Murder Unleashed (29 page)

They walked together on the old worn sidewalk to his apartment, their footsteps echoing in the dark silence. But when they got to Phil’s place, he did not invite her inside. “Good night, Helen.” Phil kissed her chastely on the cheek and shut the door.

Helen stood alone in front of his home, hating herself and hating her silence. She wished she had the courage to break it, but she knew she never would.

“You found Barkley? Helen, I could kiss you. You’ve saved my store.”

Jeff was jubilant, his anger at her forgotten. His brown eyes sparkled with relief. He danced around the shop in the hot morning sun. He hugged Helen. Then he gave Lulu a treat and draped a glamorous red feather boa around her neck.

“We’re saved, Lulu!” he said. “And Helen did it.” Lulu strutted alongside him, showing off the newest addition to her wardrobe.

“We’re not quite out of the woods. There’s still Jonathon,” Helen reminded him.

“Killing a customer is not as bad as losing a dog,” Jeff said.

“Since when?” Helen said.

“I was joking,” Jeff said, but his smile bared too many teeth. He’d meant it. “I’ve told you before, these dogs are children. I can survive anything except losing one. You’ve found Willoughby’s baby. You know, we’ve been darn lucky. Barkley’s kidnapping never made the news. All is well.”

Except for Willoughby, Helen wanted to say, but she swallowed those bitter words. “I have to ask you a big favor, Jeff.”

“Honey, you can have whatever your little heart desires,” Jeff said.

“I need you to get Lucinda the sex queen back to the store,” Helen said. “I have to ask her another question.”

“Is this for your investigation?” Jeff said. There was no sign of a smirk. Helen’s detecting abilities were treated with new respect.

“Yes,” Helen said.

“I can’t say no, not after what you’ve done. I’ll even make the ultimate sacrifice and give her something free. Lucinda bought one of those red velvet fainting couches for her poodle when she was in last time. I’ll offer her a velvet pillow for her new couch. I’ll wait till noon. That’s the earliest I can call someone like Lucinda.”

The word “free” worked the same magic for the rich as it did for the poor. It lured Lucinda into the store by two o’clock, the crack of dawn for her. She yawned and stretched and thrust out her implants. The bright sunlight showed the cracks around her lips and the indelible lines the long, lurid nights had stamped around her eyes.

Lucinda’s tiny tight T-shirt hugged her top. She had the body of a twenty-five-year-old, and she was hanging onto it. Lucinda was wrapped around another young man.

There was nothing shy about this guy. He had a pale, foxy face and a steel earplug the size of a spool of thread. This boy liked pain. He probably had a whole wardrobe of spiked collars and whips.

“You’ve got a pillow for me, Jeffie?” Lucinda said in a wheedling baby voice that made Helen grit her teeth.

“A selection, my dear,” Jeff said. “Pink, red, or purple?”

“Can I have them all?”

“Don’t be greedy,” Jeff said.

Lucinda’s pout made her look like a corrupt child. The young man whispered something in her ear and she laughed.

“I’ll take the pink one,” Lucinda said. “It matches my—Stop that, you bad boy. Put your hand back where it belongs.”

Jeff held up the red pillow. “You can have this one, too, if you’ll help Helen.”

“Help her how?” Lucinda said, suddenly suspicious.

“Just answer a few questions about Tammie’s parties,” he said.

“Are they anything delicate young ears should hear?” she asked coyly. She licked her pink lips.

Jeff rubbed his ears and said, “I think they can take it.”

Lucinda giggled. She was eager to impress her young man with her sophistication.

Helen thought that was her cue. “Thanks,” she said, stepping up to the counter. “I had a question about Willoughby and you’re the only one who can answer it.”

“The police never bothered talking to me. At least you recognize that I know something. You may ask me,” Lucinda said. She sounded like a queen granting a favor to a peasant.

“Did Willoughby like to party with anyone in particular at Tammie and Kent’s?” Helen said. “Was she attracted to one person?”

“Of course, silly,” Lucinda said. “She was hot for Tammie.”

“Tammie was bi?” Helen said. Again, she remembered the uneasy feeling she had around Prince’s naked owner.

