Clubbed to Death

Clubbed to Death

A DEAD-END JOB MYSTERY

Elaine Viets

AN OBSIDIAN MYSTERY

Other Books by Elaine Viets

Dead-End Job Mystery Series

Shop till You Drop

Murder Between the Covers

Dying to Call You

Just Murdered

Murder Unleashed

Murder with Reservations

Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper Series

Dying in Style

High Heels Are Murder

Accessory to Murder

Obsidian

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Elaine Viets, 2008

All rights reserved

OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATA LOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Viets, Elaine, 1950—.Clubbed to death : a dead-end job mystery / Elaine Viets.

p. cm.

ISBN: 1-4362-0521-8

1. Hawthorne, Helen (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—Florida—

Fiction. 3. Country

clubs—Fiction. 4. Divorced

women—Fiction. 5. Florida—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3572.I325C57 2008

813'.54—dc22 2007050086

Set in Bembo

Designed by Ginger Legato

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

To my club colleagues—

you know who you are, and I know who you are.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Superior Club does not exist. No successful country club could survive with the staff that I created, including Helen. Especially Helen.

Golden Palms and its police are also mythical.

Many people helped me with this book, including Synae White, Detective R. C. White, Fort Lauderdale police department (retired), and Rick McMahan, ATF Special Agent.

Special thanks to Susan Carlson, Valerie Cannata, Colby Cox, Jinny Gender, Karen Grace, Kay Gordy, Jack Klobnak, Bob Levine and Janet Smith. Many others helped, but I cannot publicly acknowledge them. I appreciate their help all the same.

Thanks also to Carole Wantz, who could sell dogs at a cat show.

Thanks again to the librarians at the St. Louis Public Library and the Broward County Library, who tracked down the time the sun sets in Fort Lauderdale in mid-January. Anyone who believes we don’t need libraries because we can get the information from the Internet has never needed a serious search.

Thanks to my editor, Kara Cesare, and to the staff at the Penguin Group. I am lucky in my editor, who sends thoughtful, detailed critiques.

Thanks also to my sister bloggers on the Lipstick Chronicles for their good advice and encouragement—Nancy Martin, Michele Martinez, Harley Jane Kozak, Sarah Strohmeyer and Rebecca the Bookseller. You can read us at thelipstickchronicles.typepad.com.

I’m also grateful to the many booksellers who hand-sell my work and encourage me. I couldn’t make it without you.

It would take another book to thank all the members of the mystery community who helped me when I was sick. Thank you all. You proved my theory—mystery writers may kill for a living, but they are secret softies.

Is the six-toed Thumbs a real cat? He belongs to librarian Anne Watts.

That’s his portrait on the cover of this book. Or you can check out his photo at www.elaineviets.com.

CHAPTER 1

“Do you know who I am?” The woman’s high-pitched whine sliced through Helen Hawthorne’s phone like a power saw cutting metal.

Yes, ma’am, Helen thought. You are another rude rich person.

“I am Olivia Reginald. I am a Superior Club member. I spend thousands at this country club.”

Everyone spends money here, Helen thought. That’s how they get in. “How may I help you, Mrs. Reginald?” she said.

The power-saw whine went up a notch. “I’m sitting by the pool waiting for you to call. I left a message at eleven o’clock. It took you half an hour to call back.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Reginald, but we’ve had a busy morning.”

“My husband is
in
the pool but I can’t go
in
until I arrange a guest pass for my sister. Laura is staying at our home while we’re on vacation. How can I enjoy myself when I have to wait by the phone?”

I’m sitting in a stuffy office on a fabulous January day in South Florida, Helen thought. How can I enjoy myself when I have to deal with you?

“I’ll fax the paperwork right now,” Helen said.

“I am on vacation. I am not sitting by a fax machine. Just give Laura the guest pass. I said it was OK.”

“I can’t,” Helen said. “I need your written approval. It’s for your protection. When you give someone a guest pass, she can charge thousands of dollars to your account. It will take two minutes to fax the paperwork to your hotel.”

“Well, hurry up. I’m wasting my vacation on the phone.”

Helen fought the urge to say something straight out of high school:

“My heart bleeds purple peanut butter.”

Instead, she summoned heroic willpower and the memory of her new credit-card bill and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know who I am?” should be the Superior Club’s new motto, she thought. In the old days, the members would have never asked that question. Everyone knew the Prince of Wales, the queen of Romania, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. For the club’s gently bred socialites, the question would have been unthinkable. A lady didn’t want to be known outside her circle. The painted mistresses of the robber barons were politely infamous, but always discreet.

