by Elaine Viets
“Good,” Margery said, surveying the wretched weather from her kitchen window. “The rain will keep nosy Cal inside. Phil’s no problem. He minds his own business.”
She put her coffee cup in the sink and stubbed out her cigarette. “Let’s go.”
The fat drops had turned into a downpour. They splashed across the courtyard and up the steps to 2C.
“Take off your shoes,” Margery said as she unlocked the door. “You don’t want to track in anything that will make her suspicious.” She produced a towel from under her top. “Dry yourself off with this. You don’t want to drip, either.”
Helen felt a guilty thrill as she stepped inside Madame Muffy’s apartment.
“Breaking and entering is better than sex,” Margery said.
“When’s the last time you had sex?”
Margery shrugged. “It’s been awhile. Maybe I’ve forgotten.”
The bleak morning made Madame Muffy’s apartment shadowy and mysterious. A crystal ball glowed in the dim light like a pearl. Helen looked into it.
“What do you see?” asked Margery.
“My nose. It’s really big and shiny.”
“We’d better get to work, in case she comes back early.”
Muffy’s apartment was still the same depressing combination of cheap furniture with cardboard-box accents. Muffy used two boxes as end tables next to the lumpy couch. Three boxes served as a coffee table. Three more were stacked into a bedside nightstand. They opened them all and found beige and brown sweaters, old boots, and astrology books. They found star charts, tarot cards, lists of clients, and lucky lottery numbers.
“Maybe I should keep these numbers for Peggy,” Helen said.
“Maybe you should look for something to spring Peggy. Then she’d really be lucky.”
They checked under the bed, under the mattress, and in the toilet tank. They read the opened piles of mail. Nothing.
“Where would you hide something in here?” Margery asked.
Helen thought about where she kept her cash stash. “Have you tried the utility closet?”
Inside were empty suitcases and extra blankets. But Helen was sure something was hidden in that closet. The water heater sat there, fat and dumb. Helen threw her arms around it.
“Ha. Even I’m not that desperate for something big and warm,” Margery said.
Helen felt nothing. Then she realized she was about six inches taller than Madame Muffy. She moved her arms down and found what felt like a fat envelope taped to the back of the water heater. She ripped it off and pulled it out.
“It’s stuffed with letters from a lawyer in Connecticut,” she said.
Helen read them slowly. She couldn’t believe what she was reading. Flamboyant Page Turner and mousy Madame Muffy? Helen was holding a fat motive for murder.
“Well, well. Madame Muffy sees money in her future.”
“Who’s she suing?” Margery asked, reaching eagerly for the letters.
“Nobody. Yet. Madame Muffy is trying to prove that she is the natural daughter of Page Turner. She wants his DNA for a test.”
Margery whistled. “He died without any children. I can practically see the lines of salivating lawyers. They’d try to overturn the will. Muffy would be worth a fortune, even if the Turner family bought her off out of court.”
“That argument I overheard in Page’s office the day he died makes sense now,” Helen said. “Muffy was yelling, ‘You are. I know you are. My mother said so.’ She was talking about Page being her father. Page told her, ‘Your mother’s crazy. And so are you. Get out.’ Page Turner refused to acknowledge her as his daughter. He had the money for a real legal battle.”
“It will be easier now with him dead. Think her lawyer will get Page’s body exhumed for the DNA test?”
“Nice,” Helen said. “First she gets him planted, then she has him dug up.”
“I think we can have an interesting conversation with Madame Muffy this evening,” Margery said, solemnly handing her the papers. They were a death warrant.
“I get off work at seven,” Helen said. She retaped the envelope on the back of the water heater. They tiptoed out and Margery locked the door.
“Meet me at my place when you get home,” was the last thing Margery said as she headed for her place. Suddenly, she looked ten years younger.
The day was longer than a public-radio fund drive, but finally Helen was at Margery’s home. At seven-thirty that night, the two women knocked on the little psychic’s door. Madame Muffy was at the wobbly patio table in the palm-reading parlor, finishing a rare steak. Helen thought she should be eating tofu and sprouts.
“Can I help you?” she said. “Would you like your palm read?”
“We’re more interested in the past than the future,” Helen said. “What were you doing in Page Turner’s office the day he died?”
“Warning him about his terrible fate.”
“Bullfeathers,” said Margery. That bird must be driving her crazy if she was cussing with feathers, Helen thought.
“You told him you were his long-lost daughter,” Helen said.
Madame Muffy turned pale. “You were listening at the door.”
“What was in that Bawls bottle you took out of his office?”
Muffy looked puzzled. “In it? Nothing.”
“Why did you take it?” Margery said.
Madame Muffy gave a little yip.
“I’ll tell you why,” Helen said, double-teaming her. “You drugged him so you could kill him.”
Muffy turned whiter still. Now she was the color of dingy teeth. “What? I didn’t want him dead. He’s my father.”
“Not according to him. He said you were nuts.”
“That hurt,” Muffy said. “But I knew my father would change his mind once he was presented with the proof. That’s why I took his bottle of Bawls. I wanted his DNA off the straw.”
The straw. Of course. She’d shipped it off to the lawyer. Now she was waiting on the lab report. She didn’t care what was in the bottle.
