by Elaine Viets
Yes, she knew Page Turner. She worked at his bookstore. What kind of person was he?
A rat, she thought. A cheat, a liar, a seducer. A rich man who stiffed his poor help.
“He wasn’t real popular with the staff,” Helen said. She figured Jax would find that out fast enough. “He closed two stores and let the booksellers go without any severance. He bounced our paychecks.” Well, not mine, she thought. I was paid in cash. But she couldn’t mention that, either.
“Was anyone mad enough to kill him?”
We all were, Helen thought. “What good would that do?” she said. “The stores would still be closed.”
Did Page have any friends or visitors his last day at the store? What time did he leave? Did he seem concerned, worried, angry, or upset?
“I think he was drunk,” Helen said.
Jax hit her with a hailstorm of questions, but she could answer them honestly. She began to relax. Did Page Turner drive away or did someone pick him up that last Friday? Did he have many visitors at the store? Who? Men? Women? Both? Did his guests stay after hours? What kind of cars did they drive? Did Helen know their names or what they did?
“One of his regular visitors was Burt Plank,” she said. She did not mention the sex videos they supposedly watched.
Who would benefit if Page died?
No one, Helen thought, except maybe his wife. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything about his private life.” But I’ve heard a lot of ugly rumors.
Jax’s other questions were about Peggy, and how and why Page was in her apartment. Helen said she was a friend of Peggy’s. They sat out by the pool after work and talked. No, Peggy was not dating Mr. Turner. Helen didn’t think she even knew him. Peggy had never mentioned his name.
To her knowledge, Peggy was not dating anyone. She’d never seen a man at Peggy’s apartment, or a woman, for that matter. Peggy lived alone, except for her parrot, Pete. She had a job. She was an office manager for some place in Cypress Creek, but she never discussed it. She talked mainly about her plans to win the lottery.
Funny, lively Peggy sounded so sad when Helen described her life. Peggy wasn’t a sad person, was she? Helen asked herself that question. Jax continued to bombard her with others:
“Where was Peggy Friday night?”
“At the beach barbecue with everyone else,” Helen said. “She brought a salad.”
“When did she leave?”
Helen had no idea. She didn’t see Peggy all weekend. She didn’t see anyone but Rich.
Helen signed a statement saying all her lies were true and the detectives left. She still couldn’t go anywhere. They were interviewing other Coronado residents.
Only one good thing happened that evening. At five o’clock, a florist arrived with a dozen red roses for Helen. The police checked out the vase, then let the flowers through. They were gorgeous, with extravagant bloodred petals and a heady hothouse perfume. They were the first flowers Helen had received since her tenth anniversary with the man who betrayed her. The card said simply, Forever—Love, Rich. Helen wasn’t sure she was ready for forever, not after one weekend, no matter how good.
She was haunted by the scene in Peggy’s bedroom: The rich man dead in the sumptuous bed. The bloated body on the sensuous sheets.
Death was forever, not love.
Chapter 7
That night, Helen’s worst fears crawled out from where she’d buried them. She saw Page Turner dead. She saw herself in handcuffs. The police would figure out who she was and send her back to St. Louis and the court’s cold justice.
Homicide detective Clarence Jax and his partner, Tom Levinson, were smart. She saw how Tom had laser-eyed her home. She heard Jax’s questions. Jax had gone to school in her hometown. He could easily find out she was on the run, if he started checking. She’d changed her name, but not her appearance.
She could grab her suitcase full of cash and hit the road, but that would look even more suspicious. If she was lucky, she was a minor part of a major investigation. If she ran, she’d become the focus for all the wrong reasons. Reason said to sit tight. Panic told her to flee.
She wished she’d talked to Margery after the police left last night, but she fell asleep in the warm rose-scented evening and did not wake up until after midnight. Now Margery’s lights were off.
