Shop Till You Drop (33 page)

“It’s their job to get the evidence,” Margery said. “You should tell them.”

“I tried that once,” Helen said. “Dwight Hansel acted like we were a bunch of bimbos. He thinks only men are smart enough to murder.”

“You can’t pretend nothing happened,” Margery said.

“I’m going to search those CD towers again. Then I’ll try to prove that cat was Christina’s. I found a way. At least, I thought I did. I had this magazine story about how some police are using cat DNA to solve crimes. But now it’s burned up with everything else.”

“I don’t think so,” Margery said. “You had a magazine clutched in your hand when you were carried out. In fact, it was the only thing you saved.”

“Terrific. I left my purse and good clothes in the fire and saved a magazine.”

“Your clothes are fine. They smell like smoke, that’s all. The insurance company told me where to send them for cleaning. We’ll buy you some things in the meantime. Insurance will cover it. The firefighters found your purse. It’s OK. But your teddy bear was totaled.”

“Poor Chocolate,” Helen said. “Well, at least I got his stuffing. That’s where I kept my money. I still feel terrible about what happened to the Coronado.”

“Relax,” Margery said. “I’ve got insurance up the yingyang. I might even get new air conditioners and a paint job. And you’ll have all new furniture in your apartment.”

“But I loved the old,” Helen said.

“Then you shall have it. I’ve got a storage room full of that stuff.”

“A new bed might be nice, though,” Helen said.

“I think we can swing that.”

“I’m going to have to find a place to stay while my apartment is being fixed.”

“You can have 2C. That fraud Daniel is gone. I told him to pack up and get out.”

“Didn’t you have to give him thirty days’ notice?”

“Not if he was cheating old ladies. Took off like he was on fire.”

Helen winced at Margery’s choice of words. She looked down at her soot-streaked shirt and shorts. “What am I going to wear to work tomorrow? I mean today.”

“Today’s Sunday,” Margery said. “You don’t have to worry about going to work. It’s five in the morning. If the hospital ever lets us out of here, you’re going straight to bed.”

One hour later, Dr. Curlee said Helen could go home. Margery began issuing orders. Someone brought Helen’s belongings in a plastic hospital bag: her tennis shoes, which looked like two charcoal briquets, and a singed copy of
Best Friends
magazine.

Helen was exhausted. Margery seemed to be gaining energy. She rounded up the papers to sign, then tracked down the nurse with the obligatory wheelchair and loaded Helen into her car.

Helen was so tired she stumbled up the steps to Daniel’s old apartment, 2C. She tried to help Margery put fresh sheets on the bed, but her landlady said Helen was in the way and shooed her into the shower. Margery left out fresh towels and a T-shirt for a nightgown. Even after Helen washed her hair twice, it still smelled of smoke.

“You look better,” Margery said, when Helen came out of the bathroom. “Well, cleaner, anyway. There’s coffee in the cupboard. Open the miniblinds when you get up, and I’ll bring you breakfast.”

Helen thanked her landlady and crawled beneath the sheets. Just before she fell asleep, Helen realized that she was in Daniel’s bed at long last.

 

She woke up at noon. Everything smelled like a dead fire and tasted like smoke. Her throat was dry and scratchy, and she had a nasty cough. Helen opened up the blinds, and Margery came over with orange juice, a bagel, and a purple shorts set.

“I think these are your size,” she said, “but you’re stuck with the blackened tennis shoes until we hit the mall. Do you want to see your apartment?”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” Helen said.

Her purse smelled like a smoked ham. Her money was usable, but Margery wouldn’t let Helen spend her own cash. “Let insurance pay for it. I’ve been making premiums on this place since before you were born.”

Margery bought Helen two suits, two blouses, underwear, shorts, T-shirts, and shoes at the Sawgrass Mills Mall. They had lunch, although the chicken salad had a slightly smoky flavor to Helen. But she finally felt fortified to face the damages at the Coronado.

