Murder Unleashed (14 page)

“I’m starved,” Todd said. “I’m going to the Briny Irish Pub for a bacon cheeseburger.”

That was the bar two doors down. “Is it still open?” Helen said.

“Before a storm?” Todd said. “Are you kidding? It will be packed. People need courage to face the hurricane.”

Todd was gone five minutes when Jeff said, “Have you seen Lulu?”

They searched the store for his dog, but didn’t find her. Lulu’s bed was empty, her toys abandoned, her food bowls untouched.

“She must have followed Todd to the Briny Irish,” Jeff said. “The customers love sharing their bacon slices and seasoned fries with Lulu. My dog, the bar slut. I’d better get her. Will you mind the store for me?”

Helen sold two more bags of dog food while Jeff looked for Lulu. Jan Kurtz was the only person who didn’t come in to buy food. Jan was a cool, elegant widow who lived in a high-rise on the Galt Ocean Mile with her black poodle, Snickers. Jan had a penchant for pink. She always wore pink clothes and accessories. Snickers had a pink leash, bows, and toenails.

Helen didn’t recognize the Jan who stood at her counter, her hair damp and flattened, her clothes crumpled. Jan’s eyes were puffy and her makeup was carelessly applied. She looked bedraggled, and it wasn’t entirely due to the storm.

Jan held up a rain-spotted pink gift bag. “This is for Todd,” she told Helen.

This new Jan moved constantly, like a worried hummingbird. She tapped her fingers on the counter and her heels on the floor. Her car keys jingled. Did the storm have her that rattled?

“Todd’s out right now,” Helen said. “He should be back in half an hour. Do you want to wait for him?”

Jan looked uneasy. “I need to get to my friend’s house in Plantation before the roads flood. I’ve been evacuated, and the traffic is terrible. I just wanted to drop this bag off for Todd.”

“I’ll make sure he gets it,” Helen said.

“You promise?” Jan sounded desperate.

“Absolutely,” Helen said, hoping she looked trustworthy. Jan hesitated. A gust of wind rattled the plywood. She handed Helen the gift bag, then rushed out into the storm.

Todd got gifts all the time, but his ladies didn’t usually act so spooked. And who would bring a gift for their boy toy during a hurricane? Helen had to peek inside that bag. I need to know, she told herself. This could be part of a murder investigation. I’m not stealing anything. The bag was handed to me. If God didn’t want me to see this, She wouldn’t have put it in my hands.

Helen parted the damp pink tissue paper. It hid a big chocolate brownie with gooey icing. What was so vital about that? There had to be something more in that bag. It was too heavy for one brownie. Besides, nobody carried on that way about a brownie, not even if she made it with Alice B. Toklas’s favorite recipe.

Helen lifted the brownie and found another layer of paper. She shoved it aside and saw a roll of hundred-dollar bills nesting inside. Helen quickly counted them. Jan had packed two thousand dollars in cash under the brownie. That was one sweet treat.

Helen heard the warning jangle of the boutique bell, and shoved the brownie back on top of the money just as Jeff entered. He was carrying a wet and sullen Lulu. Todd trailed behind them with a foam go-box.

“Todd, Jan Kurtz left this bag for you,” Helen said.

Todd yanked the bag from her hand so fast he nearly dislocated her fingers. “Oh, she knows how I love brownies,” he said, but he didn’t look inside the bag.

“It looked very rich,” Helen said, and could have kicked herself.

Todd clutched the brownie bag to his chest. He did not stash it on the back-room shelf where the employees kept their belongings. He carried it into the cage room with him.

By two o’clock, a deathly quiet descended on the store. There were no more customers. Most of the major nearby businesses, including the bank, were closed. The drawbridges over the Intracoastal Waterway were closed, too. Police cars with flashing lights guarded the entrances to the beach. More patrol cars moved slowly down the deserted streets, light bars strobing red, tires kicking up great fishtails of water. The city had an eerie war-zone feel.

A lashing wind beat on the boutique’s boarded windows. The plywood creaked and groaned. The flooded parking lot was almost empty. The store lights flickered once, then twice.

“We’d better close,” Jeff said. “The electricity is going out soon. I want you all safely home. I’ll balance the cash register.”

“I’ll take the last grooming dog home,” Todd said. “Call Mrs. Carter and tell her I’m on my way. She can’t get here until four.”

