Murder Between the Covers (20 page)

Margery opened her kitchen door to a blast of chilled air. She slipped off her tennis shoes and started walking across the floor. Her feet made an odd crunching sound, as if she was walking on eggshells. She pointed to Pete’s cage. “I’ve got to get that seed-slinging monster out of my kitchen. I’m sick of my floor crunching with birdseed. And feathers are everywhere.”

Pete screeched. The sound was an icepick in Helen’s ear.

“Oh, yeah,” Margery said. “The noise. How could I forget? He never shuts up.”

“He’s lonesome,” Helen said.

“I’d like to give him your cat for company.”

Helen tried to soothe Pete by petting him, but he snapped at her finger. Instead, she swept up the spilled birdseed. Green fluff and feathers floated on the air. The little Quaker parrot was pining for his Peggy. Helen sighed. She put away the broom when Margery clattered out in purple ankle-strap slides. “It’s all set. I called the office and got the address where Trevor is tenting. He’ll be there until six.”

Margery took a dozen brownies out of the freezer and microwaved them. “They’ll smell like fresh-baked,” she said, wrapping them in foil. Helen followed Margery out to her big white Cadillac. Helen was sure that once you collected Social Security, the state of Florida automatically issued you a big white car.

“We’re in luck. He’s at a hardware store in Pembroke Pines.” Margery drove at a stately pace. They didn’t need to check the address. They could see the building, covered in flapping canvas, a block away.

“Do you think he’ll talk to us?” Helen said.

“No man can resist my brownies,” Margery said.

Certainly not Trevor. “Fresh-baked,” he said when Margery handed him the warm package. Helen felt rather baked herself, standing in the hardware store’s parking lot in the four-o’clock heat. Trevor looked cool in his pressed uniform. The man didn’t sweat.

“I wish I could help you,” he said after he stashed the brownies in his truck. “I’d like to set an innocent free, like I was set free. But those door-shield locks are mostly for show. You could pop them with a screwdriver.”

Helen said nothing on the drive back. There was nothing to say.

It all went back to Peggy. She had the answers. Helen had to ask the questions. She caught the bus after work.

This time Helen had no fear of the police when she visited the North Broward jail. She had put on her cloak of invisibility. The ugly thick-soled bookstore shoes and sensible clothes turned her into a faceless clerk. She presented her fake ID without fear. You can get used to anything, she thought. Even talking to your friend through Plexiglas. But nothing could protect her from the sight of Peggy.

Peggy wasn’t just losing weight. She was shrinking. She seemed to be collapsing inside her baggy jailhouse suit. Her pale skin was an unhealthy yellow. Her large elegant nose had become a bony beak. For the first time, Helen saw gray in Peggy’s dark red hair.

Now Helen was going to add to her misery. She took another look at this new, frail Peggy and almost stopped. But it had to be done or she’d never get Peggy out of here.

She picked up her phone and said, “A legislative assis

tant to Senator Hoffman was at the bookstore. I found him wandering in the restricted area. I can’t prove it, but I know he’s the one who broke into Page Turner’s office. The place was trashed. Whoever did it was obviously looking for something. They even broke open the locked video cabinet—although why anyone would bother to lock an empty cabinet, I’ll never know.”

A single tear rolled down Peggy’s cheek.

“What is it, Peggy? What’s going on? You’ve got to tell me. How can I help you if I don’t know?”

“They don’t have it,” Peggy said. “I thought they did. That’s why I kept quiet. But they don’t have it.”

“Don’t have what?” A deputy walked by. Helen realized she was almost shouting into the phone.

“The video. That horrible sex video.” Peggy was crying harder now. Helen had trouble understanding her. “It would have destroyed me, but the fight wasn’t about me. It was about two powerful men. I was caught in their cross fire. Page Turner never blackmailed me. I wasn’t important enough.”

Peggy stopped and began plucking at a loose string on her top until Helen thought she would scream. “Tell me, Peggy. Please.”

Peggy wiped her eyes and took a deep gulping breath. “You know about the video with the cocaine and Senator Hoffman’s son.”

Helen nodded.

