Murder Between the Covers

Chapter 29

“Halt!” said Detective Gil Gilbert. “Drop it! Right now.”

The bride had already emptied the cut-glass punch bowl on Helen. Now she was preparing to smash her head with the heavy bowl. Helen was too punch-drunk to move.

“You’ll kill her if you hit her with that,” Detective Gilbert warned.

“I want to kill her,” the bride said, raising the bowl over her head. “She ruined my wedding.”

“You’ll lose your deposit on the bowl,” he said.

At that, a portly tuxedoed man stepped forward and took the bowl from the bride. “This has cost us enough already.”

Helen assumed he was the father of the bride.

Melanie sat quietly on the floor, the ruined wedding cake mostly hidden by her huge skirt. The knife had been confiscated by Detective Tom Levinson, who showed up with Gilbert for some reason Helen never figured out. He was reading Melanie her rights and was preparing to take her in quietly for questioning. But Melanie, who lived in her own romance novel, refused to go without a scene.

“I’ll tell you everything, but I want the world to know what I suffered,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll call a lawyer now and never say another word.”

Helen thought the print-on-demand author looked remarkably pretty. Her gown had only a smear or two of cake icing on it. Her blond hair tumbled down her back. Her bosom was a seething blue sea of ruffles.

No amount of persuasion would convince Melanie to change her mind. She was determined to have her audience.

“My own guilty conscience made me ruin Beth and Farley’s wedding,” Melanie said, when everyone stopped talking and she was once more the center of attention. Helen noticed the wedding photographer was taping her statement. She wondered if the police would confiscate the video.

“The burden has been too great to bear. When I saw her”—she pointed dramatically to Helen—“sitting next to a man in uniform, I thought the police had come to arrest me.”

“It was just Uncle Chuck,” the bride said. “He’s a security guard at Wal-Mart.”

Melanie grabbed the attention back from the bride. “My life was ruined by an evil man. He seduced me with empty promises. He defiled my love. He even videotaped it. A kindhearted saleswoman tried to show me the error of my ways, but I wouldn’t listen. Instead, I ran to Page in his office and sought succor. Page Turner was intoxicated. He said vile things. Things I can hardly bear to repeat.”

But she managed. It was juicy stuff. Even Helen, shivering from a bath of cold, sticky punch, was spellbound.

“Page laughed at me. He said, ‘Yeah, I screwed you, but not as bad as your publisher. Your book might as well be printed on toilet paper, for all it’s worth.’

“He did indeed have a secret recording of our lovemaking. The scoundrel invited me to watch it. ‘Then maybe you’ll stick to what you know how to do—and it isn’t writing.’ ”

A charming blush stained Melanie’s cheeks and she tossed her golden hair. Every man in the place stared at her, and Helen was sure they weren’t thinking literary thoughts. That was quite an endorsement from the late stud, Page.

“His mocking laughter followed me out of the room. My soul was seared with words no woman should ever hear.

But I held my head high. Then I heard that little man say, ‘There goes another fool.’ My shame was complete. Everyone knew. I was ruined.”

Brad’s four little words brought down the mighty Page Turner, Helen thought. If he’d kept his mouth shut, Melanie might have gone back to her job, and Page would still be alive. But then, if she and Gayle hadn’t tried to open Melanie’s eyes, maybe none of this would have happened.

Helen shivered, cold to the heart at the thought of her own role.

After her humiliation in the bookstore, Melanie’s thoughts turned to murder.

“I vowed revenge on the tyrannical Turner. He insulted me and my precious book. I sat in the parking lot for hours, brooding on my ravishment. I must have revenge. The kind saleswoman told me Page had befouled another woman, a Peggy Freeton. I couldn’t believe he could be so cruel twice. She said, ‘If you don’t believe me, ask Helen. She lives in her apartment complex.’