“Tammie was hot, period. I even tried her myself, and I don’t go for chicks. Gay, straight, bi didn’t apply to Tammie. She’s more like omni . . . omver . . . oooh . . .” Her pink, puffy lips had trouble spitting out the word.

“Omnivorous?” Helen said.

“Right. Tammie wanted everyone.”

Interesting word, “omnivorous,” Helen thought. There’s a hint of prey about it. Had Tammie preyed on Francis’s naive wife? Did Willoughby start having sex with Tammie to get even with her husband, and then it turned into something serious?

“Is that why Willoughby and Francis fought?” Helen said.

“He wanted Willoughby to come home with him,” Lucinda said. “I told you that. Weren’t you listening? Willoughby wanted to stay with Tammie.”

“You didn’t mention Tammie last time we talked,” Helen said. “You just said that Willoughby wanted to stay at the party.”

“Oh. Well. I was pretty stressed last time. I took something to relax,” Lucinda said, waving her pink-tipped hands.

Helen remembered the pinpoint pupils. “But now I have a good tension reliever.” She bit the young man on his unplugged ear.

He didn’t flinch.

Jeff watched the couple grope each other as they walked across the parking lot. “I wonder what will happen to my two innocent pillows,” he said.

“You sacrificed them to a good cause,” Helen said.

“Did you learn anything useful?” Jeff said.

“Definitely. I think Francis murdered his wife,” she said. “Willoughby wouldn’t come home with him. She wanted to stay with Tammie. It was bad enough losing her to another man. Another woman was too much. Francis killed his wife in a jealous rage.”

“Why didn’t he kill her the night of the party?” Jeff said.

“Francis needed time to build up his resentment. I bet Willoughby taunted him the night of the hurricane. She’d been hanging around Tammie, who was good at that. People who’ve lived together know exactly which buttons to push to make their partners crazy.”

“It’s a good theory,” Jeff said. “But it’s nothing you can take to the police.”

“No, but Francis bears watching, and I’m going to do it.”

“Do you have his new address?” Jeff said.

“His wife gave it to me when I started looking for Barkley,” Helen said. “That seems about a hundred years ago.”

Helen took Francis’s new address as more proof he was shrewd about money. He’d moved to a condo in Hallandale Beach, a town south of Lauderdale known as “God’s waiting room.” Francis was about half the age of the average resident. Many of the old people were dying off. Younger ones could pick up bargain real estate in Hallandale. Families in New York and Connecticut were anxious to sell off Mom’s condo and settle her estate.

Helen called Margery from the shop. “Want to go to Hallandale?”

“Do I look that old?” Margery said.

“I’m following Francis the wife killer,” Helen said. “I need backup.”

“You on the outs with Phil?” Margery said.

“No, no,” Helen lied. “He’s checking out some names for me.”

“Hmpf,” Margery said. She didn’t believe Helen. “Sure, I’ll go. When do you want me to pick you up?”

“I get off at five,” Helen said.

“Take the rest of the afternoon off,” Jeff said, walking in on her call. He was still caught up in the euphoria of Barkley’s return.

“You can pick me up now,” Helen said.

Ten minutes later, her landlady pulled up in her white car. The inside was a haze of cigarette smoke. Helen coughed and put on her seat belt. Margery drove like a native, avoiding I-95 and U.S. 1, weaving expertly through the crazed traffic on the Dixie Highway.

Francis the self-made widower lived in a gated community off Hallandale Boulevard. They checked the condo directory at the door for his unit number—118.

“He’s here,” Helen said. “His car is parked in his numbered spot. Let’s wait and see if he comes out.”

“Why aren’t we going in after him?” Margery said.

“He’ll feel safer in his home, more likely to lie. I want to get him outside in public, where I can rattle him.”

“It’s your show,” Margery said, and pulled into a guest parking spot two rows away. They sat with the windows rolled down. Helen watched flame-red flowers drift down from a canopied tree.

Margery smoked and propped her purple suede ankle-strap sandals on the dash. “Is Phil mad at you?” she said. “And don’t lie to me. Sound carries on damp nights. I heard the two of you outside his place.”

“But we didn’t say anything,” Helen said.

“Exactly,” Margery said.

“I don’t know what we are,” Helen said. “That’s all I can say about it now. Maybe you can answer this question: What is it about Florida and sex? Do we have more of it than other states? Is it weirder here? Do wives in Ohio look for sex partners for their bored husbands? Do men in Michigan drag their wives off to threesomes?”

