Ruby's Slippers (17 page)

“What if …” I take a steadying breath before I admit the truth. “What if he doesn’t want to see me, talk to me?”

“But isn’t that already true?” His words make me flinch. Yet those same words shine a light on that truth from a different angle. Not rose-colored as Sophia would view my situation, but not as harsh or brutal either as my own way of looking at my fear. “You’re afraid of what’s been true your whole life.”

The painful truth silences any incongruity. “You’re right. Ridiculous, huh?”

“Not at all.” He reaches for my hand, turning toward me at the same time, and cups my face. His dark, deep-set eyes seem to see right into my soul. An uneasiness settles over me. I want to pull away, but I don’t dare. “But I don’t think that’s your real fear.”

A caustic laugh emerges from deep inside me. I tug my hand out of his grasp. “Oh, yeah? And what am I afraid of?”

“To be loved.” This time, his words are harsh, revealing every shadowed and hidden crevice of my heart.

Much as I would like to deny it, I can’t. I
am
afraid. My heart flutters even now in my chest, like the wings of a tiny bird unable to fly.

“It’s okay, Dottie.” His words are a low growl. “I’m afraid too.”

I don’t move toward him, but I don’t move away either. Two frightened people, side by side, who are afraid to risk, afraid to love, afraid of being wounded, can’t reach out to one another. “Maybe,” I venture a hypothesis, “that’s why we can’t explore … experience God. We’re afraid of him.”

He gives a slight snort. “Afraid to be disappointed.”

“Afraid to be rejected.”

“It’s not like my mom said. I’d do anything for someone, for God even, if I knew I wouldn’t be a disappointment.” He clasps his hands between his legs. His shoulders are rounded, his back bowed. “The truth is, I’d probably let God down. I’m a screwup.”

His vulnerability has me reaching toward him. I place a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true. I—”

I wait for him to continue, but he shakes his head, his lips compressed. Heat rolls off him, emphasized more so by the coolness in the night air. Tension coils within his muscles. It’s an odd feeling, being drawn to him and nervous at the same time. I want to know what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling. “What?”

He spits out a word I’ve heard teens utilize during tests or athletic events or simply walking down the middle school hallway. Usually I would dole out detentions or reprimand them. But this is a man, a man afraid and frustrated and
needing release. Sometimes right and wrong isn’t a list of dos and don’ts. Sometimes “right” is acceptance, openness, and love. I keep silent, waiting until he’s ready to share more. He’s taken a huge step this evening in sharing even this much. But why open up to me? Am I just a big-sister type, easy to talk to? Or am I the strong, steady friend, easy to shift burdens to my narrow-but-strong shoulders? Or is there something more between us? Something I can’t fathom? Something I’m afraid to admit I might want?

Finally he releases a long breath. “I had a company. My own company. But I made some bad decisions. I trusted the wrong person. I let my need for … well, my emotions got in the way of business, clouded my judgment.”

I wonder if some woman brought him down, like Delilah betrayed Samson. Strange emotions ripple through me, a mixture of wanting to shelter him and envy that some woman could have that effect on him. I’ve never felt this way. And it doesn’t seem rational.

“Frankly,” he interrupts my crazy thoughts, “I got greedy. Instead of looking at the situation objectively, I just jumped in. Because it’s what I wanted. I wasn’t thinking of the good of the company. I wasn’t thinking of the hundred or so people who worked for me. It was all about me. And I lost it all.”

I think about this journey I’m on. In some ways it’s totally selfish of me, to keep the shoes from my sister, to consider stopping the auction. Am I the one being greedy? At what cost?

Leo looks away, coughs, then holds my gaze with his own. “I lost my company. Ended up with a package of stocks and bonds and cash. My so-called friend and mentor took it over.” He looks down at his hands. “But I felt like a failure. Fact is, I did fail. And I didn’t like who I’d become. Everything
revolved around me—what I wanted, what I needed. So that’s why I moved to the cabin. I had to figure out who I am, what I want.”

My heart aches for him. I’m not sure this man who has run his own company has much in common with a simple Kansas farm girl, and yet there is a deep connection of hurts, dreams, and failures that somehow binds us together.

“I’ve been fighting my sister over selling the farm for a long time. I thought she was being selfish. But now I’m starting to think it was me. I don’t know. I loved my life on the farm. Or maybe it’s simply all I knew. Maybe I feared giving it up meant giving up the dream that my father would return. But …” I place my hands on my knees, rub my thighs as the coolness makes my skin numb. A chill passes through me. “I haven’t been happy for a long time. I don’t mean since the tornado. Way before that.”

“You liked caring for someone. You enjoyed being loved in return.”

