by Elaine Viets
Margery smoked and propped her purple suede ankle-strap sandals on the dash. “Is Phil mad at you?” she said. “And don’t lie to me. Sound carries on damp nights. I heard the two of you outside his place.”
“But we didn’t say anything,” Helen said.
“Exactly,” Margery said.
“I don’t know what we are,” Helen said. “That’s all I can say about it now. Maybe you can answer this question: What is it about Florida and sex? Do we have more of it than other states? Is it weirder here? Do wives in Ohio look for sex partners for their bored husbands? Do men in Michigan drag their wives off to threesomes?”
“Of course,” Margery said. “Probably more than we do. Those people have to do something during the long, cold winters. Why are you carrying on about sex like you just discovered it?”
“It seems to be the reason for Tammie’s murder, and Willoughby’s, too.”
“It’s a darn good reason,” Margery said. “What are the other choices? Revenge? Money? The neat thing about sex is you can mix in the other two motives.”
She was right. All three reasons were tangled up with Willoughby. There was her affair with the dead Tammie and the divorce that stripped Francis of his home and income.
If Kent killed Tammie, sex and money were in there, too. Tammie’s death saved her husband a messy, expensive divorce, and he was on the prowl for a more interesting sex partner.
If Betty killed her, it was sex and money again. Only this time the money was for the animal shelter.
“I’ll tell you what’s weird in Florida,” Margery said. “It’s not sex. It’s death. I got one of those coupon books in the mail. You know the kind: ‘Free lunch, with the purchase of a second lunch and two beverages.’ In with the coupons for lunches, dinners, and appetizers is a five-hundred-dollar coupon for a crypt. I can just see me taking a coupon to a cemetery.”
“At least they don’t have an early-bird special,” Helen said.
Margery snorted like she’d made the Pamplona run.
“It’s him!” Helen said.
Francis, pale as unbaked bread, loped down the sidewalk to his silver Lexus.
“Follow that car,” Helen said.
“Did you really have to say that?” Margery said.
Francis was a slow, careful driver, which earned him the ire of everyone on the road. Old women cut him off. Young men gave him the finger as they gunned their cars to pass him. Francis seemed oblivious. He drove at a steady pace until he finally put on his left-turn signal.
“Is he going to the dog track?” Helen said.
“Not that man. He’s headed for Big Irv’s. It’s right in front of the greyhound track.”
They followed Francis into a blacktop parking lot. Irv’s looked like a collection of sheds cobbled together. Francis grabbed a rusty grocery cart and rolled it past big boxes the size of playpens, filled with oranges and grapefruit.
Big Irv’s was a throwback to the fruit stands of fifty years ago. There was no air-conditioning. Helen liked that. She usually carried a sweater with her. Florida buildings were kept at morgue temperatures. Irv’s was warm, but pleasant. The fresh air released the smells of sweet fruit, bitter vegetables, and fresh earth.
Shopping was like hand-to-hand combat. Customers reached over and around one another for plastic bags, and used their baskets to edge their way to open bins of green beans and corn.
Irv’s was the United Nations of produce. The aisles were packed with old women squeezing tomatoes, Hispanic mothers testing plantains for ripeness, Italians thumping eggplants. Tall Russian women weighed cabbages. Old men prodded spotted vegetables on the sale rack, looking for bargains.
Francis went for the most expensive items. He filled his cart with snow peas, blueberries, and raspberries. He brushed up against a shapely woman in a maid’s uniform and she smiled at him. She had long black hair and a fetching overbite. Francis smiled back. She giggled. They talked for a bit by the kohlrabi, and then he gave her a business card.
Helen watched in amazement. “He picked her up. I can’t believe it. What does a pretty woman like her see in him?”
“She’s a smart one,” Margery said. “She sized him up the same way she checked out the broccoli. Francis wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and he bought the most expensive produce. She saw a rich, unattached man.”
“But he’s icky,” Helen said.
“Ickier than mopping floors and scrubbing toilets?”
Francis carefully wheeled his basket past a staffer opening cartons with a razor-sharp box cutter. Helen and Margery each grabbed a cart and cornered Francis by the strawberries.
