by Elaine Viets
Then she heard, “Photo identification, such as a driver’s license, military identification, passport, or state-issued ID card must be presented by each visitor.”
ID? Helen didn’t have any identification. She had to stay out of the government computers.
“Visitors who do not have proper identification will not be permitted to visit,” the recording continued relentlessly. Helen panicked and hung up.
How was she going to get ID? Would Sarah lend Helen her license? No, Helen wouldn’t ask. She couldn’t involve her friend in a fraud. Besides, she couldn’t tell Sarah why she had no driver’s license. She could buy a fake ID on the Internet, but that would take weeks.
Then she remembered the bookstore’s lost-and-found. She rooted around in the unclaimed sweaters, flowered umbrellas, scratched sunglasses, wrinkled scarves, and . . . what was a purple suede glove doing in there?
Ah, there it was. The driver’s license. A woman had left it on the counter about two months ago. Gayle had mailed it to the address on the license, but it came back “addressee unknown.” It was probably a fake, but Gayle had tossed it into the lost-and-found limbo.
Helen looked at the battered license. It was for Kay Gordy, a cute blonde, age thirty-eight, height five-eight, weight one-forty-five. Helen was four inches taller, four years older, and fifteen pounds heavier. She was also a brunette. Well, no woman looked like her driver’s-license photo. It would have to do.
Helen felt calm enough to call the jail recording again for Peggy’s visiting day. She nearly dropped the phone when she heard it was today. Today? If she missed it, she’d have to wait another week. Visiting hours seemed designed for working people—that was one blessing. They were three-thirty to ten p.m. She got off work at three. She could catch the bus and make it back before her date with Rich at eight o’clock.
It seemed like a good plan as the bus crawled through the late-afternoon traffic, but her courage began to fail as she got closer. The landscape around the North Broward jail was flat, barren, and hot, more like a desert than lush South Florida. The jail looked like a warehouse surrounded by razor wire.
As Helen approached, she saw cops of all sorts: locals from Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines, and Dania Beach. Police from Miami to the south and Delray Beach to the north, state cops, and gray-suited FBI agents, all watching her with hawklike eyes. Even in her worst nightmare, she’d never imagined this. When she ran from St. Louis, Helen changed her name, but not her face. Did the court send her description to Florida?
White female, age forty-two, weight approximately 150 pounds, height six feet, brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing marks . . . ? Had these cops seen her photo? They had phenomenal memories. Would someone remember her and send her back to St. Louis?
She put her head down, hunched her shoulders, and tried to make herself invisible. But there was no way she could erase herself. Any odd behavior would make her more noticeable.
I’m being ridiculous, she told herself. I’m twelve hundred miles from St. Louis. I’m here to help my friend Peggy. Who’s going to recognize me?
She felt trapped in the security line. There was a police officer behind her, so she couldn’t even bolt. She put her purse on the conveyor to be X-rayed and walked through the scanner. Something on her set it off. The guard waved the wand around her. She held her breath until she passed.
Helen presented her driver’s license and signed her fake name, Kay Gordy, then sat and waited. An elderly woman sat down next to Helen, then moved away. I must stink of fright sweat, she thought. Or maybe the woman just wanted to be alone.
Finally, she was shown to a narrow cinder-block booth with a Plexiglas window set in the wall. Peggy sat down. Redheads were supposed to look good in green, but Peggy’s green jailhouse scrubs seemed to drain all the color from her face. Her dark red hair was too vivid, as if it belonged to a more flamboyant woman. It did—the old Peggy who sat out by the pool with Pete. She looked forlorn without her parrot.
Helen wanted to reach out and touch her friend. Instead, she picked up the phone receiver on the wall. Peggy’s first words were, “How’s Pete? Is he eating OK?”
Peggy had not been eating at all. She was thin and tired. Helen did not know how she would survive in here until her trial. And after the trial, if she lost . . . She wouldn’t go there.
“Pete’s fine,” Helen said quickly. “He misses you.”
