by Elaine Viets
“I’m your neighbor, yes,” he said. His voice was soft and low. Another time, it would have been sexy. Now, it was like being doused with cold water. “What are you doing here?”
“Tending bar,” Helen said. She could feel a full-body blush creeping down past her shoulders. She adjusted her soda bottles to make sure they covered as much chest as possible.
“Helen, you—”
“How do you know my name?”
“Margery told me. I pulled you out of the fire, remember? Does she know you’re here tonight?”
“She’s not my mother,” Helen said.
“She loves you like a daughter,” Phil said. “This stunt would worry her sick. You’ve got to get out of here. It’s dangerous.”
“Don’t be such a guy. I have a job to do.” It was hard to look serious with two soda bottles stuck on your chest.
A fifty-something man in blue boxers interrupted. “Hey, what do I have to do to get a drink?”
“Sorry,” Phil said. “You’ll have to use the other bar. My friend is going home. She has a chest cold.” He took off his sport coat and threw it over Helen. It felt soft and warm.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Helen said. “You’re not pulling that big brave male stuff on me.” She wanted to hand back his coat, but she couldn’t let go of the bottles. She shrugged it off instead.
Phil caught it and said through gritted teeth, “Helen, look at me.”
She’d waited a whole year for this moment. She’d sneaked peeks out her mini-blinds. She’d risen at dawn and stayed up late, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Now he was standing before her and she couldn’t look at him.
Slowly, she raised her eyes to his. They were electric blue with long dark lashes. Sparks were flying everywhere.
This man was worth waiting for. He was in his forties, with a thin, sensitive face. His nose was a little too long and made a slight jog to the left. She wondered how it had been broken. He had deep laugh lines. His skin was tanned and his thick white hair was pulled into a ponytail. The effect was devastating. He looked like an actor or a rock star.
“I’m not being sexist,” Phil said. “I’d advise a man to do the same thing: Get out of here. Now will you listen to me?”
“I need Kristi’s address,” she said in an equally low voice. “She’s the blonde who works in the back room. I’m not leaving until I get it. Period.”
“I know who Kristi is. I’ll get her address from Steve. I’ll tell him I’m taking you home. It happens all the time. He’ll give you brownie points for pleasing a customer. But you’ve got to leave. Now. Please.” He put the coat back around her shoulders. This time, she left it on.
“Alright, but I have to put the bar away in the storage room.”
“Fine. I’ll track down Steve and square your absence with him. I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.”
Helen broke down her bar and wheeled it to the storage room. She wouldn’t be missed. The second party was in full swing and the guests were occupied with more exotic activities than boozing.
The Mowbry mansion was a labyrinth of halls and cul-de-sacs. On the way back, she must have turned left when she should have gone right. Two more wrong turns, and she knew this was not the way to the pool. At the end of the hall were two massive mahogany doors, twelve feet high. The doorknobs and hinges were solid gold. Dragons and demons danced on the door panels.
Was this the fabled back room?
Helen wouldn’t need Kristi. She could see for herself what went on in there.
The heavy double doors were shut, but not locked. Helen slid them open an inch and peered inside.
The room was dense black. Tall candles flamed on silver stands. The air was thick with incense and license. Bodies writhed in the corners. A naked couple opened a teakwood box that held white powder, a mirror and a tiny silver spoon. The flickering shadows were fantastic and evil.
Helen couldn’t take her eyes off these scenes. Then suddenly, she heard the music, a swell of powerful sadness. A requiem. Brahms, she thought. Next, she saw the heavy black velvet curtains across the back wall. They seemed to absorb the candlelight.
An ebony coffin stood in front of the black curtains. It was flanked by seven-foot candles and serpentine vases with dead white flowers.
In the coffin was a blonde wearing a white lace dress and holding a bouquet of lilies.
It was Kristi.
Chapter 15
Kristi was in a black coffin, with white lace and lilies. No one cried. No one cared. No one even looked at her. But Helen could not stop staring.