“There was some ugly stuff on that video. Not just the sex. Collie hated his father. He said things like, ‘My father’s big on law and order—for other people. When I get caught, he calls in his fixers. If I did crack in Homestead instead of coke in Lauderdale, they’d lock up my ass and throw away the key.’ “

“And he said this while snorting the white stuff?” Helen said.

Peggy nodded. “There was a lot more. It’s like he made this tape to get even with his father. And then … there was the sex. You must think I’m a real slut.” She was picking at the loose thread again.

“I think you’re my friend, and I’m sorry you’re in this mess.”

Peggy quit torturing the thread. “Collie’s death was my wake-up call. I went into rehab and got Pete and played the lottery.”

She laughed bitterly. “Doesn’t sound like much of a life, does it? But I was happy. Or at least I didn’t hurt anymore. Then Gayle found out that Page was planning to use the tape to ruin Senator Hoffman. She warned me.”

“Gayle? How did she know?”

Peggy shrugged. “She must have overheard something at the bookstore.”

“Why would Page do that? Was he drunk or crazy?”

“Neither,” Peggy said. “Senator Hoffman cost Page Turner several million dollars. He talked him into investing in some energy stock.”

“Enron?”

“No, that’s not the name. But it tanked like Enron. Unfortunately, the senator neglected to tell Page to sell the stock when it started diving. Page lost about three million. He was going to have to close the bookstores because of the losses. He’d used their working capital.”

Finally, the store closings made sense. The stores weren’t losing money. Page had taken their cash and blown it on bad investments.

“He’d embezzled from the stores.”

“Well, he owned the stores, so I don’t know if you’d call it embezzling. But the family wasn’t going to bail him out. Gayle said they hushed it up, but he was stuck with the losses.

“Page tried to get the senator to cover his losses, but Hoffman said he couldn’t do anything about it. That’s when Page vowed to ruin him by turning that tape over to the press. It would make the senator a laughingstock.”

“Right,” Helen said. “Hoffman’s running on a familyvalues, antidrug platform. If the voters saw his coke-snorting son saying what a hypocrite he was, the senator couldn’t run for a bus.”

“Page hoped to get his money back by threatening Hoffman with the tape. But it would also ruin my life. I’d be a national joke, worse than Monica Lewinsky. At least she didn’t have sex with a man who turned up dead the next day. I’d kill myself before I went through a scandal like that. I called Page and tried to appeal to his better instincts.”

“So you picked him up at the bookstore,” Helen said.

“I told him it wasn’t fair. I would be destroyed because he was angry at the senator. Page laughed at me. He said this was payback for when I ran into the store in my nightgown.”

“And then what?”

“I knew it was hopeless,” Peggy said. “He got that cell phone call. I drove him back to the bookstore. I hated him. I wanted him dead.

“Then someone who hated Page even more killed him and left him to rot in my bed.”

“Wanna dance on the table with gorgeous men?” Sarah said when Helen answered the bookstore phone.

“Best invitation I’ve had all day,” Helen said. “Where are these dancing men?”

“They’re the waiters at Taverna Opa, a Greek restaurant in Hollywood. The female servers are good-looking too, but they’re not my type. Anyway, the staff dances with the diners on the tabletops. The music is loud, the food is good, and the male waiters look hot in tight white T-shirts. It’s tough getting a table on the weekends, but tonight we should have no problem.”

“I have a problem,” Helen said. “I don’t have any money.”

“Oh, come on. You can afford an appetizer and a drink. You’re turning into a mope.”

“Sarah, I’d love to go, but when my hours were cut, so was my pay.”

“So let me buy.”

“No,” Helen said. “I’ll pay my own way, or not go at all.”

“This isn’t charity. It’s friendship.”

“Friends should be equals,” Helen said.

“It’s just money,” Sarah said, irritated. “Look, it’s ten a.m. Call me if you change your mind.”

Did she slam down the phone, or did Sarah? Helen used to think it was just money, back when she made six figures. Now that she had to struggle, she knew money gave you peace of mind and independence. (But not happiness, a voice whispered. It gave you a lying, cheating husband.)

Helen sighed and looked around at the nearly empty bookshelves. With no new books coming in, the shelves were growing bare. The booksellers had covered the empty spaces by turning the books face-out, like the letter tiles in a Scrabble game. It worked for now. But as those books sold, Helen wondered what they would do. Maybe the store would be closed by then. She had to keep looking for a job.