She did not mention that Pete was driving Margery nuts. He squawked constantly and demanded to be let out of his cage. When Margery had let him out, he’d chewed up her living room curtains. Now Pete was in jail, too, life without possibility of parole. He threw his seed on the floor and spilled his water in fury.
“How is everybody at the Coronado?” Peggy said, as if she were asking about her family.
“The same. Margery is still into purple. Phil is still into pot. Cal is still cooking up smelly suppers of boiled broccoli and Brussels sprouts.”
“And you’re still seeing Dr. Rich?”
“Tonight’s my first visit to his home. I’m going to meet the animals, Sissy and Beans.”
“I never liked a man enough to take him home to Pete,” Peggy said.
Helen found this attempt at ordinary conversation unbearably sad. It felt strange talking on the phone to someone you were looking at, someone separated only by a sheet of Plexiglas. She sneaked a peek at her watch. She’d have to start back soon. They had not discussed anything important yet.
“Peggy . . .” Helen began, and then stopped. She did not know how to go on.
But Peggy knew what she wanted to ask. “I didn’t do it. I hated Page Turner. But I never killed him.”
“A witness says you picked Page up at the bookstore the night he died.”
“I did,” Peggy said. “Did Margery tell you why? I thought I could get that video back.”
“The one with the senator’s son?” That was tactful, Helen thought.
“The senator’s dead son. If that video got out, I’d be the Monica Lewinsky of Florida. Only it would be a hundred times worse. I not only had coke-snorting sex with an antidrug senator’s son, I killed him, or let him die. At least that’s what Page said.”
“Did you?”
“I don’t think so. But I was so fucked-up back then, I don’t know.” This didn’t sound like the Peggy Helen knew. I talked to her almost every day, Helen thought, and she told me nothing about herself. But then what did I tell her about me? People in Florida did not discuss the past. They moved here to get away from it.
“I didn’t know you were engaged to Page Turner,” Helen said.
“It wasn’t anything I was proud of,” she said. “I hoped when we broke off” (Helen noticed that we instead of he) “I could start with a clean slate. I hoped my new friends wouldn’t know about my old life. I should have known better.”
“What did you see in him?” Helen asked. It was a rude question, but this didn’t seem the place for ordinary polite-ness.
Peggy shrugged. “Page was different from the other men I’d dated. He was funny. He was rich. We did things and went places. We’d sail to Miami for dinner or fly to New York for a play. On Monday morning, I’d go back to my dull little job and my dull little life. Being with Page was like having a secret life. It was exciting. I knew if he ever left me, I’d have nothing. Then he started with the cocaine. That was another exciting secret. I felt so good, so mellow, so alive that first time. I never felt that way again, but I kept trying. First drugs are a lot like first love.
“Coke changes people,” she said. “It made Page meaner. It made me do crazy things I’d never even thought about before.”
Like a threesome with a senator’s son.
“I loved him,” she said. “I thought we were getting married. Page gave me a ring for my birthday. We were going to fly off one weekend and go to the Elvis chapel in Las Vegas. But somehow, we never got around to it. Then one morning, after he got out of my bed, I opened up the paper and there w
as the announcement for his society wedding in Palm Beach. You know what happened next.”
Helen did, but she couldn’t picture this pathetic woman summoning up enough rage to run barefoot in her nightgown to Page Turner’s bookstore. Maybe she and Peggy had both used up their lifetime quotas of anger.
“The police haven’t found that video yet, have they?” Peggy said.
Helen was glad Peggy asked that question. It seemed to confirm her innocence.
“No,” she said. “They’re still looking. When did Page first start blackmailing you with that tape?”
“About a month ago. He’d dried out when he married Astrid and he behaved himself for a while. But then he started drinking. All he did was trade coke for booze. Soon he was back to his old ways with women, too. Last month, he got drunk, called me up, and started tormenting me about the video. I begged him to burn it. I’d get him calmed down and then he’d call again. After the last call, I didn’t hear from him for several days.