“Why do you think Page Turner is your father?” Helen said. Actually, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Muffy was young enough to be Page Turner’s daughter, and he could have fathered half of Fort Lauderdale.
“My mother said that she had an affair with him. Page wouldn’t marry her when he found out she was pregnant. My mother married another man, who raised me as his child. After Daddy died, she told me who my real father was. The spirit voices told me I would come into a lot of money.”
“You actually hear voices?” Helen said.
“Not all the time. But I heard them about Peggy, and look what happened to her. And I heard them this time. I heard the number nine hundred and the word ‘book.’ When I saw an article in Forbes magazine that Page Turner was worth nine hundred million dollars, I knew it was a sign my mother was telling the truth. I was Page Turner’s daughter. I was entitled to my share of the Turner family fortune.”
“I saw that article,” Margery said. “That’s the family’s combined business fortune, if you count all their holdings. Page’s share is only worth about ten million.”
“It’s still a lot of money,” Muffy said. “It would have been easier for me to get it when he was alive. Then he could have acknowledged me. Now I’ll have to contest the will.”
“How’d you get in to see him at the bookstore?”
“I have a sexy voice on the phone. I said I’d always admired him and wanted to meet him. Of course, he was disappointed when he met me, but he’s not supposed to be attracted to me. He’s my father.”
“Where’s your mother fit into this? Won’t she testify on your behalf?”
“My mother has Alzheimer’s, so her word would not be good. But DNA would tell the truth. I got a lawyer who said I needed a DNA test to prove my case. So I stole the bottle of Bawls from my father’s office.
“But I couldn’t have killed him. I was reading palms at the Sunnysea Condo get-acquainted party. They expected me to d
ress up in scarves and beads like some carnival act. It was demeaning, but at least they paid me.”
Muffy’s eyes grew narrow. “And in case you’re trying to accuse me, I was there until midnight the night my father died. I had about a hundred witnesses.”
She handed Helen a pink flyer announcing A Palm-reading Gala by Madame Muffy, Psychic Extraordinaire, From Eight p.m. Until the Midnight Hour.
“You really have to lose that name,” Margery said as Helen pulled her out the door.
Helen would check, but she knew the psychic’s story was true. Their best chance was dead. Helen did not have to be psychic to see Peggy’s hopeless future.
“You still believe she’s innocent, don’t you?”
Sarah called Helen at work the next day to find out how the Madame Muffy search went. She did not seem as discouraged by the results as Helen.
“Yes, I do. But Muffy was our best candidate,” Helen said.
“But not your only one. You have to check out all the people who hated Page Turner.”
“There’s too many,” Helen said. “And I didn’t travel in his social circles. I couldn’t get in any doors in Palm Beach.”
“The last door he walked out alive wasn’t in Palm Beach,” Sarah said. “It was at that bookstore on Las Olas. Something happened there that led to his death. You have to find out what it was. Check out everyone at the store who had a good reason to kill Page Turner.”
“But that could take years,” Helen said.
“Peggy will be on death row a long time,” she said.
Chapter 16
“There are two people in the large stall in the women’s restroom,” the woman said. She was forty-something, with the look of a no-nonsense mom. “One is a teenage boy about fourteen. The girl is about the same age. You can’t miss them. The boy has blue hair.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Helen said. “You shouldn’t have to put up with that.”
The mom shrugged. She seemed immune to teenage folly.
Anyone who believed bookstores celebrated the life of the mind didn’t know about the bathrooms. Weird things happened there. People got naked. People got crazy. People had sex and drugs in the stalls. They pried open shoplifted CDs and buried the packaging in the rest-room trash. Public bathrooms were the bane of a bookseller’s existence.
Helen spotted the kid when he came out into the store a few minutes later. He was all nose and bones, with hair the color of blueberry Jell-O. His plump girlfriend was dressed in black with dead-white skin and bug-blood nails. The pair left. That problem took care of itself, Helen thought.
But it didn’t. Half an hour later, Blue Hair and the girl in black were back, heading for the bathroom.
“Oh, sir,” Helen said loudly. The boy stopped.
“This time you might want to use the men’s room,” she said.
Blue Hair’s face turned bright red. His girlfriend giggled. He made a U-turn and walked out the front door, the snickering girl following. Helen didn’t think he’d be back soon.
Twenty minutes later, another woman was up at the cashier’s desk. She had gray hair in a short sensible cut and wore a comfortable blue cotton dress. She looked smart, practical, and in charge. A nurse possibly, or a teacher. She said, “There’s a man in the women’s restroom. He’s in the handicapped stall.”
“Skinny kid with blue hair?” Helen said.
“Preppy in a pink shirt. I got a good look at him through the space in the door. He’s about twenty-five, sandy hair, wearing khakis, boat shoes, and no socks. I didn’t see a knife, gun, or other weapon, and he wasn’t talking to himself.”
The woman knew her Florida crazies. “Thank you for handling this so well,” Helen said. The woman gave a short nod, like a superior officer acknowledging a sergeant, and marched out.
Helen paged Brad, and it was several minutes before the little bookseller came up front, loaded with books. He steadied the towering stack of slush with his chin.