“Is that Brandy, the Saint Bernard?” Jeff said. “Will she fit in your car?”

“Brandy is a good dog,” Todd said. “She’s not a problem.”

Helen wondered if Todd had kissed the Saint Bernard. You didn’t trifle with the affections of a dog as big as Brandy.

Helen was sweeping the grooming room when a woman came rushing into the store. She was about fifty, with the stiffly sprayed hair that announced “standing appointment.” “I need a thirty-pound sack of dog food, and then I’m going to the salon next door for an emergency manicure.”

“A what?” Helen said.

“I broke three nails putting up my hurricane shutters,” she said, waving her hand. “I can’t stand it.”

Helen thought the woman would have plenty of time to do her nails by candlelight when the storm hit.

“Can I help you with that bag?” Helen said.

“No, no, just hold the door,” woman said. “I have to run to my manicure.”

Helen held the door and the woman struggled into the storm. Lulu zipped out after her.

“Lulu!” Helen said. “Get back here.”

But the skittish Lulu ignored her. Helen could see the dog’s little bottom bobbing above the flooded sidewalk before she disappeared around the corner.

“Lulu’s heading for the bar again,” Jeff said, and dashed after her. He was back ten minutes later, wet and worried, curly hair plastered flat on his head. The wind was howling now, a nightmare sound.

“I can’t find Lulu,” Jeff said. “The bar is closed. Someone at the salon saw her running toward U.S. 1. She could get hit by a car. Drivers can’t see her in this rain. What am I going to do?”

“Go after your dog,” Helen said. “I’ll lock up and go home.”

Jeff handed Helen the spare key. “Don’t stay long,” he said. “This store can flood in a bad hurricane. During Andrew, the water was four feet high in here.”

Then he was gone, racing out into the storm, crying, “Lulu! Lulu!”

The wind seemed to be coming from all directions now, swirling and slashing. Helen had to get out of there while she could still walk home. She piled some towels by the door to soak up the water, then did a quick walk-through check of the shop.

She was ready to lock up when she noticed a huge deposit in the Saint Bernard’s cage. Damn. Todd should have cleaned that up. She’d have to pick it up or the place would smell foul, especially if the electricity went off. The unpleasant pile was way in the back of the cage.

The Saint Bernard cage was the size of a child’s playpen. In fact, Jeff told her the previous owner of the grooming shop used to lock his kids in there on hectic Saturdays. Helen didn’t know if he was joking or not. It had a padlock that was occasionally used for dogs good at jailbreaks.

She crawled into the cage with a roll of paper towels and a plastic bag, cussing the incontinent Saint Bernard. The lights flickered for the third time. Helen had to get out of here. If the wind got any fiercer, she wouldn’t be able to walk home to the Coronado.

Something heavy hit the boarded windows. A coconut? A flowerpot? A lawn chair? Common objects turned into deadly missiles during a hurricane.

The wind was shrieking like a tortured soul. The building rocked and swayed. Each blast set loose frightening thumps and flapping bangs. Now there was a sound like ghostly footfalls. Helen shivered. She didn’t like being alone in here.

Well, then, she told herself briskly, get it over with and get out. Helen crawled the length of the cage, glancing down at the newspapers lining the bottom. That was a mistake. SINGLE WOMAN MURDERED IN LAUDERDALE CONDO, screamed one headline. UTAH SERIAL KILLER BELIEVED IN SOUTH FLORIDA, said another.

Helen moved faster. She’d crawled all the way to the back of the cage when the lights went out.

“Shit!” she said, and put her hand into the warm dog pile.

“Double shit!” she said.

That’s when she heard the cage door slam shut. “Hey! Who’s there?” Helen said. She was too angry to be afraid.

No one answered. Above the howling, she heard a metallic snap. The cage lock. Helen saw a figure moving in the blackness toward the door. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. She didn’t know if it was short or tall. It was hunched over, shrouded in a rustling rain slicker.

“Help! Don’t leave me in here. I’ll drown,” Helen said.

The only answer was the slam of a door.

H
elen sneezed. Her nose itched from the dog hair. She rattled the door again, but she knew it was useless. She was locked inside the dog cage, stuck in an ungainly crouch. The cage wasn’t big enough for her to sit down or stand up. Wasn’t that a form of torture? It certainly was for her.

