[Jennifer Cloud 01.0] The Shoes Come First Read online

  The Shoes Come First:

  A Jennifer Cloud Novel

  JANET LEIGH

  Copyright © 2014 Janet Leigh

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1502416654

  ISBN 13: 9781502416650

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014916855

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  Prologue

  May 2004, Monaco

  The old man stood leaning against the wall of the garage. He had a good view of the track as the drivers finished their test runs for the day. The cars whizzed by, blurring into a mosaic of colors. Rolling his cigar between his fingers, the old man waited patiently. He knew smoking was prohibited this close to the cars, but a few puffs of his favorite Cuban eased the tension that showed in the deep crevices on his forehead.

  The red Formula One race car slowed as it pulled into the pit. As the car came to a final stop, its roaring engine ceased, and the driver was assisted out by his team. Marco Ferrari smiled as his teammate, Enzio, walked over and gave him a high five.

  “Fantastico, Marco. That was your best time today.”

  Marco laughed as he pulled off his helmet, exposing his blond curls, coiled tight with sweat, to the cool air. “Thanks. Just don’t beat it tomorrow in that overdecorated junk heap of yours.”

  “I’ll have you know, my friend, I get paid a lot of euro by my sponsors.”

  “Yeah, but I can barely see the color of your sled for all the advertisements.”

  “Would you like to make a wager?”

  Marco raised an unnaturally dark eyebrow at his friend. “Does this wager involve women or alcohol?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  “Then I’ll pass. The last time I made a bet with you, I couldn’t drive for three days from the massive hangover. Not even a golf cart.”

  The crew moved Marco’s race car to the garage. After signing off on his test times for the day, he walked over to double-check his car. The setting sun blinded him to the figure leaning against the garage wall. As he moved closer, he could smell the familiar Cuban cigar, and he smiled, as he knew it had to be his grandfather.

  Giorgio Ferrari was extremely proud Marco had decided to follow in his footsteps, not only as a Formula One driver but as a time traveler as well. Only the lucky inherited the gene that made time travel possible, and his grandson had been blessed with the gift. The day he passed his key to Marco had been one of the happiest in his life. Now he had to ask for it back. Only temporarily, of course, but Marco used his key to drive his time vessel, his Formula One race car. He only used the key when absolutely necessary, but that was Marco. He wanted to win using his skill, not his magic, and he wouldn’t give his key or his car up easily.

  “Nonno,” Marco said as he walked up with open arms to embrace his grandfather.

  Giorgio placed the cigar in his mouth and returned the hug.

  “Did you come to see my race tomorrow?” Marco asked.

  “No, I am sorry, Marco, but I need a favor,” his grandfather answered in his thick Italian accent.

  “What do you need, Nonno?” Giorgio knew Marco preferred to speak English, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as Marco quickly made the change to Italian out of respect for his grandfather.

  “Let’s go inside.” Giorgio motioned to the garage. A few remaining members of the pit crew were completing the final cleanup on Marco’s car. Giorgio motioned for them to leave, and they obeyed as they had in the years when they had been in his service. “She looks good.”

  “You know there is no smoking in here, Nonno.” Marco hung his helmet on the equipment rack and turned to face his grandfather. He was mature for his eighteen years, and his grandfather respected him with the same respect he commanded from others. Giorgio extinguished the cigar and moved closer to the car. He ran his fingers down the rear wing of the vehicle as if he were caressing the cheek of a small child.

  “I need the key.”

  “You know I can’t race tomorrow without my car.”

  “Elma is in trouble. She transported with her new defender yesterday, and he came back a short time ago barely alive. He hasn’t regained consciousness. I need to go help her.”

  “No. You gave your key to me. She has caused nothing but heartache for my nonna.” Marco crossed his arms over his chest in a defiant manner.

  “Your grandmother and I have an understanding that doesn’t concern you.”

  “I need my key and my car tomorrow.”

  “Marco, this is important. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.” He moved around the car and laid a hand gently on Marco’s shoulder. “Besides, you know I will return in just a matter of hours.”

  Marco knew he was going to give in. How could he deny his grandfather? While his parents were flitting around the world going to parties, his grandfather and grandmother had raised Marco and his sister instead of leaving them to the care of the slew of servants his parents left behind.

  “Fine…take it.” Marco peeled the zipper of his racing suit down, revealing a stone medallion suspended by a silver chain that hung from his neck, the key to his time travel vessel and his most prized possession, his race car. He reached behind his neck to remove the key, a feat only his hands could do unless he was dead. He handed it over to his grandfather, and a small electrical tingle shot up his arm when they touched. Giorgio immediately secured it around his own throat.

  “Thanks, Marco. You are a good boy.” Giorgio climbed into the car.

  “Nonno, what are you doing? You can’t transport in here. There isn’t enough room.” But his words were drowned out by the roar of the motor. There was a sharp crack, and Marco shielded his face from the exhaust. In an instant the car and his grandfather were gone. Marco stood in the empty space, alone and concerned about the trouble that Elma woman had caused his family. She helped his grandfather capture criminals. It should be a job and no more. Nonno had a family, a wife.