She sat on her bed, holding her cat Thumbs and waiting for dawn. His soft warm fur and contented purr comforted her, and made her believe that everything would be better in daylight. Then she saw Page Turner again, gray-green with death. Suddenly, Helen remembered there was something odd about his body. He’d been knifed in the back, but there was no blood. Why? Was he already dead from the Vikane gas when he was stabbed? Or did the knife hold in the blood?
Helen wished she felt sorry that Page was dead, but she didn’t like the man. His death created even more problems than his life. Would the new bookstore management honor Helen’s cash-under-the-table deal? Would the store stay open? Or would it close, too, now that its namesake was dead? That was a death she would mourn. The old store with its book nooks and wing chairs was a lovely place.
At seven that morning, she saw the lights were on in Margery’s kitchen and knocked on the door. She found Peggy wrapped in Margery’s purple chenille bathrobe, pale and shaken, a cup of coffee growing cold in front of her.
“How long did the police talk with you?” Helen said.
“Hours,” Peggy said.
“What did they ask you?”
“Everything.”
It was all she could get out of her red-haired friend. Peggy took one bite out of a chocolate croissant and left it on her plate. When Margery brought in the newspaper, Peggy didn’t even check the winning lottery numbers.
Margery, in shorts the color of an old bruise, was smoking like a pre-EPA chimney and talking to herself. Her muttering was interspersed with earsplitting shrieks from Pete. Peggy’s apartment was still a crime scene, so she and Pete stayed the night with Margery. The landlady was not happy about living with a parrot. It was hard to pretend Pete didn’t exist when he was squawking in the kitchen.
“Does he have to throw seed around like that?” she complained.
Peggy roused herself from her stupor. “He’s upset. I’ll clean it up.”
“Do they make parrot Prozac?” Margery said.
Helen wondered if they made landlady Prozac. “I wish you could stay at my place,” she told Peggy, “but I don’t think Pete and Thumbs would get along in close quarters.”
“It’s only for a day or so,” Peggy said. Then she went back to staring at her cooling cup of coffee.
“Let’s see if anybody talked to the reporters last night,” Margery said, and flipped on the local TV news.
Page’s death was the lead story. She was not surprised that the police had taken Trevor the termite fumigator in for questioning. There was a shot of him going into police headquarters accompanied by an African-American man with a briefcase.
The bizarre death of Page Turner had attracted hordes of reporters. They’d hung around the Coronado parking lot last night, trying to interview the Coronado residents. Peggy had no comment. Phil the invisible pothead was nowhere to be seen. Margery’s response to the TV reporters had to be bleeped.
But Cal the Canadian expounded on the violence of American society. And drab little Madame Muffy came to life in front of the cameras. She looked young and pretty on TV. Her dull clothes gave her a credibility that fringe and beads would not. She told the reporters she’d predicted Page’s murder when she read Peggy’s palm.
“I saw death, destruction, and murder,” Madame Muffy said. “Her fatal future was written in her palm. Peggy had a dark aura.”
Helen thought this was a violation of client confidentiality.
“I went to the bookstore to warn Page Turner of his impending death, but he did not want to be saved from his terrible fate. He laughed at me.”
Helen remembered the scene at the bookstore, where Page c
alled Muffy crazy and threw her out of his office. At least she was telling the truth about that.
Madame Muffy’s sensational interview added to Helen’s misery. Page Turner’s murder could become a national story. Helen could not be seen on TV.
“I can’t go to work if the reporters are still in the parking lot,” she said. “If this gets on network TV, my ex might find me.” Margery knew Helen’s ex was looking for her but she didn’t know why. Her landlady looked out her back window and said, “It’s safe. They’re gone.”
Helen was relieved—until she got to Page Turners. This morning, the press pack was waiting outside the bookstore. Helen ducked around back and pounded on the loading-dock door until Albert opened it. The day manager was pale as a lost soul. His white shirt was wilted. The starch had gone out of him, too.
“What should I do? The store opens in fifteen minutes. Should I let in those reporters?”
“Call Gayle’s cell phone and ask her,” Helen said. Albert seemed relieved to yield his authority to the night manager.
