by Elaine Viets
They found Trevor tenting a two-story motel. Trevor looked a little thinner after his ordeal, and he seemed a bit subdued. But he did not mind telling them what happened.
They stood out by the motel pool and Trevor worked on a cylinder of Vikane gas. Helen was fascinated that the top of the gas cylinder was coated with dry-ice frost.
“Everything looked normal on Monday morning,” he said. “I put on my SCBA gear and went into your tented building. Nothing was disturbed. No one had touched the clamps on the tent. Except when I opened Peggy’s apartment, I found that man, Page Turner, on the bed. One look and I knew he was dead.”
“It must have been horrible,” Helen said. She remembered those hot, dark rooms, the canvas flapping ominously in the breeze.
“It was a shock,” Trevor admitted, connecting the Vikane to a plastic hose. “I turned the dead man over enough to see the face. He was starting to smell like a meat freezer when the electricity went off. I’d never seen him before. I thought somehow this man died of Vikane. It was all my fault. I didn’t check the room.”
“But you did,” Helen said. “Margery and I were with you. We would have said you did your job.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Trevor said. “I knew there would be trouble. I was a black man. This was a white neighborhood.”
Maybe Trevor did not believe that two white women would stand up for him.
“I was the only one who could go into the tent when it was filled with tear gas and poison. I had the breathing apparatus. I was the first and easiest suspect. I panicked, shut the door, then relocked it. I did not tell George and Terrell, the guys working on the tent. I was sweating, but not from the heat. I completed my rounds, all the while asking myself, Should I move the body? Should I dump it in the Everglades? How am I gonna haul a body out of here? The neighbors are watching.
“For a long time, I sat in my truck, thinking about what to do. This was a fumigator’s worst nightmare. The only people who would understand how I felt were other fumigators. So I called two friends in the business. They gave good advice. They told me moving the body was only going to make me look guilty. ‘Stay cool,’ they said. ‘Get a lawyer.’ They knew a good one who would work cheap for a brother.”
“So what did you do?”
“I saw the lawyer,” he said. “When it came time to open the doors Monday afternoon, I unlocked Peggy’s apartment and looked surprised. I pretended I’d never seen that dead man before.
“When the cops showed up, I was the number one suspect, just like I expected. The fact that I had a lawyer made the cops more suspicious. I went downtown for a talk with them. The company had their lawyer. I had mine. Next, the state inspector weighed in, looking for violations. I sat tight and kept my mouth shut, like my lawyer said. But I was sweating.
“The autopsy report saved me. It said the body had been dead since Friday night, not Saturday. That’s twenty-four hours longer than anyone guessed. There were fly eggs, but the flies didn’t develop very far. They were killed by the Vikane.
“But the autopsy said Page Turner did not die of Vikane poisoning.” He was checking gauges on the Vikane cylinder.
“Well, no. He had a knife in his back,” Margery said.
“But that knife didn’t kill him, either. The coroner said he was smothered with a pillow. While drunk.”
“That’s why we didn’t see any blood,” Helen said.
“The stab wound in the back was inflicted after death,” Trevor said. He sounded like he’d memorized the autopsy report. “A butcher knife had been found in the body, and there were prints on the knife, but the police didn’t tell me who they belonged to. I was just happy they weren’t mine.
“Page Turner had died Friday night, before the Vikane was ever pumped into the building. I can’t tell you how relieved I felt. I had nothing to do with that man’s death.
“Also, he’d been moved. The blood had pooled in the lower body. The police found evidence the body was kept in the closet and dragged out later. They believe that we passed right by the closet where the body was stashed. It was covered by some long bridesmaids’ dresses.”
“Glad somebody found a use for those things,” Margery said.
Helen and Trevor ignored her.
“The man was probably murdered between eight and midnight on Friday, and that’s what saved me. I was coaching my church’s softball team. We won the division finals and had a victory party afterward. I was not only in the photos, I was in the video, with a time-and-date stamp. It was two a.m. when I finally went home. Page Turner was long dead by then. Besides, the police could find no connection between me and Turner.”
