Cement Stilettos Read online

  Debbi came out of the kitchen and patted Nick on the cheek. “You did good today,” she said. “The family loved you.” She handed him a bulging black cotton bag with a drawstring. “Should be enough there to take care of the window and the cement. Maybe a little extra to take out your girl.” She smiled at me.

  Katie came up behind her. “Samantha, we should go shopping together sometime. Debbi and I can help you pick out some new clothes.”

  I quickly imagined a store that only stocked animal prints. “I don’t really like to shop all that much,” I lied.

  Slowly the parking lot thinned. I stood out front with a take-out container of cannoli resting against my hip. When the last of the cars that had parked me in drove away, I pulled out my keys. Nick swiped them from my gloved hand. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Not until we talk.”

  “Can’t you understand that I don’t want to be a part of this? I want to leave. I want to go home and throw out these stained clothes and pretend this day never happened.”

  “And then what?”

  Reality hit me and my eyes filled with tears that I’d been holding back all afternoon. “And then I want to start figuring out how to get over you.”

  Nick tossed my keys to the boy who’d been sitting out front. “Pull her car around, would you? It’s the black Honda del Sol.”

  “You’re gonna pay me, right?” asked the boy. “She didn’t pay me.”

  Nick pulled out his wallet. “Here’s five dollars. I’ll give you another five when you bring the car around.”

  The boy took the bill and jogged to my car. I looked at the ground, not trusting myself to speak or to look at Nick. The engagement ring felt like it was burning a circle around my finger. I heard my engine start. I looked up at Nick. “I can’t do this,” I said quietly. “The engagement is off.”

  And then, behind me, there was a loud explosion. I turned just in time to see a cloud of black engulf my twenty-year-old car.

  17

  Wednesday, 9:30 p.m.

  I screamed. Nick shielded me with his arm and pulled me down to the ground. The air grew cloudy and dark. I pushed Nick away and stood up. “The boy!” I cried.

  Nick ran toward the car. A second explosion came from the ground in front of my car, rocking it backward. Nick disappeared into the smoke. Seconds later, he emerged. The boy was hunched over next to him, hacking into his fist.

  “Get him away from here,” Nick said. He pushed the boy toward me. I put my arm around him and guided him through the parking lot, toward the street. A dirty sedan pulled into the lot and stopped next to me. The window rolled down. It was Loncar.

  I pointed to where I’d left Nick. “My car blew up. Nick’s back there. I’ll wait here.”

  Loncar drove toward the smoke. I coughed a few times to rid my lungs of the inhalant. Light flurries of snow blew around our heads. Flurries were typical this time of year, but no forecast of a storm made me look at them twice. They weren’t snowflakes, but pieces of ash that had become airborne.

  Sirens sounded and a fire truck pulled into the lot. Men in thick rubber overalls and wool coats ran a length of hose from their truck and focused their attention on my car.

  The boy pulled away from me and stood on the outside of the fence. He threaded his fingers through the metal and climbed up so he could peer over it. “Did you see that?” he asked, eyes wide.

  “Yes, I saw it. How come you weren’t in the car?”

  The boy looked angry. “Hey, lady, just because I tried to scam you out of five dollars doesn’t mean you should want me dead.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You started the car. I heard the engine. How come you got out?”

  “After you stiffed me, I didn’t want to take no chances. I was heading back to ask the other guy for the rest of my money up front. Good thing, too.”

  “Where are your parents?” I asked suddenly.

  “My dad’s working. He’ll come get me when he’s done. I can handle myself until then. I’m not a kid.”

  “Sure, you’re not.” I turned my attention back toward the parking lot. It was too late to see much more than the silhouettes of Loncar and Nick and make out a few vehicles here and there. Nick’s white truck was parked a few spaces away from where my car had been. The only other cars in the lot showed signs of having been there longer than the afternoon.

  Soon after the explosion and the arrival of Detective Loncar and the fire truck, police cars entered the lot. I stood with the boy, both of us mesmerized by the activity in front of us. Nick, draped in a blanket, stayed with the cops. I didn’t know what the explosion meant. At the moment, I felt like I didn’t know anything.

  Once the fire was under control, it was Loncar, not Nick, who came over to me and the boy. Loncar’s attitude was gentler than I was used to.

  “Ms. Kidd, I’m going to need to get your statement, but I’d like to talk to your friend first.”

  “She ain’t my friend,” the boy said. “She stiffed me five dollars.”

  I leaned toward him. “If I hadn’t stiffed you five dollars, you would have been inside that car.”

  “Lady, if you hadn’t stiffed me five dollars, I would have been watching your car and it wouldn’t have gotten blown up.”

  I stood back up. “Detective, you’re right. You really should get his statement.”

  The boy crossed his arms. “I’m no rat. I didn’t see nothing.”

  Loncar guided the boy a few feet away from me. Through little more than body language, I saw the boy shift from defensive to scared. Loncar wrote something in his notebook and then handed the boy a card. The boy didn’t take it at first. I wondered how much of this was an act he’d perfected from watching adults around him treat the police like a nuisance, and then felt myself flush when I realized I’d often treated Loncar the exact same way.

