Murder Between the Covers (13 page)

“Page Turner was a cheap bastard.”

“Amen,” Helen and Brad said.

The three employees clinked their bottles together in a toast. Helen took a sip. Bawls was clear and slightly fizzy, with a strange, subtle flavor. At first it tasted like nothing at all. Then she detected a distinctive, almost citrusy tang that was like nothing else. She guessed that was the muchtouted guarana, an exotic Brazilian berry. Delicious—and it had a caffeine zing. Too bad it was almost two bucks a bottle. She couldn’t afford to drink it.

“He never gave a damn about us,” Brad said. “When I broke my foot, he wouldn’t let me sit down. I still had to stand at the cash register. My foot never did heal right. He was heartless.”

“Hear, hear.” They clinked their blue bottles and drank again.

“He said ugly things to us,” Gayle said. “He degraded women. He embarrassed our customers with his crude remarks. He was vicious.”

They toasted for the third time. Helen remembered Page roaming the store, broad-shouldered and big-bellied, redfaced and richly dressed, a modern Henry VIII. She heard him yelling “Who’s got Bawls?” at gentle Mr. Davies until the poor man blushed. Page never understood that Mr. Davies was blushing for him.

“He was a bully,” she said. “And he made the staff clean the toilets. I hope he’s cleaning toilets in hell.”

“Oh, Lord, grant our prayer,” Brad said reverently. He had the face of a depraved acolyte. He was so thin, Helen saw his ribs under his tight black knit shirt.

“He bounced our checks. He closed two stores and never gave anyone a dime of severance. He could have afforded it. He sure can’t take it with him,” Gayle said. She threw her bottle into the big metal trash can. Brad hurled his bottle after hers. It hit the first, and broke in a shower of sapphire glass. Helen tossed her nearly full bottle of Bawls on top, and a geyser of guarana flared up.

Then, in a bitter rush of malignant energy, the three staffers started ripping open the cases of Bawls and heaving the bottles into the trash, breaking each one. Blue glass and fizzing guarana water splashed and shattered and slid down the walls. The tower of Bawls toppled. Sunlight poured into the room. It seemed even shabbier.

Soon the trash can was overflowing with broken dark blue glass, a miser’s horde of cobalt. They still had not broken all the Bawls. They each grabbed a case and carried it outside to the Dumpster. The summer heat hit them in the face. The sun glared down. The garbage stink was powerful. Nothing stopped their destructive frenzy.

The three booksellers slashed open the cases like hungry predators and hurled the bottles into the Dumpster. When they broke those cases, they went back inside for more, until there was nothing but dust where the Bawls used to be. They smiled as the last bottles broke on the sides of the Dumpster, splintering in bursts of deep blue. The exotic, expensive drink perfumed the putrid air.

They watched it ooze into the soggy trash.

“Who’s got Bawls now?” Gayle said.

Helen cleaned off the sticky splashes of Bawls on her clothes, put on fresh lipstick, and combed her hair. A sliver of blue glass clinked to the floor. She heard her name being paged, “Helen, line one. Helen, line one.”

It was Rich. Sometimes, he called her at the bookstore four or five times a day. “I’m just checking to see how you’re doing,” he said.

“I’m doing the same thing I was doing an hour ago. Trying to keep my job without getting fired. Rich, I know you mean well, but I can’t take personal calls at work.”

“But I’m worried about you,” he pouted. She hung up. When she was younger, she would have found his calls romantic. Now she felt smothered. She was used to being on her own.

I’m a fool, she told herself. He’s a good man. (But maybe not a good man for you.)

While she was at the phone, she called Margery. “What’s the news on Peggy?”

“It’s all bad.” Margery’s voice was flat, drained of emotion. That scared Helen more than her landlady’s words. Margery couldn’t—or wouldn’t—continue.

Finally Helen said, “What is it?”

“First-degree murder. She’s in detention pending trial. There’s no possibility of bail.”

“No!” Helen said. She couldn’t picture the elegant Peggy sharing a jail cell with an open toilet and a tattooed biker chick. She saw that sumptuous bed again, with the pale sheets and pillows. What was Peggy sleeping on now?

“It’s worse. The prosecutor may ask for the death penalty.”

Helen couldn’t say anything then. Finally, she managed, “That’s horrible. Peggy didn’t murder Page Turner.”

