Shop Till You Drop

Chapter 31

The sun was shining in Helen’s eyes. Someone had his hand clapped over her mouth. Then Helen realized it wasn’t a hand. It felt hard, like plastic. She tried to pull away from the thing over her mouth and sit up.

Strong hands pushed her back down. A woman’s voice said, “Take deep breaths now. Steady . . . steady . . . relax. You’re going to be fine. You’re breathing nice and easy. Another deep breath and I’ll take off the oxygen mask. Do you understand? Nod your head yes.”

Helen nodded. That wasn’t sun in her eyes. It was overhead lights. She was in a hospital emergency room, lying on a narrow gurney.

The oxygen mask was removed. Helen’s lungs hurt. Her mouth was dry and ashy. She couldn’t get rid of the taste of smoke. Her clothes and hair smelled like a fireplace. She would never eat barbecue again.

“What’s your name?” the doctor asked.

Helen almost giggled. The doctor’s name was Curlee, and she had wild frizzy brown hair pulled into an unruly ponytail. She sounded brisk and competent.

“Helen Hawthorne.”

“What day is it?” Dr. Curlee said.

“Saturday,” Helen said. “Wait. It’s after midnight. It must be Sunday.”

“Who is president?”

“That bozo neither one of us voted for,” a loud voice said. “She’s fine.”

It was Helen’s landlady, Margery. She was wearing another purple shorts set. This one was turned inside out, with the tag in front. Margery must have dressed in a hurry.

“I’ve come to get her out of here,” Margery said. “Hospitals are full of sick people. She’ll catch an infection.”

“Are you next of kin?” the doctor asked.

“I’m her aunt,” Margery said. Helen stared. Her landlady lied without a qualm. “And I’m paying her ER bill.”

“No, I have money,” Helen said.

“So do I,” Margery said. “And don’t argue with me, young woman, or I’ll tell your mother.”

That was the only threat that could quiet Helen. She shut up about the bill.

“She’s suffering from smoke inhalation,” Dr. Curlee said. “Helen does not appear to be burned or injured except for a cut on her arm. Luckily, it won’t require stitches.

“We’re doing some basic lab work to make sure she’s OK, and we’ll check her electrolytes. We need to keep her for observation for awhile. Then, if everything is all right, she can go home.”

“How much longer will it be?” Margery said.

“Another three or four hours, if all her tests go right.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Margery said.

The doctor’s beeper went off, and she left Margery and Helen alone in the curtained cubicle.

“Is Cal with you?” Helen said.

“Cal? Why would Cal be here?” Margery said.

“Because he pulled me out of that burning apartment. I thought he might have come along with you. I wanted to thank him for saving me.”

“Cal didn’t rescue you,” Margery said. “Phil did.”

“The invisible pothead? I finally saw him and I don’t remember?”

“I wish you’d quit calling him that,” Margery said, testily. “I see that boy all the time.”

Helen felt groggy and thickheaded. “I saw something else, too,” she said. “These weird white lights or letters spelling out ‘Clapton Is God.’ It was like a vision.”

“Vision, my sweet Aunt Fanny,” Margery said. “You saw Phil’s favorite T-shirt. It’s black with white letters. He got it from Ed Seelig, a guy who sold Clapton some of his guitars. It’s his prized possession. I’m surprised Phil risked it to save you.”

Helen put her head down on the thin pillow and tried to remember. She recalled Phil’s hands, calloused and strong. But she could not see a face above that T-shirt.

She also remembered the boiling smoke and the bed with sheets of flame. Her funky little apartment was gone. Helen felt a sharp stab of regret. The funny boomerang table and the exuberant Barcalounger were ruined. The squeaky bed was no big loss.

“Oh, Margery. Your beautiful apartment. It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Margery said. “The fire marshal thinks it was arson.”

“Arson!”

“Somebody wanted to burn you alive,” Margery said. The landlady’s shrewd old eyes bored into her, and Helen felt like she was in the sixth grade and had been caught smoking in the girl’s bathroom.

“Now, you better tell me what you’ve been up to. All of it. Because it’s no longer your own private business. They set fire to my apartment building. It’s my business now.”

For the next two hours, the two women stayed in the chilly, uncomfortable cubicle while Helen talked about Juliana’s: the blackmail, the drugs, the illegal maids, even the banned biopolymer injections. She finished with the reappearance of Thumbs, the dead woman’s six-toed cat.

Margery had something of her own to add. “A police detective, Karen Grace I think her name was, came by yesterday, asking where you were the weekend Christina was murdered,” Margery told her. “I said you went on a date with Cal Saturday night, moped around the place Sunday, and went to work on Monday like always. Peggy and Cal told her same thing.”

“Did she talk with Phil?”

“He didn’t answer his door. And he had the good sense not to light up while she was there.”

Occasionally someone would come in and stick Helen with a needle or make her breathe into a machine. But mostly the two women were alone. They talked until Helen ran out of things to say.

“Now, who do you think set fire to my apartment?” Margery said.

“Brittney,” Helen said, without hesitation.

“You don’t think it could be a drug dealer? Or Joe?”

“They would have just killed me. They wouldn’t fool around trying to burn me. It was Brittney. She never denied killing Christina. She knew that was a mistake, and I’d talk. She had to shut me up. The timing is right, too. Brittney followed me home, then came back and started the fire.”

“Are you going to the police?”

“And tell them what? That a rich, well-connected woman tried to kill me because I saw her cat? I haven’t a shred of evidence.”