“Of course,” Margery said. “Probably more than we do. Those people have to do something during the long, cold winters. Why are you carrying on about sex like you just discovered it?”

“It seems to be the reason for Tammie’s murder, and Willoughby’s, too.”

“It’s a darn good reason,” Margery said. “What are the other choices? Revenge? Money? The neat thing about sex is you can mix in the other two motives.”

She was right. All three reasons were tangled up with Willoughby. There was her affair with the dead Tammie and the divorce that stripped Francis of his home and income.

If Kent killed Tammie, sex and money were in there, too. Tammie’s death saved her husband a messy, expensive divorce, and he was on the prowl for a more interesting sex partner.

If Betty killed her, it was sex and money again. Only this time the money was for the animal shelter.

“I’ll tell you what’s weird in Florida,” Margery said. “It’s not sex. It’s death. I got one of those coupon books in the mail. You know the kind: ‘Free lunch, with the purchase of a second lunch and two beverages.’ In with the coupons for lunches, dinners, and appetizers is a five-hundred-dollar coupon for a crypt. I can just see me taking a coupon to a cemetery.”

“At least they don’t have an early-bird special,” Helen said.

Margery snorted like she’d made the Pamplona run.

“It’s him!” Helen said.

Francis, pale as unbaked bread, loped down the sidewalk to his silver Lexus.

“Follow that car,” Helen said.

“Did you really have to say that?” Margery said.

Francis was a slow, careful driver, which earned him the ire of everyone on the road. Old women cut him off. Young men gave him the finger as they gunned their cars to pass him. Francis seemed oblivious. He drove at a steady pace until he finally put on his left-turn signal.

“Is he going to the dog track?” Helen said.

“Not that man. He’s headed for Big Irv’s. It’s right in front of the greyhound track.”

They followed Francis into a blacktop parking lot. Irv’s looked like a collection of sheds cobbled together. Francis grabbed a rusty grocery cart and rolled it past big boxes the size of playpens, filled with oranges and grapefruit.

Big Irv’s was a throwback to the fruit stands of fifty years ago. There was no air-conditioning. Helen liked that. She usually carried a sweater with her. Florida buildings were kept at morgue temperatures. Irv’s was warm, but pleasant. The fresh air released the smells of sweet fruit, bitter vegetables, and fresh earth.

Shopping was like hand-to-hand combat. Customers reached over and around one another for plastic bags, and used their baskets to edge their way to open bins of green beans and corn.

Irv’s was the United Nations of produce. The aisles were packed with old women squeezing tomatoes, Hispanic mothers testing plantains for ripeness, Italians thumping eggplants. Tall Russian women weighed cabbages. Old men prodded spotted vegetables on the sale rack, looking for bargains.

Francis went for the most expensive items. He filled his cart with snow peas, blueberries, and raspberries. He brushed up against a shapely woman in a maid’s uniform and she smiled at him. She had long black hair and a fetching overbite. Francis smiled back. She giggled. They talked for a bit by the kohlrabi, and then he gave her a business card.

Helen watched in amazement. “He picked her up. I can’t believe it. What does a pretty woman like her see in him?”

“She’s a smart one,” Margery said. “She sized him up the same way she checked out the broccoli. Francis wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and he bought the most expensive produce. She saw a rich, unattached man.”

“But he’s icky,” Helen said.

“Ickier than mopping floors and scrubbing toilets?”

Francis carefully wheeled his basket past a staffer opening cartons with a razor-sharp box cutter. Helen and Margery each grabbed a cart and cornered Francis by the strawberries.

“You!” he said. “Why are you following me?”

“To get the truth, Francis,” Helen said. “We know about Tammie and Willoughby.”

Francis panicked and tried to bolt, but he was blocked by their carts. He backed up, then leaped into the apple bins, sending an avalanche of Red Delicious onto the floor. They bounced and rolled with hollow thuds.

“Hey! Get down!” yelled the staffer with the box cutter.

Francis vaulted over a mound of Golden Delicious and slipped on a stack of strawberry boxes. They cracked under his weight. He ran through the potatoes and squashed the ripe avocados into guacamole.