by Elaine Viets
Helen stood at the cash register like a soldier at her post, ringing up one purchase after another, until Juliana’s profited more than a hundredfold on the investment of three bottles of champagne. After the buying fever was over, the five women sat on the loveseats. Spent was the only word to describe them.
They were now deep into the third bottle of champagne. Niki had hiccups. She sent out a wave of perfume with each hic. Helen thought she’d better pop the question before it was too late.
“I’d like to propose a toast to Christina,” Helen said, lifting a champagne flute.
“She would have loved this,” Tiffany said, sounding the least bit teary. She finished the glass in one gulp.
“Don’t the police know anything about her . . . ”—Niki couldn’t bring herself to say “murder”—“passing?”
“They know the time of death,” Helen said. “They think she died sometime between Saturday evening and Monday morning.”
“That’s so sad,” Niki said. She gave an enormous hic and then a delicate belch. “I didn’t come back until Saturday. I mean the Thursday after she passed.” And interesting slip, Helen thought. Was the date of the carjacking and Christina’s murder on her mind? Or did she just say too much?
“I was in Greece,” Niki said. It sounded like Griss. “I was having a wonderful time while Christina was getting murdered.”
I’d better get a cab for Niki, Helen thought.
“I spent the whole time with Paulie, but I can’t say it was all that wonderful,” Tara said. The word came out “wunnerful.” She moved her head abruptly and slapped herself in the face with her long dark hair.
No way to prove that, Helen thought. And Tara was tipsy, too.
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Tiffany said, and finished off another glass. The champagne should have made her eyelids droop, but surgery had stretched them too tight. Instead, she looked slightly bug-eyed.
“Too bad they don’t give Oscars for best performance in bed,” Tara said. “Then the world would know what a good actress I am.”
Tara wasn’t tipsy. She was sloshed. Two cabs, thought Helen.
Brittney adroitly steered the conversation away from the slippery subject of sheets. “Where were you, Sharmayne?” she whispered. “Some place glamorous, I’m sure.”
“I was at the Frances Sneed Memorial Scholarship benefit in New York.”
“I saw your picture in the New York Times,” Tiffany said. “You wore your black Vera Wang. It looked super.”
“And where was—hic—your hic— your little puppy, Big Boy, while you were in New York?” Niki said.
Helen felt herself blush at the mention of the dog’s name. Sharmayne must have seen her face redden. She stared right at Helen and said, “I took him with me. I never board him at the vet’s. Big Boy doesn’t know he’s a dog. We stayed over until Monday.”
Sharmayne knows I’ve seen those blackmail photos, Helen thought. And she’s absolutely sober. The fear snakes in the pit of her stomach slithered nervously.
“How about you, Brittney?” Sharmayne said.
“I was at the Kensington art and jewelry sale in Boca,” Brittney whispered. She looked rather like a work of art herself. One of those lifelike people sculptures so popular a few years back.
“Ooh, that’s the three-day sale by invitation only,” Tara said.
“Right,” Brittney breathed. “I stayed at a hotel from Saturday night until Monday morning and shopped till I dropped.”
“Lucky you,” Tara said. “Three days of bargains.”
“Don’t you usually go to the Kensington sale, Tiffany?” Brittney said.
Tiffany’s eyes bulged like an ornamental goldfish’s. She tossed off another flute of champagne before she said, “No, my boyfriend, Burt, was out of town. His big saltwater aquarium broke Friday right after he left. Cracked right down the middle. I spent the whole weekend running around getting new saltwater fish and a new tank and everything. Took me till Monday to get things back together. It was awful. Flish fopping all over the carpet . . .”
The phrase “fish flopping” had defeated her pierced tongue.
“Did you go to Deep Blue Sea for your saltwater fish?” Brittney asked.
“No,” Tiffany hiccupped.
“Funny,” Brittney said, softly. “They have the best selection.”
“Well, I didn’t think so,” Tiffany said. She sounded flustered, and for a moment Helen caught a glimpse of the straggly-haired girl who swiped jewelry at the old folks home.
