by Elaine Viets
“Nice shirt,” drawled a man’s voice. It was Daniel. “Is that Elvis with an American flag? Very patriotic.”
Helen blushed. Then she realized she wasn’t wearing any underwear and blushed more. The T-shirt was long enough to cover the vital areas, but she was standing barefoot and pantieless in front of the most gorgeous man in South Florida.
Naturally, he had to be dressed. Daniel was wearing a perfectly tailored navy blue uniform with official-looking red patches on his bulging biceps. Helen thought he looked even better in his uniform than he did in his gym shorts.
“Nice uniform,” she said. A new record. Now she’d said two coherent words to Daniel.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m off to work. See you later.”
Daniel was working on a sunny day, Helen thought, when many single men would be heading for the beach or the bar. But Daniel was different from your average South Florida single man. He had ambition.
She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was only seven-thirty. She didn’t have to go to work yet. She went back to her lumpy bed. It squeaked loudly, but it squeaked for her alone.
Daniel is perfect, she thought. Absolutely perfect.
Too bad he already had the perfect girlfriend. Helen remembered Wonder Woman in the glow-in-the-dark bra and sighed.
I can’t compete with a woman who looks like that, she thought. The perfect man is one flight up, and he might as well be a thousand miles away. No, a thousand miles would be better. Then I wouldn’t know he existed. Daniel is handsome, hardworking, and polite. He’s too good to be real, except he is. I don’t have a chance with that man.
But Helen’s mind would not stay on the divine Daniel. She was filled with a nameless dread. It grew larger and larger and would not go away, not even at work. Nothing bad happened at Juliana’s. In fact, Thursday passed swiftly and pleasantly with her favorite customers, and the cash register rang merrily.
But Helen was afraid, and she did not know why. The fear grew all day, sitting on her spirit like some dark unnamed monster.
By Thursday night, the fear had a name: Christina.
Did Christina really arrange Desiree’s death? Helen had to know. She could not work for a murderer. She would mention Desiree’s death first thing Friday when she came back. She could tell by Christina’s reaction if she was guilty.
If Christina really killed Desiree, then she would quit on the spot and go to the police. Unless quitting would get her killed, too. Maybe she should continue working there until the police arrested Christina.
Which was more dangerous: staying or quitting? Helen didn’t know.
All she knew for sure was Christina would be back tomorrow, and with her would come chaos.
Chapter 16
Helen had dreaded this morning for a whole week. It was the day Christina came back to work.
Then something worse happened: Christina did not show up.
Helen opened the store by herself at nine-thirty. Christina is caught in the Third Avenue Bridge traffic, Helen told herself. She had been held up as much as twenty minutes by that blasted drawbridge. Nothing made Helen feel more like a wage slave than sitting in traffic waiting for some billionaire’s hundred-foot yacht to sail under the lifted bridge.
At ten a.m., Helen decided that Christina had been delayed in an accident on I-95. The highway was notorious for bad driving. Everyone on it was either eighty going twenty or twenty going eighty. She turned on the stockroom radio and listened to the news and traffic. No accidents.
At ten-thirty she realized Christina had overslept. She had turned off the alarm and gone back to sleep. Helen called Christina’s home phone. It rang and rang in that echoey way that happens only in an empty home. Helen called Christina’s cell phone. She got a generic recording: “The subscriber you have called does not answer. Please try your call again. Message DH124.”
At eleven o’clock, she called the store’s Canadian owner, Gilbert Roget. He gave her some sensible advice.
“Are you there alone, Helen? Then stay at the store until six and close up. Go by Christina’s place tonight, and see if she’s sick. If no one answers, call the police and report her missing. And get that girl, what’s her name, Tara, back working at the shop.”
Helen had downplayed the trumped-up robbery to Mr. Roget. He’d shrugged it off. He thought America was a violent place, anyway. No damage was done, nothing was taken. It was no big deal.
Helen hoped Tara would return. Actually, she hoped she wouldn’t need Tara. Suddenly, she wanted Christina back. Helen wanted everything to be the way it was when she first started working at Juliana’s. But she knew that was not possible.
