by Elaine Viets
Helen knew she could not walk through the front door. She went around back to the service entrance, a mean little area with a cheap screen door. She could hear someone screaming in the steamy kitchen.
“I’m looking for Steve,” she said to a man in a white chef’s coat carrying a silver coffee urn.
“Follow the shrieks,” he said in a weary voice.
Steve was dressing down two waiters. The reprimand sounded worse in his harsh New York accent. “I don’t want to ever see that again, understand?”
The waiters nodded, too scared to speak, and backed out of the room.
Steve was small and dark and needed a shave. He pointed to Helen and said, “You! Don’t stand there like a potted plant. Are you the new bartender?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Speak up,” he said. “Are you a woman or a mouse?”
“I’m somebody here to work, not take abuse,” she said.
Steve broke into a smile. “Good-looking and sassy. I like that. You’ll do.”
He planted her at a service bar by the swimming pool. It was landscaped to look like a jungle pool with a waterfall.
Ferns and pink orchids grew along the waterfall. Thick pink clouds of frilly blossoms bloomed alongside the paths. Pink-flowered vines dripped from the trees.
Long serving tables were covered with crisp pink cloths and lavish hors d’oeuvres. Huge bouquets of pink roses were being carried outside. Candles were lit. An ice sculpture dripped. A busboy brought Helen a tub of ice. She checked out the booze. No box wine here. The Mowbrys served only the finest wine and liquor.
The first guests trickled in half an hour later. By eight, the party was in full swing, and Helen was pouring drinks one after another. This was a thirsty crowd.
Brideport parties had people of breeding. In fact, it was all they talked about. As she scrambled for ice and bottles, Helen heard a white-haired man in a yachting jacket say, “We really need better birth-control programs at the schools for the great unwashed. Those people have too many children.
Indiscriminate breeding, I tell you. They all grow up to be Democrats.” The man said “Democrat” the way others might say “child molester.”
Helen thought his three double scotches made him talk that way.
But a face-lifted brunette in red sparkles had had only one white wine when she said, “How can we encourage people like us to have more children? I know they’re terribly expensive, but people of our class must understand their duty. Otherwise, we’re going to be overtaken by the wrong sort.”
Her balding companion nodded sagely and downed another neat bourbon.
A hatchet-faced man with dyed black hair ordered two red wines and told the man next to him, “There must be some way to sterilize Chelsea Clinton, so the Clinton genes are not passed on.”
Helen nearly dropped a full bottle of club soda at that one, but caught it before she was spotted as a Democrat sympathizer.
Otherwise, it was a typical, dull charity party. Helen had attended too many when she’d been in corporate life. The women were mostly blond and thin. The men were mostly overweight and over fifty. A bored photographer from the local paper snapped pictures of the partygoers and said they would run in a week or two. The fundraising chair gave a long speech thanking everyone, “including our gracious host, Dr. Mowbry and his beautiful wife, Mindy.” Whatever kind of doctoring Mowbry did, it must have paid well. There was lots of booze, decent hors d’oeuvres and a mediocre band that played tired old songs like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Helen wondered why rich people liked stodgy music.
The men flirted with her and asked if she was staying for the second party. Helen said, “Not this time.” Some seemed genuinely disappointed.
Helen thought that was odd. No one noticed the servers at parties. The women were suitably cold, but she saw few of them at her bar. The men mostly did drinks duty. That was fine with Helen. These guys handed out five-and ten-dollar tips like business cards. One short, chubby old man with a white toothbrush mustache gave her a twenty, “So you’ll be sure to remember me at the second party.”
“Oh, I couldn’t forget you, sir,” Helens said, stuffing the money in her pants pocket. Not in that getup. The old guy was wearing a tux with a shamrock bow tie and cummerbund.
The bar opposite hers, manned by a blonde named Kristi, was even busier than Helen’s. Kristi offered the same drink choices as Helen, but the men lined up as if she was giving away vintage champagne. Her line was twice as long as Helen’s.
