Shop Till You Drop

Chapter 20

“Are you telling us this broad was running drugs, skimming money, and arranging murders?” Detective Dwight Hansel said.

“Yes, I am,” Helen said. And I’m making a hash of it, she thought.

Hansel and his partner, Detective Karen Grace, were at Juliana’s within an hour after her call. As soon as Helen saw the tall, loudmouthed Hansel swagger in the door, she knew she was in trouble. She could tell where he spent most of his time. Those massive shoulders and muscled arms were made in the gym. That beer gut came from even longer hours on a bar stool.

His partner, Karen Grace, had strawberry blonde hair and a figure Helen’s grandmother would have called buxom. She also had cops’ eyes and a way of walking that said “Don’t mess with me.”

Helen told the two homicide detectives the whole story. Hansel made it clear he didn’t believe Helen. “Did you tell the store owner this woman was stealing from him?” he said.

“No,” Helen said. “I couldn’t prove anything. The shipping charge could have been an addition error.”

Helen was sweating now. What if Mr. Roget found out Christina had been skimming? He’d fire Helen for not telling him. It would take weeks to find another job. Helen would fall behind in her bills and never catch up. She’d have to leave the Coronado. With every stupid sentence, Helen saw another piece of her new life slipping away.

“And the drugs? Why didn’t you say something about them to Mr. Roget or the police?” Hansel said.

“Uh,” Helen said.

“Didn’t you say you found Ecstasy, and this Christina sold it to a customer?”

“I wasn’t sure. Someone else could have dropped it.”

“Really? You got a lot of people dropping drugs in here?”

“No. I’d never seen any before.”

Helen felt like she was twisted into a pretzel. She couldn’t think straight. Hansel had been questioning her for what seemed like hours, asking the same things over and over.

“What did you do when you overheard this so-called murder being planned?” Hansel said.

“I wasn’t sure it was a murder. I didn’t know the victim’s name. There was no way I could find her.”

“You could have come to us. We would have known how to get in touch with Jimmy the Shirt. That’s how you find his new girlfriend.”

Helen felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. He’s right, she thought. I let a woman die because I did nothing. But what if she’d gone to someone like Dwight Hansel? Would he have taken her seriously or shrugged her off as a crazy woman? Helen knew the answer.

“The murderer had no trouble finding Desiree Easlee,” he said. “She is dead. We know that much is true. How did you find out about her murder?”

“I saw it on TV,” Helen said. She could feel the anger building, the same anger that got her in so much trouble in court. Maybe she’d made a mistake. But she was trying to do the right thing now, and this was what she got.

“And did you tell the police?”

Detective Hansel sounded so snide, so sneery. Just like that sanctimonious judge in St. Louis. Something snapped in Helen. “No, because I knew I’d encounter someone like you,” she said.

“Watch it, lady. I can haul you in as a material witness,” Hansel said. Helen was pretty sure he could not do that. But she was also sure he could make her life miserable. In fact, he was already doing that.

“So what we have here is a criminal mastermind with fake tits?” Hansel said, sarcastically.

“Implants don’t lower a woman’s IQ, detective—just a man’s,” Helen said. His partner, Karen Grace, snorted. “Christina was smart and beautiful. How do you think she got that million-dollar ocean-view penthouse?”

“On her back,” Hansel said.

“Not at almost forty, detective. You’d better investigate a little better.”

“I apologize for my partner. He can be insensitive,” Detective Grace said.

“Hey, what is this?” Dwight Hansel said. He sounded indignant, but they might have been playing good cop, bad cop. Helen didn’t care. She wanted them to leave.

“We drive all the way over here, and you tell this wild story,” Hansel said. “We haven’t found anything to support it: no drugs in the woman’s condo. No shoeboxes full of cash in her closet. Yes, she had more money than a store manager should, but her sister says she received a nice cash gift from an aunt in Arkansas. A sort of off-the-books legacy before the old lady died. We’re not the IRS. We don’t care about that. Her sister says this Christina was smart about investing and turned it into a lot of money. And we did find evidence that she knew her way around the stock market.”

Lorraine made up that story, Helen thought. Christina’s older, colder sister was greedy. Helen wondered if Lorraine had found the cash and hauled it home with Christina’s body. Lorraine concocted the story of the legacy, so the police wouldn’t look too closely at Christina’s bank account. Lorraine wanted to inherit all of her dead sister’s money, legal or not.

