by Elaine Viets
“I don’t think so,” Margery said. “You had a magazine clutched in your hand when you were carried out. In fact, it was the only thing you saved.”
“Terrific. I left my purse and good clothes in the fire and saved a magazine.”
“Your clothes are fine. They smell like smoke, that’s all. The insurance company told me where to send them for cleaning. We’ll buy you some things in the meantime. Insurance will cover it. The firefighters found your purse. It’s OK. But your teddy bear was totaled.”
“Poor Chocolate,” Helen said. “Well, at least I got his stuffing. That’s where I kept my money. I still feel terrible about what happened to the Coronado.”
“Relax,” Margery said. “I’ve got insurance up the yingyang. I might even get new air conditioners and a paint job. And you’ll have all new furniture in your apartment.”
“But I loved the old,” Helen said.
“Then you shall have it. I’ve got a storage room full of that stuff.”
“A new bed might be nice, though,” Helen said.
“I think we can swing that.”
“I’m going to have to find a place to stay while my apartment is being fixed.”
“You can have 2C. That fraud Daniel is gone. I told him to pack up and get out.”
“Didn’t you have to give him thirty days’ notice?”
“Not if he was cheating old ladies. Took off like he was on fire.”
Helen winced at Margery’s choice of words. She looked down at her soot-streaked shirt and shorts. “What am I going to wear to work tomorrow? I mean today.”
“Today’s Sunday,” Margery said. “You don’t have to worry about going to work. It’s five in the morning. If the hospital ever lets us out of here, you’re going straight to bed.”
One hour later, Dr. Curlee said Helen could go home. Margery began issuing orders. Someone brought Helen’s belongings in a plastic hospital bag: her tennis shoes, which looked like two charcoal briquets, and a singed copy of Best Friends magazine.
Helen was exhausted. Margery seemed to be gaining energy. She rounded up the papers to sign, then tracked down the nurse with the obligatory wheelchair and loaded Helen into her car.
Helen was so tired she stumbled up the steps to Daniel’s old apartment, 2C. She tried to help Margery put fresh sheets on the bed, but her landlady said Helen was in the way and shooed her into the shower. Margery left out fresh towels and a T-shirt for a nightgown. Even after Helen washed her hair twice, it still smelled of smoke.
“You look better,” Margery said, when Helen came out of the bathroom. “Well, cleaner, anyway. There’s coffee in the cupboard. Open the miniblinds when you get up, and I’ll bring you breakfast.”
Helen thanked her landlady and crawled beneath the sheets. Just before she fell asleep, Helen realized that she was in Daniel’s bed at long last.
She woke up at noon. Everything smelled like a dead fire and tasted like smoke. Her throat was dry and scratchy, and she had a nasty cough. Helen opened up the blinds, and Margery came over with orange juice, a bagel, and a purple shorts set.
“I think these are your size,” she said, “but you’re stuck with the blackened tennis shoes until we hit the mall. Do you want to see your apartment?”
“I don’t think I’m ready,” Helen said.
Her purse smelled like a smoked ham. Her money was usable, but Margery wouldn’t let Helen spend her own cash. “Let insurance pay for it. I’ve been making premiums on this place since before you were born.”
Margery bought Helen two suits, two blouses, underwear, shorts, T-shirts, and shoes at the Sawgrass Mills Mall. They had lunch, although the chicken salad had a slightly smoky flavor to Helen. But she finally felt fortified to face the damages at the Coronado.
The sickly smoke smell hit Helen at the door. The living room and kitchen weren’t bad. They reeked of smoke and were covered with greasy black grime, but they were recognizable. Helen could even use the cosmetics she found in the bathroom, although she drew the line at barbecue-mint toothpaste. The broken jalousie door was boarded up. That made the room darker and hid some of the damage.
But the bedroom frightened her. The bed was a blackened mass, burned to the bedsprings. She felt queasy just looking at it. She could have been part of that unrecognizable charred horror.
The fire marshal thought so, too.
