Dying to Call You

Chapter 17

“Promise me that you will not carry any oven cleaner,” Helen said. “I’m not doing hard time for Easy-Off.”

“No oven cleaner,” Savannah said.

“No guns, either,” Helen said.

“I hate guns,” Savannah said.

“Do you swear?”

“I swear on my sister’s grave, if she had one, that I do not have oven cleaner or a gun on me.” Savannah put her work-worn hand on her heart.

Helen studied her thin, freckled face. Savannah seemed serious. “Okay, I’ll go with you to see Kristi.”

She got into the belching, lurching Tank. The car seemed to have deteriorated since the trip to Debbie’s. It shimmied so bad at stoplights that Helen felt seasick.

“The Tank needs a bath,” Savannah said.

“A bath?” Helen said. “This car needs to be junked.”

“Careful. You’ll hurt its feelings. You must have noticed that a car runs better when you wash it. I parked the poor Tank under a tree, and the birds got it. It’ll run better after I clean it up.”

A red warning light popped on in the dashboard. Helen thought she’d better change the subject. “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. How do you know Kristi’s home?”

“I called half an hour ago and pretended to sell her a newspaper subscription. She told me to do something nasty.

Is that what you go through all day?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know how you stand it.”

“No matter what they say, they can’t shoot me,” Helen said. “It’s your part-time job that scares me, working nights at a stop-and-rob on State Road 7.”

The Tank did a smoky cha-cha as they passed through the glass-brick pillars of the Palmingo Apartments. Cuddling in a coffin must pay well, Helen thought. Kristi’s building was a sleek white stucco and glass affair overlooking a palm-lined canal. White-clad couples played tennis. Bikinied men and women lounged by the pool. No one swam in its outrageously blue water. True Floridians never went in a pool.

Luckily, the building did not have a doorman. He would have never allowed the Tank to leak oil and transmission fluid in the parking lot.

Helen and Savannah checked the directory in the lobby.

“She’s on the third floor. I’ll get us inside,” Savannah said.

“She may recognize you and refuse to open up.”

Savannah stood in front of the door and knocked politely.

She looked deceptively harmless.

The door opened a few inches. Helen saw one suspicious blue eye.

“Hi,” Savannah said brightly. “I’m collecting for the—”

“We don’t want any,” Kristi said, starting to slam the door.

“Oh, yes, you do.” Savannah hit the door so hard it smacked Kristi in the face. She pushed her way inside. Helen followed.

“You hurt me,” Kristi said, rubbing her face like a little kid. “I could get a black eye.” There was already a red mark.

Kristi didn’t seem afraid. Maybe in her line of work, she was used to rough treatment.

“Your kinky customers would probably like that.” Savannah, freckled and stringy, towered over the lush little blonde.

Kristi’s hair tumbled down her shoulders. Her breasts threatened to spill out of her hot pink halter top.

“Who are you?” Kristi demanded, looking as fierce as her five-feet-four frame allowed. “Get out before I call the cops.”

“Go ahead and call them,” Helen said. “I’m sure they’d love to know you make your living doing the horizontal bop in a coffin. So would the IRS.”

Kristi went pale as death.

The white living room increased her corpselike color. It was done in Beach Bauhaus. The white overstuffed couches and love seats had swooping curved arms. The carpet, curtains and lamps were white. So were the silk flowers and plaster seashells on the coffee table.

The plaster seashells were the essence of the Beach Bauhaus style. The beaches were littered with real seashells, but Floridians adored fakes, and paid good money for them.

In the midst of this arctic wilderness, Kristi seemed small and scared.

“I was at the party last night,” Helen said. “I saw you in the back room.”

Kristi grabbed a white chair arm for support. Savannah took two steps forward. Kristi took one back.

“We want to know about my sister, Laredo,” Savannah said. “We heard she worked with you.”

“I don’t know anything about Laredo except she’s gone, Kristi said. A lock of blond hair flopped in her eyes. She pushed it away defiantly.

“She’s gone, all right,” Savannah said. “She’s dead. And you’re going to tell me everything.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Kristi said.

Savannah made a buzzing sound. “Wrong! The correct answer is, ‘I thought she left on a trip.’ You just told me you know way too much.”

Savannah reached into her bottomless black purse and brought out a plastic bottle filled with a clear liquid. She stuck it in Kristi’s face. The dead-white woman whimpered.

“Savannah, you promised,” Helen said.

“I promised no guns or oven cleaner.

“This is ammonia and bleach,” she said to Kristi. “It forms a highly toxic chlorine gas. If I squirt it, you die.”

Kristi put her hands up to protect her face.

“We all die,” Helen said. “You brought your own chemical war.”

“Nope,” Savannah said, tossing her a white mask. “Put this on. I am trained in the use of household cleaning products.”

Helen fitted the mask over her face. She wasn’t sure how much protection it was, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Kristi looked frantically for some escape from the living room, but Helen and Savannah blocked the only exit.

“Sit down.” Savannah gestured toward the couch with the bottle. The white mask took the humanity from her face and the country softness from her voice.

Kristi started to tremble.

“I said, ‘Sit down.’ ”

Kristi sat on the puffy white couch. The love seat was covered with clothes. Helen wondered if Kristi had been sorting things for Goodwill. These outfits looked too sedate for a sexy young woman. Heck, they were too conservative for Helen. Their high necks, long sleeves and long skirts were more suitable for a grandmother on her fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Helen picked up a gray wool dress. It was slit down the back and had a brownish stain near the waist. Odd. Who would want that? Next, she examined a pale blue dress. It, too, was cut down the back.

Kristi moved uneasily and started to say something, then clamped her mouth shut.

