Murder Between the Covers

Chapter 23

“I have two promising leads,” Helen told Margery.

They were drinking screwdrivers in her landlady’s kitchen. Margery’s recipe was light on the orange juice and heavy on the vodka, with a hint of Key lime.

Helen came home from the bookstore feeling like she’d been beaten with bamboo. The booze hit her like a brick.

She estimated she could down another three ounces before her lips went numb.

“Squawwwk!” said Pete. She didn’t even jump when he screeched. The screwdrivers were mellowing her out.

“You really think your manager is a killer?” Margery looked frivolous in amethyst shorts and tangerine toenail polish. But her shrewd old eyes watched Helen carefully.

“I don’t know,” Helen said, and took another sip. Jeez, that drink was good. “I just know Gayle’s very smart.

Something’s not right about her. She was at the store when Mr. Davies was killed, and she didn’t seem very sorry that he was dead. Plus she has blond hair and a silver car.”

“Ever stand on Las Olas and count blondes in silver cars? You’d run out of fingers pretty fast.”

“I still want to check her out,” Helen said. “But I’ll have to do my research on Gayle at the store. She’s off the next two days and so am I. I thought I’d use this time to check out Astrid, the merry widow. She had her late husband underground awfully fast.”

“A quick burial in a hot climate. Is that all you have on the wife?” Margery knocked back a slug that would have paralyzed Helen. The woman could pound it down.

“She had a fight with her husband the day he died. I’d like to know what that was about. And I’d really like to see if Astrid has any gentleman callers. She’s a good-looking woman. My theory is she got her boyfriend to kill her husband. He’d have quite an incentive. He’d get to marry an attractive society blonde and enjoy the dead Turner’s millions.

“Astrid could have been the blond bait who picked up her husband. Maybe she promised him something special when they made up after their fight. She could have delivered him to her boyfriend for the kill.”

“But she didn’t kill Mr. Davies.”

“No, but the boyfriend could have been in the bookstore.

Astrid is the type to have someone spy on the help. He could have heard me talking to Mr. Davies. During the mommy riot, he could have smothered Mr. Davies and slipped out. No one would have noticed in the confusion.”

“Possible,” Margery said, although she still sounded skeptical. “You planning round-the-clock surveillance of Astrid’s house?”

“Not necessary,” Helen said. She took a bigger sip this time. In fact, it was close to a gulp. She was feeling nicely numb, with a hint of a giggle underneath. “Astrid’s no dummy. She must know the police consider her a suspect.

The wife always is. She can’t go to parties and dinners with her lover right now. But she must want to see him. Rich ladies aren’t good at denying themselves what they want. If he’s visiting her, it’s going to be late at night.”

“I like this,” Margery said. “You’re thinking. And the widow lives where, Palm Beach?”

“Right,” Helen said. It came out more like “Riiiiiight.” It wasn’t the orange juice making her talk like that. She looked at the drink longingly, then put it back down. No more until she explained her plan to Margery. “I already have her address. From the bookstore files.”

“So how are you going to get there, Samantha Spade?

Hitchhike? Palm Beach is eighty miles round-trip. You don’t have a car.”

“Thought I’d borrow Peggy’s Kia and drive up there.”

“That cheap car would stick out there like a sore thumb,” Margery said. “Maybe you could get by with it when the day help was around, but at night it’s too noticeable. We’ll take my big white boat. Half the old bags in Palm Beach drive Cadillacs like mine. No one will notice us.”

“You don’t mind doing surveillance?” Helen’s tongue got tangled in the L’s.

“Awwwwk,” said Pete. Helen winced. Even the booze didn’t help that time. Pete’s squawk was like a stiletto in her brain. The little parrot sat on his perch, hunched and unhappy. Margery glared at him. He glared back.

“I don’t mind anything that gets me away from that birdbrain,” Margery said. “Parrots live even longer than Florida old farts. If you don’t get Peggy out of jail, I’m facing a life sentence with Pete.”

Pete screeched in protest behind his cage bars.

It rained all day, which was unusual for South Florida.

Rain was usually liquid sunshine, short bursts that caught people without umbrellas. This was an old-fashioned frog strangler that flooded the flat streets.

Helen ran down to the newspaper boxes and brought back an armload. She sat at her kitchen table listening to the rain and looking at the employment ads. It was a de-pressing business, and the rain didn’t help. Debt was a growth industry in Florida. The ads seemed to feed off the current financial crisis. Employers were looking for collection agents, credit counselors, and repo people.

If she didn’t want to service the rising tide of debt and bankruptcy, there were a zillion ads for telemarketers. Earn $700 to $1,200 weekly!... $12 an hour guaranteed! ...Earn $100K, they promised.

The more a job paid, the less useful it was, Helen decided. Selling books had redeeming social value. Calling people at dinner to peddle vacation time shares did not.

And look at this prize catch in the job pool. It paid six times what she made at the bookstore: Spa attendants. Attractive bikini types. $1,200 a week guaranteed.

Bet I wouldn’t have to wear my ugly granny shoes, Helen thought. Or my pants with the pinpoint holes. Bet I wouldn’t have to wear anything at all.

She sighed and nearly threw the paper across the floor when she saw the display ad:

TWO DAYS TO YOUR DREAM JOB!!

Be there or be square. 10:00 a.m. till ????

Interviews start for Down & Dirty Discounts.

Jobs galore—$8 an hour or more at our new

Federal Highway store.

