Murder Between the Covers (10 page)

She tried to fax the résumé, but the line was busy. She kept trying in between calls to Margery. She still had not gotten through to the company by ten o’clock, when Margery told her it was safe to come home. Helen figured the busy young company must have taken the phone off the hook.

The next morning at Page Turners, she faxed the résumé once again. The line was busy. She tried fifteen minutes later. Still busy. She tried all morning whenever she could get into the office. The fax line stayed busy.

At noon, Helen called the phone company to see if something was wrong. The fax line was not out of order. By five o’clock, Helen knew she didn’t have a chance for this dream job. The company must have had hundreds of faxes already. The phone line was jammed with job hopefuls.

But she tried the fax line one more time before she left. It was still busy.

That night, the TV news stories said Trevor the termite fumigator was cleared. Margery had the inside scoop when Helen got home. No reporters were lurking about, so Margery was smoking and sipping a screwdriver out by the pool. Peggy and Pete were nowhere to be seen.

“I called a friend on the force,” Margery said. “I found out Trevor had an alibi for the time of the murder, but he’d been hiding something. They cut him loose because he had no connection to the murder.”

“How come?”

“Can’t find out any more. My source clammed up.”

“I know who will tell us,” Helen said. “I have my own inside source.”

“You do?” Margery couldn’t hide her surprise.

“Sure, Trevor. We got along great on the final walkthrough. I think we bonded after I had to take that frozen urine sample out to the Dumpster. If he’s innocent, he’ll want to tell the world. We can talk to him tomorrow. I don’t go in to work until eleven.”

Helen called the termite company the next morning and said the crew had left some clamshell clamps behind and she would drop them off if Trevor was working in the area. The receptionist told her where Trevor was tenting on Hollywood Boulevard. Margery drove Helen there in her big white Cadillac. Helen thought it was like driving a living room. The seats were like sofas. There was room for a coffee table and a TV.

They found Trevor tenting a two-story motel. Trevor looked a little thinner after his ordeal, and he seemed a bit subdued. But he did not mind telling them what happened. They stood out by the motel pool and Trevor worked on a cylinder of Vikane gas. Helen was fascinated that the top of the gas cylinder was coated with dry-ice frost.

“Everything looked normal on Monday morning,” he said. “I put on my SCBA gear and went into your tented building. Nothing was disturbed. No one had touched the clamps on the tent. Except when I opened Peggy’s apartment, I found that man, Page Turner, on the bed. One look and I knew he was dead.”

“It must have been horrible,” Helen said. She remembered those hot, dark rooms, the canvas flapping ominously in the breeze.

“It was a shock,” Trevor admitted, connecting the Vikane to a plastic hose. “I turned the dead man over enough to see the face. He was starting to smell like a meat freezer when the electricity went off. I’d never seen him before. I thought somehow this man died of Vikane. It was all my fault. I didn’t check the room.”

“But you did,” Helen said. “Margery and I were with you. We would have said you did your job.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Trevor said. “I knew there would be trouble. I was a black man. This was a white neighborhood.”

Maybe Trevor did not believe that two white women would stand up for him.

“I was the only one who could go into the tent when it was filled with tear gas and poison. I had the breathing apparatus. I was the first and easiest suspect. I panicked, shut the door, then relocked it. I did not tell George and Terrell, the guys working on the tent. I was sweating, but not from the heat. I completed my rounds, all the while asking myself, Should I move the body? Should I dump it in the Everglades? How am I gonna haul a body out of here? The neighbors are watching.

“For a long time, I sat in my truck, thinking about what to do. This was a fumigator’s worst nightmare. The only people who would understand how I felt were other fumigators. So I called two friends in the business. They gave good advice. They told me moving the body was only going to make me look guilty. ‘Stay cool,’ they said. ‘Get a lawyer.’ They knew a good one who would work cheap for a brother.”

“So what did you do?”

“I saw the lawyer,” he said. “When it came time to open the doors Monday afternoon, I unlocked Peggy’s apartment and looked surprised. I pretended I’d never seen that dead man before.

