Dying to Call You

Chapter 22

“Hold it. Stop right there. I’ve got a gun.”

That was Margery. Something was wrong at the Coronado.

Helen sat up in bed, sending the cat flying into the dark.

What time was it? She stared blearily at her bedside clock. It was one twenty-seven in the morning.

“I won’t hesitate to shoot,” Margery said.

The killer. Margery had caught the killer. He’d come to murder Helen and Margery surprised him in her yard. Now her seventy-six-year-old landlady was trying to hold him off with a gun. She saw Margery, frail but fearless, an ancient revolver in her liver-spotted hands.

Margery didn’t have a chance. He’d strangled a strong young waitress with her own hair. He would walk up and rip the gun from an old woman.

A weapon. Helen needed a weapon. She grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen counter, threw on a robe and ran outside. Low-lying fog swirled and drifted across the grass, turning the night into a slasher-movie set. She felt foolish creeping down the sidewalk, kitchen cutlery in hand, but she didn’t know what else to do. She had to save Margery.

She heard the rattle of a jalousie door and jumped.

Phil slid out of his apartment wearing black jeans, sandals and no shirt. All her senses were on red alert. She noticed his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and intimidating weapon.

What was that thing? Some new federal experiment? It looked like a ray gun from a fifties science fiction movie.

“I didn’t realize you had nuclear capability,” Helen whispered.

“What are you going to do with that butcher knife—make cutting remarks?” he said.

“I said drop it.” Margery’s voice cracked with anger.

Helen and Phil looked at each other, then sprinted across the wet grass toward their landlady’s apartment. Margery was standing on her doorstep, wearing red curlers and a purple chenille bathrobe. A loose curler flopped over her left ear.

The .38 Special looked enormous in her bony hands.

It was pointed at Fred and Ethel Mertz. Fred was carrying a TV set, balanced on his enormous gut. Ethel was wheeling a bulging black suitcase toward the parking lot. They looked angry but unafraid.

“What’s going on here?” Helen asked.

“They’re walking off with my TV and God knows what else.” Margery waved her weapon at the suitcase. “Two C is a furnished unit. Or used to be, before these two stripped it.”

“Open the suitcase,” Phil said.

“I don’t have to,” Ethel said. “You don’t have a search warrant.”

“Don’t need one,” Phil said. “I’ve got this.” He raised his ray gun. Helen hoped he would vaporize Ethel in her WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA T-shirt. Fred, too, while Phil was at it.

Ethel looked at Fred. He nodded. She unzipped the suitcase. It was brimming with purple terry cloth.

“My new towels,” Margery said. “I just bought them for that unit this season. That’s my bath mat, too. And my clock radio. Damn tourists. Can’t have anything nice or they take it.”

Helen thought of the couple’s sanctimonious speeches on America’s declining morals. They’d ruined so many evenings by the pool. “In my day,” she said, “respectable retired people did not steal towels and TV sets.”

“We’re not stealing.” Fred pointed his finger dramatically at Margery. “She is. She won’t give us back our deposit and last month’s rent. We’re out eighteen hundred dollars.”

“I’m out more than that,” Margery said. “It’s only November. You signed a lease for the season. You owe me through March.”

“We would have paid you through March if you’d let us stay.” Fred was shouting, beet red with anger.

“I won’t have thieves on my property,” Margery said.

“You stole from those poor little restaurants and now you’re stealing from me. I ought to pop you on principle. I could say my finger slipped on the trigger. Poor shaky old lady. Do you think a Florida jury would convict me?”

Margery grinned crazily.

For the first time, Fred and Ethel looked frightened. Helen was scared, too. Margery was quite an actress. Helen could imagine her crafty landlady crying before a jury of her trembly peers. “I didn’t mean to kill that couple, even if they were robbing me blind. Something went wrong and...”

“Should I check their car?” Helen said, hoping to distract her landlady. “Just in case they’ve helped themselves to more of your things.”

“You bet. We’ll all go. Come on.” Margery pointed the gun toward the parking lot. Fred and Ethel quietly abandoned the TV and the suitcase on the sidewalk and Helen breathed a little easier.

