The Dead-End Job Mysteries Box Set 1

by Elaine Viets

  Phil had promised to check out more names for her, but Helen had work of her own to do. This was her problem, and she wanted to solve it herself.

  She was at the Pampered Pet by ten o’clock, anxious to talk to Jeff, but the store was overwhelmed with a burst of business. She’d barely said hello before a young woman with a Westie asked for a case of organic dog food. Grammy's Pot Pie, the dog-food label said. Chicken, Red-Jacket New Potatoes, Carrots, Snow Peas, Red Apples.

  Helen wondered what her own dinner would look like on a can: Single Woman's Special: Water-Packed Tune, Stale Wheat Bread, Old Tomato, Low-Fat Mayo. Maybe she should pick up a can of dog food for dinner.

  She hauled the case out to the Westie owner’s MINI Cooper. When Helen came back into the store, she heard Jeff on the phone. “You need the parts shaved. Yes, ma’am. Bring her by and we’ll fix her. Fortunately, we have Jonathon to help you.”

  He hung up the phone.

  “We do?” Helen said. “Jonathon is back?”

  “In all his glory. He’s working on a sheltie right now. He made bail yesterday. I really need him. That poor woman has a white dog and she shouldn’t. She can’t keep it clean. Now we’ll have to shave that pretty white hair. People want these long-haired fluff muffins when they should have a short-haired dog like Lulu. It’s like wearing white pants. Some people have the knack. Others don’t.”

  Jeff was wearing white pants and he didn’t have a speck of dirt on them, despite a morning when dogs had piddled all over the store. It’s a gift, Helen decided. Her own jeans smelled a bit funky. She must have knelt in something.

  Even Lulu looked better than Helen. Today the glamour hound was modeling a black Lurex turtleneck sweater that Helen would have worn on a date with Phil. Lulu’s nails were painted black and gold, and her strawberry-blond hair was freshly washed.

  Upstaged by a dog, Helen thought, as Lulu strutted around the store. Helen couldn’t afford Lulu’s pampering—not when she made six-seventy an hour.

  Jeff was back on the phone again, and this time something was very wrong. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs. Curtis,” he said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  He was white-faced when he hung up the phone. “Another cancellation. She heard about Willoughby’s dog. She doesn’t trust us to care for her baby. I knew this would happen.”

  “Was Barclay’s dognapping on the news?” Helen said.

  “Not yet. So far it’s just word of mouth. But that can kill me. There’s the phone again.”

  He picked it up as if it were a loaded gun and put it to his ear. “You know, if you cancel a standing Jonathon appointment,” he said, “I may not be able to get you another one if you change your mind. Yes, yes, I understand. Your baby’s safety comes first.”

  The salon doorbell rang, and Helen was rushing to find dog collars, dog beds, and biscuits. In between she’d see Jeff on the phone. Sometimes he accepted the cancellation stoically. Sometimes he’d resort to pleading. Neither one worked. She counted at least four cancellations in the appointment book.

  It was eleven thirty when the crush of customers cleared out and the phone calls died down. Helen cornered Jeff in the stockroom. “If we’re going to clear Jonathon’s name, I need someone who can tell me about Tammie’s sex parties,” she said.

  “Don’t look at me,” Jeff said. “I spend my evenings with Bill.” That was his interior decorator.

  “I don’t know anything, either,” Helen said. “I’m with Phil.”

  “Some swinging singles we are,” Jeff said. “In the sex capital of South Florida, we go straight home to our honeys.” He looked at Helen. “Well, some go straighter than others.”

  “Neither one of us knows anything about the wild side,” Helen said.

  “How did we get so boring?” Jeff asked.

  Helen didn’t think her nights with Phil were dull. “Somebody has to know something,” she said. “Too many people come into this store.”

  There was a thoughtful silence as Jeff and Helen wandered through the shop, running lists of customer names through their heads in the search for a decent—or indecent—source. Helen studied the shelves and displays, thinking of who bought dog clothes, jewelry, and treats, picturing one customer after another, dismissing them all as too respectable. She conjured up a parade of women as sweetly innocent as their small dogs.

  After a storewide circuit, Jeff and Helen ended up at the same place: the rack of spiked and studded dog collars.