  Marco changed out of his gear. When he was dressed, he looked more like a high school student than a Grand Prix driver. He wore a faded T-shirt and jeans, an outfit that caused his mother to frown and caused his sister to refer to him as a “tool.” He liked the artistic drawings imprinted on his Archaic shirt, and he loved his favorite jeans, a pair of broken-in Diesels. Thanks to private tutors, Marco had finished high school two years early, allowing him more time to race. College was on the back burner. His father would like him to go for a business degree at Harvard, but what was the point? He had everything he needed.

  Marco moved outside and locked the garage. Digging in his pocket, he found a half-smoked cigarette. He dropped his backpack on the ground and lit up, leaning against the wall the same way his grandfather had been when he found him. He would have to forfeit the race tomorrow if Giorgio didn’t return with his car and his key. Marco took a long drag on his smoke and looked up at the moon. It had just begun to wane; possibly a day would be all the time they would have left
to return safely.

  A loud crack broke the silence. Marco pulled away from the wall to see if his grandfather had come back with that Elma woman. Behind the garage was an empty field with a huge oak tree holding court in the center. Marco’s car stood waiting under the tree. He flicked his cigarette to the ground, smashing it with his shoe as he proceeded to the vessel. The race car was empty. A few minutes later, Elma’s vessel appeared almost on top of him. He dodged quickly out of the way. Elma stumbled and almost fell out of her vessel, holding up a half-conscious Giorgio.

  “Marco,” she cried helplessly. “I tried to save him, but there were too many of them.” Marco’s heart froze as he helped Elma lay his grandfather down on the ground.

  A pool of blood was forming on the center of Giorgio’s chest, staining his white shirt a deep crimson. He opened his eyes for a brief second and ran the backs of his fingers across Marco’s cheek.

  “We found it, you know.”

  “Hold on, Nonno, I am going to get help.” Marco looked at Elma, who was wiping the tears from her aged face as she held Giorgio’s hand in hers.

  “Marco, you are such a good boy,” Giorgio whispered as his eyes went empty and he died in Marco’s arms.

  Elma’s arm was badly injured. She removed the key from around Giorgio’s neck and reaching up, removed her own. Using her good arm, she pulled Marco to his feet, and she handed both keys to him. Marco thought she had incredible strength for such a tiny woman.

  “You must take these and get your car back into the garage.” She looked around nervously. “Wash the blood from your hands and return to help me get your grandfather to headquarters.”

  Marco just stood rooted to the ground.

  “Do it now, boy; we don’t have much time.” She looked at him with damp eyes the color of the sea. “Marco, you must protect the gift. I need you to give my key to my niece, Jennifer Cloud.”

  Marco looked down at her. “Your niece?” he asked, bewildered. “But she can’t have the gift.”

  “Promise me you will do as I ask. It’s imperative for the future of my gift.” She gave him a little push. “Go now—get your vessel safe.”

  Chapter 1

  July 2013

  I bent over to secure the strap on my new pair of Steve Stone metallic snake sling-backs. They’d set me back a few hundred dollars but were worth every penny. I sat upright to finish my makeup and complete my “get ready for work on time” routine. The round mirror on my dressing table reflected the fact that I had loose strands of my blond hair escaping my updo of the day. I secured them with a few bobby pins and plastered on the hair spray like all good Texas girls do. After putting the finishing touches on my eyeliner, I swiped some mascara across my lashes, and voilà, I was ready for my day at the best job ever.

  I sighed as I relished my good fortune of landing the perfect job. Jennifer Cloud, assistant merchandiser for Steve Stone Shoes. The sound of it made my heart dance.

  Steve Stone Shoes was a specialty shoe store in Dallas that sold tons of designer shoes and was located in the most exclusive mall in Texas. I loved it. I had the luxury of being the first one to preview the new spring lines, not to mention I received a fabulous discount. A good portion of my paycheck was left behind to pay for my purchases, but I had cute shoes, shiny shoes, shoes in every color, shoes for wet days, and shoes for hot summers when I didn’t even wear shoes. I was a lucky girl. My face smiled back at me in the mirror. I caught a glimpse of something glistening around my neck. The silver necklace my great-aunt Elma Jean Cloud had left me in her will sparkled in the mirror. Tiny blue gems in the shape of stars encircled a piece of stone that resembled a crescent moon. I reached up to touch the necklace and remembered the first time I laid eyes on it.

  I was nine when I first saw the gift. It was August, one of the bake-your-ass-off months in Texas. Our Ford Explorer was rattling along the asphalt roads looking for the nearest place to have its radiator overheat. The air conditioning was on high and the car radio on low. My mom didn’t like country music, and my dad didn’t like our hip-hop tunes. So we proceeded on with the low drone of Elvis Presley in the background.

