by Elaine Viets
Helen finished the last bite of her burger and delicately licked the juice from her fingers. “That’s the part I don’t get. Christina was already blackmailing Niki for the jewel business. Why would Niki give her more ammunition by going to her for a hit man?”
“Because Niki was desperate,” Sarah said, taking the last onion ring. “It had been years since she’d been in Playboy. She never became a model or a movie star. Nothing was going to happen to her, except she’d get old. Jimmy was her last chance to snag a rich man. If Niki had to kill to keep him, she would.”
“Nice theory,” Helen said, finishing the final french fry. “Except Niki’s got an unbreakable alibi for Christina’s death. She was out of the country.”
“So what?” Sarah said. “I still think she could have hired a hit man.”
“And I still say it’s Brittney,” Helen said. She counted off the reasons on slightly greasy fingers.
“One, Christina photographed Brittney actually killing someone. That’s better than a tape where Niki is just talking about it.
“Two, Brittney has no alibi for Christina’s death.
“Three, Brittney tried to kill me when I accused her of murdering Christina.”
“You don’t know that,” Sarah said.
“The fire happened right after I saw her. I don’t believe in coincidence. Besides, Brittney has the mob boyfriend.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Sarah reminded her.
“And four, Brittney has Christina’s cat,” Helen said.
“Prove it,” Sarah said. “One cat looks like another.”
“I will,” Helen said.
“And I’ll prove my theory,” Sarah said.
“How?” Helen said. “Are you going to play that tape for Jimmy the Shirt?”
“Not this woman. I know about killing the messenger. Let’s leave that tape right where it is, so the cops can find it if they need it. I’m going to get on my computer and start searching newspaper data bases. The key to this case is Desiree’s carjacking. It’s not easy to pull off a carjacking in a gated community. Someone had inside knowledge. Most gated communities have a TV camera at the gate. Either this one didn’t or something malfunctioned.”
“How do you know?”
“The police would have released a description of the suspected vehicle, a license plate number, or a photo of the driver. But there’s nothing. I bet the hit man—or woman—has used that method before. I want to research carjackings in South Florida and see if I can find a pattern. When I do, it will lead back to Christina.”
“Too far-fetched,” Helen said. “The killer is Brittney. I know it. I’m showing those pictures of her swinging that champagne bottle to Detective Karen Grace. She’ll have Brittney in jail before you start up your computer.”
“I bet you’re wrong,” Sarah insisted. “I bet you anything the killer is Niki.”
“What will you bet?”
“You like chocolate?”
“You bet,” Helen said.
“Then I bet you a hot fudge sundae at Jaxson’s.”
“What’s that?”
“You claim you like chocolate and you’ve never been to Jaxson’s?”
“Never even heard of the place,” Helen said.
“When you wrap your lips around their hot fudge, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Actually,” Helen said, “I’m trying to avoid that experience—at least for another fifty years.”
Chapter 33
“What do you mean, we don’t have anything?” Helen said. Anger and disappointment made her voice rise. She sounded whiny, and that made Helen madder. She’d called Detective Karen Grace because she seemed smarter than her partner Dwight Hansel. Now Helen didn’t want to hear Detective Grace’s smart talk.
“Show me the connection to Christina,” Grace demanded.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. On the phone, Grace had seemed interested. She told Helen not to touch the photos and drove straight over Tuesday morning. Helen had buzzed her through Juliana’s green door. In her badly tailored gray pants suit, Grace looked out of place, like a computer dropped into a pink boudoir. Juliana’s women were ornamental. Grace, with her lush figure and strawberry blond hair, could have been, but she lived by her brains.
Helen had been sure once Grace saw those photos Brittney would be arrested, and it would be all over. Especially when Helen told her about the visit to Brittney’s ice palace, the six-toed cat, and the fire. Instead, Grace said, “What do these photos have to do with Christina’s murder?”
Helen pointed to the photos on the stockroom counter.