At lunch, Helen ate a Luna bar, bought a cup of coffee, and went out for a free paper. She found a bench under a palm tree and read the want ads. The only jobs that paid anything were for telemarketers, and Helen hadn’t stooped that low. Yet.

Then she saw something promising: W
atch this spot for
the job jamboree at Down & Dirty Discounts. The new
Triple D on Federal Highway near Broward opens soon.
Jobs galore for eight dollars an hour and more.

Good money within walking distance. The upstart Down & Dirty was giving Wal-Mart a run for its money. Helen would apply for a job as soon as the stores started accepting applications. She walked back to work with a spring in her step, admiring the warm blue sky, the pink and red impatiens blooming around the tree trunks. She saw something greenish gray on the sidewalk. Wait! Was that what she thought it was? Did someone drop a dollar? She bent down and picked up—

A hundred-dollar bill! Half a week’s pay was at her feet.

Helen couldn’t believe her luck. The most she’d ever found had been a Georgia quarter. Now Ben Franklin was smiling coyly at her. The redesigned currency made the founding father look like a Grateful Deadhead. She wanted to kiss him.

She saw two young men elbowing each other and thought, They want my hundred. They’re going to say they dropped it. Helen wasn’t going to let anything happen to her windfall. She shoved the bill into the inside zip pocket of her purse, then hurried into Page Turners to call Sarah.

“God wants me to go to Taverna Opa,” she told her friend.

“The devil is more like it,” Sarah said.

“Nope. God must be a woman. She put a hundred-dollar bill right in my path, so I can see the natural beauties of Florida. Take me to Taverna Opa.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” Sarah said.

Just the thought of that much free money was liberating. Helen felt inspired. She would save Peggy. She would find out who killed Page Turner. She’d love to pin Page’s murder on the preppy prowler, Harper Grisham IV. But he wouldn’t give her the time of day, much less tell her where he was the night Page died. There had to be a way to make him tell her.

“Son of a bitch,” said Brad the bookseller, as he came back from lunch. “I got a twenty-dollar ticket. All because this place is too cheap to give us free parking.”

Parking was scarce on Las Olas. The lot behind the bookstore cost four dollars an hour. Most booksellers were not about to spend half their pay on parking. Instead, they found free parking five or six blocks away.

“What happened?” Helen said.

“The ticket says I was in a no-parking zone,” he said. “I

didn’t see the yellow paint on the curb. First my hours were cut, now this. I don’t know how I’ll make the rent.”

The little bookseller’s shoulders were hunched, and his head hung down in defeat.

“I’m sorry, Brad,” she said. But Brad’s misfortune was her gain. She knew now how to question the preppy prowler. It was risky. If he had caller ID, she would be fired, but this job wouldn’t last much longer anyway.

When there was a lull in the customers, she asked Brad to cover for her and headed for the break room. She dialed Senator Hoffman’s Tallahassee office and said, “Hello, may I please speak to Mr. Harper Grisham?”

After a brief wait, his arrogant voice was on the phone. “This is Harper Grisham.”

Helen held her nose to make her voice nasal. “This is the city of Fort Lauderdale,” she said. “You have an unpaid parking ticket for two hundred dollars, plus fifty dollars in court costs and overdue fines. We are issuing a bench warrant for your arrest.”

“You’re joking,” Grisham said. His voice was relaxed, affable, as befit a future ruler of the free world.

“I am completely serious, sir,” Helen said, still pinching her nose. “The ticket was issued June second at eight p.m. You were ticketed a second time at eleven-thirty p.m. for nonremoval of your vehicle.” She was making up the charges as she went along.

“I was in Tallahassee that night at a rally for Senator Colgate Hoffman,” Grisham drawled. “I can have my office send you a news clip that shows me on the platform.”

Suddenly the affability was gone, and there was a lash in his voice. “But if I have to do that, I’ll have your job, you incompetent moron. What is your name?”

Helen hung up and let go of her nose.

The preppy prowler wasn’t guilty of murder. Too bad. Helen would have loved to administer that lethal injection herself. She wondered how she was going to help Peggy now.