My shoe wobbles and my life drains out of me as I realize that most likely, the heel is broken. Normally, a broken shoe wouldn't bend me out of shape, other than the minor inconvenience of having to walk like a drunken sailor, but this isn't a normal shoe; this is my precious, the pair I spent almost two weeks' salary on, the pair that had me subsisting on ramen noodles for a month.

I glance down at the Manolo Blahnik stiletto and let out a whimper. Sure enough, the heel is barely attached.

I take in a deep breath. They're just shoes, right?

The black and white floral mesh isn't scuffed and the bejeweled square embellishment is still intact. The heel is an easy fix.

Not that I can afford having it properly repaired right now, but maybe Lanie will have some glue in her apartment, or better yet, a pair of shoes I can borrow. She's going to freak out when she sees its condition, say the brand holds up well, and without a doubt, she'll ask how it happened.

I eye the shoe with suspicion. How did it break?

I look down at the sidewalk and turn around in search of a culpable gap in the sidewalk, but the sidewalk is smooth, newly repaired. It didn't happen here. If I'd stepped too hard or caught the heel in a crack, I would have noticed before now. Strange.

My attention catches on the red and green flickering of lights strewn around several palm trees in front of Palma D'Oro, the high-rise where my best friend Lanie lives. Garland and trumpet-blaring angels decorate the lampposts and it is quite festive for the season.

"Is she dead?" a woman asks from a crowd gathered several feet away.

"I think so," another says, her voice choking back tears.

Wow! Someone has died? This is awful.

The body is too far away, so I inch forward, trying not to push into the burgeoning crowd, but they don't budge. They're caught up in "Who is she?" and "What do you think happened?" Not that I can blame them. Dead bodies don't just turn up on Harbor Island. Death is ugly, really ugly, and this is where the pretty people of Tampa live in the safety of their gated communities and security guards. With the bulk of the island's population young and working in high-paying jobs, deaths are few and far between. 

It's not like my side of town, where drug overdoses, robberies, or some weird Florida occurrence like the guy who ate the face off another guy seem to happen on a weekly basis. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but it isn't anything like here.

I try to peek over the shoulder of the designer suit-wearing guy in front of me. It fits the man really well and for some reason, it reminds me of something my boss would have worn before he died. But it's not like he was the only one who wore Armani; there are three Armanis in this very crowd.

He steps back and I quickly take his spot. The regrets come quickly as I notice the shoulder-length, greasy, black hair of the guy who lives down the hall from Lanie. I think his name is John, but I've pretty much tried to avoid him in the two years Lanie has lived in Palma D'Oro. He clearly has money since he can afford to live here, yet I have never seen him all cleaned up. He consistently looks like he hasn't showered for ages and he wears geeky t-shirts with the same ratty sweatpants almost every time I see him. Tonight, he's wearing a decade-old coat to keep warm in this cold front that wandered in a couple days ago.

I suck in a deep breath and try not to hurl as body odor wafts into my nose. Yuck.

John turns around and glares at me.

I want to ask him which imaginary friend he's going to talk to tonight, but that's a tad rude. Instead I just glare at him until the silence becomes uncomfortable. "Can you move?" I quickly add a please to it, but his expression only hardens.

Hands gripping what appears to be a large chess pawn, he says, "Go to the other side."

Ummm. Weird. "That's what I'm trying to do. I have to get through the crowd so I can enter the building." As if it's not obvious. It's not like I'm going to climb the levels of the parking garage when my shoes are wobbly and an elevator is only a few feet away. Jeesh.

Still he wears a stony expression on his face. I haven't always been nice to him, but I've never been rude to him. I've just always kind of avoided him for fear of catching whatever disease his grime-infused clothing might contain.

"Really, I want to see Lanie. If you'd move, I'd be that much closer to seeing her." My voice is squeaky. I hate it when it does that.

"You don't want to see this," he says without emotion.

The realization sinks in. It's Lanie.

I look up at the coquina building, specifically at the seventh floor. A pale blue curtain is flapping outside the window of the apartment three windows to the left, Lanie's apartment.

"No!" I scream. "Not Lanie!"

John's expression turns to confusion, but the rest of the crowd's attention remains focused on the dead body.

