Alice in Glass Slippers

by L. C. Davenport

  Alice stared up at her in shock. There Mimi stood, the slipper clenched in her sweaty hand, glaring malevolently back at her. She was dressed in a very elaborate, very shiny gown that looked to be three sizes too small. Alice found herself wondering in a detached sort of way how she’d managed to get into Brittany’s gown without popping several seams.

  “Give it to me!”

  The rage in Mimi’s voice jolted Alice back to the situation at hand, and she blinked in a mixture of confusion and shock. “Why do you care?” she asked quietly, trying to get to her feet without Mimi pushing her back down. “My grandmother was the one that opened The Glass Slipper, not me. And it wasn’t like she set out to put your mom out of business.”

  Mimi growled low in her throat. “I. Want. That. Slipper.” Her chest was heaving so hard Alice was afraid a rather important part of her dress would explode. “Now!”

  Alice scanned the crowd as she stood slowly. The only person who seemed to be paying her any attention was Kyle, who was standing at the edge of the stage. He took one look at Mimi and moved to Adam’s side, muttering something in his ear.

  Alice wished she could just wait there for help, but Mimi grabbed her above the elbow, hard, and growled again. So Alice did the first thing she could think of. She lifted her foot and took off her other slipper, and then, before Mimi could reach out and grab it, she twisted out of Mimi’s grasp, ducked around a group of people and bolted.

  In hindsight, Alice should have run toward Kyle instead of away from him. He was the head of security, after all; surely he could have done something useful.

  But she didn’t, and for once her small height was an asset in a crowd rather than a liability. She dodged through the partiers, ignoring the gasps of surprise she left in her wake.

  Mimi was nowhere to be seen when she escaped into the main section of the mall. Alice darted down the hallway until she was far enough away that no one from the ball could see her. She retreated into a darkened corner, leaned against the wall, and tried to calm her racing heart. It had been one heck of a day. And not all bad. After all, Adam was staying. For good. In spite of the Mimi threat, Alice couldn’t keep the silly grin from slipping onto her face.

  The sound of music starting back up made her jolt away from the wall, and she inched her head around her corner. The light from the atrium filtered only so far into the heavy shadows, and she was well beyond that line. If Mimi had followed her she’d have either caught her or passed her by now. She didn’t dare go back to the ball in case Mimi was waiting for her, so the only thing she could think of to do was to go somewhere safe.

  But when she got to The Glass Slipper she could feel her heart rate spike again. A light was on in the back room, and the gate was closed only halfway. Frowning, she stooped underneath. She’d only taken a few steps when she heard a loud, angry voice coming from the rear of her shop.

  “We wouldn’t be in this mess if you could drive!”

  “It’s not my fault we hit that orange car. You didn’t see it there either.”

  “Well, now we’re all in trouble.”

  The voices were familiar. They were querulous, old, and…”Harold? Johnny? Is that you?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Harold’s in rare form tonight, Alice thought as she closed her eyes and tried not to say what she wanted. “It’s me, Alice. How’d you get here?”

  The only response Alice got was a lot of banging. “It’s a wonder you’re still in business,” Harold snapped as he came through the door, followed closely by Johnny. “Do you always keep shoe boxes on the floor, or is it just on special occasions?”

  “I only leave a mess when I think you’ll bless me with your presence. How’d you get here? And why are you here in the first place?”

  Johnny cleared his throat. He shrugged before grinning hugely and holding out a key ring. “I may have sweet-talked the driver into letting me borrow these.”

  “And you decided to come here why?”

  “Because of us.” Johnny had a strange expression on his face as he hollered behind him, “Come on, slowpoke! We don’t have another forty years to wait for you to get your rear in gear!”

  Alice watched, baffled, as Harold Number Two shuffled through the door. He wore a scowl that matched Harold Number One’s perfectly.

  “Please tell me you didn’t duplicate yourself.”

  The two men cackled. “I was born four and a half minutes before Roger was,” Harold informed her. “And I’m much handsomer, so you should have no problem telling us apart.”

