“Can I help you, miss?” the man behind the counter asked. He was an older man, slightly stooped and balding. What hair he had left was pure white and combed carefully in a futile attempt to conceal his bald patches.
“Yes, I’m interested in the red shoes you have on display.”
His expression betrayed surprise. “For yourself?” Plainly, he didn’t believe it.
Sarah smiled. “No, actually, I’m not interested in buying the shoes. I’m interested in someone who did buy a pair like them a few weeks ago.”
The man was worried now. “If she wasn’t happy with them, I can’t-”
“Oh, no, I’m sure she was very pleased with them. It’s just… something happened to her. She was… murdered.”
The old man’s eyes widened, and he took a step back, as if trying to get away from Sarah. Or at least from what she was saying. “I don’t know nothing about it,” he insisted.
“Of course you don’t,” Sarah assured him, wishing she knew more about interrogating people. Malloy would know what to do. But maybe not. This poor man was terrified. Malloy would have had him reduced to hysterics by now, and they’d never find out anything. She tried another smile, making it as kindly as she could manage. “I was just wondering if you might be able to remember who bought the shoes for the young lady in question. We think he might be the one who killed her, you see, but we don’t know anything about him.”
“Who’s this ‘we’ you keep talking about?” he asked suspiciously.
Sarah thought fast. If she mentioned the police, she’d get no help at all. “Her family. I’m a family friend, you see, and they’ve asked me to help them find her killer.”
“They would’ve done better with one of them detectives,” he told her. “You can hire men to look into things like this. Females got no business with such things.”
Sarah gritted her teeth to keep from telling him she most certainly did have business with such things. “I have some experience in these matters. And I did manage to locate the place where the poor girl got the shoes, didn’t I?”
He frowned, not quite certain he should admit to it. “And what good did it do you?”
“None yet, but it might if you can remember who the man was who bought the shoes for her. Her name was Gerda. She was a pretty, blond girl. German. She hadn’t been here very long, and she spoke with an accent. We think the man who bought her the shoes would have been well dressed. Expensively dressed, that is.”
“A lot of them is, you know,” the man told her. “They come down here where nobody knows them and takes up with these girls. It’s a scandal. In my time, girls didn’t go off alone with men. They stayed home where they was safe. You say this girl got herself killed?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“It’s no wonder, then. She was asking for trouble. What kind of family don’t know to keep their girls home where they’ll be safe?”
Sarah wanted to point out that Gerda had been forced to work to support herself, so she couldn’t possibly have stayed home. Arguing would be a waste of time, though, and she might annoy him enough that he wouldn’t tell her anything.
“You’re right,” she said, trying to be patient. “But we still need to find out who murdered Gerda. He’s killed other girls, and he’ll most likely kill again if we don’t catch him.”
“Others, you say? That’s terrible! But it wouldn’t happen if they’d stay home-”
“I know, I know.” Sarah had reached the end of her patience. “But can you give us any help at all? Do you remember the German girl who bought red shoes? It wasn’t very long ago.”
He frowned with the effort at remembering. “I only sold a couple pairs this summer, but I’ve seen hundreds of people coming through my store. She was German, you say?”
“Yes, and she would have been very excited about the shoes.”
He nodded slowly, concentrating as he remembered. “Thick ankles.”
“What?”
“She had thick ankles. I see a lot of ankles in my business. A woman tries on a pair of shoes. you see her ankles. Can’t help it.”
Now Sarah wanted to throttle him, but she restrained herself. He surely wouldn’t tell her anything if she did. “So you do remember her?”
“I only sold two pairs of the red shoes, and the other girl was an American.”
He really did remember. He was just being difficult. “Do you remember the man who was with her, the one who bought her the shoes?”
He frowned again. “I ain’t too sure. Is there some kind of reward or something?”
“If the information leads us to the killer, there’s a reward of one hundred dollars,” Sarah lied without batting an eye. Quite frankly, if someone could tell her who the killer was, she’d gladly pay the hundred dollars herself.
The man suddenly seemed much friendlier than he had been. “Can’t blame me for being careful, can you? Don’t know just who might be coming in here, asking questions. Don’t want to get mixed up in no murder, now do I? Can’t have the police in here. Bad for business, you know.”
Sarah could just imagine. “The man who bought the shoes,” she prodded.
“Well, they don’t usually introduce themselves, if you know what I mean, and I don’t notice the men much any-ways. But I remember the girl well enough. She was babbling in German, and he kept telling her to talk English, and she kept saying, ‘Oh, Will, they’re so pretty,’ or something like that.”
Sarah felt the blood rushing from her head. “Will? She called him Will?”
“I think so.” He was hedging, seeing Sarah’s excitement but not knowing what it meant. “I wouldn’t want to get nobody in trouble, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I remember. Now who did you say was going to pay this reward?”
“Her family,” Sarah said, “and I’ll certainly tell them how helpful you’ve been.”
Now she had it, proof that all the murdered girls had known the man named Will. He must be the one they were looking for. She couldn’t wait to get back to the city and tell Malloy. She was mentally answering all of the questions she imagined Malloy would ask when she almost bumped into Dirk in the corridor outside the shop.
“You look particularly satisfied,” he remarked with a grin. “Did you find your killer?”
If only it were so easy. “I learned that a man named Will bought the red shoes for Gerda. That means she really did know him, and all the other girls knew him, too!”
His smile vanished. “What other girls?”
Sarah was so excited, she had forgotten her resolve not to tell Dirk about the other murders. Now, of course, there was no reason not to.
“There have been other murders in which girls like Gerda were killed in the same way. That’s how we knew about this man named Will. They had all been seeing him right before they were killed. We knew Gerda had been seeing someone new, too, but we didn’t know his name, at least not until today.”
He was horrified. “So you think this Will character must be the killer? That he’s killed… how many girls did you say?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, hedging. “Three more that we know about, but there may be others. We only found out about these by accident, because some of Gerda’s friends knew the other victims.”
Dirk was pale. For all his worldliness, he had probably never been exposed to something so ugly before. He tried his usual grin, but it was crooked and strained. “So now that you know this fellow Will is connected to all the murdered girls, how do you propose finding him?”
“We don’t have to talk about this anymore, Dirk,” Sarah said kindly. “I can see you’re upset and-”
“Oh, please, I’ll be more upset if I don’t know everything. I must believe that you have a plan for catching this… this monster, or I won’t be able to sleep at night.”