The Dead-End Job Mysteries Box Set 1

by Elaine Viets

  “No,” Phil said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Don’t pull that big strong male routine on me again, Phil. I’m a telemarketer, and a good one. Besides, I’m already in place there.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” Phil said. “What if the boiler room gets raided?”

  “Exactly what I’ve been telling her,” Margery said.

  Whose side was Margery on? First she praised Helen for noticing things on the job. Now she said it was too dangerous.

  Helen shrugged. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Do you think Cavarelli cares what happens to you or anyone else? You said he was armed. He could start shooting. He could take hostages.”

  Helen shivered at the thought of Cavarelli’s flat yellow eyes. She could feel his reptilian hands, dry and pebbly, as he clutched her for a human shield.

  “You haven’t told Phil why you were bartending topless,” Margery said. “There’s two dead girls mixed up in this, Phil. Helen forgot to mention that.” She handed Phil a brownie the size of a potholder.

  He didn’t touch it. He sat there, waiting for Helen to talk. His stillness was uncanny.

  “I told you about Laredo,” Helen began. “I heard her die while I was making a call for Girdner Surveys.”

  “Tell me again,” Phil said. “I want to hear it all from the beginning.”

  She told him the whole story. Each time, it seemed a little less shocking to her. Phil listened with that full-body concentration, occasionally interrupting to ask a question. He believes me, Helen thought. If the police had shown this kind of interest, Debbie might still be alive.

  Helen noticed something else. She thought there was a layer of loneliness under Phil’s professional manner, like a vein of something soft running through granite.

  “And you think Laredo was killed for that computer disk,” Phil said, when she finished her story.

  “Yes. I think she used it to blackmail Henry Asporth. She pushed too hard and he killed her. But that’s where Asporth made his mistake: He thought Laredo had the disk with her when she came to his house. Laredo was smarter than that. She hid it. Her last words were ‘It’s the coffee.’ Her sister Savannah and I can’t figure out what that means. The disk is supposed to prove that Hank was laundering money and mixed up in a fraud with some big names. Laredo called it her lottery ticket.”

  “You’ve searched her home?”

  “Yes. So has the killer.”

  Suddenly, a thought slammed into Helen. “The break-in here. It was Fred and Ethel.”

  “I thought we’d already established that,” Margery said, dryly.

  “But that means I didn’t bring the killers to the Coronado. They don’t know about me. I’m safe. We’re safe.”

  A weight the size of a stone sofa was lifted from her. She’d been sick with guilt since the break-in, thinking she’d exposed Margery and the Coronado to danger. But Fred and Ethel had trashed her apartment and taken her money. That fact put a different light on her investigation, too. She wasn’t on Hank Asporth’s radar. She was still invisible.

  Margery yawned, but it was not dainty and catlike. She looked like a hibernating bear.

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning,” she said. “I’m throwing you both out so I can get some sleep.”

  “I have to be at work in four hours,” Helen said.

  As she walked across the foggy courtyard with Phil, Helen was not tired. She didn’t want this night to end. Phil lingered, too. The hazy moon silvered his biceps and shimmered in his hair. Helen thought of that poem she had to memorize in high school, about the moon being a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. “A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.”

  Phil looked like the highwayman.

  “Can I have one last question?” she said in a whisper. They were standing so close, they were almost touching.

  “You can have anything you want,” Phil said, and raised that eyebrow again.

  Helen wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to wrap her in his big strong arms and rip her clothes off. She wanted to drag him into her bedroom and lock the door. Helen wanted sweaty, twisted sheets. She wanted beard-burn all over her body and cheap champagne for breakfast.

  Her lips parted slightly. She tilted her head upward, so he could kiss her more easily. She was ready for mad, impulsive sex. She said the first thing that came into her head.

  “What is that ray gun thing?”

  Phil looked surprised. But not as surprised as Helen. Why the hell had she said that? Some alien had taken possession of her body.

  Phil became all business.

  “It’s a target pistol with a red-dot sight,” he said.

  “That’s all? It looks like it could vaporize buildings.”

