by Elaine Viets
“Cookie!” Ramon said happily and smashed it into his truck. Helen wanted to smash something, too. How much longer was Taniqua going to stall?
She ate another cookie, then said, “A bailiff boy cheats his family. When a bad man gets a divorce, he don’t care no more about his wife and family. He don’t want to give them no money, no matter how much he be making. He want it all for hisself. So he find hisself a lawyer who be as low as he is. Then he quits his job and works at a place like this. He don’t want no real money cause his wife and kids might get it. He flip burgers, wash dishes or sell septic-tank cleaner. He probably slip Vito money to give him this bad job.”
Helen thought Taniqua was right, although she couldn’t say anything. Vito helped himself to a hunk of Helen’s bucks because she needed cash under the table.
“Then the bad man dress up real poor-like and tell the court he can’t afford to pay hardly no child support cause he lost his good job and he be working as a telemarketer. The court send out a bailiff to his new job to check on him. The bailiff see him working here, and then the bad man is gone. You never see that bailiff boy here again.”
“But what happens to his good job?”
“He go right back to it. Plenty of bad men out there, helping other bad men. Bad women, too, hurting their sisters. His poor wife have to go back to court to get more money out of that lying cheat, and it cost her more lawyer bills. She got kids to feed and put through school. She can’t afford to chase the bad man around the court. Most of these men get away with it.
“I warned you. You caught yourself a bailiff boy.”
Taniqua’s even white teeth cut a cookie viciously in two.
Pieces of Jack’s conversation came floating back to Helen. Jack took her to the dazzling Pier Top Lounge overlooking Lauderdale and said, “Helen, I promise you, the telemarketing is only temporary. I’ll be back on top of the world soon and you’ll be with me.”
Jack was curiously unworried about paying for their Delano lunch.
Jack talked oddly about his children. “It’s like they aren’t even my kids anymore.” Jack hadn’t used their names. They were no longer people to him.
Helen looked toward the dirty boiler-room door. The man in the brown uniform was gone. Jack was bouncing back down the aisle to his seat with a big grin on his face. Taniqua gave him a look that should have turned Jack’s black hair snow white. She pointedly turned her back on him and picked up her phone.
“What’s her problem?” Jack said.
“Is it true?” Helen said. “Are you working this job to cheat your family out of child support?”
“My wife turned the boys against me,” Jack said. “Why should I bust my butt for them?”
Helen felt sick. How could she have thought this worm was attractive?
Jack gave her a grin that showed too many teeth. “Hey, the law favors the mother. It isn’t fair. She doesn’t have to account to me how she spends my money. She could spend it on studs for all I know.”
“You scumbag,” Helen said. “You’re going to deprive your own children so you can lunch at the Delano.”
“Relax, babe. Those boys are spoiled rotten. It’s good if they don’t get everything they whine for. They may have to get a summer job or something. It will make men out of them.”
Helen’s rage flared up like a red geyser. She slapped Jack across the face so hard her hand stung. “Nothing,” she said, “will make a man out of you.”
When her rage cleared, she saw Jack rubbing his cheek. Taniqua was laughing and clapping her hands. Vito came out of his office and said, “Hey, Helen, what’s the matter? You on the rag or something?”
“I’m sick,” she said. “I’m leaving now. I won’t be in tonight.”
It was three minutes to one. She clocked out early and stomped up Las Olas, cursing Jack and her own gullibility. The rat. The black-hearted, black-haired creep. Cheating his own children. How low could a man go?
She noticed something wet on her cheeks. Tears? It couldn’t be. She was not going to cry over Jack. He wasn’t worth it. She stopped in front of a shop window to check for runny mascara. It was a shoe store, featuring a clever display of red high heels.
Red heels. She still had the red heel she found in Hank Asporth’s house. It was in her purse. She stopped at a pay phone to call Savannah and told her about her date with Joey the Model.
“I found this shoe tossed in a closet. It’s a cherry-red spike heel. Size six with a scalloped edge and a scuff on the toe colored in with red ink.”
