Clubbed to Death (27 page)

“Arsenic! Where did she get that?” Margery said.

“Wal-Mart. You only need a twentieth of a teaspoon to kill someone.”

“Good lord,” Margery said.

“That’s why drawing my blood and getting a urine sample was so important. If the tests find phenobarb, they’ve got Jackie for attempted murder. Ditto for the arsenic in the chocolate. There was cinnamon tea in the kitchen cabinet, so they can tie that to Jackie. But they couldn’t find the pink thermos or the cup. The chocolates were missing, too. And there’s no sign of the bloody shirt or the papers Jackie stole from my desk at the club.”

“I bet they’re long gone,” Margery said.

“Maybe, but I’m here,” Phil said. He bent down and kissed Helen.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Better than she deserves,” Margery said.

Helen felt another stab of guilt. Phil looked tired and worn. His silver hair straggled down his neck, his skin was oily, and there were deep bags under his dark blue eyes.

Margery sniffed the air. “You’ve changed your aftershave,” she said.

“But I like it.”

“Hot coffee and warm Krispy Kremes,” Phil said. “The way to a woman’s heart.”

“Definitely the way to mine,” Helen said. “I’m ready for a sugar rush. Mmm. Sweet creamed coffee and warm glazed doughnuts.”

There was a respectful silence while they ate and drank. Two doughnuts later, Helen said, “You listened to me on the ride home from the club. But I never heard about your trip to Palm Beach, Phil. What happened with your trip today?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Phil said. “I’d spent days tracking down rumors of a jeweler who sold expensive items to ‘special customers.’ The shop carried new and antique jewelry—and according to the rumors, some pretty shady goods. I finally found it on the northern edge of Palm Beach County.”

More guilt, Helen thought. Phil had driven more than two hundred miles today, if you counted the trips from Palm Beach to Miami and back. No wonder he looked exhausted.

“I thought I was going to have the big news to night.” Phil took out a blue velvet box, got down on his knees in front of Helen and opened it. Inside was a sparkling diamond ring.

“Oh, Phil, you shouldn’t have,” Helen said. She felt confusion, surprise and what she least expected—happiness.

“Of course I should,” he said.

Helen threw her arms around Phil and kissed him. He smelled of hot coffee, Krispy Kremes and slightly sweaty man. They should bottle this, she thought. There’s nothing sexier.

“I can’t believe you did this,” she said. “I never expected it.”

“Hey, I promised Elsie I’d get her diamond ring back and I did,” Phil said.

Helen pulled herself away and tried to hide her disappointment in a third doughnut.

“Right,” she said. “Elsie’s ring. I’m so happy. For her, I mean.”

“I can tell,” Margery said. Her sarcasm went right by Phil, but Helen knew her landlady had seen everything, including Helen’s disappointment that the diamond ring wasn’t for her.

“The dumb bastard had it on display in his store,” Phil said. “Can you believe that?”

“Dumb,” Helen echoed weakly. Margery knew she wasn’t talking about the ring.

“He was unbelievably arrogant,” Phil said.

“Arrogant,” Helen repeated.

“When you’re overconfident, you let yourself in for some nasty surprises,” Margery said, twisting the knife.

“Not only was Elsie’s ring on display,” Phil said, “so were Marcella’s ruby-and-diamond earrings. They were out there as appetizers, to lure in customers to buy the whole set. I asked to see the earrings. I said I was looking for a present for my fiancée. I hope you don’t mind, Helen. I needed a pretext.”

“Pretext,” Helen said.

“That’s her,” Margery said, malice lighting her old eyes.

“The shop own er said, ‘Excellent choice, sir. Would you be interested in a larger piece? I have something in the back you may want to see. We’re getting ready to ship it to New York.’

“As soon as I saw the necklace,” Phil said, “I knew it was Marcella’s, and this guy had been dealing with crooks. The rumors were true.

“He’s slippery. He won’t take goods that the police list as stolen.

But he knows there are gray areas, where the own ers hesitate to call in the law: A child hooked on coke steals his mother’s diamonds and hocks them. A boy toy takes his lover’s Rolex. A fiancé runs off with the silver. The own ers are too embarrassed to report the thefts.”

“So what did you do?” Helen said. She was surprised she sounded so normal.