“So you were off the hook,” Helen said.
“Mostly. But the police knew I knew something. I made a deal with them. My lawyer and I explained why I’d delayed informing the police about the dead body for twenty-four hours. I got a lecture and was released.”
He checked the gauges again and the clear plastic hoses.
Helen heard the hissing of the Vikane gas, releasing more death. She wanted out of there. She and Margery congratulated Trevor and left.
On the ride home, Helen said, “I knew Trevor didn’t do it.”
“Oh, really?” Margery said. “You were ready to convict him when he called his lawyer.”
Helen wasn’t proud of that. “I heard the cops found the tapes with all Page’s naked girlfriends,” she said, hoping to change the subject. “That will keep them busy for years.
We have nothing to worry about.”
But Margery looked worried indeed.
Chapter 8
“You don’t know anything,” the woman said.
“Ma’am, I need either the title or the author,” Helen said.
“I can’t find the book without one or the other. Please give me more information.”
“I saw that book in your store last month. It had a blue cover,” the woman said triumphantly, as if she’d produced a crucial fact.
“I’m sorry, but we have a hundred thousand books,” Helen said. “Lots of them have blue covers.”
“You’re an idiot,” the woman said, and turned her back on Helen.
I must be, Helen thought, to take this abuse for six seventy an hour. She used to think bookstores were genteel places to work. Now she knew how mean some customers could be. They seemed to get almost physical satisfaction from insulting clerks.
It had been a bad day at the store. She’d also had to deal with a young weasel who tried to return a stolen Bible.
Helen had watched him shoplift it, sliding it into his backpack. The Bible was the store’s most shoplifted book. Now he had the nerve to come up to the counter, take out the boosted Bible, and claim he lost the sales receipt. The weasel spat four-letter words at her when she confiscated the Bible and refused to give him any money.
“Thou shalt not steal,” she told him. He took the Lord’s name in vain. Then the Bible stealer left.
The bad customers looked like animals today, she thought, weasels and pigs with the dispositions of wolverines.
The nice customers were worse. They asked the questions Helen wished she could answer: When was Page Turner’s funeral? Would the store close for the service?
Would it close permanently? Who was in charge now? Albert was the day manager, but he didn’t know any more than Helen did. He stood around in his starched shirt, sweating and wringing his pale hands, afraid to make the smallest decision.
A blonde came up to the counter with Tuesdays with Morrie. She was stick-thin with balloon breasts, sexy sandals, and a silver toe ring. “I’m devastated by Page’s death,” she said softly, and Helen noticed her red, swollen eyes. “He once told me this was the best book when you lost someone you cared about, but I never thought I’d need it for him.” Her voice faltered for a moment, then steadied.
“We used to talk about books for hours upstairs in his office.”
Helen saw how the blonde filled out her white halter top.
Anot
her pigeon, she thought.
“They had such lovely literary discussions,” said the little brown mother hen with her. “You don’t find many men who can talk about books in South Florida. And to die in such a senseless way.”
“We’re all sorry, ma’am,” Helen said, sliding the book into a bag.
But she wasn’t, and neither was anyone else who worked at Page Turners. Helen felt like a fraud as she made fake sounds of sympathy to the customers.
Only Matt, the bookseller who’d walked off the job when his paycheck bounced, came out and said it. He stopped at the store the morning after Page Turner’s murder hit the news. Matt’s dreads were as luxuriant as ever, but his usual white T-shirt was black.
“You’re out of uniform,” Helen said. “What’s with the black? You in mourning for Page?”
“I’m not wasting any tears over that man. I heard you found the body.”
“It was dreadful. He had a butcher knife in his back.”
“I told you he’d pay,” Matt said. “The man passed, but it wasn’t easy. He’s gone and I’m glad.”
Helen was, too. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so.