"Let me through. Now."

He throws his free hand into the air and says, "You aren't going to like what you see, Mom." He puts his hand on an old woman's shoulders and guides her away.

A man with salt-and-pepper hair elbows his way through the crowd, the duffle bag on his shoulder swinging against the onlookers to his side. "What's going on here?" His voice is marked with authority and his suit suggests he carries the clout to go with it. I hide behind him as he nears the body. He comes to an abrupt stop and the air gushes out of him. "Does anyone know what happened here?"

"I think it's my friend," I answer, but he pays no attention to me. I round him to get a look at the corpse.

She's too heavy and a little too tall to be Lanie, and the clothes she's wearing...omigosh. Lanie wouldn't be caught dead in them. Black, bug-eye sunglasses cover most of the poor soul's face. A black, angora sweater is bunched up and a small muffintop peeks out of her stonewashed denim skirt that the eighties would like to have back, stat. The only things saving her from being a complete fashion catastrophe are the Manolos on her feet. They're exactly like mine, but I'll bet hers aren't broken.

I wonder if anyone would notice if I took the shoe?

I scratch the thought as quickly as it entered my head. I'm not a vulture, even if the shoe is by my favorite designer.

"I think she either jumped or fell," says the same woman from earlier. She points a French-manicured fingernail toward the high-rise.

Mr. Salt-and-Pepper spins around and, wow, is he handsome, to the extent he could be an actor. I scan his hand for a wedding ring, but there isn't one. I'll have to get his number to give to my mom. Maybe if she has a love interest, she'll leave me alone about my perpetual lack of one.

"Does anyone know who she is?" Salt-and-Pepper asks.

Everyone mumbles that sound you make when you press your lips together to say, "I don't know." After a couple seconds, a lone voice rises from the crowd, John. "She's a friend of the girl who lives down the hall from me. She used to give me the stink-eye all the time. I think her name's Shelly."

I can't help but laugh at the stink-eye comment. More than likely, his weirdness and hygiene garner reactions from everyone who meets him. Shelly couldn't have been that bad of a person. With her love for Blahnik's we probably could have been great friends. Well, if she weren't dead and all. I doubt I'd go anywhere with her, though, if she insisted on wearing the eighties garb. I do have standards, after all.

But what was Shelly doing in Lanie's apartment? My short kinship with her ends on that note. I can't recall Lanie saying that we'd be going out as a group tonight, and I know all of the friends she hangs with, that's the privilege of being her best friend.

Mr. Salt-and-Pepper sets his duffle bag on the ground and kneels beside the deceased. He lifts her wrist to check for a pulse. A shard of glass clinks onto the cement. His straight lips downturn as he gently lowers her wrist back onto the sidewalk. He reaches for her handbag on the sidewalk next to the woman.

"Has anyone contacted the police?" the man asks as he removes her wallet.

I shift my attention back to the body and omigosh! The shoes are gone! Who on earth would have the nerve to steal shoes off a corpse in front of a crowd of thirty or forty people?

I scan the crowd for the culprit, but come up empty. A burgundy dress sashays away from everyone, but all eyes are on Salt-and-Pepper, and all mouths are repeating that "I don't know" sound again.

The blare of sirens a couple blocks away interrupts my thought. An ambulance wails past the building, in an apparently busy night for an emergency. I can't believe no one has dialed 9-1-1 for this poor lady.

A car screeches to a halt in front of us. I turn my gaze to the red Volvo. Lanie climbs out of the passenger side. After slamming the door, she races toward me. And of course, she's wearing the same tacky jean skirt and black sweater as the deceased, but hers is cinched with a neon green belt, and she looks killer in the outfit, rather than killed.

"Oh my god! Cheline!" she screams as she nears the body.

"I'm over here." I wave, almost whacking Mr. Salt-and-Pepper in the head. Bewildered that I can't seem to catch her attention without injuring someone or making a bigger spectacle of myself, I weave my way through the gawkers to avoid stepping over the body.

By the time I reach Lanie, she is crouched over Shelly on the sidewalk. She removes the sunglasses, and I hear a scream.

The corpse is mine.

_________________________

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider voting for it and adding it to your reading list. I'd also greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks again. :)