“You!” he said. “Why are you following me?”
“To get the truth, Francis,” Helen said. “We know about Tammie and Willoughby.”
Francis panicked and tried to bolt, but he was blocked by their carts. He backed up, then leaped into the apple bins, sending an avalanche of Red Delicious onto the floor. They bounced and rolled with hollow thuds.
“Hey! Get down!” yelled the staffer with the box cutter.
Francis vaulted over a mound of Golden Delicious and slipped on a stack of strawberry boxes. They cracked under his weight. He ran through the potatoes and squashed the ripe avocados into guacamole.
Helen hefted a hearty two-pound sweet potato and lobbed it at him. She missed, and it bounced into the rutabagas. Margery started throwing tomatoes. Her aim was better. She nailed Francis in the chest with a swift, ripe shot, splashing his beige shirt with red color and yellow seeds.
“What are you doing?” an old woman said.
“He killed his wife,” Margery said, and hit him again. That woman had quite an arm.
“She’s a crazy old lady,” Francis screamed.
It was the wrong thing to say in that crowd. The women launched a tomato attack. The largest was thrown by the pretty maid with the overbite.
“Coward!” she screamed. “Wimp! Here’s what I think of men who kill their wives!” Her tomato hit him in the ear. Francis winced at her words. Her contempt hurt worse than her well-aimed tomato. He had to justify himself to all these people. He had to explain to the pretty maid.
“I loved her.” Francis’s cry was ripped from his throat. His face was now as red as his shirt. “I loved her and she laughed at me. She deserved to die.”
That did it. Furious women begin hurling hordes of produce and specialty foods. “You sound like my pig of a son-in-law,” said a woman in a black wig, as she slung a jar of kosher pickles at the fleeing Francis. He tried to escape into the yellow onions. A young woman jogger blocked his run and beat him with a bunch of broccoli. A mother swung a bag of Idaho potatoes at his crotch.
Someone opened the refrigerator case and brought out a carton of eggs. The first one landed on his shoe with a yellow splat!
“She drove me to it,” Francis shouted. “She left me for another woman.”
There was silence, except for a juicy tomato that plopped off a counter. Francis was splashed red with juice and mashed fruit. A single blueberry stuck to his forehead like a jewel. A banana was squashed on his back, and something green and leafy sat on his head, like a Roman laurel wreath. The sharp tang of pickle juice made an eye-watering cloud. The floor around him was slippery with pasta sauce. Its red splashes looked like a crime scene.
“She was going to run off with Tammie and take our dog,” Francis said.
“That’s terrible,” a trembling old man said. “To leave you like that and take your dog.”
“Our dog is Barkley, the Davis department stores mascot,” Francis said. He started to climb off the mound of onions, but Margery blocked him with her cart.
“That cute little puppy?” the jogger said.
“I’ve seen those TV commercials. That dog is worth some money,” the old man said admiringly. His chins wobbled and he steadied his hands on his cart.
“My wife was going to live off our dog and keep her girlfriend in style,” Francis said. “Our innocent puppy would
support their lesbian lifestyle.”
“Shouldn’t happen to a dog,” the old man said.
“It shouldn’t happen to a man,” Francis said. “I was humiliated, but I thought I could fight it in court. When I tried to talk to my wife about custody of Barkley, she said the woman she left me for was a better man than I was. I couldn’t take it. I picked up a tree branch and bashed her in the head. I didn’t mean to. The next thing I knew she was on the ground and she wasn’t moving. I killed the woman I loved.”
He was weeping now, unless the tears were caused by the yellow onions.
“I want to end it all!” he said.
“He has a box cutter,” a woman shrieked.
Francis held it to his own throat. “I can’t live with the shame,” he said.
My God, Helen thought. One slash and he’s dead. I’ve done this.
“Put it down, son. A jury of your peers would understand,” the shaky old man said. He was clinging desperately to his shopping cart, and Helen feared the excitement would be too much for him.
