It’s release day!!! 🥳 The Magic of Shoes is out today!
There was a submission call titled If the Shoe Fits that asked for queer stories featuring shoes, and I thought it sounded fun.
I like shoes. If I have to shop for something, shoes are probably my favorite thing, but… they have to be comfy. I refuse to walk around in uncomfortable shoes. You’ll never catch me in heels. Never. And if the shoes happen to be waterproof, all the better since I walk a lot, and most often in terrain.
That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a nice shoe, though. And just like Clay, I find French heels delightful 😁
This is a short, silly, contemporary story about Clay who works in a shoe shop. One day when he gets back after his lunch break, there is a body on the floor dressed in nothing but a pair of French heels. Not the best day of his life…
The Magic of Shoes
Clay Tibor loves a wicked French heel, but not when the shoe is attached to a dead body sprawled on the floor of the shoe shop where he’s working. Two weeks ago, the owner of the shop passed away, and Clay now works for his son, Nathan. Nathan might be hot, but he knows nothing about shoes. Clay wished it was his biggest problem, but shoe ignorance is a mere inconvenience compared to being accused of murder.
Nathan’s brother, who is technically co-owner of the shoe shop, is a cop who is convinced Clay did it. To increase his chances of having a proper alibi should something else happen, Clay would do best to stay glued to Nathan’s side twenty-four-seven. Right?
Buy links:
Contemporary Gay Romance: 15,879 words
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
Clay Tibor unlocked the front door to The Polished Countess, the vintage shoe store where he’d been working for the last thirteen years, and came to a stumbling stop inside.
A lovely black Victorian button boot with a French heel and nine buttons lay on the floor. The calf coming out of the leather was bare, and while Clay firmly believed in liberating shoes from gender norms, a man’s leg wasn’t what he had expected to see. Maybe he wasn’t as free-thinking as he’d believed.
“Nathan!”
No reply. Fuck. Was he still out on lunch? Clay had been away for longer than he should, so, Nathan should be back, right? The door would’ve been unlocked if Nathan had been here.
He stepped forward, and more of the body came into view. A naked man, face-down. The man’s hair was dark and tousled as if he needed a haircut, and he had a tattoo of one black and one white snake tangling together on his left forearm.
And he was naked.
“Nathan!”
Clay didn’t want to be the one who dealt with this. He nudged the man with his 1460 Pascal Floral Mash Up Dr. Martens.
Nothing.
Fuck. He should check for a pulse, right?
He yelped as the door opened behind him, and Nathan stepped in with a wrapped burger in his hand. He came to an abrupt stop much like Clay had.
“What the fuck did you do?” He looked between the body and Clay.
“I didn’t do anything. He was here when I came in.”
Nathan scowled at him. Two weeks ago, Walter Tallman passed away after a short illness. Clay hadn’t been prepared. He’d spent almost every day for over a decade together with Old Man Tallman, and while he was a grump, he had known shoes.
His two sons, Jeffrey and Nathan, had inherited The Polished Countess. Clay suspected he’d be fired any day now.
Most likely today.
Jeffrey worked in law enforcement. Clay wasn’t entirely sure what he did, but he was most often dressed in a suit, so something important, whereas Nathan had been out of work when Walter had passed. Since then, Clay had been forced to spend his days with Nathan, who was as grumpy as Walter had been with the downside of knowing nothing about shoes.
“I locked the door. There was no one here.”
Clay glared at him. “And you think I somehow managed to get him in here? A dead man. Naked. Dressed in Victorian shoes. We don’t stock those shoes.” Which was a shame because they were beautiful.
Nathan gave him an assessing look that shouldn’t make him shiver. “It would surprise me. He probably stumbled in here on his own accord.”
“How? The door was locked.” And people would’ve noticed a naked man walking around on the street in nothing but a pair of vintage shoes—women’s shoes if they were adhering to gender norms.
The door opened again. Clay swallowed a yelp as a shriek filled the air. A woman in her late fifties to early sixties kept shrieking for way longer than should’ve been possible. Clay recognized her. She’d been in before.
When she finally quieted, she looked between Clay and Nathan. “Is he dead?”
Clay shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“You don’t—” Nathan sighed and pushed the wrapped burger against Clay’s chest. “Hold this.”
“Hey! I don’t want to get grease—”
“Hold it, and call Jeffrey.” Nathan crouched next to the body and touched it only to jerk his hand away. Then he groaned and flipped the body over.
“Hey!” Clay took a step back and bumped into the woman. Then he saw it. The man had a Barbie Ken Doll bulge. “What the…”
“It’s a doll.” Nathan glowered at him. “Very funny, Clay.”
If he hadn’t been a coward and had checked on the man, he’d have known. The hair looked real, the face did not. “I didn’t do it.” He spoke way softer than he’d meant to. Nathan deserved to be yelled at, but there was something extremely creepy about having a naked, life-sized doll splayed on the shop floor.
“It’s not April Fool’s Day, right?” He looked at the woman.
“January eleventh, dear.”
“Damn.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes. “You can confess now.”
“I didn’t do it, asshole! I left before you did. You locked the door, remember?”
