Just Murdered

Chapter 9

When she got home, Helen didn’t want that drink after all. She wanted the comfort of Phil’s arms. She could feel him wrapped around her. She could feel his soft hair and smell his spicy aftershave.

Helen wasn’t a woman alone anymore. She had a man who loved her—a faithful man. Phil was nothing like Rob, the rat she’d married.

The day had taken its toll. Helen felt like the detectives had beaten her with a rubber hose. Her hair stuck out in six directions. She was sweaty and shoeless. Her feet were dirty from the city sidewalks, and she limped a bit after stepping on the last bottle cap in America. She needed a shower. Then she needed Phil.

In the Coronado parking lot, Helen saw a woman with long curly red hair struggling with a pile of bulky luggage. She was trying to drag two black wheeled suitcases and a surfboard-sized piece of equipment over the curb and up the sidewalk. Her skin-tight jeans and spike heels made it hard for her to lift the bags.

“Can I help you?” Helen said.

The woman stuck out a taloned hand and said, “I’m Kendra, the Kentucky Songbird. I have a song on the Billboard charts. I’m staying with my husband.”

“Warren?” Poor Margery, Helen thought. She was in for a surprise. Her handsome dancing partner had a much younger wife.

“No, Phil. Didn’t he tell you about me?”

“No,” Helen said. The rest of her words wilted and died.

Kendra gave a gusty sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that man. I told him to let the neighbors know I’ll be moving in.”

“Moving in,” Helen repeated numbly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kendra said brightly. “You must be Helen. He told me all about you. You’re a—what? Oh, right, a clerk at a wedding dress shop.”

She looked at Helen’s dirty bare feet. “Must be one of those hippy-dippy places. Even country brides aren’t barefoot and pregnant nowadays.”

Kendra’s heels were red and glittery. And round, Helen thought nastily.

“I have a gig here in Fort Lauderdale at a big night-club on U.S. 1, and of course I’m staying with my husband.” Kendra’s soft country accent was a cross between Billy Ray Cyrus and The Judds.

“Your husband,” Helen said.

“Thanks for offering to help carry this. Phil said how nice and friendly you were. He’d said you’d do just about anything for a person when you hardly knew him.”

Helen thought about what she’d done for Phil last night. She’d been real friendly. She felt the hot blood rush to her face.

“Sure,” Helen said. One word was all she could handle without killing herself or Kendra.

Kendra promptly dumped both suitcases on Helen as if she were a porter. “Here. I’ll keep the keyboard. You take these,” she said.

It was like moving a pair of refrigerators. Helen staggered behind the woman. On closer inspection, Kendra’s hair was orange-red, a color not found in nature unless you were an opium poppy. It reached almost to her round behind, which switched rhythmically back and forth as she walked. Kendra pointed to Phil’s apartment. “That’s his place there.”

Kendra was wearing stage makeup. Her dramatic black eyeliner gave her Egyptian eyes. Her short pink sweater showed her nipples. She moved in a sweet, heavy cloud of perfume.

“I know,” Helen said. Last night we made the bed-springs rock, she thought. Phil did absolutely everything, except tell me about you. Oh, wait. He did mention you. He said, “The romance went out of my marriage with the wedding. My ex got caught up in making sure the bridesmaids’ ribbons matched the groomsmen’s cummerbunds.”

“My ex.” Not “my wife.”

What else had Phil said? Helen searched her shell-shocked brain. “I felt like an afterthought. I never lost that feeling.”

I am Phil’s afterthought. I’m the fool he screwed while his wife was on the road. Friendly old Helen, providing aid and comfort to lonely husbands. She wanted to hurl Kendra’s luggage into the pool. She wanted to throw Phil in after it. She wanted to drag out his drowned body and stomp him into the ground. She wanted to bury him under twenty tons of coral rock. Then she wanted to dig him up, so she could kill him all over again.

“You’re a country singer?” Helen said with an odd croak.

“Number ninety-seven on the Billboard country music chart.” Kendra thrust out her chest proudly, as if the chart was printed on her front. Her breasts and her dangly earrings jiggled simultaneously. Kendra didn’t look like a country singer to Helen. She looked like a man-stealing twit.

“What’s your song called?” Helen said.

“ ‘You Can’t Divorce My Heart.’ ” Kendra’s perfume drifted back to Helen in a choking cloud.

