by Elaine Viets
Phil announced that the car search was over. “What can they take with them?” he asked.
“They can keep the suitcases with their clothes,” Margery said. “But I’m confiscating all those tourist T-shirts. People think Florida is tacky enough without Fred and Ethel wearing those shirts back home.”
Margery also kept a citrus juicer and a blender, both in the original boxes. “Those are ours,” Fred insisted.
“Show me the receipts,” Margery said.
“I didn’t keep them,” he said.
“Then I keep these,” Margery said. “I’ll use them to make me some interesting drinks. Screwdrivers with fresh orange juice. Margaritas and strawberry daiquiris. Lighten up, Fred. Fresh fruit is good for you. Alcohol is a preservative.”
Fred and Ethel bristled like wet cats.
Finally, they were allowed to get in their car. “Don’t ever come back,” Margery said. “Do you understand?”
Fred and Ethel had all the expression of crash-test dummies. They nodded but said nothing. Fred started up the ghostly white car. The foggy night quickly swallowed it. Helen, Margery and Phil watched the crooked couple disappear.
“Whew, glad that’s over,” Margery said. “This thing is heavy.” She tossed the gun onto the concrete. It spun crazily, like a lethal party game. Helen and Phil leaped backward as the barrel pointed in their direction.
“Careful,” Phil said.
“It’s OK,” Margery said. “It’s not loaded. Never was. I don’t even keep bullets in the house.”
“Margery, that doesn’t make any difference. You have to treat every gun like it’s loaded.” Phil was a shade paler.
“I hate guns,” Margery said.
“Maybe you should start packing oven cleaner,” Helen said.
Chapter 23
Margery stood like a triumphant queen in her purple robe, with a crown of red sponge curlers. Her enchanted kingdom was restored. She had banished the trolls, Fred and Ethel. Her plundered treasures were back in apartment 2C.
The Coronado was in deep-night quiet. The other residents slept as if under a spell. White fingers of fog wrapped themselves around the palm trees and snagged on the bougainvillea spikes. The pool lights glowed, magical in the mist.
Phil gave a small, neat yawn, like a cat. Helen was afraid he would disappear into the fog, along with his wizard weapon. Phil had been invisible for more than a year. It could happen again. She blocked his way. “You owe me an explanation.”
“I don’t owe you anything. And I can’t tell you anything,” he said.
Helen could feel the heat from his bare chest. The odd, hazy moonlight turned his hair to spun silver
“Margery will vouch for me.”
Her landlady pulled her purple robe tighter to ward off the chill, then picked a loose curler from her hair. “Listen, Phil, if you told me, you can tell her. She’s in the middle of it, anyway. It’s better if she isn’t blundering about, causing more trouble.”
“Thank you for that vote of confidence,” Helen said, stiffly.
“Come back to my kitchen. We can get warm and talk,” Margery said. “I’ll make some coffee, unless you’d rather have a drink.”
They settled for decaf and warm brownies at Margery’s kitchen table.
“These brownies are terrific,” Phil said. “Are they homemade?”
He ate neatly. Helen’s ex-husband, Rob, had dropped crumbs all over the table and the floor, like a messy child in a high chair.
“Nuked them with my own two hands,” Margery said. “Now, why don’t you quit wasting your breath praising my box brownies?”
“I’m not sure where to start,” Phil said.
He was stalling. “Let’s pick up where we were the other night,” Helen said, helpfully.
“Good idea. Take off your top.” Phil grinned.
Helen flushed red with anger and disappointment. The man was a slob after all. “That was below the . . .”
“Belt?” Phil raised one eyebrow.
“That was beneath you.” Helen wished she didn’t find that eyebrow so sexy. She was suddenly aware she wasn’t wearing anything under her short robe. “You were a gentleman at the Mowbrys’ party. Now you sound like a pig.”
“Helen, since you were half-naked when you met the man, it’s difficult to take the high moral road,” Margery said.