“That night, when she got off work”—Melanie pointed at Helen again—“I followed her home. I saw the distinctive yellow mouse car of the Truly Nolen termite people. I knew what that meant. A termite tenting. It was a simple matter to get Peggy’s apartment number from the mailboxes and steal her termite information notice.

“Then I began my plan. I would avenge all womanhood.

It was the best plot I’ve ever done,” Melanie said proudly.

She knew about tenting. Her own building, like most older buildings in South Florida, had been tented. She’d had the lectures about the dangers of Vikane and the necessity of SCBA gear.

“I researched SCBA systems on the Net, and found a used one at greatly reduced prices. I had it over-nighted.”

Melanie knew Page liked kinky sex, although she didn’t say it that way. “I had his cell phone number and I called him that Friday to arrange a rendezvous. I told him to bring the video. I promised to add another interesting episode.

“When I picked him up at the bookstore, Page was already sodden with drink. I brought more of his favorite tipple.” Melanie modestly forbore to mention it was Bawls and vodka. “Soon he was staggering drunk. He had his arms around me, but it was not an embrace of love. The Coronado apartments were deserted. Everyone had moved out. I put on my latex gloves. I’m afraid they gave Page Turner some very wrong ideas about my plans for the night.

It was a matter of minutes for me to pick the lock, even with Page’s filthy paws all over me. I’m quite accomplished with the picks.

“Page staggered into the apartment and fell on the bed. I tied him up with scarves. Handcuffs would have left marks.

I’m afraid he was anticipating something quite different. He fell asleep before I finished. He was snoring. It was as if an angel guided me to the pillows on the bed.”

Helen thought that line sounded familiar. She also thought an angel had nothing to do with it.

“I put the pillow over his face and pressed down. His snores stopped. Soon, so did his struggles. I felt I’d struck a blow for women everywhere.

“I rolled the body off the bed and into the closet with the sliding doors. It was only two feet away. I hid him behind some long bridesmaid dresses. No one could see him.

“I remembered to take Page’s briefcase. Inside were two videos, both labeled. One was mine. The other was Peggy’s. I dropped the briefcase and the videos in a nearby canal. The first part of my plan was complete.”

The wedding party and the caterers looked like wax figures. No one said a word while Melanie told her bizarre tale. The bride and groom were holding each other, as if protecting themselves from the bridesmaid from hell.

“Once the Coronado was tented, I came back late Saturday night and donned my SCBA gear. Then I took the clamps off one corner of the tent and slipped in. It was hot, dark, and spooky inside. I picked the locks again on Peggy’s apartment and went inside.

“I slid the body back on the bed. That was the hard part, but I wanted everyone to know he was a philanderer. I heaved the head and shoulders up, using his belt as a sling.

Then I dragged the legs onto the bed.”

“No way. A little thing like you moved a big guy like that?” a groomsman said.

“Never underestimate the power of a woman scorned,” Melanie said.

Or her upper-body strength when she’s worked out at the gym, Helen thought.

“I wasn’t completely successful. I wanted Page found on his back, but when I tried to turn him over, he kept wrinkling the spread and it didn’t look nice. Also, he smelled yucky. So I left him facedown.

“Then I went to the kitchen for a butcher knife. I wrapped it in a towel to preserve the prints, held it below the handle part, and stabbed him in the back. That felt so good, I wanted to keep doing it, but I was afraid I’d mess up her prints.”

Melanie vacuumed the drag marks off the rug. “Then I deposited the SCBA gear in a canal, along with the scarves.

I knew the butcher knife might implicate Peggy, but I was sure she would never be convicted. Good always wins out.”

Helen snorted. The wedding party glared at her.

“After that, I began to heal. I realized Page Turner was wrong. I was a good writer. I had created the perfect locked-room mystery. My big mistake was to kidnap that parrot. I thought it would make her”—Melanie pointed at Helen for the third time—“stop investigating. Instead, everything unraveled. Perhaps I had a subconscious desire to get caught. I’m not a bad person.”

She looked winsome in blue chiffon and white icing.