“When the cops showed up, I was the number one suspect, just like I expected. The fact that I had a lawyer made the cops more suspicious. I went downtown for a talk with them. The company had their lawyer. I had mine. Next, the state inspector weighed in, looking for violations. I sat tight and kept my mouth shut, like my lawyer said. But I was sweating.

“The autopsy report saved me. It said the body had been dead since Friday night, not Saturday. That’s twenty-four hours longer than anyone guessed. There were fly eggs, but the flies didn’t develop very far. They were killed by the Vikane.

“But the autopsy said Page Turner did not die of Vikane poisoning.” He was checking gauges on the Vikane cylinder.

“Well, no. He had a knife in his back,” Margery said.

“But that knife didn’t kill him, either. The coroner said he was smothered with a pillow. While drunk.”

“That’s why we didn’t see any blood,” Helen said.

“The stab wound in the back was inflicted after death,” Trevor said. He sounded like he’d memorized the autopsy report. “A butcher knife had been found in the body, and there were prints on the knife, but the police didn’t tell me who they belonged to. I was just happy they weren’t mine.

“Page Turner had died Friday night, before the Vikane was ever pumped into the building. I can’t tell you how relieved I felt. I had nothing to do with that man’s death.

“Also, he’d been moved. The blood had pooled in the lower body. The police found evidence the body was kept in the closet and dragged out later. They believe that we passed right by the closet where the body was stashed. It was covered by some long bridesmaids’ dresses.”

“Glad somebody found a use for those things,” Margery said.

Helen and Trevor ignored her.

“The man was probably murdered between eight and midnight on Friday, and that’s what saved me. I was coaching my church’s softball team. We won the division finals and had a victory party afterward. I was not only in the photos, I was in the video, with a time-and-date stamp. It was two a.m. when I finally went home. Page Turner was long dead by then. Besides, the police could find no connection between me and Turner.”

“So you were off the hook,” Helen said.

“Mostly. But the police knew I knew something. I made a deal with them. My lawyer and I explained why I’d delayed informing the police about the dead body for twentyfour hours. I got a lecture and was released.”

He checked the gauges again and the clear plastic hoses. Helen heard the hissing of the Vikane gas, releasing more death. She wanted out of there. She and Margery congratulated Trevor and left.

On the ride home, Helen said, “I knew Trevor didn’t do it.”

“Oh, really?” Margery said. “You were ready to convict him when he called his lawyer.”

Helen wasn’t proud of that. “I heard the cops found the tapes with all Page’s naked girlfriends,” she said, hoping to change the subject. “That will keep them busy for years. We have nothing to worry about.”

But Margery looked worried indeed.

“You don’t know anything,” the woman said.

“Ma’am, I need either the title or the author,” Helen said. “I can’t find the book without one or the other. Please give me more information.”

“I saw that book in your store last month. It had a blue cover,” the woman said triumphantly, as if she’d produced a crucial fact.

“I’m sorry, but we have a hundred thousand books,” Helen said. “Lots of them have blue covers.”

“You’re an idiot,” the woman said, and turned her back on Helen.

I must be, Helen thought, to take this abuse for six seventy an hour. She used to think bookstores were genteel places to work. Now she knew how mean some customers could be. They seemed to get almost physical satisfaction from insulting clerks.

It had been a bad day at the store. She’d also had to deal with a young weasel who tried to return a stolen Bible. Helen had watched him shoplift it, sliding it into his backpack.The Bible was the store’s most shoplifted book. Now he had the nerve to come up to the counter, take out the boosted Bible, and claim he lost the sales receipt. The weasel spat four-letter words at her when she confiscated the Bible and refused to give him any money.

“Thou shalt not steal,” she told him. He took the Lord’s name in vain. Then the Bible stealer left.

The bad customers looked like animals today, she thought, weasels and pigs with the dispositions of wolverines.

The nice customers were worse. They asked the questions Helen wished she could answer: When was Page Turner’s funeral? Would the store close for the service? Would it close permanently? Who was in charge now? Albert was the day manager, but he didn’t know any more than Helen did. He stood around in his starched shirt, sweating and wringing his pale hands, afraid to make the smallest decision.