She could hear Gayle shout her answer. “For God’s sake, don’t let them in the store.”
“There are so many, how will I hold them off?” Albert said, desperate as General Custer at Little Bighorn.
“Keep the doors locked. I’m on my way.”
Helen saw Brad elbowing his way through the reporters. Albert unlocked the door and the little bookseller slid inside. His shirt was twisted and his hair stuck out at odd angles. “Today, it’s reporters,” he said, straightening his clothes. “Yesterday, it was the police. You missed that, Helen. They found the sex videos. Dozens of them. Took them out by the boxload.”
“So they really exist.”
“Oh, yeah. I bet there’s going to be cops begging for that assignment. I heard you saw the body. Was it horrible?”
“The worst. I won’t ever forget.”
“Did Page Turner suffer?”
“I don’t think so,” Helen said.
“Too bad,” he spat. Helen did not know how Brad’s skinny body could hold so much hate. She was afraid it would overflow and scald her.
Helen hid in the break room and made phone calls. She thanked Rich for the wonderful roses. He’d heard about the murder and wanted to take her away, but Helen insisted she was fine. She talked with her friend Sarah, who was equally worried. Helen assured her that she’d be all right.
At nine-fifteen, Gayle arrived, an avenging angel in Doc Martens and a black turtleneck. She read a prepared statement asking the press to respect the Turner family privacy and please stay out of the store. The reporters interviewed customers going in and out for a while, then drifted away.
Rich called again at eleven. And at noon. And at one and two. Albert, his composure regained, frowned with disapproval every time. “It’s your boyfriend,” he’d say, handing her the phone like it was a dead fish. When Rich called at four she said, “I appreciate your concern, but I can’t keep taking personal calls at work.”
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “There’s a killer loose.”
“I’m fine. I’m in a bookstore. It’s perfectly safe.”
“That’s what Page Turner thought. Be careful talking to strange men.”
“It’s South Florida. All the men are strange.” A man walked up to her register, his feet making an odd slap-slap sound. He wore a Hawaiian shirt that clashed with his tattoos. Helen looked down and saw knobby knees and Day-Glo swim fins.
“Forgot my shoes,” he said, and handed her a copy of Guns & Ammo.
Helen put Rich on hold while she rang up Swim Fins, and hoped he wouldn’t be there when she came back.
But he was, giving advice and orders. “Don’t speak to any men. Don’t encourage them in any way. It could be a serial killer. They’re attracted to unstable situations. It’s where they hunt women.”
“Rich, I’m forty-two. I can take care of myself. I really have to go. Please don’t call again. I need this job.”
This is Page Turner’s fault, she thought. His death had unleashed some streak of protective paranoia in Rich. It was ruining her romance.
Page was not done causing problems for Helen. When she got off work at six that night, Helen called Margery and asked if the TV reporters were back at the Coronado.
“I ran them off my parking lot, but the damn satellite trucks are parked in the street, thanks to that blasted Madame Muffy,” Margery said. “She’s outside talking to them again. I ought to raise her rent. I can’t even sit out by the pool with a glass of wine or I’ll wind up on TV looking like a lush. Call me in another hour, and I’ll let you know if they’ve left.”
Helen sat in the café, eating free, slightly stale eggplant sandwiches and drinking coffee bought with her employee discount. She found a paper on the table and read the employment ads. Most were for people with special training: Welder . . . window installer . . . wood finisher. All skills Helen didn’t have.
Wait! Here was something she could do. A “busy young company” wanted a word processor. They paid nine dollars and eighty cents an hour, good money in South Florida. Must know spelling and grammar, the ad said. Fax résumé attn. Sally. There was no address or phone, only the fax number.
Helen checked her watch. It was seven p.m. She slipped into the bookstore’s deserted office and typed up a résumé with impressive speed. That alone should qualify me for the job, she thought. She checked it for errors. Perfect.