The sickly smoke smell hit Helen at the door. The living room and kitchen weren’t bad. They reeked of smoke and were covered with greasy black grime, but they were recognizable. Helen could even use the cosmetics she found in the bathroom, although she drew the line at barbecue-mint toothpaste. The broken jalousie door was boarded up. That made the room darker and hid some of the damage.

But the bedroom frightened her. The bed was a blackened mass, burned to the bedsprings. She felt queasy just looking at it. She could have been part of that unrecognizable charred horror.

The fire marshal thought so, too.

“The way you had the pillows and covers arranged, the arsonist must have thought someone was in the bed. You’re lucky they didn’t see you sleeping on the Barcalounger.”

“There’s no doubt this was arson?” Helen asked.

“None,” the fire marshal said. “We found the burn patterns, and we found potato chips.”

Potato chips? Helen thought she’d heard wrong. But the fire marshal told her that some professional arsonists used potato chips as the perfect fire starter. Chips were oily, highly flammable, and consumed by the flames.

A trail of chips would lead to the main fire starter. “The individual slid open your patio doors and splashed barbecue starter all over your carpet to the bed. Then the individual lit the chips and had time to get out before the fire really took off. Except this arsonist didn’t quite get it right. We found some chips left behind unburned in the damp grass.”

This was no pro, the investigators decided. Still, there had been enough fire to kill Helen. If she had not fallen asleep in the living room, Helen would have roasted in her own bed. Its blackened, burned-out skeleton taunted her.

Helen felt rage, hot as the flames of the night before. Brittney set that fire. She was not getting away with this.

Helen could hear the phone ringing as she struggled to unlock the green door at Juliana’s. It was an angry, impatient ring.

“The boss is calling, and he’s not happy,” Helen said, sprinting for the phone. “I can tell by the ring.” She was back at work but still recovering from the fire the day before. She ran a little slower than usual.

“You’re silly,” Tara said. “Phones sound the same.”

But they didn’t. Helen knew this call sounded angry, and Mr. Roget usually called from Canada when the store opened.

“You’ve sold up a storm. Why would Old Tightwad be angry?”

Helen caught the phone on the fourth ring and prayed Mr. Roget had not heard Tara call him Old Tightwad.

Mr. Roget didn’t bother to say good morning. “Helen, I want to talk to you about that champagne showing,” he said.

How could he be angry about that? Helen thought. I did a month’s worth of business in three hours.

“I see you bought three bottles of champagne for forty dollars each,” Mr. Roget said.

“Yes, sir. Piper-Heidsieck Extra Dry.”

“You realize that comes to one-hundred-twenty dollars. U.S. dollars, not Canadian. Who authorized you to spend that?” he said.

“No one, sir. But look how much I sold.”

“You are supposed to sell. That’s your job. It is not your job to waste good money on overpriced swill. I’m docking your pay at the rate of one dollar an hour until you pay for the champagne.” He hung up without saying good-bye.

Helen slammed down the phone. She’d made Old Tightwad thousands of dollars, and he’d demoted her to six seventy an hour.

“What did he do?” Tara said.

“Docked me a dollar an hour to pay for the champagne.”

“That’s heinous,” Tara said. For once, Juliana’s favorite word fit the circumstances.

“It is heinous,” Helen agreed. “It will take me three weeks to pay off that champagne. But you know what? He’s never going to get that money from me, because I’ll be at my new job. That was the last straw. I will find a job, no matter what.”

“When you go, I go,” Tara said. “I won’t work for him a minute longer.”

After Mr. Roget’s reprimand, Helen did not care about selling clothes, but the customers bought anyway. She had to work hard not to take out her anger on them. In the slow times, she typed out a new résumé. She printed it on the office equipment, using store paper and envelopes. Take that, Mr. Roget.

Helen was angry. Angry at her cheap boss, who would not spend money to make money. Angry at Brittney, who was getting away with murder. Angry at herself, for not finding the evidence to nail Brittney.

