Shop Till You Drop

Chapter 27

Sharmayne was furious. Tiffany was lying. And nobody seemed to have a decent alibi. The champagne showing was a smashing success.

As soon as Sharmayne stalked out the door, Helen called Sarah. After all, this had been her idea. Helen wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could talk while she cleaned up.

“I’m not sure what I learned, but I’ve certainly stirred things up,” Helen said.

She was enjoying this. Helen was a natural detective—or busybody. That’s what they called women back home who watched the neighbors through their miniblinds and pumped the unwary for personal information.

“There’s hardly an alibi in the whole bunch. I can’t prove if Tara was with her boyfriend the whole time,” Helen said. “Brittney doesn’t have an alibi, either. She spent the weekend at an invitation-only sale in Boca. She could have slipped out any time and driven back to Lauderdale in forty-five minutes.”

Helen carried the empty champagne flutes to the stockroom. She went back for the third champagne bottle and dropped it in the recycle bin. It landed on the others with an audible clank.

“Nice dress shop you’re running there,” Sarah said. “Sounds like a bar.”

“If it was, I’d have some decent bar rags to clean off the table tops. Spilled champagne is sticky.” Scrubbing at the rings with paper towels seemed to smear them around.

“Sharmayne is furious with you, but she has an alibi, right? She was in New York.”

“But I don’t know that for sure,” Helen said. “If the benefit was Saturday night, Sharmayne could have come home Sunday and had plenty of time to murder Christina.”

“I can check Sharmayne’s story,” Sarah said. “I have a friend in the travel industry who owes me a favor.”

“What if Sharmayne used fake ID?”

“Unlikely these days. Even if she did, she was traveling with a German shepherd. That will show up in the computer. She couldn’t exactly put Big Boy in a carrier under the seat, could she?”

“What about Niki?”

“It’s even less likely she’d fake an international flight. I’ll check on her, too.”

Sarah called back in an hour. “Bingo,” she said. “Sharmayne traveled under her own name. She flew out of Fort Lauderdale at 10:22 a.m. Saturday and returned Monday at 4:57 p.m. The dog went by crate. No other hits for a woman passenger with a large crated dog during that time.

“Niki’s in the clear, too. She left for Greece the Thursday evening before Christina disappeared. She flew nonstop from Miami to Madrid, then to Athens. She did not come back until the Thursday after the carjacking. Christina was already dead.”

“She died the same day as Desiree. How’s that for irony?” Helen said. “We’re making some progress. Niki, Sharmayne and Venetia are definitely out.”

“Unless one of them hired a hit man,” Sarah said.

“Who would they go to—Christina?”

“No, most of them have mob boyfriends.”

“That’s why Christina was blackmailing them,” Helen said. “We’ve just gone in a circle. Those three are in the clear. I still have to deal with the lying Tiffany. I’ll call her in the morning when she sobers up.”

“Good idea,” Sarah said. “When she’s hungover and remorseful, she may tell you more.”

“After I close the store, I’ll take another look at those CDs. I’m starting to get somewhere. I’ll solve this yet.”

But Helen never got a chance. She was interrupted by a death threat. It was almost six p.m. when the phone rang.

“Juliana’s,” Helen said. No servile “How may I help you?” The store’s name was a statement and a challenge.

A muffled voice asked, “Where is it? Where’s the stuff?” “What stuff?” Helen said, puzzled. Was this a wrong number?

“You know,” the voice said. There was no menace to it, and that made the low, flat voice more frightening. Helen couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. Had the voice been mechanically altered?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helen said.

“Yes, you do, Helen,” the oddly inhuman voice said. It knew her name. The hair went up on the back of her neck. “I want it, or you’re next. You’ve got a week.”

“For what? Before what?” Helen was desperately trying to understand what this crazy person wanted.

“Before you get your own personal ride in a barrel.”

There was a click. The silence was so loud, Helen could hear her heart pounding. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Someone wanted to kill her.

Someone wanted to stuff her body in a barrel. She’d never be identified. She didn’t have any implants. She’d wind up buried in a potter’s field.

Shadows shifted in the store, and Helen jumped before she realized it was only the wind rustling the trees on Las Olas. The corners of the store seemed dark and menacing. The stockroom was a black cave filled with unspeakable secrets.

At six p.m., Helen locked the store and left. On the walk home she kept looking around nervously. A big white Lincoln with tinted windows was crawling down Las Olas right behind her. Helen slowed her pace. The car slowed down, too.

The Lincoln was following her. If she ducked down a side street, it could follow and run right over her. No one would see her die.

Helen had only one chance. When the light changed at the next corner, she crossed to the other side of the street. The car would have to make a U-turn to kill her. She’d run inside a shop and call 911. Helen wasn’t worried about getting hit while she crossed the street. The Lincoln was hemmed in by a UPS truck and a van.

As she crossed, she looked through the Lincoln’s windshield, hoping to identify the driver. The sight left her frozen in the middle of Las Olas—at least until the light changed and the UPS truck started honking.

The Lincoln was driven by a woman so small her white head barely cleared the steering wheel. She was old, but determined. No one was going to push her around. She refused to go more than ten miles an hour, no matter how much the cars behind her honked.

That was her hit-and-run killer? Helen felt ridiculous.

A palmetto bug as big as a bagel skittered over her foot. Helen gave a disgusted shriek. That startled an orange cat, and it ran out from behind a bush.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Her heart was racing.

Helen had brought this on herself. She’d stirred things up, spurred on by greed and fear. She wanted the financial ease twenty-five-thousand dollars would give her. She wanted Detective Dwight Hansel and Christina’s death to go away. She’d poked and prodded until she found those pictures and arrest records. She’d seen into the souls of five people. Now one of them was looking at her. One of them wanted her dead.

At last, Helen was home. She passed through the comforting smog of Phil’s burning weed and locked the door to her apartment. She felt safe. Until she remembered Phil’s pot smoke and had another horrible thought.

The caller had not asked, “Where are the photos?” or “Where are the papers?” The inhuman voice had demanded, “Where’s the stuff?”

Drugs. The caller could be looking for drugs. That’s what Christina was selling in those pretty little purses: candy-colored pills and capsules. She took them with her that Saturday. They disappeared, and Christina was never seen alive again.

Helen knew what drug dealers did when you double-crossed them. She watched the TV news. She’d seen the body bags being brought out, the blood-spattered walls, the tales of torture. They could shoot her knee caps, one at a time. They could give her a Colombian necktie. They could leave her, bleeding and starving, to die in a rat-infested abandoned building.

They’d kill her for sure, slowly and painfully. Because Helen didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know what they wanted.