Phil caught it and said through gritted teeth, “Helen, look at me.”
She’d waited a whole year for this moment. She’d sneaked peeks out her mini-blinds. She’d risen at dawn and stayed up late, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Now he was standing before her and she couldn’t look at him.
Slowly, she raised her eyes to his. They were electric blue with long dark lashes. Sparks were flying everywhere.
This man was worth waiting for. He was in his forties, with a thin, sensitive face. His nose was a little too long and made a slight jog to the left. She wondered how it had been broken. He had deep laugh lines. His skin was tanned and his thick white hair was pulled into a ponytail. The effect was devastating. He looked like an actor or a rock star.
“I’m not being sexist,” Phil said. “I’d advise a man to do the same thing: Get out of here. Now will you listen to me?”
“I need Kristi’s address,” she said in an equally low voice.
“She’s the blonde who works in the back room. I’m not leaving until I get it. Period.”
“I know who Kristi is. I’ll get her address from Steve. I’ll tell him I’m taking you home. It happens all the time. He’ll give you brownie points for pleasing a customer. But you’ve got to leave. Now. Please.” He put the coat back around her shoulders. This time, she left it on.
“Alright, but I have to put the bar away in the storage room.”
“Fine. I’ll track down Steve and square your absence with him. I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.”
Helen broke down her bar and wheeled it to the storage room. She wouldn’t be missed. The second party was in full swing and the guests were occupied with more exotic activities than boozing.
The Mowbry mansion was a labyrinth of halls and cul-de-sacs. On the way back, she must have turned left when she should have gone right. Two more wrong turns, and she knew this was not the way to the pool. At the end of the hall were two massive mahogany doors, twelve feet high. The doorknobs and hinges were solid gold. Dragons and demons danced on the door panels.
Was this the fabled back room?
Helen wouldn’t need Kristi. She could see for herself what went on in there.
The heavy double doors were shut, but not locked. Helen slid them open an inch and peered inside.
The room was dense black. Tall candles flamed on silver stands. The air was thick with incense and license. Bodies writhed in the corners. A naked couple opened a teakwood box that held white powder, a mirror and a tiny silver spoon.
The flickering shadows were fantastic and evil.
Helen couldn’t take her eyes off these scenes. Then suddenly, she heard the music, a swell of powerful sadness. A requiem. Brahms, she thought. Next, she saw the heavy black velvet curtains across the back wall. They seemed to absorb the candlelight.
An ebony coffin stood in front of the black curtains. It was flanked by seven-foot candles and serpentine vases with dead white flowers.
In the coffin was a blonde wearing a white lace dress and holding a bouquet of lilies.
It was Kristi.
Chapter 15
Kristi was in a black coffin, with white lace and lilies. No one cried. No one cared. No one even looked at her. But Helen could not stop staring.
Kristi blond hair was fanned out on a silk pillow. Her massive chest was modestly covered with white lace. Her skin was as pale as her lily bouquet.
Now a man rose out of the flickering shadows and approached the coffin. His dark hair stood in peaks like horns.
He had thick black hair all over his back, like a pelt. His studded leather codpiece seemed more perverse than nakedness.
The leather man ran one finger down the curve of Kristi’s bare white throat. Helen shuddered. The finger traveled downward over the white lace. Then both his hands grabbed Kristi’s breasts. The man moaned and pressed himself against the black coffin.
Helen watched in horror. It was obscene. The woman was lying in her coffin. How could he touch her like that?
Then Kristi sat up, tossed the bouquet aside and pulled the man into her black coffin.
Helen gave a little shriek, but no one heard her. The coffin rocked slightly as the leather man climbed inside, his horned hair making devilish shadows.
Helen did not want to see any more. She slid the great paneled doors shut. Their dancing demons and dragons grinned at her as she turned and ran back to meet Phil. This time, she had no trouble negotiating the mansion’s maze of halls. Helen arrived at the pool, panting and white with shock.
“What’s wrong?” Phil said. “What did they do to you?”
“I saw Kristi in a coffin. What was she doing?”
“Exactly what you think,” Phil said.
“The Six Feet Unders. That’s what they are. Debbie told me about them right before she died.”
“We don’t have time to sit here and chat,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”
“Do you have Kristi’s address? I’m not leaving without it.”
“Here.” Phil handed Helen a white card. “Steve told us to have a good time. He gave me your money, too. Five hundred bucks. Now let’s go.”
“Turn your back,” Helen said.
“What? Why?”
“I have to put on my blouse. It will just take a second.” It was ridiculous to insist on modesty after she’d spent the night half-naked, but Helen couldn’t put on her clothes in front of Phil. He turned his back and mercifully didn’t say a word. The man was a gentleman.
“Thanks for your jacket,” she said, when she was decent again.
“Why don’t you keep it until we get home? It’s chilly after midnight.” That sentence soothed her humiliation. She wasn’t a topless slut. She was shivering in the night air and a man offered her his jacket.
As they walked to his car in silence, Helen studied Phil by the streetlight, drawn to those deep blue eyes and that tanned face framed by the startling white hair. She wanted to trace her finger along his slightly crooked nose. He looked like an eighteenth-century swashbuckler. She could imagine him with a sword, in satin knee breeches. She could imagine him without those breeches, too.
How could a man this good-looking live right next to her and she never knew it?
Because he didn’t want you to know, she thought. So don’t go daydreaming. You’ve had enough man trouble without falling for a druggie.
But Phil’s eyes were clear and so was his skin. He was fit and muscular. His gut did not have the telltale liver bulge of longtime drug users. He didn’t use drugs.
“You’re undercover, aren’t you?” Helen said.
Phil said nothing.
“DEA?”
Silence.
“FBI? ATF? Local?”
The silence grew, blacker and heavier. Phil said softly, “This is not a game. People are getting killed.”
“I know,” Helen said. “That’s why I was at the party. I heard a woman die. She was strangled and I couldn’t stop it.
Her name was Laredo Manson. She worked the back room with Kristi.”
“How did you hear her die?”
“I’m a telemarketer and—”
“A what? Where?”