“Yet it wasn’t enough. I knew I was missing out on life. I’d see my friends marry, move away, start families. Their lives changed, mine didn’t.”

“Were you afraid no one would love you, accept you the way your mother did?”

“Probably.” It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted the truth even to myself. It’s not necessarily pleasant, but it is freeing.

Looking deeply into my eyes, he leans toward me. For a moment I think he might kiss me. My heart hammers at the possibility.

Suddenly he grabs my elbow. He looks behind me, toward the parking lot.

“Otto!” I realize he isn’t at my feet anymore. I hear the
padding of his paws and his panting before I see him trotting toward me. “Come here, boy.”

“Shh.” Leo squeezes my arm.

“What’s wrong?” I start to turn, but his fingers tighten even more. He places a hand against my face.

My stomach flips. “What—”

“Don’t move.”

My heart thumps heavily.

“I’ve seen that car before.”

Disappointment collides with confusion. “What car? Where?”

“We’re being followed.” His golden gaze drills into me. “Why?”

Leo tugs me off the rock and up the embankment toward the restaurant. Fog has begun to roll in. The tiny lights that line the rim of the building’s roof glow eerily. His hand on my arm is warm and firm. Even though he pulls me slightly off balance, he also manages to steady me. I feel awkward, like that little girl dancing in the garden, my footsteps heavy and clumsy as I dodge Otto who seems bent on getting between my feet.

I glance toward the parking area, search for signs of a suspicious car. Headlights flash in the distance like two halos, on then off. A gray darkness swallows the light. Wisps of cool air float about us, chilling me to the bone.

Leo bursts through the restaurant’s doors, startling a waitress who drops a stack of menus. He motions to Tim and Sophia. “Let’s go!” His voice rumbles through the establishment. “Check!”

“No dogs in here,” someone calls.

I scoop Otto into my arms. “I’m sorry.”

We gather our belongings, purses, jackets, boxes of leftover food. Tim fumbles with his wallet. Leo grows impatient waiting for the waitress. He stalks across the restaurant where the tired woman stands at a computer. He sets several bills on the desk. Then he’s back, hurrying Tim along. Before we walk out the door, I peer out into the gray murkiness.

“Still there?” Leo asks.

“I don’t know. I can’t see anything.”

“Who?” Sophia asks.

“What’s going on?” Tim struggles with a sleeve of his jacket. Sophia helps him tug the material over his stooped shoulders.

Leo starts to open the door then stops. “Let’s get back to the motel.”

Sophia’s face crinkles with worry. “Is Dottie in danger?”

Leo’s face darkens. “I don’t think she’s told me everything about this trip. We have to talk.”

“Back at the motel.”

Otto gives one bark as if to emphasize the urgency to leave.

Leo nods grimly.

As I open the door, another of those
Wizard of Oz
advertisements grabs my attention. This time, the Wicked Witch of the West peers out, her face green, her eyes familiar. I gasp. “Oh my!”

“What is it?” Leo asks.

“Isn’t that … ?” Sophia steps forward and peers closer.

I nod. “My sister.”

“Abigail?” Tim asks.

“She likes to be called Abby,” I tell him, noticing the dates for the show are this week. The caption on the poster reads,
“I’ll get you, my pretty—and your little dog too!”

“Well,” Leo pulls the door open further so we can all leave the restaurant, “you did say she was flighty.”

* * *

BACK AT THE motel, we search the parking lot for any sign of the car following us … me. Leo seems dubious at best about the shoes and that someone might be following me, looking for them. I explain all the strange happenings, my sister’s odd behavior concerning them. Casually, he puts an arm around my shoulders. He provides a shelter I want to lean into but resist. I’ve been strong on my own for so long. And before that, I was strong for my mother and sister. Old habits are hard to break.

“Don’t worry,” he says, his breath bathing my ear. “I’m right next door. If you need me—”

“We’ll be fine.” I slide the key into the door.

With a backward glance toward Sophia and me, he moves toward his and Tim’s room.

I hold the door for Otto and Sophia who move ahead of me into the room. She flips on the light and makes a strangled sound that jolts my heart just as Otto begins barking.

“What is it?” I peer around her, which takes effort as she’s much taller than I am. But nothing seems different to me. Our luggage remains on opposite sides of the room, just as we left it. The monkey Craig gave me sits on the bed, staring blankly ahead, its arms and legs splayed. “Did you see a mouse?” I imagine a furry creature scurrying for cover when the light surged, and a shiver ripples down my spine.

She shakes her head. “We’ve been robbed!”