“The way you had the pillows and covers arranged, the arsonist must have thought someone was in the bed. You’re lucky they didn’t see you sleeping on the Barcalounger.”
“There’s no doubt this was arson?” Helen asked.
“None,” the fire marshal said. “We found the burn patterns, and we found potato chips.”
Potato chips? Helen thought she’d heard wrong. But the fire marshal told her that some professional arsonists used potato chips as the perfect fire starter. Chips were oily, highly flammable, and consumed by the flames.
A trail of chips would lead to the main fire starter. “The individual slid open your patio doors and splashed barbecue starter all over your carpet to the bed. Then the individual lit the chips and had time to get out before the fire really took off. Except this arsonist didn’t quite get it right. We found some chips left behind unburned in the damp grass.”
This was no pro, the investigators decided. Still, there had been enough fire to kill Helen. If she had not fallen asleep in the living room, Helen would have roasted in her own bed. Its blackened, burned-out skeleton taunted her.
Helen felt rage, hot as the flames of the night before. Brittney set that fire. She was not getting away with this.
Chapter 32
Helen could hear the phone ringing as she struggled to unlock the green door at Juliana’s. It was an angry, impatient ring.
“The boss is calling, and he’s not happy,” Helen said, sprinting for the phone. “I can tell by the ring.” She was back at work but still recovering from the fire the day before. She ran a little slower than usual.
“You’re silly,” Tara said. “Phones sound the same.”
But they didn’t. Helen knew this call sounded angry, and Mr. Roget usually called from Canada when the store opened.
“You’ve sold up a storm. Why would Old Tightwad be angry?”
Helen caught the phone on the fourth ring and prayed Mr. Roget had not heard Tara call him Old Tightwad.
Mr. Roget didn’t bother to say good morning. “Helen, I want to talk to you about that champagne showing,” he said.
How could he be angry about that? Helen thought. I did a month’s worth of business in three hours.
“I see you bought three bottles of champagne for forty dollars each,” Mr. Roget said.
“Yes, sir. Piper-Heidsieck Extra Dry.”
“You realize that comes to one-hundred-twenty dollars. U.S. dollars, not Canadian. Who authorized you to spend that?” he said.
“No one, sir. But look how much I sold.”
“You are supposed to sell. That’s your job. It is not your job to waste good money on overpriced swill. I’m docking your pay at the rate of one dollar an hour until you pay for the champagne.” He hung up without saying good-bye.
Helen slammed down the phone. She’d made Old Tightwad thousands of dollars, and he’d demoted her to six seventy an hour.
“What did he do?” Tara said.
“Docked me a dollar an hour to pay for the champagne.”
“That’s heinous,” Tara said. For once, Juliana’s favorite word fit the circumstances.
“It is heinous,” Helen agreed. “It will take me three weeks to pay off that champagne. But you know what? He’s never going to get that money from me, because I’ll be at my new job. That was the last straw. I will find a job, no matter what.”
“When you go, I go,” Tara said. “I won’t work for him a minute longer.”
After Mr. Roget’s reprimand, Helen did not care about selling clothes, but the customers bought anyway. She had to work hard not to take out her anger on them. In
the slow times, she typed out a new résumé. She printed it on the office equipment, using store paper and envelopes. Take that, Mr. Roget.
Helen was angry. Angry at her cheap boss, who would not spend money to make money. Angry at Brittney, who was getting away with murder. Angry at herself, for not finding the evidence to nail Brittney.
When Tara went to lunch, Helen stood in the stockroom and stared at the two towers. Somewhere in those CDs was the evidence against Brittney. Where was that stupid Don Ho album? Helen would have to go through every album in both towers—all two hundred forty. She put out the “back in fifteen minutes” sign to make sure she wasn’t disturbed. If Mr. Roget lost business, too bad. Then she pulled on her twelve-button search gloves. The endless stacks of CDs seemed to taunt her. Nothing in her life was working out right. Nothing.
