Secrets of a Shoe Addict (8 page)

T
he next morning Tiffany got up before Loreen and Abbey to return the clothes to Finola Pims. When she was about to leave the room with her bags, she noticed Jacob Murphy and Parker Walsh trying to get the window open, while Kate sat nearby watching TV.

“What are you guys doing?” Tiffany asked, knowing the answer wasn’t going to be something easy.

Both boys turned to her, faces pale with surprise. “Nothing,” one of them said. It didn’t matter which one, the truth of
something
was written all over their faces.

“Jacob bet Parker he could hit someone square on the head with a water balloon,” Kate said.

“Kate!”
Jacob objected.

“Are you kidding me?” Tiffany asked. “Where did you even get a balloon?”

“We don’t have a balloon,” Jacob said.

Parker looked like he’d just eaten something unpleasant.

This made Kate turn away from the TV. “Yes, you do. Don’t lie to my mom.” She turned back to Tiffany. “The lady that was here last night gave us balloons and chocolates.”

Wow. She really should have cleared that with the parents first, Tiffany thought. What if one of the kids was allergic to chocolate? Or latex? “Give me the balloon,” she said, holding her hand out.

Both Parker and Jacob produced flat little balloons and handed them over.

“Thank you.” Tiffany stuffed them in her bag. “Now, I have to go downstairs for a minute—” She stopped. There was no way she could trust these guys alone while Loreen and Abbey were asleep. God knew what they’d get into next. “And you guys are coming with me.”

“Are we going to the casino?” Jacob asked eagerly.

“No. A store.”

“Aw, man!”

“Come on.” She rustled them up, jotted a note for the others that she had the kids, and headed downstairs to Finola Pims.

It was only three kids, but trying to keep track of them in the chaos of the hotel proved harder than Tiffany had anticipated. The lights and noise seemed to hypnotize them into all sorts of wild behavior.

It was
“Jacob! Kate! Stop playing tag, you’re running into people!”

Or
“Where’s Parker?”

And
“Jacob and Parker, that is not funny. Stop it now!”

The five minutes down the elevator and out to the storefront seemed to last a lifetime. When they got to the Finola Pims shop, Tiffany rounded the children up outside the store entrance.

“Listen to me,” she said in a harsh whisper, bending down before them. “You guys
have
to be
silent
in here, do you understand? Stand like statues, don’t make a single
peep
. If you do, I
swear to you
, I will go to the board of education meeting and suggest they abolish summer vacations
completely
.” She looked at the blank faces for signs of terror and acquiescence.

“What’s
abolish
?” Jacob asked.

“It means they’d
end
it,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “School would go year-round with
no
summer vacation.” She gave a nod to emphasize her point.

That did it. There was the white-faced fear she’d been looking for: the straight backs, the closed mouths. That was more like it.

“Good.” She stood up. “Now, let’s go.”

They marched into the store like the von Trapp children, in a quiet line, straight to the sales counter. Tiffany waited behind a mature woman who was dripping with jewels so big, she couldn’t imagine they were real. Then again, the total of her sale indicated she might actually be able to afford the real thing.

Of course, someone might have said the same thing about Tiffany’s purchase.

“Can I help you?” asked the salesgirl, a slip of a thing who looked about nineteen. She glanced at the bags Tiffany was holding and the unmistakable hope of large sales commissions glinted in her eye.

“Yes.” Tiffany hefted the bags onto the counter. “I need to return these.”

For a moment it looked like the salesgirl, whose name tag announced her as
RAYANNE
, thought Tiffany was speaking another language.

“They’re beautiful,” Tiffany hastened to add, in case she had
somehow insulted the girl. “But”—she wasn’t going to admit she couldn’t afford them—“they just don’t quite suit me.”

“Wow, that’s too bad.” Rayanne nodded.

Tiffany smiled. “Well, with all the kids”—she gestured—“I figured it would be more merciful to the other shoppers for me to try them on in my room and see what works.” She took the receipt out and held it out to the girl, who just looked at it with vague sympathy.

“And they don’t fit?” she asked, making no move to take the receipt from Tiffany.

“They’re just not quite right for me.” Tiffany set the receipt on the counter and pushed it toward Rayanne, like it was a silent bid auction. “So, if you could just . . . do the return.”

“I wish I could.” She shook her head and let the words plunk down without further explanation.

“Okay, well, can you get someone who can?” Tiffany asked, losing patience. The kids were starting to shuffle their feet and get antsy. She shot them a warning look and mouthed the words
summer vacation
.

“No one can.” Rayanne pointed to a sign Tiffany had managed to overlook when making the purchase. It said, in the kind of thin, elaborate script that was harder to notice than to miss:
ALL SALES FINAL. NO RETURNS OR EXCHANGES. NO EXCEPTIONS.

“I didn’t see that before,” Tiffany murmured, as if it would make a difference.

“It’s the store policy.”

“But . . . why? I mean, Nordstrom doesn’t do that.”

Rayanne shrugged. “This isn’t Nordstrom.”

It was undeniable. “Is there a manager I could speak with? Not that I’m saying you’re not competent.”

“He won’t let you return the stuff.”

“Why don’t you let me speak to him myself?”

Rayanne didn’t move. “He won’t. People have tried before.”

Which led Tiffany to wonder for a moment if they actually removed that sign during a transaction, and put it back when the poor suckers came back to return things. Or maybe it was sort of the Brigadoon of signs, appearing once every so often, and Tiffany was just out of luck this time. “Would you please ask him to come over so I can talk to him?”

“Mom.” There was a tugging on the back of her shirt.

“Shhh!” She tossed over her shoulder.

A few moments passed, then another tug. “But
Mom
.”

“Kate, honestly, you
have
to just wait a minute, okay?” Tiffany rasped, hoping not to call attention to herself. “I need to talk to one more person, then we’ll go back to our hotel room.”

