by Elaine Viets
King screamed and fell back into the water. The blonde watched him struggle. Blood trailed in the water from his damaged hand. The blonde turned her back on King and walked away. Helen could see her clearly. That was Phoebe.
The camera stayed trained on the man’s struggles, until King went quiet and floated facedown. Water ballooned out the jacket of his ugly tux, and he slowly sank to the bottom.
“He’s dead. Phoebe killed him,” Helen said. “But Mireya is guilty, too. She watched him die when she could have saved him. No wonder she didn’t go to the police. This video is proof Miguel Angel is not guilty. I could enjoy my wedding a lot more if I knew he was in the clear.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Margery said.
“I’m going to talk with Phoebe.”
“Alone! Are you nuts?” Margery said.
“Nope, I’m not going alone. You’re driving me. You don’t have to come in. You can wait in the car.”
“Like hell I will,” Margery said. “Who do you think you are, the Lone Ranger? Even he had Tonto.”
“Okay, Kemo Sabe, will you drive me to Phoebe’s condo?”
“Where does she live?”
“Near Commercial and Bayview in north Lauderdale,” Helen said.
“Ritzy neighborhood for an assistant hairdresser,” Margery said. “How does she afford it?”
“I don’t think it’s from salon tips,” Helen said.
“Do you have that Hendin Island homicide detective’s card?” Margery asked.
Helen found it in the bottom of her purse. “He’s in the Crimes Against Persons Unit and his name is Richard McNally.”
“Good. If anything goes wrong, I’ll call him on my cell phone.”
It was a tense half-hour ride to Phoebe’s condo. Helen was glad Margery drove a big car. She hugged the door, but there still wasn’t room for the two of them and Margery’s anger.
Phoebe lived in a ten-story pink condo on the Intracoastal Waterway, with an ocean view from the upper floors. The view from the street was not as picturesque. The lawn and circular drive were piled with wood and rusting metal. The fountain and flowers were hidden by a noisy generator and a Dumpster overflowing with construction material. One-third of the building had a skeleton of scaffolding. Metal stages, like those used by window washers, hung at the seventh and third floors. Brown-skinned men with jackhammers tore at the concrete balconies and shouted at one another in Spanish.
“Are they building this place or tearing it down?” Helen asked.
“I’m guessing they’re replacing the rebar,” Margery said. “That’s the ridged steel bars used in reinforced concrete. This salty ocean air destroys them. When the rebar goes bad, it has to be removed, then replaced and new concrete poured over it. These condo owners are looking at monster assessments. Do you know what unit she lives in?”
“Seven-seventeen,” Helen said.
“How are you going to get up there? Most condo elevators require special keys. I see a security guard.”
“He’s reading a magazine,” Helen said. “If this condo has a big assessment, buyers are going to be hard to find, right? What if I say I’m getting married and I’m looking at a condo for sale.”
“Finally, you have a smart idea.” Margery parked the Lincoln in a guest spot and waved at the guard, who stayed engrossed in his magazine. “There are always places for sale in these big buildings. Let’s look around the grounds first.”
They followed a path to the fenced pool, which jutted out over the Intracoastal. A crooked palm tree cast a grudging circle of shade on the concrete deck. Only one woman was out by the pool. She’d dragged her towel-draped chaise longue into the shade circle. The blonde, wearing a red bikini, was lying on her belly. Her bra clasp was undone to avoid a tan line on her back. The star tattoo was visible. A plastic water bottle the size of an oxygen tank sweated next to the chaise, along with a pair of black heels. Were those the same shoes that killed King’s last hope of rescue?
“I think that’s Phoebe by the pool,” Helen whispered. “I’m going to talk to her.”
“Don’t let her back you into that pool,” Margery said. “She’s dangerous. Take a weapon.”
“Like what?” Helen said. She could hardly hear Margery over the stutter of the jackhammers.
“That purse you have looks pretty hefty. Hit her with that. And carry this.” She handed Helen a two-foot section of rusty rebar.
