by Elaine Viets
The windshield fogged over. Helen turned on the defroster, and the fog thickened. She fished a tissue from her purse and wiped at the glass. Red brake lights suddenly popped out of the night. Helen slammed on her brakes and the Toad fishtailed. She steered into the slide, and prayed the junker hit something cheap. It stopped three inches from a BMW.
The driver flipped her off, swung into the breakdown lane, and roared away. The Toad died to the blare of impatient horns. Helen ground the starter, pumped the gas pedal, and cursed the car. It hiccupped like a drunk, shuddered, and suddenly leaped forward, farting clouds of black smoke.
I can’t believe I traded my elegant silver Lexus for this hunk of junk, Helen thought. She did a lot of stupid things when she was running from Rob. She’d picked up the Toad in Kansas from a used car dealer who swore it was driven by a little old man only on Sundays.
The guy wasn’t lying, exactly. The car worked about one day a week.
If I ever get back to Kansas, that car dealer will think a tornado hit him. He gave me this rattletrap and a thousand dollars cash in trade for my beautiful driving machine. Her hands itched for the crowbar. Her scraped knuckles throbbed at the memory of meeting Rob’s mouth.
Damn, punching her ex had felt good. If she’d slugged him sooner, would she have had a different life?
I hope not, Helen thought. I like where I live—and who I love. That’s why I can’t be too angry at the Toad. It died here in Lauderdale and brought me my new life.
Helen had kept the dead Toad in her apartment parking lot, where it leaked oil and odd fluids, including something oily and pink. She didn’t need the car—or have the money to fix it—until she got her latest job. The Toad had already swallowed her first paycheck, and she knew it would eat at least four more. It still needed more work, and it guzzled gas with an alcoholic’s abandon. She was surprised they even let the Toad in the Village of Golden Palms.
The Village of Golden Palms was a chunk of beachfront carved out of Miami-Dade County. A small, pricey slice with houses starting at three million dollars, the Superior Country Club, and a few apartments near the railroad tracks for those who tended the Golden Palms’ gilded homes.
There were no services in Golden Palms. If you needed a dry cleaner, a doctor or a loaf of bread, you had to go to Miami or some other low-rent place. Golden Palms had two main moneymakers: the country club and a speed trap on U.S. 1. Helen could have cut ten minutes off her trip home if she’d taken U.S. 1, but she swung way west on I-95 to avoid the notorious trap. Golden Palms claimed it had “zero tolerance” for speeders. She’d seen people get tickets for going four miles over the speed limit—nonresidents, that is. Cars with Golden Palms stickers seemed to breeze through untouched.
Golden Palms residents liked to say they were Miami “before.” If you were clueless enough to ask, “Before what?” they’d delicately say, “Back when everyone spoke English.” They meant before the Cubans, Brazilians, Haitians, Jamaicans and God knows who else poured into South Florida. Golden Palms did not believe in the melting pot.
In the good old days, when the privileged could say what they pleased without fear of a lawsuit, Golden Palms residents put out NO IRISH NEED APPLY signs and stayed at hotels that promised “always a view, never a Jew.” Sometimes, Helen thought the people there looked sideways at her because she was a brunette. About 95 percent of the residents of Golden Palms had golden hair. She couldn’t guess how many were natural blonds. Helen knew they winced or sniffed the air when the Toad belched down their pristine streets toward the employee entrance of the Superior Club. She’d seen them.
The rain was slackening by the time she got to Hallendale Beach. Her forty-minute drive home had taken more than an hour in the rain-crazed traffic. When Helen turned off the highway ten minutes later, a silver-white moon was shining. She was home. Helen liked Fort Lauderdale. It wasn’t as clean or perfectly groomed as Golden Palms, but it was alive.
The night was filled with sounds of slow jazz from a club on Las Olas and salsa music from a restaurant. Tourists drifted by in laughing clusters, intoxicated by margaritas and the warm winter weather. Locals smiled at them indulgently. It was fun to live where other people wanted to be. Nobody ever said, “I hate to leave” when they visited Helen in St. Louis. They couldn’t wait to get out of town.