But Helen didn’t say any of that. Who would Hansel believe: salt of the earth Lorraine or Helen with her wild tale of drugs and murder at a dress shop?

“Did you find Christina’s cat?” she asked instead.

“Cat? There was no sign of one,” Detective Grace said.

“We didn’t find no cat,” Hansel added.

“She had a cat named Thumbs. It had six toes.”

“She must have given it away,” Hansel said.

“She’d never do that,” Helen said. “Christina loved that cat. Maybe Thumbs ran away when the police opened the door.”

“And took its litter box?” Grace said. “I’m telling you we found no sign of a cat. No toys, no litter box, no food or bowls. Nothing.”

“Any cat hair?”

“Some. She worked in a public place. She could have brought those hairs home with her. Her condo was clean. Nothing was out of place, except in one room.”

“What was in there?”

Hansel cut in. “Can’t tell you. It’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

“Did you find any purses in her condo or her car? She took a box of expensive evening purses with her when she left that last Saturday,” Helen said.

There were no purses. There was no cat.

When the two detectives finally left, Helen felt beat up. She was mad at herself and snippy with Sarah when she showed up at the store. “You got me into this, Dudley Do-Right,” she said.

“I still think it’s better that you went to the police,” Sarah insisted, stubbornly. “What if Hansel found out that information on his own?”

“He’s too dumb to find anything but the next brew.”

“And his partner? Is she dumb, too?”

“No,” Helen said. “She didn’t talk much, but she didn’t seem stupid.”

“Then you did the right thing,” Sarah said.

But Helen didn’t think so. She hardly spoke as they walked around the old Himmarshee Village. It was old for Fort Lauderdale, anyway. The museum buildings hailed from about 1905. The commercial buildings were from the 1920s. Helen could find blocks of buildings much older in St. Louis, but Florida was newly hatched.

A Florida historical district was not a sober affair. Most of the buildings were bars and restaurants, with plenty of beer and live bands. Sarah and Helen stopped at a bar and had margaritas. Helen liked the salty-sweet taste, but she was restless sitting in the dark bar. Sarah didn’t want to sit long, either. They saw huge crowds streaming toward Sammy’s Good Tyme Saloon.

Helen and Sarah followed the crowd. Every inch of Sammy’s was packed. People were hanging off the upstairs decks, sitting on the balconies and staircases. More were crowding the open first-floor windows, watching the partyers lucky enough to get inside. Sammy’s set up auxiliary bars at the entrance, selling beer, wine, and bottled water to those who couldn’t get in.

“What’s drawing the huge crowd?” Helen said. “A Beatles reunion?”

“Big Dick and the Extenders,” said a twenty-something with a luxuriant goatee. “They usually play in the Upper Keys. They’re great.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Sarah said. “Big Dick is supposed to make Howard Stern look like Miss Manners.”

Helen and Sarah elbowed their way in closer to the open windows. Helen liked the music. Most of it was songs from the sixties and seventies, with some hard-driving southern rock. She did not like Big Dick’s jokes. She had expected some about sexual organs, considering the band’s name. What she didn’t expect was how many jokes put down women and how many women laughed at them. They even laughed when he said, “I see a lot of beautiful women here tonight. I see some ugly bitches, too.”

Helen felt trapped in a fifties frat house. The audience, mostly young men and big-haired women, seemed to love it.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sarah said.

“Took the words out of my mouth,” Helen said. She was about to walk away, when she saw a tall man in a purple muscle shirt deep inside the bar. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place him.

“Sarah, wait. Do you know that guy?” she said, pointing him out.

“I can’t get a good look at his face,” Sarah said. “There are too many people.”

A couple in front of them left, and Sarah and Helen moved forward and pushed their way inside. Helen saw the guy more clearly now, but she still couldn’t place him. He stripped off his muscle shirt, waved it in the air, and began dancing like a Chippendale. Muscle Shirt was at least three beers ahead of his companions. The drunken crowd cheered, and his dance grew wilder and lewder. Helen saw Muscle Shirt had incredibly hairy armpits. Then she got a good look at his face.

“Oh, my God. It’s Detective Dwight Hansel,” she said. “The homicide cop who interviewed me today. I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

The band took a break, and the sudden quiet was thunderous. Then the regular barroom sounds started up again—the clink of bottles, the scrape of chairs, snatches of conversation: “So I said to her, if you don’t like it, you can haul your skinny ass out of here . . .”

Nice place.

“Let’s get out of here before Dwight Hansel sees us,” Helen said.