“Yeah,” a beefy younger man said. “Get a bunch of guys on the jury and we’ll let you go.”
The women glared at the men and brandished their produce in a threatening manner. Helen was afraid another food fight would erupt and Francis would kill himself before she could reach him. She looked at the horde of angry women, including the contemptuous maid. Suddenly she knew the words that might save him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Helen said, stepping around several honeydew melons the size of bowling balls. “It was a crime of passion.”
“Passion?” Francis said. His knobby knees and narrow shoulders were not the stuff of passion. But he said it again, more firmly this time. “Passion.”
“You did what any red-blooded man would do,” the beefy young guy said. The women growled, and he quickly shut up.
“You were overcome with passion,” Helen said.
The pale Francis liked that. He wasn’t a cuckolded wimp. He was a man of passion. “Yes,” he said. “I did it. And it was a crime of passion!” Willoughby’s widower lost his hangdog look. He put down the box cutter on a pile of green-pepper cartons and squared his narrow shoulders.
The crowd applauded.
Helen was relieved to hear the police sirens.
CHAPTER 29
Some things were better at night. With the help of the softening shadows, Helen could have explained everything to Phil. She knew he would understand why she couldn’t tell him what happened in St. Louis.
But Helen missed her chance. She and Margery had slipped away from Big Irv’s as soon as they heard the wailing sirens. They came back to the Coronado, and spent a restless hour or so pacing and drinking coffee. At six o’clock they turned on the TV news. Willoughby’s killer was in custody. Dozens of people had heard Francis’s confession, and were eager to tell the television audience. The case was solved.
Margery and Helen proceeded to celebrate Helen’s victory. Some celebration. Helen had one glass of white wine. One lousy glass. Then she fell asleep in the chaise longue by the pool.
“It’s the stress,” she heard Margery whisper to Phil. “She’s been running on worry and adrenaline since that damn dog disappeared. Let her sleep. You can talk to her in the morning.”
No! Helen wanted to say. She tried to struggle up from the sleep-numbed darkness. She felt Margery and Phil carry her home and put her to bed. They slid off her shoes and pulled cool, comforting sheets over her. She heard the clink of dry food hitting Thumbs’s bowl and knew someone had fed her cat.
“Phil,” Helen said. “Please stay so we can talk,” she wanted to add, but she slid down the long tunnel of unconsciousness.
The next thing she knew, someone was knocking on her front door and her bedroom was flooded with harsh, hot daylight.
“Helen! Wake up! I need to talk to you,” Phil said.
Damn. She didn’t want Phil to see her like this, baggy-faced and dry-mouthed. She didn’t want to try to explain herself now. Helen wasn’t a morning person. She couldn’t muster the right words until noon. She squinted at her bedside clock. Seven a.m. Five hours before she could talk sense.
“Coming,” she said, and stumbled over her shoes.
Helen shrugged on a lumpy pink bathrobe. She felt frumpy, but didn’t have the strength to put on something better. In the bathroom she looked in the mirror and winced. She hoped those were sleep wrinkles on her face. She brushed her teeth. An ice pick of pain hit her in the head when she bent over the sink. Her lipstick looked too dark on her washed-out face. She wiped it off. A zit shone like a beacon on her chin.
She opened the front door and threw up her hands against the sun like a vampire.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Phil said.
He was so damn cheerful in the morning. Helen would have hated him, if he wasn’t so good in bed. A woman would put up with a lot for a man who would—
“Hello, anyone in there?” Phil said. His chin looked freshly chiseled. He had a clean, just-shaved scent. He balanced two coffee mugs and a white pastry box on a tray. Phil kissed Helen hard and handed her the box. “Chocolate croissants.”
“Yum,” she said. “Come into the living room.”
Helen swept the newspapers off the couch and set down the tray. Thumbs came up and rubbed against Phil, leaving a white patch of cat hair on his dark pants that would have annoyed a lesser man. Phil scratched the cat’s chin until he flopped over in ecstasy.
“I wanted to catch you before you went to work this morning,” Phil said.