Kristi's blond hair was fanned out on a silk pillow. Her massive chest was modestly covered with white lace. Her skin was as pale as her lily bouquet.
Now a man rose out of the flickering shadows and approached the coffin. His dark hair stood in peaks like horns. He had thick black hair all over his back, like a pelt. His studded leather codpiece seemed more perverse than nakedness.
The leather man ran one finger down the curve of Kristi’s bare white throat. Helen shuddered. The finger traveled downward over the white lace. Then both his hands grabbed Kristi’s breasts. The man moaned and pressed himself against the black coffin.
Helen watched in horror. It was obscene. The woman was lying in her coffin. How could he touch her like that?
Then Kristi sat up, tossed the bouquet aside and pulled the man into her black coffin.
Helen gave a little shriek, but no one heard her. The coffin rocked slightly as the leather man climbed inside, his horned hair making devilish shadows.
Helen did not want to see any more. She slid the great paneled doors shut. Their dancing demons and dragons grinned at her as she turned and ran back to meet Phil. This time, she had no trouble negotiating the mansion’s maze of halls. Helen arrived at the pool, panting and white with shock.
“What’s wrong?” Phil said. “What did they do to you?”
“I saw Kristi in a coffin. What was she doing?”
“Exactly what you think,” Phil said.
“The Six Feet Unders. That’s what they are. Debbie told me about them right before she died.”
“We don’t have time to sit here and chat,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”
“Do you have Kristi’s address? I’m not leaving without it.”
“Here.” Phil handed Helen a white card. “Steve told us to have a good time. He gave me your money, too. Five hundred bucks. Now let’s go.”
“Turn your back,” Helen said.
“What? Why?”
“I have to put on my blouse. It will just take a second.” It was ridiculous to insist on modesty after she’d spent the night half-naked, but Helen couldn’t put on her clothes in front of Phil. He turned his back and mercifully didn’t say a word. The man was a gentleman.
“Thanks for your jacket,” she said, when she was decent again.
“Why don’t you keep it until we get home? It’s chilly after midnight.” That sentence soothed her humiliation. She wasn’t a topless slut. She was shivering in the night air and a man offered her his jacket.
As they walked to his car in silence, Helen studied Phil by the streetlight, drawn to those deep blue eyes and that tanned face framed by the startling white hair. She wanted to trace her finger along his slightly crooked nose. He looked like an eighteenth-century swashbuckler. She could imagine him with a sword, in satin knee breeches. She could imagine him without those breeches, too.
How could a man this good-looking live right next to her and she never knew it?
Because he didn’t want you to know, she thought. So don’t go daydreaming. You’ve had enough man trouble without falling for a druggie.
But Phil’s eyes were clear and so was his skin. He was fit and muscular. His gut did not have the telltale liver bulge of longtime drug users. He didn’t use drugs.
“You’re undercover, aren’t you?” Helen said.
Phil said nothing.
“DEA?”
Silence.
&n
bsp; “FBI? ATF? Local?”
The silence grew, blacker and heavier. Phil said softly, “This is not a game. People are getting killed.”
“I know,” Helen said. “That’s why I was at the party. I heard a woman die. She was strangled and I couldn’t stop it. Her name was Laredo Manson. She worked the back room with Kristi.”
“How did you hear her die?”
“I’m a telemarketer and—”
“A what? Where?”
“For Girdner Sales.”
“Oh, my God. They’re owned by the Mob.”
“I figured. Either that or the boss, Vito, was hanging around with the cast of The Sopranos.”
“Will you quit joking?”
“Will you quit flying off the handle? I’m a grown woman. I’ve taken care of myself for a long time.”
Phil took a deep breath. “OK,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let me take you home and you can tell me what happened.”
Phil drove a beat-up black Jeep, dusty and stripped to the essentials. Helen liked the zippered windows. This was a working vehicle, not some yuppie fantasy. When they were out of the maze of Brideport streets, Phil said, “How did this Laredo woman die?”