“I’ve been ready to leave for a long time,” Sarah said, starting for the door.

It was too late. Hansel saw them and stepped in front of Helen. He was standing so close, she could smell the sweat on his purple muscle shirt. His skin looked slick and slippery.

“You following me, Helen?” he said, pointing to his chest with his beer. The bottle was sweating, too. “You can save your energy. I’m going to be following you. In fact, I’m gonna be all over you like a cheap suit. You know why? Because I think something is going on in that store. I’ve been talking to some people. That Christina was selling more than dresses. And you’re in on it. Or maybe it’s the boyfriend. Hey, I like that even better. You’re in on it with the boyfriend.”

“Joe?” Helen said. It came out as a croak.

“Yeah. Maybe you wanted a rich boyfriend for yourself. So you murdered your friend Christina.”

Helen was so insulted he’d accused her of wanting Joe, she ignored the charge of murder.

“Joe? You think I’m interested in Joe? I wouldn’t go out with Joe if he was the last man on earth. He’s even dumber than y—”

She stopped just in time. She almost said “you.”

“Than what?” Hansel said.

“Your beer bottle,” she ended lamely.

“Joe’s smart about money,” he said. “He has a couple million in the bank. You’re making how much pushing dresses? Maybe you’d rather spend your days sitting out by some rich guy’s pool.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Helen said.

“Oh, no,” he said, softly. “I’m dead serious.” Then he walked back to his friends and left Helen standing in the middle of the seething crowd of drunks. Helen felt the fear in the pit of her stomach, coiled and knotted and heavy. She’d trapped herself. This man would never believe her.

“Are you OK?” Sarah said.

“No,” Helen said.

“What do you want to do?”

“Get another drink,” Helen said.

Helen was surprised it was still early when she got out of the bar. Which bar it was, she couldn’t remember, and the sign seemed kind of blurry. But her watch, which she could read, said it was only eight-thirty. Helen was tipsy. No, not tipsy. Hammered. Hammered in Himmarshee.

“I can walk home,” Helen said.

“You’re not walking home in your condition,” Sarah said. She held her liquor better, or maybe she hadn’t drunk as much as Helen. Anyway, Sarah drove Helen to the Coronado. Helen nearly fell out of the big Range Rover when she opened the door. She walked carefully to her apartment, as if her head might fall off. Then she put on her cutoffs and Tweety Bird T-shirt and poured herself some wine in an iced tea glass. She filled the glass to the brim.

Margery was sitting at the picnic table, smoking Marlboros and reading a paperback. Her landlady’s shorts were the color of a new bruise. Her toenails were ruby red. She saw Helen lurch into a chaise longue.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Margery said. “I think I made a mistake,” Helen said. Her words sounded slurred.

Margery picked up Helen’s iced tea glass and poured the wine on the grass.

“Hey!” Helen said.

Margery ignored her. She went into her place and came out with a ham sandwich, a bag of pretzels, and a big glass of water.

“Eat this,” she said. “And drink all the water. I’m not making you coffee because that will just make you a wide-awake drunk.”

Helen ate. She was hungry and thirsty. Then she told Margery what she had done.

“You made a mistake,” Margery said. For some reason, Helen felt better when her landlady said that. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to the Sunnysea police? They have the worst force on the beach. Didn’t you hear about the homeless guy who was Tasered?”

Helen looked blank.

“Must have been before you moved here. There was something wrong with the guy. He was mental or on drugs or something, and he went into a Sunnysea café and started tearing up the place. Broke a window, flipped over two tables, scared the owner half to death. The cops were called. Four of them showed up. They held the guy down and hit him with a Taser. A stun gun. The guy died. Some witnesses said the cops were justified. Others thought they used excessive force. One of the papers asked if there was going to be an investigation. Know what the police chief said? ‘Why? We didn’t shoot him or anything.’ ”

Helen groaned. She could feel a headache starting. She could feel that heavy coil in her stomach grow tighter. It was squeezing her guts.

“Look, Sunnysea Beach has some good cops,” Margery said. “But the city can’t afford to pay much, so they can’t hire the sort of police you’d get in a richer place. They get young, inexperienced cops who think they know everything. They get rejects from other departments. They get retired guys from up North with attitudes and pensions who don’t care any more.”

Helen groaned again. Now her head was throbbing, and her guts were in a viselike grip. Snakes of fear slithered around in the pit of her stomach. She had not felt like this since she ran from St. Louis.

