Page 99 of Passions in Death
Why were there seasons for sales? Eve wondered. If the season was ending, did you have to wait until the next year to wear what you bought at the end of the season? Then you’d probably hit the preseason sales and end up with a closet full of pre stuff and end-of stuff before you bought in-season stuff.
A sickness, she decided. It was all a sickness.
Pleased to be healthy in that regard, she paused at the store, studied the signs announcing that end-of-season sale.
UP TO 50 % OFF!
LIMITED SIZES!
END YOUR SUMMER ON FASHIONABLE FEET!
Fashionable feet apparently meant sandals—platform, heeled, flats. Or open-toed shoes. Open-toed boots, which made virtually no sense whatsoever to her mind. A lot of candy colors, or more inexplicably to her, the clear ones that exposed your entire foot.
But as she opened the door to mild chaos, she decided the marketing just worked.
At least a dozen people sat on tiny scoop chairs or narrow benches, both with piles of shoes scattered like shrapnel. More crowded the shelves and racks while clerks hustled to bring more boxes out, take more boxes away.
The noise level reached awesome.
She spotted Peabody and McNab toward the back with a mid-twenties Asian woman in New York black and those weird clear, open-toed boots. She began to weave and dodge her way back.
Peabody saw her coming. “Oh, hey. Lieutenant Dallas, this is Mae-Lu, the assistant manager. Mae-Lu was about to tell us about an encounter with Ms. Lopez.”
“Truth,” Mae-Lu said, and spoke in a voice that rang with Queens. “So she comes in—the one in the picture they showed me, yeah? This is like back last fall before I got promoted, and we weren’t swamped like today, yeah? We had some customers, but Roxy had them and I was free, so I asked if I could show her something, and she gives a look that’s all: As if, and says she wants the manager.”
“Did she ask for her by name?” Eve wondered.
“Nope, just ‘the manager,’ and I thought how uh-oh, she’s one of those, come in to bitch about something. So I went in the back where Shauna was handling some things, and told her. She comes out, and she says like: ‘Oh, hi, ChiChi’—I remember the name because my aunt has a cat named ChiChi. Anyway, the woman says how she wants to look at some shoes, which I could’ve helped her with, yeah? But Shauna takes care of her.”
“So she bought shoes?”
Mae-Lu shifted on her invisible open-toed boots, then set a fist on her cocked hip.
“Nope, here’s the thing. I got busy with a customer, then I noticed how the ChiChi woman’s sitting there, with a bunch of shoes and boxes all around—that happens—but she’s being bitchy about it, and she’s got Shauna down on the floor, putting her shoes on like she’s freaking Cinderella, yeah?
“We weren’t all that busy, like I said, but I bet I served three customers while this one’s sending Shauna back and forth. So when I’m free again, I go over and ask if I can take some of the shoes back for Shauna, and Ms. Cinderella gives me that look again, and she says how a manager should be able to manage.”
Expressively, Mae-Lu rolled her gorgeous onyx eyes.
“Then she puts her own shoes back on and says how there’s nothing in this store worth having. And gives Shauna that nasty look and says: ‘Nothing at all.’ Then she walked out like the queen or whatever. I said something like, you know, ‘Whew, rude much,’ but Shauna’s all ‘It’s no big.’”
Mae-Lu shrugged. “That’s why she’s the manager, yeah. She rolls. Anyway. We put all the shoes away, and I can see she’s a little steamed, a little upset, but she just goes back to work, yeah? Shauna’s totally professional, and really nice, too. She put me up for promotion. I’m really, really sorry about what happened to her fiancée.”
Those onyx eyes went damp. “She’d come in once in a while—Erin. Everybody liked her.”
“Did ChiChi ever come in again?”
“Not while I was working, and I’d probably have heard if she did from one of the other staff. Because, whoa, talk about ’tude. And not the good kind, yeah?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Um, if you talk to Shauna, just tell her we’re all really sorry. And we’re going to cover things here, yeah? Not to worry about any of it. I need to get back to it. Our big sales rock it out.”
“Go ahead. Thanks again.” She turned to Peabody. “Let’s step outside.”
And out of the mayhem to where Roarke in his perfect suit stood on the sidewalk perusing the shoes on display.
“Hello, Peabody, Ian. Lieutenant. Quite a busy hive in there, I see.”