“I thought I could reason with Page. I thought I could talk him into giving me the video, fool that I was. When I called him about noon that day, he seemed reasonable. He said he’d bring it in his briefcase. By the time I picked him up at the bookstore, Page was mean drunk. He was drinking something in a blue bottle.”
“Absolut Bawls,” Helen said. “A caffeine energy drink he dosed with vodka.”
“Made him almost as crazy as coke,” Peggy said. “I should have left him at the store. I knew it was useless the moment he got in my car. When he was like that he’d say no just to be contrary.”
“Where did you go when you picked him up?”
“I started driving down Las Olas, toward the beach. We used to walk along the ocean when we first met. I hoped it would help him remember our old romance and he’d give me the video. We never got to the beach. We’d driven a few blocks when he asked what I wanted. He didn’t even remember our conversation of a few hours ago. I told him that he’d promised me the video and he laughed at me. He said the video was his insurance.”
“What could you do to him if he used it?”
“Nothing,” Peggy said.
“So what happened? Why did you take him back to the store?”
“He got a call on his cell phone. He listened and then said, ‘Give me ten minutes.’ He demanded that I take him back to the store. By then, I knew my idea was hopeless. I was afraid to be in the car with him anymore. I was so mad, I thought I might kill him. I dropped him off at his car. That’s the last I saw of him. I swear it is. He was alive when I left him in that parking lot.
“No one believes me. The police think I did it. Margery got me a good lawyer, but she thinks I’m guilty, too.”
“I believe you,” Helen said. “I want to help.”
“What can you do?” Peggy said, and the question laid bare their hopeless situation. Peggy, the receptionist. Helen, the bookstore clerk. Two women with no money and no power, sitting in a jail.
“I think whoever killed Page had some connection with the bookstore, either a customer or an employee,” Helen said. “I work there. I see things the police don’t. There’s one question I think needs to be answered: Why did Page suddenly start tormenting you with that video now? He’d had it a couple of years.”
“I don’t know,” Peggy said. But her eyes shifted and she licked her dry lips. She was lying.
“You’re on trial for your life. The prosecuting attorney is asking for a lethal injection, and Florida doesn’t mind killing women. Why now, Peggy? This question could save your life.”
“I don’t know.” But Peggy’s eyes would not meet Helen’s.
She did know. And she’d rather die than tell me, Helen thought. Why? Was she afraid of someone? Or still hoping for help from someone?
“Please tell me,” Helen pleaded. She was clutching the phone like a lifeline.
Peggy hung up.
Chapter 12
Helen awoke in Rich’s arms, naked and gasping. Unfortunately, she was not breathless from passion.
“What is that disgusting odor?” she said.
“Beans has a medical condition,” Rich said with as much dignity as a naked man could muster.
“Does he have to sleep on your bed? Couldn’t you put him in another room?”
“Beans is part of the family,” Rich said, sounding hurt. “And he loves you.”
It was true. The foul-smelling basset followed her everywhere. Sissy, the Persian princess, wanted nothing to do with Helen. She glared at her now from a drink-ringed dresser. The long-haired gray cat had ignored her all night, except when she’d stolen Helen’s steak off her plate and dragged it across the carpet. Rich thought that was funny. Helen ate hamburger while Sissy had steak.
The animals were here before I was, Helen thought. (And they’ll be here when I’m gone.)
Her first visit to Rich’s was not a success. Last night, in the moon glow, she could see things were a little dusty. When she’d asked Rich why his black socks were hanging on the bedroom lamp shade, he’d said, “My dryer is broken.” It seemed funny then.
Today, in the harsh morning light, the bachelor squalor was depressing. Well, she wouldn’t be moving in with him anytime soon. Helen yawned and stretched. The gray sheets felt oddly soft. Why did Rich have flannel sheets in Florida? Helen saw her hands were covered with long gray hair. The sheets, under the layers of cat hair, were actually white.
Rich saw her hairy hands. “Oops,” he said. “That’s where Sissy likes to sleep.”
“When was the last time you changed these sheets?” Helen said.
