Clubbed to Death (26 page)

She dialed club security and heard a man’s voice, “Hello. This is Steven.”

“Xaviera’s Steven? This is Helen. Help me.” That’s what she wanted to say. But her voice was a hoarse croak and her words rushed out in a jumble.

“Helen, what’s wrong? Where are you? You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I was attacked,” she said. “Someone tried to kill me.”

“Ohmigod. Are you hurt?”

“I’m OK. I’m trapped in the customer care office. In the supply closet in the back hall. I need to get out of here. I’m running out of air.”

“I’ll get help. No, I’m coming right over. Stay there.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” Helen said.

“I meant, stay on the phone,” Steven said, and promptly disconnected her.

Helen thought that was funny, now that help was on the way. She called Margery next and said, “I can’t stay on the line. I’m OK, but I don’t think I can drive home. Can you pick me up at the club?”

“What the hell happened now?” Margery roared. “Why do you sound like something in a tomb?”

Helen thought she could see her landlady’s cigarette smoke coming through the phone. “It’ll take too long to explain,” Helen said. “But I’m in a tomb, sort of, and they’re getting me out. Just get here, please.

Come to the front gate. Ask for Steven in security.”

“Don’t do this to me, Helen,” Margery said. “What tomb? What’s going on?”

“I’m fine,” Helen said, and hung up. She had to. She heard Steven calling her name.

“Here,” she shouted and pounded on the cabinet door.

“Hold on, Helen,” Steven said. “The door’s jammed. I’m opening it now. I’ll have you out in a moment. Just stay calm.”

It was Steven who sounded nervous. The metal catch rattled and she felt someone slamming the door from the other side.

“Am I hurting you?” Steven asked, as he kept hitting the door.

“No. Just open the door,” Helen said.

And then he did.

Helen rolled out of the cabinet into the cool office. She landed on her back, gasping like a beached fish. Helen lay on the worn tile filling her lungs with delicious fresh air.

“Look at your hands,” Steven said. “You’re bleeding. The club doctor is on his way. So are Detective O’Shaughnessy and Marshall Noote, the head of security.”

Helen groaned.

“Hang on,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

Not if the police and Marshall Noote show up, she thought.

“Can I get you water? Some coffee? Tea?”

“No tea,” Helen said. “Water. Water’s fine.”

Steven found a cold bottle in the department fridge. “Tiny sips,” he said. “We don’t want you drinking too much and getting sick.”

Water had never tasted so refreshing. Helen pressed the cold bottle against her forehead, then took another sip. “Thanks. This is delicious.”

So was Xaviera’s surfer boyfriend. Helen, on the other hand, was rancid. She had vomit on her shirt and in her hair. Her uniform looked trampled and the sleeve was ripped.

Steven didn’t seem to notice the vile smell. He took out his pocketknife and began cutting the tape off Helen’s ankles.

He was nearly done when the club doctor came running in with his black bag. He wrinkled his nose in disgust when he bent down to examine Helen. He spent his days in a perfumed office on South Beach, installing fake boobs in fake blondes. The club waived his monthly dues to keep him on call, but he mainly handled sunburns and poolside slip-and-falls. The doctor probably hadn’t worked a messy emergency in years.

“Let’s get her in a chair,” the doctor said.

Helen didn’t know if this was out of concern for her or his suit. He didn’t bother introducing himself, and Helen couldn’t find his name in her useless brain. The doctor poked and prodded. By that time, Detective O’Shaughnessy, Marshall Noote and enough security to staff a rap concert were crowded into the office.

Once again, Helen was struck by the father-son resemblance between O’Shaughnessy and Noote: same thick neck, thick fingers and short hair. Same cop eyes. They stayed trained on her while she told her story.

O’Shaughnessy seemed to believe her. She suspected Noote did not.

Things seemed to happen very fast now, in little jagged scenes. The medics arrived. The police collected a sample of her vomit. They searched for Jackie’s pink basket, the cup and the thermos, but those were gone. So was the petty cash—the five hundred dollars that Solange kept in her upper drawer. The drawer was open.

“Everyone in the office knew Solange kept the key under the plant on her desk,” Helen said.

Jackie had taken the money and run. The incriminating fax numbers that Helen had on her desk were gone, too. Jackie’s desk was empty.