Helen slid the rebar into her purse so only a small piece stuck out, then strolled toward the pool gate. The jackhammers suddenly went silent as Helen opened the gate. She stood over Phoebe’s chaise. The sun-roasted killer seemed to be asleep.
“Phoebe!” Helen said in the deafening silence.
Phoebe sat straight up and grabbed her bra to cover her bare breasts.
“Nice to see you again,” Helen said, sitting in a deck chair next to her. “Florida unemployment must pay well if you can afford this luxurious condo. Did King buy this, or have you found someone else to blackmail?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Phoebe said. Her voice was cold enough to chill the pool.
“Of course you do,” Helen said. “You pushed King into his own pool, then stomped his hand when he tried to crawl out. You watched him drown.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Sure you do.”
“Prove it.” Phoebe was a study in sunburned defiance.
“I have the wedding video,” Helen said. “You have a star part in King’s life and death.”
“You never did make sense,” Phoebe said.
“I mean the star tattoo on your back. It was in the newspaper ads when you danced at King’s strip club.”
Phoebe turned her back and said, “There’s no tattoo there.”
“Sure there is. It’s on your—”
Phoebe grabbed a high heel, swung around abruptly and aimed for Helen’s eye. The bikini top fell on the pool deck. Helen ducked and caught the blow on her head. Something warm dripped down her forehead, but Helen was too furious to notice. She swung her leather purse and knocked Phoebe flat onto the chaise. Phoebe took a second swing at Helen, using the hefty water bottle as a bat. Helen dodged it and nearly fell into the pool. She carefully backed away, anxious to avoid the water.
Helen reached for the rebar in her purse and swung the rusty metal at Phoebe’s smooth, tanned legs. She connected, leaving a long, nasty scrape. Phoebe screamed, but no one heard her over the pounding jackhammers. She picked up the chaise and threw it at Helen. Helen easily sidestepped it. Waving the rebar like a sword, Helen aimed for Phoebe’s ankles, trying to drive her away from the pool.
Phoebe leaped up on an umbrella table. The table tipped under her weight. Phoebe hung by the umbrella pole, six feet over the brown, polluted Intracoastal.
Helen whapped Phoebe’s fingers with the rebar. The bare-breasted killer screamed and dropped straight into the dirty water. Phoebe splashed around, then swam to the condo’s concrete seawall and tried to climb out. Margery was there with a tire iron.
“Put one finger on that concrete before the cops get here and I’ll smash it to pieces,” Margery said.
Helen heard the wail of sirens and felt dizzy with relief. She put her hand to her forehead. It was red with blood. Black spots formed at the edge of her vision, and she swayed in the heat.
“Don’t you dare faint, Helen Hawthorne,” Margery yelled. “Are you a woman or a wuss?”
Chapter 30
Helen managed not to faint like an overgrown Victorian maiden. She clung to the pool fence until the paramedics took her to the emergency room. She was grateful to lie on the gurney.
“Head wounds bleed freely,” Margery told her, as the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance. Helen didn’t find that reassuring.
Margery was allowed to see Helen in the ER two hours later. “The doctor says the X-ray of your head revealed nothing,” she said. “I could have told her that.”
“
I think she meant I don’t have a concussion,” Helen said. “The doc put butterfly bandages over the wound. Those will look lovely with my wedding dress.”
“Don’t worry,” Margery said. “The veil will cover them.”
“But what about my hair?” Helen said. “She shaved off a patch.”
“Your boy-wonder stylist can hide that by parting your hair on the left,” Margery said. “I’ll pick up the emergency room bill. I should just adopt you and put you on my insurance.”
“You’d make a better mother than the one I have,” Helen said.
“I’m hoping to marry you off and get you out of my hair,” Margery said.
A gray-haired man wheeled a cart into their cubicle. “Juice?” he asked. “Crackers?”
Helen took a carton of juice and a pack of graham crackers, but her hands were so shaky Margery had to open them for her.