Her announcement hits me like a rock falling out of the clear blue sky. “The shoes!” I jerk open the closet door, see the open shoebox, the crumpled yellow tissue paper. “They’re gone!”

“I have the shoes.” Sophia clutches her large purse to her chest. “They’re in my bag.”

I take a calming breath. The room looks as serene as when we left it.

Leo rushes into the doorway, his features hard and unrelenting as he pushes into the room. “What was taken?”

“Nothing. We weren’t robbed.” I watch Otto sniffing the carpet, running this way and that, circling around as if following a scented trail.

Tim peeks in the doorway, his knobby hands fisted. “Where are they?”

“Right here.” I touch Sophia’s bag, amused and moved by their gallant behavior. “We weren’t robbed.” I put an arm around Sophia who is trembling. “False alarm. We’re all a little jumpy. Paranoid in the extreme.”

“No.” She edges into the room, stepping lightly as if she might disturb some evidence.

Are we looking at the same room? Everything looks normal. “Okay,” I remain calm, trying to keep an open mind about this. “Tell me what you see that makes you think—”

“I left my suitcase closed, the tabs locked in place.”

I stare at her battered suitcase which looks like it dates back to the 1930s. The lid is flat, the brass locks upright, unlatched.

“Are you sure, Sophia?” Tim’s gaze skips around the room faster than he can move. “You didn’t forget, my dear?”

“Mom forgets names and places but not how she arranges her things,” Leo says, his voice deep and hushed. “She always arranges her suitcase just so in case the help decides to look through her things.”

“Well, maybe that’s all this is.” I search for a plausible solution.

“This isn’t the kind of place,” Leo says, “where they turn down the covers and place chocolates on your pillow.”

With a trembling hand, Sophia moves forward. She cautiously lifts the lid and nods as if answering her own question. “Yes. Most definitely. Someone has been looking through here.” She points her finger at her pajamas scrunched to the side. “See this!”

I stare hard, trying to see fingerprints or explosives or something that seems out of the ordinary. But everything looks normal.

“I would never leave my panty hose dangling out of the pocket like that. And I keep my pajamas folded neatly.”

Maybe Sophia simply forgot or was careless, but I don’t want to tell her she’s exaggerating. Then I remember Abby rifling through Momma’s boxes, tossing clothes this way and that without regard to their care, but I bat the memory away. “What should we do?”

“Check your things. See if anything was taken,” Leo says. “Maybe whoever broke in here was only searching.”

“The ruby slippers are the only valuable we’re carrying. Could someone know I have them?”

Sophia shrugs. “You know Maybelle. She blabs all the time.”

“Or my sister. If she suspects—”

“Or your father,” Tim adds.

I reach for Sophia’s bag and slide my hand inside until it
bumps against a heel. I pull out a ruby slipper. It’s reassuring to look at them, to know they’re safe. They’re my reason to find my father—my ticket, so to speak.

Leo stares at it silently for a long moment as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. “What thief would be so neat? Maybe it’s a woman. What guy would go to so much trouble for a pair of shoes?”

Sophia turns to me then. Anxiety creases the paper-thin skin at the corner of her eyes. “Leo could be right. It might be your sister. Could she be following us? Could she have broken in here and searched for the slippers?”

I sit on the edge of the bed, suddenly exhausted. “Abby?” Is my sister capable of something like that? “No. Absolutely not.”

“That poster. We know she’s somewhere nearby.” A muscle tenses along Leo’s neck and shoulder.

“But how would she know where I am?” I’m not ready to condemn my sister just yet. She wasn’t as neat as whoever broke into this motel room.

“Why would she want these shoes so badly?” Leo asks. “Has to be more than a shoe fetish or sibling rivalry.”

“They might be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Sophia explains.

Leo’s gaze shifts between all three of us. “You’re serious?”

“Very.”

Otto starts barking. He stands outside the bathroom, his body rigid.

“Otto! Come here, boy.”

But he stands firm.

“Wait.” Leo puts a hand out to hold me back when I start to go to pick Otto up. He stealthily peers into the dark
bathroom and shrugs. “Nothing there.” He lifts Otto into his arms.

But something happened in this room while we were gone. I reach for my purse and pull a name and phone number out of my wallet. I pick up the phone.

“Wait!” Leo says.

“What?”

“Fingerprints.”

I sigh. “I doubt she or he or they or whoever it was broke in here to make a phone call.”

He nods agreement. “Are you calling the police?”

“That’s a good idea, my dear.” Tim’s gray eyes pinch with worry.

“No. The FBI.”

