The Dead-End Job Mysteries Box Set 1

by Elaine Viets

  “I want this book, but it’s too expensive.” Muffy the preppy psychic was holding a fat volume called Cooking with the Stars: A Guide to Astrology and Food. She was dressed almost like the preppy prowler in a pink shirt and khakis. The pink made her hair look blond. She was almost pretty.

  “Can you buy this for me with your employee discount?”

  “No,” Helen said. “I could get fired.”

  “But I can’t afford it without your discount,” Muffy said. “It’s not money out of your pocket.”

  “I’m sorry,” Helen said. “You’ll have to get something else.”

  Muffy raised her voice so heads turned. “I can’t buy the book I want. It’s all your fault.” Then she stomped off to the Cooking section.

  When Helen saw her next customer, she didn’t have to be psychic to predict more trouble. It was Melanie Devereaux DuShayne, the POD author. Helen wondered how she had the nerve to walk into the store after the Page Turner debacle. Her blond hair trailed down her back. She wore a tight, short sea foam-green sundress with a froth of polyester lace down the plunging neckline, and those clear plastic shoes.

  “I got a call that my book has come in,” Melanie said. Her voice trembled and her face went pink.

  Now Helen knew what she was doing there. An author would endure any humiliation for her book. She checked the hold shelf. “You have two copies, actually. That will be twenty-nine ninety-five each, for a total of—”

  Melanie’s face crumpled. Her voice was teary. “That much? I get a discount if I buy from the publisher, but it looks better if I order them at a real bookstore.”

  “I’m sorry,” Helen said. “We don’t give author discounts. I wish we did. We do take credit cards.”

  “I’m maxed out,” Melanie said. “I bought the editing package.”

  Helen looked at her. “Editing package?”

  “I wanted the best for my book, so I paid nine hundred ninety nine dollars for the deluxe package. It includes copy-editing, five free books, plus two favorable reviews.”

  “Where do the reviews run?” Helen said.

  “On the UBookIt Web site,” she said. “They’re really supposed to help sales and I wanted to give my book every chance.”

  Poor Melanie. No one would read those reviews but other POD authors. Her book was the bastard child of the book industry. She’d been seduced by a greedy publisher who only wanted her for her money. Helen felt sorry for her.

  “POD books are not returnable. You have to take both copies.”

  “I’ll have more money next month. Can’t you keep one until next payday?”

  It was against the rules. But Helen figured Page Turners owed Melanie that much. She rang up one book and buried the other on the hold shelf.

  “Thanks,” Melanie said. “Where are your romances?”

  Helen directed her to that section, and hoped Melanie could find something. The romances had been around. Helen was embarrassed to sell them.

  “Helen,” said Gayle, her blond hair shining like a halo in the bright sun. “My reading glasses came apart. I have to finish the weekly financial report. I’m going to run to the optometrist down the street and see if he’ll fix them. Will you watch the shop for a few minutes? Albert is due in any moment. Until then, you’re in charge. You and Denny can do a slush run. Brad can run the register.”

  Helen felt like she was on an Easter-egg hunt. She found stray books under tables and chairs, shoved under shelves, and hidden in displays. She wished it was as easy to look for Page’s killer. She was running out of suspects. She was missing something, too. It nagged at her. When she turned the corner and saw Mr. Davies, the store’s oldest inhabitant, in his usual chair, she knew what it was.

  He’d tried to tell her something last time she’d talked with him. Except Helen had been too impatient to listen.

  Now she sat humbly on the footstool at Mr. Davies’ chair and said, “I cut you off last time. I’m very sorry. That was rude. On the night of the murder, the pretty redhead in the green Kia brought Page Turner back to the store, didn’t she?”

  Mr. Davies sat up eagerly, his bright squirrel eyes gleaming. “Oh, my, yes. I know I talk too much. It makes the young impatient. That young Detective Jax was the same way. Don’t you think the police are looking younger these days? I really wonder how anyone that young can be trusted with a gun, but they say fourteen-year-olds take guns to school now. It was so different when I was young. He didn’t bother listening to me.”

  Who? Helen wondered, then realized Mr. Davies was talking about Detective Jax.