This store has pigs, pigeons, hens, and weasels, she thought. You can add another animal to the menagerie. I’m a rat. I’ve got to get out of retail. I’m beginning to hate the human race. I need a nice desk job. Someplace without a cash register. I need to get off my feet.
Before Helen started at Page Turners, she had no idea how physically hard a bookstore job could be. Booksellers were not allowed to sit when they worked the cash register.
Cheap Page did not carpet the cashiers’ area. He wouldn’t even spring for rubber mats. After eight hours of standing on concrete, her feet hurt so badly she could hardly walk home. Her back ached and kept her awake at night.
“The key to survival,” Gayle told her, “is to get the ugliest shoes with the thickest soles you can find.”
Helen spent sixty dollars she couldn’t afford for cushion-soled lace-ups too styleless for her grandmother. Gayle was right. The thick soles helped. But the pain never really went away.
Now that she was cut back to thirty hours a week, Helen had time for a serious job search. She’d had an interview with a good prospect after work. An accounting firm wanted an office assistant.
The office was in a new building four blocks from the Coronado. Helen saw herself sitting at a clean, well-lighted desk with a comfortable chair and a potted philodendron.
The pay was better than the bookstore: eight fifty an hour.
The requirements would be laughable anywhere but South Florida. Must have neat appearance and speak fluent English, the ad said. Local standards could be delightfully low.
Helen hoped she could persuade the owner to pay her in cash off the books. She’d settle for eight dollars an hour.
At four-thirty, Helen put on fresh lipstick, combed her hair, and checked her panty hose for runs. No doubt about it, she looked neat. She walked confidently to what she hoped would be her new job. The door to the office suite was a solid slab of mahogany with a discreet silver plaque:
THE HANSELMEYER COMPANY. The old corporate part of her responded immediately and approved. The receptionist’s desk was equally impressive, and the woman behind it was a dignified fifty instead of some fluffy young chick. Another good sign.
The owner, Selwyn Hanselmeyer, looked like a snake in a suit, but Helen figured she could put up with him. He had a flat face, yellow eyes that never blinked, and a large bulge in his midsection. Helen wondered if he’d swallowed a piglet for lunch.
Just beyond his door, she glimpsed the office cubicles, padded with soft gray fabric to deaden sound. Even ordinary office workers had big leather executive chairs. She longed to sit in one. On the closest desk, she saw a framed baby picture and a philodendron in a blue pot. The throne-like chair was empty. It was waiting for her.
Please let me get this job, she prayed. I’ll work for a snake. It won’t be so bad.
Hanselmeyer was so short, she suspected he’d jacked up his chair to make himself look taller. He did not rise when Helen entered the room. He probably didn’t want to be measured against her six feet. Instead, she looked down on his elaborate comb-over. She wondered if it hid a diamondback pattern.
Helen recognized his first questions as part of the standard employee interview. He wanted to know her goals and past experience. Helen lied about both. She truthfully said she was skilled in all the right software.
When Hanselmeyer asked what job she wanted in ten years, Helen knew not to say, “Yours.” The snake asked when she would be available.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
Could she could work overtime? “I love overtime.” Yes! she thought.
Then he hissed, “Do you hear that old biological clock ticking?”
“I beg your pardon?” Helen said. She wasn’t sure what this had to do with typing and filing.
“I know I shouldn’t ask, but are you planning to have children?”
“I’m not married,” Helen said.
“Unmarried women can have children,” Hanselmeyer said, pointing to the empty desk. “That girl out there had herself a turkey-baster baby because she was afraid time was running out. Now she’s off half the time taking care of the kid. It’s always sick. Got croup today. I can’t fire her or I’ll have the libbers all over me. Maybe it’s a little illegal to ask, but are you going to have kids?”
Helen wasn’t. But she could feel her anger burst in her brain in a red-hot shower. How dare he? He only asked because she was powerless. He knew he could get away with a question that was piercingly personal and definitely illegal.
“Oh, dear, I wouldn’t want you to do anything illegal, Mr. Hanselmeyer,” she said. “So I won’t answer that.”