She tried to fax the résumé, but the line was busy. She kept trying in between calls to Margery. She still had not gotten through to the company by ten o’clock, when Margery told her it was safe to come home. Helen figured the busy young company must have taken the phone off the hook.
The next morning at Page Turners, she faxed the résumé once again. The line was busy. She tried fifteen minutes later. Still busy. She tried all morning whenever she could get into the office. The fax line stayed busy.
At noon, Helen called the phone company to see if something was wrong. The fax line was not out of order. By five o’clock, Helen knew she didn’t have a chance for this dream job. The company must have had hundreds of faxes already. The phone line was jammed with job hopefuls.
But she tried the fax line one more time before she left. It was still busy.
That night, the TV news stories said Trevor the termite fumigator was cleared. Margery had the inside scoop when Helen got home. No reporters were lurking about, so Margery was smoking and sipping a screwdriver out by the pool. Peggy and Pete were nowhere to be seen.
“I called a friend on the force,” Margery said. “I found out Trevor had an alibi for the time of the murder, but he’d been hiding something. They cut him loose because he had no connection to the murder.”
“How come?”
“Can’t find out any more. My source clammed up.”
“I know who will tell us,” Helen said. “I have my own inside source.”
“You do?” Margery couldn’t hide her surprise.
“Sure, Trevor. We got along great on the final walk-through. I think we bonded after I had to take that frozen urine sample out to the Dumpster. If he’s innocent, he’ll want to tell the world. We can talk to him tomorrow. I don’t go in to work until eleven.”
Helen called the termite company the next morning and said the crew had left some clamshell clamps behind and she would drop them off if Trevor was working in the area. The receptionist told her where Trevor was tenting on Hollywood Boulevard. Margery drove Helen there in her big white Cadillac. Helen thought it was like driving a living room. The seats were like sofas. There was room for a coffee table and a TV.
They found Trevor tenting a two-story motel. Trevor looked a little thinner after his ordeal, and he seemed a bit subdued. But he did not mind telling them what happened. They stood out by the motel pool and Trevor worked on a cylinder of Vikane gas. Helen was fascinated that the top of the gas cylinder was coated with dry-ice frost.
“Everything looked normal on Monday morning,�
�� he said. “I put on my SCBA gear and went into your tented building. Nothing was disturbed. No one had touched the clamps on the tent. Except when I opened Peggy’s apartment, I found that man, Page Turner, on the bed. One look and I knew he was dead.”
“It must have been horrible,” Helen said. She remembered those hot, dark rooms, the canvas flapping ominously in the breeze.
“It was a shock,” Trevor admitted, connecting the Vikane to a plastic hose. “I turned the dead man over enough to see the face. He was starting to smell like a meat freezer when the electricity went off. I’d never seen him before. I thought somehow this man died of Vikane. It was all my fault. I didn’t check the room.”
“But you did,” Helen said. “Margery and I were with you. We would have said you did your job.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Trevor said. “I knew there would be trouble. I was a black man. This was a white neighborhood.”
Maybe Trevor did not believe that two white women would stand up for him.
“I was the only one who could go into the tent when it was filled with tear gas and poison. I had the breathing apparatus. I was the first and easiest suspect. I panicked, shut the door, then relocked it. I did not tell George and Terrell, the guys working on the tent. I was sweating, but not from the heat. I completed my rounds, all the while asking myself, Should I move the body? Should I dump it in the Everglades? How am I gonna haul a body out of here? The neighbors are watching.
“For a long time, I sat in my truck, thinking about what to do. This was a fumigator’s worst nightmare. The only people who would understand how I felt were other fumigators. So I called two friends in the business. They gave good advice. They told me moving the body was only going to make me look guilty. ‘Stay cool,’ they said. ‘Get a lawyer.’ They knew a good one who would work cheap for a brother.”
“So what did you do?”
“I saw the lawyer,” he said. “When it came time to open the doors Monday afternoon, I unlocked Peggy’s apartment and looked surprised. I pretended I’d never seen that dead man before.