“I see four good reasons for Brittney to kill Christina,” she said. “She photographed Brittney killing the guy. Look at that one: Brittney is slamming the guy’s head with a champagne bottle. And this one: She’s throwing him overboard. He’s dead, or will be shortly. That has to be her fiancé, Steve, the one found floating in the canal.
“Look at this first photo again,” Helen pleaded. “See how he’s trying to push her away? He dumped her and she killed him. It’s obvious.”
“I’ll tell you what’s obvious,” Detective Karen Grace said. “There’s no connection to Christina.”
“Christina took those pictures,” Helen said. “That’s how she was blackmailing Brittney.”
“Prove it. I don’t see Christina’s name on the back of these photos. We didn’t find any telltale photos or negatives in her penthouse.”
“But you found a camera.”
“So what?” Grace said. “Everyone has a camera.”
“Christina used photos to blackmail people. I know that for a fact. I’ve seen those photos.”
“Do you know for a fact that Brittney was being blackmailed? Did she tell you?” Grace asked.
“No, but . . .”
“Here’s what we have: photos of Brittney hitting a guy with a champagne bottle. She looks drunk as a skunk. It doesn’t look premeditated. Any good lawyer—and Brittney can afford the best—could argue diminished capacity. Brittney might get manslaughter. If there were enough men on the jury, she could get a medal. Florida juries have done stranger things. But I see nothing to link Christina with these photos of Brittney.”
“I found the photos here in the store,” Helen said.
“Where Christina worked. But you work here, and so does Tara. I’ll bet your next paycheck the only fingerprints on those photos are yours.”
“Mine!”
“That’s right. You picked them up. Brittney could say you were blackmailing her, and you made up that wild story about her cat. You have no credibility. The homicide investigators will find out that your name isn’t really Helen Hawthorne and that you’re on the run.”
Helen froze. She felt the blood draining from her face. Her jaw moved up and down a few times before the words came out. “How did you know?”
“I’m a detective,” Grace said.
“My life’s over,” Helen said. “My ex-husband will find me.”
“Your ex is a creep. I’m not going to say anything unless it turns out you did it. My partner knows your story checked out. That’s all he knows, and all he cares about.”
Just when Helen felt herself breathing again, Grace said, “You should have told me about the phony aggravated battery at the store here. I don’t appreciate your hiding that.”
“What about Tara?” Helen said.
“What about her?”
“Well, she was the one who saw the guys with the guns. She, um . . . had reasons to hate Christina. . . . Uh, I mean, she had a past in Las Vegas where she worked as a . . .” Helen couldn’t bring herself to say that Tara had been a prostitute, and Christina had blackmailed her. She liked Tara.
“I know she used to be a pro,” Detective Grace said. “She wouldn’t be the first Lauderdale lady to have an interesting past.”
“She’s got an alibi?” Helen said.
Grace rolled her eyes. “You watch too many cop shows. Tara is blessed
with a nosy neighbor who watched her the whole time. Said no cars left the driveway. Even knew she and her boyfriend had Chinese delivered Saturday and Papa John’s pizza on Sunday. The neighbor said her boyfriend never came out of the house until after three p.m. Monday to pick up the morning paper, and he was still wearing his bathrobe. Tara didn’t appear until nine Monday night, and she sat in the hot tub for twenty-seven minutes. ”
“That neighbor must be one lonely old lady.”
“Mr. Rodriguez would resent that description,” Detective Grace said. “He’s a lively seventy-eight-year-old with high-powered binoculars. He waits for Tara to go sunbathing in her bikini. She also likes to sit nude in the hot tub after dark. The old boy watches her like the Secret Service watches the president. He even keeps a diary.”
“I guess you can find those things out when you’re the police,” Helen said.
“I hope you are not wasting your time playing detective. You don’t have my resources or my training.”
