Shoe Done It (25 page)

“Can I touch them?”

He held out a pair of rubber gloves. I put them on. Then I picked up the shoes one at a time and looked at them, ran my fingers over the leather and tapped the heels lightly with my knuckles. All the while Jack was watching me. What he thought, I had no idea. Maybe he thought I was faking it. That I didn’t know anything. But I did. My confidence was returning. I knew my shoes and I knew I knew them.

“Well,” he said after I’d done the same with both shoes and put them back in their box.

“Fake,” I said.

“How can you be sure?” he said.

I picked up a shoe and held it up to the light. “A slanted, easily breakable heel, faux leather, and studs instead of diamonds,” I said.

“Can anyone tell the difference?” he asked. “Or just you?”

I didn’t want to brag, but I had to be honest. “No, they can’t and even if they can, it may be worth it to buy the fake for forty-six dollars if the real thing is over a thousand or many thousands.”

He whistled softly.

“I don’t mean to put down Harrington’s work,” I said. “If he made these. It can’t be easy to make a pair of shoes. Marsha looked stunning in them, didn’t you think?”

He shrugged. “I’m not big on orange dresses and silver shoes.”

“Tangerine,” I corrected. “I still don’t understand where that dress came from. It was not Dolce’s. So now what? Will you give the shoes back to Marsha?”

“I will, but I’d like to find the originals,” he said.

“Because they will lead you to the killer, am I right?” I held my breath. If he was true to form, he wouldn’t tell me anything.

Instead of answering my question, he asked, “If you wanted to buy a pair of knockoffs, where would you look?”

“Online. There are dozens of outlets.”

“Would you ever buy a knockoff?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and flipping a pen from one hand to the other.

“I have. Some designers don’t mind. They take knockoffs as a compliment. If they make beautiful shoes or dresses or whatever. They’re confident that the copies just don’t compare. Like those shoes.” I glanced at Marsha’s silver shoes. “They don’t have the same feel or the same texture, and they certainly can’t fit as well as the originals. But other designers hate being copied. They want to see us have a fashion copyright law like they have for books, music, films or art. They feel ripped off by the counterfeiters. As for Harrington making one copy for his sister or a costume for his play, I hardly think anyone could complain about that.”

“You convinced me,” Jack said. “I’ll give her back her shoes.”

“And the real shoes, the ones I brought from Miami, the ones MarySue was wearing?” I asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.

I didn’t believe that for a minute. I believed he had a very good guess who had them and where they were, but he didn’t have enough evidence to pounce or get a search warrant. It was maddening.

“Are you sure MarySue was wearing the shoes at the Benefit?” he asked. “You weren’t there, were you?”

I wondered if he was trying to trick me into confessing that I was actually at the Benefit and I’d killed MarySue to get the shoes back.

“No, I wasn’t there,” I said. “I can’t be sure about the shoes, but why would MarySue steal them and then not wear them? It doesn’t make sense. Everyone who was there says she was wearing silver shoes. There are only two pairs, Harrington’s and the real ones. Unless there are more knockoffs out there we don’t know about.” I suddenly had a horrible vision of boatloads of silver stilettos being unloaded from faraway countries where little children worked for pennies a day. I buried my head in my hands.

I heard Jack scrape his chair across the floor. When I looked up, he was standing. He was obviously tired of talking about and hearing about these shoes, and who could blame him? He must have other problems, other cases on his desk.

“Well,” I said, “I have to go to work. Perhaps I’ll see you at the memorial Jim is hosting at MarySue’s favorite hot spot.” I wanted him to know I had no intention of staying away.

He looked like he wanted to warn me, but after a moment, he said, “I’ll be there,” and he walked out to the front door with me.

Portnoy’s Tavern was supposed to be closed to anyone who wasn’t with the Jensen funeral. I’d never been there before, and I had to give Jim credit or whoever planned it for booking a historic saloon across the street from the cemetery. Of course, they’d chosen it because it was MarySue’s favorite hangout. I just hoped I could continue to avoid running into Jim in case he still held a grudge.

The other person I would have liked to avoid was Nick’s aunt, Meera. But there she was standing at the bar. “What’s she doing here?” I muttered. “I thought this was a private party.”

“Who?” Dolce said, handing me a pisco punch.

“Meera, the one-hundred-year-old-plus so-called vampire who is Nick’s aunt.”

“Maybe she hangs out at cemeteries just in case—”

“In case she locates another undead vampire on their way back to earth? Right.” I took a sip of my punch hoping I wouldn’t have to speak to her. “Delicious,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the woman approaching.

“I see you’ve found me in my home away from home,” she said, greeting me with air kisses as if we were old friends. “Good choice,” she said, either referring to my glass or the tavern itself. “I’ve been coming here for ages. The place is almost as old as I am,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. Knowing her, I was sure this was either a hint for Dolce to ask how old she was or an attempt to bring the conversation around to the topic of her vampire status. I nudged Dolce to keep quiet so I wouldn’t have to hear her story again.

“You know,” she continued, “I’ve been coming here since the days of the Barbary Coast, speakeasies, Prohibition. You name it, I’ve seen it all.” She turned to Dolce. “Who’s your friend?”

“Dolce is my boss. Dolce, this is Nick’s aunt, Meera.”

“You’re both in style,” she said, giving us each a once-over. I had the distinct feeling she didn’t approve of our choices of funeral attire. “In style” but not stylish enough? Not funereal enough? “How interesting. Call me old-fashioned, but I think once you’ve found your style you should stick to it even if times change, do you agree?”

It was obvious what era she’d chosen. She was wearing a bonnet, a cape and a long full skirt. I’d hardly ever seen Dolce at a loss for words, especially when the subject was fashion, but at that moment she just stood there staring at Meera, a vision in a turn-of-the-century costume who could have stepped out of a museum. For all I knew, she had.