Oh, damn, she thought. There goes my chance to ask the snake to pay me in cash under the table. That’s illegal, too.
Well, I couldn’t work for the slithering SOB, anyway.
She stood up and said, “Thank you for your time.”
On the way out, she gave the desk with the leather chair one last lingering look.
Helen dragged herself home to the Coronado, tired and discouraged. Margery poked her gray head out her door and yelled, “Pick your face off the sidewalk. That boyfriend of yours is on the phone.”
“Rich?” she said. She’d asked Rich never to call her landlady unless there was an emergency.
“You dating someone else?” Tonight, Margery’s shorts were a militant mulberry. They clashed alarmingly with her plum sandals and crimson toenail polish.
Helen picked up Margery’s phone with a fluttering heart.
“What’s wrong?”
“I couldn’t reach you all day.” Rich sounded whiny, her least favorite male mood. “I called the store six times. No one answered.”
“I’m sorry, Rich. We were swamped because of Page’s death. When that happens, the phones go unanswered.”
“How are you?” he said. “Are you avoiding strange men at the store, like I told you?”
She wanted to tell him not to be so foolish, but she wasn’t going to fight on Margery’s phone.
“Look, I don’t want to tie up Margery’s phone. She may be expecting a call.”
“Then let’s talk tomorrow night. We could go to my place. I’ll pick you up after work and throw a couple of steaks on the grill. You can meet Beans and Sissy.”
His pets—at his place. For Rich, meeting his animals was like meeting the family. Beans was a basset hound who’d been brought to the clinic with terminal flatulence.
The exasperated owner wanted to put the gasbag to sleep, but Rich adopted the dog instead. Helen thought that was sweet. Sissy was a regal gray Persian. Helen had not been to Rich’s home yet, so she’d only heard about the animals.
This was a step forward in their relationship.
“Helen,” he said, “why don’t you let me buy you a phone?”
Helen did not want to be in any phone compa
ny computer. She’d be too easy to trace.
“Thanks, Rich, but I’d rather not.”
“Don’t let your pride get in the way. I know you can’t afford one, but I can. You can keep it with you and then I can talk to you anytime I want.”
Anytime he wanted. The phrase lodged uneasily in Helen’s mind. Would that also be anytime she wanted? She could see Margery in the kitchen, pacing impatiently back and forth, smoking a cigarette, the red tips of her fingers and her cigarette glowing in the evening shadows.
“I can’t talk now, Rich,” she said. “I’m tying up Margery’s phone. I’ll see you tomorrow night at six. Your roses were still gorgeous this morning.” She hung up.
“Everything OK with lover boy?” Margery said. She blew a wreath of smoke.
“Just fine.” Helen had a feeling her landlady knew she was lying. “Gotta go.” She almost fled out the door to avoid talking about Rich. She ran straight into a wall of heat. Even at six-thirty, it was a force. Helen liked it better than artificially chilled rooms. She was ready for a cool drink by the pool.
Pete and Peggy were already out there. Helen waved at them, but Peggy didn’t respond. She was staring into space.
She hadn’t been herself since the murder.
Why should she? Helen thought. Peggy had found a dead man in her bed. Once the police tape came off the door, would Peggy ever sleep in that soft, sensual bed again? Or would she always share it with a bloating corpse?
Helen was worried about her friend. Peggy seemed drained and lifeless. Her dark red hair was flat, and her long elegant nose seemed more beaklike than ever. Maybe a glass of wine would cheer her up.
“Want a drink?” Helen called across the courtyard.
“Yes,” Peggy said. She sounded like she was sleepwalking. Pete let out a raucous squawk. “Don’t bring any crackers. He’s getting fatter.”
Helen opened her apartment door and was hit with the funeral-parlor scent of dying flowers. She’d turned off her air conditioner when she went to work that morning, to save money. The heat must have roasted her roses. The dropped petals looked like spots of blood on her coffee table. Rich’s gorgeous gift was dead too soon.