“No, but I find stuff anyway. Look at those.” Helen pointed to Christina’s other CDs with the blackmail material. She kept her promise to Sarah and did not bring out the Niki cassette. “And you were wrong. My fingerprints aren’t on Brittney’s pictures or any of the others. I’ve opened them up wearing gloves.”
Helen showed her the pair of twelve-button search gloves, which were getting slightly gray at the finger tips.
“I didn’t realize it was a formal search,” Detective Grace said, as she pulled on her own gloves. They were latex, not twelve-button kid. One by one, she opened the cases.
“Quite a collection of individuals here,” Grace said, after she finished. Helen thought “individual” was cop-talk for “scumbag.”
“I’ll alert our special victims unit about the sexual abuse of a minor. But all of these individuals have alibis for the time of the murder.”
“You checked them?” Helen said. She was surprised.
“What do you think I was doing? Sitting on my hands? I checked out all the shop’s regulars.”
“So the only two without alibis are Brittney and Joe,” Helen said. At least, that’s what she and Sarah had managed to find out.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Maybe not, but I’m right. And I’ll bet you don’t believe in coincidence. I get death threats. Then I go to Brittney’s house and see the dead woman’s missing cat. I confront Brittney, and that same night somebody tries to kill me.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Detective Grace said. “But I need a connection. It will take time to establish one.”
“I know a shortcut,” Helen said. “What if I could prove Brittney has Christina’s cat?”
“How? It’s an alley cat.”
“DNA,” Helen said. “Animals have it, too. Were any cat hairs found on Christina’s body?”
“Four or five,” Detective Grace said.
“And you found cat hair in Christina’s condo?”
“A whole brushful,” she said.
“Then all we need is the cat, and we can get a DNA test.”
“Two problems,” Detective Grace said. “First, Sunnysea Beach is not going to pay for a DNA test for a cat. DNA tests cost thousands, and we don’t have that kind of money.
“Second, even if they did, we’d need a court order to get Brittney’s cat. There’s no way a judge would give us one. It would be your word—the word of a woman on the run—against a solid citizen.”
“Look,” Helen said, desperately, “the last detective who used this technique was named Officer of the Year. He got a ton of publicity. You could get out of Sunnysea Beach and get a job with a better force. Get a decent partner instead of Dwight.”
“And where do I get the money for the test?” Detective Grace said. She was considering it, Helen thought. A little more persuasion, and she’d say yes.
“The merchants association has a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for anyone who gives information leading to the arrest and conviction of Christina’s killer. Put my name in for the reward, and I’ll pay for the DNA test if your department won’t.”
“Deal,” Detective Grace said. “But we still need the cat’s hair.”
“I can get it,” Helen said. “Brittney’s house has a pet door. The cat goes out at night. I’ll grab it and get a few hairs.” Helen didn’t want to think about pulling hair from a live cat. A live cat with more than his share of razor-sharp claws.
“I don’t want to know any more,” Grace said. “Just don’t call me from the Bridge Harbour police station.”
“First, I have to call the animal DNA expert,” Helen said.
Helen enjoyed running up Juliana’s phone bill to track down the DNA expert. Dr. Joy Halverson was at QuestGen laboratories in Davis, California, four time zones and twenty-five hundred miles from Florida.
“Do you have cat-hair samples with roots?” Dr. Halverson asked.
“Detective Grace says a grooming brush filled with hair was found in the dead woman’s penthouse.”
“That’s a good source. There should be root material,” Dr. Halverson said. “What about the hairs found on the woman’s body?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said. “Is it important?”
“Yes. There are two kinds of DNA testing in forensics. STR, short tandem repeats, is the most accurate test, but it needs nuclear DNA. You get that from blood samples, saliva, or hair with roots. A shed hair does not have a lot of root material. You might get lucky, though. One of the hairs found on the body may have a root. You need to check.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Helen said.
