When Emily's elderly customer, Sophia Sarfatti, complains her shoe is uncomfortable--and Emily pries off the heel to investigate--she discovers a stash of precious stones that has the power not only to make her own life uncomfortable--but to end it completely. Someone is using Emily's Place, the fashionista's favorite discount shoe store on New York City's colorful Upper West Side, to traffic in stolen stones, and the list of possible suspects keep growing. Was it Freddie the Fox, a local kid who sold her a few pair at a really good price " because they fell off a truck?" Or was it Italian Mafia--the shoes were imported from Italy--or worse yet, was it the Russian Mafia, expanding their neighborhood fur business? Nobody in the neighborhood seems to be able to resist the temptation those gems provide--not even Emily herself. But she knows that whoever has stashed those stones is going to come back for them and she begins to worry--big time--not only about herself but about her other customers, whose heels, stuffed with diamonds and rubies, even now might be taking them on a short-cut to the cemetery.