Kristi had a face like a doll’s, and it was just as expressionless. Her dyed blond hair was puffed up. So were her chest and lips. The enhanced hair, lips and breasts looked obvious and artificial to Helen. The guys didn’t seem to care.
Kristi was a silicone siren. Men longed to throw themselves on her rocky breasts.
Helen had never been to a party with such generous tippers. The rich usually hung onto every nickel. When another busty blonde came around with a tray of mini-quiches, six men slipped her bills. The chubby old man gave her a fat wad and said again, “So you’ll be sure to remember me at the second party.”
Poor old fellow must have a real ego problem. Probably felt he was nothing without his money, Helen thought.
While the fundraising chair gave her speech, the booze traffic slacked off. That’s when Debbie, the long-haired waitress from Gator Bill’s, showed up at Helen’s service bar.
“Hi,” Helen said. “I didn’t know you worked here, too.”
Debbie pulled her silk curtain of hair forward to hide her face and said in a low, angry voice, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to find Laredo.”
“I told you, she left town,” Debbie said. She tilted her head and her amazing hair fell back off her face. Helen looked into those pale blue eyes. They were hard as marble.
Were they also shadowed with fear?
“I don’t believe you,” Helen said.
“Then believe this. You don’t know what you’re getting into. If you have any sense you’ll get out fast.”
A few heads turned their way. Some men stared. Debbie smiled fetchingly in their direction and left, her white-blond hair rippling down to her waist.
Helen wondered what could be threatening at this party for middle-aged rich people? By ten o’clock, many of the guests had said goodnight and drifted away.
Helen’s shift was over at eleven. Steve came by her station and said, “Don’t bother to clean up. Kristi’s going to take over here.”
Steve counted out her pay in cash. “You did a nice job, he said. “I heard a lot of good comments about you tonight.
Call me again for another gig.”
Helen liked the feel of two hundred dollars in her hand.
She had another one-fifty in tips. There was no downside to this job, except that her feet hurt. But for three hundred fifty bucks, she could stand that.
She walked out the grimy back entrance in a green glow.
Already she was dreaming about spending her bartending money. Maybe she could finally get her car fixed. The rusting heap needed eight hundred dollars in repairs, but she could make that in three weekends. Look at the money she had right in her hands. She ought to put it in her purse. It wasn’t safe walking around with that much cash, even in Brideport.
Helen stopped dead. She didn’t have her purse. She’d left it in the service bar.
Helen felt like a complete fool. Well, at least no one would notice another bartender at the party. She could get her purse and get out again. She ran the block back to the Mowbry mansion. No one saw her slide into the dismal back entrance and along the kitchen hall to the pool. There was no one at her service bar under the palm tree. Helen pulled her purse out of a cubbyhole in the bar. Fresh tubs of ice and glasses had been put out. New lemons and limes had been cut.
It was a long trip home on a lot of water. Helen stopped in the closest bathroom. The Mowbrys’ place seemed to have about twelve on the firs
t floor. It had no lock, but Helen figured a shut door was enough. She was washing her hands when a man opened the door. She’d seen him at her bar before. A scotch on the rocks who saw himself as a player, with too-tanned skin, too-white teeth and too much gold jewelry.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“You’re excused.” He exposed the teeth. “I saw you earlier tonight. You must be new. Wanna get it on?”
“Do I what? I don’t even know you. Get out of here.”
“Hey, why are you so upset? You’re here for the second party, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I came back because I forgot my purse.”
“Oops, sorry.” He oozed out the door.
Oops? What was going on at the second party? Helen slid along behind the ferns and frothy pink flowers for a look. At first, she had trouble believing what she saw. A topless Kristi now stood behind Helen’s bar, her giant white breasts like mounds of snow.
The same waitresses were walking around with the same canapés, but now the women were topless. Helen thought the half-naked servers looked bizarre instead of sexy. They also looked cold. Some had goose bumps bigger than their nipples.
But it wasn’t just the servers who were half-naked.