“I don’t have to go in until noon,” Helen said. She sounded whiny. She managed a smile that rearranged her sleep wrinkles and sat down on the couch next to Phil. He leaned back, put both his feet on the boomerang coffee table and one arm around her. She snuggled next to him.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, and kissed his neck. “Ummm. The croissants are warm and flaky.”
“Like me,” Phil said. He kissed her again, a morning kiss of toothpaste and coffee that made Helen want to go further. She felt his slight hesitation. Then Phil pulled away and said, “You need to eat. I have strict instructions from Margery to make sure you have breakfast.”
Was that the reason? Helen wondered. Or was he still angry with her?
“Eat,” he said, and jammed a croissant into her mouth like a groom with a piece of wedding cake. Helen bit into it and sent a shower of buttery flakes all over the couch.
“You know what I like about you?” he said. “You aren’t worried about crumbs on your couch and feet on your coffee table.”
“I was in another life,” she said, then wished she hadn’t. That was an invitation to a forbidden subject. “This furniture has been around for half a century. Nicks and scrapes give it character. Now, tell me what you’ve found, since you woke me up at this awful hour.”
Phil finished half a croissant while Helen tried to contain her impatience. He had one flake on his upper lip. She longed to lick it off, but now she was hungry for information.
“I’ve found the owner of the black van, the one you saw Jeff getting out of,” Phil said, and brushed off the errant flake. “It belongs to a Fort Lauderdale artist. He’s quite expensive, does mostly portraits in oil. Very popular with the new rich. His name is Robard Raxley.”
“Rax!” Helen said. “Tammie and Willoughby both had Rax portraits in their homes. He’s the John Singer Sargent of Fort Lauderdale. He can make any rich woman look like a grande dame.”
“Jeff seems to like artistic men,” Phil said. “First the decorator, then a portrait painter.”
“I don’t think this is an assignation,” Helen said. “According to Todd, Jeff brings the man envelopes. Large, thick envelopes.”
“So you’re thinking blackmail?” Phil said.
“Absolutely,” Helen said. “Maybe the painter saw something when he was painting Tammie and he’s blackmailing Jeff. There’s definitely a connection between Tammie, Willoughby, and Jeff, and the painte
r can connect the dots. I like it.”
“But wait, there’s more,” Phil said like a game-show host. “I’ve got news about your animal-loving friend, Betty. I don’t know what she was doing the afternoon that Tammie died, but she wasn’t playing golf. She’s not down in the club book for any tee time that day.”
“I saw her leaving the Stately Palms grounds with her golf clubs in her car,” Helen said.
“Right after Tammie was murdered,” Phil finished. Then he finished off the croissant and licked his fingers. Helen watched him hungrily.
“Turns out our Betty has a violent streak when it comes to saving helpless creatures,” Phil said. “Margery mentioned two arrests. I found those, plus two more. Betty also punched out a lawyer who tried to drown a bag of kittens in his swimming pool. She rescued the kittens and busted the guy’s nose. He decided not to press charges for assault.”
Phil reached for another croissant and sent another shower of crumbs over the couch.
“Betty also stole a corgi that belonged to a CPA who lived on her street. He left the dog locked up all day and it barked itself into a frenzy. Betty saw the corgi in the window, foaming at the mouth. She broke the window, rescued the dog, then decked the owner when he came home. He hit his head on the fender of his Mercedes. Those charges were dropped, too.”
“Betty can afford the best lawyers,” Helen said.
“Someone may also have explained to the animal abusers what the publicity would do to them,” Phil said.
“That’s true. Would you want a lawyer who drowned little kittens?” Helen said.
“Under certain circumstances, yes,” Phil said.
Helen swatted him playfully. “We have quite a crop of suspects here,” she said. “Jeff and Betty are serious possibilities. Tammie’s husband looks even better, except he has that pesky alibi.”
“I’d like to spend some time looking into what Mr. Kent did that afternoon,” Phil said. “I want to know more about the salesman who was supposedly with him while he test-drove that car. It would be nice if someone poked around in the salesman’s bank accounts, looking for recent large deposits.”
“Know anyone who could do that?” Helen said.