Shop Till You Drop

Chapter 7

Niki was the first person at the green door that morning, her long brown hair waving in the breeze like a dark banner. She was beautiful, but Juliana’s was used to beautiful women. Niki’s beauty was in her perfection. Her eyes and her lips and her cheekbones looked sculpted and covered with skin as unblemished as acrylic. She was the perfect high school cheerleader, all grown up.

A man walking by in ugly plaid shorts stared at the beautiful Niki so hard he tripped and fell against a parked Porsche. The outraged owner gave the bedazzled man the finger.

Niki looked luminous in the sunlight, the perfect advertisement for Juliana’s. Even at a distance, Helen recognized Niki’s white silk Joop halter top, tight white Dolce & Gabbana pants, and gold-trimmed D&G mules.

Christina buzzed Niki into the shop. She wafted in on a cloud of perfume so strong, it made Helen’s eyes water.

“In that outfit you look positively bridal,” Christina said. “How’s Jimmy? Are you here to buy more things for your wedding?”

“What wedding?” Niki said, and burst into tears.

“There, there, sweetie, it will be OK,” Christina said, and put her arms around Niki. They were both so thin, they looked like a pile of broomsticks.

“It won’t be OK,” Niki said. “The wedding’s off. All because of that bitch Desiree.”

“The skinny blonde chick with the fat lips?” Christina said, handing her a tissue. “She’s had so much collagen, she looks like Daisy Duck.”

Niki only sobbed harder and blew her perfect little nose. “That’s what makes it so awful, Christina. I’ve done everything right, and then she comes along with those stupid lips and outsize tits, and he falls for her. It isn’t fair!”

Niki’s own chest implants were impressive. Desiree’s mammaries must be mountainous, Helen thought.

Niki tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t. She seemed to be in real pain as she told her story. The perfume cloud covered her like a pall.

“I just found out about them last night. Jimmy told me he had to work late. I could have gone to dinner with my girl-friends, but I stayed home, gave myself an herbal mask, and went to bed early. One of our friends called this morning. She said she saw Jimmy and Desiree dancing together at our club. She said everyone saw them.”

Some friend, Helen thought.

“I called Jimmy at work,” Niki said. “He didn’t even bother to lie. He says he’s going to marry the bitch. We were supposed to go to a party at the Bee Gees’ place on Star Island.”

“Which Bee Gee?” Helen said, star struck.

“Robin, I think. Not Barry. And Maurice is dead. It was going to be fabulous. Now he’s taking her.”

“Oh, sweetie, that’s so terrible,” Christina said. Niki cried harder. Christina handed her another tissue. Her grief seemed to intensify the perfume until it was almost liquid.

“Jimmy says I can keep the condo in the Towers and the ring, but he wants his freedom.”

He bought his freedom at a high price, Helen thought. Condos in the Towers started at one million, and that ring had a rock the size of Delaware. Little jilted Niki would be well fixed.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Christina soothed. “You’ve been engaged for four years. This is just a passing fling. Nervous bridegrooms do dumb things. Jimmy will get tired of Desiree and come back to you.”

“He won’t,” Niki sobbed, and Helen had never heard such despair. “She’s younger than me. She’s blond.”

“She’s bleached,” Christina said. “Anyone can be blond these days.”

Helen thought this jab at Desiree was unfair, since Christina owed her own blondness to the bottle.

“She’s never done anything. I’ve been in Playboy,” Niki said proudly, and sat up straight, so that her imposing implants stuck out farther. The movement unleashed another choking cloud of perfume.

“That’s how you and Jimmy first met, wasn’t it?” Christina said.

“Yes,” Niki said. “He saw my picture in Playboy. He remembered it for six whole months. He recognized me at a South Beach club and introduced himself.”

Helen hoped it was her face Jimmy recognized.

“It was love at first sight. Jimmy was so proud of me. When we started dating, he bought a hundred copies of my Playboy issue and gave them to all his friends and business associates.”

To show them what he was getting, Helen thought.

“That’s how his wife found out about us. She saw the bill for all those back issues on his credit card. She was so mad. She said she’d take him to the cleaners. Poor Jimmy had to hide things offshore and everything. The divorce took four years. I went through hell. Now he’s marrying that bitch on the beach in Belize next month.”

“I hope the sharks get her,” Christina said.

“I want her dead before that,” Niki said, her eyes suddenly hard mean slits.

“Don’t you want him dead?” Christina said. Good question, thought Helen. That’s who I’d want to kill if Jimmy dumped me right before the wedding.

“No, I want her dead,” Niki said. Her words were a vicious slash. “Maybe when she’s dead, he’ll come back to me.”

Niki wrapped her pipestem arms around herself and rocked back and forth, spotting the black silk-satin loveseat with her tears and sending waves of perfume rolling through the store. It was time for serious grief counseling.

“Helen, would you unpack that Blumarine jeans stock for me?” Christina said. “I’ll take Niki back and show her some pretty new things to make her feel all better. She’ll have herself a new man in no time.”

“I don’t want a new man. I want Jimmy,” Niki wailed, like a spoiled child.

Christina herded her gently toward the dressing room, a good-hearted but firm nanny. “Come on, sweetie. I have some lovely white wine. Would you like a glass of wine? Or maybe some Evian?”

That was kind, thought Helen. Smart, too. Niki would buy up a storm in her shattered state. Christina was hauling half the store into that dressing room.

Before Helen could unpack the jeans, the doorbell rang. Helen recognized a regular, Melissa, and buzzed her in. Melissa was the blonde with the eighteenth-century face and the twenty-first-century boob job. Good thing she’d persuaded her boyfriend to let her keep that Armani gown. Now he wanted her to get “something cute” for a barbecue.