“The shop own er said the jewelry hadn’t been reported as stolen. But he didn’t have any provenance on those pieces. He knew the kid who brought in Elsie’s antique diamond couldn’t afford a ring like that. I showed him the insurance photo of Elsie’s missing ring and he gave it back to me.”

“Just like that?” Helen said. “He just turned over a diamond ring?”

“I told him I’d have Elsie report it as stolen and the police would come down on him so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him. I said I’d call the media and the TV trucks would be waiting outside his shop.

He doesn’t want any attention. He gave that ring up way too quick—the sign of a guilty man.”

“And what about Marcella’s jewelry?” Margery asked.

“In exchange for me not saying anything, he promised to return it, no questions asked. He says the seller has more pieces. He’s going to get him into the shop tomorrow to deliver them. Then I’ll leave him and his store alone.”

“Is Rob the seller?” Helen asked. “Is he alive?”

“I’m not sure. It was a pretty generic description. He said the seller was wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. I thought you’d want to go with me. Now I guess you’re too sick.”

“I’m going,” Helen said. “I’d rise from the dead to be there.”

“Let’s see if Rob does,” Phil said.

CHAPTER 27

Helen put on a black Escada top that clung to her curves. It was sexy but not slutty.

Short black skirt.

Sky-high heels.

She dressed with extra care for the maybe meeting with her ex. She wanted to remind Rob what he’d lost. He’d married an older woman for her money. Let him see what money couldn’t buy.

Helen washed her hair and tamed it into lush waves with a blow-dryer.

She wore it longer since their divorce, almost to her shoulders.

She couldn’t do much about her battered hands. They looked like they’d been run through a shredder. But Rob’s eyes would probably never travel past her legs—they were long, lean and tanned.

Phil whistled when Helen stalked out of her apartment in her killer clothes. “Wow! I need to take you to Palm Beach more often. Is that new?”

“I bought myself some treats when I got the Superior Club job,” Helen said. Her new credit cards were already in meltdown, but she’d worry about paying them later.

“Wish I had a limo instead of a Jeep,” Phil said.

He opened the door to his dusty vehicle and admired her legs while she slid into the seat. Phil didn’t know this show was for another man.

Phil had slept off his exhaustion. This morning he looked alert and rested and way too handsome to be cooped up in a car on a sunny day.

The drive up I-95 seemed endless. Conversations started and stopped.

“Do you really think Rob is dead?” Helen said.

“Don’t know,” Phil said.

“None of Marcella’s husbands has escaped before,” Helen said.

“Why would she show mercy to a cheat and a thief like Rob?”

“Murder gets riskier every time you try it,” Phil said. “Marcella is smart enough to know she’ll get caught eventually, no matter how many lawyers she can buy.”

“I wonder why Margery hangs around with a notorious killer like the Black Widow?” Helen asked.

“No one ever saw Marcella kill anyone. She’s never been arrested.

Ever wonder what happened to Margery’s husband?” Phil asked.

“I assume she divorced him.”

“He disappeared after Hurricane Andrew,” Phil said. “He’s presumed dead, but there’s no body. Maybe Margery and Marcella have more in common than you think.”

They rode in silence for a good ten miles after that. Phil was marshaling his thoughts for the confrontation with Rob. Helen reviewed what Phil had told her before about Marcella’s marital history.

At twenty, Marcella had married her first husband. She was a stunning natural beauty, with long wavy hair and a lush body. Her husband had his own shipping company. He was lonely, fabulously wealthy, and fifty years older than Marcella. There was even some evidence that she loved the man. He died of a heart attack ten years later. Marcella inherited half a billion dollars, four houses, a yacht and a teak sailboat. She was thirty. She wore black for six months, then married a twenty-three-year-old Chippendale.

Her second husband had a great body and all the right moves except one: Chip swung both ways. Marcella caught Chip with his boyfriend and made a terrible scene. It was the talk of the seaport bars. Shortly after that, Marcella and Chip went on a sailboat trip to the Bahamas.

She told the police that her second husband had had a lot of wine that evening and must have fallen off the boat during the night. A fisherman found the body two days later.

The coroner ruled the death accidental. Chip’s boyfriend was never seen again. No one went looking for him. He was a drunk and a drifter.