“I was working on a vodka survey. I called a man who lived in Brideport. He started to answer my questions, then put down the phone. Next, I heard him arguing with a woman.”
“What about?” Phil said.
“I don’t know,” Helen said. “At first the woman sounded defiant. She said he’d better give her what she wanted. I couldn’t hear what the man said but he seemed angry. She was pressuring him. She called him a liar and yelled other things I didn’t understand. Then she became afraid and screamed, ‘No, Hank!’
“Her scream was cut off and she made this terrible gurgling noise. It was a sound I’ve never heard anywhere else. He strangled her. Then he hung up the phone.”
Helen felt the hot tears rise up. She would not cry in front of Phil. It was weak and useless. She swallowed her tears. They tasted like bitter medicine, but they did not make her feel better.
“I called 911 and the police went to the house. They didn’t find any sign of a struggle. There was no body, no blood, no strange cars in the driveway. The police searched his house, cars and boat. Nothing.
“The guy claimed I’d heard a movie, and the cops believed him. They acted like I was a nutcase. But that was no movie. I heard that horrible sound and I heard her call his name.”
“His name was Hank? Hank who?”
“Hank Asporth.”
She studied his face. Phil gave no indication that he knew Asporth.
“Hank Asporth sicced his lawyer on me to shut me up. But I searched the computers at work. A woman named Laredo Manson was supposedly living with Asporth. I called her number and got her sister, Savannah. She said Laredo was missing. The police weren’t looking too hard for her. A woman who worked with Laredo at Gator Bill’s restaurant said she was restless and took off.
“The waitress’s name was Debbie. She was a nasty little tease with long white-blond hair. I mean, it went all the way down to her waist. Must have taken all day to dry. Debbie got a lot of tip money making middle-aged men crazy with that hair and her body.”
I’m babbling, Helen thought. I don’t know this man. I did some pretty dicey stuff with Debbie. It could get me arrested.
She studied Phil’s handsome, offbeat face. Could a man with a crooked nose walk the straight and narrow?
“What’s the matter?” Phil said. “Why did you suddenly stop?”
“I’m trying to decide if I can trust you,” Helen said. “What if I told you I did something bad? Would you turn me in to the cops?”
“Did you commit a murder?”
“No!” Helen was shocked.
“Do you deal drugs?”
Helen was outraged. “Are you nuts? Would I take abuse as a telemarketer if I could make good money dealing?”
Phil grinned. That was slightly crooked, too. “Then the answer’s no. Besides, Margery would skin me alive if I turned you in.”
He was right. Margery trusted him. She could, too.
“Savannah and I went to Debbie’s apartment. She told us Hank Asporth paid her a thousand dollars to lie about Laredo.”
“She told you, huh? This Debbie sounds hard as nails. She was paid to lie, but she volunteered information out of the blue?”
“Her long hair didn’t work on us. And we were persuasive,” Helen said.
“I bet,” Phil said.
“Do you want to hear this or not? Debbie said Savannah’s sister worked the charity orgies in the back room. Debbie claimed she didn’t know what went on in there, except that it was some group called the Six Feet Unders. She said Kristi would know the details because she worked there, too. Debbie was going to get Kristi’s address for us, so we could ask her some questions. Except somebody killed her first. We found her dead when we went back to her apartment. Debbie was strangled with her own hair.”
“Did you tell the police what you know?”
“We called them from a pay phone so they’d find her body, but we didn’t say anything else. Savannah’d had a little problem with the law.”
“I’m not surprised, being as she’s so persuasive. What about you? Did you call the police?”
“Uh, it wasn’t a good idea for me, either.”
“You’ve got a little problem with the law?” Phil looked amused.
“I’ve got a big problem with an ex-husband.” Also with the court, but Helen didn’t want to get into that. She kept talking, hoping to slide over that sticky subject.
“Anyway, I managed to get into Hank Asporth’s house and search it. He has a fur bedspread, mirrors on the ceiling and penis extenders.”