“I think this is dinner,” Helen said, and sat up too fast. The little room shifted and the privacy curtain danced. “Ohmigod. Kathy and Tom are due in Friday and I wanted to get some food for them this afternoon.”
“I’ve already thought of that,” Margery said. “I sent Phil to the supermarket with a list of things they’ll probably need. I got a call from your sister. They’re making good time. They may get here a day early, on Thursday, depending on the traffic.”
“Good. Did the cops arrest Phoebe?” Helen asked.
“You bet they did,” Margery said. “I had them contact that Hendin Island detective, Richard McNally. He came rushing over to Phoebe’s condo. I gave him the wedding video. Took a while to calm him down. He’s not happy about you stumbling around in a murder scene. You’re darn lucky he’s pretending to believe my story that you found that video on the sidewalk outside Mireya’s town house. I didn’t mention Phil. He needs to stay clear of this.”
There was a knock on the cubicle door. Helen said, “It’s probably the hospital after more of my blood. All they’ve done is stick me with needles.”
“Maybe they can give you a shot of common sense,” Margery said.
Helen was surprised to see Richard McNally in the doorway. The white-haired detective was taller than she remembered. She hadn’t forgotten those steel blue eyes. Now they were lit with an angry fire.
“May I have a minute with Miss Hawthorne?” he asked.
“You can have her as long as you want,” Margery said. “I need a cigarette.”
“Are you after my blood, too?” Helen asked McNally.
The lanky detective leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “No, but I should be,” he said. “What were you thinking, going after that young woman alone?”
“I had Margery with me,” Helen said.
“An old woman. She can really protect you against a seventeen-year-old killer.”
“Did Phoebe confess?” Helen asked.
“Oh yes. Once she knew we had the video, she decided to talk. She didn’t want a lawyer. She believes she’ll get away with murder because she was underage and sexually assaulted by the victim.”
“It’s going to be hard to figure out who the victim is here, isn’t it?” Helen said.
“Mireya was definitely a victim,” McNally said. “But I don’t think there will be much sympathy for King Oden.”
“Was Phoebe blackmailing him?”
“For more than a year. She got close to half a million dollars out of him. When King got engaged, he quit giving her money. She threatened to tell his blog competitors, and he laughed at her. She made one last attempt to convince him at his wedding. He said he’d married a woman with class and nobody would believe a hooker with a tramp stamp.”
“I thought tramp stamps were lower-back tattoos,” Helen said.
“I don’t think he was in any position to argue. He was trying to get out of the pool. He had one hand on the pool edge when she slammed him with her spiked heel and said, ‘I’ll show you a tramp stamp.’”
“And he fell back into the pool and drowned,” Helen said.
“While she turned her back on him. That’s a cold woman, Miss Hawthorne. A jury might have let her get away with killing him if she hadn’t beaten that little photographer. The only thing Mireya was guilty of was greed.”
“Her death was sad,” Helen said. “And useless.”
“Don’t think for one second I believe you found that wedding video on the sidewalk,” he said. “I ought to throw you in jail, but I hear you’re getting married on Saturday. I’ll give you a wedding present: I’m not going to press charges.”
“Thank you,” Helen said.
“You get one pass from me, and one only,” he said. “If I find out you’ve ‘accidentally stumbled’ onto any more murders, you’ll be a guest of the Broward County correctional facility. Got that?”
“Yes,” Helen said.
“Good. Keep your nose out of police business. And heaven help your husband.”
McNally walked out. The room felt suddenly emptier. Helen was freezing in the cold cubicle. She crept to a cart in the hall piled with hospital blankets and helped herself to three. She was shivering under the thin blankets when she heard a man shouting above the chaos of the emergency room.
“And I say she’s my fiancée and I can, too, see her.” That was Phil.
“Sir, if you’ll calm down,” a nurse said in a professionally soothing voice. “I don’t want to call security.”
Helen sat up, grabbed the edge of the gurney to keep from falling, and stuck her head out of the cubicle. “Phil!” she cried.