  “Lucinda the dog-collar lady,” they said together.

  “How do we get her back in the store?” Jeff said. “She shows up when she feels like it. She could come in tomorrow or next month.”

  “That would be too late to help Jonathon,” Helen said. “What about telling her there’s a sale?”

  “We never have sales,” Jeff said. “Our customers think those are down-market. I know! I’ll tell her I have new stock in from New York. I just got in those great winter coats for dogs, the fur-lined toy boxes, and the fainting couches—”

  “What’s a fainting couch?” Helen interrupted.

  Jeff pulled a miniature pink velvet Victorian chaise out of a box. It was exactly the right size for a small dog.

  “These are new. They’ll bring Lucinda in, probably with another boyfriend.”

  Jeff made the call while Helen paced impatiently. “Lucinda said she’s tied up right now,” he reported.

  “Probably to a bedpost,” Helen said.

  “She says she’ll be in later this afternoon.”

  “When do you think Lucinda will show?” Helen asked.

  “Who knows?” Jeff said. “Could be three or four o’clock. Could be tomorrow or the next day. Time doesn’t mean much for Lucinda. I’ve planted the idea in her foggy little brain, so she’ll show up sooner rather than later.”

  “Could it be right now?” Helen said hopefully.

  “No. It’s only noon. Way too early for the likes of Lucinda. Party animals rarely get going before two or three o’clock.”

  Helen faced another frustrating wait, another day of going nowhere. “Why don’t you lend me the Pupmobile? I’ll collect Prince’s grooming fee from the new widower, Kent.”

  “It’s nice of you to try, but I don’t think you’ll get any money out of him,” Jeff said.

  “What can we lose?” Helen said. “If I’m not back by two o’clock, promise me you’ll call the cops. That guy is weird.”

  “Are you sure you want to go?” Jeff said. “I don’t need the grooming fee that badly.”

  “Definitely,” Helen said. “Let me call first and make sure he’s home.”

  A young woman with a heavy Hispanic accent answered the phone.

  “Hello,” Helen said. “I have a delivery from the Pampered Pet for Mr. Kent Grimsby. I’ll be bringing it over in thirty minutes.”

  “Sí, yes,” said the housekeeper. “We are here.”

  Margery had offered to drive Helen to the Grimsby home, but she was afraid her outspoken landlady might attract the wrong kind of attention. Helen was glad she’d made that decision when she got to the guard’s kiosk at the Stately Palms Country Club.

  Security was much tighter since Tammie’s murder. The dozing oldster was gone, replaced by an alert, muscular woman who looked like she might be ex-military. She studied Helen’s fake driver’s license until sweat ran down Helen’s forehead, then called the Grimsby home to make sure they were expecting someone from the Pampered Pet. She and Margery would have had a hard time bluffing their way past this woman.

  Helen parked the pink Pupmobile in front of the outsize Grimsby home. Both seemed outrageously exaggerated, but their styles clashed. This time the door was opened by an attractive young housekeeper. Her uniform was embroidered with the name Lourdes. Small and voluptuous, Lourdes had an engaging giggle.

  “I’m Helen.” She stuck out her hand. Lourdes seemed surprised, but shook it tentatively and smiled. “I didn’t meet you on my other visits,” Helen said. “Are y
ou new?”

  “No. I work two years here.” Lourdes held up two fingers and smiled again.

  Helen wondered where the housekeeper had been the day Tammie died. Maybe Kent gave her the afternoon off so he could kill his wife. Helen couldn’t ask that question. Instead she dug into her purse and pulled out a twenty.

  “Lourdes, before you get Mr. Kent, could I ask you a question?”

  “I don’t know,” Lourdes said. Her eyes were riveted on the twenty. “This is a very good job. I could lose it talking about Mr. Kent.”

  Helen pulled out another twenty. “I won’t ask anything about Mr. Kent,” she said.

  Lourdes stared at the forty dollars as if willing it to fly into her hands. “But Mr. Kent and the police both said I should not talk about Mrs. Tammie.”

  Helen pulled out a ten. Fifty dollars, one quarter of Margery’s emergency wad. It was nearly a day’s pay for Helen. It was all the money she could afford to give Lourdes. It meant she’d be living on spaghetti and scrambled eggs for a month to pay Margery back. Helen was going for broke—literally.

