by Elaine Viets
“Oh, come on. You can afford an appetizer and a drink. You’re turning into a mope.”
“Sarah, I’d love to go, but when my hours were cut, so was my pay.”
“So let me buy.”
“No,” Helen said. “I’ll pay my own way, or not go at all.”
“This isn’t charity. It’s friendship.”
“Friends should be equals,” Helen said.
“It’s just money,” Sarah said, irritated. “Look, it’s ten a.m. Call me if you change your mind.”
Did she slam down the phone, or did Sarah? Helen used to think it was just money, back when she made six figures. Now that she had to struggle, she knew money gave you peace of mind and independence. (But not happiness, a voice whispered. It gave you a lying, cheating husband.)
Helen sighed and looked around at the nearly empty bookshelves. With no new books coming in, the shelves were growing bare. The booksellers had covered the empty spaces by turning the books face-out, like the letter tiles in a Scrabble game. It worked for now. But as those books sold, Helen wondered what they would do. Maybe the store would be closed by then. She had to keep looking for a job.
At lunch, Helen ate a Luna bar, bought a cup of coffee, and went out for a free paper. She found a bench under a palm tree and read the want ads. The only jobs that paid anything were for telemarketers, and Helen hadn’t stooped that low. Yet.
Then she saw something promising: Watch this spot for the job jamboree at Down & Dirty Discounts. The new Triple D on Federal Highway near Broward opens soon. Jobs galore for eight dollars an hour and more.
Good money within walking distance. The upstart Down & Dirty was giving Wal-Mart a run for its money. Helen would apply for a job as soon as the stores started accepting applications. She walked back to work with a spring in her step, admiring the warm blue sky, the pink and red impatiens blooming around the tree trunks. She saw something greenish gray on the sidewalk. Wait! Was that what she thought it was? Did someone drop a dollar? She bent down and picked up—
A hundred-dollar bill! Half a week’s pay was at her feet.
Helen couldn’t believe her luck. The most she’d ever found had been a Georgia quarter. Now Ben Franklin was smiling coyly at her. The redesigned currency made the founding father look like a Grateful Deadhead. She wanted to kiss him.
She saw two young men elbowing each other and thought, They want my hundred. They’re going to say they dropped it. Helen wasn’t going to let anything happen to her windfall. She shoved the bill into the inside zip pocket of her purse, then hurried into Page Turners to call Sarah.
“God wants me to go to Taverna Opa,” she told her friend.
“The devil is more like it,” Sarah said.
“Nope. God must be a woman. She put a hundred-dollar bill right in my path, so I can see the natural beauties of Florida. Take me to Taverna Opa.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” Sarah said.
Just the thought of that much free money was liberating. Helen felt inspired. She would save Peggy. She would find out who killed Page Turner. She’d love to pin Page’s murder on the preppy prowler, Harper Grisham IV. But he wouldn’t give her the time of day, much less tell her where he was the night Page died. There had to be a way to make him tell her.
“Son of a bitch,” said Brad the bookseller, as he came back from lunch. “I got a twenty-dollar ticket. All because this place is too cheap to give us free parking.”
Parking was scarce on Las Olas. The lot behind the bookstore cost four dollars an hour. Most booksellers were not about to spend half their pay on parking. Instead, they found free parking five or six blocks away.
“What happened?” Helen said.
“The ticket says I was in a no-parking zone,” he said. “I didn’t see the yellow paint on the curb. First my hours were cut, now this. I don’t know how I’ll make the rent.”
The little bookseller’s shoulders were hunched, and his head hung down in defeat.
“I’m sorry, Brad,” she said. But Brad’s misfortune was her gain. She knew now how to question the preppy prowler. It was risky. If he had caller ID, she would be fired, but this job wouldn’t last much longer anyway.
When there was a lull in the customers, she asked Brad to cover for her and headed for the break room. She dialed Senator Hoffman’s Tallahassee office and said, “Hello, may I please speak to Mr. Harper Grisham?”
After a brief wait, his arrogant voice was on the phone. “This is Harper Grisham.”