  Loncar stood by while the boy pulled out a phone and made a call. When the boy was done, Loncar flagged one of the policemen and called him over. The boy and the policeman headed toward the building. The detective came back over to me.

  “Okay, Ms. Kidd, you want to tell me what happened?”

  “Sure,” I said. But instead of answering, I burst into tears.

  My lack of transportation and subsequent emotional outburst had led Loncar to chauffer me to the police station. Nick hadn’t offered me a ride. I didn’t know if he knew I was still there. He’d gone inside the fire hall after handing the boy over to me and I hadn’t seen him after that.

  Loncar parked his car in a reserved space by the front doors to the precinct. We walked side by side to the entrance. I went inside and stood by the room marked Interrogation.

  “Let’s go to my office,” Loncar said. He led me down a hallway and opened a door on the right.

  I’d been to Loncar’s office a few times in the past and had always been struck by how devoid of personality it was. Today, the cracked and torn desk chair had been replaced with a brown leather one with lumbar support. A pink football tied with a white ribbon sat on the middle of the desk. Loncar picked it up and set it on a stack of recycled file folders on the shelf behind him.

  “A pink football?” I said.

  “Girls can play football just as well as boys,” Loncar said.

  “Your granddaughter is six months old.”

  “Five,” he corrected. “I was going to get her a doll but that seemed like a cliché.”

  “You’re trying to do things differently to show your wife you’ve changed.”

  Loncar leaned back in his chair. “You think you know people, but you never really do. Sometimes they surprise you with something unexpected. Could be good or bad. Either way, that’s part of the package.”

  “You’re telling me nobody’s perfect,” I said. “But you’re talking about Nick.”

  “I’m talking about everybody. Take me. I spend my days trying to make this town a better place for the residents but my wife thinks I’m a bad person because I leave the toilet seat up.”


  “Leaving a toilet seat up and being involved with the mafia aren’t the same thing.”

  “No, they’re not.” He picked up a pencil and tapped the end against his desk. Loncar had these little habits: clicking pens, tapping pencils, spinning his wedding ring. They drove me nuts. Come to think of it, they probably drove his wife nuts too. I’d told him to stop it once, and he had, but here we were again. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it. I imagined years spent with him while he did his annoying little tap tap tap or click click click, and how long I would be able to take it before I snapped like his wife.

  But Nick didn’t have annoying habits, or if he did, I couldn’t see them. My attraction had rendered me blind to his flaws, and now that my eyes were open, I could see that his flaw was a doozy.

  “How long have you known Mr. Taylor?” Loncar asked.

  “Eleven years.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “Through work. We had a professional relationship.” I thought about how I’d acted around Nick and how I’d acted around my other vendors at the time. “A professional relationship with flirting.”

  Loncar smiled. “Did you think he was perfect?”

  “I thought he was close.”

  “Let me ask you a question. Do you think you’re perfect?” His question was so unexpected and, coming from him, borderline sarcastic that I laughed out loud. The resulting sound was a cross between a hiccup and a cough. I slapped my hand over my mouth and apologized for my outburst. He kept staring at me, apparently expecting an actual answer.

  “I think we all know I’m not perfect,” I said.

  “Mr. Taylor included?”

  “He has a front row view of my imperfections.”

  “And yet he asked you to spend the rest of your life with him. Why do you think that is?”

  I sat up straight and pointed a finger at Loncar. “You’re trying to trick me into forgiving him. Why? How come you’re not arresting him and telling me to run the other direction? You’d tell your daughter to run the other direction if it was her, wouldn’t you? And don’t give me any of that ‘I’ve changed’ stuff. You wouldn’t change that much.”

  “All I’m saying is if you want to be in a relationship with him, then you need to see him for who he is. Not who you want him to be. If you’re not ready to do that, you’re both going to be in for disappointment in the future.”

  “There’s not going to be any future. I can’t marry someone who’s been lying to me ever since we met.”

  Loncar stood up. “Come with me.” He walked out of his office and I followed him. I wasn’t sure where we were going or why we were talking about my love life and not the explosion at the fire hall or the mafia contingency in Ribbon or the illegal activities that had probably been planned while I worked the sauce station.

  We went farther down the hall. Loncar stopped by the last door on the left. He opened it and led me inside a room that was no bigger than ten feet square.

  A small table was pushed up along the back wall, and a water cooler was wedged into the corner next to a coffee station. But what caught my attention was the wall facing us. It was covered with a blown-up map of the southernmost part of the city of Ribbon. Someone had traced the outline of a series of roads on the map, highlighting a long narrow rectangle that was framed out by Fifth Street on one side and Eleventh Street on the other. Red dot stickers had been affixed to the map, some flat against the shiny plastic surface, others curling at their edges. A cluster of red dots overlapped at an intersection at the bottom. The fire hall had been only a few blocks away from that cluster.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s a map of the known mafia activity in Ribbon.”

  “How long have you been tracking it?”

  “Actively? Last couple of years.” He opened a file drawer and pulled out a white tube of paper. He slid off a rubber band and unrolled it. It was the same map, but the dots were yellow and there were only about a quarter as many. “This was Ribbon ten years ago.”