“She sure doesn’t deserve to die for it,” Margery said. That wasn’t a vigorous defense of Peggy’s innocence.

“Peggy is no murderer,” Helen said.

(And your ex wouldn’t cheat on you. And you wouldn’t pick up a crowbar and wind up on the run. Not a nice little number cruncher like you.)

“Can I see her?”

“The lawyer said Peggy doesn’t want to see anyone right now. This is a fairly common reaction. Don’t worry. She’ll want to see you in a day or two. Give her time to get used to it.”

“Margery, I’m supposed to go to Rich’s tonight. He’s picking me up after work for a barbecue at his place. Maybe I should cancel.”

“Why? You can’t do anything about Peggy. Go on. Do you need someone to look in on your place?”

That was Margery’s oblique way of asking about Thumbs. She would not say the C-word.

“I left him extra food and put the lid up on the emergency water supply. He’ll be fine.”

Margery was a woman of contradictions. The Coronado had a no-pets policy. Margery would not rent to anyone with an animal. But she turned a blind eye to Pete and Thumbs, maybe because she liked Peggy and Helen. Her landlady also hated drugs. Margery had refused to transport Phil’s pot to the beach motel. But she ignored the perpetual cloud of marijuana smoke around Phil’s door. Typical Florida. If we don’t have to confront a problem, it doesn’t exist.

“Is there anything I can do for Peggy? Does she need food, clothes, a toothbrush? I don’t feel right leaving her alone there.”

“Helen, she’ll have these problems a long time. You didn’t make them. Go out with your boyfriend—unless there’s some other reason you don’t want to be with Rich.”

“No, no,” Helen said.

“Then go. There’s nothing you can do for Peggy.”

Margery hung up the phone, but her words lingered, There’s nothing you can do … But there was. Helen could find out who murdered Page Turner.

Yeah, right. A clerk who stumbled over the cash register keys knew more than the police. But she did. She saw and heard things at the bookstore the police didn’t know. And she knew Peggy. Well, she didn’t know her. But she knew she didn’t kill Page Turner.

“Uh, Helen, can you help me?” She recognized that frantic tone. Denny, her new coworker, had a problem with his tricky register. His line was backing up. “How do you ring up a special coupon?”

Finally, someone knew less than she did. Helen felt good showing him the intricate combination of keys. The line of customers snaked around the store. Once again, everyone in the store had decided to buy a book at the same time.

Denny was so young he didn’t shave. He had a slim body and a face like a Renaissance cherub, complete with silky auburn hair that curled fetchingly on his forehead. He looked like a rock star, before the sex and drugs. He seemed to have no idea he was beautiful. The women customers didn’t seem to mind waiting in his line.

When the crowds finally abated, Helen asked, “Is this your first job at a bookstore?”

“First job ever,” Denny said. “I got hired in a special deal by the guy who got killed, what’s his name?”

“Page Turner.”

“Yeah, Turner was friends with the judge.”

“What judge?”

“My juvie judge. I beat up a teacher at school.” Denny looked about as vicious as a new puppy.

“Anyway, my old man paid the teacher’s medical bills and bought him off with a settlement for pain and suffering, and the judge sentenced me to get a job.”

Only in Florida, Helen thought. She was surprised work wasn’t considered cruel and unusual punishment.

“How long do you have to work here?”

“Six months.” Denny made it sound like a life sentence.

So much for meeting a better class of people in a bookstore. The late and unlamented Page had found a way to stop staff turnover—convict labor. He wouldn’t have to worry about Denny complaining if his check bounced. The kid would clean toilets under court order. At least he wasn’t handcuffed to the cash register.

She wondered how much damage Denny had done to the teacher, and what those medical bills were for. Was Denny dangerous? She hoped not. He was so beautiful, she tried not to stare. And he worked hard. He even volunteered to go on a slush run. Maybe he just wanted to get away from starchy old Albert, who came back from lunch in a snit.

“Who threw away those cases of Bawls?” Albert said. “Do you have any idea what they cost? I would have taken them.”

There was no way to explain their Bawls-busting frenzy. “The family wanted it that way,” Helen lied. That shut Albert up. He still worshiped the Turner family.

