Final Settlement by Vicki Doudera Page B

Farr Realty and heard Tina’s brisk voice say hello.
    “Shoe delivery for Ms. Ames,” Darby intoned.
    “Wahoo! Are they just spectacular, or what?”
    “Truthfully, I haven’t even looked at them. They’re heavier than flip-flops, I can tell you that.”
    “Those shoes are Manolo Blahnik! They probably cost Terri close to a thousand bucks. Do you want me to come pick them up?”
    “No, I thought I’d stop by the office. Can I bring you a sandwich from the Café?”
    “Nah. I’m watching my waistline until after the wedding. But any kind of soup is great, as long as it isn’t chowder.”
    “Gotcha.” Darby hung up and drove to the center of town. She parked beside the Café, leaving the shoes and box on the passenger seat.
    The Jeep’s thermometer said the temperature had risen to twenty-five degrees, but Darby shivered as she walked. The air was cold, cold and damp. Above the tops of Hurricane Harbor’s wooden buildings, large gray clouds were massing together. It’s the moisture bound up in those clouds that’s causing the bone-penetrating chill, Darby thought.
    The Café bustled with a hungry lunchtime crowd. Darby waited several minutes before ordering two bowls of curried butternut squash soup. The restaurant’s owner, a fifty-something banker from Boston, chatted as he rang up the sale. “Looks like we’re in for a good dumping,” he commented. He saw Darby’s puzzled face and added, “Snow. Sounds like a blizzard, if you can believe what the weather people say. Of course, you can’t always go by their predictions! Half the time they are dead wrong.”
    Darby took the bag with the two containers of soup and thanked the man. Was a blizzard truly forecast for the imminent future? What would that mean for Miles and his flight from California?
    She walked to her car, thinking that the lack of a television at the old farmhouse had meant she was oblivious to the weather report. No wonder the air felt so damp. It was going to snow.
    The compact office of Near & Farr Realty was located a quarter mile up the hill from town, with a slice of harbor just visible from the small parking lot. Darby parked, grabbed the soups, and headed down the icy path. Tina met her at the door and flung it open.
    “Yum! I swear that I can smell that soup already. Curried squash, right? Can’t wait.”
    Darby placed the containers on a scarred wooden conference table. “I forgot spoons, I’m afraid.”
    “No biggie, we’ve got some here. Jane insisted we have cutlery, wine glasses, and cocktail plates at the ready, just in case she needed to booze up some potential buyer.” She grinned. “That aunt of yours was a character.” She plunked two spoons, two napkins, and two glasses of sparkling water on the table. “I miss her.”
    “Thanks.” Darby couldn’t say whether she missed her Aunt Jane. Their relationship had been so fraught with complications that it was almost a relief having it over. I miss the parts of her I didn’t fully appreciate, she thought. If we’d had the chance to know each other as adults, we might have found common ground.
    The women enjoyed their lunch in silence. When Tina was finished, she pushed aside her cardboard container. “Okay … bring on the shoes!”
    Darby laughed. “They’re in the car. Be right back.”
    She dashed out and opened up the Jeep’s passenger door. The red lacquered box was there, but the white plastic bag holding the shoes was not on the fabric seat. She looked in the back but found nothing. Finally, she looked under both of the seats and in the cargo compartment.
    The Manolo Blahniks were gone.
    Baffled, Darby trotted back to the building and gave her friend the news.
    “What?” she gulped, her face turning an ashen gray. “Terri’s going to kill me.”
    “They were in a bag on the front seat.” She thought back, remembered leaving the box and the bag, and heading to the Café. She had not locked the Jeep. “Somebody must have stolen them when I