Killer Cuts: A Dead-End Job Mystery (11 page)

M
iguel Angel, is that really you?” Helen said.”You’re

beautiful.”

“I had the best stylist in Fort Lauderdale,” he said.

Helen laughed.”Meaning yourself.”

“It’s true,” he said.”I cannot lie.”

The evening sun gleamed on his blond hair. His complexion was smooth and creamy, and his makeup was perfect.

“If it’s the truth, then it’s not bragging,” Helen said. “I’ve seen the photos of your Halloween costumes at the salon, especially that one of you dressed as a cheerleader.You can perform miracles.”

“Daily,” Miguel said, without a trace of modesty.

If Miguel Angel could give ordinary women the illusion of beauty, he could easily transform himself into an attractive female. It helped that Miguel was slender, round-faced, and looked younger than his forty years. His makeup case was crammed with wigs and extensions. Miguel Angel’s blond hair had to be a wig.

“Where did you get the peacock blue dress?” Helen asked.

“Out of the bride’s closet.We’re the same size.”

Not quite, Helen thought.The dress was tight around his waist.The top had to be padded.

“I slipped into King’s bathroom and shaved my face and legs with his razor,” Miguel Angel said.

And probably your chest, Helen thought. That neckline dipped pretty low.

“Then I did my makeup,” Miguel Angel said. “I had to leave my black traveling case behind.”

“You heard that King is dead?” Helen asked climbing into the pas senger seat of Miguel Angel’s Jeep.

“How could I not hear? The screams, the sirens, the fire. I watched it from the upstairs window like a TV show.When the police arrived, I had to disappear, so I borrowed Honey’s dress and high heels.”

“Borrowed?” Helen watched the sweat stains spread on the peacock blue silk.”Do you think she’ll want that dress back? Or those shoes?”

His feet were stretching out high-heeled sandals several sizes too small for him.They were ruined.

Miguel Angel shrugged. “Honey won’t miss them. She can afford more.”

“Why didn’t you just run when you saw the fire?” Helen asked.

“Because the TV crews were outside, photographing the guests. I could be here as a stylist, but if someone thought I was feeding King gossip, my business would be dead. So I put on a dress and ran outside. Even if I was on TV, my clients wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Why would anyone think you betrayed them to King?” Helen asked.

“Because I believe his last two scoops originated at my salon,” Miguel Angel said. “Remember when he reported that Fernanda was drinking again, after a month in rehab? She turned up drunk for her appointment, carrying a champagne bottle. Her photograph was on King’s gossip blog the next day. She was wearing the same outfit she had on at my salon. And Richelle’s baby bump? She told me she was pregnant but was keeping it quiet until her wedding next Saturday.Two days later, the news was on King’s TV show.”

“But if she told you, she probably told other people,” Helen said. “And Fernanda walked down Las Olas at noon, drinking champagne.”

“She was drunk, but I took the bottle away from Fernanda before she left my salon,” Miguel Angel said. “I made sure she was escorted to her limo. That photo was taken at my salon. But the real gossip— Honey’s baby—has never been reported.You know why not? Because Phoebe is feeding information to her good friend Honey. And Honey is paying her.”

“Are you sure?” Helen asked.

“How could Phoebe afford that expensive blue dress for the wed ding? It had to be at least three thousand dollars.Why was she an hon ored guest—because she’s such a good friend? Something is wrong. I am watching her. Phoebe will be gone soon. Then she will have big problems, because King’s gossip empire is dead.”

“Do you think Honey killed King?” Helen asked.

“No!” Miguel almost shouted.”She’s not like that.”

“But she would marry King for his money.”

“That is the way of the world,” Miguel Angel said. “Do you really believe in happily ever after?”

“I did once,” Helen said.”Then I quit believing any marriage could be happy. Now with Phil, I’m beginning to hope again.”

“Your ex-husband must have really hurt you.”

“He did,” Helen said.”But I survived. If Phil betrays me, I’ll survive that, too.”

“But he won’t,” Miguel Angel said.”Phil loves you.”

“Right now he does. Forever is another issue.”