She dodged a speeding bicyclist and pulled the Toad into her parking space. The car shuddered and died before she could shut it off. Home at last.
The Coronado Tropic Apartments looked best by moonlight. Its ice-white walls glowed with a surreal beauty in the silvery light. Its lush S-curves were softened by blue shadows. Storm-tossed flowers floated on the smooth surface of the turquoise pool, sheltered by whispering palms and purple bougainvillea.
Helen hardly noticed the rust trails from the dripping window air conditioners and the cracks in the concrete walks. The Coronado was a two-story stucco apartment complex built in 1949. Dozens like it were torn down daily to make way for condos and mini-mansions. The Coronado survived, as indestructible as its seventy-six-year-old landlady, Margery Flax.
Tonight, all the windows were dark. Pete and Peggy were asleep. So was Phil. Even Margery wasn’t keeping watch out her kitchen window.
I should sleep, too, Helen thought. I have to leave for work at nine thirty. In the morning, I’ll tell everyone my triumph. I can’t wait to hear what they’ll say.
“You were stupid enough to hit Marcella’s husband?” Margery said.
“Are you nuts?” Peggy said. Pete, her green Quaker parrot, gave a startled screech.
So did Phil, the man Helen loved. “You passed up a chance to see Clapton live?” he said.
Helen’s landlady was standing by the pool in purple flip-flops, fishing out dead flowers with a long-handled net. Phil and Peggy were sitting at an umbrella table. Pete was sitting on Peggy’s shoulder. The table was cluttered with toast, doughnuts and coffee, but no one was eating. They were staring at Helen. Margery looked as if she wanted to throw the net over Helen and call the folks in the white coats.
“I thought you’d be pleased I finally stood up to Rob,” Helen said.
“That’s called assault and battery,” Peggy said. She used to date a cop.
“Awk!” said Pete, her green parrot.
Peggy looked like an elegant bird, with her beak of a nose and crest of red hair. Her skin was so pale Helen could see fine blue veins. That made Peggy doubly exotic in South Florida, where so many complexions were tanned and leathery. The parrot patrolled Peggy’s shoulder. Helen stretched out a finger to pet him, and he nipped it.
“Pete!” Helen said. “Are you mad at me, too?”
“Even a birdbrain knows you weren’t too bright,” Margery said. “Marcella doesn’t like anything she owns damaged. That includes husbands.”
“You said your friend Marcella was harmless,” Helen said.
“I never said that,” Margery said. “I said she’d never been charged with murder.”
“Nice friend,” Helen said. She hadn’t had her coffee yet, and her head was pounding. The bright Florida sunshine hurt her eyes. Her hand throbbed, but this morning it wasn’t a good hurt.
“My friends aren’t nice, they’re interesting,” Margery said. She hung up the pool net and lit a Marlboro. She inhaled, then blew out a cloud of smoke, as if burning with anger. Not nice, but interesting—that was Margery. Her eyes were old and shrewd. Her tanned face had more wrinkles than a charity suit. Her steel-gray hair was cut in a pageboy that fell almost to her shoulders. Her purple shorts and T-shirt were nearly the same color as the bruises on Helen’s knuckles.
“Look at your hand,” Margery said. “You look like a prizefighter. You must have hit him good.”
“I did.” Helen couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice.
“I can’t believe you missed Clapton because you were afraid of that bald twerp,” Phil said. He was stuck on that one theme.
“I wasn’t afraid of him,” Helen said. “I hit him
, didn’t I? Anyway, he’s not bald. He’s using Rogaine.”
Helen always felt compelled to defend her ex-husband to Phil, though she never understood why. She couldn’t stand the way Phil judged her. She remembered the desperate deal she’d made with Jessica to avoid her ex, and felt small and shriveled. She’d failed—twice. She’d missed the concert of a lifetime and Rob had found her.
Phil wouldn’t have run like she did. He was strong. He was noble. He was totally dense when it came to understanding Helen and her ex-husband. Sometimes, she wanted to shake Phil. He really believed the system worked, and her botched divorce was a glitch that could be fixed. Helen knew better. Rob would always escape the consequences. Helen would always pay—for his sins and hers.