“Then the probabilities change drastically. If you get a match when you use STR testing, there is only one chance in a billion the test is wrong. That’s fairly convincing evidence. If you use the non-root material, the chances drop to maybe one in three hundred.”
The whole case was riding on a hair. A cat hair.
“If I go ahead with the test, what will it cost?” Helen said.
“It’s for you, not the police, right?”
“The local police department can’t afford a DNA test for a house cat,” Helen said. Neither can I, she thought.
“If a private person did it, the test would run about a thousand dollars,” Dr. Halverson said. “If I did the test, it would take two to three weeks. The price goes up to two thousand or more if I have to testify in court.”
The DNA test would take a huge bite out of Helen’s suitcase stash. It’s an investment, Helen decided. If I get the reward, I’ll still have twenty-three thousand dollars. But I can’t get anything without it.
“How much hair will I have to pull off the cat for comparison?” Helen said. She was not looking forward to this part.
“None,” the doctor said. “I need a cheek sample. You can use a fine brush, like a baby tooth brush, or a cotton swab. Just brush it on the inside of the cat’s cheek, and that will get the DNA sample.”
Great. Helen had to steal cat slobber instead of cat hair. How was she going to stick a Q-tip in a strange cat’s mouth?
“Do you have a court order for the cat?” Dr. Halverson said.
“No,” Helen said. “I can get what I need by other means.”
“Like climbing the fence?” the doctor said shrewdly.
“I’m hoping the cat will come out to the sidewalk,” Helen said. She knew how hopeless that sounded.
Next, Helen checked with Detective Grace. “We have to be the only people in America who want cat hair,” Grace said.
“Not just any cat hair,” Helen said. “It has to have roots.”
“I’ll get back with you,” she said.
Detective Grace called Helen back two hours later. “We’re in luck. There’s a root on one hair.”
“Then I’m about to become a cat burglar,” Helen said.
Chapter 34
“We better scout Brittney’s place. I want to see what it looks like at night,” Margery said.
“The same as in the
day, only darker,” Helen said.
“Not true. Every place looks different at night. Acts different, too. Trust me on this. I’m an old night owl.”
Helen wondered what Margery saw at the Coronado after dark. Her landlady was providing the wheels for the cat caper. “Brittney goes to a different South Beach club almost every night,” Helen said. “Wednesday nights she goes to the Delano. Usually leaves sometime after nine.”
“Fine,” said Margery. “We got a date tonight at ten. It’s Tuesday, so we’ll nail the cat tomorrow.”
At ten o’clock, they pulled out of the Coronado and headed for the Seventeenth Street Bridge. Margery drove an old white Cadillac half a block long. Helen wondered if it was a state law that when you reached age seventy, you had to drive a big white car.
On the other side of the bridge, Margery made a left onto Bridge Harbour Parkway, and they were suddenly in the hushed, winding streets of the wealthy. Her landlady was right. Bridge Harbour was different after dark.
The huge houses looked more like hotels, with their two-story entryways. Huge, enormous, and giant described everything about these houses, except their lots, which were barely big enough for a modest ranch house.
“How come major mansions are built on such little lots?” Helen said.
“You can get land in Omaha,” Margery said. “They want water. The fewer drawbridges your yacht goes through before you get to the ocean, the better. Bridge Harbor is only one drawbridge away.
“Now, can we skip the house tour and get to work? Did you see all these ‘No Parking’ signs? What are we going to do with this car? I can’t park it. And look at these security patrols.”
Bridge Harbour houses were built along a system of canals. The security service had white patrol cars stationed at every little canal bridge.
“I counted six rent-a-cops on wheels,” Margery said. “This is not going to be easy. Show me the house. And tell me it doesn’t have a seven-foot wall, like every other place we’ve passed.”
“Oh, no,” Helen said. “It has a tall hedge, but a nice open driveway. The cab pulled right in.”
But no car could get in at night. The driveway was closed by an electric gate.“That wasn’t here during the day,” Helen said.