Helen still remembered the warm afternoon when her faith in for ever was destroyed. She’d come home from work early and found Rob naked with their next-door neighbor, Sandy. Those two had been so busy rocking the chaise longue on the new back deck, they didn’t no tice Helen. She was frozen in the doorway, her mind refusing to believe what her eyes saw.

The couple didn’t realize Helen was there and that she had picked up the crowbar Rob had used to work on the deck. Until Sandy peeked over Rob’s shoulder and screamed.

Rob had dismounted with record speed and left his buck-naked lover to fend for herself. He sprinted for the safety of his Toyota Land Cruiser—the SUV his wronged wife had bought for him.

Helen, in a red rage, beat the vehicle into dented metal, busted glass and broken plastic. She’d totaled the SUV and still regretted it. Her life would have been simpler if she’d destroyed Rob instead. She would have only served seven years or so for his murder. Instead, she’d killed the car and let her unfaithful husband live. Now she was facing a life sentence with Rob. Helen discovered ex-husbands were like cock roaches; you never quite got rid of them.

A frantic Sandy had called the police.The cops had stopped Helen from beating the SUV—and laughed themselves silly at the naked Rob cowering inside the ruin.

Rob and Sandy had declined to press charges against Helen, but Rob had the last laugh. When Helen filed for divorce, his lawyer used the photos of the smashed SUV to show that Helen had an uncon trollable temper. He claimed that Rob had been a steadying influence who kept her successful career on course. Helen told the court the man hadn’t worked in seven years, unless you counted jumping other women’s bones. Helen’s lawyer sat there like a cardboard cutout.

The divorce judge had awarded Rob half of Helen’s six-figure in come, plus half the house she’d bought with her money. Her ex had earned himself hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Helen swore that Rob would never see another nickel of her in come. She fled St. Louis, crossing the country in grief-crazed zigzags to keep Rob from finding her. Her car died in Fort Lauderdale and she started her new life, taking dead-end jobs for cash under the table and trying to stay off Rob’s radar. She’d succeeded until earlier this year, when he’d tracked her down.

“So who killed King?” Helen asked, steering the conversation to a safer topic.

“Who knows?” Miguel Angel said.”Maybe one of his strippers. Or his hookers. Or his ex-wife. Or some celebrity he ruined by his gossip. Even his old business partner wanted him dead. I heard the lawyers’ fees were eating Wyllis alive. Everyone hated King.”

“Even you?” Helen teased.

“Especially me,” Miguel said, tossing his long hair.”Not enough to kill him, though. But I was afraid the police would hear about the fight, so I thought I’d better get away.”

“You were lucky to avoid the cops,” Helen said.

“I didn’t avoid them. Not totally. An officer caught me leaving the house. He looked so young, I thought he was a Boy Scout in the wrong uniform. I said,’No spik English’ over and over and cried like a hysteri cal woman. I did the whole Cuban-drama routine.They thought I was the bride’s crazy auntie. I gave them a fake name and address in Miami, and left.”

“Miguel Angel, the police will get you for that,” Helen said, conve niently forgetting her own fake name.

“They’ll get me, anyway,” Miguel Angel said. “I hated that man. I had a fight with him. I begged his wife not to marry him. I’m gay and I’m Cuban.”

“You’re an American citizen,” Helen said.

“Not to the police. I’m still Cuban, no matter how many citizenship tests I pass. If they have to choose between arresting a Cuban nobody and a pretty American, you know who they’ll throw in jail.”

“They’re not like that,” Helen said. But she wondered if that was true. She was a middle-class American and lived in a different world. Besides, she’d had her own troubles with the law.

“I still wish you’d talked to the police,” she said.

“I wish this had never happened,” Miguel Angel said.”But it did.”

It was six thirty when Miguel Angel pulled up in front of the Coronado Tropic Apartments. Helen waved good-bye and walked up the path to the backyard.The waning light was kind to the old Art Moderne build ing, tinting the Coronado’s elegant curves a soft bluish-white.The palm trees rustled like taffeta petticoats in the gathering dusk.

Helen’s landlady, Margery Flax, was stretched out on a chaise longue by the turquoise pool. Margery was seventy-six. Tonight she wore a long, summery lavender dress slit high enough to reveal purple gladiator sandals. Margery loved purple. Her gray hair was bobbed, and her tanned face creased with wrinkles. Cigarette smoke wreathed her hair.