  “It made Fred and Ethel disappear,” he said. “That was enough.”

  Helen woke up the next morning on sweaty, twisted sheets. She’d tossed and turned all night after she went to bed alone.

  Chapter 24

  “So how did you two make out last night?” Margery said. “You were drooling over Phil like a pup with a porterhouse. That’s why I left you alone.”

  Helen didn’t want to talk at seven thirty in the morning. She didn’t want to talk about Phil any time ever. She stepped around Margery and plowed toward the sidewalk, head down.

  “I can’t stop now,” she said. “I’m going to be late for work.”

  But Margery was not to be ignored—not in purple clamdiggers and red tennis shoes. She stomped right alongside Helen, keeping up with her long, loping strides. Smoking Marlboros didn’t slow her down.

  “I’ll walk with you,” her landlady said. “I’m going in the same direction.”

  “Then you’re going nowhere,” Helen said. “That’s where we went last night. You know why? Because I opened my big mouth. We were all alone in this romantic setting, surrounded by fog and flowers. He moved in closer. I was sure he was going to kiss me. And do you know what I said?” She glared at Margery until the glaze on her good cheer cracked.

  “Do I want to know?” Margery said.

  “I asked him what kind of gun he had.”

  “That science fiction thing? What did he answer?” Margery was genuinely curious.

  “It’s a target pistol with a red-dot sight. But that’s not the point. He went all business on me, Margery. He spent half an hour talking about that stupid gun. Excuse me, weapon. It was as romantic as a night at the Bass Pro Shop. I ruined the mood. I’ve been so long without a man, I panicked and turned into a porcupine. I’m so freaking stupid.”

  “I think you were smart,” Margery said. “Women used to know how to play hard to get. He was probably expecting you to fall into his arms. Instead, you threw him off balance. A man like Phil is used to getting any woman he wants. It will do him good.”

  Helen’s cheeks were bright red, and not from the brisk walk. “Do you really think so?”

  “I just said so.” They were in front of the sidewalk restaurant at the elegant Riverside Hotel. Margery eyed the tanned busboy in the white jacket and tight pants.

  “I hear the buns are great here.” She grinned wickedly.

  “Margery!” Helen said.

  Margery put on her best innocent old lady face. “I’m having a leisurely breakfast as a privilege of my age. You, young woman, should go to work. Build up that Social Security fund.”

  Helen didn’t remind her landlady that she was paid in cash under the table. The only thing she contributed to was Vito’s slush fund.

  As she walked the rest of the way to the boiler room, Helen decided she was a failure in the womanly wiles department. She’d have to impress Phil with her detecting skills. Maybe she could steal those papers off Vito’s desk. She knew how to do it without getting caught.

  As Helen clocked in, she felt her spirits sink lower. The boiler room was dingy with ancient dirt. The night shift had left half a bag of Cheetos on her computer. Helen popped a handful in her mouth. They were stale. Her p
hone was coated with bright orange-yellow Cheetos’ residue, like an exotic pollen. She cleaned it off and threw away the bag.

  Ramon, Marina’s little boy, overturned her trash can. He found the stale Cheetos and started eating them.

  “No, no,” his mother said, taking away the bag. Ramon sat on the floor and screamed.

  Helen heard more screaming on the phone. Her first call was to a Rhode Island man who snarled like a rabid dog. “You got a lot of balls calling me at eight thirty in the morning, lady.”

  “I’ve got guts, not balls,” she said, but the guy hung up on her. Comeback interruptus, Helen thought, a major cause of frustration in telemarketers.

  When the customers weren’t yelling, Vito was. He patrolled the aisles, shouting, “Loud and proud, people. Let’s hear you. Let’s get those sales.”

  All Helen got was the green weenie in her ear. The nicest thing anyone did was hang up on her. For three hours she listened to the same old insults, and those were hard to hear with little Ramon howling for his lost Cheetos. Finally, Helen sneaked some out of the bag in the trash and fed them to the boy. Stale Cheetos wouldn’t hurt the kid, she told herself. She’d eaten them herself. Besides, he shut up.

