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
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.
Chapter 32
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.