Husband number three was a member of the yacht crew, another empty-headed stud fifteen years younger than Marcella. Gossip said she caught this one with an island hottie, but nobody would say anything on the record.

Two days after Marcella supposedly caught her third husband in bed with another woman, he ate some bad seafood and died in agony.

The island police didn’t investigate his death too carefully. He was seen eating three lobsters that night in a restaurant in the capital of Georgetown. Two other lobster-lovers at the restaurant were also sick, but they survived. Marcella ate steak, the most expensive thing on any island menu. She was once more a widow. After the inquest, she buried her handsome young husband at sea.

Marcella was fifty-two when she met her fourth husband at a bar in the Caymans. That wedding nearly equaled Madonna’s extravaganza with Sean Penn, according to
People
magazine. The million-dollar wedding was in a pavilion by the sea, decorated with ten thousand pink roses.

Two years later, the groom drowned in a diving accident. Marcella’s fourth husband was only thirty. The police investigation found nothing unusual and Marcella seemed to have no known reason to kill him.

The fifth husband died in the Bahamas, again on that fatal sailboat.

He was a bodybuilder who cheated on Marcella with a sixteen-year-old Nassau girl. He told the girl the rich old bag he married was so grateful, he could do anything. The young woman got pregnant and her mother told Marcella.

Marcella had a very public reconciliation with her husband on Bay Street. It was so touching, tourists and locals alike applauded them.

The couple sailed for a second honeymoon on that teak boat. Marcella wanted to picnic on a remote island, just the two of them.

The cook packed a basket with caviar, lobster and champagne. Her fifth husband was an inexperienced sailor. The sailboat hit a sudden squall, the boom swung wildly in the wind, and he was cracked on the head. He died before Marcella could get him to a hospital.

The coroner ruled the head wound was consistent with injuries sustained by a blow from the boom. Marcella had the bodybuilder cremated.

Rob was husband number six. He cheated on the Black Widow and stole her jewelry.

Helen kept asking herself how she could be so wrong about everyone—Rob, Jackie, Cam, Jessica, maybe even Margery. She didn’t trust herself to judge bananas at the supermarket anymore.

She was relieved when they reached the jewelry store, a marble cube in a shopping strip between a Botox specialist and a pricey pet store.

NEW AND PRE-OWNED ELEGANCE, the jewelry shop window proclaimed in scrolly gold letters. Inside, the shop went for the discount Versailles look: gold-framed mirrors, fake Louis XVI chairs and crystal chandeliers. The counters had stubby gold legs. The white carpet was thick and soft. Walking on it was like wading through a warm snowstorm.

The shop owner oozed around the counter, also on stubby legs.

Fine tailoring couldn’t mask his rotund figure. Helen suspected even if he wore sunglasses, his eyes would still look shifty. He clasped his soft white hands, as if trying to keep from grabbing the jewelry off his customers. His wide oily smile straggled away when he recognized Phil.

“This is Mr. Harpet,” Phil said.

Helen barely rated a nod.

“The client is due in less than ten minutes,” Mr. Harpet said. “The best observation post is through a two-way mirror in the back room.”

“Just like at the police station,” Helen said.

Mr. Harpet’s look said she was not the better class of client.

“There’s a speaker in the room,” he said. “You’ll be able to hear everything the same as I do.” Mr. Harpet ushered them into a dingy back room. The hidden mirror let them see the whole store from behind the main counter. It was as if they were standing behind him.

“Best seats in the house,” Phil said.

He and Helen sat on two crippled gold chairs and waited impatiently. Phil got up and paced. Helen shifted in her chair and wondered if her slippery former spouse would show. He seemed to have a sixth sense when things weren’t going his way.

“What if it is Rob?” Helen said.

“We let him complete the deal. I want the whole thing on tape,” Phil said. “Then we grab him and the jewelry.”

Helen heard a bell. The shop door opened. She saw a man silhouetted in the sunlit doorway, but he was too far away to see his face. He was about Rob’s height. He wore new jeans, a baseball cap, and judging by the drape, an expensive shirt.

As he walked toward the counter and the hidden mirror, Helen finally made out his face.

“That’s him!” she said.

“It sure is,” Phil said.

Helen wanted to leap through the glass and strangle him. After what he’d put her through, Rob strolled in to boldly sell his wife’s jewelry. Incredible.