  My dad was driving because he was the only one who had enough patience to navigate the backwoods of his birthplace. His name was John Wayne, after a famous cowboy actor. He went by JW just to rule out any confusion. He squinted into the afternoon sun, cursing the fact that he had forgotten his sunglasses. His Comanche Indian ancestry showed in his smooth, bronze skin and the deep black color of his hair. Mom relaxed in the passenger seat next to him, working on a crossword puzzle and looking very chic in her big straw hat and sleek Chanel sunglasses. We sat in the backseat. My thirteen-year-old sister, Melody, was to my right. She was the spitting image of my dad. Her big brown eyes focused on the Tiger Beat magazine she held in her hands. The blast from the air conditioner blew her dark-brown hair, which was layered in the latest Jennifer Aniston haircut. She had a window seat because she was older than me. So unfair, in my opinion—birth order should not determine car placement.

  My brother, Eli, was sitting on the other side of me, also with a window seat. Two years older than me, he had the same thick, black hair as my dad and a lighter version of our mom’s sea-blue eyes. He looked out the window through his John Lennon glasses. The headphones connecting to the CD player in his lap were latched onto his head, excluding him from my constant questioning about the end of our trip.

  I was stuck in the middle—Jennifer Cloud, doomed to ride without a window. I didn’t inherit my dad’s thick, dark hair or my mom’s beautiful blond locks. Instead, I had what is called a dishwater-blond color. Now why would anyone name a color after dishwater? Go figure. I did, however, have the same deep blue eyes as my mother. My long hair was pulled back into pigtails and braided with yellow bows at the ends to match my dress. This gave Eli something to pull on when he teased me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked for the fifth time.

  “I told you,” Mom replied, “to Aunt Elma’s house in Mount Vernon, Texas.”

  “It’s not aunt,” said Dad. “It’s Aint Elma.” Mom laughed but probably would not succumb to Dad’s East Texas drawl. “Everyone down here has aints and pappies, mawmaws and pawpaws, and most of the boys are just called junior.”

  My mom, Mary, was a cookbook editor for a well-known publishing house. She was all prim and proper from being born and raised in Upstate New York and tried to take the twang out of our accents by overannunciating everything.

  “We are going to Aunt Elma’s birthday party; the entire family will be there,” Mom said, thoughtfully tucking the pencil she was using in her crossword book and closing it. “It’s kind of a family reunion and a birthday all in one.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “No one knows; she won’t tell,” Dad replied, looking at me in the rearview mirror.

  “How do we know how many candles to put on the cake?” I asked, because this was extremely important to a nine-year-old.

  “Duh, when a person gets to fifty years old, you just put one candle for every ten years the person has been alive,” explained Eli.

  I guess he can hear under those headphones after all.

  Melody saw an opportunity to put in her two cents. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What if they are fifty-two?”

  “You would round up to the next decade. So that would be six candles. But you stop at eight candles.”

  “Why would you stop at eight?” Melody pursed her lips like she was exerting extra effort to make conversation with Eli.

  “Jeez, Melody, everyone knows old people can’t blow out more than eight candles in one blow.”

  “You’re making that up,” Melody accused.

  “Am not!”

  “Are too!”

  “Brace face!” Eli shouted, showing off his set of perfectly straight white teeth.

  “Shut up, Eli!” Melody screamed through clenched teeth, refusing to reveal her mouthful of metal.

&nbs
p; “Shut up, Eli,” mocked Eli in his interpretation of Melody’s voice.

  “OK, settle down, kids. We are almost there.” Dad sighed as he turned onto a small dirt road. Tall live oak trees lined both sides of the pothole-ridden road. Pine trees and various kinds of brush gathered among the tree trunks like soldiers on the front lines daring anyone to try to break through.

  The vast canopies of the live oaks came together above us, forming a tree tunnel that provided relief from the harsh summer sun. We bounced along for about ten minutes, until the tree tunnel opened up and small frame houses began to appear occasionally on either side of the road.

  Aunt Elma lived in a small, white frame house surrounded on either side by a bunch of old oak trees with the occasional red-leaf maple tree thrown in for color. Her tiny house sat way back from the road, so you could just make out the porch. Today her front yard looked as if it had been turned into a used car lot. People just parked haphazardly wherever they stopped.

  “Good gracious, what a mess!” Mom exclaimed. “I hope Aunt Elma’s yard survives all these cars.”

  “Honey, don’t worry, the only kind of grass that grows out here is crabgrass, and even your cooking wouldn’t kill it,” Dad quipped.

  “That’s really cute, JW.” Mom pulled her sunglasses down her nose to give Dad the evil eye. He knew very well my mom was a great cook but teased her anyway just to get a rise out of her.

  My parents met at a food convention in Las Vegas. Dad had just opened up his own health-food store (which was actually a glorified feed store) and had traveled to Vegas to give a lecture on healthy foods and vitamins. Mom had been working as a grunt at a publishing house and was tagging along with the assistant editor in hopes of meeting some of the up-and-coming chefs so she could edit their future cookbooks. It was love at first sight. The way my dad tells the story, my mom was crossing the meeting room for a drink of water when she accidentally tripped on my dad’s outstretched cowboy boot and landed facedown in his lap. They were married the following week in the Chapel of Love. Since Dad owned a health-food store, Mom moved to Texas and hasn’t worn her pearls since.