“Mr. Roget, I’ll be glad to check on Christina, but I don’t have a car.”
“Then take a bus,” Gilbert Roget said. “I’ll reimburse you for the fare.”
You’re all heart, Helen thought. Christina lived somewhere in Sunnysea. A bus ride would take most of her evening. But she was too worried about Christina to argue with the penny-pinching store owner.
“Do you know Christina’s address?”
“No, but my secretary does. I’ll have her call you back.”
The secretary said Christina lived at One Ocean Palm Towers in Sunnysea Beach.
“Are you sure?” Helen said, surprised.
“Yes, in 2200P. That’s the penthouse.”
The penthouse? Those started at two million dollars. Any high-priced high-rise in South Florida had to have one of these words in its name: One, Ocean, Palm, or Towers. When the first expensive high-rise was built on Sunnysea Beach, the developers used all four of the magic words. They needed them to combat Sunnysea’s down-at-heels image. The funky little beach town was mostly 1950s motels, T-shirt shops, bars, and offbeat beach houses. One Ocean Palm Towers was the first grand high-rise condo development in Sunnysea. Those who loved the little beach town were afraid it would not be the last.
After she locked up for the day, Helen walked home. She found Peggy and Pete the parrot in their usual after-work spot by the pool.
“I’ll be glad to drive you to Christina’s,” Peggy said. “I’ve wanted to get a closer look at One Ocean Palm Towers, anyway. That’s where Pete and I will move when I win the lottery.”
Helen noticed that Peggy said “when” she won—not “if.” Pete went back to Peggy’s apartment with an indignant squawk. Then Peggy and Helen piled into the little green Kia.
Christina’s place was twenty minutes and several million dollars away from the Coronado. The marble sign announcing One Ocean Palm Towers was bigger than Helen’s apartment. It was surrounded by a forest of palm trees and pricey plants. They drove past a fountain the size of a swimming pool, pushing up a regal plume of water.
“How does the manager of a dress shop live here?” Peggy said.
“Good question,” Helen said. “Christina only makes around eighteen thousand a year.”
“This looks like about a hundred years,” Peggy said.
“One hundred eleven and change,” Helen said. She hadn’t completely lost her number-crunching skills. “Christina also makes a commission, but that wouldn’t cover the monthly maintenance fees on this place.”
“Maybe Christina inherited some money,” Peggy said.
“In that case, why work at Juliana’s at all?”
At the entrance, Peggy started to park the little green Kia between a vintage Jaguar and a silver Mercedes when a doorman came running out. He directed her around the back to the service parking. The Kia wound up next to a plumber’s van.
Even the back parking lot had a stunning view of the ocean. Peggy and Helen watched the wild waves crash on the private beach for a moment. Christina could not afford this ocean view even if she skimmed a thousand dollars a week from Juliana’s, Helen thought. If she was arranging murders for hire at three thousand each, she’d still have to wipe out half of Broward County. What else had Christina been up to?
Nothing good, Helen decided.
The magnificent m
arble front with its vigilant doorman was for show. The service entrance door was propped open with a brick. Two Hispanic men in khaki stood outside it, smoking. They nodded politely when Helen and Peggy walked past them into the back entrance. The decor was grimy cinderblocks and unpainted concrete.
“The bucks stop here,” Peggy said. “Want to take the service elevator to the penthouse?”
“Let’s go around to the front entrance and see if we can talk to a receptionist,” Helen said. “Maybe he’ll know when Christina is supposed to return.”
The doorman looked at Peggy’s flip-flops and cutoffs the same way he’d viewed her car. Fortunately, Helen was still wearing her Ungaro suit. He let the women approach the reception desk.
The lobby was slick with shiny polished marble. Helen felt like she was walking across a skating rink. The manager on duty was a pale blond creature in a black suit. Helen was not surprised that his name tag said Mr. White. He looked down his nose at her and said, “Miss Christina left no special instructions with us as to when she expected to return from her vacation.”