Helen held her nose to make her voice nasal. “This is the city of Fort Lauderdale,” she said. “You have an unpaid parking ticket for two hundred dollars, plus fifty dollars in court costs and overdue fines. We are issuing a bench warrant for your arrest.”
“You’re joking,” Grisham said. His voice was relaxed, affable, as befit a future ruler of the free world.
“I am completely serious, sir,” Helen said, still pinching her nose. “The ticket was issued June second at eight p.m. You were ticketed a second time at eleven-thirty p.m. for nonremoval of your vehicle.” She was making up the charges as she went along.
“I was in Tallahassee that night at a rally for Senator Colgate Hoffman,” Grisham drawled. “I can have my office send you a news clip that shows me on the platform.”
Suddenly the affability was gone, and there was a lash in his voice. “But if I have to do that, I’ll have your job, you incompetent moron. What is your name?”
Helen hung up and let go of her nose.
The preppy prowler wasn’t guilty of murder. Too bad. Helen would have loved to administer that lethal injection herself. She wondered how she was going to help Peggy now.
Sarah pulled up in her green Range Rover at seven on the dot, wearing a green linen Ralph Lauren pantsuit that set off her curly brown hair, and square-cut emeralds at her ears and throat.
Helen whistled. “Wow, you look good. Mind being seen with me?” She was suddenly ashamed of her clunky bookstore shoes.
“You look fine,” Sarah said. “But if you want to change your clothes, I can take you home first.”
“Naw, I’ll just slip off my shoes if I dance on the tabletop. Ben Franklin is burning a hole in my pocket. Let’s eat, my treat.”
The line for Opa was out the door at seven-thirty. “Not bad,” said Sarah. “On the weekends, the crowd is lined up across the parking lot.”
In fifteen minutes, they were inside, where they were hit with a blast of Greek music. It seemed to vibrate off the floor and slam into the ceiling. A twenty-something waiter who looked like a Greek James Dean was dancing on the table with a woman of forty. She was shaking her hips like an exotic dancer, and he was matching her move for move.
Everyone at the table was cheering—except for one surly-looking man. Her husband? Helen wondered.
Across the room, a woman server of about twenty was dancing on a long table with a white-haired man of seventy, while his family yelled “Opa!” and applauded. His moves were stiff and too slow for the music, but he looked so happy Helen laughed out loud.
The host showed Helen and Sarah to a table on an open gallery running along the main room. It had a view of the water on one side and the table dancing on the other. Suddenly, the dance was over, and the waiters went back to running drinks and hauling huge trays of food.
The dark-haired James Dean brought a wooden bowl of chickpeas to their table and, using a pestle, mashed them into hummus. Helen and Sarah spread it on crusty bread. It was strong with garlic.
“This is good,” Helen said.
With the hundred burning a hole in her pocket, she ordered lavishly: caviar spread, roast lamb, grilled sea bass, Greek salad with snowdrifts of feta cheese, lots of wine to cut the olive oil.
Periodically, the waiters would jump on the wooden tables on the main floor and start dancing. One or two brave diners would join them, while their friends clapped and hooted.
“Are you going to dance?” Helen asked Sarah.
She looked at thei
r wobbly plastic table and said, “Do you really think this will support me?”
“How about the wooden tables in the main area?” Even now, a sizable woman was shaking her hips over plates of moussaka.
“Right,” Sarah said. “I can see me now. ‘Excuse me, sir. Could you move your sea bass? I’d like to climb on your table and dance with your hunky waiter.’”
Helen laughed. “It’s a spectator sport for me, too.”
They talked and laughed and ate until Helen felt better than she had in months. It was fun to have money again, even for one night. Over strong black coffee and sweet flaky baklava, Sarah asked, “How are your efforts to save Peggy going?”
“Not so good. Everything I find out just makes it worse.” She told Sarah about Peggy’s job and the videotape. “I’m a little hurt, too. Why didn’t Peggy tell me anything about herself?”
