enough to cover the vital areas, but she was standing barefoot and pantieless in front of the most gorgeous man in South Florida.
Naturally, he had to be dressed. Daniel was wearing a perfectly tailored navy blue uniform with official- looking red patches on his bulging biceps. Helen thought he looked even better in his uniform than he did in his gym shorts.
“Nice uniform,” she said. A new record. Now she’d said two coherent words to Daniel.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m off to work. See you later.”
Daniel was working on a sunny day, Helen thought, when many single men would be heading for the beach or the bar. But Daniel was different from your average South Florida single man. He had ambition.
She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was only seven-thirty. She didn’t have to go to work yet. She went back to her lumpy bed. It squeaked loudly, but it squeaked for her alone.
Daniel is perfect, she thought. Absolutely perfect.
Too bad he already had the perfect girlfriend. Helen remembered Wonder Woman in the glow-in-the-dark bra and sighed.
I can’t compete with a woman who looks like that, she thought. The perfect man is one flight up, and he might as well be a thousand miles away. No, a thousand miles would be better. Then I wouldn’t know he existed. Daniel is handsome, hardworking, and polite. He’s too good to be real, except he is. I don’t have a chance with that man.
But Helen’s mind would not stay on the divine Daniel. She was filled with a nameless dread. It grew larger and larger and would not go away, not even at work. Nothing bad happened at Juliana’s. In fact, Thursday passed swiftly and pleasantly with her favorite customers, and the cash register rang merrily.
But Helen was afraid, and she did not know why. The fear grew all day, sitting on her spirit like some dark unnamed monster.
By Thursday night, the fear had a name: Christina.
Did Christina really arrange Desiree’s death? Helen had to know. She could not work for a murderer. She would mention Desiree’s death first thing Friday when she came back. She could tell by Christina’s reaction if she was guilty.
If Christina really killed Desiree, then she would quit on the spot and go to the police. Unless quitting would get her killed, too. Maybe she should continue working there until the police arrested Christina.
Which was more dangerous: staying or quitting? Helen didn’t know.
All she knew for sure was Christina would be back tomorrow, and with her would come chaos.
Chapter 16
Helen had dreaded this morning for a whole week. It was the day Christina came back to work.
Then something worse happened: Christina did not show up.
Helen opened the store by herself at nine-thirty. Christina is caught in the Third Avenue Bridge traffic, Helen told herself. She had been held up as much as twenty minutes by that blasted drawbridge. Nothing made Helen feel more like a wage slave than sitting in traffic waiting for some billionaire’s hundred-foot yacht to sail under the lifted bridge.
At ten a.m., Helen decided that Christina had been delayed in an accident on I-95. The highway was notorious for bad driving. Everyone on it was either eighty going twenty or twenty going eighty. She turned on the stockroom radio and listened to the news and traffic. No accidents.
At ten-thirty she realized Christina had overslept. She had turned off the alarm and gone back to sleep. Helen called Christina’s home phone. It rang and rang in that echoey way that happens only in an empty home. Helen called Christina’s cell phone. She got a generic recording: “The subscriber you have called does not answer. Please try your call again. Message DH124.”
At eleven o’clock, she called the store’s Canadian owner, Gilbert Roget. He gave her some sensible advice.
“Are you there alone, Helen? Then stay at the store until six and close up. Go by Christina’s place tonight, and see if she’s sick. If no one answers, call the police and report her missing. And get that girl, what’s her name, Tara, back working at the shop.”
Helen had downplayed the trumped-up robbery to Mr. Roget. He’d shrugged it off. He thought America was a violent place, anyway. No damage was done, nothing was taken. It was no big deal.
Helen hoped Tara would return. Actually, she hoped she wouldn’t need Tara. Suddenly, she wanted Christina back. Helen wanted everything to be the way it was when she first started working at Juliana’s. But she knew that was not possible.
“Mr. Roget, I’ll be glad to check on Christina, but I don’t have a car.”
“Then take a bus,” Gilbert Roget said. “I’ll reimburse you for the fare.”
You’re all heart, Helen thought. Christina lived somewhere in Sunnysea. A bus ride would take most of her evening. But she was too worried about Christina to argue with the penny-pinching store owner.
“Do you know Christina’s address?”
“No, but my secretary does. I’ll have her call you back.”
The secretary said Christina lived at One Ocean Palm Towers in Sunnysea Beach.
“Are you sure?” Helen said, surprised.
“Yes, in 2200P. That’s the penthouse.”
The penthouse? Those started at two million dollars. Any high-priced high-rise in South Florida had to have one of these words in its name: One, Ocean, Palm, or Towers. When the first expensive high-rise was built on Sunnysea Beach, the developers used all four of the magic words. They needed them to combat Sunnysea’s down- at-heels image. The funky little beach town was mostly 1950s motels, T-shirt shops, bars, and offbeat beach houses. One Ocean Palm Towers was the first grand high-rise condo development in Sunnysea. Those who loved the little beach town were afraid it would not be the last.
After she locked up for the day, Helen walked home. She found Peggy and Pete the parrot in their usual after-work spot by the pool.
“I’ll be glad to drive you to Christina’s,” Peggy said. “I’ve wanted to get a closer look at One Ocean Palm Towers, anyway. That’s where Pete and I will move when I win the lottery.”
Helen noticed that Peggy said “when” she won—not “if.” Pete went back to Peggy’s apartment with an indignant squawk. Then Peggy and Helen piled into the little green Kia.
Christina’s place was twenty minutes and several million dollars away from the Coronado. The marble sign announcing One Ocean Palm Towers was bigger than Helen’s apartment. It was surrounded by a forest of palm trees and pricey plants. They drove past a fountain the size of a swimming pool, pushing up a regal plume of water.
“How does the manager of a dress shop live here?” Peggy said.
“Good question,” Helen said. “Christina only makes around eighteen thousand a year.”
“This looks like about a hundred years,” Peggy said.
“One hundred eleven and change,” Helen said. She hadn’t completely lost her number-crunching skills. “Christina also makes a commission, but that wouldn’t cover the monthly maintenance fees on this place.”
“Maybe Christina inherited some money,” Peggy said.
“In that case, why work at Juliana’s at all?”
At the entrance, Peggy started to park the little green Kia between a vintage Jaguar and a silver Mercedes when a doorman came running out. He directed her around the back to the service parking. The Kia wound up next to a plumber’s van.
Even the back parking lot had a stunning view of the ocean. Peggy and Helen watched the wild waves crash
