“What were you doing back in that corner?” Albert said when she returned to the front. The prissy bookseller looked as if his starched shirt was holding him up. “I won’t go near it. It’s like that old man is still there.”
“I wish he was,” Helen said. “Mr. Davies wouldn’t hurt anyone, alive or dead.”
“I miss him,” Brad said. “We used to talk about J.Lo. He particularly appreciated her performance in
“She’s not opulent, she’s obese,” Albert said nastily.
Brad looked stricken.
Helen intoned:
“Pain.
“Pain.
“Pain is a red scream in my head....”
Albert turned dead white.
“We all have things we care about,” Helen said. “We should respect them.”
Albert didn’t say another word about J.Lo or anyone else.
“Thanks,” Brad whispered, and went back to gathering up the books scattered all over the store. He moved slower today and smiled less.
Only Gayle was her usual cheerful self, laughing and chatting with the customers. At the cashier’s counter, a little boy about four proudly presented his new book to Helen. It was shaped like a fire truck.
“Here,” he said. His mother put a twenty on the counter.
“Do you want to be a fireman?” Helen asked him as she rang up the book and bagged it.
“Yes,” he said.
“My brother is a firefighter in Fort Lauderdale,” Gayle told him. “He’s very brave.”
“I’m brave, too,” the little boy said. “I’d like to be a fireman. Or an alligator. Then I could eat the bad people.”
Helen stopped laughing abruptly. Firefighter. Firefighters have breathing gear. They could get into a tear- gas-and-Vikane building. Maybe Gayle got the SCBA equipment— or stole it—from her brother. Did she hate Page Turner enough to kill him?
She looked at Gayle with the golden hair... and the silver car.
What’s wrong with me? she thought. How can I suspect Gayle?
How can you not? said a small voice. Gayle wasn’t upset at Mr. Davies’ death. That wasn’t natural.
Gayle hated Page Turner. She was working at the store the night Page Turner died. She had an hour for dinner— enough time to get to the Coronado and back.
Of course, someone else could have hated Page Turner.
Someone who looked even more like Cinderella.
And Astrid’s silver Mercedes was a much grander coach.
Chapter 23
“I have two promising leads,” Helen told Margery.
They were drinking screwdrivers in her landlady’s kitchen. Margery’s recipe was light on the orange juice and heavy on the vodka, with a hint of Key lime.
Helen came home from the bookstore feeling like she’d been beaten with bamboo. The booze hit her like a brick.
She estimated she could down another three ounces before her lips went numb.
“Squawwwk!” said Pete. She didn’t even jump when he screeched. The screwdrivers were mellowing her out.
“You really think your manager is a killer?” Margery looked frivolous in amethyst shorts and tangerine toenail polish. But her shrewd old eyes watched Helen carefully.
“I don’t know,” Helen said, and took another sip. Jeez, that drink was good. “I just know Gayle’s very smart.
Something’s not right about her. She was at the store when Mr. Davies was killed, and she didn’t seem very sorry that he was dead. Plus she has blond hair and a silver car.”
“Ever stand on Las Olas and count blondes in silver cars? You’d run out of fingers pretty fast.”
“I still want to check her out,” Helen said. “But I’ll have to do my research on Gayle at the store. She’s off the next two days and so am I. I thought I’d use this time to check out Astrid, the merry widow. She had her late husband underground awfully fast.”
“A quick burial in a hot climate. Is that all you have on the wife?” Margery knocked back a slug that would have paralyzed Helen. The woman could pound it down.
“She had a fight with her husband the day he died. I’d like to know what that was about. And I’d really like to see if Astrid has any gentleman callers. She’s a good-looking woman. My theory is she got her boyfriend to kill her husband. He’d have quite an incentive. He’d get to marry an attractive society blonde and enjoy the dead Turner’s millions.
“Astrid could have been the blond bait who picked up her husband. Maybe she promised him something special when they made up after their fight. She could have delivered him to her boyfriend for the kill.”
“But she didn’t kill Mr. Davies.”
“No, but the boyfriend could have been in the bookstore.
Astrid is the type to have someone spy on the help. He could have heard me talking to Mr. Davies. During the mommy riot, he could have smothered Mr. Davies and slipped out. No one would have noticed in the confusion.”
“Possible,” Margery said, although she still sounded skeptical. “You planning round-the-clock surveillance of Astrid’s house?”
“Not necessary,” Helen said. She took a bigger sip this time. In fact, it was close to a gulp. She was feeling nicely numb, with a hint of a giggle underneath. “Astrid’s no dummy. She must know the police consider her a suspect.
The wife always is. She can’t go to parties and dinners with her lover right now. But she must want to see him. Rich ladies aren’t good at denying themselves what they want. If he’s visiting her, it’s going to be late at night.”
“I like this,” Margery said. “You’re thinking. And the widow lives where, Palm Beach?”
“Right,” Helen said. It came out more like “Riiiiiight.” It wasn’t the orange juice making her talk like that. She looked at the drink longingly, then put it back down. No more until she explained her plan to Margery. “I already have her address. From the bookstore files.”
“So how are you going to get there, Samantha Spade?
Hitchhike? Palm Beach is eighty miles round-trip. You don’t have a car.”
“Thought I’d borrow Peggy’s Kia and drive up there.”
“That cheap car would stick out there like a sore thumb,” Margery said. “Maybe you could get by with it when the day help was around, but at night it’s too noticeable. We’ll take my big white boat. Half the old bags in Palm Beach drive Cadillacs like mine. No one will notice us.”
“You don’t mind doing surveillance?” Helen’s tongue got tangled in the L’s.
“Awwwwk,” said Pete. Helen winced. Even the booze didn’t help that time. Pete’s squawk was like a stiletto in her brain. The little parrot sat on his perch, hunched and unhappy. Margery glared at him. He glared back.
“I don’t mind anything that gets me away from that birdbrain,” Margery said. “Parrots live even longer than Florida old farts. If you don’t get Peggy out of jail, I’m facing a life sentence with Pete.”
Pete screeched in protest behind his cage bars.
It rained all day, which was unusual for South Florida.
Rain was usually liquid sunshine, short bursts that caught people without umbrellas. This was an old-