Nathan flew to his feet. “Yes, but you came back before I did.”
“A few seconds before you did.”
“If it had been only a few seconds, I’d have seen when you entered the store. I walked from the bottom of the street.” He pointed at the burger which was from the joint at the corner of the block.
“Can’t have been more than a minute.”
When Nathan took a step forward, Clay took one back. He wouldn’t stand a chance against Nathan if things turned physical, and he had been beaten enough times to know he didn’t enjoy it.
Nathan froze, then took a step back, some of the anger leaving his eyes.
“Don’t you have a surveillance camera?” The woman looked between them.
“Mr. Tallman didn’t like cameras.” Clay had suggested it more than once, along with a security alarm, but Walter had nixed it.
Nathan scoffed.
“Then you better call someone. If there’s been a break and enter, the police should know about it and perhaps the other shop owners on the street too.”
Right, Clay remembered her now. She was a hairdresser with a shop farther down the street. Across from the burger joint.
“I’ll call Jeffrey.” Nathan grabbed his phone. “Eat.” He pointed at the burger.
“What?”
“Eat it.”
Clay’s stomach chose that moment to rumble. “I… don’t eat meat.” He’d told Nathan the first week he’d worked there, or the first week Clay had worked for him, when he’d suggested they’d go on a Mongolian BBQ buffet for lunch. Nathan had scoffed and gone to have Mongolian BBQ on his own.
“It’s a halloumi spicy avocado pickled onion and jalapeno thing. So not a real burger.”
Aww. “And you got it for me?”
Nathan didn’t look at him. “You said you hadn’t had breakfast, and I bet you didn’t eat on the lunch break.”
No, he hadn’t. He’d promised to walk Edgar, Anna’s lazy pug, on his lunch breaks this week. She was off on a conference or course or whatever. She came home to sleep at night, but normally she was able to bring Edgar to work. One perk of being a veterinary assistant.
He glanced at Nathan. Maybe he’d be okay with Edgar in the store. The poor little fellow was all alone in the apartment.
“Eat.” Nathan still didn’t look at him as he walked past the counter and continued into the office.
* * * *
“So you didn’t see anyone leave the shop?” Jeffrey Tallman, Nathan’s brother, and technically as much of Clay’s boss as Nathan was—at least until they’d solved everything concerning the estate—held a pen against a notepad while waiting for an answer.
After everything was done with the estate, Clay fully expected to be out of work. Neither of the Tallman brothers understood the need for shoes.
Or, they wore shoes, so they understood the need for them, but they didn’t see the souls of shoes, didn’t feel the magic. Clay glanced at Jeffrey’s black penny loafers and sighed. Soulless. There was nothing wrong with penny loafers. Some men pulled off penny loafers more than well, but he had the feeling Jeffrey had grabbed them off a rack, checked the size, and bought them without forming a connection to them.
“Clay!”
He jumped. “Sorry, what?”
“Did you see anyone leave the shop?”
He shook his head and shoved the last bit of the halloumi burger into his mouth. He should think nicer thoughts about Nathan. No one had ever wanted to feed him, and it made him all warm and fuzzy inside.
“Where were you on your lunch break?”
Clay frowned at him. He’d already told him. “I went to Anna’s and took Edgar for a walk.”
“When did you leave here? How long were you gone? When did you come back?”
“I think I want to talk to a real cop. You’re not listening to me.”
Nathan groaned from behind the counter.
“I am a real cop.”
Clay scrunched his face. “I don’t believe you. Either way—” He hurried on when Jeffrey was about to object. “—you’re too close to this. I don’t think you’re allowed to investigate your own family.”
Jeffrey blinked owlishly at him, and Nathan muttered something he couldn’t hear.
“There is a doll on the floor. I don’t think anyone will be upset about me asking a few questions. I don’t know what you think will happen, but there won’t be a lot of manpower invested in this. I suspect this is it since we have nothing to go on.”
“Won’t you at least dust him for prints?”
Jeffrey stared at him for several seconds. “When did you leave for lunch?”
Clay sighed and glanced at Nathan. “A quarter to twelve, perhaps?”
“Eleven forty-eight.”
Clay gestured at Nathan. “See I have a witness. Eleven forty-eight.”
“And you went…?”
“To Anna’s.”
Jeffrey didn’t write anything on his notepad. “Where does she live?”
“Parkside Row. In the old white stone house.”
“She has an apartment there?”
Since the entire house was made up of apartments, he shouldn’t have to answer. “Yes, third floor.”
“And what did you do when there?”
Clay frowned at him. “Grabbed Edgar. We walked in the park until I had to rush back here.”
“And when you walked back here, what did you do?”
Clay tried to remember. “Well… I came from the park, right? And in front of me was a woman in vintage aviator boots, or I’m sure they were a reproduction, but we should see if we could get something similar in stock. Brown leather, lace-up, speed hooks. I’d say a replica from the 1930s, but it could be the twenties too. Anyway, we should—”
Both Jeffrey and Nathan groaned, and Clay looked between them.
“When you weren’t studying some poor woman’s shoes, what did you notice?”
