Death on Heels (7 page)

The boot designer himself was on hand to meet and greet his fans, and the occasional lost fashion reporter. He was long and lanky and went by the name of Ryder. His sandy red hair touched his shoulders, and he wore a million-dollar smile. Though he was surrounded by fans,
Lacey flashed her D.C. congressional press pass and wrangled a few words with him.

He picked up one of his display boots and stroked it lovingly. “All my boots have a stainless steel shank and are built by hand, using custom lasts. See this sole? Attached with lemonwood pegs. I don’t use brass nails. Weather changes and they fall right out. Not the lemonwood. And I’ve got the best hides on the planet. The best workmanship. All handmade, hand pegged, hand lasted, hand stitched, every boot fitted to an individual foot.”

“They’re beautiful,” Lacey said. “Cowboy boots are a frontier tradition, but do you think they also make a fashion statement?”

“Course they do.” Ryder grinned like a shark. “They say,
Yee hah, baby! I’m livin’ the Frontier and I’m kickin’ it! Kickin’ it hard!
Cowboy boots are high style, they’re low style, they’re yesteryear and next year, they’re rockin’ an ageless American renegade-rebel-on-the-road kinda thing. Real cowboys buy my boots, if they’re rich enough. Movie stars and Nashville music stars buy my boots. Even Lady Gaga buys my cowboy boots,” he said. Lacey wasn’t taking notes, but she was engraving the good quotes in her reporter’s memory.

“And Taylor Swift?”

“The country songbird? Goes without saying. How do you like these? Brand-new design.” Ryder picked up a pair of knee-high black and red boots, hand-tooled cowhide with furious red-eyed bulls snorting clouds of rhinestones and silver filigree. The stacked heels were sky-high and so was the price. They would sell for five thousand dollars.

They were magnificent, but Lacey couldn’t see a real cowboy wearing them. Those filigree bulls wouldn’t impress the real bulls. They had a country music star vibe.

“Have you sold any of these yet?”

“Just delivered my first pair,” Ryder said. “To a pretty lady who’s already bought sixty-five pairs of my boots.”

Sixty-five?
Lacey did a quick calculation in her head. That might be a couple of hundred thousand dollars’
worth of boots. “She’d need a special closet just for those boots.”

He nodded with a grin. “I helped her design that closet. Custom built, like my boots.”

“Does she ever wear anything else? I mean, on her feet?”

“I hope not.” He laughed. Ryder was surrounded by fans begging for his attention and it was time for Lacey to move on.

Lacey gazed at the boots, mesmerized. She handled several pairs, admiring their construction—and their price tags. The variety of subject matter was impressive. There were no one-color, utility boots in this collection. There were calf-high and knee-high, with low heels and tall heels. They were works of art decorated in a multitude of moods and themes. There were boots intricately fashioned with skulls, bad kitties, cowgirls, and rattlesnakes wrapped around daggers and guitars. There were hand-tooled butterflies, flowers, and flaming hearts.

A woman around Lacey’s age tried on boots in black leather with white and red cutouts in the shapes of spades and clubs, hearts and diamonds. Another shopper in her twenties wore a pair of yellow boots decorated with sterling silver roses. These women were confident, active, attractive, and obviously successful enough to feel no pain at price tags that ran into thousands of dollars for a pair of boots. Lacey knew she shouldn’t be shocked, but she was.

Cherise was trying on a pair of baby-blue-and-bone-colored high-heeled boots and admiring them in the mirror.

“Aren’t they beautiful?”

“Yes, but did you see how much these things are going for?”

“Oh, these are only nine hundred.”

Only nine hundred! Have you lost your mind?
Lacey held her tongue. She remembered how she’d once lost her own mind over that pair of Scarpabella designer heels. Of course, she’d been ganged up on by Stella and
Miguel and stoked with chocolate endorphins. And those shoes were on sale, $660 marked down from $1200. Lacey had surrendered to a moment of shoe madness. The beautiful shoes still sparkled in her closet. Who was she to cast the first sandal?

“Very pretty,” Lacey said. “I suppose you’d have them forever.”

“If my feet don’t grow.” Cherise looked worried. “I heard they keep growing when you get old. Is that true, big sis?”

“I guess it’s your gamble. Of course you could always just display them on a shelf, like art.”