“So where did you buy your fish?” Brittney asked. The woman would have made a good prosecuting attorney.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Tiffany said, slurring her words.
She’s lying, Helen thought. And she doesn’t have an alibi.
At two o’clock, the champagne was drunk, and so were at least three customers.
“Time for me to reopen the store,” Helen said. “And your cabs are here. Tara, ready to go?”
“How am I going to explain to Paulie why I’m coming home in the middle of the day?” Tara said.
“Tell him you got the flu,” Helen said.
“The wine flu,” Niki giggled. Her perfume seemed to be getting stronger as she got drunker. “Gotta queshun. Christina leave anything for me?”
“Some papers?” Helen said, thinking of Niki’s arrest record squirreled away in the CD case.
“No, a tape. Wedding songs. I’d like it for sennimen—for stentimen—for pers’nal reasons.”
“I haven’t found any tapes,” Helen said.
“You wouldn’t lie to little Niki?” Her face crumpled like a wet Kleenex, and Helen was afraid she might cry. Time to go. Helen loaded Tara, Tiffany, and Niki into cabs, along with their mountains of purchases. Brittney said she could drive herself home. Helen had not seen her drink more than half a glass of champagne.
Sharmayne was completely sober. She was also the last to leave. She stood at the door, hip cocked at an aggressive angle, voice lowered to an icy threat.
“I know what you were doing,” Sharmayne said.
Then she slammed the green door in Helen’s face.
Chapter 27
Sharmayne was furious. Tiffany was lying. And nobody seemed to have a decent alibi. The champagne showing was a smashing success.
As soon as Sharmayne stalked out the door, Helen called Sarah. After all, this had been her idea. Helen wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could talk while she cleaned up.
“I’m not sure what I learned, but I’ve certainly stirred things up,” Helen said.
She was enjoying this. Helen was a natural detective—or busybody. That’s what they called women back home who watched the neighbors through their miniblinds and pumped the unwary for personal information.
“There’s hardly an alibi in the whole bunch. I can’t prove if Tara was with her boyfriend the whole time,” Helen said. “Brittney doesn’t have an alibi, either. She spent the weekend at an invitation-only sale in Boca. She could have slipped out any time and driven back to Lauderdale in forty-five minutes.”
Helen carried the empty champagne flutes to the stockroom. She went back for the third champagne bottle and dropped it in the recycle bin. It landed on the others with an audible clank.
“Nice dress shop you’re running there,” Sarah said. “Sounds like a bar.”
“If it was, I’d have some decent bar rags to clean off the table tops. Spilled champagne is sticky.” Scrubbing at the rings with paper towels seemed to smear them around.
“Sharmayne is furious with you, but she has an alibi, right? She was in New York.”
“But I don’t know that for sure,” Helen said. “If the benefit was Saturday night, Sharmayne could have come home Sunday and had plenty of time to murder Christina.”
“I can check Sharmayne’s story,” Sarah said. “I have a friend in the travel industry who owes me a favor.”
“What if Sharmayne used fake ID?”
“Unlikely these days. Even if she did, she was traveling with a German shepherd. That will show up in the computer. She couldn’t exactly put Big Boy in a carrier under the seat, could she?”
“What about Niki?”
“It’s even less likely she’d fake an international flight. I’ll check on her, too.”
Sarah called back in an hour. “Bingo,” she said. “Sharmayne traveled under her own name. She flew out of Fort Lauderdale at 10:22 a.m. Saturday and returned Monday at 4:57 p.m. The dog went by crate. No other hits for a woman passenger with a large crated dog during that time.
“Niki’s in the clear, too. She left for Greece the Thursday evening before Christina disappeared. She flew nonstop from Miami to Madrid, then to Athens. She did not come back until the Thursday after the carjacking. Christina was already dead.”
“She died the same day as Desiree. How’s that for irony?” Helen said. “We’re making some progress. Niki, Sharmayne and Venetia are definitely out.”