Rich thought for a moment. “Let’s see. I broke up with Sheila in March.”
“It’s June,” Helen said, sitting up and throwing off the suspect sheets. “You didn’t change your sheets for more than three months?”
“I don’t think of that stuff.”
“But your clinic is so clean.”
“Gloria handles that. She’s a terrific office manager. Sheila did the house stuff.” He smiled winsomely. “I was sort of hoping, now that we’re getting serious, you could take over.”
“Do I look like a housekeeper?”
Helen looked like an angry naked woman. Time to fix that. She started hunting for her clothes. She wasn’t about to shower at Rich’s. She’d seen cleaner bus station bathrooms. She found her bra under the bed in at least three months of dust. She shook it out and snapped it on.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” Rich said. “I thought when a woman cared about a man, she naturally wanted to care for his house. It’s like an instinct.”
“Wrong,” Helen said. “There’s no connection between hormones and housekeeping.”
She couldn’t believe any man still thought that way. Then again, nobody ever called South Florida a center of advanced thinking. She put on her panties inside out, then picked up her blouse from a chair upholstered with more cat hair. She pulled on her pants and slipped on her Ferragamo loafers. They were damp.
Did she spill her drink on them? She hoped not. They were some of her last good shoes, even if they had been resoled twice. She picked up one loafer for a closer look. That’s when she caught the unmistakeable odor of cat urine.
Sissy had delivered her final opinion of Helen.
Helen got home at nine-thirty that morning. Thumbs greeted her at the door. Her big-footed cat looked cuddlier than ever. He was so gentle and well mannered, compared to Rich’s rude animals. She scratched his ears in appreciation and poured him an extra helping of breakfast.
As she pulled off her black Ralph Lauren pants, she saw tiny pinpricks of daylight in the seat and along the inseam. Her good pants were wearing out. She’d bought them back when she made a hundred thousand dollars a year. Now that she was working dead-end jobs, she could not afford pants that expensive. They’d cost a week’s pay. She wondered if she could get by with wearing her holey pants over black panty hose.
She had to salvage her smelly shoes. Helen did not have any leather cleaner, so
she sprayed her loafers with lemon Pledge. They smelled a little better, but she still caught a faint, pungent whiff. Oh, well. She had to wear her thick-soled clunkers to the bookstore anyway.
Helen kept herself busy so she would not have to think about her disastrous night with Rich—or worse, their lovely weekend together on the beach. Suddenly, she couldn’t hold back the memories any longer. She saw the moonlight leaving a silver path on the endless ocean, and the two of them walking along the shining sand.
The tears came and she could not stop them. She cried for all that she had lost long before she knew Rich. She could not change the past, but she would not repeat it. She’d let her ex take her for granted. That would never happen again. Could Rich believe that a woman naturally wanted to clean house for a man? She would not be any man’s unpaid housekeeper, no matter how good the sex.
She thought of her grandmother, a short tanklike woman who’d supported herself with dead-end jobs, watching other people’s children and cleaning other people’s houses. Grandma never got a weekend on the beach with a man who looked like a shaggy Mel Gibson, but she kept going.
She was tougher than I am, Helen thought. She seemed to hear her grandmother’s voice now: Pull your socks up and quit whining. She dried her tears and checked the clock. It was time to go to work.
When Helen walked into Page Turners shortly before eleven, the phone was ringing. “It’s for you,” Albert said, and frowned. “It’s a personal call. Again.” He pursed his mouth in irritation. Helen hoped his starched collar would strangle him.
The caller was Rich. “I can’t talk now,” Helen said.
“Don’t hang up,” he said desperately. “I’m sorry.”
“You certainly are,” she said, slamming down the receiver.
He called every half hour after that. Helen didn’t know if she or Albert was more annoyed. She begged Rich to stop, afraid she might be fired. Finally he quit calling. At one o’clock, a florist arrived with an enormous bouquet. Rich had sent two dozen red roses.
Forgive me, the card said. P.S.: I’ve hired a cleaning service.