“Margery, don’t you think you should aim that gun at the ground? What if you trip and it accidentally goes off?” Phil said.

“Then it won’t be my fault,” Margery said. “Listen, sonny, don’t patronize me. I’m old but I’m not stupid. Come on, you two. March.”

The Mertzes reluctantly walked toward their car, while Margery held the gun on them. Phil followed, looking faintly amused, his ray gun at his side. If he tripped, he’d vaporize the sidewalk. Helen was last in line, clutching her kitchen knife and debating whether the back or the front view of Phil was better. The front, she decided. She liked those raised eyebrows.

“Why, you thieving buzzards,” Margery said.

Fred and Ethel’s big white Chevy looked like the Clampetts’ truck from The Beverly Hillbillies.

Roped into the trunk was a wicker rocking chair from the living room. Through the rear window, Helen could see three plastic wastebaskets, two pillows, and a purple blanket.

Margery ran to the car and peered inside. “They even took my shell mirror.”

This time, her weapon did wobble. How hard did Margery have to squeeze the trigger to plug the couple? Fred held his wife protectively, but Helen noticed he was standing behind her sturdy figure. If the shooting started, she’d make a handy shield. Phil moved in closer, as if deciding whether to grab the gun from the outraged Margery. If he was really a cop, shouldn’t he take it from her? What was going on here?

“Do you want me to call the police?” Helen hoped that would make Margery put down the gun.

“I can settle this without the cops,” Margery said. “What if they keep my stuff for evidence? I’ve got my own way of dealing with thieves.”

“We aren’t thieves. We didn’t take a penny more than we were entitled. This all came to eighteen hundred dollars, Fred said righteously.

“Wholesale or retail?” Margery snarled. She held the .38 on them while Helen and Phil started carrying the swag back to 2C. Helen gently unloaded the mirror with its frame of delicate seashells. Fred and Ethel had packed it in pilfered bath towels.

When Phil picked up the heavy rocker, Helen noticed how his shoulder and back muscles rippled. His abs were absolutely flat. The wrong men got naked at the Mowbrys’ party.

Helen hung the mirror back in 2C, then dragged an army green footlocker out of the Mertzes’ car trunk. Over Fred and Ethel’s protests, she opened it.

On top was a purple oven mitt. “Is this yours?” she asked Margery.

“Yep. And that’s my new Martha Stewart kitchenware.”

She pointed to a set of beige mixing bowls under the mitt.

“Martha has been convicted. Is it stealing to take her stuff?” Helen said.

“She was framed,” Margery said.

Helen didn’t argue with a woman holding a gun. She piled Margery’s belongings on the grass.

Crammed in the footlocker was every tourist T-shirt sold in Florida, especially the disgusting ones. “Did you or Fred wear this?” Helen held up a T-shirt that said: DON’T FOLLOW ME. I JUST FARTED A BIG ONE.

The Mertzes maintained a dignified silence. Phil was stone-faced, but Helen thought his lips twitched.

Helen pulled out a pair of jockey shorts with HOME OF THE WHOPPER across the front.

“You should have gotten the T-shirt instead, Fred, Margery said.

Even Phil couldn’t keep a straight face that time.

Under all the clothes, Helen found a black Bible. “What about this?”

“It’s not mine. I’m not running a hotel,” Margery said.

“Besides, they need it more than I do. Maybe they’ll read the part about ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ”

“We weren’t stealing,” Fred said. “I told you—”

That’s when Helen saw the brown furry ear in the footlocker. She tugged on it and a stuffed animal popped out.

“My teddy bear,” she said. “You took my bear, Chocolate.

You broke into my apartment and stole my money. That was you sneaking around my window when I got money out of my bear. You saw me and ransacked my place for cash.”

“I—” Fred said.

“We—” Ethel said.

“Shut up,” Margery said. “You broke my lamp when you trashed her apartment. You owe me for that, too.”

“You had your hands on my underwear, you perverts.”

Helen was glad she was no longer holding the knife. She wanted to plunge it in Fred’s fat gut.

She picked up her bear and patted it. Chocolate was oddly lumpy.