Melissa tried on a long strapless tube of ruched material in lavender. It looked smashing with her blonde hair. If you were more than a size four, you’d look fat as a French bonbon. This four hung on Melissa.

“You need a size two,” Helen said. “I know we have one somewhere. Let me find it for you.”

The top wasn’t in the shop or the stockroom. It must be in Niki’s dressing room, thought Helen, along with most of the other clothes in the store.

Helen was about to knock on Niki’s door when she heard Christina say in a low voice, “I’ll need fifteen hundred down and fifteen hundred when the job is done.”

That’s what a hit man cost, Helen thought. Everyone in South Florida knew the price of a hit man. It was always on the news for some murder trial or other. But they can’t be talking about a hit man in a Las Olas dress shop. Niki must want some sort of body sculpting. Juliana’s women often resorted to surgery after they broke up with a man.

“I want her dead and him back in my arms!” Niki wailed.

“Shhh! The others will hear you. If you’re serious, I’ll need the money in cash tomorrow.”

Cash? Hit men didn’t take checks. But some of the doctors Christina recommended for her regulars took cash only. Like Doctor Mariposa, the illegal Brazilian face fixer.

Niki lowered her voice so much, Helen only caught the words “next Saturday.” She couldn’t figure out the rest of their conversation. Niki’s voice was too soft, too clogged with tears and anger. Christina’s was too cautious. But the two women seemed to have reached some sort of agreement. Niki raised her voice a notch. “I want her dead. And I want the Chloe jumpsuit and camisole.”

Had the woman just ordered a camisole and a killing in the same breath? Helen wasn’t sure what she’d heard, but she couldn’t knock on Niki’s dressing room door now. Helen was so rattled, she grabbed the first thing she saw off a nearby rack and went back to Melissa.

“Uh, sorry, we don’t have that size two after all,” she said. “But I thought you might like this instead for the barbecue.”

Melissa looked at her strangely. Her slightly popped eyes bulged a bit more. No wonder. Helen was holding a green Versace evening gown.

“Er, I’m sorry,” Helen said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“We all have those days,” Melissa said. “Anyway, while you were gone, I tried on this top. I really like it instead.”

Helen finally noticed what Melissa was wearing: a skin-tight black top slit up the side and laced with slim satin ribbons.

“Very sexy,” Helen said, and it was.

“It’s only two hundred and fifteen dollars,” Melissa said. “Rick gave me five hundred, so I can keep the change.”

Change, Helen thought. Melissa’s change is more than I make in a week. And I’m working at a place that could be arranging contract killings.

She rang up Melissa’s purchase in a daze, all the while trying to understand what she had heard. Helen knew Christina fiddled with the books a bit, but she wasn’t a murderer, she told herself. Of course, Christina did arrange things. Face lifts. Designer drugs. Collagen injections. Contract killings.

Should she go to the police? But what would she tell them? All Helen knew was that the supposed victim was named Desiree. She didn’t know her last name or where she lived. Did Desiree live in Fort Lauderdale? Boca? Miami? South Florida covered three counties and had millions of people.

Helen needed more information. She waited until Niki left, looking hopeful. Even her perfume seemed lighter. Then Helen walked back to Niki’s clothing-crammed dressing room and began delicately digging.

“Was Niki really a Playboy centerfold?” she asked. She could still smell Niki’s powerful perfume.

Christina was putting a skinny belt through the loops of a pair of flared pants. “No, just an inside feature. And that was five years ago. Old news now. You ask me, she showed too much and got too little. Niki couldn’t turn the exposure into a modeling or movie contract. All she ever did was snag Jimmy.”

“And now she’s lost him,” Helen said. “Poor Niki. She was a wreck. Whatever you did for her, she left here smiling.”

Helen waited for Christina to say Niki was getting some high-priced plastic surgery. Instead, she started buttoning a sheer pink blouse with dozens of slippery pearl buttons. “I guess I said the right thing,” she said. “Maybe I should be a shrink.”

Christina did not mention the three thousand dollars. Helen knew she’d heard her say, “I’ll need fifteen hundred down and fifteen hundred when the job is done.”

“What’s Jimmy do for a living?”

“He has some T-shirt shops,” Christina said. “But I think they’re a front for something else, maybe money laundering. He’s known as Jimmy the Shirt.”

“Sounds like a mob name,” Helen said. “Desiree is the perfect first name for a femme fatale. I hope her last name isn’t something disappointing, like Potts. And please don’t tell me she lives in an apartment complex in Davie.”

“I don’t know where she lives,” Christina said, coldly. “But I know you better quit standing around yakking. There’s stock to put away. Here. Hang these up.” She thrust an armload of blouses at Helen.

Christina had effectively cut off any more questions. Was she being a boss? Or was she trying to shut Helen up?

No, it couldn’t be true. Niki didn’t come here to buy a murder. This wasn’t happening. Helen couldn’t say anything to anyone, not even her friend Sarah. She knew what Sarah would tell her: Get out of that place now. Find another job. It was good advice. She would look for work on her next day off.

Besides, Niki could still change her mind and call off the murder, if there really was one. If Niki came in tomorrow with the money, then Helen would call the police, no matter how crazy she sounded.

Somehow, Helen got through the next day. She watched the green door constantly and jumped every time the doorbell chimed. But Niki never showed up with a cute little bag full of money. She never showed up, period. Helen began to relax. She’d misheard. She’d misunderstood. This was what she got for listening at doors. Everything was going to be fine. It would be better than fine.