“Brad, watch the register, please,” Helen said. “There’s a problem in the women’s bathroom. Some preppy in a pink shirt is hiding in a stall.”
“At least he’s dressed,” Brad said. “Last week, I got the naked guy drying himself in front of the men’s-room hand dryer, holding his own wienie roast.”
The bookstore bathrooms were at the top of a long corridor. At the other end were the steps up to Page’s office. That section was roped off and had a PRIVATE—NO ADMITTANCE sign, but it was easy to step over the flimsy barricade. Helen saw the pink-shirted preppy in the hall, on the wrong side of the green velvet rope. He was coming from the direction of Page Turner’s office.
“Excuse me, sir,” Helen said.
“Do you want something?” he said, as if Helen were the one trespassing. He had blond hair and a built-in sneer.
“A woman reported that a man answering your description was lurking in a stall in the restroom,” Helen said.
“The old biddy needed glasses,” he said. “I’m here in the hall. And I’m not lurking. I’m lost.”
“You’re in a restricted area.”
“I made a wrong turn,” the preppy sneered.
“Maybe you’d better show me some identification.”
“I don’t have to do anything of the kind.”
“No, you don’t. You have another choice. I can call two strong booksellers and they can hold you here until the police arrive. Then we’ll charge you with trespassing.”
The preppy reluctantly pulled out his wallet. Instead of a driver’s license, he produced a picture ID that said he was Harper Grisham IV, legislative assistant to State Senator Colgate Hoffman III. Were all those Roman numerals supposed to intimidate her? And why was that name familiar?
“You’re a little far from Tallahassee,” Helen said. “So why don’t you go back where you belong?”
“Gladly,” he said. Helen wanted to wipe that sneer off his face. Instead, she stood in the doorway and watched Harper the preppy stroll through the store. He walked at a stately pace, as befitted a future political mover and shaker. Finally, the preppy prowler was gone.
An hour later, Gayle was at Helen’s register. She was not her usual cool self. Her blond hair stuck out at weird angles. Her black turtleneck was dotted with packing lint. She was definitely upset.
“Page’s office has been broken into,” she said. “I’ve called the police.”
“Did they get anything?”
“I can’t tell. I noticed the break-in when I took the last cash pickup to the safe. The office lock was jimmied. I’ve never seen such a mess. The place is ransacked. Astrid has been through so much, and now she’ll have to deal with this.”
“Why? I know she’s the owner, but you know what’s there better than she does.”
Gayle ran her fingers through her hair, and sent her bangs up in more spikes. “I thought the police made a mess, but that was nothing. Papers are tossed all over the floor. The file drawers are open. The couch is slashed. Things are broken and overturned. The locked video cabinet door was bashed in, too. I guess someone didn’t know the police took all the videos. Either that, or the thief wanted it to look that way. There’s a lot of damage.”
“I caught a guy in the back hall about an hour ago,” Helen said. “I have his name. He’s a legislative assistant to State Senator Colgate Hoffman III.” As soon as she said the name out loud, she knew why it was familiar. The thought rocked her.
“Why would a senator’s assistant break into Page’s office?”
Helen knew, but she couldn’t say why. Peggy had starred in the missing video with the senator’s late son.
The women’s restroom was right next to the rope barricade. Someone must have come along when the preppy prowler was trying to break into the office and he ducked in there. It was the closest hiding place.
The store was soon overrun with police. Helen expected the evidence technician and burglary detectives. But she didn’t expect to see Homicide Detective Clarence Jax. He spent most of the a
fternoon with Gayle, while she tried to figure out what was missing. Helen rang up the customers and gave vague answers to their curious questions about the police.
Gayle was her capable self the next time Helen saw her. The punk-stress spikes were gone. Her black clothes were lint-free. She was a gunslinger in Doc Martens.
“Nothing’s missing,” the manager concluded. “Whoever did it trashed the place. I think it was a pissed-off staffer. But Detective Jax wants to hear about your preppy prowler.”
Jax peppered her with questions that made Helen feel like she was lying, even when she wasn’t. “And you actually saw the senator’s aide in the women’s bathroom?” he said. Did he think she was making that up?
“No, I didn’t. A woman customer reported him there.”
“Do you have her name and number? Do you have a description of her?”
“I didn’t take her phone number. She was about fifty, on the chunky side, short gray hair. A sensible-looking woman.” Helen hoped that would make Jax believe her.
“Did she pay for a purchase by check or credit card? We could find her that way.”
“She didn’t buy anything,” Helen said. “She reported a strange man in the women’s bathroom and I went back to investigate.”
“And then she left? Without buying anything?” Helen thought she heard more skepticism in his voice. “Did you see this man in the restroom?”
“No, he was in the hall, in the restricted area.”
“Did he say why he was there?”
“He claimed he was lost, even though he’d have to step over a velvet rope with a PRIVATE sign on it.”
“Did you see him near the office door? Did he have anything in his hand?”
“No. He was coming from the direction of Mr. Turner’s office, but I didn’t actually see him touch the door. He didn’t seem to have anything with him.”
Because he didn’t find anything, Helen thought.