together.
“I need to use Margery’s phone,” Helen said. “I’m working at Page Turner’s bookstore tonight. I have to call the manager and tell her I’ll be late.” She also wanted to tell the booksellers their boss was dead in Peggy’s bed.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the detective said. “We’ll notify the bookstore that you won’t be in to work.”
“I’m going to miss a whole night?” Should she sound more distraught over Page’s death? She couldn’t. Damn that man. She would not be paid for this lost time. Page Turner cost her another forty-six dollars and ninety cents.
The cops meant business. Uniformed officers were posted at the Coronado entrances.
Helen went to her apartment and paced. Thumbs paced with her. The sirens hurt his ears and the unexpected activity unsettled him. Helen was equally jumpy. Police made her nervous. What if they found out she was on the run?
They’d ship her back to St. Louis. She tried to imagine life without the Coronado. She needed the sunset wine sessions with Peggy by the flower-draped pool. The jibes of her purple-clad landlady. The taffeta rustle of palm trees and the perpetual burning-leaf smell of Phil’s weed.
Oh, my Lord, she thought. Phil! He must have slipped back in during the excitement. If he was in a marijuana daze, he’d be busted for sure. She had to warn him. She’d never seen him, but he’d saved her life once. She owed him. She opened her door and saw the uniformed police officer at his post. She was about to make a warning racket when she sniffed the air. It reeked of patchouli oil, the scent of the sixties. Phil must have set fire to a barrel of the stuff.
He was safe.
For the rest of the evening, Helen stood at the window and stared out between the slits of her mini-blinds. She watched the crime-scene unit arrive, two women. Then the Broward County medical examiner, a man. The police brass were next, all men, all self-important.
It was seven o’clock when the two homicide detectives, Tom Levinson and Clarence Jax, knocked on her door. Jax was short and burly, with abrupt, aggressive movements.
He had red hair and freckles and, she suspected, the temper to go with them. Levinson was taller and slimmer, with a rugged face and dark hair. He had quick, light movements, and Helen wondered if he’d had martial-arts training. Even in their boxy suits, Helen could see the muscles bulging on their thighs, arms, and shoulders. Too bad they were cops.
Jax sat down on her turquoise couch with the black triangle pattern. Levinson was walking around, examining the 1950s furniture—the lamps like nuclear reactors, the boomerang coffee table. “Neat stuff you’ve got here,” he said, but he wasn’t admiring her secondhand furniture. That cop had eyes like a laser. What was he looking for? Drugs?
Contraband? Evidence she’d killed Page Turner? Could he see the suitcase stuffed with seven thousand dollars stashed back in her closet?
She offered the men coffee or soda. Both said no. Jax wanted to get down to business. “Your name?”
“Helen Hawthorne,” she said. The first words out of my mouth are a lie, she thought.
“How long have you lived at the Coronado?”
“About eight months,” she said, glad she could tell the truth that time.
“And before that?”
I was crisscrossing the country, hoping to lose my pursuers. Before that, I was in St. Louis, living in a fool’s paradise with an unfaithful husband.
“I was in the Midwest, like most Floridians. Nobody’s from here.” Helen tried to smile. Her lips were dry and awkward.
“Where in the Midwest?” Jax’s question sounded casual, but she was sure it wasn’t. His partner, Levinson, was still laser-searching her apartment, picking up knickknacks, examining flower vases. She wished she could hold Thumbs, but her cat had abandoned her. He was hiding under the bed. She wanted to join him.
Where indeed? She couldn’t say St. Louis. Jax would find out about her past for sure. She knew Chicago well, but didn’t have a Chicago accent. Helen picked a city she figured no one knew anything about.
“Cincinnati.”
“Nice city on the river. Sort of like St. Louis, where I went to college, except Cincinnati makes better use of its river views. Where’d you live in Cincy?”
“Near the baseball stadium,” she said. The only thing she knew about Cincinnati was that it had a stadium like St.
Louis. Just her luck Jax knew St. Louis. Helen was sweating now. She could feel sweat popping out on her forehead, running down her arms. She looked Jax in the eye and wondered if all liars did that. A fat drop of sweat plopped into her lap.
She was relieved when he switched to questions about Page and the termite tenting. Yes, she and Margery had accompanied Trevor on the final walk-through. She saw nothing suspicious in Peggy’s apartment. Certainly no bodies.
Yes, she knew Page Turner. She worked at his bookstore.
What kind of person was he?
A rat, she thought. A cheat, a liar, a seducer. A rich man who stiffed his poor help.
“He wasn’t real popular with the staff,” Helen said. She figured Jax would find that out fast enough. “He closed two stores and let the booksellers go without any severance. He bounced our paychecks.” Well, not mine, she thought. I was paid in cash. But she couldn’t mention that, either.
“Was anyone mad enough to kill him?”
We all were, Helen thought. “What good would that do?” she said. “The stores would still be closed.”
Did Page have any friends or visitors his last day at the store? What time did he leave? Did he seem concerned, worried, angry, or upset?
“I think he was drunk,” Helen said.
Jax hit her with a hailstorm of questions, but she could answer them honestly. She began to relax. Did Page Turner drive away or did someone pick him up that last Friday?
Did he have many visitors at the store? Who? Men? Women? Both? Did his guests stay after hours? What kind of cars did they drive? Did Helen know their names or what they did?
“One of his regular visitors was Burt Plank,” she said.
She did not mention the sex videos they supposedly watched.
Who would benefit if Page died?
No one, Helen thought, except maybe his wife. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything about his private life.” But I’ve heard a lot of ugly rumors.
Jax’s other questions were about Peggy, and how and why Page was in her apartment. Helen said she was a friend of Peggy’s. They sat out by the pool after work and talked.
No, Peggy was not dating Mr. Turner. Helen didn’t think she even knew him. Peggy had never mentioned his name.
To her knowledge, Peggy was not dating anyone. She’d never seen a man at Peggy’s apartment, or a woman, for that matter. Peggy lived alone, except for her parrot, Pete.
She had a job. She was an office manager for some place in Cypress Creek, but she never discussed it. She talked mainly about her plans to win the lottery.
Funny, lively Peggy sounded so sad when Helen described her life. Peggy wasn’t a sad person, was she? Helen asked herself that question. Jax continued to bombard her with others:
“Where was Peggy Friday night?”
“At the beach barbecue with everyone else,” Helen said.
“She brought a salad.”
“When did she leave?”
Helen had no idea. She didn’t see Peggy all weekend.
She didn’t see anyone but Rich.
Helen signed a statement saying all her lies were true and the detectives left. She still couldn’t go anywhere. They were interviewing other Coronado residents.