She wished she could make Phil understand. She wished he didn’t look so handsome this morning. It was distracting. His soft blue shirt, sleeves rolled almost to the elbows, matched his eyes. His long silver hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Short hair was the fashion for men, but she loved his long. She liked the contrast between his white hair and his young skin.
His nose was slightly crooked. Helen liked that quality in a man. His mouth was set in a stubborn line. That she could do without.
“You only confronted him after you missed Clapton. Live,” Phil said. The last word was almost a wail. “No wonder you punched Rob.”
“I didn’t punch him over Clapton,” Helen said. “I hit him because of what he said. No woman would have stood for that insult.”
But in the hard light of day, Rob’s words seemed more silly than sinister. Why had they set her off ?
“Keep your voices down,” Margery warned. “The folks in 2C are still asleep. I finally have decent renters in there.”
“No, you don’t. They’re crooks,” Helen said. But she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Everyone who rents 2C is a crook.”
“That’s unfair,” Margery hissed like a smoking snake. “And untrue.”
It wasn’t, and Margery knew it. Former residents of 2C were still serving time in prison. One had ads running on late-night cable TV.
“OK, we had a crook or two. But this time I had Phil check them out,” Margery said. “If I have a real detective living right here, I might as well use him. George and Nancy are exactly what they said—a nice couple from Elyria, Ohio.”
“Nice, or interesting?” Helen said.
“Nice,” Margery said. “My other renters were too interesting. George and Nancy are dull as a church potluck supper and I like that. They’ve been married thirty-six years. Nancy’s mother died recently, and she’s selling her mom’s condo and settling the estate.”
“Even found the obituary,” Phil said. “Her mother was definitely dead.”
“Did they kill her?” Peggy asked.
Margery glared at her, and Pete shifted protectively on Peggy’s shoulder.
“She died of natural causes,” Phil said. “Lung cancer.”
“Believe it or not, there are normal people,” Margery said.
“Not in 2C,” Helen said.
“They’re only here for a month. They’ve paid me rent plus a security deposit. And you’re stalling. I can always tell. What else aren’t you telling us about your ex?”
“He says someone wants to kill him,” Helen said.
“Besides you?” Margery said. “Let’s go through this story again. I’m missing some parts.”
Helen did. She told everything, from the moment Rob stepped out of the shadows till Brenda and Jessica showed up.
“You never found out who wanted to kill Rob or what he’s up to?” Phil said.
“No, and I don’t care,” Helen said.
“I do,” Phil said. “What if he winds up dead?”
“I’ll cheer,” Helen said.
“You’ll be the number one suspect,” Phil said. “And you’ve got a hostile witness. Brenda, the boss who gives you a hard time, saw you fighting with him.”
“The fight was over by the time Brenda got there,” Helen said. “Anyway, Jessica was with her. She’ll counteract the poison. What can go wrong?”
As soon as she asked the question, Helen knew the answer in two words: Anything. Everything.
CHAPTER 5
Helen clocked into chaos in customer care at ten twenty-nine that morning. Jessica, Xaviera and Jackie were on the phones, placating members. Cam was nowhere to be seen. Kitty wasn’t in her office. Solange’s door was closed. She never helped in a crisis.
Untended phones jangled frantically. Three hulking men loomed at the front counter. They looked like escapees from a Sopranos episode. The leader drummed his meaty fingers on the marble top. The other two stood impassively beside him. They were used to waiting. Helen noted the bulges in the armpits of their shiny sharkskin suits and decided their needs were more urgent than the phone callers.
“May I help you, sir?” Helen asked.
The beefy leader had eyes as dead as Jimmy Hoffa. A knife scar ran down his left cheek like a lightning strike. Helen wondered what had happened to the person who cut him.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re new. You’re cute.” His dese,dem and dose accent sounded like a joke, but this man was seriously scary. He’d been pointed out to Helen before. What was his name? Angelo. That was it. Angelo “Death Angel” Casabella didn’t earn his nickname because he held hands at sickbeds. The other two men, who looked like meat sculptures, must be his bodyguards. Angelo’s import-export business made a lot of enemies.
