“Did they . . .” Helen forced herself to say the word. “Did they rape you?”
“No,” Tara said. “They hit me—rammed my head into the wall.”
“Oh, Tara, oh, no, I’m so sorry. I should have never left you here alone. Don’t move. I’ll call the police and get an ambulance.”
“No!” Tara said, gripping her arm. She really seemed afraid now. “They’ll come back and hurt me.”
“That’s why we need the police.”
“Nooooo,” Tara wailed, trying to sit up again. “Please, just call Paulie.”
“Paulie would want me to call the police, too,” Helen said, firmly. “You stay there.” She ran to the phone outside the dressing room, dialed 911, then told the operator what happened.
“Have the intruders left the building? Is anyone else in the store?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said. “I just ran in when I saw the lights on and found Tara and called you. I could look around.”
“Stay right there, ma’am,” the 911 operator said. “Don’t hang up. Keep talking to me. We’ll have someone there in a moment.”
Helen could hear sirens, then the screech of tires. Two patrol cars pulled up in front of the store, and Helen ran up front to let them inside. The two officers looked enough alike to be twins. Both were about six feet tall with short dark hair and open boyish faces, until you saw their eyes. They had hawk’s eyes, alert and watchful. They walked like gunslingers. Helen found that comforting. One had a name tag that said T. Gerritsen. The other one was J. MacWilliams.
The two officers asked Helen to wait outside by the door. “But Tara’s in there,” she said.
“We know that, ma’am. We need to check things first,” Gerritsen said.
The two officers went inside Juliana’s, guns drawn. No one had ever entered the fabled green door that way, although a few women must have thought about it.
While she waited, Helen kept berating herself. She should have stayed with Tara until closing. Instead, she let herself get irritated by Tara’s silliness. What kind of manager was she? She couldn’t even stay another fifteen minutes to make sure Tara left the store safely. If anything happened to her, Helen would have two deaths on her hands—Desiree Easlee and Tara.
She was wringing her guilty hands when Officer Gerritsen reappeared. “The paramedics are on their way. They’ll check her out.”
Helen saw Tara sitting on the loveseat, talking to the other officer, MacWilliams. She wanted to sink down on the carpet and cry with relief.
“Can I see Tara?”
“In a little bit,” Gerritsen said. “We’re talking to her now. Do you have the boyfriend’s phone number?”
“Yes, sure. I should have called him. I’ll do that now.”
“We’ll do that,” the officer said. “We need you to see if anything is missing or damaged. Don’t touch anything. Just see if you can tell.”
Helen walked around the store, stepping carefully to avoid the clothes scattered on the carpet. There weren’t as many as she first thought. Six blouses were pulled off their padded hangers. A few belts were tossed around, along with an Hermes scarf and a Versace evening dress. A chair was overturned, and a box of hangers was spilled on the floor. But nothing was damaged. Even the money was still in the register, about five hundred dollars.
Helen told Officer Gerritsen that nothing was missing up front, not even the cash in the register. “But I’d better check the stockroom, just in case.”
Before she could do that, the paramedics arrived. They gave Tara an ice pack to put on her forehead and urged her to go to the emergency room or see her family doctor. Tara refused. She signed a release form, and the paramedics left.
Helen was shocked by her appearance. The bump on Tara’s forehead had swollen into a purple knot with green highlights. Her snakeskin top was nearly torn in two and she was missing one shoe. But Tara seemed alert and otherwise unhurt.
The police still would not let Helen talk with Tara. She went to the stockroom to finish the requested check. Everything looked undisturbed. The only odd thing was on the security panel. The store’s interior cameras had been turned off. Helen wondered if she or Tara had hit the wrong button and accidentally shut them off.
Helen could hear the police questioning Tara. She was telling her story for what sounded like the second or third time. Helen edged to the door and peeked out at the scene.
“I was getting ready to close,” Tara said. “It was almost six o’clock. That’s when we close. I was here alone because Helen went home early.”
Helen winced.
“Two black men forced their way into the store. They both had guns.”
“What did they look like?” Officer MacWilliams said.
Tara pulled her long hair forward until it hid her face. “One man was tall, sort of husky, muscular. I told you that. One was skinny and short, almost as short as me. I couldn’t see their faces. They were wearing ski masks and gloves.”
In South Florida? Helen wondered. No one on white bread Las Olas noticed two black men dressed like this?
“How did they get in?” MacWilliams asked.
Good question. Tara would have had to buzz them in.
“They knocked on the door and sort of pushed their way in,” Tara said, vaguely. “I’m not really sure. I guess I panicked when I saw the guns. They ran inside and started throwing things around. They kept asking me, ‘Where is it?’ I didn’t know what they were taking about.”
“Did you see them take anything, ma’am?”
“No,” she said.
“What about the money in the cash register? I understand there’s a considerable sum in there.”
“I didn’t get a chance to count it and put it in the safe,” she said. “I think the short one was going to the cash register when the tall one started hitting me. He hit me in the head.”
“I thought you said he pushed your head into the wall,” MacWilliams said.
“He did that, too,” Tara said, pulling her hair forward to hide more of her face. All Helen saw now was a black curtain of hair. “I’m sorry. I’m not making sense. My head hurts.”
“Just a few more questions, ma’am. When the tall man grabbed you, what did you do?”
“I fought with him, of course. That’s how my blouse got torn.”
Helen saw that only Tara’s top was ripped, the one that she thought made her look fat. The pants that fit like a dream were fine.
“Your nails are pretty long. Did you scratch his face? Sometimes we can get the suspect’s DNA from skin under the victim’s nails.”
Tara held out her hands. Her long fragile fake nails were unbroken. Tara must have realized she didn’t look like she’d put up a fight, because she said, “There wasn’t much I could do. He was bigger than me.”
“What time do you think it was when the tall man hit you?” the officer said.
“A little after six,” she said. “That’s a guess. I wasn’t keeping track of the time. He hit me, and I heard someone rattling the door handle, and then both men ran out the back, and I passed out.”
“And you’ve been unconscious for over three and a half hours?”
“Yes,” she said. “I may have awakened once or twice but I didn’t really come to until Helen found me.”
“The blood on your forehead is fresh, ma’am. You’d think after three and a half hours, it would have dried.”
Tara started crying. “You don’t believe me,” she said.
“I didn’t say that, ma’am,” MacWilliams said. “Now, you say that your store’s security system wasn’t on yet, and your security cameras were not working. But the jewelry store near you has a security camera. Maybe it caught the two men as they walked by there.”
The little bit of Tara visible behind the curtain of hair seemed to grow paler.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think they walked by the jewelry store. I think they got out of a cab in front of this store.”
“A cab,” the officer said. “That’s good. Cabs keep records.”
