“Peggy was frightened. She could be charged with manslaughter at the very least, based on her coking with the soon-to-be-dead man. Page told her that she’d let Collie die. He didn’t mention his own role. He didn’t say how Peggy got home and Collie got to that hotel. Peggy couldn’t contradict him. She had only the haziest recollection of that night. Page’s threat shut her up permanently.”
“Poor Peggy. She must have been shattered.” Helen knew how you could go off the rails when you loved the wrong man. She and Peggy were sisters in experience.
“She never saw that bastard Page Turner again,” Margery said, “or any other man. That’s a waste of a fine woman. The only good thing was, she went into rehab and got herself off the nose candy.”
The long speech made Margery thirsty. She took a deep drink of her screwdriver and lit a cigarette.
Peggy had often told Helen that she was through with men for good. Now Helen knew why. No wonder Pete was the only male she trusted.
“Her life was nice and quiet. Then, all of a sudden, Page threatened to give that video to the press. Peggy was afraid she’d wind up in prison. Murder has no statute of limitations.”
“But that’s crazy. Why would Page do that after keeping quiet for more than two years?”
“Does he need a reason? The man was drunk, mean, and hated women. He’s so rich he can do what he wants. I don’t know why. But I know she was desperate.”
“Did the police find the tape?”
“No. Not yet. But they found five others he made of her.
And they know one video is missing. My source says Page put the women’s first names on the videos and then numbered them—Peggy one, Peggy two.”
“Quite the little librarian,” Helen said.
“Page had six of Peggy, and the third one is missing. I hope to God the cops never find it. They’ve got enough on her.
“I love Peggy. I’ll do my best to defend her. But I think she did it.” This judgment was delivered in a hellish haze of cigarette smoke. Helen refused to accept it.
“Lots of people hated Page Turner,” she said. “They had equally good reasons to kill him.”
“Name two,” Margery said.
“There’s Albert, the day manager at Page Turners. He’s worked there for thirty years. Now the store is probably going to close. Albert will be out of a job with no severance, no health insurance, and no way to support his old mother.”
“And killing Page would stop the store from closing?”
“No. But it was a lousy thing to do to Albert,” Helen said.
“Hell, it was a lousy thing to do to you. And you didn’t kill Page Turner.”
“No, but I thought about it. Gayle, the night manager, hated the way Page treated women.”
“That’s why she killed him? To save a bunch of women she didn’t know?” Margery snorted more smoke. Even Helen thought her reason sounded stupid.
“Probably not. Gayle did warn off a woman so she wouldn’t star in another one of Page’s videos.”
“Then she could warn the others.”
“How about his wife, Astrid? She called Page a son of a bitch on the phone.”
“If every wife who did that killed her husband, there wouldn’t be a man left in Florida.”
“Madame Muffy, the preppy psychic, could have done it.
I heard her arguing with Page the day he died.”
Margery snorted like a mad bull. “Muffy said on TV she was warning him about his terrible fate.”
“I know. But there’s something weird about her.”
“Of course she’s weird. How many psychics wear deck shoes?” Margery took a last swig of her screwdriver.
“It could be someone or something we don’t know anything about,” Helen said. “What if Page Turner was blackmailing the senator?”
“And the senator, who is surrounded by security night and day, slipped out and killed him?”
“He could have had someone do it for him.”
“Right. One of the senator’s preppy aides offed Page.
Come on. That’s a bit much even for Florida.” Margery blew a fantastic plume of smoke.
“How about the other women in those sex videos? The police took away boxes of tapes.”
“Some of those tapes are old. They even predate Peggy.
Why would those women kill him now?”
“For the same reason the police think Peggy wanted him dead.”
“Maybe, but none of them went running to the bookstore in her nightgown, threatening to kill him.”
“I know she’s innocent.” Helen wondered if she was trying to convince herself. “She’s innocent,” she repeated, this time with conviction. “I’m going to prove it.”
“I hope so,” Margery said as she stubbed out her cigarette. “Because I’m tired of that damned bird throwing seed all over my kitchen.”
Chapter 10
Page Turner was buried the next day in Palm Beach. No one bothered to tell the bookstore staff. Helen saw the story in the morning paper. We don’t exist for the Turner family, she thought. We’re another store fixture, like the cash registers.
“Why aren’t we closing for the funeral?” Helen asked Gayle. The night manager was running the store now.
“Astrid said he would have wanted it that way.” His widow was probably right. Page never missed a chance to make a buck. His whole family loved those ringing registers. They didn’t even hang a mourning wreath on the bookstore door, in case it discouraged sales.
“I gather we aren’t invited to the funeral,” Helen said.
“It’s private. Family members only,” Gayle said.
“We need closure,” Brad said. “We should hold our own wake for Page Turner.”
“We’re dressed for one,” Gayle said. All three booksellers were in black, although Helen didn’t think Gayle’s Doc Martens were standard mourning attire.
Albert and the new guy, Denny, were working the registers up front. Gayle, Brad, and Helen were in the dingy break room. They didn’t start work for another twenty minutes. Page Turner may have had a luxurious office, but he stuffed his staff into a grimy closet. The break room smelled of microwaved pizza and old Taco Bell takeout. It was furnished with broken chairs and a folding table covered with crumbs, napkins, plastic forks, and old magazines.
The rest of the space was taken up by cases of Bawls.
The distinctive cobalt bottles were piled to the ceiling, shutting out the light from the single window.
Gayle broke open a case of Bawls and gave Brad and Helen each a blue bottle, and took one for herself. She found an opener in the mess on the table and popped the caps. Then she said the first words in memory of their dead boss:
“Page Turner was a cheap bastard.”
“Amen,” Helen and Brad said.
The three employees clinked their bottles together in a toast. Helen took a sip. Bawls was clear and slightly fizzy, with a strange, subtle flavor. At first it tasted like nothing at all. Then she detected a distinctive, almost citrusy tang that was like nothing else. She guessed that was the much--touted guarana, an exotic Brazilian berry. Delicious—and it had a caffeine zing. Too bad it was almost two bucks a bottle. She couldn’t afford to drink it.
“He never gave a damn about us,” Brad said. “When I broke my foot, he wouldn’t let me sit down. I still had to stand at the cash register. My foot never did heal right. He was heartless.”
“Hear, hear.” They clinked their blue bottles and drank again.
