Free Rita Hayworth's Shoes by Francine LaSala Page B

they just hired someone to replace Heimlich.”
    â€œWho?” Amy asked.
    Hannah was quiet for a minute, which made Amy incredibly nervous. She was terrified that she may possibly have remembered that at some point a long, long ago, Liz French had been a professor of English…
    â€œYou’ll see,” said Hannah as she darted out.
    Amy took a deep breath and went back to her task. If Liz was her new boss, well, she’d just have to jump off that bridge when she got to it.
    She moved the two-drawer filing cabinet she had just emptied to make sure nothing had fallen behind it. Nothing had, but there was something there, strangely enough. A small door—not unlike the first door Alice encountered when she landed in Wonderland, Amy thought.
    Amy tried turning the knob and found the door was locked. So she reached up onto the desk for a letter opener, and began prying away at the lock. At last it clicked open and she pulled at the door, only to find another mystery: a small steamer trunk. She pulled it out and, saw that it too was locked, so out came her trusty letter opener again.
    As she tried to pick open the lock, the tip of the letter opener slipped and stabbed her in the finger. “Shit,” she said, and opened Heimlich’s top drawer, where she knew he kept his stash of Band-Aids. She opened one and wrapped it around her fingertip. “Huh,” she said, realizing she may have just solved the mystery of Heimlich’s Band-Aid wrapped fingertips.
    She sat back down on the floor and tried the lock again. This time, it clicked open and the lid flipped up, revealing the contents: a sequined Elvis costume, a black Elvis wig, what seemed like hundreds Elvis of CDs, and then, underneath these, a collection of six antique bisque dolls. Under the dolls, there was another locked section that she was just about to start picking when she got interrupted.
    â€œNow that’s shocking.”
    Amy looked up, shocked herself for a moment to see the hulking bald guy from the funeral parlor standing over her. “You mean the dolls or the secret stash of CDs?” Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.
    â€œNot really either,” he said, joining her on the floor. He pulled a couple of dolls out of the trunk and made them dance with each other. “I just would have thought vinyl. For both.”
    â€œGood point,” she nodded, and then caught herself. “Hey, wait. What are you doing here?”
    â€œMe?” he smiled, his eyes still as warm as the other day. “Oh, I’m just on an errand for my old pal, Detective Franks. He wanted to know if you’d return to the scene of the crime. It seems you…”
    Amy froze, and Deck let out a hearty laugh.
    â€œOh, very funny,” she said, snatching back Heimlich’s dolls from him and stuffing everything back into the trunk. She closed it, pushed it back into its hiding spot, and slammed the little door. “Seriously, what are you doing here?”
    He stood and offered his hand to help her up. “I work here, actually,” he said. “Turns out, I’m replacing old Heimlich,” he explained, with a glint of mischief in his warm, somewhat wonderful eyes. “Which I guess makes me your boss.”
    Amy relaxed slightly, thinking this would have to be better than working for Liz. “Small world,’” she said, and she pushed the filing cabinet back in front of the door.
    â€œMost things are small to me.”
    â€œYou are kind of tall, aren’t you.”
    â€œNot that tall. Not freakishly tall,” he said, and she had to look away on the word “freakishly.”
    â€œNot going to give the trunk to the family?”
    â€œDunno. It seems too weird, you know? I say let Heimlich have his secrets.”
    â€œIf you say so. Oh, which reminds me…” Deck reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Here,” he said, handing it to her.