  “And he did not apologize like you did, my dear.”

  Helen dug her nails into her palms for patience while she waited for Mr. Davies to get to the point.

  “The redheaded girl—excuse me, woman, I do try to say the right thing—the redhead was back after ten minutes. I thought Mr. Page Turner was very foolish to spend so little time with such an attractive young person. She left him at his private parking spot behind the store.

  “But then I dozed off, and at first I thought it was a dream, she was so beautiful, and I told that detective that, and he said he didn’t care about my dreams, he just wanted the facts. But I wasn’t dreaming. I’d been reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I’m rereading the old classics. They are so much richer at my age. I read a biography of Mark Twain, but you can learn more about an author by reading his work—or her work, excuse me. Authors always write about themselves. The good ones are better at disguising it.”

  Helen suppressed a sigh and felt some sympathy for Jax. Would Mr. Davies never get on with it?

  “I’d just finished the page when this lovely blonde showed up in a silver car. A silver coach for a golden princess.”

  This wasn’t much help. “Lots of blondes are in the store,” she said.

  “Not like this one. She had yellow hair and looked like Cinderella.”

  “Helen to the front, please, Helen to the front.” She was being paged. It sounded like Denny.

  “Cinderella? What do you mean?” Helen was desperate for more information.

  “Helen to the front. Please come to the front!” It was definitely Denny. He sounded desperate.

  “Gotta run. I’m being paged. I’ll talk to you later, Mr. Davies.”

  “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll be here,” he said. “I always am.”

  Sadly, that turned out not to be true.

  Chapter 21

  “What is it?” Helen said. She was out of breath, running for the cashier’s desk.

  “It’s Mr. Goggles,” Brad said. “Denny spotted him.”

  “Oh, Lord. Not that pervert. This store is crawling with kids.”

  Summer was the season of the feral children. Bands of wild teenagers roamed the bookstore until it closed at midnight, swiping CDs, shoplifting computer books, and paying for their double lattes with hundred-dollar bills.

  Where did teens get that kind of money? Helen wondered. From parents who gave them everything but love? Or were they selling drugs?

  Their little brothers and sisters were set free in the bookstore while Mom and Dad shopped, drank, dined on Las Olas—or sat in another section of Page Turners and read books.

  The abandoned children ran through the store, tearing up books and shrieking, sitting on the floor and sobbing, sometimes even reading. Their complacent parents thought their children were safe. They never guessed a creature like Mr. Goggles was lurking nearby.

  Mr. Goggles haunted local libraries and bookstores. Librarians and store managers called the cops or threw him out when they saw him, but Mr. Goggles slipped in like mist on the ocean and drifted back to the Children’s section. No one knew how he was able to move about stores without being noticed.

  Mr. Goggles was an evil creature. If you opened up the dictionary and looked under “pervert,” you would see him. Mr. Goggles wore swim goggles. If that wasn’t strange enough, he was a small, misshapen man with mismatched clothes that looked like they’d been stolen from t
he Goodwill bin: an orange dress shirt and plaid walking shorts.

  In some countries, the people would stone Mr. Goggles. In South Florida, he’d been in and out of jail and various institutions. But he always returned to haunting bookstores and libraries.

  Even the most inexperienced bookseller knew there was something wrong with Mr. Goggles. Young Denny recognized the goblin man as a destroyer of innocence. He came running up to Helen and said, “There’s this weird guy playing with himself in the Spider-man section. He’s one row from the kids’ books.”

  “Call nine-one-one,” Helen told Brad. “I’ll grab Mr. Goggles. Denny, guard the Children’s section and make sure he doesn’t run back there.”

  Helen quickly collared Mr. Goggles. The little man struggled, but he was easy to subdue. Helen was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier. She bent his arm behind his back, and shuddered when his hand touched hers. She knew where it had been.

  Mr. Goggles smelled like fried eggs and unwashed hair. Helen wanted to let go of him and take a shower. In Lysol. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” he whined. “Don’t be mad at me.”

  “Shut up or I’ll break your neck and do the world a favor.”