She reached into the slit in the bear’s back. Instead of money, she felt... a plastic bag. Helen pulled it out. It was stuffed with long plastic objects. Salt-and-pepper shakers?

“Those are my love toys,” Ethel said, indignantly.

A bag of vibrators. Helen dropped it. She had a sudden searing vision of Fred in his HOME OF THE WHOPPER underwear and Ethel in a flag-draped negligee.

“Where’s Helen’s money?” Margery said. “Don’t make me use this.” The gun was right in Fred’s face, and this time Helen didn’t care if she fired it. “What did you do with it?”

“It’s gone,” Fred said. “We went on the gambling boats.”

“You blew my money gambling?” Helen thought of the brutal hours she’d worked to earn that cash. Now it was all lost. Only suckers played the gambling boats. The Mertzes might as well have dumped her hard-earned money in the ocean.

“Open your wallets,” Margery said. “Get them out. Right now.”

“What? You can’t do this.” But Fred and Ethel fished out their wallets and handed them to Margery. She looked through Ethel’s fat wallet first, pulling out a driver’s license.

Then she searched Fred’s wallet.

“There’s two sets of ID in here,” Margery said. “Are you Fred and Ethel Mertz—or John and Mary Smith?”

“Our real name is Smith,” Ethel said. “But it’s so common. It was embarrassing when we checked into a motel. We had trouble cashing checks. We got tired of the jokes and changed our names.”

“You’re I Love Lucy fans?” Helen said.

“We never watched that silly show,” Ethel said haughtily.

“I named myself for Ethel Merman. He’s a Fred MacMurray fan.”

“So why aren’t you Mr. and Mrs. Fred MacMurray?”

“That would make us into a joke,” Ethel said. Helen gave up.

“Quit gabbing,” Margery said. She seemed to have borrowed her dialogue from late-night movies. “Phil, will you search their car for cash?”

Phil pulled everything out of the Mertzes’ Chevy, even the backseat. He checked the glove box, the wheel wells and the spare-tire compartment. He felt under the seats and dash. He even took off the door panels. Helen went through every box and suitcase in the car. They didn’t find another nickel.

Helen’s thirty-two hundred dollars was gone for good.

Margery found five hundred dollars in the Mertzes’ wallets. She extracted a twenty.

“That will pay for my broken lamp,” she said. “Here, Helen, the rest is yours. I’m sorry I couldn’t get it all back.”

“I never expected to see this much,” Helen said.

“Hey, how are we going to buy gas?” Fred said.

“In my day,” Margery said, “people worked for their money. You might try it.”

Phil announced that the car search was over. “What can they take with them?” he asked.

“They can keep the suitcases with their clothes,” Margery said. “But I’m confiscating all those tourist T-shirts. People think Florida is tacky enough without Fred and Ethel wearing those shirts back home.”

Margery also kept a citrus juicer and a blender, both in the original boxes. “Those are ours,” Fred insisted.

“Show me the receipts,” Margery said.

“I didn’t keep them,” he said.

“Then I keep these,” Margery said. “I’ll use them to make me some interesting drinks. Screwdrivers with fresh orange juice. Margaritas and strawberry daiquiris. Lighten up, Fred.

Fresh fruit is good for you. Alcohol is a preservative.”

Fred and Ethel bristled like wet cats.

Finally, they were allowed to get in their car. “Don’t ever come back,” Margery said. “Do you understand?”

Fred and Ethel had all the expression of crash-test dummies. They nodded but said nothing. Fred started up the ghostly white car. The foggy night quickly swallowed it.

Helen, Margery and Phil watched the crooked couple disappear.

“Whew, glad that’s over,” Margery said. “This thing is heavy.” She tossed the gun onto the concrete. It spun crazily, like a lethal party game. Helen and Phil leaped backward as the barrel pointed in their direction.

“Careful,” Phil said.

“It’s OK,” Margery said. “It’s not loaded. Never was. I don’t even keep bullets in the house.”

“Margery, that doesn’t make any difference. You have to treat every gun like it’s loaded.” Phil was a shade paler.

“I hate guns,” Margery said.

“Maybe you should start packing oven cleaner,” Helen said.