Helen almost believed her, until Melanie tried to justify killing Mr. Davies. “He was so old and lonely, I was doing him a favor. It was a blessing, really. What was he—eighty-three? Who would miss him?”

I do, Helen thought. The store was not the same without his gentle presence.

When Melanie finished her tale, she waited as if for applause. Instead, there was only the snap of handcuffs.

Melanie looked surprised. Maybe she expected to talk her way to freedom. Two uniforms took her away. “I’ll be auctioning the movie rights,” she said as they led her out.

Detectives Gilbert and Levinson took statements from the wedding party.

Someone slipped out to Publix and came back with a white sheet cake that said Happy Wedding on it in white icing. Helen thought she could see the word “Birthday” faintly in the frosting. The caterers swept up the broken china. The church janitor cleaned up the squashed cake and spilled punch. Another bowl of punch appeared, without the strawberry ice ring.

The wedding reception was about to start, minus one bridesmaid.

* * *

There was another party, this one for Peggy. She was out of jail and fully exonerated. Margery celebrated her homecoming—and Pete’s departure from her place—with a barbecue by the Coronado pool. Peggy looked thin and worn, and Pete’s feathers were still ruffled. But they were together at last. Helen knew both would recover.

“Awwwk!” said Pete, but it was a contented screech. He was once more sitting on Peggy’s shoulder. She was in her chaise longue by the pool. Peggy gave Pete an asparagus spear. He held it in one foot and gnawed on it.

Helen wondered if Pete knew that Peggy had gotten a big bouquet of flowers from one of the cops she met during her stay at the jail. He wasn’t at the party, but they had a date next week.

This was a gala affair, far more cheerful than the beach party. Margery contributed T-bone steaks. Helen brought champagne. Sarah made crab cakes with a luscious sauce.

Peggy made a salad, although she had to borrow Margery’s butcher knife. Madame Muffy brought another chocolate cake. Cal the Canadian showed up with two tomatoes, unsliced. They looked a little shriveled, and Helen wondered if they’d attended the first party.

Even Madame Muffy toasted Peggy’s freedom with champagne. She announced she was leaving the Coronado and moving to Miami.

“Please let me read your palms,” Madame Muffy said to the partygoers. “It will be my good-bye present.”

“Er, no thanks,” Peggy said.

“I’m too old to have a future,” Margery said.

“I’m too superstitious,” Cal said.

“I’m game,” Sarah said.

“Me, too,” Helen said.

Sarah held out her hand and Muffy contemplated it. “I see health and success for you,” Muffy said. “You have a Martha Stewart aura.”

“Muffy tells that to all the girls,” Helen said. “She said I had one, too.”

Sarah giggled. Muffy glared at her.

“What about my love life?” Sarah said.

“You are content as you are,” Muffy said. “You do not need a man to complete you.”

“You got that right,” Sarah said. “Your turn, Helen.”

Helen suddenly wished that she wasn’t doing this. When she was growing up in St. Louis, the nuns said it was dangerous to seek knowledge of the future. Lord knows Muffy’s predictions had caused Peggy enough grief.

“Do I see a handsome detective in your future?” Margery said. “That Gil Gilbert seemed awfully interested in you.

You gotta love a man who shows up in the nick of time.

The bride was about to bean you with that cut-glass bowl.”

“It would have put me out of my misery,” Helen said.

“She’d already drowned me with pink punch.”

“I don’t understand why that wedding bash didn’t wind up on TV,” Cal said. “Somebody had to have a video camera. They could have sold the tape to the networks.”

“There were several video cameras,” Helen said. “But the bride and groom’s families promised to sue anyone who gave a tape to TV.”

Helen had been afraid the wild wedding would wind up on the news and her ex, Rob, would find her. But she was lucky. There was no publicity. The police were happy to take credit for solving Page Turner’s murder. Helen escaped the limelight.

“Don’t change the subject, Helen,” Margery said. “What about Detective Gilbert?”