When Helen saw Phil, her heart beat faster. Her man looked impos sibly handsome with his long white hair in a ponytail. He was wear ing her favorite shirt—medium blue—and blue jeans that matched his eyes. His nose was slightly crooked. When he smiled, he had sexy eye crinkles.

Phil was drinking a beer and eating spicy chips. He put down his bottle and got up to kiss Helen. His slightly beer-flavored kiss had that special zing. Damn, she was lucky to find him.

“Are you okay?” Phil asked.”You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Helen said.”It’s been an awful day.The groom is dead.”

“At the wedding?” Margery asked. She poured Helen a glass of white wine out of the box. Phil handed over his chips.

Helen took a deep gulp of cold wine and said,”Died right after the ceremony.The police suspect he was murdered, but nobody knows for sure.The bride tried to save him.” Helen told them about the wedding, the fire and her police interrogation.

“It’s so sad,” Helen said. “It was a fairy-tale wedding. A little over done, maybe, but beautiful.”

“Did you get any tips for our wedding?” Phil asked.

“Yes, your ex-wife is not invited,” Helen said.”And you’re not wear ing a tux with brown lapels.”

“Uh, I wasn’t planning to.” Phil looked puzzled.

Helen kissed him on the forehead. “I don’t understand why King bothered to get married in the first place. He could have all the women he wanted.”

“All the hookers,” Phil said.”There’s a difference.”

“Honey is no hooker,” Helen said. “Though I think she married him for his money.”

“The other problem was his profession,” Margery said, and blew more smoke into the soft night.”His gossip empire embarrassed King’s daughter, Cassie. Some of the women at his former strip club were selling so-called special services, and King was arrested for pimping. His lawyers claimed that King wasn’t responsible for the after-hours activities of his employees, and he had no idea they were engaged in prostitution.

“No one bought that argument except the jurors. King was ac quitted. But his daughter suffered for his sins. He’d sent Cassie to an expensive private school.The students were merciless about her father’s arrest.They taunted her with how the man made his money.They hung strings of king-sized sausages on her locker door, left sex toys in her backpack and condoms in her textbooks.”

Helen felt a pang of sympathy for Cassie. The young woman had been sulky at the wedding, but she’d loved her father—or so it seemed. “Kids can be cruel,” Helen said.”Didn’t the school step in and stop the harassment?”

Margery snorted. “Are you kidding? Not when every other daddy and mommy is a lawyer. The headmaster claimed he’d cracked down on the troublemakers, but very little was done.The parents complained that King’s daughter couldn’t take a joke, their kids didn’t mean any harm and, besides, a child with her background did not belong in their fancy school.

“King wanted to sue the school, or yank out his daughter and send her somewhere else, but his advisors told him it was time to tone down his act. King actually listened, for once. Next thing you know, he an nounced he was marrying Honey, and he started donating millions to charity.”

Helen didn’t ask where her landlady got this information. Margery always knew the local gossip.

“And that solved the problem?” Helen asked.

“Let’s just say the kids stopped harassing Cassie once their parents had to go to King, begging for their favorite causes. Society managed to hold its nose and accept his dirty money. Cassie was never popular, but her life was better when her daddy changed his ways.”

“Did he really change?”

“Not all that much,” Phil said.”King has attracted some very nasty stories.They say he uses sex workers to help gather his gossip. Hook ers know who’s unfaithful, who’s kinky and who’s back on drink and drugs.”

“While we’re on the subject of change,” Margery said,”I have two new tenants for apartment 2C.”

Helen and Phil groaned.

“Who did you rent to this time?” Helen asked.”A bank robber? A grave robber? A cradle robber? Or someone who fleeces widows and orphans?”

“Are their pictures in the post office?” Phil asked.

“That’s enough,” Margery said. “I do not have crooks in 2C this time.”

“That’s a first,” Phil said. “You’ve rented to con artists, embezzlers, a fortune-teller who advertises on late-night TV, and assorted thieves.You’ve never had an honest tenant in there since I’ve lived at the Coronado.”

“These two young men are different,” Margery said.”Josh and Jason are in the construction business. They have special senior discounts. Jason is from Maryland. Josh is from the Midwest, where people still have a work ethic.”