The petty cash drawer was fingerprinted. The tape from Helen’s wrists and feet was collected to be checked for fingerprints.

A police officer was dispatched to Jackie’s apartment. The officer knocked on the door and no one responded. A neighbor said that Jackie had thrown some suitcases into her car and left about six thirty that evening. The same neighbor also said that Jackie had brought her tea earlier that afternoon. Now the neighbor couldn’t find her phenobarbital. She didn’t want to accuse anyone, especially sweet little Jackie, but she was the only visitor in days.

The neighbor kept her medicine in plain sight on the kitchen counter. She needed phenobarb for her seizures. Maybe Jackie took it by accident. Could the nice officer ask Jackie about it, please, when they found her?

When they found her. Now there was the question.

“We have a BOLO for her car,” Detective O’Shaughnessy said.

“She’s wanted for assault, theft and double homicide.”

The words made Helen feel even more unreal. Quiet little Jackie had racked up an impressive list of crimes.

“She drives an old silver Geo,” Helen said. “I don’t think it goes very fast.”

“Doesn’t have to,” O’Shaughnessy said. “It’s twelve thirty in the morning. She’s had a six-hour start. We’d like to get a search warrant for the suspect’s apartment.”

“She tried to kill me. Can’t you just break down the door?” Helen asked.

“Doesn’t work that way,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Unless the person who has the privacy rights associated with the property has knowingly and voluntarily waived those rights, a search warrant is always needed if any evidence obtained is to be admitted in court.”

I’m still woozy, Helen thought. But I think he’s saying that he needs Jackie’s consent for a search.

“To obtain a search warrant,” O’Shaughnessy said, “one needs probable cause to believe that what ever is the object of the search is in or on the property sought to be searched.”

“Huh?” Helen said. Now she was totally lost.

“The tea,” he said. “Do you have reason to believe that she made this tea at home? What about the chocolates? Did she bring them from home? Your statement will help us get a warrant.”

“Definitely,” Helen said. “She said she got the tea as a gift. She brought it from home in a thermos. The chocolates, too. Except they didn’t come in a thermos. They were in a basket.”

The police found the chocolate Helen had dropped under her desk.

It was taken for analysis.

The club doctor told her she was lucky she’d only pretended to eat it. “That’s a needle mark on the bottom,” he said. “That chocolate has been injected with something. I suspect there were sleeping pills in that tea. You were supposed to eat the chocolate, drink the tea, pass out and die. You’re lucky you didn’t aspirate your own vomit and choke.”

Now Helen felt really sick.

“You need to go to the hospital and have your stomach pumped,” the doctor said.

“No, I don’t,” Helen said. “I didn’t eat the chocolate. I just drank some tea and threw up. I’m fine.”

“Then you’ll have to sign a paper that you’re refusing treatment.”

The great healer is afraid I might sue, she thought.

“Thank you for caring,” Helen said.

“We prefer you go to the ER, Miss Hawthorne,” Detective O’Shaughnessy said. “We don’t know for sure what you’ve consumed or if anything is still in your system. It’s for your own safety. Also, we’ll need the hospital staff to collect urine and blood samples for testing. We need proof of what you were given to bring your assailant to justice.”

“OK, you can take me,” Helen said to the medics. “Do I have to go on that stretcher?”

“Regulations,” said a strapping young man in a blue uniform. He was too big to argue with.

As they were wheeling her away, Helen said, “Steven, my landlady’s coming to the club. Will you direct her to the hospital?”

“No problem,” Steven said.

Marshall Noote trotted alongside her, like a big friendly dog. He patted her hand, as if he really cared. Helen knew better.

“You don’t fool me,” he whispered in her ear. “I know you staged that poisoning attempt. Gave yourself just enough to get a little sick.

You framed poor Jackie. She got scared and ran. She’s no killer. I knew her from the old days. Sweetest woman I ever met. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“She tried to kill me,” Helen said. “What do I have to do to convince you—die?”

“That might work,” Noote said.

CHAPTER 26

“You want tea with your toast?” Margery asked.

“You’re joking, right?” Helen said. “I never want tea as long as I live.”

“You could just say, ‘No, thank you,’ ” Margery said. “Phil’s gone out for coffee. I thought you wouldn’t want to wait for some hot caffeine.”

