Amanda's Young Men (7 page)

‘Where is Mr Dumphries?’

‘Not here.’

‘I can see that. Why isn’t he here?’

‘He don’t come in early.’

‘Really? By whose authority?’

‘Ms Sharpe’s. She’s the VP of Purchasing.’

‘Where’s she?’

‘She’s away.’ The girl scratched absently behind her ear.

‘Is she? Away where?’

‘Holiday.’

‘Due back?’

‘A week from next Monday.’ Possibly the redhead hadn’t stood still for this long in a while, or perhaps the barrage of questions was getting to her. At any rate, she shifted her
weight
back and forth, from left hip to right, while they talked.

‘So who’s in charge of Purchasing right now?’

‘I am.’

‘I see.’ Amanda turned to leave but almost tripped over an open carton that was filled with magazines. More kinky porn? She picked up the top one. It wasn’t a porn magazine but what looked like a shoe-trade journal. She couldn’t tell much more because it was in German. ‘Who do these belong to?’

‘No one. That stuff was Paul’s, Paul Carter’s, but he ain’t here no more. I was gonna, like, dump them?’

‘He quit?’

‘Mr Dumphries, like, fired him?’

‘What for?’

The girl leant forwards conspiratorially. In a whisper, she hissed, ‘Forgery.’

At last, Amanda felt she was on the track of a crime. ‘What did he forge?’

‘An order. Mr Dumphries placed an order for fifteen cases of some shoe. Paul Carter changed the one into a four for forty-five cases.’

‘Why on earth did he do that?’

‘Well, him and Dumphries had had a big fight. Carter wanted to order lots of the style but Dumphries wasn’t going for it, so Carter increased the order, like, by forging, you know, faking the number.’

Amanda perched on the edge of a desk, intrigued. ‘This shoe, did it sell well?’

‘What? Oh sure. Sold out all forty-five cases in about three weeks, it so happens. All the shops wanted more but it were, like, too late.’

‘So this Carter person was right about the shoe, then.’

‘I know. But that wasn’t the point, Dumphries said. He said,
like
, Paul was dishonest. So he had to go. Dumphries was really pissed off.’

‘Because Carter forged, or because he was right?’

The girl shrugged.

‘Deliver this carton up to my office, please. I’d like to take a look at these magazines.’

‘I don’t do deliveries.’ The girl actually laughed out loud. ‘Do I look like I’m dressed to carry stuff around?

‘I see. What’s your name?’

‘Pat Hughes.’

‘Well, Pat Hughes, you may take the rest of the week off.’

‘Cool!’ Belatedly, the girl asked, ‘Who are you, anyway?’

‘I am Amanda Garland, the owner of Forsythe Footwear. On Monday, report to Mrs Carrey. She’ll have your severance papers and final pay waiting for you.’

‘What?’ The girl’s mouth hung open.

‘You’re fired.’ Amanda felt a tingle of pleasure as she abused her power for the first time. Anyway, the girl was a dud. If the redhead was taking the hit not only on her own behalf but on behalf of all the obnoxious teens who had ever given Amanda lousy service over the years, at the cinema, in shops, at the counters of take-out restaurants, well, so be it.

‘You can’t do that!’

‘I just did.’

Amanda lugged the carton up to her office herself. It didn’t just contain shoe magazines from around the world but also scores of sheets of paper covered with numbers and graphs and notes in some sort of code. As best she could make out, they were someone’s – Paul Carter’s, she presumed – attempts to forecast shoe styles. Considering his row with Dumphries, it looked like he’d succeeded in one instance, at least.

Amanda buzzed Nola. ‘Nola, we used to have a man with us, a Paul Carter. Can you find out who he’s working for now?’

‘Certainly, Ms Garland. Ms Garland?’

‘Yes?’

‘He was nice, really smart. I was sort of sorry to see him go.’ It was the first time Nola had initiated conversation.

‘Good looking?’

Nola giggled. ‘A real dish, if you like ’em that young!’

‘How young?’

‘Oh, he’d only be about twenty, I think.’

Amanda smiled. Her world was filling up with potential toy-boys.

At one, Nola brought Amanda a tray with a Caesar salad and a mineral water with lemon wedge. Apparently, she had a memory inside that fluffy head of hers. The way the girl swished in, she was begging to be looked at.

‘New skirt?’ Amanda asked.

‘Do you like it?’