  “I just want to know if anyone visited Mrs. Tammie the afternoon she died,” Helen said.

  Lourdes grabbed the money and started talking. “I run the errands,” she said. “I go to the grocery store. I go to the dry cleaner. I do not know. I only saw one person that day.”

  She looked hopefully at Helen. Helen started to take back one of the twenties, but Lourdes talked faster and hung on to the cash. “It was the dog lady, Betty. I see her come here before. She tried to get Mrs. Tammie to give money to the shelter for the lost dogs again.”

  “And did she?”

  “Mrs. Tammie laughed at her. She said, ‘I gave you enough last time, Betty. You still feeling guilty about living off those blind rabbits?’

  “Miss Betty, she got angry then. She said, ‘You have lots to feel guilty about yourself.’

  “ ‘No, I don’t,’ Mrs. Tammie said. ‘That was survival of the fittest. The strongest survived. The rest didn’t deserve to live.’ I thought Miss Betty was going to hit her.”

  “Did she?” Helen asked.

  “I don’t know. The phone rang and I had to answer it, and then I had to leave. I no come back that day. I spend the night with my family in Hialeah. That’s all I know. Mr. Kent is home. I find him for you.”

  Lourdes ran off, as if worried Helen might change her mind about the fifty dollars. Helen thought she had a bargain. Her trip was already worth it. As she waited in the foyer, she noticed that Tammie’s grand portrait was gone, replaced by gold-framed mirrors. There must have been two dozen. Some were no bigger than a compact. Others were the size of a hubcap. On one of the smaller ones Helen saw scratches and traces of a fine whitish powder. The rumors were true: Kent did serve coke at his parties.

  The master of the house came into the foyer wearing a black Speedo. The man must be in deep mourning, Helen thought. She tried to stare at his forehead so she wouldn’t see that rubbery wobble when he walked toward her. Kent’s body was slick with suntan oil. He had a black silk robe over one arm. She was grateful when he pulled it on.

  “I’ve spent enough time out by the pool,” he said. “I’ll look like a freaking lobster if I’m not careful. Let’s go into my TV room.”

  The TV room was a windowless cave with black walls, a black leather couch, and a silver-framed plasma television. “Can’t watch TV with that damn Florida sun,” he said. “You get a glare on everything. I insisted that fruit decorator of Tammie’s do one useful thing. I had him design me a room where I could watch decent TV.”

  Kent switched on the television with the biggest, blackest remote Helen had ever seen. He stared at a horse race.

  “I’m so sorry about Tammie,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was too bad.” His eyes were glued on the set.

  “When is the funeral?”

  “There isn’t one. I had her cremated and dropped her off the Seventeenth Street Causeway.”

  Helen was too shocked to say anything. Kent kept talking. “Funerals are so damn depressing. That’s not how I wanted to remember Tammie. She always liked the view from the causeway, so I figured she’d want to go over the rail there. I kept it simple.”

  He still didn’t look at Helen. “That big gray there is gonna win,” he said, pointing to the horse with his remote.

  “It must have been a terrible shock when you found your wife here at the house,” Helen said.

  “Oh, man. I came home and there were cops all over. I thought it was a bust. Turns out she was dead on the patio. Ruined a dynamite day. I’d spent the whole afternoon test-driving a new Porsche. Good thing, huh? Otherwise I could have been dead, too.”

  “It must have been very hard for you,” Helen said.

  “I had the cops crawling up my ass until they caught that killer fruit. I couldn’t take a dump without them watching me.”

  The big gray horse crossed the finish line, winning by a nose. “See?” he said. “What did I tell you?”

  The television was still blaring, but now Kent turned to face Helen. His legs were spread and his robe fell open, showing his hairy chest and bobbing Speedo.

  Oh, Lord, Helen thought.

  “You look like a broad-minded lady,” he said. “I’m giving a little party for some special friends next Saturday. Do a little coke, have a little fun. Wanna come, if you know what I mean?”