“What’s going on here?” Savannah said. “Why are those clothes slit down the back?”

“I don’t know.” Kristi’s eyes darted like fish in a pond.

Helen picked up a scissors with a scrap of pale blue fabric stuck in the blades. “I think you know.” She sounded like an android in that mask.

Savannah had the spray bottle in Kristi’s face again. “I think you’re gonna tell me.”

Kristi hesitated. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead.

“They’re corpse clothes,” Kristi blurted.

“What?” Helen and Savannah said together.

“They were worn by dead people. They’re slit up the back, because that’s how you dress a corpse.”

Helen dropped the blue dress and wiped her hand on her pants. Now she was glad for the mask. “Where did you get them? Are you robbing graves?”

“I bought them from a funeral home. The families changed their mind before the bodies went on view.”

“What’s that mean?” Helen said.

“They decided the blue dress didn’t look good on Aunt Tillie, so they brought the yellow suit for her to wear instead.

The family doesn’t take back the blue dress. They can’t. It’s been on a dead body. Someone who worked at the funeral home sold it to me.”

Helen was so creeped out, she could hardly look at the gruesome pile of clothes. Savannah was motionless. Her finger was still on the trigger.

“What do you do with it?” Helen said.

“Corpse clothes go for major money,” Kristi said. Helen studied her pale face. The mouth was pinched. The eyes were hard and shiny as coffin handles. “Some guys like a woman to wear corpse clothes when they do her.”

That was kinky even for Florida.

“I can’t believe funeral homes make all these mistakes.”

Helen pointed to the pile of slit dresses.

Kristi shrugged, as if she didn’t care what Helen believed.

“You’re not telling us the whole truth.” Savannah pointed the spray bottle at Kristi’s hard blue eyes.

“Not my eyes. No, please,” Kristi pleaded. She was ghost white. “I’ll tell you. I only bought one real dress worn by a dead person. I made the others myself.”

“You counterfeit corpse clothes?” Helen said.

“I have to. The demand is greater than the supply. Besides, buying corpse clothes is risky. A funeral director could lose his license if he’s caught. So I go to the resale shops and buy good secondhand clothes. I never pay more than thirty-five dollars. I slit the dresses up the back. That’s what I was doing when you knocked on the door.”

“What are those stains?” Helen said, pointing to the brown spot on the back of the dress.

“They’re supposed to be formaldehyde. Sometimes it, you know, leaks from the bodies. The freaks pay extra for that. I stain some clothes with unscented hair spray and food coloring and say it’s formaldehyde. People don’t know what formaldehyde looks like.

“My biggest sellers are the white lace dresses. I get a thousand dollars for those, twelve hundred if they’re stained.” She sounded proud of herself.

“What’s the big deal with white lace—a bridal thing?”

“No, it was the dress on the corpse in the opening of Six Feet Under.”

Helen flashed on Kristi with her white-lace dress and lily bouquet, inviting the leather man into her coffin. Of course.

It all made sense.

“That’s why you had white lace and lilies last night, Helen said. “The Six Feet Unders. What exactly do they do?”

“Not much.” Kristi rolled her eyes. “It’s some kinky old guys and a couple of weird women. They like to screw in a coffin. They’re old and boring and think it’s a big deal.

Maybe it is for them. They’ll be in their own coffins soon enough.”

“One question,” Helen said. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Is it comfortable doing it in a coffin?”

“It’s not bad, once you get over the idea. It’s roomier than the back seat of a Toyota but not as big as a twin bed. It’s got a mattress. The springs don’t squeak, either.”

Savannah interrupted in a flat, dead voice. “My sister was doing this? Wearing grave clothes and...” She couldn’t bring herself to say the rest.

Helen suddenly felt ashamed for asking about sex in a coffin.

Kristi smiled, showing small pointed teeth. It was a predator’s smile. She would enjoy hurting Savannah.

“For awhile she was real popular. Those fat old guys go for the spunky blondes. She had big tits, too. The geezers like to grope those.”

Savannah’s hand trembled on the trigger, and Kristi realized she’d gone too far.

“But she stopped,” she said, quickly. “She really did.”

“When?” Savannah said.

“Just before she disappeared. She said she found something that was going to change her life. Something big.

Laredo said she wouldn’t be just a pair of tits. She’d be somebody important. She’d get married and live in a mansion.”

“What did she find?”

“Uh...”

“Tell me what you saw or you’ll never see another thing.”

Savannah’s finger twitched on the trigger. Helen held her breath. If she lunged for the bottle, Savannah would shoot Kristi for sure.

“It was a computer disk.” Kristi’s voice was a highpitched shriek of panic. “It was red. Plain red. She showed it to me. I saw it. She said that little disk was her winning lottery ticket.”

“What was on it?”

“I—” Kristi started to cry.

“Answer me, or you’ll really have something to cry about.”

“It was stuff from Hank’s computer. She said he’d been laundering money. He was into some other fraud, too. She said I’d be surprised at who was involved. Big names. That’s all she said.”

“What did she do with the disk?”

“She put it in her purse. Later, she told me she hid it.”

“Where?”

“If I knew that, it wouldn’t be hidden, would it?”

Savannah moved the spray bottle closer to Kristi’s eyes.

“I didn’t want to know,” Kristi said. “Laredo was gone and Debbie was dead. I was afraid I’d be next.” She was crying hard now. Her white face was now an ugly red. Her nose was running. “You can point that thing at me all day, but I don’t know any more.”

“You got any family?” Savannah said.

“A sister in Missoula.”

“I suggest you take a nice long visit home. The last woman we talked to wound up wearing real corpse clothes.”