It was in grey flannel, fitted and a few inches longer than Nola usually wore, but with a six-inch slit up each side. Amanda thought that perhaps it was some sort of homage to the skirts she herself wore.

‘Very nice,’ she said, and meant it. The girl had remarkably attractive legs.

Nola reddened with pleasure. ‘I’m so glad you like it, Ms Garland. You always dress so nice, so it’s a real compliment.’ Her face clouded. ‘You’re really nice, and smart, too. Not at all like I expected Rog – Mr Garland’s wife to be …’ She dried up.

‘How did you picture me?’

‘I don’t know. I’d seen pictures of you, of course, but I thought you’d be dumb. Self-centred and dumb. But what did I know?’ Now that she’d started talking again, the poor pink-haired girl clearly couldn’t stop. She babbled on, ‘If I’d known you were so great, I never would’ve …’

‘Never would have what?’

‘Nothing.’ Nola stood frozen to the spot. ‘I have to go,’ she finally mumbled, and retreated much more clumsily than she’d entered.

Amanda grinned. Hm! That was very close to an apology for screwing Roger, an apology Amanda had a mind to accept. She was starting to like the little upstart. Nola of the pink hair had had the nerve to imagine
her
, Mrs Roger Garland, as dumb. It amused Amanda. And it couldn’t have been Nola in that motel room. Amanda had checked the time sheets. Nola had been behind her desk that morning. It seemed that Roger had fooled around with a number of women and girls. Nola couldn’t be entirely blamed for Roger’s unfaithfulness.

She opened the locked drawer and fingered the bag of gold charms. Roger had been a complicated man, clearly in love with her yet happily unfaithful. Or perhaps all men were like that.

Maybe it had been power that had made him cheat. Amanda had happily seduced both Trevor, the building’s security guard, and Rupert, her own employee, directly or indirectly –
and
she planned to screw this Paul Carter, a young man she hadn’t even met yet. Any of them might have a girlfriend or a wife. Roger’s death had certainly liberated her, if its having turned her into a conscienceless libertine counted.

It was three o’clock when Dumphries, a suitably dumpy little man with a wart between his eyes and a comb-over, bustled into her office. ‘What happened to my Pat?’

‘I fired her.’

‘Why?’

‘She was obnoxious.’

‘What?’

‘Sit down. I want to talk to you.’

‘But – Pat …’

‘We can discuss her later … if it’s still relevant.’

The tone of her voice deflated him, and he sank into a visitors’ chair. ‘What is it?’

‘Style number F 102340.’

He frowned. ‘Women’s black oxford with a good solid built-in arch support. From Ogilvy & Fitch. Excellent shoe.’

‘How many pairs have we bought so far this year?’ Amanda asked the question in a silky voice.

‘I’m not sure. I’d have to check.’

‘I already did. Just short of two thousand pairs.’

‘Oh?’

‘And how many pairs have we sold?’

‘That’s not my department.’

‘Purchasing isn’t concerned about sales? Interesting. Very well, I’ll tell you. One hundred and eighty-three pairs, as of close of business last week.’

‘As I said, it’s a good shoe. We must be stockpiling. It’s the sort of shoe that’s never out of style.’

‘Or in it,’ Amanda purred. ‘And last year, we –
you
– bought just over three thousand pairs. We sold fewer than four hundred. At this rate, in ten more years it’ll be the only shoe we stock.’

Dumphries crossed his arms. ‘I don’t make purchasing decisions. Ms Sharpe decides what we buy.’

‘I’m glad you brought that up, Mr Dumphries. What is it, exactly, that you
do
do, apart from come in late, take long lunches and leave early?’

He sat up sharply and wagged his finger at her. ‘I’ll have you know –’

‘What? Tell me what the process is – the ordering.’

‘Well, Ms Sharpe tells me what shoes to buy and in what quantity. I pass her instructions on to my assistant – Pat.
She
makes up the order forms and brings them to me for signature.’

‘So all you do is pass instructions on and sign order forms? And without looking at what you sign, I hear.’

‘Now see here!’

‘No, Mr Dumphries, I’ve wasted quite enough time on you. You’re fifty-eight, almost fifty-nine, right? You can retire at sixty. I’ve checked with Human Resources. The cheapest way to get rid of you is to continue to pay you for the next fourteen months, but please don’t bother to come in. You won’t be welcomed.’

He stood up, spluttering. ‘I’ll be talking to Ms Sharpe about this!’