  At eleven thirty, Helen finally heard something she wanted:

  “All right, people,” Vito said, “everyone in my office for a pep talk.”

  Helen grabbed a pen and some paper. She jumped over little Ramon like a hurdle, then sprinted into Vito’s office. She was the second person in the room and snagged a seat on the corner of his desk. The other telemarketers pushed in, until Vito’s office was crowded as a Beijing bus. Good. The others would screen her.

  Helen pulled out the paper she’d brought with her and began making notes. “Buy cat food. Throw out old takeout in fridge. Or feed to cat.” It was a list of things she had to do on her afternoon break, but she looked diligent from a distance.

  Vito, pink and porcine, stalked up and down the room.

  “You’re not selling, people. And if you’re not selling, you’re not telling the right things about our product. What do we know about Tank Titan? Here’s a refresher course:

  “Tank Titan eats sludge like Pac-Man.”

  Vito demonstrated with greedy chomps until the telemarketers were giggling. Helen glanced down at the boss’s desk. It was a landfill. With a fingernail, she lifted the top sheet of the paper pile nearest her. It was a stack of articles on the do-not-call law, printed off the Internet. Nothing she could steal there.

  “Tank Titan is so good it’s like being on the city sewer,” Vito said. He quit chomping. Helen went back to scribbling.

  “And it’s all-natural. Your baby could eat it for breakfast, and it wouldn’t hurt him.”

  Vito grabbed Ramon from his mother’s arms and grinned at the boy like a deranged kiddie-show host. Helen noticed guiltily that Ramon’s mouth was yellow with stale Cheetos. Ramon burst into sobs, squirming to get away from Vito. The kid’s instincts were good.

  Vito said, “Of course, you’d be changing a lot of diapers for a couple of days, but Tank Titan is harmless.” He handed Ramon back to his mother like a rejected package. While Marina carried her sobbing child from the room, Helen examined the next paper pile: a stack of time sheets and racing forms. Nothing again.

  “Helen!” Vito said.

  She jumped.

  “Name two things that we never say to customers.”

  “You can send the product back,” Helen said. “And, we will send you a free sample.”

  “Very good,” Vito said. “See? The lady pays attention.” Fat lot he knows, Helen thought, as she went back to her list of things to do. She looked at Vito’s well-packed form and wrote, “Buy ham.”

  Vito tormented three more telemarketers, who hadn’t a clue about what they should not say—or should, for that matter. Helen poked through more paper stacks. She found overdue invoices, ads for hair transplants, blank employment applications. Nothing.

  “Remember, you’re not a telemarketer,” Vito said. “You’re an insurance agent for their septic tank. And how does a good agent sell? With fear. Make them afraid not to buy our product. Tell them, ‘If your septic tank backs up, and a backhoe rips up your lawn, that’s five thousand dollars down the drain.’ Fear sells, folks. Fear is the great motivator.”

  It is for me, Helen thought, as she inched toward the last heap of paper. It was blank copy paper. Damn. The desk search was a bust. Then she saw a stapled corner sticking out of the pile. Blank paper didn’t have staples. She gave the corner a tiny tug.

  Vito shouted, “What’s the most important thing to remember?”

  Every telemarketer knew that answer: “Never, ever give out our 800 number!”

  Vito clapped his hands. The telemarketers applauded themselves. Helen gave the stapled corner a good yank and pulled it out. She caught the paper tower before it toppled. She had the list of phony employees. It was covered with dust and coffee rings, but she had it. She stuck her to-do list on top of the stolen paper.

  The pep talk was over. Helen joined the crowd surging for the open door.

  “Helen!” Vito called.

  Helen froze.

  “Can you come here?” Vito didn’t look porcine anymore. He looked like a mass of robust muscle. Even his eyebrows were muscular.

  “I saw what you were doing.” Vito cracked his knuckles. Next, he’d crack every bone in her body.

  Helen was too frightened to talk. He knew. He saw her steal that paper. What would he do next? Beat her up? Shoot her? Burn her with cigar butts? She could stand anything, as long as he didn’t lock her in with Mr. Cavarelli. Please don’t call in the lizard, she wanted to beg, but her mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Taking notes is a good idea,” Vito said. “Sets a good example for the other telemarketers. Makes ’em take me more serious-like.” His smile showed sixty-four teeth.