Lacey wondered what Stella would think of these boots. Because cowboy boots weren’t overdone in D.C., they would be that much more rare and exotic to Stella. Maybe Lacey should suggest a pair of cowboy boots for Stella’s wedding. Did cowboy boots come in white tooled leather? No doubt Ryder would make them, for a price. And decorated with sterling silver roses, or at least rhinestones. And hearts and flowers.

Cherise paraded in front of the mirror, clearly in love with her boot choice.

“I want them. Everyone’s wearing them. Besides, Lacey, you have cowboy boots.”

“With a broken heel. And they only cost a couple of hundred. It seemed like a lot, at the time.”

“I’ll take them,” Cherise said, handing the box and her shoes to the associate. “Can I just wear them? I wanna dance all night in these! By the way, Lacey, don’t tell Mom how much these cost. Promise!”

“Really, when you think about it, they’re a real bargain,” Cherise said.

In her new baby blue and bone boots, Cherise pranced along with a new spring in her step. She smiled at random men on the street, ready to kick up her heels and flirt. She experienced none of the instant buyer’s regret that would have had Lacey by the throat. Lacey envied her that.

Cherise was in the mood for a raucous dance club, but Lacey needed something quieter. She chose the Cruise Room. Because she was the big sister, she won. She always thought the Cruise Room at the Oxford Hotel was one of the most romantic places in Denver. Maybe a little less romantic if you were with your sister. Lacey realized she was missing Vic terribly. If only he were there with her! Not that she resented hanging with Cherise. Not exactly.

Dark and lit with a rosy glow, the Cruise Room famously had opened the day after Prohibition ended in 1933, and it was essentially unchanged. It was modeled after a bar in the Queen Mary. A dozen Art Deco bas-relief panels lined the walls above the cozy booths and featured Thirties-era toasts from around the world. Lacey and Cherise grabbed the booth beneath the Russian toast N
A
Z
DOROVIE
.

“You call this a bar? It doesn’t even have a television,” Cherise complained.

Lacey raised an imperious eyebrow. “Art Deco hates
television, and so do I. The Cruise is perfect just the way it is. I need a dirty martini. Do you want to talk, or just leave me here and go find yourself a sports bar somewhere?”

“When you put it that way.” Cherise pouted a little and settled into the booth. She gazed down at her new boots. “I don’t usually get down to this part of town.” She looked around. “Lacey, cute guy alert,” Cherise whispered. “At the bar.”

Lacey glanced up.
Skiers
heeding the late winter call to the slopes
. They had the telltale ski-goggles tan. As if on cue, two men with healthy white grins and neatly cropped hair spun around on their barstools to admire Cherise’s new cowboy boots. The boots were working like a charm. Cherise and the guys discussed the merits of skiing Telluride versus Crested Butte, and they all swore allegiance to the superiority of Colorado powder. Lacey had forced herself down the slopes a few times, only to discover she was
not
a skier. She smiled and nodded and thought of Vic and Cole Tucker. Cherise collected the skiers’ business cards as they left.

“You’re right, Lacey. I’m not missing television now,” Cherise said.

“But what about Tommy? You missing him?”

Cherise had been dating the high school quarterback she had once knocked out with her killer kick. She shrugged.

“Not so much. We’re just, you know, casual. Nothing serious.”

“Maybe he’s afraid of you. The kick is mightier than the sword.”

“Very funny. That was ages ago. What about you? You say you’re here to find out about Cole Tucker, but what about Vic?”

Lacey felt herself smiling at his very name. “I’m pleading the Fifth Amendment.”

Her sister had an irritatingly knowing air. “I thought so. Will he be in Sagebrush?”

“He’ll be there.”

“Is his ex still after him? That cotton-candy blonde?”

Lacey tossed a straw at her. “I imagine so. Too bad I never mastered that cheerleader kick thing.”

“Inborn ability. How long has it been since you’ve seen this cowboy?”

“Years and years.”
An eternity ago.

“You still care about him?”

“No. Not like that. But this whole thing is gnawing at me. He’s not a killer. It can’t be him. It’s a mistake.” She thought about Tucker’s sudden arrest.
Who called the law on Tucker? Why? And what was the evidence that tipped the scales?

“Cole Tucker seemed okay to me,” Cherise said. “Cute too. But you read all the time about these seemingly normal guys. They have families, they lead the Boy Scouts, the whole nine yards. And they turn out to be mad-dog killers.”