“That’s it,” Savannah said. “My sister used that ink trick ever since she saw the Julia Roberts’ movie Pretty Woman. Drove me crazy. Laredo would borrow my good shoes and scuff them up. She was too lazy to polish them. I used to yell at her all the time. Guess I won’t have that problem any more.”
There was a sad silence.
“Laredo loved those red shoes,” Savannah said. “She would never have left that shoe behind at Hank’s house. It won’t convince the police, but I know she was there. It’s time to get in touch with that Kristi person. What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Looks like I’m tormenting Kristi.”
“I can’t get away until about three. I’ll pick you up at your place.”
The call to Savannah cured Helen of any lingering grief about Jack Lace. Savannah had real problems. Helen did not. She was lucky. She hadn’t dated Jack. She hadn’t slept with him. He wouldn’t be back to the boiler room. What was the big deal?
I was a fool once again, she thought. Why am I such a bad judge of men? Is that all that’s out there?
There’s Phil. Your next-door neighbor who looks like a rock star, a small voice whispered. She tried to ignore it.
It was one thirty when she reached the Coronado. Cal, Fred and Ethel were having another slamfest by the pool. Helen caught the words, “We would have never been allowed . . .”
Helen waved at them, then knocked quickly on Margery’s door before they could trap her in a conversation. It was a fine day, a sunshiny seventy-two degrees. Her landlady was sitting in her kitchen with the blinds pulled, avoiding the dreary threesome by the pool.
“You want a bologna sandwich with ketchup? It’s all I’ve got in the house,” Margery said.
Helen thought of her lost lunch at the Delano, the exquisite plates, the fine wine. “Sure. But no whole-wheat bread. Bologna has to be served on white pillow bread.”
“Coming up, Julia Child,” Margery said. “You want salt-and-vinegar chips with that?”
“Why not?” Helen said. Why worry about love handles when she had no lover?
The bologna on pillow bread with Heinz ketchup was wonderful. It’s your childhood on a plate, Helen thought. Maybe the Delano should add it to the menu. Nah, they’d ruin it by making the chips out of sweet potatoes or something.
“I met Phil last night,” Helen said, taking another bite of her sandwich. “You knew he was no pothead, didn’t you?”
“Of course. Do you think I’d rent to a drug user?”
“Why not? You’ve rented to everything else,” Helen said.
“You’re just bitter about Fred and Ethel,” Margery said.
“You bet I am. It’s a perfect day, but I can’t sit by the pool with the temperance society out there. Admit it. You hate them, too.”
Margery sighed. “I should have known normal wouldn’t cut it in South Florida. I went to my lawyer and tried to get their lease broken, but they haven’t done anything wrong.”
“And they aren’t likely to,” Helen said. Her sandwich was disappearing fast.
“We’re stuck with them until March,” Margery said. “I won’t renew their lease. I promise.”
“Have you thought of an exorcism for 2C? The place is possessed.”
They stared morosely into space. Then it dawned on Helen she’d been adroitly steered off the topic of Phil. “He’s undercover, isn’t he? Who’s he with?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can
’t? Or won’t?”
“I keep my promises to you. I keep my promises to him,” Margery said.
Fair enough, Helen thought, as she munched her bologna.
“Is he married?”
“No.”
“Single? Divorced? Straight?”
“Divorced. Definitely straight. And much too dangerous for you.”
Helen left her potato chips untouched on her plate.
Chapter 17
“Promise me that you will not carry any oven cleaner,” Helen said. “I’m not doing hard time for Easy-Off.”
“No oven cleaner,” Savannah said.
“No guns, either,” Helen said.
“I hate guns,” Savannah said.
“Do you swear?”
“I swear on my sister’s grave, if she had one, that I do not have oven cleaner or a gun on me.” Savannah put her work-worn hand on her heart.
Helen studied her thin, freckled face. Savannah seemed serious. “Okay, I’ll go with you to see Kristi.”