Clay shrugged. “Her gait was a little uneven, and one of the heels—”
“Not about her shoes! Anything else.” Jeffrey’s sharp tone had Clay snapping his mouth shut.
“Eh… it’s chillier than it looks outside.”
Clay wouldn’t call the sound coming from Nathan a laugh, more like a sound of disbelief. Jeffrey closed his eyes for a moment.
“Look, Clay, I know there isn’t much going on inside your head, or maybe there is too much going on, but could you please focus on the important things?”
Spluttering, Clay motioned at Jeffrey. “You’re not allowed to speak to me like that. Nathan, he can’t say such things to me.”
Nathan sighed. “Answer his questions.”
“Why? He said he won’t investigate it. There is a doll on the floor, dressed in wicked shoes we don’t stock, and someone dropped him off when the store was empty and locked. But instead of worrying about how someone got in here without breaking anything and without anyone seeing them, you’re asking me about what I saw on my lunch break walk, and then you get annoyed when I tell you.”
Jeffrey breathed so loudly Clay feared something was wrong with him. Maybe they should call an ambulance in case he was choking.
“I am investigating, and I am asking you about the doll.”
“No, you weren’t.” Clay avoided looking at Jeffrey. He didn’t do well in the presence of angry men, and the Tallman brothers were huge. Not monstrous, but well over six feet, both of them. His five-eight didn’t measure up, not to mention he’d always been scrawny.
“When you reached the shop, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. I hurried up the steps because I feared I was late, and Nate would have my balls.”
“Nate?”
Oops. “Nathan. I feared Nathan would be annoyed with me.”
“Can’t imagine why.” Jeffrey’s mutter had him narrowing his eyes. Fucker. He waited for another question.
“So you were late?”
“No. I was here before Nathan.”
“But left before him.”
Clay nodded.
“And when you arrived, the door was unlocked.”
“No. It was locked. I unlocked it and stepped inside.”
Jeffrey wrote something on the notepad for the first time during their conversation. “And then what?”
“Then I saw the Victorian button boot. French heels are delightful. I wish everyone would wear them.”
Jeffrey groaned, but he believed the sound coming from Nathan was one of amusement. Maybe.
“And after you’d noted the French heel?”
“Then I questioned my prejudice concerning gender and footwear since it was clear it was a male-presenting person splayed on the floor.”
“Of course. Fucking queers.”
“Hey! You can’t talk to me like that! I want to report you. Who do I speak to?”
“I can. I have a brother who is queer, so it’s okay.”
Clay gaped at him. Was he completely insane? Had to be. “It does not give you the right to say things like that.” And did he have more brothers? Maybe their mother had more children than Nathan and Jeffrey. He’d only known about the two of them since they were Walter’s children. Or maybe Jeffrey made things up.
“After you’d admired the heel and contemplated your core values, what did you do?”
“Call for Nathan.”
“You called for Nathan?”
“Hell yeah, I didn’t want to move any closer to the corpse.”
“So you called for Nathan? You didn’t think Nathan was the killer?”
Clay stared at him. Damn. “Eh… no.”
“You’re the only two people with a key to the shop. There is, what you believe is a murdered—”
“Dead. There was no blood so… I didn’t think he was…” Had he believed he’d been murdered? He couldn’t remember.
“There is, what you believe, a dead man on the floor. Naked. And you don’t suspect Nathan of having killed him?”
Clay looked at Nathan. Damn, he’d be the first to die in a horror movie, wouldn’t he? He would go into the basement to check what caused the strange noises. “No. I… eh… hoped he’d be able to deal with it.”
“And next?”
“Nathan came through the door and accused me of murder.”
Nathan huffed. “I didn’t accuse you of murder.”
“You said: What the fuck did you do? in an accusing tone.”
Jeffrey scrawled something on the notepad. “And then?”
“Then a customer came in and screamed, and Nathan went to check for a pulse.”
“How long had you been in the shop by then?”
Clay shrugged. “A minute, two at the most.”
“A couple of minutes, and you hadn’t checked for a pulse?”
Wincing didn’t help much. “No… I… eh…” He sent a pleading look at Nathan, but he was watching Jeffrey, not Clay.
“Two minutes next to a body, and you didn’t check if he needed medical care.”
He studied the tiny blue flowers on the toe of his boots. Tomorrow, he should wear his Decayed Roses Docs, blue was too cheerful.
The snap of the notepad being closed made him jump, then Jeffrey crouched and grabbed the doll. “Right, I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”
Clay gaped at him. “But you didn’t ask Nathan any questions.”
Jeffrey shrugged, flung the doll over his shoulder, and headed toward the door. What the fuck?
After the door had closed behind Jeffrey, Clay stared at it for several seconds.
“Perhaps you should take the rest of the day off.”
“What?” He couldn’t afford to take a day off.
“Go home.”
“Why?”
“You’ve had a shock, and there are no customers here.”
Right now, but there would be customers later, and Nathan didn’t know shit about shoes.
“Go home, Clay.”
“No, I don’t want—”
“Go home.”
Fucker. Clay pushed the door open and stepped out on the sidewalk.
A lord in danger. A magician in turmoil. A snowball in hell.
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