Peggy now.
Sarah pulled up in her green Range Rover at seven on the dot, wearing a green linen Ralph Lauren pantsuit that set off her curly brown hair, and square-cut emeralds at her ears and throat.
Helen whistled. “Wow, you look good. Mind being seen with me?” She was suddenly ashamed of her clunky bookstore shoes.
“You look fine,” Sarah said. “But if you want to change your clothes, I can take you home first.”
“Naw, I’ll just slip off my shoes if I dance on the tabletop. Ben Franklin is burning a hole in my pocket. Let’s eat, my treat.”
The line for Opa was out the door at seven-thirty. “Not bad,” said Sarah. “On the weekends, the crowd is lined up across the parking lot.”
In fifteen minutes, they were inside, where they were hit with a blast of Greek music. It seemed to vibrate off the floor and slam into the ceiling. A twenty-something waiter who looked like a Greek James Dean was dancing on the table with a woman of forty. She was shaking her hips like an exotic dancer, and he was matching her move for move.
Everyone at the table was cheering—except for one surly-looking man. Her husband? Helen wondered.
Across the room, a woman server of about twenty was dancing on a long table with a white-haired man of seventy, while his family yelled “Opa!” and applauded. His moves were stiff and too slow for the music, but he looked so happy Helen laughed out loud.
The host showed Helen and Sarah to a table on an open gallery running along the main room. It had a view of the water on one side and the table dancing on the other. Suddenly, the dance was over, and the waiters went back to running drinks and hauling huge trays of food.
The dark-haired James Dean brought a wooden bowl of chickpeas to their table and, using a pestle, mashed them into hummus. Helen and Sarah spread it on crusty bread. It was strong with garlic.
“This is good,” Helen said.
With the hundred burning a hole in her pocket, she ordered lavishly: caviar spread, roast lamb, grilled sea bass, Greek salad with snowdrifts of feta cheese, lots of wine to cut the olive oil.
Periodically, the waiters would jump on the wooden tables on the main floor and start dancing. One or two brave diners would join them, while their friends clapped and hooted.
“Are you going to dance?” Helen asked Sarah.
She looked at their wobbly plastic table and said, “Do you really think this will support me?”
“How about the wooden tables in the main area?” Even now, a sizable woman was shaking her hips over plates of moussaka.
“Right,” Sarah said. “I can see me now. ‘Excuse me, sir.
Could you move your sea bass? I’d like to climb on your table and dance with your hunky waiter.’ ”
Helen laughed. “It’s a spectator sport for me, too.”
They talked and laughed and ate until Helen felt better than she had in months. It was fun to have money again, even for one night. Over strong black coffee and sweet flaky baklava, Sarah asked, “How are your efforts to save Peggy going?”
“Not so good. Everything I find out just makes it worse.”
She told Sarah about Peggy’s job and the videotape. “I’m a little hurt, too. Why didn’t Peggy tell me anything about herself?”
“She probably didn’t want to look bad. You’re a good person, Helen. One look at you, and you can tell you don’t do drugs or know anything about the police. Peggy was probably ashamed of her old life and thought you wouldn’t understand.”
She doesn’t suspect, Helen thought. None of them do. If I told Sarah I was on the run, hiding from my ex and the courts, she wouldn’t believe me. What right do I have to be hurt by Peggy hiding her past? What have I told her or Sarah about me?
“I want to help her,” Helen said. “But I’m spinning my wheels. Today, I found out the preppy prowler had a decent alibi. I would have loved to pin it on him.”
“Don’t give up,” Sarah said. “You have a lot of work to do. You have to check the alibis of anyone in the bookstore who wanted to kill him.”
“That’s a lot of people, Sarah. I can’t just ask them, ‘Where were you the night Page Turner died?’ ”
“You won’t have to. It’s like love. Just let it happen naturally.”
“I’ve not had much luck in love, either,” Helen said.
“How are things going with your contractor?”
Helen was irritated that Sarah wouldn’t say Gabriel’s name. “Just fine. I’m taking it slowly. We had coffee at the cafe. He’s taking me to the Shakespeare festival on Sunday to see
“You know any more about him?”
“I know a man who likes Shakespeare is a rare find in Florida.”
“Just because a man likes culture doesn’t make him a good person. Hitler loved art and opera.”
“Sarah! Are you comparing Gabriel to Hitler?”
“No, I’m just telling you to be careful. This is South Florida.”
“Anything else, ladies?” said their James Dean waiter.
His white T-shirt was sweaty from his last dance. It clung to his muscular torso, revealing well-developed pecs. Helen thought of a few answers to his question, but said, “It’s time for the check.”
The bill for their meal was $79.82. That was the end of her hundred-dollar bill, she thought. But it was a glorious meal and an entertaining evening, except for Sarah’s last lecture. And her friend did care about her. She was just overly concerned. Maybe Sarah needed a date, Helen thought.
She pulled out the hundred-dollar bill from the zippered compartment where she’d stashed it. It felt odd. Lighter or thinner or something. Helen looked at it in the waning evening light. No, that was definitely Ben Franklin. The man may have said a penny saved is a penny earned, but he looked happy on a hundred.
But the bill felt wrong. Helen turned it over. The back side was blank white paper. Printed in heavy black ink was
Helen felt the blood drain from her face. She thought she was going to lose her hundred-dollar dinner. Suddenly, the scene with the two young men nudging each other took on another meaning. They didn’t want her bill. They were laughing at her. She was a stupid greed-head.
Sucker! indeed.
“Helen, are you OK? What’s wrong?”
Helen showed her the fake hundred-dollar bill. Sarah burst out laughing. “It’s a color Xerox copy. I’ve heard of these. They’re the latest scam. Crooks have been putting them on high-grade paper and passing them off as real bills to busy cashiers. Some copies are good enough, if they aren’t inspected too closely. This one is not bad. Leaving the fake bill on the sidewalk is a new twist. Trust Florida to invent it.” Like many residents, Sarah seemed proud of the endless creativity of the local scam artists.
“I feel like such a fool,” Helen said. “I only have two dollars.” She apologized until Sarah begged her to stop.
“Forget it,” she said. “It was worth the entertainment value.” She whipped out her credit card and cheerfully paid the bill, leaving a generous tip. “Ready to go?”
Helen nodded.
Helen tore it up.
But she felt like the word was branded on her forehead.
Chapter 19
“Excuse me, I need some help here.”
A lean woman with bad skin and dead-black hair plunked four paperbacks down on the counter at Helen’s