“I see,” Helen said. And she did.

“Well, here’s his place. Don’t you want to come in and see Phil?” Kendra said.

“I already have,” Helen said.

She dropped the suitcases in front of Phil’s door and ran to her apartment. Her hands shook so badly she had trouble unlocking her door. Her ex had betrayed her with their next-door neighbor Sandy. Now Phil, the first man she’d loved in a long time, betrayed her too. She raced to the bathroom and stood in the shower until she was sure the water running down her face was not tears.

She got out, wrapped herself in a big robe, and turned on her hair dryer. She couldn’t hear her sobs over the motor’s howl. By the time her hair was dry, so were her eyes. When she shut off the hair dryer, she heard the pounding on her door.

“Helen, open up. Please. I have to talk to you.”

It was Phil. She wanted to ignore him, but she walked to the door with new determination. She would get this over with. She would get this liar out of her life.

Phil was freshly shaved, with a tiny patch of shaving cream on his throat. Last night, she would have licked it off. Now she wanted to cut his throat. He tried to take her in his arms, but she dodged him.

“Helen, I’m so sorry,” he said. “What did she say to you? She twists everything around. She knows I love you. She’ll do anything to break us up.”

“I don’t think she twisted this. She said you were her husband.”

“Our divorce isn’t final for another month,” Phil said. “But believe me, we’re divorced. I’ll never go back to her.”

“Then why is she living with you? And why didn’t you tell me?” Helen hoped he didn’t hear the hurt in her words.

“I’ve been tied up in court on that charity orgy case, as you well know. Thanks to me, you’re not mixed up in it.”

Oh, no. He wasn’t going slide by like that. “We spent last night together. Why didn’t you say something then?”

“Because I knew you’d act this way.” If he’d searched the dictionary, he couldn’t find seven words that would make her madder. Phil looked like a high-school kid caught with a roach in his locker.

“Helen, Kendra has an important gig in Fort Lauderdale. She doesn’t have enough money to stay at a hotel during the season. I told her she could sleep on my couch.”

“Kendra!” Helen said. “What kind of country name is that?”

“She’s crossover country.” Phil was talking too fast, the way her ex-husband, Rob, did when he was lying.

“Oh, yeah?” Helen said. “What happens when she crosses over to your bed?”

“See? I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Phil said.

“I understand perfectly,” Helen said. “Your wife wants to sleep with you.”

“Ex-wife,” Phil said. “She’s only here for her career. It’s all she’s ever cared about. You forgot. We’re getting divorced.”

“You forgot. Divorced people don’t live together.”

“The solution is simple,” Phil said. “I can move in with you. She can have my place.”

Helen was outraged. “This is how you propose the next step in our relationship? What am I? A hotel? Maybe you don’t take us seriously, but I do.”

“This is why I didn’t say anything about Kendra last night.” Phil was yelling. “You’re hysterical.”

Helen felt her blood boil and her bleeding heart turn into a black charcoal briquette. The H word was her own personal H bomb. When a man called a woman hysterical, he meant she was crazy.

“I am NOT hysterical,” she shouted. “I am justifiably angry.” She slammed the door in his face.

There was another knock. Helen opened the door again and said, “I told you I never wanted to—Oh, hi, Margery.”

Her landlady was wearing her usual purple shorts set, but now her face was a delicate heliotrope. Margery was mad. “What the hell is going on here? This is an apartment building, not a cat house. Phil’s got some redhead moving in with him and the two of you are screaming at each other on your doorstep. I won’t have it.”

“I’m sorry,” Helen said. “But the redhead is Phil’s wife.”

“What wife? He’s divorced.”

“It’s not final for a month. Her name is Kendra and she’s a country-western singer. She’s got a gig here and she can’t afford a hotel, so she’s staying at his place.”

“Dumb bastard. Phil was probably trying to help her out,” Margery said. “He’s well meaning but not too bright when it comes to exes. Why don’t you let him move in with you?”

“Because he’s taking me for granted.” Helen was gripping her arms so tightly she left red marks on them. “He just assumed he could hang his clothes in my closet and put his toothbrush in my holder. I’m not going to let him.”

“You want moonlight and roses?” Margery said. “At your age, you should know better.”

But Helen had seen her landlady dancing by the pool with the silver-haired Warren. Margery had romance at seventy-six.