* * *

WE STEP AWAY from the “crime scene,” which is starting to feel like a bad episode of
CSI
, and camp out in Leo and Tim’s room while we wait for Agent Chesterfield, who surprised me when he said he was only an hour away. I doubt my ability to sleep with all the excitement and turmoil, but exhaustion must lurk inside me like a dormant virus, waiting for my immune system to dip low, then it springs forth and overwhelms me. I fall into a deep, hard sleep without dreams.

A hand on my shoulder gives me a gentle shake. I shift to my side, bury my face in the rough pillowcase.

“The FBI is here.” Leo’s gruff voice as much as his serious tone make my eyes blink wide open. “Heard a knock on your door.”

The room is as black as the deepest part of the ocean. Leo takes my hand, his grasp firm, almost possessive. But it makes me feel safe. He leads me to the door. “Mom and Tim
are sleeping.” His whisper brushes my ear. His warm breath tickles the side of my neck, and a tiny shiver ripples along my skin. “Don’t worry.” His fingers tighten on mine. “I’ll be with you.”

Don’t worry
. The words seduce me. I want to cling to them, believe in them. I want to trust, but that’s been a difficult concept all my life. I realize then it’s not just God I have a hard time trusting but men too. It’s why I was never satisfied with Craig’s explanation of Momma’s will, with his assurances that Abby couldn’t sell the farm out from under me. Leo seems loyal and kind beneath all the gruffness, but I also know he’s something of a loner. Will he walk away from me as easily as he walked away from a company, from civilization?

Otto’s whimper makes me turn. “Okay. You can come.”

Together the three of us slip out of the room. I feel like I’m back in college, sneaking into the house after a date with some guy that should have ended long before it did. I hold Otto against my shoulder as his little nose sniffs at the night air. Chilly with the coolness of the ocean, the air puckers my skin. The night isn’t as dark as it is gray. The security lights in the parking lot skim along the edges of fog, making it hard to see more than a couple of feet. Otto utters a growl deep in his throat.

“Shh. It’s okay.” I pat his back. “Agent Chesterfield?” We follow along the balcony railing until we stand outside my room. Leo’s hand is firm at my back, giving both comfort and concern. “Are you sure—?”

“Good evening.” The deep, clipped tones jump out of the fog from behind us.

Otto’s bark shatters the quiet, and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I place a hand on Otto, and he quiets down.

“What are you doing?” Leo growls.

“Keeping an eye out.” The agent gives me a slight nod. “Ms. Meyers.” He takes a step toward us. Curling steam floats out of the top of the Styrofoam coffee cup he holds. “So what happened?”

I explain how Leo recognized a car he’d seen several times that day.

Agent Chesterfield’s gaze narrows on Leo. “Can you give me a description?”

“A dark-blue sedan. Maybe a Chrysler.”

“Sure it’s not black?”

“I’m sure.” Leo’s jaw is set in a hard line.

“Did you get a license number?”

“No.”

“Could you tell how many people were in the car?”

“Tinted windows.”

“One or two?” the agent asks.

“Windows?” I interject.

“People,” Leo answers for the agent, his gaze aimed straight at Chesterfield, his shoulders square. “I don’t know.”

“Male or female?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“And you found your room ransacked?” the agent asks as if his coffee hasn’t jolted him awake yet.

“Not exactly.” I key the door and we enter. Leo flips on the light. Nothing has changed. It looks normal. “I think whoever broke in here was looking for the shoes.”

Leo puts a hand on my arm.

“Why would they look here for the shoes?” The agent sets his coffee on the desk. “Do you have them?” He begins taking notes as he walks through the room. Behind the agent’s back, Leo gives a slight shake of the head. A warning? Chesterfield
draws a layout of the room on a little notepad, shoves the pencil through the spiral top, and reaches for the drawer.

“Shouldn’t fingerprints be taken?” Leo’s question stops the agent who pauses, his hand an inch from the knobby handle.

He coughs. “I’ll have the office send someone over later.” He gives me a pointed look. “So don’t touch anything.”

I hold up my hands like I’m under arrest.

Then the agent walks to the bathroom. A shaft of light surges. A moment later, he returns, hooking his thumb over his shoulder. “Did you see that?”

Heart thumping, I walk past him, my arms tight around Otto’s warm, tense body. I turn into the bathroom and come to a complete stop as I stare at the mirror. Red lipstick letters sprawl across the mirror.

It reads,
I want those shoes!

* * *

“DO YOU KNOW where the ruby slippers are?” Agent Chesterfield asks point blank.

“No.” Leo answers for me. He stands with his arms crossed over his chest like a sentry.

A scowl pinches Chesterfield’s features. “Are you being straight with me?”

Leo remains silent. I look from him to the agent, my nerves fraying. “Why would anyone think I have the shoes?”