The blond women guests had shed their dresses and were parading rail-thin bodies in expensive thong underwear.
Helen did not want to estimate what those La Perla panties cost per square inch.
The men, alas, were in an equal state of undress. Florida’s male movers and shakers wobbled like Jell-O in a hurricane.
When they weren’t grabbing canapés, they had their hands on the waitresses’ breasts.
The chubby old man in the green cummerbund now had on only his shamrock boxers. The busty blond server was on her knees before him. Her tray of mini-quiches was abandoned on a stone bench.
All around on chairs, couches and tables, people were entwined in positions Helen had never seen in the want ads.
It was a charity swingers party.
Chapter 8
Helen expected to feel shocked. Actually, she was rather proud.
Trust South Florida to find a way to liven up one of the deadliest events in the social calendar. Naked fat men and skinny women weren’t her thing, but an orgy was an interesting way to raise money for charity.
As she boarded the waiting water taxi, Helen wondered what other charities the swingers had sponsored: Single mothers? A sperm-donor bank? A school for delinquents?
The possibilities were endless. The advantages were obvious. There were no speeches at an orgy, and nobody wanted their name read out loud for any reason. Of course, the thank-you notes might be a problem. “Dear Mr. Harrison-Smythe: Thank you for your contribution to the fifth annual charity ball....”
The water taxi hit the wake of a passing yacht and Helen got a face full of cold, dirty water. Ugh. Her hair was soaked.
It was what she needed to shock her back to reality. This wasn’t funny. Laredo had been a waitress at the swingers’ party shortly before she disappeared. She’d asked Tammy, the Gator Bill’s bartender, for change for five one-hundred-dollar bills. Five hundred dollars was the amount Helen had been offered to work the second party. Now she knew why the party paid so much. She’d have to do more than serve drinks.
How was she going to tell Savannah her little sister was a topless waitress—and maybe worse?
Helen remembered the blond server kneeling before that silly old man in the shamrock shorts, and his wad of tip money. She hoped Savannah would never find out. But Savannah wasn’t stupid. She’d know pretty young women didn’t get that kind of money for being good little girls.
Cold water from her drenched hair slowly dripped on her shirt. Her teeth chattered, and she shivered in the cool night breeze. The water taxi was open as a veranda. She wished she’d brought a jacket.
Poor Savannah. Her baby sister was murdered, and now her memory was being killed, too. Helen saw once more the pinup photo of the flirty little blonde. Laredo looked so eager, so willing to do anything to get out of that drab trailer park. Her sweet desperation would attract rich old men the way honey draws bees—or WASPs.
Important people went to those parties. Fort Lauderdale’s money men and women frolicked in their overpriced underwear. They were served a sea of alcohol, and at the second party, possibly drugs. People let their guard down in those situations.
Had Laredo seen or heard something that got her killed?
Some illegal business deal, some improper political alliance?
Had she tried to blackmail someone? Just being seen at that second party was enough to ruin most of those guests. Soccer moms or city councilmen, no one would want their names connected to that charity affair.
Helen was bone cold by the time the water taxi bumped against the dock behind Las Olas. Her shirt stuck to her like she’d been in a wet T-shirt contest. The short walk home did nothing to warm her. No one was sitting out by the pool at the Coronado on this chilly night. The only sign of life was Phil’s cloud of pot smoke. The man was a perpetual party of one.
Back in her apartment, Helen took out her money again and counted it on the bed. Her cat, Thumbs, jumped up and rolled around in the pile of bills, making the money crackle.
Yesterday, she would have joined him, laughing at her good fortune. Now she lifted her cat off the bed, quickly bundled up the cash, and stuffed it in a couch pillow. It was blood money. She wanted it out of her sight.
Helen slept badly that night. Thumbs complained loudly at her restlessness. Most nights, he slept peacefully at the foot of her bed. But not tonight. Once she rolled over abruptly and sent him spinning off the bed. Then she dropped into a twitchy sleep and kicked the poor cat. He nipped her heel.