  Helen was grateful that the Spider-man section was in a secluded book nook. Mr. Goggles was too scared of Helen to make any noise, and he’d stopped struggling. The police were on the way. She heard the sirens and started to relax. They would haul him away soon.

  That’s when a little boy said loudly, “Mommy, that man’s wee-wee is showing.”

  It was the child who’d torn up the Children’s section, along with his book-ripping sister. Helen would never forget those little monsters, or their heavily pregnant mother. She’d sat there and read Oprah best-sellers while her offspring destroyed the place.

  Mom had her nose buried in another Oprah pick. But her son’s words must have set off some special mommy alert. She put her trade paperback facedown on the table, cracking its spine.

  “Justin,” his mother commanded, “go read about Clifford, the big red dog, with your sister.”

  She stood up. My Lord, that woman is pregnant, Helen thought. She must be due any day. She looked like a fertility goddess in a white, high-waisted dress, her long brown hair trailing down her back.

  Mr. Goggles saw the woman rise to her full height and girth and backed into Helen for protection. Helen nearly threw up as she got a wave of fried egg and oily hair. The pregnant woman lumbered over to the law books and picked up a Black’s Law Dictionary. It was the deluxe leather-bound edition, more than seventeen hundred pages. The thing was the size of a lawyer’s briefcase and a lot heavier.

  “Stand back,” she ordered Helen.

  “No!” Helen said. But she saw the fire in the outraged mother’s eyes. She was not going to get squashed saving Mr. Goggles. She moved aside, and the woman walloped him on the head.

  “Ma’am, it’s OK, the police are on their way,” Helen said. But Justin’s mom pounded Mr. Goggles like a pile driver. Helen hoped the police took their time. The pervert deserved it.

  Another mother in a denim jumper grabbed Jane’s Fighting Ships of World War II and slammed it into Mr. Goggles’ private parts. He shrieked in agony.

  “Shut up, you nasty man. You’ll scare my child,” the woman said, and got him in the groin again. This time, he moaned softly and fell to the floor.

  All around Helen, mothers were arming themselves with monster tomes. Helen abandoned Mr. Goggles to his fate. By the time the cops arrived, there was a full-scale parental riot. Mothers were beating Mr. Goggles with bigger and bigger books. He was clutching his groin. It would be a long time before he used that area for recreation.

  As the cops dragged Mr. Goggles away, a woman screamed, “I hope you throw the book at him.”

  That’s when Gayle returned from the optometrist. “I’m gone fifteen minutes and there’s a riot. What the hell happened?”

  “Mr. Goggles,” Helen said. “He got what he deserved.”

  Gayle picked up the battered Black’s Law. The title page was ripped and smeared with blood. Other pages were torn. “Justice has a high price,” she said. “This book goes for ninety-six bucks. I can’t sell it or return it in this condition.”

  Gayle and Helen squatted on the floor, gathering up far-flung books and assessing the damage. Black’s Law was beyond repair. Jane’s Fighting Ships might sell if they slipped off the torn dustcover. Helen spotted a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged under a display table. It weighed twelve and a half pounds, but it had been tossed aside like a paperback. If Mr. Goggles got hit with that baby, he would hurt for a while.

  She crawled under the table to the abandoned dictionary and saw that it was resting near two paint-spattered work boots. She followed them up to a pair of superbly tanned legs, blond hairs glistening in the afternoon sun. She knew those legs and the rest of that muscular body. It was her all-around handyman, Gabe, looking cool, calm, and oh-so-handsome in this chaos. He helped her out from under the table and embraced her.

  “Gabe!” Helen said.

  “Daddy,” said little Justin, grabbing Gabriel’s leg. “Daddy, when are you coming home?”

  Isn’t that cute, Helen thought. He thinks Gabriel is his father.

  “Daddy!” shrieked Justin’s sister. Wasn’t her name Gabrielle? Helen was getting a bad feeling.

  The pregnant woman, now armed with a sturdy Roget’s Thesaurus, returned to the section, fertile and ferocious, “Yes, Daddy, when are you coming home? You haven’t given me a dime of child support in six months. In case you didn’t notice, your third child is on the way.”