The new members were a different breed. They’d invaded the historic Superior Club like a swarm of termites, and they were just as destructive. Helen prayed the balky fax-copier machine was working, or she’d have to listen to Mrs. Reginald’s power whine again.

Helen never made it to the copy machine. She was stopped by another club member before she got down the hall. This one looked like he’d escaped from the Early Man display at the natural history museum and hijacked a suit. His forehead was so low it seemed to collapse on his thick eyebrows. Make that eyebrow. The man only had one, and it was fat and furry. Helen was sure his back and chest were covered with a thick pelt.

The surprise was his hands, which he must have swiped from a higher primate. They were long and slender and only slightly hairy around the knuckles.

The creature spoke with an educated accent.

“I’m a doctor,” the caveman said. “This is an emergency. I need to speak to the department supervisor.”

“I’m sorry, she’s out to lunch,” Helen said. In more ways than one, she thought. “Solange will be back in about two hours. How may I assist you?”

“You can’t.” His eyes narrowed to feral slits. Helen wondered if he had a stone ax up his sleeve. “I need someone important and I need him now.”

The doctor’s simian face was hard, but not from exercise or responsibility. This hardness came from too much cocaine, too much money or both. It stripped the softness from the personality, leaving only the nasty “gimme” part. Helen had seen many versions of the doctor at the Superior Club, although none quite so hairy.

He was right. She couldn’t help him. She was only a clerk in customer care—a polite name for the country club’s complaint department. The other staffers didn’t even look up when the doctor screamed at Helen. They’d heard these tantrums before.

“How much longer are you going to keep me waiting?” The doctor’s soft, smooth fingers drummed the marble countertop. His brownish hair bristled with rage. “Didn’t you hear me? I said this was an emergency.”

Maybe someone really was dying, Helen thought. He was a doctor, after all. “Let me find Kitty, our manager. May I have your member number, please?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the doctor said.

“I can assist you faster, sir.”

“I’m a doctor,” he corrected her, as if he expected her to bow down and worship him.

Helen dropped Mrs. Reginald’s paperwork on her desk and sat at her computer. She looked expectantly at the caveman, her hands hovering over the keys. He capitulated. “My Superior Club number is eight-eight-six-two.”

Helen typed in the number and saw the confidential profile.

Doctor Rodelle “Roddy” Dell, breast augmentation specialist, married to Irene “Demi”

Dell. Status: Paid in full. See comments on behavior.

A boob doctor. So what was the big hurry: Someone needed an emergency C cup? Of course, there was that young woman at the fitness center who’d picked up too heavy a weight and busted the stitches on her new implants. She had to go to the emergency room. Imagine the embarrassment when you bust your boobs, Helen thought.

“Are you going to stare at the computer all day?” the doctor demanded.

Helen picked up the phone and called Kitty. “Dr. Rodelle Dell is here, and he has an emergency. His member number is eight-eight-six-two.”

Helen heard the clack of Kitty’s keyboard as she looked up the account. “Oh, no. Roddy the Rod. Is he foaming at the mouth?”

“That would be correct,” Helen said. “He says it’s an emergency.”

“He’s too important to have anything else,” Kitty said. “Bring him to my office, please. And stay. I need a witness with Dr. Dell.”

“This way, doctor,” Helen said. She noticed little hairs trapped in the gold-and-steel links of his TAG Heuer watch. He looked like a well-dressed Cro-Magnon.

And what do
I
look like, in my navy uniform with the gold Superior Club crest on the chest? Helen thought. A nobody. An eleven-fifty-an-hour clerk. The sad part is, this is more money than I’ve made in years.

Helen knocked on the door to Kitty’s comfortably cluttered office.

She could hardly see her Kewpie-doll boss over the vase of yellow roses, the piles of paper and framed photos of her children. A teddy bear in pearls and a pink dress slouched next to her computer. The only empty space was where the photo of her almost ex-husband once stood.

“Please sit down, doctor.” Kitty indicated a leather wing chair that shrieked “country club.” Usually, Kitty’s soft voice and big brown eyes disarmed the angriest club member.

The doctor paced in front of her desk, too agitated to sit. Helen stayed in the office doorway, but he didn’t notice her.

“I have an emergency,” he said. “I need my bill.”

“The monthly statements will be mailed this afternoon,” Kitty said.

She checked the computer. “Yours will go to your home in Golden Palms.”

“That’s the emergency, dammit. I can’t have my wife see that bill.”

“Is there a problem, sir?” Kitty said.

He was too upset to correct her about his proper title. “I treated a friend—a young woman—to a day at the Superior Club. She’s one of my office staff. Strictly business. It helps her perform better.”