She got into the belching, lurching Tank. The car seemed to have deteriorated since the trip to Debbie’s. It shimmied so bad at stoplights that Helen felt seasick.
“The Tank needs a bath,” Savannah said.
“A bath?” Helen said. “This car needs to be junked.”
“Careful. You’ll hurt its feelings. You must have noticed that a car runs better when you wash it. I parked the poor Tank under a tree, and the birds got it. It’ll run better after I clean it up.”
A red warning light popped on in the dashboard. Helen thought she’d better change the subject. “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. How do you know Kristi’s home?”
“I called half an hour ago and pretended to sell her a newspaper subscription. She told me to do something nasty. Is that what you go through all day?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know how you stand it.”
“No matter what they say, they can’t shoot me,” Helen said. “It’s your part-time job that scares me, working nights at a stop-and-rob on State Road 7.”
The Tank did a smoky cha-cha as they passed through the glass-brick pillars of the Palmingo Apartments. Cuddling in a coffin must pay well, Helen thought. Kristi’s building was a sleek white stucco and glass affair overlooking a palm-lined canal. White-clad couples played tennis. Bikinied men and women lounged by the pool. No one swam in its outrageously blue water. True Floridians never went in a pool.
Luckily, the building did not have a doorman. He would have never allowed the Tank to leak oil and transmission fluid in the parking lot.
Helen and Savannah checked the directory in the lobby. “She’s on the third floor. I’ll get us inside,” Savannah said. “She may recognize you and refuse to open up.”
Savannah stood in front of the door and knocked politely. She looked deceptively harmless.
The door opened a few inches. Helen saw one suspicious blue eye.
“Hi,” Savannah said brightly. “I’m collecting for the—”
“We don’t want any,” Kristi said, starting to slam the door.
“Oh, yes, you do.” Savannah hit the door so hard it smacked Kristi in the face. She pushed her way inside. Helen followed.
“You hurt me,” Kristi said, rubbing her face like a little kid. “I could get a black eye.” There was already a red mark. Kristi didn’t seem afraid. Maybe in her line of work, she was used to rough treatment.
“Your kinky customers would probably like that.” Savannah, freckled and stringy, towered over the lush little blonde.
Kristi’s hair tumbled down her shoulders. Her breasts threatened to spill out of her hot pink halter top.
“Who are you?” Kristi demanded, looking as fierce as her five-feet-four frame allowed. “Get out before I call the cops.”
“Go ahead and call them,” Helen said. “I’m sure they’d love to know you make your living doing the horizontal bop in a coffin. So would the IRS.”
Kristi went pale as death.
The white living room increased her corpselike color. It was done in Beach Bauhaus. The white overstuffed couches and love seats had swooping curved arms. The carpet, curtains and lamps were white. So were the silk flowers and plaster seashells on the coffee table.
The plaster seashells were the essence of the Beach Bauhaus style. The beaches were littered with real seashells, but Floridians adored fakes, and paid good money for them.
In the midst of this arctic wilderness, Kristi seemed small and scared.
“I was at the party last night,” Helen said. “I saw you in the back room.”
Kristi grabbed a white chair arm for support. Savannah took two steps forward. Kristi took one back.
“We want to know about my sister, Laredo,” Savannah said. “We heard she worked with you.”
“I don’t know anything about Laredo except she’s gone,” Kristi said. A lock of blond hair flopped in her eyes. She pushed it away defiantly.
“She’s gone, all right,” Savannah said. “She’s dead. And you’re going to tell me everything.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Kristi said.
Savannah made a buzzing sound. “Wrong! The correct answer is, ‘I thought she left on a trip.’ You just told me you know way too much.”
Savannah reached into her bottomless black purse and brought out a plastic bottle filled with a clear liquid. She stuck it in Kristi’s face. The dead-white woman whimpered.
“Savannah, you promised,” Helen said.
“I promised no guns or oven cleaner.