  Helen nodded. She still didn’t have her voice back. She fled the room, the purloined papers in her hand.

  Helen went home at lunch break and fed Thumbs the leftover Cantonese chicken with water chestnuts. Her cat ate around the water chestnuts just like she did. Helen made herself a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, but couldn’t finish it. Her encounter with Vito had ruined her appetite. The terror diet, she thought, an effective new weight-loss program.

  She tried to take a nap, but she was too charged with adrenaline. She knocked on Phil’s door to give him the stolen list, but he wasn’t home. She slid the list under his door with the phantom employees starred.

  Three hours before she had to be at work. Helen paced restlessly, wondering what to do. Then she had an inspiration.

  The wife of Damian Putnam, the horny plastic surgeon at the Mowbrys’ party, was the CEO for a funeral-home chain. Helen had seen her picture in the society story.

  What was that woman’s name?

  Patricia Wellneck, that was it. The funeral home chain was called The Wellneck Group. Helen had heard their ads on the radio, with a professionally lugubrious announcer intoning: “The Wellneck Group. We’re here when you need us.”

  Helen needed Patricia now.

  She checked the phone book. The Wellneck headquarters were in Lauderdale, a half-hour bus ride away. Helen put on a black pantsuit. The bus pulled up to the stop as she arrived, a good omen. Even better, the bus stopped right in front of the pink stucco funeral home.

  Florida funeral parlors looked about like the ones in Helen’s hometown of St. Louis, with one major difference: they were preternaturally sunny. No matter how thick the curtains, a Florida funeral home was flooded with sunshine. In the softer St. Louis light, you could say, “He looks so natural” with a straight face. But the relentless Florida sun was the enemy of the mortician’s art. It cruelly revealed the corpse’s makeup, the sprayed hair, the too-stiff stiff. Helen thought that was why there were more closed-casket funerals down here.

  The casket in Slumber Room A was mercifully shut. It was pinkish bronze with a red carnation
cover, like a flower blanket on a Kentucky Derby winner. Helen thought the red carnations clashed with the casket color, but it was fairly tasteful for Florida.

  She tiptoed past Slumber Rooms B and C, both empty, and found the office. A young woman in a somber navy suit said, “May I help you?”

  Her soft, solemn voice made Helen want to clutch a tissue.

  “I’d like to see Patricia Wellneck about some pre-need arrangements.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. But if I don’t make them now, I’ll never have the courage again,” Helen said.

  Ms. Solemn Suit knew better than to let a live one get away. “I’ll see if she’s available.”

  Patricia Wellneck was back in two minutes. She photographed better than she looked in person. She was so thin, she looked like one of her coffin candidates. Her yellow-blond hair was upswept, and in the harsh light of day, facelift scars were visible behind her ears. She also had an eye-job slant. Her husband had been whittling on her, Helen thought.

  “Now, how may I help you?” Patricia gave a death’s-head smile.

  “I’m looking into some pre-need arrangements,” Helen said. “For myself. I want to buy a coffin.”

  “And your name is?”

  What’s my name? Helen thought. Patricia’s skeletal smile made her panic. I can’t use my real name. Who do I want to be in this place?

  “Rob,” Helen blurted her ex-husband’s name.

  “Yes, Ms. Robb. You are wise to make your choice now. We have a full line of caskets. Many younger people, like yourself, prefer our theme line.”

  “Theme caskets,” Helen said. She flashed back to those awful corporate theme parties from her former life, where unhappy servers had to wear lederhosen for unfestive Oktoberfests and cowboy hats for dreary chuck wagon cookouts.

  Patricia pulled out a catalogue. “These,” she said, “are dignified but distinctive.”

  She showed Helen a casket covered with Monet’s water lilies. It looked like a giant jewelry box. “This is from our Eternal Masters series. It makes a comforting statement for your family. This is a quiet reflection of a full life.”