The smell in the cage was atrocious. What did that damned Saint Bernard live on—beer and pickled cabbage? Helen had wiped her dirty hand on a paper towel and pushed the foul towel through the wire. She couldn’t get the massive left-behind lump in the cage through the wires, so she buried it in more paper towels and stuck it in the plastic bag. The cage still stank.

Helen felt something wet on her feet. Oh, no. The Saint Bernard didn’t leave a puddle, too, did she?

Helen dipped a finger and sniffed cautiously. It was water. She tasted it. It was slightly muddy, a little salty. This was bad news, far worse than any piddling Saint Bernard. The rainwater in the parking lot was over the curb and coming into the shop. The flooding had started.

What had Jeff said? During Hurricane Andrew the water in the store was four feet high. She’d drown, trapped in this cage. That was way over her head. Helen couldn’t imagine a more humiliating way to die. She’d be found floating in a locked cage with the biggest pile of dog doo in Fort Lauderdale. She could hear the shocked whispers at her funeral as her friends stood over a cut-rate casket: “Poor Helen. We didn’t realize she drank until it was too late.”

Would it be worse if an autopsy found no evidence of alcohol? What if her friends thought Helen had died of acute stupidity? “We don’t know how it happened, but she managed to lock herself in a cage, and when the water came up, well . . . Helen always was a little klutzy.”

Who did this to her and why?

Helen must have discovered something that threatened someone—but what? Did Todd see her poking in his pink gift bag with the green lining? Did Jonathon hear her say something to the police? In that case, why didn’t they just kill her? The person in the slippery slicker could have easily surprised her and bashed her head in. Why leave her locked in this cage, waiting for a slow death? Who hated her that much?

Helen was angry at herself and whoever snapped that lock. She was not going to die. She would find a way out, and from the sound of the storm, she’d better do it soon. The wind grew wilder, beating on the boarded-up windows. Strange missiles thudded against the plywood. The building creaked and sighed.

She rattled the cage door until her teeth vibrated, hoping to shake the lock loose.

Nothing.

She grabbed the wire door with both hands and pulled until the tendons stood out on her muscular arms, trying to yank the door off its hinges. It held. It was made to withstand two-hundred-pound dogs. The burly Saint Bernard weighed more than Helen did.

What time was it? It was absolutely dark in the boarded store. There was no light from the street, no winking security lights or glowing clocks. Helen couldn’t read her watch, but she guessed it was about five o’clock. The storm was supposed to hit at eight. She wondered if the store would survive the hurricane. She wondered if she would survive.

Thwap!
Something landed on the roof. Helen jumped and the dirty water sloshed around her ankles. The plastic bag of dog doo bobbed on the water. Helen’s feet and the seat of her pants were wet. She tried to sit on the roll of paper towels, but it quickly absorbed the water. The grooming room was warm and steamy, but she still shivered in the muddy water swirling in the cage.

Helen poked three fingers through the cage wire and found the padlock, rough and slightly rusty. She could feel a keyhole, a fairly large one. Now she needed something to open the padlock. She had nothing useful in her hair or on her clothes. Why didn’t she wear a pin or a hair clip? Why didn’t she carry a nail file or a Swiss army knife? Her shoes were slip-ons. Her watch was cheap plastic. Helen didn’t even have a metal belt buckle.

Her stomach growled. She was hungry. Thirsty, too. Her mouth was dry with fear. She was in water past her ankles, but it wasn’t fit to drink. Helen wanted to paw the cage like the yappy dogs in the grooming room. If she ever got out of here, she’d never ignore their unhappy howls again. She knew exactly how they felt.

She forced herself to make a slow, careful search of the cage, inch by wire inch. It was damp, blistered with rust, and frustratingly secure. Until she reached the far left corner, near the very top. A wire stuck her thumb so hard she bled. Helen was never so happy to feel pain. Yes! She’d found an inch-long length of loose wire. She began working the small piece off the cage. Her battered fingers were slippery with her own blood. She slowly lifted and twisted the wire, teasing another inch away from the cage. The rest was too tightly attached.

Helen kept prying and pulling. She was at an awkward angle. Her knees cracked and cried for mercy. Her hips and back ached. The wire slid and sliced her finger. She kept twisting. She broke a nail down to the quick. That stung, but Helen didn’t care. The wire was loosening. She could feel it. One more good pull and a twist, and it would be free. Then she could start working the lock.