more.
Chapter 13
Helen picked up the knife carefully. Her wrist hurt from where Dr. Rich had grabbed her. She wore a bracelet of bruises and a long-sleeved blouse to cover them. No man had ever treated her like that, not even her ex, Rob. She seethed with anger.
Helen was alone in the Bawls-less break room with her anger and her lunch, a jar of crunchy peanut butter and a box of crackers. She was still furious after that humiliating scene with Rich yesterday. He hadn’t called her since. She almost wished he would, so she could tell him what she’d thought of him. She’d carried his roses home and thrown them in the Dumpster. Her only revenge was her date with Gabriel. Well, she couldn’t call it a date exactly. It was coffee at the Page Turners cafe, under the watchful eye of Gayle.
“That’s your lunch?” Gayle said, opening the break room door. She’d brought back a lovely little salad Nicoise from a nearby French restaurant. She brushed cracker crumbs off the table and sat down in the second least wobbly chair.
Gayle was wearing black, as usual. Her metal belt buckle looked like it belonged on a blast furnace.
“It’s one of the few things I can cook,” Helen said.
“You call that cooking?”
“I opened the jar myself.”
“Look out, Emeril. Doesn’t the break room look better since we got rid of all those cases of Bawls?”
“It’s bigger, anyway,” Helen said, looking around the dingy room. It still smelled like Taco Bell takeout. “Did Astrid tell you anything about Page’s funeral?”
“It was short and sweet,” Gayle said. “They had him underground in record time.”
“Any of his old girlfriends show up?”
“Not a one. That’s why Astrid kept the funeral service private. She didn’t want his weeping bimbos there.”
Helen wondered if the other women in Page’s videos would weep for him. Peggy was just one of many in that locked cabinet. Maybe one wanted him dead. Maybe they all did. She imagined a scene like something from
“Did you know any of the women who starred in his videos?” she asked Gayle.
“You mean besides the one who was arrested? Because I have to tell you, Peggy was here more than the rest combined.”
Helen winced. Gayle didn’t notice. She was picking the tuna off her salad.
“I knew most of them. They usually came into the store when I was on nights. Let’s see... there were Cheree and Maree, two skinny blondes with long straight hair. Very striking, those two. They looked like twins, although I don’t think they were. They always showed up together.
They wore identical black dresses and black studded dog collars. I expected Page to walk them on a leash. I think they were pros.
“Then there was Liza. She was a sweet little thing, curly brown hair, big brown eyes. She moved back home to Pittsburgh and married a dentist. You see any pepper over there?”
Helen dug in the pile of leftover ketchup, mustard, and sugar until she found a pepper packet. Gayle ate her peppered salad methodically. First all the tuna. Then the tomatoes. She was working on the string beans when she said, “Jamie was a sad case. She OD’d on heroin last year.
“Shelly was the smart one. She left Page for another man. Her new boyfriend got them a great gig on a yacht.
She cooks, he crews. Last I heard they were headed for Brazil.
“I’m sure there were more, one-night stands or women who showed up after hours, but those are the ones I knew about.”
Five women, a typical South Florida sampling: Two thrived on the corruption here, one ran back home, one ran away to sea, and one died. Cheree and Maree wouldn’t care about sex videos. They’d consider them good advertising.
Jamie was dead, and couldn’t be hurt any more. Shelly had left the country. That left one candidate for blackmail. How would the Pittsburgh dentist feel about a wife who starred in Page’s private porn library?
“Liza, the one who went back home, are you in contact with her?”
“I get a card from her at Christmas,” Gayle said, intent on spearing an escaped string bean.
“Could you find out if she heard from Page recently?”
“Why?” Gayle stabbed and subdued the slippery green bean and began working on the potatoes.
“Because I think Page may have been blackmailing those women.”
Gayle waved a forkful of potato as if it were a pointer.
“Page Turner was a lot of things, most of them bad. But he wasn’t a blackmailer. Why bother? He didn’t need the money.”
“Rich people never have enough money,” Helen said.
“He certainly wouldn’t get it from the women in those videos. None of them had two nickels to rub together.
Astrid was the only woman he dated with money. I think that’s why he married her.”
“Then he did it because he could,” Helen said. “He liked the power.”
“I never thought I’d hear myself defending Page Turner,” Gayle said, “but I’ll say it again: He’s not a blackmailer. I’ll call Liza for you, but I’m not sure she’ll tell me anything.
We weren’t close. I knew Peggy better.”
Gayle put her fork down and looked at Helen. “She’s your friend, isn’t she? That’s why you’re asking these questions.”
“Yes,” Helen said. There was no point in hiding it. “Page was blackmailing her. I think he may have been blackmailing the others, too, if not for money, then for pure meanness.”
“Page was always motivated by money. Always. How would he get money from Peggy? I don’t think Page’s sex videos are any big deal. The cops will watch them and snicker, but that’s all. Peggy is lucky there’s no video of the day she stormed into the bookstore in her nightgown. That was your blackmail material. I never saw anyone, man or woman, so angry. If she’d had a knife instead of a newspaper, she’d have stabbed him on the spot.” Gayle ran her fork savagely through the last potato.
“But that was two years ago,” Helen said.
“You don’t get over a hurt like that right away. Maybe not ever. He made a fool of a smart woman.”
Gayle threw away her salad things and wiped the crumby tabletop with her napkin. “I’ll call Liza in Pittsburgh. But don’t expect anything.”
That should have been the motto for the whole afternoon.
A badly used blonde with a big chest wobbled up to Helen’s cash register with a stack of coin-collector folders.
Either the blonde was wearing bourbon cologne, or she was trashed. She tried to pay with two rolls of quarters. Helen groaned. She’d have to count all the coins.
“Hey!” the woman said, and slapped Helen with a wave of bourbon. “Why yuh taking ’em out of the wrappers? I already counted ’em for you.”
“Because half these quarters are Canadian,” Helen said, and slid them back across the counter. The bourbonized blonde was hanging on to the counter and swaying. Helen felt seasick.