  Roger whacked his brother on the back of the knee. “Stop it with the stupid Star Wars references,” he said crossly.

  “How come you didn’t tell me you had a brother, Harold? I asked about your family when I visited you, and you didn’t say anything.”

  Harold scratched his face, making his wrinkles morph into strange, abstract shapes. “Roger and I haven’t been on speaking terms in what, forty years?”

  “Give or take a few.” Roger didn’t seem too bothered by this. “We don’t even live at the same home.”

  “So why are you both here now?”

  “Roger recently acquired a salty new girlfriend,” Harold said sourly. “And he wanted to rub it my face that he had one and I didn’t. Which I did,” he snapped in Roger’s direction, “and I saw her first.”

  “He’s just angry because his girl isn’t as spiffy as mine is. Betty’s a real corker.” Roger smiled beatifically.

  “I already told you, dimwit. There is no Betty. We’ve both been played.” Harold scowled and knocked several pairs of shoes onto the floor in annoyance. “I should have known when Anna came in wearing those blood-pressure-raising shoes that she couldn’t be trusted.”

  Alice looked at Johnny for help. “What’s going on?

  Johnny eased himself into a cushioned chair and stuck his keys into his pocket. “It seems that our little Anna has been seeing men all over the Detroit area,” he explained. “She gives herself a pseudonym, uses her charms to convince people like Harold and Roger, here, who are childless and rather…” He glanced between the brothers and cleared his throat. “…Advanced in age that they’re in love with her. Then she gets them to sign over their money to her in their will. When they die, she inherits everything.”

  “That explains why she wasn’t interested in you. You have kids.”

  “And I’m not close to dying.” Johnny smiled faintly at the Tooey brothers’ gasps of indignation.

  “We’re not nearly dead,” Roger spluttered.

  “And I’m not giving my money to anyone.” Harold glared balefully at Alice. “So don’t get any ideas.”

  Ignoring this, Alice gazed at Johnny. “How’d you figure all this out?”

  “Anna, or whoever she is, made a mistake. She started seeing two men with the same last name. Then she wore the same red heels–and the same red wig–when she saw them both. Roger decided to rub it into Harold’s face that he had a hot younger woman after him, and we started to connect the dots.”

  “Took him four decades to find a reason to gloat enough to contact me.” Harold snapped his false teeth at his brother, who managed to look completely unruffled.

  “You didn’t call me, did you?”

  Alice’s eyes strayed to the display table Harold had just cleared. Red stilettos with a shiny accent on the side. Her mind flashed back to the catalogue she’d seen Brittany flipping through a month or so ago. She’d ordered a pair that sounded just like them, and when they’d come in, she’d set them right… there. They hadn’t been sold; she knew that for a fact, so they must have gone to…

  Mimi.

  “That’s how she’s been buying all those shoe stores,” Alice said in disbelief.

  “Who?” Johnny leaned forward, his hands planted firmly on his knees.

  “Mimi Walker. She owns this store and about four others in the mall. She’s Anna, and Betty, and Marilyn Monroe, and–”

  “Very clever, Alice Riverton. Very
clever, indeed. I had no idea you were a junior detective.”

  It seemed like every hair on Alice’s body stood at attention at the sound of Mimi’s shrill voice. She was just outside the gate, the light from the back room glinting off her dress. It made her look like she’d been dropped in a vat of melted mirrors that flashed memories back at you–memories you didn’t necessarily want to think about.

  Alice almost stumbled back into the cash register at the amount of hatred and fury rolling off of Mimi. “Why?” she asked in a desperately soft voice. “Why did you have to own all those shoe stores? Wasn’t this one enough for you?”

  Mimi threw the gate all the way up into the ceiling with a massive heave and stalked into the store, ignoring the group of men who swiveled their heads back and forth between the two women like they were watching a table tennis match. “Once I collected your shop I needed leverage,” Mimi said in a dismissive tone. “You weren’t cooperating.”

  Some of the fear in Alice subsided, to be replaced with indignation. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her stomach as Mimi came closer. “I did everything you told me to do. Everything.”