Phil burst out laughing so hard he had trouble downshifting. The gears ground and the Jeep lurched forward. “So you were working undercover on your own?” he said.
“This isn’t funny. I found a red shoe tossed in the back of a closet that I think belonged to Laredo. That’s proof she was in Hank’s house. I snuck it out.”
“You removed it from the scene?” Phil was serious now. “It’s useless as evidence.”
“What evidence? Do you think the police will search the Asporth house again on my say-so?”
“May I ask how you got into Hank’s house?” Helen noticed Phil had called him Hank. Did he know Hank Asporth or not?
“I went as the date of a guy named Joey. Drives a red Viper.”
Phil stared at her. “You dated Joey the Model?” A car behind them honked. They’d been sitting at a green light.
“Is that his name? I couldn’t stand the guy. I pretended I was sick and he sent me home in a cab. He was awful.”
“You could say that. Joey the Model has murdered six people that we know about, two of them women he dated. He beat them to death.”
“Oh,” Helen said. “I knew there was something wrong with him. That’s why I was working that awful topless party. It was the only way I could get Kristi’s address.”
“You are really something,” Phil said. “But what it is, I don’t know.”
When Phil pulled into the Coronado parking lot, Helen jumped out and handed him his coat. “Thank you very much,” she said, leaving him standing there. She ran all the way to her apartment.
What’s the matter with me? she asked herself. Why didn’t I stay and talk with Phil? I’ve told him everything—well, a lot anyway—about me. I have plenty of questions for him. But I ran like a rabbit. At least I could have let Phil walk me to my door.
But Helen knew the reason: She was afraid he might kiss her good night. She was afraid he might not.
It felt strange passing Phil’s door without the familiar pot smog. It felt stranger still to have a face for the man in the Clapton T-shirt. Phil was no longer invisible. He wasn’t even a pothead. But he was still a mystery.
Who was he? Who did he work for? Why did he create that druggie persona? What was he doing at that charity orgy?
Once inside her apartment, Helen began shivering uncontrollably. She fixed a cup of decaf coffee and sat in the turquoise Barcalounger with her cat on her lap, absently scratching Thumbs’ ears until he rolled belly-up in ecstasy.
The cat and the comfortable chair could usually lull her to sleep on the most restless nights. But not tonight. Helen kept flashing on Kristi with her white lace and lilies, and the heart-stopping moment when she sat up in her coffin.
Then she thought of sassy little Laredo, with her yellow hair and red shoes. There would be no surprise resurrection for Savannah’s sister.
Helen sat up until the night sky turned into gray dawn, drinking decaf and asking questions she couldn’t answer.
Where was Laredo’s body? Did the Mowbrys’ parties have something to do with her death? Did Savannah’s sister see something that got her killed? Had she been blackmailing someone? Or had Laredo stumbled onto something stranger with the Six Feet Unders?
The coffin scene made Helen believe this was way beyond anything her Midwest imagination could conjure up. The Mowbrys’ guest list read like a South Florida who’s who—with one slithering exception. Why was Mr. Cavarelli, the boiler-room reptile, mixing with the movers and shakers at a charity orgy?
There was one more guest who didn’t belong in that crowd. A slim, muscular man with white hair, blue eyes and a lean, tanned face.
Chapter 16
“You look stunning,” Jack Lace whispered in her ear. “All set for lunch at the Delano?”
Helen nodded. She was wearing her best black Ralph Lauren suit. Both she and the outfit looked slightly shopworn in the bright morning light. The suit was too shiny. She was too dull.
After that long slow night, morning came rushing straight at Helen. As soon as she clocked in at the boiler room, the staff was crammed into Vito’s smelly little office for another pep talk.
Jack boldly sat on the edge of Vito’s dusty desk. The room was so crowded, Helen was practically in Jack’s lap. The prospect was not as pleasing as she thought it would be. Jack’s cologne was overpowering in the hot room. His hair was suspiciously black. His manner seemed smarmy.
Vito started marching up and down behind his desk, a plump pink piglet on parade.