“She told me she’d be back at work today, and she didn’t show up. I’m concerned about her. So is the owner of Juliana’s, Mr. Roget.” Helen hoped dropping a rich man’s name would help her get taken seriously.
“I understand your concern, madam,” Mr. White said, “but I cannot open her door.”
“Can you let us go up and at least ring her doorbell? What if she’s sick and needs help?”
“Each One Ocean Palm Towers unit is equipped with a security system and has a panic button in every room, including the lavatories,” Mr. White said. “If Miss Christina needed personal aid, she would contact us. However, to set your mind at ease, I will go up with you and ring her doorbell.”
The elevator was paneled like a lawyer’s office. They rode to the twenty-second floor in silence. The doors opened on a dramatic view of the ocean, green and turquoise until it faded into the darker evening sky.
“Wow!” Helen and Peggy said together. Mr. White’s nostrils pinched in disapproval. People who went to the twenty-second floor were not supposed to be so easily impressed. They stopped in front of white-paneled double doors with a discreet brass plaque that read “2200.”
“Well, there are no newspapers piled up on her doorstep,” Helen said.
Mr. White looked scandalized. “We would not permit that,” he said. He solemnly pressed the doorbell, and they heard the chime echo through the apartment. But there were no footsteps.
“Ring it again,” Helen said. Mr. White did. Again, there was nothing but the sound of chimes. Then Helen thought of Thumbs, the cat Christina loved so fiercely.
“Do you know what happened to her cat?” she asked.
“I’m sure she made private arrangements for the care of her animal,” Mr. White said. “Now, if you’re quite finished.”
There was nothing they could do but take the elevator down to the vast marble lobby and walk back out to Peggy’s little car.
“I don’t like this,” Peggy said.
“Me either,” Helen said. “Christina has never missed a day of work in her life. If she isn’t there, then . . .” Helen stopped, afraid to go on.
“She’s dead?” Peggy finished.
“Well, something’s very wrong,” Helen said, unwilling to jump to that conclusion yet. “Mr. Roget said if I didn’t find her at home, I should file a missing person report.”
She reported Christina missing to a bored Sunnysea Beach cop. He told Helen that Christina was an adult and could come and go as she pleased. The police could not do anything until Christina had been missing at least forty-eight hours.
“But she was due back today, and she missed work,” Helen said.
“Was she known to be depressed?” the officer asked.
“No, Christina was looking forward to her vacation.”
“Was she in the process of a messy divorce, or did she have arguments with her spouse?”
“She was single,” Helen said. “I thought I said that. Her boyfriend just broke up with her, but he didn’t threaten her or anything.”
“He have any history of prior physical assaults?”
“Joe? No!”
“Has the subject ever extended a vacation before?”
“No,” Helen said.
The cop droned on. “Did she make her return flight? Did she, for that matter, make her flight out?”
“I don’t know if she was flying anywhere,” Helen said.
“Where was she going on her vacation?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said, feeling foolish. “All I know is that Christina was eager to leave.”
“Then maybe, ma’am, she wasn’t eager to come back.”
Chapter 17
Another restless, sleepless night. Helen’s lumpy bed seemed to be stuffed with cabbages and bowling balls. Any attempt to find a more comfortable position set off a series of lonely squeaks.
At seven a.m., Helen gave up and got up. She told herself she was getting up an hour early because she wanted breakfast by the pool. But she knew what she really wanted: to see Daniel in his dashing blue uniform.
Helen felt guilty thinking about Daniel Dayson. Christina was missing, maybe dead, and she was carrying on a school-girl crush. But I can’t spend all my time worrying about Christina, she told herself.
A disapproving inner voice lectured her: “Didn’t Rob and Cal teach you anything? You know you have terrible taste in men.”