Helen was so frustrated, she took the closest tower and shook it. She heard an odd rattle near the base. It sounded different from the shaken CDs. Helen got on the floor and examined the base. A small drawer slid out of the bottom of the tower. Inside was a cassette tape, a ninety-minute Memorex with a label in Christina’s bold, black handwriting: “Wedding Song.”
The tape Niki wanted for sentimental reasons.
Helen wondered what kind of music Niki wanted for her wedding. Would she pick something as cloying as her perfume, like the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun”? Or did a woman who’d been naked in Playboy want to walk down the aisle to Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”?
Helen couldn’t resist. She popped the tape into the store’s sound system and got a blast of static. After adjusting the dials, Helen waited for the music. Instead, she heard a doorbell, then a clicking noise, like high heels on a hard surface, possibly marble or tile.
Helen moved out into the store by the speakers, so she could hear the tape better. There was the sound of a door opening, then Christina’s unmistakable voice. It was eerie hearing the dead woman speak. Christina said, “Niki, how are you?”
Niki?
There was a rustle of expensive fabrics. Helen could imagine the air kisses and practically smell Niki’s perfume. Niki clicked her way inside and said, “Is that your kitty? He’s so cute.” They must be in Christina’s penthouse.
Niki cooed over Thumbs. Christina got her a glass of Evian. They sat down on something soft and got down to business. At times, the recording sounded like it was made from the bottom of a well, but Helen could figure out what was going on.
“Did you bring it?” Christina asked.
“Fifteen hundred today, the other half later,” Niki said. “Three thousand total. I still say that’s expensive.”
“I can get you somebody for five hundred,” Christina said. “The kind who brags in bars to his friends, then rolls over the first time the cops put on any pressure. Buy the best and only cry once.”
“That’s why I put it in a Neiman Marcus bag, since I’m buying the best.” Niki giggled. “You want to count it?” Helen could hear paper money being snapped and shuffled.
“When’s the wedding?” Christina asked.
“He marries that bitch a week from Saturday.”
“You’re sure?” Christina said.
“I checked with his best man. Jason has always liked me. He can’t understand what got into Jimmy.”
“He’s thinking with his little head,” Christina said. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix it. It will look like a carjacking.”
“You know what’s really funny?” Niki said. “Jimmy is paying for this. I sold some jewelry he gave me to get this money. He won’t miss it. Three thou is petty cash for Jimmy. He’ll never know that he paid to get Desiree out of his life.”
Niki’s girlish giggle made the hair stand up on the back of Helen’s neck.
“You know you’ll be the first suspect when she goes. Do you have a solid alibi?” Christina said.
“I’ll be visiting my mother in Greece until after their wedding.”
“The wedding that won’t happen,” Christina said.
“Right. Once Desiree is dead, I’ll fly home to comfort my poor Jimmy.”
“And then you’ll be the bride.”
“But we won’t be going to Belize for our wedding,” Niki said.
They laughed. It was not a pretty sound.
The tape ended with a snakelike hiss. Helen wondered why Christina made this tape. She could never go to the police with it. She’d go to prison along with Niki. Maybe the tape was insurance, so Niki paid the rest of the fee.
Unless Christina wasn’t threatening Niki with the police. The thought hit Helen like a punch in the face. Suppose Niki’s new husband found out his wife had arranged the murder of Desiree—and he’d been fool enough to finance it?
Jimmy the Shirt would dump her without a penny. If Niki was lucky. He might kill her or have her killed. The boyfriends of Juliana’s regulars had interesting connections. Christina knew that.
Niki had married a T-shirt baron who threw money around like confetti. Thanks to this tape, she would be a little cash cow. Christina could milk her for the rest of her life.
Too bad Christina didn’t live long afterward. She was as dead as Desiree.
“Wedding Song,” indeed. That was another of Christina’s little jokes. Niki sang herself into a nasty little trap.
Helen went back to the stockroom and turned off the hissing tape. She checked the drawer in the bottom of the other tower. Empty. She stared at the CD towers. All her searching, all her work, and this is what she had to show for it: not one, but two reasons for Niki to kill Christina. She still had no motive for Brittney. Helen could not find that blasted “Tiny Bubbles” CD.