“I was undercover,” Helen said.
Margery snorted like she’d run the Triple Crown. Phil started talking, possibly to cover his embarrassment—and Helen’s. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He apologized neatly, too, Helen thought. He could have said he was tired and it was late. But Phil gave no excuses. She liked that. Besides, he was cute when he was contrite.
“I’m undercover,” Phil said. “I can’t tell you the name of the government agency I’m working for, but I’m not a police officer or a federal agent. I’m an outsourced contractor.”
“What’s that?” Helen said.
“I’m a private eye. The government hired my firm to do undercover work.”
“I thought the federal government couldn’t hire detective agencies,” Helen said. “I remember reading that somewhere.”
“They can’t,” Phil said. “That’s why Pinkerton dropped the word ‘detective’ from its name years ago, so the Department of Defense could hire their agents as independent contractors. My company did the same thing. I investigate defense-contractor fraud.”
“For the DoD?” Margery asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Phil said.
He didn’t deny it, either, Helen thought.
“You’re an investigator?” The last thing Helen wanted was an investigator poking around, especially with her past. Phil misinterpreted her interest.
“Yes, but it isn’t as romantic as it sounds,” he said.
Helen wished he didn’t look so romantic, with his silver-white ponytail, bare chest and blue eyes. All the man needed was one of those full-sleeved pirate shirts. Actually, he could skip the shirt and stay the way he was.
“All that means is I generally work as a janitor in a small town in the middle of nowhere.”
“Aren’t you kind of noticeable with that hair?” Margery said.
“When I’m on a job, I cut it short and dye it no-color brown. Nobody notices me.”
Helen doubted that.
“My last investigation was in Rowland, Missouri. A company there makes copper components. The government suspected the copper was being siphoned off and sold elsewhere. They were right. I found out how the thieves did it after I worked there for six months as a janitor. They put the stolen copper in a Dumpster. Their accomplices picked it up late at night.”
“So what happened?” Helen said. “Did the crooks go to jail?”
Phil shrugged. “No. My investigation was buried in paper.”
“Were you disappointed?”
“They stopped ripping off the company,” he said. “That was my job and I did it. You get used to nothing much happening in government work.
“My next investigation took me to New Jersey. Some generator parts were getting sidetracked. I traced the shipments down to the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area. I thought it was going to be another version of the copper ring, but it was more than that. When the shipments were found, there was evidence that drugs had been in the packing cases.
“That led to undercover work down here for more than a year. The case has turned out to be complicated. I can’t give you the details, but the Mowbrys are involved. That’s why I was at the party. That’s why I wanted you to leave it.”
“They’re loaded,” Helen said. “Why would they be involved in an illegal operation? Melton Mowbry is a doctor and his family is richer than God.”
“Wrong,” Phil said. “The Mowbrys used to have money. It’s long gone, but most people don’t know that. Here’s something else they don’t know: Mindy Mowbry’s maiden name is Cavarelli.”
“She’s related to the lizard?” Hel
en said.
“Would you care to explain that?”
“There’s this scary-looking guy at the boiler room. I nicknamed him the lizard. He’s from the New York headquarters. When he visits our office, even Vito is scared of him.”
“Vito should be. That’s Carlo Xavier Cavarelli, Mindy’s first cousin,” Phil said. “The family is connected. Mindy got her Florida mansion the same way her granddaddy got his on Long Island—by breaking the law.”
“Does it involve those charity orgies?”
“The parties bring in big bucks. Some of the money goes to the charity. The rest goes to the Mowbrys for upkeep on that mansion.”
“Are they blackmailing people?” Helen studied Phil’s slightly crooked nose. She liked the way it veered to the left. She wondered why little flaws made a man more interesting.