“She probably didn’t want to look bad. You’re a good person, Helen. One look at you, and you can tell you don’t do drugs or know anything about the police. Peggy was probably ashamed of her old life and thought you wouldn’t understand.”
She doesn’t suspect, Helen thought. None of them do. If I told Sarah I was on the run, hiding from my ex and the courts, she wouldn’t believe me. What right do I have to be hurt by Peggy hiding her past? What have I told her or Sarah about me?
“I want to help her,” Helen said. “But I’m spinning my wheels. Today, I found out the preppy prowler had a decent alibi. I would have loved to pin it on him.”
“Don’t give up,” Sarah said. “You have a lot of work to do. You have to check the alibis of anyone in the bookstore who wanted to kill him.”
“That’s a lot of people, Sarah. I can’t just ask them, ‘Where were you the night Page Turner died?’”
“You won’t have to. It’s like love. Just let it happen naturally.”
“I’ve not had much luck in love, either,” Helen said.
“How are things going with your contractor?”
Helen was irritated that Sarah wouldn’t say Gabriel’s name. “Just fine. I’m taking it slowly. We had coffee at the café. He’s taking me to the Shakespeare festival on Sunday to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“You know any more about him?”
“I know a man who likes Shakespeare is a rare find in Florida.”
“Just because a man likes culture doesn’t make him a good person. Hitler loved art and opera.”
“Sarah! Are you comparing Gabriel to Hitler?”
“No, I’m just telling you to be careful. This is South Florida.”
“Anything else, ladies?” said their James Dean waiter. His white T-shirt was sweaty from his last dance. It clung to his muscular torso, revealing well-developed pecs. Helen thought of a few answers to his question, but said, “It’s time for the check.”
The bill for their meal was $79.82. That was the end of her hundred-dollar bill, she thought. But it was a glorious meal and an entertaining evening, except for Sarah’s last lecture. And her friend did care about her. She was just overly concerned. Maybe Sarah needed a date, Helen thought.
She pulled out the hundred-dollar bill from the zippered compartment where she’d stashed it. It felt odd. Lighter or thinner or something. Helen looked at it in the waning evening light. No, that was definitely Ben Franklin. The man may have said a penny saved is a penny earned, but he looked happy on a hundred.
But the bill felt wrong. Helen turned it over. The back side was blank white paper. Printed in heavy black ink was Sucker!
Helen felt the blood drain from her face. She thought she was going to lose her hundred-dollar dinner. Suddenly, the scene with the two young men nudging each other took on another meaning. They didn’t want her bill. They were laughing at her. She was a stupid greedhead.
Sucker! indeed.
“Helen, are you OK? What’s wrong?”
Helen showed her the fake hundred-dollar bill. Sarah burst out laughing. “It’s a color Xerox copy. I’ve heard of these. They’re the latest scam. Crooks have been putting them on high-grade paper and passing them off as real bills to busy cashiers. Some copies are good enough, if they aren’t inspected too closely. This one is not bad. Leaving the fake bill on the sidewalk is a new twist. Trust Florida to invent it.” Like many residents, Sarah seemed proud of the endless creativity of the local scam artists.
“I feel like such a fool,” Helen said. “I only have two dollars.” She apologized until Sarah begged her to stop.
“Forget it,” she said. “It was worth the entertainment value.” She whipped out her credit card and cheerfully paid the bill, leaving a generous tip. “Ready to go?”
Helen nodded. Sucker! the fake bill screamed at her. Helen tore it up.
But she felt like the word was branded on her forehead.
Chapter 19
“Excuse me, I need some help here.”
A lean woman with bad skin and dead-black hair plunked four paperbacks down on the counter at Helen’s register. They weren’t the usual women’s reading: Letters to Penthouse XIV, XV, XVI, XVII.
“I’m not sure this is what I want,” she said. “I need a book on talking dirty. Can you see if you have any books like that?”
Helen typed talking dirty into the bookstore computer and got several hits. She read the titles out loud.
“No, that’s not quite it.” The hard-faced woman had a surprisingly soft voice. “How about ‘talking sexy’?”