A blonde came up to the counter with T
uesdays with
Morrie.
She was stick-thin with balloon breasts, sexy sandals, and a silver toe ring. “I’m devastated by Page’s death,” she said softly, and Helen noticed her red, swollen eyes. “He once told me this was the best book when you lost someone you cared about, but I never thought I’d need it for him.” Her voice faltered for a moment, then steadied. “We used to talk about books for hours upstairs in his office.”

Helen saw how the blonde filled out her white halter top. Another pigeon, she thought.

“They had such lovely literary discussions,” said the little brown mother hen with her. “You don’t find many men who can talk about books in South Florida. And to die in such a senseless way.”

“We’re all sorry, ma’am,” Helen said, sliding the book into a bag.

But she wasn’t, and neither was anyone else who worked at Page Turners. Helen felt like a fraud as she made fake sounds of sympathy to the customers.

Only Matt, the bookseller who’d walked off the job when his paycheck bounced, came out and said it. He stopped at the store the morning after Page Turner’s murder hit the news. Matt’s dreads were as luxuriant as ever, but his usual white T-shirt was black.

“You’re out of uniform,” Helen said. “What’s with the black? You in mourning for Page?”

“I’m not wasting any tears over that man. I heard you found the body.”

“It was dreadful. He had a butcher knife in his back.”

“I told you he’d pay,” Matt said. “The man passed, but it wasn’t easy. He’s gone and I’m glad.”

Helen was, too. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so. This store has pigs, pigeons, hens, and weasels, she thought. You can add another animal to the menagerie. I’m a rat. I’ve got to get out of retail. I’m beginning to hate the human race. I need a nice desk job. Someplace without a cash register. I need to get off my feet.

Before Helen started at Page Turners, she had no idea how physically hard a bookstore job could be. Booksellers were not allowed to sit when they worked the cash register. Cheap Page did not carpet the cashiers’ area. He wouldn’t even spring for rubber mats. After eight hours of standing on concrete, her feet hurt so badly she could hardly walk home. Her back ached and kept her awake at night.

“The key to survival,” Gayle told her, “is to get the ugliest shoes with the thickest soles you can find.”

Helen spent sixty dollars she couldn’t afford for cushionsoled lace-ups too styleless for her grandmother. Gayle was right. The thick soles helped. But the pain never really went away.

Now that she was cut back to thirty hours a week, Helen had time for a serious job search. She’d had an interview with a good prospect after work. An accounting firm wanted an office assistant.

The office was in a new building four blocks from the Coronado. Helen saw herself sitting at a clean, well-lighted desk with a comfortable chair and a potted philodendron. The pay was better than the bookstore: eight fifty an hour. The requirements would be laughable anywhere but South Florida.
Must have neat appearance and speak fluent Eng
lish
, the ad said. Local standards could be delightfully low. Helen hoped she could persuade the owner to pay her in cash off the books. She’d settle for eight dollars an hour.

At four-thirty, Helen put on fresh lipstick, combed her hair, and checked her panty hose for runs. No doubt about it, she looked neat. She walked confidently to what she hoped would be her new job. The door to the office suite was a solid slab of mahogany with a discreet silver plaque: THE HANSELMEYER COMPANY. The old corporate part of her responded immediately and approved. The receptionist’s desk was equally impressive, and the woman behind it was a dignified fifty instead of some fluffy young chick. Another good sign.

The owner, Selwyn Hanselmeyer, looked like a snake in a suit, but Helen figured she could put up with him. He had a flat face, yellow eyes that never blinked, and a large bulge in his midsection. Helen wondered if he’d swallowed a piglet for lunch.

Just beyond his door, she glimpsed the office cubicles, padded with soft gray fabric to deaden sound. Even ordinary office workers had big leather executive chairs. She longed to sit in one. On the closest desk, she saw a framed baby picture and a philodendron in a blue pot. The thronelike chair was empty. It was waiting for her.

Please let me get this job, she prayed. I’ll work for a snake. It won’t be so bad.