“Unless one of them hired a hit man,” Sarah said.
“Who would they go to—Christina?”
“No, most of them have mob boyfriends.”
“That’s why Christina was blackmailing them,” Helen said. “We’ve just gone in a circle. Those three are in the clear. I still have to deal with the lying Tiffany. I’ll call her in the morning when she sobers up.”
“Good idea,” Sarah said. “When she’s hungover and remorseful, she may tell you more.”
“After I close the store, I’ll take another look at those CDs. I’m starting to get somewhere. I’ll solve this yet.”
But Helen never got a chance. She was interrupted by a death threat. It was almost six p.m. when the phone rang.
“Juliana’s,” Helen said. No servile “How may I help you?” The store’s name was a statement and a challenge.
A muffled voice asked, “Where is it? Where’s the stuff?” “What stuff?” Helen said, puzzled. Was this a wrong number?
“You know,” the voice said. There was no menace to it, and that made the low, flat voice more frightening. Helen couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. Had the voice been mechanically altered?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helen said.
“Yes, you do, Helen,” the oddly inhuman voice said. It knew her name. The hair went up on the back of her neck. “I want it, or you’re next. You’ve got a week.”
“For what? Before what?” Helen was desperately trying to understand what this crazy person wanted.
“Before you get your own personal ride in a barrel.”
There was a click. The silence was so loud, Helen could hear her heart pounding. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Someone wanted to kill her.
Someone wanted to stuff her body in a barrel. She’d never be identified. She didn’t have any implants. She’d wind up buried in a potter’s field.
Shadows shifted in the store, and Helen jumped before she realized it was only the wind rustling the trees on Las Olas. The corners of the store seemed dark and menacing. The stockroom was a black cave filled with unspeakable secrets.
At six p.m., Helen locked the store and left. On the walk home she kept looking around nervously. A big white Lincoln with tinted windows was crawling down Las Olas right behind her. Helen slowed her pace. The car slowed down, too.
The Lincoln was following her. If she ducked down a side street, it could follow and run right over her. No one would see her die.
Helen had only one chance. When the light changed at the next corner, she crossed to the other side of the street. The car would have to make a U-turn to kill her. She’d run inside a shop and call 911. Helen wasn’t worried about getting hit while she crossed the street. The Lincoln was hemmed in by a UPS truck and a van.
As she crossed, she looked through the Lincoln’s windshield, hoping to identify the driver. The sight left her frozen in the middle of Las Olas—at least until the light changed and the UPS truck started honking.
The Lincoln was driven by a woman so small her white head barely cleared the steering wheel. She was old, but determined. No one was going to push her around. She refused to go more than ten miles an hour, no matter how much the cars behind her honked.
That was her hit-and-run killer? Helen felt ridiculous.
A palmetto bug as big as a bagel skittered over her foot. Helen gave a disgusted shriek. That startled an orange cat, and it ran out from behind a bush.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Her heart was racing.
Helen had brought this on herself. She’d stirred things up, spurred on by greed and fear. She wanted the financial ease twenty-five-thousand dollars would give her. She wanted Detective Dwight Hansel and Christina’s death to go away. She’d poked and prodded until she found those pictures and arrest records. She’d seen into the souls of five people. Now one of them was looking at her. One of them wanted her dead.
At last, Helen was home. She passed through the comforting smog of Phil’s burning weed and locked the door to her apartment. She felt safe. Until she remembered Phil’s pot smoke and had another horrible thought.
The caller had not asked, “Where are the photos?” or “Where are the papers?” The inhuman voice had demanded, “Where’s the stuff?”
Drugs. The caller could be looking for drugs. That’s what Christina was selling in those pretty little purses: candy-colored pills and capsules. She took them with her that Saturday. They disappeared, and Christina was never seen alive again.