“Where do you get your clothes?” Dolce said at last.

“I have them made for me,” Meera said, smoothing her bouffant skirt with her hand, “by my tailor. And I don’t mean my friend Mr. Levi Strauss.”

“You knew the man who made the first blue jeans?” I asked. I should have known since Meera had been telling us she’d been around for a long time.

“Of course,” she said, twirling her parasol. “In those days San Francisco was a small city. We all knew each other. Mark Hopkins, Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, James Flood and myself. I don’t know if you know this, but Strauss came to California from Bavaria to open a branch of the family dry goods business. He had the most charming accent.” She smiled dreamily and Dolce shot me a look that said, “Can you believe this woman?”

“When he got here he planned to make tents and wagon covers out of canvas for the forty-niners. He knew there was money to be made in the support services. But nobody wanted his tents. I felt terrible for him. He told me he was thinking of going back to Bavaria, but I convinced him to stay. I suggested he try something new like making sturdy pants for the miners.”

“So you were responsible for his success. It was your idea he should make Levi’s?” I asked politely. I knew I sounded skeptical. I was. She didn’t mind. She must be used to it.

She nodded. “But not out of canvas. Too stiff. Too hard to work with. I suggested he use a kind of denim with copper rivets.” She twisted her gold ring around her finger. What could we say? There was no one around to contradict her. Everyone from that era was dead. I began to see the benefits of being a vampire and living forever. I wanted to pin her down about her age and the discrepancy in her stories. How could she have hung out with the miners and the early movers and shakers if she was really only 128? But now was not the time to do it. Maybe that time was never.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” Meera said to me.

I wanted to say, “I don’t think I’ve seen you since Alcatraz,” but I pretended I’d forgotten all about our last meeting when she tried to lock me in the cell.

“I’ve never been here before,” I said. “We’re here for a . . . gathering . . . One of our customers, uh, recently died unexpectedly. We’re here to celebrate her life.”

“It must be Mrs. Jensen,” Meera said. “I heard about her. What did she die of?”

“Actually, she was poisoned at a society function.”

“A murder?” Meera’s eyes lit up. “How exciting. Who did it?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a few people I recognized from the funeral just arriving at the historic tavern. Dolce drifted away from me and toward them. Probably had had enough of Meera. For some reason I hung around. Wasn’t it possible Meera knew something I wanted to know, like who might have killed MarySue?

“No one knows,” I said. “But it seems to be connected to a pair of expensive shoes she was wearing at the time.”

“Killed for a pair of shoes!” Meera said. “They must have been some shoes.”

“They were silver stilettos.”

“I say forget the shoes and look for the next of kin,” Meera said, peering over her spectacles to observe the crowd gathering at the bar. “Is that her husband over there?”

I followed her glance to where Jim was playing the host by serving drinks.

“That’s Jim,” I said. “But why would he want to kill his wife?” Of course I knew the answer to that one. He was furious with her for ordering the shoes and spending so much money. He could collect on her life insurance, and he might even have planned to return the shoes and get the deposit money back.

“I know nothing about this case, but I have been witness to many a murder over the years. President Harding died right here in San Francisco.”

“Really? When was that?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, twenty-two or three, I think. Poisoned. Just like your friend MarySue. Some suspected his wife Florence, but in that case it was not a matter of cherchez la femme. No, there’s the difference. If I were the officials, I would definitely go after the husband here. Jim is his name? He looks guilty to me.”

I thought about the life insurance, and I had to admit that she had something there. But I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of thinking she’d solved in minutes a crime the police hadn’t been able to solve in weeks.

As if she’d read my mind, she said, “I will have to have a word with the police. I’ve been helpful to them in the past you know. Ah, there is that handsome policeman now.”

I turned to see Jack standing in the doorway. Now how did Meera know who he was? No uniform. He blended in with the other mourners who were filling the bar now. How Meera intended to help Jack solve this crime, I didn’t know. I watched as she walked across the room, her lace-up boots clacking against the floorboards. She sidled up to Jack and began an animated conversation. I had no doubt she’d let him know exactly what she thought she knew. I was glad because Jack wouldn’t have believed me if he didn’t have this chance to interact with her himself.

Dolce found me and handed me a fresh drink. “I thought you could use one after getting rid of that nutcase.”

“So you didn’t buy her story?” I asked.

“Hardly,” she said. “It’s a story, that’s all.”

“I know,” I said. “If she really wants us to believe she was around for the gold rush, then she’s got to confess to being at least one hundred seventy, doesn’t she?”

Dolce frowned. “Rita, I’m worried about you. There’s no such thing as vampires. The woman is a con artist.”

“I know,” I assured her. “It’s just—”

“You’ve been working too hard trying to help the police. Forget the murder. It’s not your problem.”

“I can’t forget it,” I protested. “Not when I’m a suspect.” Or
you
are a suspect, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I didn’t want Dolce as worried or involved as I was.

“Who suspects you?” she asked me.

I pointed across the room to where Meera and Jack were still talking. “Jack, the cop on the case, thinks I know more than I’m letting on. I had a motive—to get the shoes back. I thought I had an alibi, but no one clocked me in at the hospital when I arrived. Someone saw a woman who could have been MarySue drop me off, but it’s all so murky,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m going to find the ladies’ room,” I said. I had to freshen up before more people arrived. I headed toward the rear of the bar where I saw a sign in several languages.

I’d just turned the corner down a dim hallway toward the restroom when I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned around, I saw Jim Jensen looming over me.

“There you are,” he said. “You have a lot of guts coming to my party.”