“This is ammonia and bleach,” she said to Kristi. “It forms a highly toxic chlorine gas. If I squirt it, you die.”
Kristi put her hands up to protect her face.
“We all die,” Helen said. “You brought your own chemical war.”
“Nope,” Savannah said, tossing her a white mask. “Put this on. I am trained in the use of household cleaning products.”
Helen fitted the mask over her face. She wasn’t sure how much protection it was, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Kristi looked frantically for some escape from the living room, but Helen and Savannah blocked the only exit.
“Sit down.” Savannah gestured toward the couch with the bottle. The white mask took the humanity from her face and the country softness from her voice.
Kristi started to tremble.
“I said, ‘Sit down.’”
Kristi sat on the puffy white couch. The love seat was covered with clothes. Helen wondered if Kristi had been sorting things for Goodwill. These outfits looked too sedate for a sexy young woman. Heck, they were too conservative for Helen. Their high necks, long sleeves and long skirts were more suitable for a grandmother on her fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Helen picked up a gray wool dress. It was slit down the back and had a brownish stain near the waist. Odd. Who would want that? Next, she examined a pale blue dress. It, too, was cut down the back.
Kristi moved uneasily and started to say something, then clamped her mouth shut.
“What’s going on here?” Savannah said. “Why are those clothes slit down the back?”
“I don’t know.” Kristi’s eyes darted like fish in a pond.
Helen picked up a scissors with a scrap of pale blue fabric stuck in the blades. “I think you know.” She sounded like an android in that mask.
Savannah had the spray bottle in Kristi’s face again. “I think you’re gonna tell me.”
Kristi hesitated. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead.
“They’re corpse clothes,” Kristi blurted.
“What?” Helen and Savannah said together.
“They were worn by dead people. They’re slit up the back, because that’s how you dress a corpse.”
Helen dropped the blue dress and wiped her hand on her pants. Now she was glad for the mask. “Where did you get them? Are you robbing graves?”
“I bought them from a funeral home. The families changed their mind before the bodies went on view.”
“What’s that mean?” Helen said.
“They decided the blue dress didn’t look good on Aunt Tillie, so they brought the yellow suit for her to wear instead. The family doesn’t take back the blue dress. They can’t. It’s been on a dead body. Someone who worked at the funeral home sold it to me.”
Helen was so creeped out, she could hardly look at the gruesome pile of clothes. Savannah was motionless. Her finger was still on the trigger.
“What do you do with it?” Helen said.
“Corpse clothes go for major money,” Kristi said. Helen studied her pale face. The mouth was pinched. The eyes were hard and shiny as coffin handles. “Some guys like a woman to wear corpse clothes when they do her.”
That was kinky even for Florida.
“I can’t believe funeral homes make all these mistakes.” Helen pointed to the pile of slit dresses.
Kristi shrugged, as if she didn’t care what Helen believed.
“You’re not telling us the whole truth.” Savannah pointed the spray bottle at Kristi’s hard blue eyes.
“Not my eyes. No, please,” Kristi pleaded. She was ghost white. “I’ll tell you. I only bought one real dress worn by a dead person. I made the others myself.”
“You counterfeit corpse clothes?” Helen said.
“I have to. The demand is greater than the supply. Besides, buying corpse clothes is risky. A funeral director could lose his license if he’s caught. So I go to the resale shops and buy good secondhand clothes. I never pay more than thirty-five dollars. I slit the dresses up the back. That’s what I was doing when you knocked on the door.”
“What are those stains?” Helen said, pointing to the brown spot on the back of the dress.
“They’re supposed to be formaldehyde. Sometimes it, you know, leaks from the bodies. The freaks pay extra for that. I stain some clothes with unscented hair spray and food coloring and say it’s formaldehyde. People don’t know what formaldehyde looks like.
“My biggest sellers are the white lace dresses. I get a thousand dollars for those, twelve hundred if they’re stained.” She sounded proud of herself.
“What’s the big deal with white lace—a bridal thing?”