“No,” Phil said. “They’re providing a recreational opportunity for broad-minded bigwigs. Remember when those schoolteachers got caught at a Broward County swingers’ club? There was a big scandal, even though the teachers were consenting adults doing something that was not illegal in Florida. Same thing here. Broward County’s movers and shakers can’t be caught at an orgy. They need a safe place to play. They pay well for that peace of mind.”
“Enough to buy the Mowbrys a mansion?”
“Not that much. The Mowbrys also have an interest in that boiler room where you sell septic-tank cleaner.”
“They’re laundering money, aren’t they?” Helen said.
Phil raised both eyebrows.
Margery smiled. “That’s my girl. She notices things, Phil.”
Phil said nothing.
“I bet you if Mowbry is a doctor, he’s involved in Medicare fraud,” Margery said. “It’s a big temptation for those doctors. He’d have to find a way to launder that money.”
Phil still said nothing, but his eyes bulged a bit. Helen figured Margery was on target.
“I know how they do it,” Helen said. “There was a near riot last payday. About five or six staffers, including this big biker, complained they’d been cheated out of their commissions. They’d been shorted two or three sales.”
“Don’t they have records?” Phil said.
“Yes, but not good ones. The telemarketers keep track of their own sales. But there are no sales logs or official company forms. Everybody writes down their sales on scrap paper. There is no supervisor’s signature or date to verify the sales.”
“Interesting,” Phil said.
“From the way everyone was complaining, I gather they were ripped off pretty regularly. But this time, the staff rebelled. They finally had enough. I thought they were going to beat up Vito. But then Mr. Cavarelli appeared. They all backed down when they saw the lizard. Even the big biker was afraid of him. I think Cavarelli had a gun.”
“So what did the staff do?”
“Nothing,” Helen said. “What can they do? The biker is an ex-con. Who else is going to hire him? The others are desperate for different reasons. Most people who work in boiler rooms are trapped. That’s why it’s a perfect place for money laundering. The bosses can put any numbers they want in the computer for our sales. They’re also stealing the staff’s commissions. All the telemarketers have are their scrap-paper lists. Those would be useless in court. At least I know now why Cavarelli was slithering around the Mowbry party.”
It made Helen sick, when she remembered the party. The Mowbrys’ obscene luxuries were stolen ten dollars at a time from single mothers and high school dropouts. She thought of Marina’s little boy, Ramon, playing on that filthy carpet. And Nick the junkie, borrowing quarters for orange soda to feed his sugar blues. She saw the other faces in the boiler room, young and old, listening to Vito’s pep talks, desperate to hang on to their last-chance jobs.
And then she saw something else: those papers on Vito’s desk.
“They’re scamming another way,” Helen said.
“The last time I was in Vito’s office, I saw some papers on his desk. Vito’s kind of a slob. He leaves things around. The papers said there were ninety people working in the boiler room and listed their names and addresses. But I know there are only sixty telemarketers. That’s how many phones we have. Vito created thirty phantom employees. I bet he gave them phony sales. That’s another way to launder money.”
“That’s the kind of information I need,” Phil said. “Looks like I’ll be working in the boiler room.”
“You can’t,” Helen said. “You’ve been to the Mowbrys’ parties. Cavarelli will recognize you.”
“Not when I cut off my hair and dye it brown.”
The thought of amputating that ponytail was painful to Helen.
“There’s no need,” she said. “I know what those papers look like. They’re probably still on Vito’s desk. We’re always being dragged into his office for pep talks. I can find them.”
“No,” Phil said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Don’t pull that big strong male routine on me again, Phil. I’m a telemarketer, and a good one. Besides, I’m already in place there.”
“You shouldn’t be,” Phil said. “What if the boiler room gets raided?”
“Exactly what I’ve been telling her,” Margery said.
Whose side was Margery on? First she praised Helen for noticing things on the job. Now she said it was too dangerous.
Helen shrugged. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Do you think Cavarelli cares what happens to you or anyone else? You said he was armed. He could start shooting. He could take hostages.”