“Too late for regrets now,” Margery said briskly. “You talked. The damage is done. I’ll do my best to protect you. If those cops show up here, you call me. If you need a lawyer, you call me. I know a good one who owes me a favor. If you need any other help, let me know. . . . What the hell is that?”

Margery’s head swiveled around like the kid in The Exorcist . Helen followed her. They saw Peggy the parrot lady and Daniel the magnificent strolling along the sidewalk.

Helen thought they made a stunning couple: long-legged, red-haired Peggy and Daniel with the rippling muscles and the tiny shorts with the large bulge.

Helen saw the couple was actually a threesome. A grumpy-looking Pete sat on Helen’s shoulder. Daniel seemed to realize that Pete was out of sorts, too. He reached out to pet the parrot. Pete clamped down on Daniel’s finger and refused to let go. The parrot had a wild, piratical look in his eye.

“Pete!” Peggy said angrily. “Pete! Stop it right now.” But Pete hung on. She gently pried his beak open to free Daniel’s digit.

“Is that a parrot or a pitbull?” Daniel said.

“Pete’s going to his room,” Peggy said. “Daniel, I am so sorry.” And she was gone.

“Let me get you a Band-Aid. You’re bleeding,” Helen said. There was a tiny teardrop of blood on Daniel’s finger. It was perfect, too.

“You better put some antibacterial ointment on that,” Margery said. “Do you have any?”

“Yes,” Helen said.

Daniel followed Helen docilely into her apartment. She was grateful that she’d hung up her work suit and put the wine box away before she went out by the pool. At least she didn’t look like a drunken slob. With Daniel so near, Helen was sobering up fast.

When Daniel stepped into her apartment, the place suddenly seemed much smaller, and the bed much bigger. The bed was very big. It seemed to take over the apartment. It was pulsating, throbbing, beckoning. No matter where Helen looked, she saw the bed.

Daniel was standing much too close. She didn’t want him to do that. No, she did. She wanted him even closer. But Helen was afraid she’d do something embarrassing, like throw herself into his arms and start kissing him. Helen was also afraid to take Daniel into her bathroom, which was the size of a phone booth. She had him sit down on the couch and brought in the ointment and a Band-Aid.

“Would you put it on for me?” he asked. Helen took his wounded hand and held it in hers. Daniel had huge fingers, and Helen wondered if that meant his other appendages were large. Feet, for instance, she told herself, trying to clear her pheromone-fogged brain.

It didn’t work. Smearing goo all over Daniel’s index finger and wrapping it in a Band-Aid seemed like some arcane aphrodisiac rite, a prelude to passion. Get a grip, woman, she told herself.

“Well,” Helen said, briskly. “That’s that.”

“Thanks,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes. “Anything I can do for you?”

Helen studied his face for a smirk. He seemed to be sincere. “For a Band-Aid?” she said, with a shaky laugh. “Don’t be silly.”

“Then I guess I better go,” he said, and moved off into the velvet night.

Helen could not stand to be alone in her apartment. Daniel had overpowered it. He’d overpowered her fears, too. She still felt the fear coiling in the pit. She was still afraid Detective Dwight Hansel would get her. But when Daniel was with her, the snakes stopped slithering.

Helen stepped around her huge empty bed, opened the patio door, and cursed her denseness. Daniel had given her an invitation, and she was too dumb to recognize it. She’d lost her only chance to be loved by a perfect man. She breathed in the soft night air and thought she might die of longing. But women who wore Tweety Bird shirts did not die of anything so interesting.

Helen went sadly, soberly, out to the pool. Peggy was outside again, without Pete. Or the magnificent Daniel. Pete wasn’t a pet, Helen decided. He was a feathered chaperone. An earsplitting squawk was enough to discourage most men. If not, Pete literally nipped the romance in the bud.

“I guess I messed up my chances for a date, huh?” Peggy said.

Helen looked at her. “You don’t really care, do you?”

“I’d care very much if Pete had hurt Daniel,” she said, seriously.

“But you don’t really want to date Daniel, do you?” Helen said. “You admire him, like a painting or a statue.”

“Helen, I’ve had too much hands-on experience to get involved with any man again. I’m through with them for good. Pete’s the only man for me.”

Helen wondered what had happened to make a woman as striking as Peggy live like a nun.

Their purple-clad landlady popped out of the palms like a wild orchid. “What happened?” Margery asked.

“Absolutely nothing,” Helen said.

“Good girl,” Margery said, approvingly. “Only way to land a man like that.”

But Helen was sure she’d made another mistake.