“But Mom—”

“Quiet!”

“Jacob
peed in his pants
!”

Tiffany kept her focus straight ahead. Maybe she’d heard wrong. Maybe she’d misunderstood. Surely a nine-year-old hadn’t just wet himself in the middle of a high-end store.

She looked back as wincingly as if she were looking at a car wreck. And she was. The front of Jacob’s khaki pants was soaking wet, and there was a puddle on the white marble floor of the shop.

Tiffany had to swallow a curse. Several of them, actually.

Jacob shrugged.

Well, at least he wasn’t emotionally traumatized by it. Like Tiffany was about to be. “Jacob, what happened?”

“I
really really
had to go.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

This started them all jabbering at once about how
you told us not to talk
and
no summer vacation ever again.

“I didn’t mean . . .” What could she say? More to the point, what could she
do
? There was only one option: to sneak out of the store with the kids and come back before they left for the airport in the morning when someone else could watch the children. “Okay, guys, quick—”

“How may I help you?”

Startled, Tiffany whipped around to see a small man with a pencil-thin mustache who looked like he was doing his best impression of William Powell, only in miniature.

And without the little sparkle of humor in his eye.

“Rayanne said you wished to see a manager.”

She glanced uncertainly back at Jacob, then scooted Kate in front of him to, hopefully, block the mess. “Yes, I just had a few returns to make, and Rayanne pointed out that you have a no-return policy.” She tried to give a trill of a laugh, like
I’m so rich and silly I didn’t even realize it!
“Now, the problem is, I’m going back home this morning, and I was really hoping to get this done right away.” She paused, and he continued to look at her in a detached manner. “If you look, you’ll see that everything still has the tags on and everything.” She lifted the would-be Kentucky Derby hat and pointed out the tag.

“That’s good,” he said.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Tiffany smiled. “I was afraid you were going to stick to your policy, which would be understandable, of course, but—”

“No, no, the hat is good. Exquisite. I’m sure it’s quite fetching on you.”

“Well . . . not so much. That’s why I’m returning it.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I cannot overturn the store policy.” He clasped his hands in front of him and shook his head. “Would that I could.”

“You’re the manager. I’m sure you can. In fact, I bought them only a few hours ago, so could you just look in the drawer for the receipt and void it out?”

“Well . . .”

“I would be so grateful.”

He took a long, deliberate breath. “Perhaps, I could—” He interrupted himself to make a noise like Scooby-Doo encountering a ghost, and clapped his hand to his mouth.

“Mr.—?” Tiffany realized he hadn’t introduced himself. “Are you okay?”

He pointed a shaking finger behind her. “Are they with you?”

She closed her eyes for a moment before turning to look behind her and make sure he was referring to the children and not, say, a pack of wild dogs that had gotten into the store.

It was the kids, all right. And Kate had stepped aside, so Jacob was there in all his damp glory.

“They’re . . . here.” That didn’t make sense. She couldn’t come up with an answer that would both make sense and make things better, so she tried the truth. “They’re not all mine, of course, but I brought them down rather than leaving them alone in the hotel room.”

He wasn’t listening. “Excuse me.” He turned away in horror and clapped his hands in front of his face, walking briskly across the store, calling, “Clean up at register one! Quickly! Spit-spot!”

“Hey, Mary Poppins said that!” one of the kids said.

“Mom, are you finished?”

“I think so,” Tiffany said, turning dejectedly to take the kids out. She stepped over the puddle and kept walking, not even bothering to admonish the kids to keep quiet. She had spent five thousand dollars on
clothes
when every penny she and Charlie had was budgeted into carefully constructed categories and needs.

She’d probably just spent a big chunk of Kate’s first semester of college on a ridiculous Kentucky Derby outfit she’d never, ever be able to use.

An hour later, Tiffany, Abbey, and Loreen went to the airport with the kids. The kid mood was wild, happy, excited; the adult mood was decidedly morose.

For one thing, Tiffany was wearing the stupid, ostentatious hat she’d bought when, drunk, she’d thought it looked fun. There was no room for it in her suitcase. She’d thought about leaving it behind for the maid, but all she could envision was some tired old cynic of a maid coming in, trying on the crazy $230 hat, then shoving it into the trash bag. Tiffany would rather keep it than that. Even if she had to wear it for gardening.

And take up gardening to wear it.

“I’m hungry, Mom,” Kate whined as she trailed behind Tiffany on the way to the gate.

“Me, too!” Jacob chimed in immediately.

“Can we get something to eat?” Parker asked.

“Oh! I want pizza!” Kate started running toward a Sbarro counter.

“Kate, stop!” Tiffany yelled, but Kate didn’t even slow. “Katherine Dreyer, you stop
right now
!”

She stopped. She knew what it meant when her parents used her
whole name. Unfortunately, Jacob Murphy did not, and he ran smack into her and they both fell onto the hard linoleum.

“My knee!” Kate wailed.

Jacob’s face went red. “Sorry,” he said guiltily.

“You didn’t need to run right on top of me!” Kate snapped back at him.

“Kate.” Tiffany went over and leaned down to pull Kate up. “If you can bark at Jacob like that, you can’t be too hurt. Let me take a look.”

Kate whimpered and pointed to her knee, which was exactly the same pale shade as her other knee.

“She’s awright,” Jacob groused.

Parker hung back, clearly wanting to remain distanced from any trouble.

“Yup. I think she is,” Tiffany said.

“And I think these kids need to eat so they don’t whine all the way back to D.C.,” Loreen added, behind her. “You know all they serve on airplanes these days is Cheese Nips and pretzels.”

“They had a cheese platter on the way over,” Tiffany pointed out. “Although it was just American, Swiss, and Whiz.”