Helen shivered at the thought of Cavarelli’s flat yellow eyes. She could feel his reptilian hands, dry and pebbly, as he clutched her for a human shield.
“You haven’t told Phil why you were bartending topless,” Margery said. “There’s two dead girls mixed up in this, Phil. Helen forgot to mention that.” She handed Phil a brownie the size of a potholder.
He didn’t touch it. He sat there, waiting for Helen to talk. His stillness was uncanny.
“I told you about Laredo,” Helen began. “I heard her die while I was making a call for Girdner Surveys.”
“Tell me again,” Phil said. “I want to hear it all from the beginning.”
She told him the whole story. Each time, it seemed a little less shocking to her. Phil listened with that full-body concentration, occasionally interrupting to ask a question. He believes me, Helen thought. If the police had shown this kind of interest, Debbie might still be alive.
Helen noticed something else. She thought there was a layer of loneliness under Phil’s professional manner, like a vein of something soft running through granite.
“And you think Laredo was killed for that computer disk,” Phil said, when she finished her story.
“Yes. I think she used it to blackmail Henry Asporth. She pushed too hard and he killed her. But that’s where Asporth made his mistake: He thought Laredo had the disk with her when she came to his house. Laredo was smarter than that. She hid it. Her last words were ‘It’s the coffee.’ Her sister Savannah and I can’t figure out what that means. The disk is supposed to prove that Hank was laundering money and mixed up in a fraud with some big names. Laredo called it her lottery ticket.”
“You’ve searched her home?”
“Yes. So has the killer.”
Suddenly, a thought slammed into Helen. “The break-in here. It was Fred and Ethel.”
“I thought we’d already established that,” Margery said, dryly.
“But that means I didn’t bring the killers to the Coronado. They don’t know about me. I’m safe. We’re safe.”
A weight the size of a stone sofa was lifted from her. She’d been sick with guilt since the break-in, thinking she’d exposed Margery and the Coronado to danger. But Fred and Ethel had trashed her apartment and taken her money. That fact put a different light on her investigation, too. She wasn’t on Hank Asporth’s radar. She was still invisible.
Margery yawned, but it was not dain
ty and catlike. She looked like a hibernating bear.
“It’s four o’clock in the morning,” she said. “I’m throwing you both out so I can get some sleep.”
“I have to be at work in four hours,” Helen said.
As she walked across the foggy courtyard with Phil, Helen was not tired. She didn’t want this night to end. Phil lingered, too. The hazy moon silvered his biceps and shimmered in his hair. Helen thought of that poem she had to memorize in high school, about the moon being a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. “A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.”
Phil looked like the highwayman.
“Can I have one last question?” she said in a whisper. They were standing so close, they were almost touching.
“You can have anything you want,” Phil said, and raised that eyebrow again.
Helen wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to wrap her in his big strong arms and rip her clothes off. She wanted to drag him into her bedroom and lock the door. Helen wanted sweaty, twisted sheets. She wanted beard-burn all over her body and cheap champagne for breakfast.
Her lips parted slightly. She tilted her head upward, so he could kiss her more easily. She was ready for mad, impulsive sex. She said the first thing that came into her head.
“What is that ray gun thing?”
Phil looked surprised. But not as surprised as Helen. Why the hell had she said that? Some alien had taken possession of her body.
Phil became all business.
“It’s a target pistol with a red-dot sight,” he said.
“That’s all? It looks like it could vaporize buildings.”
“It made Fred and Ethel disappear,” he said. “That was enough.”
Helen woke up the next morning on sweaty, twisted sheets. She’d tossed and turned all night after she went to bed alone.
Chapter 24
“So how did you two make out last night?” Margery said. “You were drooling over Phil like a pup with a porterhouse. That’s why I left you alone.”
Helen didn’t want to talk at seven thirty in the morning. She didn’t want to talk about Phil any time ever. She stepped around Margery and plowed toward the sidewalk, head down.