A businessman in a dark gray suit and rep tie reverently placed
Jesus CEO
on the counter. Helen wondered if the guy realized this CEO had been crucified by the competition.

Denny came back with a stack of slush books and said, “Red alert. Wild children are tearing up the kids’ department.”

Helen paged Gayle, who said, “I’m tied up in receiving. Will you check it out?”

The Children’s section looked like a small tornado had sucked all the books off the shelves. The little tornado was industriously tearing the pages out of a Harry Potter pop-up book.
Rip.
A Hogwart’s tower vanished. T
ear.
A witch disappeared.
Tug.
A cat came loose. The little girl gave Helen an angelic smile and mashed the book into the rug.

A slightly older boy let out an earsplitting shriek, then leaped over a kiddie chair. His chubby foot caught in the chair back and he fell into a Dr. Seuss display. He burst into startled sobs. Helen helped the boy up and checked him out. Angry tears ran down his cheeks, but he appeared unhurt.

The children’s mother was sitting in the midst of the chaos, reading an Oprah book and ignoring both children. She was heavily pregnant.

“Ma’am,” Helen said, “I’m afraid your little boy might have hurt himself. And your little girl is tearing up a very nice book.”

The mother finally looked up. She said indignantly, “Come along, Gabrielle and Justin. It’s obvious they don’t like children here.”

Not when they destroy the store, Helen thought. She was still picking up the pieces when Gayle appeared, a dark angel in Doc Martens. “Can you believe that?” Helen said. “The mother sat there and let the little bastards rip up the books.”

A mother in flowery Laura Ashley heard Helen and pulled her child closer.

Gayle smothered a smile. “Maybe I’d better have you collect slush in Fiction. I’ll finish here. The murder mysteries need work, too.”

“Speaking of murder, do you remember the night Page Turner died?” Helen asked.

“Do I ever,” Gayle said. “It was a full moon and the customers were nuts.”

“I remember that. I saw him leave, too, although I didn’t know it was for the last time. He was drunk,” Helen said. “Did he have anything with him? Did he drive away in his car or did someone pick him up?”

Was she asking Gayle too many questions? Apparently not. “Let me think.” Gayle closed her eyes, as if she was seeing Page’s final exit in her mind. “He walked out carrying his briefcase, which the cops never found. He left his car here. The police impounded it. They think someone picked him up.”

“Did you see who?”

“No. It was too crazy.”

Great interrogation technique, Helen thought. That got a lot of useful information. At this rate, Peggy will be in jail until she’s ninety. (If she’s lucky, a mean little voice whispered.) Helen tried to hush it by working harder.

Fiction was chaos. Since the staff hours were cut back, no one had time to check the shelves. Jane Austen had been shoved next to James Patterson. Skin magazines were piled on top of Mark Twain. Danielle Steel rubbed shoulders with William Faulkner. Helen straightened the long rows of shelves. She saw Mr. Davies sitting in the book nook by the back window, the favorite reading spot for the store’s oldest inhabitant. He had a pleasant view of a palm garden—and Page’s private parking spot. He might know who picked up Page Turner.

“Mr. Davies, do you remember Page Turner’s last day?”

“Oh, my, yes,” the small, squirrellike man said. His bright eyes gleamed. He was enjoying the attention.

“Very sad when a young man dies. Very sad. I knew his grandfather since the 1960s. He was nothing like his grandson, nothing. A great lover of books, was old Mr. Turner. His grandson saw himself as a great lover.”

The old man chuckled at his joke. Helen tried to steer the conversation back to the topic. “Did you see who Page drove off with?”

“Yes, indeed. I don’t miss much, especially not a pretty girl. Woman, I mean. I’m trying to raise my consciousness and say the right thing. But I’m not so old I don’t notice a pretty female individual. And this one was hard to miss. As I told the police, she had unusual dark red hair and a most imposing nose. It gave her character, you know. She was very attractive.”

Helen’s heart sank as Mr. Davies talked. “Did you see what she was driving?”

“Oh, yes. A little green car with a funny name. Always makes me think of Vietnam. I remember, it was a Kia. KIA meant killed in action in the war.”

Peggy, Helen thought. Peggy drove a green Kia. She picked up Turner the night he died.

“I also told them—” Mr. Davies said, but Helen could not listen to any more of the old man’s chatter. She was heartsick.