The remainder was too tattered to return to the publishers.
On the last day, all the staff was gone except for Gayle and Helen. The store was empty and echoey. Helen thought there was nothing sadder than a dead bookstore. She and Gayle were in the stockroom, amid torn author posters, empty display racks, and stacks of flattened cardboard boxes.
“That’s about it, except the junk in this corner,” Gayle said. She carried a stack of flattened boxes to the Dumpster out back.
Helen started sweeping the floor. “What happened to the other booksellers?” she asked.
“Albert got a job with the new chain bookstore on Federal Highway. If he stays six months, he’ll get health insurance. You won’t be able to pry Albert out of that place.
Brad’s working there, too. In the magazines.”
“Good,” Helen said. “He’ll be with his beloved J.Lo. What about Matt?”
Gayle threw a pile of blank order forms in the trash can.
“The guy with the great dreadlocks? Matt was smart. We already knew that, since he had the good sense to walk out of here when his check bounced. He got a scholarship to law school. He wants to be a civil-rights lawyer.”
“And young Denny?”
“Wait till you hear that one. He went to a karaoke night at a club in Pompano a couple of weeks ago and did his Sting imitation. He’s working there now. His eighties oldies act is drawing huge crowds. The kid’s an overnight success.
A South Beach club is talking with his new agent about a gig down there.”
“Just think, we saw it free when he sang to a floor mop,” Helen said wistfully.
“If he really gets famous, I’ll go down in history as the moron who made him scrub the counter he danced on.”
Helen laughed. “You were just doing your job. Will you be working at another bookstore?”
“No. Astrid and I are moving to Key West,” Gayle said, flattening and stacking more shipping boxes.
“What will you do there?”
“You don’t have to do anything in Key West,” Gayle said. “You just have to be.”
“What will you be?”
“Happy,” Gayle said, and she looked as happy as anyone could in deep black. “What about you?”
“I start Monday as a telemarketer,” Helen said, leaning on her broom. “I’ll call you at dinnertime one night.”
“And I’ll hang up on you,” Gayle said. She stopped folding boxes and looked at Helen. “Telemarketing is an awful job. Are you really going to do it?”
“The money’s good and I’m tough,” Helen said. She kicked an empty box to move it out of her way, but it didn’t budge.
“Ouch. My toe. I think I broke my toe. This box is full.”
Gayle opened it up. “It’s a case of Burt Plank paperbacks. I’m not paying to send that old lecher’s books back.
Will you do me a favor and strip the case?”
Burt Plank. At the mention of his name, Helen felt his fat hand crawling up her leg like a spider.
“My pleasure,” she said.
Madame Muffy, the preppy psychic, moved out of apartment 2C shortly after Page Turners closed. She would not be living in a mansion with a Turner family fortune. DNA tests proved conclusively that Madame Muffy was not the daughter of Page Turner III.
She promised to keep in touch, but like most people who made that promise, she didn’t. Helen had not thought about her in months. She and Margery were eating popcorn and watching an old movie on late-night TV when they saw an ad for Madame Miranda. The psychic looked exotic with her jangling beads, flapping fringe, and dangling earrings.
“Call Madame Miranda now. Know your future today,” she said, earrings swaying hypnotically. “I can feel your aura through the phone. I will find what’s blocking your road to future happiness. And order my new book,
Operators are standing by. Call now for—”
“Holy shit,” Margery said, and nearly swallowed her cigarette. “It’s Madame Muffy. She took my advice and ditched the preppy getup and stupid name. Now she can afford TV ads.”
“Her prediction was right,” Helen said. “She just interpreted it wrong. The spirit voices told her she would come into a lot of money. She heard the words ‘book’ and ‘nine hundred.’ Muffy thought she would get a share of the ninehundred-million-dollar fortune from the Turner bookstore family. Instead, she got a nine hundred number and wrote her own book.”
* * *
Melanie Devereaux DuShayne wept prettily during her double murder trial. She said she was driven to kill Page Turner “to ease her soul-searing shame.”
The prosecution argued that the deceased was a respected literary figure killed by a cold, premeditated murderer. The judge allowed police testimony about the videos, although they could not be shown in court. Page Turner looked like pond scum. If Melanie had not killed him, the jury would have.
Unfortunately, there was also Mr. Davies’ death. The jury, whose average age was seventy-three, did not take kindly to someone who snuffed out an elderly man like an old dog, no matter how blue her eyes and blond her hair.
The judge was no spring chicken, either, although the scrawny old plucker rather looked like one. He agreed with their recommendation.
Melanie was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for the murders of Page Turner III and Zebediah Davies. She was a model prisoner and developed a prison dental education program.
Her POD book,
Helen, Peggy, and Pete were out by the pool one morning some time after the trial, reading the paper. Helen noticed a hickey on Peggy’s neck, on the other side from where Pete sat. She was still dating the cop.
Peggy had yet another scheme to win the lottery. “Next week is a full moon. Nobody knows why, but double numbers are more likely to win during a full moon.”
“You mean like twenty-two, forty-four, sixty-six?” Helen said.
“Exactly. Some think the double numbers affect the balance of the balls, and, combined with the gravitational pull of the moon, it’s enough to tip them into the winning slots.”
Helen figured this was more moonshine, but she was glad to see Peggy back at her old pastime. She was trying to find the news story about the newest Lotto winner for Peggy when she said, “Hey, here’s an article about Melanie.”
She read the headline:
“Melanie’s getting a million bucks for writing three mysterious romances or romantic mysteries,” Helen said. “A New York publisher has picked her up. Critics compare her potential to Danielle Steel’s.”
“I don’t believe it,” Peggy said. “I lose weeks of my life, not to mention my bed and my butcher knife, and she gets a million bucks. I thought you couldn’t profit from your crimes.”
“Awwwk,” Pete said.
“Took the words out of my mouth,” Peggy said.
“She’s writing fiction,” Helen said. “That doesn’t count.
Maybe you could send her a bill for your time. It says here her new novels are very pro-police.”
“I guess she is pro-police. The cops locked up the wrong person. If you hadn’t started investigating, I’d be sitting on death row.”
“Not with Colby for a lawyer,” Helen said. “Here’s a quote from her editor. She says, ‘Melanie is the perfect writer. She has no distractions. I only wish the rest of them were locked up.’ ”
Helen felt her guilt over her role in Melanie’s murders melt away as she read the story of her new contract.