“Not this guy.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I only met him that once and I can’t get the headlines out of my mind.”

“Me neither. And there will be people who’ll swear they always knew something was wrong about Cole.” Lacey pushed her hair away from her face.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because someone always says that. ‘I could see it in his eyes. He had killer eyes.’”

Cherise nodded. “Monday morning quarterbacks.”

“And then they’ll say, ‘He was always so quiet. It’s the quiet ones who surprise you.’”

“I think you’ve been writing too much about murder. You’re creeping me out, Lacey.”

Cherise sipped her blue martini—to match her boots—as another man smiled at them. Denver wasn’t like D.C., where most men seemed to be afraid of women, or too in love with themselves and their own self-importance to think of the opposite sex. Nope, here in the West, men weren’t afraid to look at women. Especially women wearing boots.

I should have worn my cowboy boots. The ones Vic broke. Coincidence?

*   *   *

After a single blue martini Cherise was a relentless chatterer, even in the taxi on the way home. Even when Lacey leaned her head against the seat and closed her eyes and tried to ignore her talkative little sister.

“Show me that thing Tucker taught you,” Cherise was saying.

“What thing?” Lacey opened one eye.

“You know. How to throw a lasso. I’ve always wanted to do that.” She mimicked the motion of throwing a rope.

“Those cowboy boots are really going to your head.” Lacey yawned. “And I don’t remember how.”

Lacey hadn’t exactly forgotten, but it wasn’t like she’d had much chance to practice lasso throwing in Washington, D.C. It was just one of those things, a memory of Tucker. Riding and roping were second nature to him. Not only was he a born cowpoke, he’d won his share of awards in local rodeos when he was a teenager.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” Tucker had said, on one of their first dates. It was definitely not dinner and a movie.

He had put his arms around Lacey to show her how to tie the honda, the loop at the end of the rope, and the stopper knot. He singed the end of the new rope to secure the knot. The rope looped through the honda, forming a kind of noose that was thrown with one arm high and circling. The warmth of his arms and the giddy feeling of an unexpected first love were a sharper memory than Lacey wanted to recall. She closed her eyes again to blot it out.

“I was never very good at it,” Lacey said. She had captured a few tree stumps in her time with Tucker. That was about all. Tucker had turned her loose on roping a real live calf once, and it was that calf’s lucky day.

“When we get home, show me,” Cherise begged her. “Please.”

“Sure,” Lacey said. “Show you another lethal trick? Why not. Maybe you can rope Tommy What’s-his-name, the quarterback.” The cab pulled up to the house. Cherise jumped out, leaving Lacey to pay the driver.

“There are ropes in the garage,” Cherise yelled, sprinting for the garage door.

Lacey trudged over the winter-yellowed lawn after her perky sibling. “It’s got to have the right weight, you know.”

“Lots of rope. Take your pick,” Cherise said, hunting for her folks’ house keys. “If Dad doesn’t have it, it doesn’t exist. Not at a hardware store, anyway.”

“Do you know what time it is?” Lacey asked. It was only eleven p.m., but one o’clock in the morning in Washington. She had to get up early.

“It’s not that late. And it’s Saturday night!” Cherise lifted the garage door. A metal-on-metal screech cut through the silent night. Lacey held her hands over her ears.

The garage was Steven Smithsonian’s man-cave. Tools and supplies were neatly organized on shelves and hung on hooks on the walls. There were ladders and drills, shovels and rakes and trimmers, and all manner of axes and hammers. There were wrenches and screwdrivers, buckets and old coffee cans full of nails and screws and metal hooks, all sorted by size and purpose. There were sheets of plywood and two-by-fours, everything a home handyman might require. And even though Steven rarely produced any particular
thing
with his hands—once there was a birdhouse, Lacey recalled—
he liked to putter in the garage and listen to sports on the radio. His man-cave even contained a television, a green wooden Adirondack chair, a space heater, and a microwave oven to heat his coffee. And the Oldsmobile wagon.

Rose assured everyone the man-cave was essential to the health of her marriage. She didn’t interfere with Steven’s male habitat, and he didn’t have a choice in her interior decorating.

“I feel like I’m trespassing,” Lacey said.

“Don’t be silly. Dad doesn’t mind.” Cherise pointed to her father’s rope collection. At least a dozen different ropes were coiled and hung on a special Steven-made rack on the far wall.