“Come outside by the pool,” Margery said. “Peggy’s there. We’ll have some wine and talk it over. You need to think about this.”

“I need to get dressed,” Helen said.

“No, you don’t. In that big old robe, you’re wearing more clothes than Peggy and I combined.”

Helen grabbed the box of pretzels from the kitchen counter and obediently followed her landlady to the pool. Peggy was stretched out on a chaise longue, with Pete patrolling her shoulder. Helen gave him a pretzel. Margery gave her a glass of wine.

Peggy took one look at Helen and said, “What’s wrong?”

“Phil’s wife moved in with him,” she said.

“Awwwk!” Pete snapped the pretzel in two.

Helen could feel the tears starting again, but she tried to stop them. “I am not crying over that man. He’s not worth it.” She downed a hefty jolt of wine. That made her feel safe and warm. “He’s living with a country singer named Kendra.”

“That’s rotten,” Peggy said. She’d had her share of betrayal.

Margery set fire to a Marlboro and said, “Helen, it’s not that bad. Phil’s divorce will be final in a month. He’s letting his ex stay with him while she sings at some club in Lauderdale. She can’t afford a hotel. He did something stupid trying to be nice. Don’t get all bent out of shape. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“Why didn’t he tell me Kendra was staying with him?” Helen cried.

“He was probably scared you’d go ballistic. Which you did.”

“I had a good reason,” Helen said. “She’s so nasty. She made these insinuating little remarks about us, like I was a mercy screw. It was degrading.”

“Of course it was,” Margery said. “She wanted it that way. She’s a sly one. And you’re going to leave him alone with a hundred pounds of red-haired temptation? Helen, just let Phil move in with you. He’s there almost every night, anyway.”

“I would if he said he loved me. But he wants to do it because I’m convenient.”

“Helen Hawthorne,” Margery said. “If you let a man like Phil get away because you’re so stubborn, then you are a fool.”

Helen wiped angry tears from her eyes. “He can go to hell,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Margery said. “He will.”

Helen wanted desperately to change the subject. “Phil was just part of this wretched day. There’s a lot more. Kiki was murdered.”

“Awwk,” Pete said.

Margery dropped her cigarette. It glowed in the dusk. She retrieved it and said, “Another murder? How do you get mixed up in these things?”

“Murder is easy at a wedding,” Helen said. “Everyone wants to kill the mother of the bride.”

“The caterer did it,” Peggy said. “Or the photographer. Or the sister with the tattooed boyfriend who was banned from the ceremony.”

“Nothing that simple,” Helen said. “Ordinary people have those problems. We’re talking major money. Let me tell you what happened.”

When she finished, Margery said, “How much trouble are you in? Do you want me to retain Colby Cox for you? She’s expensive, but she owes me several favors.” Colby was one of the premier defense lawyers in South Florida.

“No, there are enough other suspects to keep the cops busy,” Helen said.

“The offer stands. I’ll call her anytime you need her,” Margery said. “Helen? Are you there, Helen?”

Helen was staring at Phil’s door. It stayed closed. He had not followed her to the pool. He won’t even walk across the yard for me, Helen thought. Damn him. She took a drink, but her wineglass was empty. She refilled it and said, “I’m going to my room to brood.”

“Good idea,” Margery said. “You’ve had a dog of a day. If you want company, knock on my door. I’ll be out till late tonight, but if you see my light, come on over.”

“Going any place interesting?” Peggy said.

“Dancing with Warren.” Helen thought Margery smiled like a woman with a secret.

“Warren, now, is it? Is there romance for rent in 2C?” Peggy teased.

“Please.” Margery blew a huge smoke screen. “Warren’s just for fun. He’s one of those rare men who likes women his own age. I go out with three other friends. He dances with all of us. I think he’s giving Elsie lessons. She’s seventy-eight and having the time of her life—if she doesn’t break her hip twirling on the dance floor.”

“Never mind Elsie,” Peggy said. “What about Margery? Helen could get you a good price on a wedding dress.”

Margery snorted. “Young people. You’ve got one thing on your mind.”

“Sex?” Peggy said.

“Marriage,” Margery said. “I’m past the marrying stage. Men Warren’s age don’t want wives. They want a nurse with a purse. I’m not that desperate. He’s strictly recreation.”

“Awwk,” Pete said.

Helen wondered if she’d ever be smart enough to use men that way.