“It’s their job to get the evidence,” Margery said. “You should tell them.”

“I tried that once,” Helen said. “Dwight Hansel acted like we were a bunch of bimbos. He thinks only men are smart enough to murder.”

“You can’t pretend nothing happened,” Margery said.

“I’m going to search those CD towers again. Then I’ll try to prove that cat was Christina’s. I found a way. At least, I thought I did. I had this magazine story about how some police are using cat DNA to solve crimes. But now it’s burned up with everything else.”

“I don’t think so,” Margery said. “You had a magazine clutched in your hand when you were carried out. In fact, it was the only thing you saved.”

“Terrific. I left my purse and good clothes in the fire and saved a magazine.”

“Your clothes are fine. They smell like smoke, that’s all. The insurance company told me where to send them for cleaning. We’ll buy you some things in the meantime. Insurance will cover it. The firefighters found your purse. It’s OK. But your teddy bear was totaled.”

“Poor Chocolate,” Helen said. “Well, at least I got his stuffing. That’s where I kept my money. I still feel terrible about what happened to the Coronado.”

“Relax,” Margery said. “I’ve got insurance up the yingyang. I might even get new air conditioners and a paint job. And you’ll have all new furniture in your apartment.”

“But I loved the old,” Helen said.

“Then you shall have it. I’ve got a storage room full of that stuff.”

“A new bed might be nice, though,” Helen said.

“I think we can swing that.”

“I’m going to have to find a place to stay while my apartment is being fixed.”

“You can have 2C. That fraud Daniel is gone. I told him to pack up and get out.”

“Didn’t you have to give him thirty days’ notice?”

“Not if he was cheating old ladies. Took off like he was on fire.”

Helen winced at Margery’s choice of words. She looked down at her soot-streaked shirt and shorts. “What am I going to wear to work tomorrow? I mean today.”

“Today’s Sunday,” Margery said. “You don’t have to worry about going to work. It’s five in the morning. If the hospital ever lets us out of here, you’re going straight to bed.”

One hour later, Dr. Curlee said Helen could go home. Margery began issuing orders. Someone brought Helen’s belongings in a plastic hospital bag: her tennis shoes, which looked like two charcoal briquets, and a singed copy of Best Friends magazine.

Helen was exhausted. Margery seemed to be gaining energy. She rounded up the papers to sign, then tracked down the nurse with the obligatory wheelchair and loaded Helen into her car.

Helen was so tired she stumbled up the steps to Daniel’s old apartment, 2C. She tried to help Margery put fresh sheets on the bed, but her landlady said Helen was in the way and shooed her into the shower. Margery left out fresh towels and a T-shirt for a nightgown. Even after Helen washed her hair twice, it still smelled of smoke.

“You look better,” Margery said, when Helen came out of the bathroom. “Well, cleaner, anyway. There’s coffee in the cupboard. Open the miniblinds when you get up, and I’ll bring you breakfast.”

Helen thanked her landlady and crawled beneath the sheets. Just before she fell asleep, Helen realized that she was in Daniel’s bed at long last.

She woke up at noon. Everything smelled like a dead fire and tasted like smoke. Her throat was dry and scratchy, and she had a nasty cough. Helen opened up the blinds, and Margery came over with orange juice, a bagel, and a purple shorts set.

“I think these are your size,” she said, “but you’re stuck with the blackened tennis shoes until we hit the mall. Do you want to see your apartment?”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” Helen said.

Her purse smelled like a smoked ham. Her money was usable, but Margery wouldn’t let Helen spend her own cash. “Let insurance pay for it. I’ve been making premiums on this place since before you were born.”

Margery bought Helen two suits, two blouses, underwear, shorts, T-shirts, and shoes at the Sawgrass Mills Mall. They had lunch, although the chicken salad had a slightly smoky flavor to Helen. But she finally felt fortified to face the damages at the Coronado.

The sickly smoke smell hit Helen at the door. The living room and kitchen weren’t bad. They reeked of smoke and were covered with greasy black grime, but they were recognizable. Helen could even use the cosmetics she found in the bathroom, although she drew the line at barbecue-mint toothpaste. The broken jalousie door was boarded up. That made the room darker and hid some of the damage.

But the bedroom frightened her. The bed was a blackened mass, burned to the bedsprings. She felt queasy just looking at it. She could have been part of that unrecognizable charred horror.

The fire marshal thought so, too.

“The way you had the pillows and covers arranged, the arsonist must have thought someone was in the bed. You’re lucky they didn’t see you sleeping on the Barcalounger.”

“There’s no doubt this was arson?” Helen asked.

“None,” the fire marshal said. “We found the burn patterns, and we found potato chips.”

Potato chips? Helen thought she’d heard wrong. But the fire marshal told her that some professional arsonists used potato chips as the perfect fire starter. Chips were oily, highly flammable, and consumed by the flames.

A trail of chips would lead to the main fire starter. “The individual slid open your patio doors and splashed barbecue starter all over your carpet to the bed. Then the individual lit the chips and had time to get out before the fire really took off. Except this arsonist didn’t quite get it right. We found some chips left behind unburned in the damp grass.”

This was no pro, the investigators decided. Still, there had been enough fire to kill Helen. If she had not fallen asleep in the living room, Helen would have roasted in her own bed. Its blackened, burned-out skeleton taunted her.

Helen felt rage, hot as the flames of the night before. Brittney set that fire. She was not getting away with this.