“Gil Gilbert is married and an honorable man. He wouldn’t think of cheating on his wife. And I don’t do married men.”

At least, not when I know they’re married, she thought.

“Besides, my luck with men has not been too good lately.

I’m not in the market till I get my head on straight.”

Sarah applauded. Helen presented her palm. Madame Muffy’s grasp was firm and strangely warm. Her brown eyes grew intense. “What do you want to know?” she said.

“Might as well make Margery happy. What’s my romantic future?”

Madame Muffy studied Helen’s palm for a long moment, then said, “I see a man for you. A man worth waiting for.

He is free, but he’s let himself be caged for noble reasons.

He is loyal and true, brave and colorful. And he’s right here in your own backyard.”

“Awwwk!” the little green parrot said.

“You can’t have him,” Peggy said. “Pete’s my main man.”

E p i l o g u e g Page Turners bookstore closed two weeks after the Going Out of Business Sale sign went up. Most of the stock sold.

The remainder was too tattered to return to the publishers.

On the last day, all the staff was gone except for Gayle and Helen. The store was empty and echoey. Helen thought there was nothing sadder than a dead bookstore. She and Gayle were in the stockroom, amid torn author posters, empty display racks, and stacks of flattened cardboard boxes.

“That’s about it, except the junk in this corner,” Gayle said. She carried a stack of flattened boxes to the Dumpster out back.

Helen started sweeping the floor. “What happened to the other booksellers?” she asked.

“Albert got a job with the new chain bookstore on Federal Highway. If he stays six months, he’ll get health insurance. You won’t be able to pry Albert out of that place.

Brad’s working there, too. In the magazines.”

“Good,” Helen said. “He’ll be with his beloved J.Lo. What about Matt?”

Gayle threw a pile of blank order forms in the trash can.

“The guy with the great dreadlocks? Matt was smart. We already knew that, since he had the good sense to walk out of here when his check bounced. He got a scholarship to law school. He wants to be a civil-rights lawyer.”

“And young Denny?”

“Wait till you hear that one. He went to a karaoke night at a club in Pompano a couple of weeks ago and did his Sting imitation. He’s working there now. His eighties oldies act is drawing huge crowds. The kid’s an overnight success.

A South Beach club is talking with his new agent about a gig down there.”

“Just think, we saw it free when he sang to a floor mop,” Helen said wistfully.

“If he really gets famous, I’ll go down in history as the moron who made him scrub the counter he danced on.”

Helen laughed. “You were just doing your job. Will you be working at another bookstore?”

“No. Astrid and I are moving to Key West,” Gayle said, flattening and stacking more shipping boxes.

“What will you do there?”

“You don’t have to do anything in Key West,” Gayle said. “You just have to be.”

“What will you be?”

“Happy,” Gayle said, and she looked as happy as anyone could in deep black. “What about you?”

“I start Monday as a telemarketer,” Helen said, leaning on her broom. “I’ll call you at dinnertime one night.”

“And I’ll hang up on you,” Gayle said. She stopped folding boxes and looked at Helen. “Telemarketing is an awful job. Are you really going to do it?”

“The money’s good and I’m tough,” Helen said. She kicked an empty box to move it out of her way, but it didn’t budge.

“Ouch. My toe. I think I broke my toe. This box is full.”

Gayle opened it up. “It’s a case of Burt Plank paperbacks. I’m not paying to send that old lecher’s books back.

Will you do me a favor and strip the case?”

Burt Plank. At the mention of his name, Helen felt his fat hand crawling up her leg like a spider.

“My pleasure,” she said.

Madame Muffy, the preppy psychic, moved out of apartment 2C shortly after Page Turners closed. She would not be living in a mansion with a Turner family fortune. DNA tests proved conclusively that Madame Muffy was not the daughter of Page Turner III.

She promised to keep in touch, but like most people who made that promise, she didn’t. Helen had not thought about her in months. She and Margery were eating popcorn and watching an old movie on late-night TV when they saw an ad for Madame Miranda. The psychic looked exotic with her jangling beads, flapping fringe, and dangling earrings.