Angelo stared so hard at Helen’s chest, she wanted to button her white blouse up to her chin. His bodyguards stared, too. Three pairs of evil eyes were trained on her breasts.
“Dose are da real thing,” Angelo said. “I like dat in a woman.”
“You know what’s important,” Helen said. “I like that in a man.”
She saw Jessica shake her head slightly and regretted her smart remark. Rumor said Angelo left his enemies floating in barrels in Biscayne Bay.
Angelo missed the sarcasm and nodded his agreement. “I need a card for a new broad,” he said.
“You’re changing your DU, Mr. Casabella?” Helen asked.
“Yeah. That’s what I said.”
Not quite. DU, or “designated user,” was the club name for a significant other. Most were very young women living with very old men. Helen wasn’t sure who was using whom. DUs had the same privileges as spouses. Club members were allowed one—and only one—DU a year.
“Here. Dis is my member card.” Angelo flipped it on the counter. His manicured nails were thick with clear polish. His fingers were studded with chunky gold rings.
Helen called up his computer file. Mr. Casabella had had three DUs so far this year. The two extra were approved by Solange.
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give you another DU.”
“Sure you can.” The bodyguards moved in, a threatening muscle mass.
“The rules say club members are allowed one DU a year,” Helen said.
“Ain’t gonna happen. Lemme talk to da bimbo who runs dis place. The redhead wid the fake boobs.”
“The department director is Solange,” Helen said.
“I just said that,” he said. “Lemme see her.”
Helen knocked on Solange’s door. Angelo Casabella’s description was deadly accurate. Solange wiggled out of her office in a tight pink sweater and short skirt, her hair rumpled as if she’d just gotten out of bed. “Mr. Casabella,” she cooed. “How may I help you?”
She ushered the mobster and his glowering bodyguards into her office with soothing sounds. Ten minutes later, they were back out. “Helen, you may give Mr. Casabella an exception,” Solange said in her breathy voice. “But that’s the last one, Mr. C.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’ll send in the new broad for her card photo.”
“He needn’t bother,” Jessica whispered, when the Casabella entourage left. “They all look alike: skinny blondes with big boobs and little brains.”
“Let me guess,” Helen said
. “Solange gave him an exception because he’s another big spender.”
“You’re catching on,” Jessica said.
Cam strolled in, balancing five foam cups of ice. “Look, everybody,” he said. “I brought you ice.”
“We don’t need ice,” Xaviera said, her temper as hot as her red nail polish. “We need you at your desk, answering the phones. Who gave you permission to wander off ?”
“I don’t have to ask you,” Cam said.
“Please don’t fight,” Jackie said, in a small, hurt voice. Her dark hair was pulled into a painfully tight chignon that accentuated the fine wrinkles at her neck and jaw. She absently gnawed her nails.
Cam and Xaviera ignored Jackie. She seemed to expect it.
“It takes five minutes to go to the ice machine,” Xaviera said. “You’ve been gone half an hour.”
“I try to do you a favor,” Cam said, “and this is the thanks I get.”
Helen listened to them squabble and figured she had Cam pegged right. He was ambitious, but he’d never die of overwork.
Jessica whispered, “Helen, we have to talk.” Before she could say more, the office phones all rang at once, virtually levitating off the desks.
Solange popped her head out of her office. “Girls and Cameron, answer those phones,” she said, and shut her door again.
Helen dove for her receiver.
“This is Letitia Minotaur,” said a soft, quavery voice. “My member number is two-six-four-one. I wanted to alert you to a little problem.”
When a club member admitted to a little problem, it was a whopper. Helen called up Letitia’s file, and guessed this little problem was twenty-seven years old. Letitia’s son, Chadwick Minotaur IV, had been raising Cain at the club since he was sixteen. That’s when he stole a member’s Acura and wrapped it around a palm tree near the tennis courts.
Letitia had bought the member a better car and the club a bigger palm tree. No charges were filed against Chad. Every six or eight months, Letitia bought her son out of another scrape. Each run-in was documented in the club computers. Helen knew there was even more information in the paper files.