“I thought I could reason with Page. I thought I could talk him into giving me the video, fool that I was. When I called him about noon that day, he seemed reasonable. He said he’d bring it in his briefcase. By the time I picked him up at the bookstore, Page was mean drunk. He was drinking something in a blue bottle.”
“Absolut Bawls,” Helen said. “A caffeine energy drink he dosed with vodka.”
“Made him almost as crazy as coke,” Peggy said. “I should have left him at the store. I knew it was useless the moment he got in my car. When he was like that he’d say no just to be contrary.”
“Where did you go when you picked him up?”
“I started driving down Las Olas, toward the beach. We used to walk along the ocean when we first met. I hoped it would help him remember our old romance and he’d give me the video. We never got to the beach. We’d driven a few blocks when he asked what I wanted. He didn’t even remember our conversation of a few hours ago. I told him that he’d promised me the video and he laughed at me. He said the video was his insurance.”
“What could you do to him if he used it?”
“Nothing,” Peggy said.
“So what happened? Why did you take him back to the store?”
“He got a call on his cell phone. He listened and then said, ‘Give me ten minutes.’ He demanded that I take him back to the store. By then, I knew my idea was hopeless. I was afraid to be in the car with him anymore. I was so mad, I thought I might kill him. I dropped him off at his car.
That’s the last I saw of him. I swear it is. He was alive when I left him in that parking lot.
“No one believes me. The police think I did it. Margery got me a good lawyer, but she thinks I’m guilty, too.”
“I believe you,” Helen said. “I want to help.”
“What can you do?” Peggy said, and the question laid bare their hopeless situation. Peggy, the receptionist. Helen, the bookstore clerk. Two women with no money and no power, sitting in a jail.
“I think whoever killed Page had some connection with the bookstore, either a customer or an employee,” Helen said. “I work there. I see things the police don’t. There’s one question I think needs to be answered: Why did Page suddenly start tormenting you with that video now? He’d had it a couple of years.”
“I don’t know,” Peggy said. But her eyes shifted and she licked her dry lips. She was lying.
“You’re on trial for your life. The prosecuting attorney is asking for a lethal injection, and Florida doesn’t mind killing women. Why now, Peggy? This question could save your life.”
“I don’t know.” But Peggy’s eyes would not meet Helen’s.
She did know. And she’d rather die than tell me, Helen thought. Why? Was she afraid of someone? Or still hoping for help from someone?
“Please tell me,” Helen pleaded. She was clutching the phone like a lifeline.
Peggy hung up.
Chapter 12
Helen awoke in Rich’s arms, naked and gasping. Unfortunately, she was not breathless from passion.
“What is that disgusting odor?” she said.
“Beans has a medical condition,” Rich said with as much dignity as a naked man could muster.
“Does he have to sleep on your bed? Couldn’t you put him in another room?”
“Beans is part of the family,” Rich said, sounding hurt.
“And he loves you.”
It was true. The foul-smelling basset followed her everywhere. Sissy, the Persian princess, wanted nothing to do with Helen. She glared at her now from a drink-ringed dresser. The long-haired gray cat had ignored her all night, except when she’d stolen Helen’s steak off her plate and dragged it across the carpet. Rich thought that was funny.
Helen ate hamburger while Sissy had steak.
The animals were here before I was, Helen thought.
(And they’ll be here when I’m gone.)
Her first visit to Rich’s was not a success. Last night, in the moon glow, she could see things were a little dusty.
When she’d asked Rich why his black socks were hanging on the bedroom lamp shade, he’d said, “My dryer is broken.” It seemed funny then.
Today, in the harsh morning light, the bachelor squalor was depressing. Well, she wouldn’t be moving in with him anytime soon. Helen yawned and stretched. The gray sheets felt oddly soft. Why did Rich have flannel sheets in Florida? Helen saw her hands were covered with long gray hair. The sheets, under the layers of cat hair, were actually white.
Rich saw her hairy hands. “Oops,” he said. “That’s where Sissy likes to sleep.”
“When was the last time you changed these sheets?” Helen said.
Rich thought for a moment. “Let’s see. I broke up with Sheila in March.”
“It’s June,” Helen said, sitting up and throwing off the suspect sheets. “You didn’t change your sheets for more than three months?”
“I don’t think of that stuff.”
“But your clinic is so clean.”
“Gloria handles that. She’s a terrific office manager.
Sheila did the house stuff.” He smiled winsomely. “I was sort of hoping, now that we’re getting serious, you could take over.”
“Do I look like a housekeeper?”
Helen looked like an angry naked woman. Time to fix that. She started hunting for her clothes. She wasn’t about to shower at Rich’s. She’d seen cleaner bus station bathrooms. She found her bra under the bed in at least three months of dust. She shook it out and snapped it on.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” Rich said. “I thought when a woman cared about a man, she naturally wanted to care for his house. It’s like an instinct.”
“Wrong,” Helen said. “There’s no connection between hormones and housekeeping.”
She couldn’t believe any man still thought that way.
Then again, nobody ever called South Florida a center of advanced thinking. She put on her panties inside out, then picked up her blouse from a chair upholstered with more cat hair. She pulled on her pants and slipped on her Ferragamo loafers. They were damp.
Did she spill her drink on them? She hoped not. They were some of her last good shoes, even if they had been resoled twice. She picked up one loafer for a closer look.
That’s when she caught the unmistakeable odor of cat urine.
Sissy had delivered her final opinion of Helen.
Helen got home at nine-thirty that morning. Thumbs greeted her at the door. Her big-footed cat looked cuddlier than ever. He was so gentle and well mannered, compared to Rich’s rude animals. She scratched his ears in appreciation and poured him an extra helping of breakfast.
As she pulled off her black Ralph Lauren pants, she saw tiny pinpricks of daylight in the seat and along the inseam.
Her good pants were wearing out. She’d bought them back when she made a hundred thousand dollars a year. Now that she was working dead-end jobs, she could not afford pants that expensive. They’d cost a week’s pay. She wondered if she could get by with wearing her holey pants over black panty hose.
She had to salvage her smelly shoes. Helen did not have any leather cleaner, so she sprayed her loafers with lemon Pledge. They smelled a little better, but she still caught a faint, pungent whiff. Oh, well. She had to wear her thick-soled clunkers to the bookstore anyway.
Helen kept herself busy so she would not have to think about her disastrous night with Rich—or worse, their lovely weekend together on the beach. Suddenly, she couldn’t hold back the memories any longer. She saw the