  “The mob’s been here for a decade? And you’ve only been actively tracking them for the past couple of years?”

  “The dots are yellow because we suspected they were here but we didn’t have proof. Thanks to information we’ve been getting from people in the community, we now have proof.”

  Loncar was hinting at something but not spelling it out. My brain was on overload and for once I needed him to give it to me straight. “Detective, please, I don’t have the mental strength right now. Whatever you’re trying to tell me, I need you to just tell me.”

  I hadn’t heard the door open behind us, so when the voice spoke, I jumped and turned around. I was surprised to see Nick’s dad.

  “The detective is trying to tell you my son isn’t responsible for his business being involved with the mob.”

  “With all due respect, after what I saw today, I’m not sure I believe you,” I said.

  “You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “Nick didn’t put the shoe company in jeopardy. I did.”

  18

  Wednesday, 11:00 p.m.

  Nick Senior remained where he was. I stared at him for a long moment. Loncar broke the spell by moving a plastic chair behind me. I dropped into it. He poured me a cup of water from the cooler and then crossed the room and shook Senior’s hand.

  “Thanks for coming. I know it’s late.”

  Senior nodded. “It’s time.” Loncar opened the door and turned back. “I think you two should talk.” He closed the door behind Senior.

  I stood back up. “I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m not going to be a victim.”

  “Who says you’re a victim? The reason I’m here is because in some ways, you’re stronger than the rest of us.”

  “The rest of who?”

  “If I tell you it’ll just go to your head.” He turned a second plastic chair around and sat down facing me. “I’m going to tell you something that only a few people know.” He ticked fingers off on his hand. “My son knows. Detective Loncar knows. And Angela di Sotto knew.”

  “Angela was murdered,” I said. “Maybe I’m better off not knowing.”

  “Too late,” he said. He unbuttoned his jacket and readjusted himself in his chair. “I loved Nick’s mother. We had a great marriage, and when she died, I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do to fill the hole in my life so I threw myself into work.”

  “A lot of people turn to their jobs when they experience loss.”

  “In time, I accepted her death. There wasn’t anybody who could fill her shoes, but I missed having somebody to go to the ball games with me, or to watch a movie. I was spending so much time at the showroom that it was no surprise when one day I noticed my showroom manager was a bright, attractive woman who worked as many hours as I did.”

  He sat quiet for a moment. As the silence draped itself over the room, I felt the energy shift. This wasn’t going to be about accusations and blame. Nick’s dad was confiding in me.

  “What happened?”

  “I asked her out to dinner, and that was the beginning of our relationship. I never expected anything other than companionship. When the company hit a rough patch, I needed money to pay the factories. She said she knew some people who wanted to invest. Maybe I was willfully ignorant, but I didn’t see the problem.”

  “Was she married?”

  “No, she wasn’t married, but in a way, she was taken. She was Lucky Vincenzo’s mistress.”

  Involuntarily, my mouth formed an “O.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “When I found out where the money came from, I got mad. I was a single father who owned a struggling shoe company, but I lived a clean life. It looked to me like all that time she’d been working on Lucky’s behalf. I felt like a mark. I broke off our relationship and told her to find another job.”

  “Did Lucky find out?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying to figure out a way to pay off the debt when Lucky sho
wed up and told me we were square.” His eyes filled with tears, and I sensed that whatever had happened had caused him great pain that he hadn’t spoken of before.

  I reached over and put my hand on his hand and squeezed.

  He looked up at me. “There was only one place that money could have come from. Junior”—I knew Junior was Nick—“was about to head off to Parsons School of Design in the fall. But same month Lucky told me we were square, Junior told me he had changed his mind and was taking a semester off to work in the factory. Six months later, he accepted a full scholarship to I-FAD. It took him six years to graduate because he worked on the side, but he eventually got his degree.”

  “You think Nick paid off your debt with his college fund and never told you.”

  “I’ve made mistakes. Lots of them. But my son is a good kid and I won’t let you blame him for what I did wrong back then. He had nothing to do with this life. Never has.”

  “That’s not true. Somebody murdered Angela and left her in Nick’s showroom. And if that wasn’t enough, they destroyed his showroom, and then they threw him a fundraiser. Are you saying they’re destroying him to get to you? Is that how they work? Destroy your life and then offer you a helping hand so you’re forever in their debt?”

  “You catch on pretty quick.”

  “I don’t believe it. Angela was involved in something she didn’t want anybody to know. I’ve been clinging to that. The tiny possibility that her murder didn’t have anything to do with Nick, that she was keeping some other secret that brought all this on.”

  “You’re part right,” Nick Senior said. “Angela did have a secret, but she wasn’t the only one keeping it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “About a year ago, Angela di Sotto showed up on my doorstep and told me she thought I was her father.”

  19

  Wednesday, after midnight

  Nick Senior smiled a little at the memory. “She was a pretty young lady. That dark almost black hair and those brown eyes, she looked so familiar. For a second, I thought I was hallucinating. I remember thinking whatever she was selling, I was going to buy some.”