She glared at Helen. So did her cigarette. Helen found all those red eyes unnerving.

It was now four in the morning, with a cold clammy mist drifting on the ground. Helen sat snug in Margery’s purple recliner with a plate of warm buttered toast in her lap.

She stank like a Dumpster. She’d changed her smelly shirt and torn uniform, but she couldn’t shower or wash her hair yet. Helen’s damaged hands were wrapped in gauze mittens. She had to keep the salve on a little longer. Her arm had an ugly green bruise where the techs had drawn blood for the police.

“Do you know what you put me through?” Margery said.

For once, Helen’s landlady looked every day of her seventy-six years. Her wrinkles plowed furrows into her face. Her purple T-shirt was on inside out, tag in front. She must have dressed in a hurry when Helen called for help.

“First you call me up at eleven at night, croaking like a raven,” Margery said. “Then you tell me you’re buried in a tomb.”

“I said ‘sort of,’ ” Helen said.

“That was real cute,” Margery said. “Especially after you hung up without explaining.”

“I didn’t hang up. Help had arrived.”

“Why didn’t you say so, instead of making me wonder what happened? I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. Phil drove me down to Golden Palms, racing in and out of traffic at a hundred miles an hour.

I’m surprised we didn’t wipe out on the highway—or wind up in jail.”

“Not on I-95,” Helen said. “Everyone drives like that.”

“You’re being cute again.” Margery’s eyes blazed with anger. “You don’t care what you put us through. When we finally got to the Superior Club, that Steven bird said you were in the hospital. That message took another ten years off my life. Didn’t make Phil feel too good, either. You’re lucky we didn’t let you hitchhike home.”

“I’m sorry,” Helen said. “The police wanted my blood.”

“So do I,” Margery said. “What were you doing, drinking poison with a killer?”

Helen wasn’t sure if the smoke in the room was from her furious landlady or her cigarette. “I didn’t know she was a killer.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Margery said. “Why don’t you leave the murder investigations to the police?”

“That’s what I thought I was doing,” Helen said.

“You borrowed my skeleton key to go snooping through that guy’s desk,” Margery said.

“And I found information that proved Cam couldn’t be the killer.”

“So you turned around and blamed that poor actress,” Margery said.

“I never said anything to Jessica.”

“You didn’t get a chance to,” Margery said. “Instead you sat down to tea with a serial killer.”

“Jackie’s not really a serial killer,” Helen said. “She only killed two people.”

“Only!” Margery howled. “Gee, let’s have her over for a barbecue.”

“I mean, she’s not Jack the Ripper,” Helen said. “She just lashed out when she was cornered.”

“She beat that woman’s head in,” Margery said, “then killed another man and tried to kill you. I’d say she’s pretty violent.”

Helen couldn’t argue with that. “At least I figured out the killer worked in the club office. The police were still interviewing the doctor’s old girlfriends. That would have kept them busy for the next decade.”

“Maybe if you’d told them the truth, the cops wouldn’t have wasted their time,” Margery said.

Helen winced. That hit home. “Well, at least they’re looking for the right suspect now. They think Jackie killed Brenda because she tormented her, which is true enough.” Helen still hadn’t told the police about the club information Jackie had sold Rob. She was more scared of the Black Widow than the police.

“Humph,” Margery said, and breathed out a huge cloud of smoke.

“And the police couldn’t have gotten the search warrant without me,” Helen said.

“I bet they could have figured out something to tell the judge.”

Margery wouldn’t give an inch. She ground out her cigarette and lit another. Helen quietly munched her toast. Slowly, the anger seeped out of the room. Margery had said what she needed to say.

Half a cigarette later, Margery broke the silence. “Did the police find anything to connect Jackie to the murder?”

“A few things. At least from what I overheard last night,” Helen said.

She was grateful for a peaceful conversation. “The police got their warrant and Jackie’s landlord unlocked her apartment. The place looked like it had been ransacked. They found her closets open and her clothes flung everywhere. Her car was gone. The police think Jackie did a hasty packing job and fled.

“They found two things to back up my story: The neighbor’s bottle of phenobarbital was sitting on Jackie’s kitchen counter, with about half missing. They also found ant killer that contained arsenic.”