At six A.M., she gave up, got up, made coffee and bought a newspaper. She was glad it was Sunday, her day off. She took the paper back to bed. Thumbs burrowed playfully under the pages and tore into the funnies. He was enjoying the paper.
Helen could not read or fall back asleep. She tried to clean house, but she couldn’t keep her mind on it. At nine A.M., she could put it off no longer: She found a pay phone and called Savannah Power.
As the phone rang, Helen prayed she wouldn’t be home.
But Savannah picked up on the third ring. Helen told her about last night, leaving out only the old man in the shamrock shorts. It was a smart move. Savannah didn’t make the connection that Laredo might have been passing around more than the canapés.
“Your Saturday night was more interesting than mine, Savannah said. “My boyfriend came over and we watched TV until we fell asleep. Must be getting old. Ten years ago, we would have torn each other’s clothes off.”
Helen didn’t want to go there. She felt distinctly nun-like after stumbling into that orgy last night.
“You know what gets me?” Helen said. “Debbie made a special trip over to my bar to warn me off. She sounded angry. But I think she was also afraid. That woman knows something. We’d better have a talk with her, and not at Gator Bill’s, either.”
“No place like home,” Savannah said.
“Do you know where she lives?” Helen said.
“No, but the Gator Bill’s servers get off at eleven on Sunday nights. That’s when I used to pick up Laredo. Most of them are too tired to party on Sunday. We can probably follow Debbie straight to her home. I’ll pick you up about ten forty-five tonight.”
Savannah’s old brown beater showed up at the Coronado right on time, its engine knocking loud enough to wake everyone in the complex. No wonder Hank Asporth had spotted Savannah tailing him, Helen thought. She wondered why it took him four hours.
The car lurched out of the parking lot. “The Tank has a little cold-start problem,” Savannah said, “but it’s a great car.”
Helen was afraid they wouldn’t let the noisy, battered Tank near the Gator Bill’s lot, but the attendant knew Savannah and waved her in.
“How’s that cute little sister of yours?” he said. “I haven’t
seen her around. Latched onto something better?”
“She’s in a much better place,” Savannah said, and for a minute Helen thought she was going to cry. But Savannah set her lean, freckled jaw and drove to the back of the lot.
Debbie was one of the last servers to come out the kitchen door. She was wearing her cheerleader’s uniform and talking to a Hispanic chef. The young man was so dazzled he could hardly get out a tongue-tied “Goodnight.”
“That’s her,” Helen said.
“Practicing her womanly wiles on that poor young man, Savannah said. “Look what she’s doing to him. You can tell she hasn’t the slightest interest in him. Woman’s got a definite mean streak.”
Debbie walked across the parking lot, round bottom twitching, long hair switching. She unlocked a purple Neon that looked like a rolling jelly bean, and pulled out onto Las Olas. They tailed her in the shaking, lurching Tank. Helen wondered why Debbie didn’t notice them.
About five miles later, the purple Neon abruptly swung into an apartment complex. It was a square white shoebox set in an asphalt parking lot. They saw Debbie pull into a spot marked “203.” When the lights came on in a second-floor apartment, Helen and Savannah got out of the car and tiptoed up the stairs.
“Let me get us inside,” Savannah whispered. “That little witch is going to talk or else.”
She sounded so menacing, Helen was afraid. “You aren’t going to do anything foolish, are you? You don’t have a gun?”
“I hate guns. I promise you, no guns.” Savannah patted her big black leather purse. Then she knocked on the door and said loudly, “Landlord! Open up! We’re having problems with electrical fires in the ceiling. We need to check your kitchen.”
Helen stepped back out of sight. She could hear someone unlocking the door. Debbie opened it slightly and said, “I’m OK. My smoke alarm hasn’t gone off.”
Savannah pushed her way inside the beige apartment.
Helen followed. When Debbie saw her, she said, “You! What are you doing here? I’m calling the cops.” She picked up a cell phone from the hall table.