“Call Madame Miranda now. Know your future today,” she said, earrings swaying hypnotically. “I can feel your aura through the phone. I will find what’s blocking your road to future happiness. And order my new book, Madame Miranda’s Past Look at Your Future. For only twenty-nine ninety-five, you can have my book and a special reading.

Operators are standing by. Call now for—”

“Holy shit,” Margery said, and nearly swallowed her cigarette. “It’s Madame Muffy. She took my advice and ditched the preppy getup and stupid name. Now she can afford TV ads.”

“Her prediction was right,” Helen said. “She just interpreted it wrong. The spirit voices told her she would come into a lot of money. She heard the words ‘book’ and ‘nine hundred.’ Muffy thought she would get a share of the ninehundred-million-dollar fortune from the Turner bookstore family. Instead, she got a nine hundred number and wrote her own book.”

* * *

Melanie Devereaux DuShayne wept prettily during her double murder trial. She said she was driven to kill Page Turner “to ease her soul-searing shame.”

The prosecution argued that the deceased was a respected literary figure killed by a cold, premeditated murderer. The judge allowed police testimony about the videos, although they could not be shown in court. Page Turner looked like pond scum. If Melanie had not killed him, the jury would have.

Unfortunately, there was also Mr. Davies’ death. The jury, whose average age was seventy-three, did not take kindly to someone who snuffed out an elderly man like an old dog, no matter how blue her eyes and blond her hair.

The judge was no spring chicken, either, although the scrawny old plucker rather looked like one. He agreed with their recommendation.

Melanie was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for the murders of Page Turner III and Zebediah Davies. She was a model prisoner and developed a prison dental education program.

Her POD book, Love and Murder—Forever: A Mysterious Romance or Romantic Mystery, sold briskly, thanks to the trial publicity.

Helen, Peggy, and Pete were out by the pool one morning some time after the trial, reading the paper. Helen noticed a hickey on Peggy’s neck, on the other side from where Pete sat. She was still dating the cop.

Peggy had yet another scheme to win the lottery. “Next week is a full moon. Nobody knows why, but double numbers are more likely to win during a full moon.”

“You mean like twenty-two, forty-four, sixty-six?” Helen said.

“Exactly. Some think the double numbers affect the balance of the balls, and, combined with the gravitational pull of the moon, it’s enough to tip them into the winning slots.”

Helen figured this was more moonshine, but she was glad to see Peggy back at her old pastime. She was trying to find the news story about the newest Lotto winner for Peggy when she said, “Hey, here’s an article about Melanie.”

She read the headline: Killer Deal for Convicted Murderer.

“Melanie’s getting a million bucks for writing three mysterious romances or romantic mysteries,” Helen said. “A New York publisher has picked her up. Critics compare her potential to Danielle Steel’s.”

“I don’t believe it,” Peggy said. “I lose weeks of my life, not to mention my bed and my butcher knife, and she gets a million bucks. I thought you couldn’t profit from your crimes.”

“Awwwk,” Pete said.

“Took the words out of my mouth,” Peggy said.

“She’s writing fiction,” Helen said. “That doesn’t count.

Maybe you could send her a bill for your time. It says here her new novels are very pro-police.”

“I guess she is pro-police. The cops locked up the wrong person. If you hadn’t started investigating, I’d be sitting on death row.”

“Not with Colby for a lawyer,” Helen said. “Here’s a quote from her editor. She says, ‘Melanie is the perfect writer. She has no distractions. I only wish the rest of them were locked up.’ ”

Helen felt her guilt over her role in Melanie’s murders melt away as she read the story of her new contract.

“I think Melanie got what she wanted,” Helen said, “a successful writing career, lots of attention, plenty of romance, but no dastardly men.”

“If only the prison uniforms had ruffles, she’d be in heaven,” Peggy said.