Helen typed in those key words. “I get a lot of books, but they’re about relationships.”
“I don’t want a relationship.”
“Can I ask what you do want?” Helen said.
“I’m going back to work doing phone sex. It’s been a couple of years and I’m out of practice. The new place does not allow scripts. I need some backup in case I go dry.”
Helen typed in phone sex. Bingo. “Here’s Confessions of a Phone-sex Queen. We don’t have the book in stock, but I can order it.”
“I’ll take it,” the woman said.
Another satisfied customer, Helen thought. “What’s your last name?”
“Retner,” the woman said. That name was familiar.
Helen typed it in and saw three other Retners had ordered books in the last thirty days. One was Albert. Helen wondered what kind of book the prissy, bad-tempered manager would order.
Curiosity overcame her. After the phone-sex worker left, Helen looked in the computer. Albert had ordered Smother Love: The True Story of a Serial Killer Who Smothered His Victims to Death.
Interesting.
Helen checked the publisher’s information on Smother Love. She read: Darryl Eugene Crow was shy and quiet, but he had no problem finding women. The relationships never lasted. When love died, Darryl Eugene’s lovers died, too. He would ply his soon-to-be lost loves with alcohol, then end their lives with a pillow. This compelling study of . . .
End their lives with a pillow? That was how Page Turner died. He was drunk, too.
When did Albert get this book?
Helen looked at the computer record. The book arrived three weeks before Page Turner died.
Helen couldn’t see Albert killing someone with a knife or a gun. That would be messy. He might get blood on his hands. But something sneaky, like smothering a defenseless drunk, that was his style. She could imagine him pressing down that pillow. It would be neat and quick. Albert wouldn’t even get his starched shirt wrinkled.
“Did Albert work the night Page Turner died?” Helen asked Brad.
The little bookseller looked skittish. “No, he got off work at six with me.”
“Where did Albert go after work?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Brad said. “Excuse me, I have to go.” He seemed anxious to get away. Had she offended him? And how could she ask Albert such a personal question? The thought made her head throb, and that gave her an idea. Helen waited till he returned from lunch, then clutched her forehead dramatically. She knew she couldn’t count on Albert to ask w
hat was wrong. If she fell over on the floor, he’d reprimand her for lying down on the job.
She said, “Do you have any aspirin, Albert? Ever since Page Turner died, I’ve had the worst headaches.”
“I don’t dispense medication,” Albert said. “I read where a woman at a store was sued because she gave an aspirin to a customer.”
“For heaven’s sake, Albert, I’m not going to sue you. I have a headache. Didn’t Page Turner’s murder bother you?”
“Well, it has affected my colitis,” he said. “Just this morning . . .”
You asked for it, Helen thought, as Albert gave her the intimate details of his ailment. At least they were bonding. “I’ve never had an attack so explosive,” he finished. “It’s gotten much worse since Mr. Turner passed on. Stress, you know.”
“That’s terrible,” she cut in quickly. “His death seems to have caused so many problems. When Page left the store that Friday, I had no idea it would be the last time I’d see him alive. I went to a party, like it was any other day. Where did you go?”
“What I do on my own time is my business,” Albert said, and his lips zipped. So much for bonding.
He’s hiding something, Helen thought. And I’m going to find out what it is.
But not tonight. Tonight she had another task. It was even worse than listening to Albert. She had to call her mother in St. Louis. Once a month, at seven in the evening, she made the call. And dreaded it the rest of the time.
At home, Helen prepared herself. She shut the miniblinds and locked the door, then opened her utility closet and got out the battered Samsonite suitcase that held her seven-thousand-dollar stash. She rooted around in the old-lady underwear until she found the cell phone and a piece of pink cellophane from a gift basket.
She’d bought the cell phone in Kansas when she was on the run. She’d sent her sister Kathy a thousand dollars and hoped that would cover the bills for a long time. Her air conditioner was rattling so loud, it sounded like it was about to take off and join the mother ship. She had to turn it off so she could hear on the phone.
“Hi, Mom. How’s everything?” she said.