Maybe there was hope after all, she thought.

Margery’s day had been equally depressing. She’d been to see Peggy.

“She looks like death on toast,” Margery said. “The trial’s in three weeks. Her lawyer, Colby, is supposed to be the best, but for the life of me, I don’t know what she’s doing. She hired a private detective to help establish an alibi for Peggy. He came up with nothing.”

“What was Peggy doing after she left the barbecue?”

“She says she was driving around. But she didn’t buy gas—or anything else. No one saw her.”

They were in Margery’s big white Cadillac. The rain had stopped, and it was nearly nine at night. I-95 was a demented dodge-’em game. Cars weaved in and out of traffic, or stomped on their brakes for no reason. Sometimes they did both at the same time.

“I remember reading an article in the 1980s that twenty percent of the people arrested for traffic violations on I-95 were on Quaaludes,” Margery said.

“It explains a lot of this driving,” Helen said.

“Not really,” Margery said. “I think ’ludes are out. Who knows what they’re on now.”

The construction work started at the Palm Beach County line. The highway became a nightmare of lumpy patched asphalt and blinking barricades.

An SUV the size of an armored personnel carrier was tailgating the Cadillac. Helen could see its grille, like an evil grin, in the rearview mirror. When the SUV hit its high beams, urging Margery to get out of the way, the inside of the Caddy lit up.

“I hate when people do that,” she said, and slammed on her brakes. The SUV honked loudly, then pulled in front of Margery.

“Good,” she said, flipping on her high beams. “Let’s give this bird a taste of his own medicine.”

She tailgated and high-beamed the SUV all the way to Okeechobee Boulevard. Helen was relieved when Margery finally took that exit, even if it meant more torn-up roads in West Palm. About two blocks later, she was able to talk again.

“Can I ask a question?” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“What does Phil the invisible pothead do for a living?”

“I told you, he’s not invisible,” Margery said, sounding irritated. “I see him at least once a month when I collect the rent.”

“Well, I’ve never met the man and I’ve lived next to him almost a year. I just smell his burning weed. He’s supposed to be a Clapton fan, but I never hear a note from his apartment.”

“He’s a considerate Clapton fan.”

“Does he have a job?”

“Yes, it’s something with the government. Broward County, I think. Building division, variances and permissions.”

“No wonder he smokes so much dope. He must be crazy with boredom.”

“He’s got another five years and he can retire and do what he wants.”

“What’s that?” Helen said.

Margery shrugged. “He didn’t tell me.”

They rolled over the bridge into Palm Beach. The street looked like it had been steam-cleaned and landscaped by Disney. It was so neat, it made Helen nervous.

“We’re on Royal Palm Way, which is lined with royal palms,” she said.

“The rich aren’t big on ambiguity,” Margery said.

The late Page Turner didn’t have a house on the water, but he lived only a block or so away. The sight of Turner’s opulent home made Helen sick. It was a Mizner-style mansion in a shade of peach only rich people could buy. It was surrounded by a ten-foot-tall ficus hedge, but Helen could see the circular drive through the wrought-iron gates. The mansion was artistically lit, inside and out.

“Is this a hotel or what?” she said. “How many rooms does it have? Look at that. I can’t believe that cheap son of a gun was whining about paying me six seventy an hour.

My salary wouldn’t pay for his floodlight bill.”

“You wouldn’t want the man walking in the dark,” Margery said.

“I want him rotting in hell,” Helen said.

“It’s hard to sympathize with the little people when you’re sitting in a Cadillac,” Margery said. “Let’s keep some perspective here. Now, will you put down your manifesto and help me find a place to park?”

The street signs said, PARKING BY PERMIT ONLY—9 A.M. TO 6 P.M.

“It’s going on ten o’clock,” Helen said. “We can park on the street. If we see any security coming around, we’ll move on.”

“OK, but you’re going to have to do most of the watching. I can hardly see anything. My view is blocked by the hedge.”

They watched for an hour with the lights off. “If we don’t find a bathroom soon, I’m going to ruin the upholstery,” Margery said. “I could use some coffee and a cigarette, too.” Margery had made the supreme sacrifice. She didn’t smoke on the stakeout.

They stopped at a convenience store on Dixie Highway.

“This surveillance stuff is about as exciting as alphabetizing my spices,” Margery said. “I’m beginning to miss that parrot. His squawks would keep me awake.”

“It’s almost eleven. You want to hang it up for tonight?”

Helen said.

“No, let’s go back for another hour or so.”

As they sat in the dark, Helen asked, “How come the police never suspected you of Page Turner’s murder? He was killed at your place.”

“Why, that’s so sweet,” Margery said sincerely. “You don’t think I’m a helpless old lady. The cops did. Also, I had an alibi. I was drinking Singapore slings with Alice, the owner of the beach motel, until two a.m. One of the guests complained about the noise.”

It was eleven-twenty when a small car pulled up to the wrought-iron gates. An arm snaked out and punched in a code. The gates swung open.

“He has the combination,” Helen said. “He’s been here before. And look at that little car. He’s no rich guy.”

“This is it,” Margery said. “You don’t make a social call at this hour. We’re about to find out the widow Turner’s main squeeze.”

“Main squeeze?” Helen said.

“Quiet,” Margery said. “The car door is opening. Looks like a skinny guy getting out.”

“That’s no guy,” Helen said.

“Definitely not,” Margery said. “I should have put on my glasses. That’s a woman.”

“That’s Gayle,” Helen said.