  “Not true.” Mimi’s eyes shot daggers. “You never quit.”

  Alice was so mad she could hardly breathe. “Quit? This is my mother’s shop. I’m not going to leave it, especially to someone like you.” She paused, fighting to keep her voice sounding calm and reasonable. “You, of all people, should have realized that.”

  “That’s going too far. You’re too much alike, you Riverton women. Your mother’s shop? She was just as stubborn and stupid as you are, but in the end I got what I wanted.” She pointed at Alice with a long, fire-engine-red fingernail. “Unlike her.”

  Alice backed up slowly. Something in the pit of her stomach told her she didn’t want to hear Mimi’s next words. She shook her head wordlessly as she reached the hallway. “Mom had everything she wanted. She told me so herself the day she died.”

  “That, my sweet little imbecile, is where you’re wrong. After all, she didn’t want to die.” Mimi’s teeth glittered as she said the last word, following Alice out of the shop. “But I took care of that for her. Just like I’m going to take care of you.” And then, as if by magic, she produced a small gun from somewhere in her dress and aimed it straight at Alice.

  Alice’s mind refused to acknowledge the gun for what it was, instead focusing on things that surely didn’t matter at all. The slither of silk against her skin, the faint scent of flowers and fruit wafting from the candle store several doors down, the way the sign over her window sparkled faintly in the dark. She caught the look of determination on Johnny’s face as he made his way toward them.

  Is this the last thing I’ll remember? She wished more than anything that Adam were there.

  “Have you used that before?” Johnny’s calm voice drifted into Alice’s ears, tugging at her to come back to reality. “I’d hate for anyone to get hurt.”

  “Of course I’ve used this before.” Mimi was breathing heavily, her face a hard mask of hate. “I used it on Belinda Riverton a year and a half ago.”

  Alice almost dropped the slipper she still clutched in her hand. After all those months of waiting for this very news, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know anymore.

  “Why would you do that?” Johnny asked.

  Alice had a sudden flash of respect for Johnny Evers. How did he manage to sound so soothing while talking to a crazed woman with a gun?

  “I tried to be civilized,” Mimi said, and the gun lowered fractionally. “I offered to buy the shop from her, more than once, but she refused. Said it was a legacy that she’d hand down to her daughter. What she forgot was that she ruined my legacy when she put us out of business.”

  And then Alice found her voice. “My mom didn’t put you out of business,” she said quietly. “What happened was between my grandmother and Bertha. How could killing my mother possibly have given you back what was never yours in the first place?” Alice was in a state of shock. She was facing her mother’s killer. She needed to know why.

  Mimi raised the gun back into position. “It gave me her store. I knew that sap she called her husband would sell to the first person that came knocking on his door once she was out of the way. So Mama’s shop may not have been mine, but this one sure is now. And I’ll pass it down to Brittany when I’m too rich to care about it anymore.”

  A sudden movement in the shadows flickered in Alice’s peripheral vision, and then Whitney stepped into the circle of light. “I don’t think Brittany will want the store,” she said steadily. “She called me a little while ago from Las Vegas. She eloped with Clyde this afternoon.”

  For just a second Mimi’s face crumpled, and Alice could see the girl who must have hated hearing about the young upstart who’d stolen her future. She felt a flash of pity for that younger Mimi, but it vanished as quickly as Mimi’s expression. “She’s still getting it,” Mimi snapped. “When the time comes she can do with it as she wishes.” She looked down her nose at her younger daughter. “As for you, all I can say is that you’re marrying above yourself. Good work.”

  Lewis materialized out of the darkness and wrapped his arm around Whitney’s waist. “I think you have that backwards,” he said, and clasped Whitney tighter to his side. “I wouldn’t expect an invitation to the wedding if I were you.”

  “Just so I have this straight,” Johnny cut in, glancing at the gun briefly, “you lured elderly gentlemen into giving you their inheritance so you could purchase additional shoe stores after you killed Miss Riverton’s mother to acquire this one.” He gestured to the shop behind him, where Harold and Roger were slowly making their way toward them. “Am I missing anything?”