“Do you know this man?” the nurse asked her.
“It’s okay,” Helen said. “We’re getting married. He’ll be paying the hospital bills after Saturday.”
Phil loped over to Helen’s cubicle, his tanned face several shades paler with anger. “What did you do to yourself?” he asked between gritted teeth.
“I had a little accident with a high heel,” Helen said.
“Bull! You went off alone to catch a killer.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had Margery with me,” Helen said.
“A seventy-six-year-old bodyguard. Then I had no reason to worry.”
“Hey! She’s tough,” Helen said.
“You’re damn right I’m tough.” Margery materialized in the crowded cubicle, trailing the scent of cigarette smoke. “I can take care of myself—and your wife-to-be.”
“I’m sorry, Margery,” Phil said. “It’s not your fault. This is between Helen and me. I thought we were in this together, Helen. Instead, you went running off to meet a killer without telling me. I found out what happened when I saw a breaking news story on television. I was putting the groceries away in your apartment and nearly dropped the eggs.”
“The story is on TV?” Helen said. “Already?”
“Somebody at the condo called Channel Seven. Phoebe was nearly naked, and that didn’t hurt. The station ran a shot of the cops helping the topless murderer out of the water. They called her the Bikini Killer. I saw you at the edge of the shot, holding on to the pool fence. You had blood running down your face.”
“You could tell it was me?” Helen said.
“I could, because I’m the man who’s going to marry you. I doubt if anyone else will recognize you. I drove to the condo, and the guard said you’d been taken to the hospital. I was afraid you were badly hurt.”
Phil’s blue eyes showed white all around, like a frightened horse’s. Helen took his hand and kissed it. “Phil, I’m sorry if I upset you. I promise I will never, ever, chase a murderer without you.”
“You better promise,” Phil said. “Margery, you’re my witness.”
“I can’t believe the Bikini Killer story has made the news already,” Helen said.
“Made it? It’s the lead local story on three stations,” Phil said. “Only one channel had the arrest on tape, but the other stations rushed over to King’s Sexxx and interviewed all the strippers who claim they knew Phoebe. There were so many half-naked women, I’m surprised Phoebe ever had room to
dance on the stage.”
“Then the word is out. Miguel Angel is safe,” Helen said.
A nurse in hospital scrubs entered the room with a pile of papers. “I have your instructions and release,” she said, “plus a prescription for pain medication. If you have a severe headache or vomiting, come back to the emergency room.”
Helen signed the papers.
“I’ll take her to the pharmacy for the painkillers,” Margery said.
“Skip the pharmacy,” Helen said. “I want to go home.” She scrubbed at the dried blood on her face with a hospital washcloth. “Maybe I should put on some makeup.”
“You’ll look better if you don’t try to cover up the damage,” Margery said. “My car has air-conditioning. I’ll drive her home, Phil.”
“I’ll pick up something for dinner,” Phil said. “Mexican food okay for both of you?”
“Chicken burrito for me,” Helen said.
“I want a side of guacamole,” Margery said. “The nice thing about wearing a minister’s robe is I don’t have to watch my figure.”
Helen was silent on the ride home. Her head throbbed. When they got to the Coronado, she was glad that Peggy and Cal weren’t home. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
Helen saw a blank envelope taped to Phil’s door. Inside was a bill for $110 for the rental of a tux, cummerbund, shirt and shoes. A note from Cal said, “Thought you’d want to pay this, since it’s your wedding.”
“Of all the—” Helen said.
“What’s wrong?” Margery said. Helen handed her the bill.
“Don’t that beat all?” Margery said. “He wants Phil to pay for his tux. I think I’ll raise his rent a hundred and ten dollars. That guy is too cheap to live.”
“Don’t bother,” Helen said. “He is cheap, but he pays his rent on time and he’s quiet.”
Phil came up the walkway, carrying a fat takeout bag. Helen was hungrier than she thought. She finished the last crumb of food, then yawned.