thirty and found the door open. Someone jimmied it and trashed my home. They got...” She stopped. Helen could hear her swallowing tears.
“Savannah. What happened?”
“They tore up everything in Laredo’s room. Slashed the bedcovers. Ripped her Shakespeare book. Smashed a china ballerina she’s had since she was eight. Now I don’t have anything to remember her by. It’s all broken.” Savannah wept the hot, harsh sobs of someone unused to crying.
“Savannah, please don’t cry. Talk to me. Who did this? Do you think it’s the same people who killed Debbie?”
“Definitely. Laredo’s room was hit the hardest, but they got my whole place. They slashed the couch cushions and the mattress. They dumped everything out of the drawers and cabinets. Five pounds of coffee were dumped in the sink.
There’s sugar on the kitchen counter and raw hamburger stinking up the floor.”
“Sounds familiar,” Helen said.
“It’s just like Debbie’s apartment. Except they also kicked in my TV. Put their foot right through the screen. Somebody was real mad.”
“Savannah, I’m so sorry. Did you call the police?”
“Didn’t have to. They hit another mobile home in the same park. The Sunnysea cops were already here when I got home, talking to my neighbor, Randy. He had ten dollars on the dresser and nobody touched it. They didn’t even take his camcorder. The police say it was kids tearing things up.”
“Do you think it was kid vandals?”
“No. They would have taken the cash. These bustards were looking for something that belonged to Laredo. Her room is slashed to pieces. That other trailer was window dressing to distract the police. Randy’s home didn’t have near the damage mine did. They broke in his door and overturned a few things.”
“Savannah, I get off work in half an hour. I’ll catch a bus and come right over.”
“No, don’t. That’s not why I’m calling. I’m warning you to be careful. They’re after us. Both of us. They got me.
You’re next. Watch your back.”
Helen had a jumpy walk home from work. Why would Hank Asporth—or whoever it was—trash Savannah’s trailer? What was he looking for? The killer won’t bother my place, she told herself. It made sense to search Laredo’s home. But Helen didn’t have anything of interest.
Besides, Margery was more eagle-eyed than any security service. She knew every alley cat that crossed the yard. No human would slip by unnoticed. Still, Helen was glad when she reached the Coronado. She was even happier to hear Cal the Canadian having a disapproval derby with Fred and Ethel by the pool.
“It would never happen in Canada,” Cal said.
“You’re right,” Fred said. “America is a violent society.
Rapes and murders are rampant and nobody gets punished.
Why, just the other day...”
Three people were within deploring distance. They’d come running if Helen called for help. It would give them more to deplore. She felt safe—until she saw that her front door was slightly ajar. Helen saw the telltale jimmy marks on the door frame. She slowly opened the door. Something white floated out.
A feather.
She saw the smashed lamp first. The boomerang coffee table was overturned. The couch pillows were slashed. Her money was gone. Her secret stash. She’d had almost twenty-three hundred dollars stuffed in those pillows.
She ran to the bedroom. The sheets and spread had been dragged off the mattress. Her feather pillows had been ripped open. The room had snowdrifts of white feathers.
“Thumbs?” Helen said. “Thumbs, where are you? Are you OK?”
The toylike cat with the huge paws crawled out from under the bed and said, “Mrrrw.”
“Good boy,” Helen said. She picked him up and scratched his soft gray ears until he purred. “At least you’re safe.”
She was slowly taking in the damage. She ran to the kitchen, remembering Savannah’s sugar on the counter and rotting meat on the floor. Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with that, she thought. They didn’t trash my TV, either.
But in the bedroom, her dresser drawers were open. Her bras were twisted together on the floor. Her panties were spread out on the bare mattress. The creeps had had their hands on her underwear. That violation seemed worse than Savannah’s torn books and smashed china.
Underwear. She had seven thousand dollars stashed in the Samsonite suitcase, guarded by a mass of snagged stockings and old lady underwear. What if they got that?
She tore open the utility-closet door. The suitcase was still there. She yanked it open. The money was safe under the pile of elderly intimate garments.
Suddenly, Helen couldn’t stay in her home another second. She ran across the lawn and pounded on Margery’s door. Her landlady opened it wearing a purple leopard-print shorts set—if there were purple leopards— and kitten-heeled sandals.
“What’s that racket? It’s ten thirty.”
“Someone broke into my apartment,” Helen said. “They wrecked it and took about thirty-two hundred dollars in cash.”
“Not at my Coronado,” Margery said. “We’ve never had anything like that.” The break-in was a personal attack on the integrity of her apartment complex. She crossed the lawn in long, feline strides. A tiger was in those kitten heels.
Margery surveyed the damage to Helen’s home. “The miserable buggers broke my lamp. Don’t worry. I have another one just like it.”
“They had their hands on my underwear,” Helen said.
“We’ll fix that.” Margery stuffed the mauled bras and panties into a shopping bag, then added the sheets and spread. The pillow cases were totaled, but she took them, too.
“Let’s go back to my place. I’ll throw these in my washer.
Damn. The one night I go visit my friend Shirley and this happens. Do you want to sleep on my couch tonight?”
“No, they’re not chasing me out of my place. Besides, there are plenty of people around.”
“Fine. Let’s call the police.”
“No!” Helen said. “How would I explain twenty-two hundred dollars stuffed in the couch pillows?”
“You don’t have to. They’re not the IRS.”
“I don’t want the police wondering why I have all that cash,” Helen said. “They’ll never find my money. I can’t point to a pile of bills and say, Those are mine. I recognize George Washington’s picture.’ ”
“We can at least ask Cal, Fred and Ethel if they saw anything. Peggy’s not home yet.”
As they pushed through the poolside palm fronds, Helen heard Fred say, “The government should make those welfare bums work.”
“Excuse me,” Margery said. “While you were settling the fate of the nation tonight, did you see anyone hanging around Helen’s apartment? Someone broke in.”
“That’s terrible,” Ethel said. She was wearing an ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDBABY T-shirt. Helen would cut out her tongue before she did.
“They get anything?” Fred said.
“Just messed the place up,” Helen said. She wasn’t going to tell them she’d lost over two grand.
“Kids,” Ethel said. Her chins wobbled judicially. “They should be in school, but they’re roaming about, not working, everything handed to them. When I was their age—”
“Canada would never—” Cal interrupted.
“Did anyone see anything?” Margery interrupted. “Any strangers on the property or the parking lot? I left about six tonight.”
“I didn’t get home until a-boot half an hour ago,” Cal said.
A year ago, Helen would have found that “a-boot” sexy, along with the rest of Cal. Now it was as thrilling as