  “You’re married?” blurted Helen.

  “It’s just a technicality,” Gabe said.

  “Technicality, my ass,” said the pregnant woman, and whacked him with the Roget’s. “You walked out, but we’re still married. And your technicality is due in two weeks.”

  “You told me you didn’t want children,” Helen said.

  “I didn’t,” Gabe said. “They just happened.”

  “You rat,” Helen said, but two words were not adequate. She picked up the Webster’s unabridged dictionary. Four hundred fifty thousand words should do it, she thought, and took aim at his—

  “Helen!” Gayle said. Helen stopped in midswing. “Put that book down. I’ll not have you ruining good books on a worthless man. You, too, ma’am. Drop that Roget’s. Violence is bad for your unborn child.”

  The pregnant woman looked down at her bulging belly and slowly put the book down.

  Helen had never seen Gayle look so fierce. With her golden hair and black clothes, she looked like a commando in a James Bond movie.

  “Do you want me to detain this deadbeat?” she said to the pregnant woman.

  “No. I don’t need his money. Besides, he won’t go far. He’s got his little seduction routine. Takes his gullible fools to a free Shakespeare play, a cheap meal at the Thai restaurant, and a visit to his dream house.”

  Helen winced. He’d used all three on her.

  The earth mother turned to Helen. “Bet he told you he owned some lot and was building his dream house.” Helen managed a nod. “Go look again. It’s not his lot. You’ll see a ‘For Sale’ sign out front. He takes it down before he has a date.”

  Sucker! Helen thought.

  “Don’t feel too bad,” the pregnant woman said, giving her absolution. “He pulled the same tricks on me. That’s how I know. At least you’re not pregnant. Come, Gabrielle and Justin. Let go of Daddy.” Justin began whimpering, and Helen felt sorry for the little boy. He deserved a real father, not a deadbeat dad.

  Gabe kept looking at his paint-spattered boots. He seemed frozen to the floor. When the children had left with their mother, Gayle turned to him. “And you, scum. Get out and don’t come back. If I catch you in this store again, I’ll personally throw you out.”

  Gabriel slouched out the door. Helen was
suddenly aware that he had a full-blown pot and a silver-dollar-sized bald spot on his crown.

  She also noticed that she didn’t feel anything. She was completely numb. Gayle took her upstairs to the office of the dead adulterer, Page Turner, and tried to make her sit down on the slashed couch. “You’ll feel better if you cry,” she said.

  Helen paced like a caged leopard and stayed dry-eyed. “I’m not wasting any tears on him.” Then she burst out, “Aren’t there any good men in South Florida?”

  “How would I know?” Gayle said.

  “Well, at least he fixed my air conditioner,” Helen said.

  “Hell, I’d almost sleep with a guy for that,” Gayle said. “If you think a good man is impossible to find in South Florida, try looking for reliable repair people.”

  Did Gayle really say that? Helen giggled. Then she started laughing and couldn’t stop until Gayle pounded her on the back.

  “If you’re not going to cry, you might as well work,” Gayle said. “I know you hate nights, but I need you to stay and put the store back together after the riot. Albert had a case of the vapors and went home. Brad can’t work past six.”

  “Might as well,” Helen said. She didn’t want to go home to the bed she’d shared with Gabriel. She wouldn’t sleep in it again until she changed the sheets. No, she wouldn’t change those sheets. She’d burn them.

  Sucker! She couldn’t spot false money or a false man. Sarah had warned her about Gabriel, but Helen didn’t listen.

  Sucker! She hauled heavy books back to their shelves, hoping hard work would shut up the voice inside her.

  Sucker! It screamed. Nothing drowned it out.

  At eleven-thirty Denny was mopping the café floor. There wasn’t a customer in sight. Denny flipped over his mop so the head was a microphone and sang oldies from the 1980s. His imitation of Sting crooning “Every Breath You Take” was hilarious. The kid danced over the tabletops and ended his act with a soft-shoe on the café counter. All he needed was some dry-ice fog, and he could be on MTV. God, he was gorgeous, with his auburn hair flying. He was born to be a star. Helen applauded wildly.