‘And so will I. You have twenty-five minutes to clear your desk, or Security will escort you from the premises. Goodbye, Mr Dumphries!’

7

SPIKES WAS A
much larger shop than any of Forsythe Footwear’s. It had about sixty feet of frontage and rose for three tall floors. Its façade was pale-pink reflective glass, trimmed with heavy black chains. The motif was continued inside, with pink mirrors, pink faux-suede seating and displays that were made from black chains that had had their links welded together to make sinuous shapes. Handbags hung from thin black chains, twirling decoratively at eye-level.

Amanda tottered in like a geisha in a black slub-silk jersey skirt that hobbled her ankles and clung to her thighs, a ruffled white chiffon blouse and a short boxy jacket that was fastened by three frogs, leaving a two-inch gap that offered a tantalising hint of her thinly veiled cleavage.

The staff wore uniforms, black skirts with pink blouses or black pants with pink shirts. Happily for Amanda’s purposes, they also wore name tags – pink writing on black. When the only male server on that floor asked if he could help Amanda, and she’d checked his tag, she asked him where the higher-heeled shoes were displayed.

He looked down at Amanda’s restricted legs, then at the staircase that rose from the middle of the floor, and grinned. ‘Upstairs, madam. Shall I have someone bring a selection down for you?’

‘No thanks.’ Amanda stooped and teased the Velcro fastening on her skirt apart high enough to display four inches of her naked thigh above the top of her stocking. The
salesman
was still gawking when Amanda was halfway up the flight.

The stairway had been designed for exhibitionists and voyeurs. It was open on both sides and had treads but no risers. It was impossible for anyone in a skirt to climb them without offering an ‘upskirt’ show to those below. Amanda supposed that the assumption was that women who wore heels higher than the relatively conservative three- and four-inch ones displayed on the lower level had to have exhibitionistic streaks. Clever.

The downside of having a husband in the shoe business, she now realised, was never visiting shoe stores. Amanda’s life with Roger had been incredibly isolated and she’d been oblivious to it. It had happened gently, over time, like a light snowfall, one flake following another. Without noticing, she’d been buried. And Amanda had a pretty good idea why. Roger had made damn sure she wasn’t tempted, as he’d been, fearing that she’d succumb, as he damn well had!

Amanda paused before she reached the top, turned and gave the young man who’d directed her a big slow smile. He was tempting, no doubt about it, and just the right age – which was to say, young. Amanda flounced up the remaining three steps. But he wasn’t the one she was after, not today.

There was only one person serving up there, so he had to be Paul Carter. Once more, Amanda pretended to browse as she watched a shoe salesman, who she planned to seduce, at his work. She was becoming quite the Mata Hari!

In contrast to baby-faced Rupert, Paul had a gaunt look, almost lupine, with prominent cheekbones and large wild eyes. His lips, though not as generous or raspberry red as Rupert’s, were just as alluring. His dark spiky hair looked as if he’d just got out of bed – a look that he most likely spent an hour achieving each morning.

Paul went down on one knee to fit shoes to his customer’s feet. When he pushed a shoe on, he did so by pressing up on the tip of its heel with the palm of his hand. Perhaps the girl he was serving didn’t interpret that idiosyncrasy, but Amanda did. Now she knew exactly how she was going to enslave him.

When the girl left and Paul turned to Amanda, she told him, ‘I want to try on the highest-heeled pump you have.’

He looked at her feet and raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a very small foot, madam. Our highest heels are six inches tall. You’d be balancing on the tips of your toes in them. Are you sure …?’

‘Try me.’

He measured her foot with the delicate touch of a spider. ‘One moment, madam.’

The shoe he brought to her was a plain classic pump in metallic bronze, with six-inch steel-tipped heels that were as slender and vicious as nails. He knelt and used his palm to push up on the blunted spike to press the shoe’s heel on to Amanda’s foot. Amanda bore down, forcing his right hand lower and lower, until its back was flat on the floor, and trapped. Then she put just a little weight on it, indenting the flesh of his palm.

Paul looked up at her face with both pain and lust in his eyes.

‘Now the other shoe,’ she said.

‘I …’

‘You’ll manage.’

‘Yes, madam.’ Awkwardly, he worked her foot into the second shoe, one-handed, until a third of her heel was in it. He set his palm beneath its spike and looked up again, his deep-brown eyes silently pleading.

Amanda knew exactly what he wanted. She forced his left hand down and trapped it beside its mate.

‘Madam?’

‘Paul Carter, right?’