When Tara went to lunch, Helen stood in the stockroom and stared at the two towers. Somewhere in those CDs was the evidence against Brittney. Where was that stupid Don Ho album? Helen would have to go through every album in both towers—all two hundred forty. She put out the “back in fifteen minutes” sign to make sure she wasn’t disturbed. If Mr. Roget lost business, too bad. Then she pulled on her twelve-button search gloves. The endless stacks of CDs seemed to taunt her. Nothing in her life was working out right. Nothing.

Helen was so frustrated, she took the closest tower and shook it. She heard an odd rattle near the base. It sounded different from the shaken CDs. Helen got on the floor and examined the base. A small drawer slid out of the bottom of the tower. Inside was a cassette tape, a ninety-minute Memorex with a label in Christina’s bold, black handwriting: “Wedding Song.”

The tape Niki wanted for sentimental reasons.

Helen wondered what kind of music Niki wanted for her wedding. Would she pick something as cloying as her perfume, like the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun”? Or did a woman who’d been naked in
Playboy
want to walk down the aisle to Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”?

Helen couldn’t resist. She popped the tape into the store’s sound system and got a blast of static. After adjusting the dials, Helen waited for the music. Instead, she heard a doorbell, then a clicking noise, like high heels on a hard surface, possibly marble or tile.

Helen moved out into the store by the speakers, so she could hear the tape better. There was the sound of a door opening, then Christina’s unmistakable voice. It was eerie hearing the dead woman speak. Christina said, “Niki, how are you?”

Niki?

There was a rustle of expensive fabrics. Helen could imagine the air kisses and practically smell Niki’s perfume. Niki clicked her way inside and said, “Is that your kitty? He’s so cute.” They must be in Christina’s penthouse.

Niki cooed over Thumbs. Christina got her a glass of Evian. They sat down on something soft and got down to business. At times, the recording sounded like it was made from the bottom of a well, but Helen could figure out what was going on.

“Did you bring it?” Christina asked.

“Fifteen hundred today, the other half later,” Niki said. “Three thousand total. I still say that’s expensive.”

“I can get you somebody for five hundred,” Christina said. “The kind who brags in bars to his friends, then rolls over the first time the cops put on any pressure. Buy the best and only cry once.”

“That’s why I put it in a Neiman Marcus bag, since I’m buying the best.” Niki giggled. “You want to count it?” Helen could hear paper money being snapped and shuffled.

“When’s the wedding?” Christina asked.

“He marries that bitch a week from Saturday.”

“You’re sure?” Christina said.

“I checked with his best man. Jason has always liked me. He can’t understand what got into Jimmy.”

“He’s thinking with his little head,” Christina said. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix it. It will look like a carjacking.”

“You know what’s really funny?” Niki said. “Jimmy is paying for this. I sold some jewelry he gave me to get this money. He won’t miss it. Three thou is petty cash for Jimmy. He’ll never know that he paid to get Desiree out of his life.”

Niki’s girlish giggle made the hair stand up on the back of Helen’s neck.

“You know you’ll be the first suspect when she goes. Do you have a solid alibi?” Christina said.

“I’ll be visiting my mother in Greece until after their wedding.”

“The wedding that won’t happen,” Christina said.

“Right. Once Desiree is dead, I’ll fly home to comfort my poor Jimmy.”

“And then you’ll be the bride.”

“But we won’t be going to Belize for our wedding,” Niki said.

They laughed. It was not a pretty sound.

The tape ended with a snakelike hiss. Helen wondered why Christina made this tape. She could never go to the police with it. She’d go to prison along with Niki. Maybe the tape was insurance, so Niki paid the rest of the fee.

Unless Christina wasn’t threatening Niki with the police. The thought hit Helen like a punch in the face. Suppose Niki’s new husband found out his wife had arranged the murder of Desiree—and he’d been fool enough to finance it?