  “Not particularly,” Helen said. “But I know a big spender like you won’t have a little coke. You’ll have more snow than Alaska in January. If you don’t want the cops busting you big-time, why don’t you pay the grooming and pickup fees for that sweet little Yorkie you gave away? I think a donation to the shelter would be a good idea, too. Make it in your wife’s name. It will be a nice memorial.”

  “What?” Kent said. “You’re shitting me. You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me,” Helen said. “I saw the telltale signs all over while I waited for you. A good cop could bust you in a heartbeat.”

  Kent looked wildly around the room, but didn’t see the razor-blade-scratched and coke-dusted mirrors.

  “Don’t bother trying to find them. It doesn’t matter if your housekeeper tries to clean up after I leave. There’s so much white stuff in this place, the cops should go through here with a snowplow. One more thing, sport. Close your robe. I’ve seen enough of you.”

  The new widower huffed and snarled, but he wrote two checks.

  Helen took them both and left.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Hello, beautiful. Don’t you look good today?” Helen turned around with a smile on her face. A tall, dark, handsome man was at her feet. Too bad he was petting Lulu.

  “You are such a beautiful girl,” he said.

  Lulu kissed him.

  That dog, Helen thought. Always that dog. Lulu flirts with every man in the store, and they all love her.

  Lulu has a bigger wardrobe than I do. This week alone, Lulu had swanked around in a new fake-fur coat, a pink sweatshirt, a yellow sundress, a blue chiffon evening dress, and a sparkly turtleneck.

  Lulu has more jewelry than I do. Her pearls are real.

  Lulu doesn’t have a weight problem. She eats all day and never gains a pound. In the last two hours, she’s snarfed down cheese-and-bacon treats and turkey jerky, then run off to the bar for cheeseburgers and seasoned fries. That was another thing. Lulu never paid for a meal. Everyone at the Briny Irish Pub gave her treats.

  I’m no match for a strawberry blonde with a big nose and bowlegs, Helen thought. But I might be smarter. Might.

  Helen had enjoyed her triumph with Kent today. But now it was three o’clock and there was no sign of Lucinda. She didn’t think the aging sex queen would be in this afternoon. Helen was half-crazed by the pointless waiting. She could hear poor Jeff on the phone saying, “But you’ve had a standing appointment with us for five years, Mrs. Richards. That’s why I put you on Jonathon’s preferred-customer list. If you cancel, I can’t promise . . .�
��

  Time was ticking away. She had to do something. She couldn’t look for Willoughby’s dog while she waited on customers at the shop.

  But there was one part of Tammie’s murder she could investigate. The police thought Jonathon was the killer. Once they arrested him, their investigation of other suspects stopped. Helen did not think Jonathon was guilty, but she had major questions about him, and she wanted them answered. Once he was cleared in her mind, she could concentrate on the others.

  By three thirty she came up with a plan. Two phone calls, and she had it mostly in place. Now she needed some information from Jeff to complete it. When the customer rush died down, Helen dragged Jeff into the back room, where they couldn’t be overheard by the two dog groomers.

  “I’ve got some questions about Jonathon,” she said.

  “You and everybody else,” Jeff said.

  “The afternoon that Tammie was killed—where did he go?” Helen asked.

  “He won’t say.”

  “What’s his real name? The police called him Bertram Reginald Falkner. Is that really who he is?”

  “I have no idea,” Jeff said. “I’ve always called him Jonathon.”

  “That’s how you make out your checks to him?”

  “Yes. ‘Jonathon, Inc.’ It’s not unusual for an artist to go by one name.”

  “Where does Jonathon live?” Helen asked.

  “Nobody knows,” Jeff said. “Jonathon is secretive. People have tried to follow him, but he always loses them. He’s on the lookout for a tail. His real home is a closely guarded secret.”

  “Why?” Helen said.

  Jeff shrugged. “Jonathon is a mystery. Some say he lives in a penthouse with a very old man who pays for everything. Some say he lives on a boat with a very young boy. Boaters say they’ve seen him sailing naked near Bimini with a crew of Chippendales. That blond hair of his is distinctive.”

  “What do you think?” Helen said.

  “I don’t know,” Jeff said. “But I do know whatever the reason, he doesn’t want to be found. Jonathon sometimes stays at a gay guesthouse in Lauderdale, but it’s not his real home.”