It was hopeless. Helen was sick of looking. She was sick of working for a boss who didn’t appreciate her. She was sick of Christina and her greed and the trouble it created. She was sick of all the ugly things she’d seen and heard here.
The twin towers seemed to taunt her with their secrets. She gave the closest one a kick. It wobbled and swayed. Helen tried to grab it before one hundred twenty CDs spilled onto the stockroom floor. She missed. Plastic cases flew everywhere, splitting open, cracking, sliding across the floor. As the tower toppled, she saw one CD was hidden under its base.
Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles.”
She picked it out of the square of dust under the tower. She didn’t want to open it. She knew the dead Christina had hidden another horror behind the Hawaiian crooner.
Inside were four photos.
The first looked harmless. It showed Brittney and a dark-haired man on a big white boat. The Hatteras cruiser docked behind Brittney’s house? They were both so small and perfect, they looked like dolls on a wedding cake. Brittney was trying to kiss the man. His face was turned toward the camera, as if he was avoiding her kiss. His hands were pushing her away. He seemed drunk, or high, or both. So did Brittney. She was holding a champagne bottle by the neck.
The photo was taken before she’d had her biopolymer injections when her face could still show emotion. Brittney looked angry.
In the second photo, Brittney was swinging the champagne bottle like a club. The short man was cowering in the corner with his arms up, trying to protect his face. Brittney was pop-eyed with fury. Her murderous rage radiated from the photograph. Helen knew she was seeing a man who was about to die. She felt a sick fascination, but she still reached for the third photo.
In that one, Brittney was heaving the man over the side of the boat. His torso was half over the railing, like a sack of flour. His hair was almost dragging in the water. Brittney was about to give him the final shove, into the water and the next world.
In the fourth photo, Brittney was on the boat alone, staring into the water and waving good-bye with one hand. She held the champagne bottle in the other like a trophy. Those tiny bubbles had packed quite a wallop.
Who could have taken those photos? And why?
Helen thought she knew. Brittney’s good friend Christina had been on this booze cruise. The drunken Brittney had been
enraged by Steve’s rejection and bludgeoned him with a champagne bottle. Perhaps clever Christina had even egged her on. Christina certainly hadn’t tried to stop her and save Steve. Instead, she’d snapped the pictures that guaranteed her a lifetime income.
Christina had been blackmailing Brittney. Helen had heard Christina on the last day of her life pressuring Brittney for more money in Juliana’s dressing room. “I don’t have more,” Brittney had said in her strange hissing whisper. “I’m not made out of money.”
Brittney had killed Christina and set herself free.
Helen checked the clock. Ten minutes before Tara returned from lunch. Time for a quick call to Sarah while she picked up the spilled CDs. Sarah’s phone rang and rang, but she didn’t answer. Helen left a message while she stuck the last CDs in their slots. Then she put the “Wedding Song” tape back where she found it and stripped off her search gloves. She removed the “back in fifteen minutes” sign just in time. Tara was coming up the sidewalk.
Sarah called an hour later. “I can’t talk now,” Helen said. “Can you meet me tonight after work for dinner? My treat.”
They met at one of the few Las Olas restaurants Helen could afford, Cheeburger Cheeburger. While they wolfed down fries, onion rings, and big juicy burgers, Helen told Sarah about her finds. The blood dripping off her rare burger added the right touch to Helen’s tale of murder and blackmail.
When she finished, Sarah said, “Niki is our killer. She has the best reason for murdering Christina. She was already being blackmailed for the jewel theft. After the Desiree tape, she’d have two reasons. Christina would squeeze her doubly hard for cash.”
“Christina didn’t have time to blackmail Niki about Desiree,” Helen said. “Remember her weird filing system? There’s no article about Desiree’s carjacking hidden in the store manuals, because Christina probably died the same day as Desiree.”
Sarah took a bite of burger, then said, “Didn’t mean she hadn’t started pressuring Niki for more money.”