But Cal was a harmless mistake, the kind a woman made when she jumped back into the dating pool. She didn’t sleep with him or anything. She lost a little money, that’s all. And Rob? The pain of Rob’s betrayal seemed to be receding in the February sunshine. It was winter in St. Louis, and it was easy for her heart to stay frozen there. But South Florida was so lush and romantic and most of all, warm, that things seemed possible.
Helen dressed carefully, spending extra time on her hair and makeup. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee. It was quarter to eight when she went outside. Margery and Peggy were at the picnic table under the coconut palms.
“You look nice this morning,” Peggy said, looking up from her paper.
“He’s already left for work,” Margery said. Helen flushed. How did her landlady know?
“Daniel is always gone by seven-thirty,” Margery said. Her shorts set was covered with purple butterflies. Margery pointed to a white bakery box and a stack of paper napkins on the picnic table. “Want a chocolate croissant?”
Helen did. Peggy took another.
Peggy was dressed for her receptionist’s job in a parrot-green pantsuit. She looked like an exotic bird or Pete’s big sister. The wild parrots were screeching in the palms overhead, taunting Pete. He ignored them. Pete had no interest in his kind, just as Peggy had no interest in the male species. They were content with each other.
Peggy pointed to her morning paper. “A guy in Hallandale won the lottery,” she said. “Twenty-three million dollars. He’s thirty years old, and he’ll never have to work again. He’s going to take the whole thing in a lump sum, so he’ll get about half, something like twelve million.”
“Why would he do that?” Margery said. “Why not take the payout over thirty years? He’ll get the whole twenty-three million, plus interest. It’s more money that way. I could understand someone my age taking it in a lump, but he’s a young guy.”
“No, he did it right,” Peggy said. “All the experts say the figures work out in your favor if you take it in a lump sum and invest it. That’s how I’m going to do it when I win.”
She was serious, Helen thought. “Which lottery game do you play?” she asked.
“Lotto. It has the big jackpots.”
“How many tickets do you buy each week?” Helen said.
“Three a day. Twenty-one dollars a week.”
Helen whistled.
“That’s not much,” Peggy said. “There’s a guy who comes into the store and buys sixty dollars in tickets every
week, and those are nothing but scratch-offs.”
“If you invested that money, you’d have something,” Margery said.
“If I win the lottery, I’ll really have something,” Peggy said. “Think about it. A guy right in Hallandale won twenty-three million. The good luck is getting closer. Look at the smile on that man’s face. That’s the same smile you’re going to see on mine.”
She passed Helen the paper. But Helen never got to the photo of the grinning winner. She was distracted by the headline on the opposite page: “Body of Unidentified Woman Found in Barrel in Biscayne Bay.”
The story began, “Miami Palms police are seeking information to identify the body of a woman found dead in a barrel in Biscayne Bay. The barrel was pulled from the water yesterday by . . .”
Helen could hear Peggy and Margery saying, “Helen, what’s wrong? Helen, are you OK?” but she couldn’t stop reading. The story continued:
“The woman was between thirty and forty years old, with shoulder-length blonde hair, and was wearing a black pants suit, a police spokesperson said. The deceased was described as being of slight build and about five foot three inches tall. Police said the woman is believed to have been dead about a week. The deceased died as the result of blunt trauma, sources said. Persons with information should contact . . .”
The page blurred. “Oh, my God, it’s Christina,” Helen said. “She’s dead. It’s right here in the paper.”
“Where?” Margery said, grabbing the paper. Helen pointed to the article with a shaky finger. Margery read it and said, “The dead woman was small, skinny, and blonde. That description would fit half the women in South Florida.”
But Helen was having trouble breathing. “No, it’s her. I know it. It’s horrible. She was beaten to death. That’s what ‘blunt trauma’ means. There’s a number to call. Margery, can I use your phone?”
“Sure, dear,” Margery said. The landlady put an arm around Helen’s waist and helped her to her apartment, as if Helen were an invalid. “Now, calm down. Don’t get so upset. If she’s really dead, it happened awhile ago, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Take some deep breaths. There. Feel better? You don’t know anything for sure yet. It still might be someone else. Lots of women wear black in South Florida.”