  “That about covers it.” Mimi’s eyes were wilder than Alice had ever seen, but the gun never wavered. “And now it’s time to finish this once and for all.”

  Then, without warning, the Tooey brothers let out a loud war cry and smacked Mimi smartly on the rear with their canes. She yelped and grabbed her bottom with her free hand. “Stop that!” she shouted, her face mottling impossibly red. “Get away from me!”

  And then Adam was there. His hair was wild and his bow tie was hanging around his neck like he’d been pulling at it. He said something into his cell phone and the lights came blaring on, making everyone squint.

  Adam took one look at Harold and Roger as they managed to evade Mimi’s attempts to stop them from whacking her and smiled slightly. The smile disappeared when he spotted the gun, and his eyes flickered to Alice. His face was pale and scared, but when he called to her, his voice was steady.

  “Throw me your shoe,” Adam said. Without a second thought, Alice tossed it over Mimi’s head. He caught it in one hand, narrowed his eyes, and threw it right at the hand holding the gun.

  The gun was pointing straight up when the slipper connected with it, and Mimi squeezed her fingers in surprise at being hit by an unexpected assailant. When the gun went off, it shot the sign over The Glass Slipper, and Alice watched as the board that no one could dislodge came crashing down on Mimi’s head, sending up a cloud of dust so fine it twinkled in the bright light.

  When the dust cleared, Mimi was on the ground, knocked out cold. Johnny kicked the gun away and looked at Adam with an appreciative eye. “You have a good arm, son.”

  “Little League,” was all Adam had time to say in response before he was at Alice’s side. “Are you okay?” His hands ghosted down her arms and over her back.

  Without warning, Adam leaned over and picked her up, earning a sarcastic snort from Lewis. He carried her away down the hall before setting her on a bench. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I saw Mimi with that gun,” he said, his voice shaking slightly, and he buried his face on her shoulder.

  Alice’s legs were beginning to feel like they weren’t made of rubber anymore, and she slid her fingers through his hair to sooth him. “You and me both. Thanks for coming to the rescue. But that wa
s a really stupid thing to do,” she added, tugging on his hair a little. “What would you have done if that thing had been aimed at someone when she pulled the trigger?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “But–”

  He placed a finger on her lips and sighed. “It was stupid, I know. But I couldn’t just stand there and watch someone try to kill you.” He stopped talking to swallow. “I–”

  “What?”

  “This is not the right time to be saying things like this,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Just spit it out, Adam. I’ve just found out who–”

  “I love you.”

  Alice’s mouth opened and she blinked at him.

  “I love you, Alice Riverton, and I’m sticking around for a long time so you might as well get used to the idea. As for my mother’s suggestion… I wouldn’t be opposed to that when the time’s right.”

  When asked later on why she’d burst into tears, Alice would say it was because it had been a very, very long night, and Adam’s proclamation was almost too much to bear. But when his arms were around her and she was folded into his embrace, she whispered brokenly into his ear, “I love you, too.”

  Finding out that Mimi had killed her mother brought back all the pain she had suffered that day her mother had been shot. But, finally having closure and understanding why her mother had been taken away from her, it had given Alice some peace.

  And Adam. She had Adam.

  Three minutes later, Alice was still kissing Adam when she heard the roar of Lewis’s voice. It probably carried all the way to the food court.

  “You hit my car? With a minivan?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It took several weeks for the excited chatter to die down in the mall. Fortunately for Alice, she was too busy mopping up the mess Mimi had left behind to notice.

  Damage from the ball itself was the easiest to clean up, Alice thought as she packed another box full of shoes that the Walkers had ordered. Her keys and cell phone had somehow made their way into the backseat of Mimi’s car, although Mimi claimed to have no knowledge of how that had happened. Thanks to Adam and his mighty skills of hiring a cleaning crew, her apartment had quickly been restored to its previous glory. Someone even found the slipper Mimi had wrenched from her foot in the atrium and returned it with much reverence. And Arthur came home.