Helen knew what drug dealers did when you double-crossed them. She watched the TV news. She’d seen the body bags being brought out, the blood-spattered walls, the tales of torture. They could shoot her knee caps, one at a time. They could give her a Colombian necktie. They could leave her, bleeding and starving, to die in a rat-infested abandoned building.
They’d kill her for sure, slowly and painfully. Because Helen didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know what they wanted.
Chapter 28
“How much do you want?” Tiffany said.
She stood defiantly under the painting of the cruel-lipped Juliana looking equally tough. No pretty pink ruffles and curls today. She was dressed in dead black, her long blonde hair hanging straight down her back. A Tiffany that Helen had never seen before had walked into the store.
Helen thought Tiffany was soft and yielding, giggly. This Tiffany was hard and determined. It was like finding out that Barbie dolls were made of titanium. Yet this Tiffany made sense. Tiffany would have to be tough to survive in her world—and smart enough to disguise it.
Helen had called Tiffany that morning and said, “Could I talk with you privately next time you’re in the store?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Tiffany had said. She didn’t ask why Helen wanted to see her. She marched into Juliana’s wearing sunglasses black as a drug dealer’s car windows. Helen recognized the sign of a raging hangover. She also saw a woman ready for a fight.
Tiffany whipped off the glasses and looked Helen in the eye. “How much do you want?” she said.
“I don’t want any money,” Helen said.
“Don’t play games with me,” Tiffany said.
“All I want to know is where you were when Christina was killed.”
“So you can blackmail me for even more,” Tiffany said. It was weird. Tiffany was furious, but her eyes stayed wide open. They could not narrow. There wasn’t enough skin left after the eye surgery.
“How can I blackmail you about that weekend? I don’t have any proof.”
“Then why do you want to know?” Tiffany said.
“Because I have to know where everyone was when Christina was killed. I’ve got to solve her murder, or the police will suspect me.”
Tiffany started laughing. It was not a cute giggle. It was a harsh barroom bray. “That’s all?”
“I swear,” Helen said. “I’m not going to tell anyone. Have you ever heard me spread gossip?”
“No,” Tiffany said.
She looked Helen up and down. “Not with that pudding face. You’re from the Midwest. You’re too dumb to lie.” Somehow, things had reversed. Tiffany was in control.
“I was with the pool boy,” Tiffany said, tossing her blonde hair.
“The pool was broken? Not the fish tank?” Helen said.
“No, you moron. We were in bed the whole weekend. I’ve got an alibi. I just can’t use it. I made up that fish tank story yesterday on the spur of the moment, and it sounded like it. Last time I drink champagne before noon.”
“Where was your boyfriend, Burt?” Helen said.
“On a gambling cruise. I knew he wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. I wanted some romance. I wanted to feel a young man’s muscles instead of an old man’s flab. Kurt had a surfer’s body and sun-bleached hair. He was my age. Actually, he was a little younger, but I don’t look my age.”
Helen realized she didn’t know Tiffany’s age. On a good day, Tiffany looked twenty-five. Today, she looked forty.
“I can’t believe I’m such a cliché,” Tiffany said. “The pool boy. Next it will be the tennis instructor and the personal trainer. Never again. It was the first time I’d ever cheated on Burt, and it will be the last. I only wanted one weekend. Kurt called in sick so he could spend Monday with me, too. It would be when Christina got herself killed. That’s just my luck.”
“I hope it was everything you wanted,” Helen said. She knew about wanting the wrong man.
“Oh, it was. Right up until he left Monday night. Then he asked me for a thousand-dollar ‘loan.’ ” A single tear rolled down her cheek.
Tiffany knew the truth then: Her romantic weekend had been one more service provided by the pool boy.
Helen had bagged four alibis, but she was no longer enjoying the game. Tiffany’s single tear left her scalded with shame. Poor Tiffany. It must have hurt when she realized the pool boy was using her the same way she used Burt.
The doorbell chimed, and Helen buzzed in a well-dressed woman and her escort. Helen had never seen the woman before, though she recognized her Ralph Lauren suit. She thought the escort looked familiar, too.