you?”
“Of course. Do you think I’d rent to a drug user?”
“Why not? You’ve rented to everything else,” Helen said.
“You’re just bitter about Fred and Ethel,” Margery said.
“You bet I am. It’s a perfect day, but I can’t sit by the pool with the temperance society out there. Admit it. You hate them, too.”
Margery sighed. “I should have known normal wouldn’t cut it in South Florida. I went to my lawyer and tried to get their lease broken, but they haven’t done anything wrong.”
“And they aren’t likely to,” Helen said. Her sandwich was disappearing fast.
“We’re stuck with them until March,” Margery said. “I won’t renew their lease. I promise.”
“Have you thought of an exorcism for 2C? The place is possessed.”
They stared morosely into space. Then it dawned on Helen she’d been adroitly steered off the topic of Phil. “He’s undercover, isn’t he? Who’s he with?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“I keep my promises to you. I keep my promises to him, Margery said.
Fair enough, Helen thought, as she munched her bologna.
“Is he married?”
“No.”
“Single? Divorced? Straight?”
“Divorced. Definitely straight. And much too dangerous for you.”
Helen left her potato chips untouched on her plate.
Chapter 17
“Promise me that you will not carry any oven cleaner,” Helen said. “I’m not doing hard time for Easy- Off.”
“No oven cleaner,” Savannah said.
“No guns, either,” Helen said.
“I hate guns,” Savannah said.
“Do you swear?”
“I swear on my sister’s grave, if she had one, that I do not have oven cleaner or a gun on me.” Savannah put her work-worn hand on her heart.
Helen studied her thin, freckled face. Savannah seemed serious. “Okay, I’ll go with you to see Kristi.”
She got into the belching, lurching Tank. The car seemed to have deteriorated since the trip to Debbie’s. It shimmied so bad at stoplights that Helen felt seasick.
“The Tank needs a bath,” Savannah said.
“A bath?” Helen said. “This car needs to be junked.”
“Careful. You’ll hurt its feelings. You must have noticed that a car runs better when you wash it. I parked the poor Tank under a tree, and the birds got it. It’ll run better after I clean it up.”
A red warning light popped on in the dashboard. Helen thought she’d better change the subject. “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. How do you know Kristi’s home?”
“I called half an hour ago and pretended to sell her a newspaper subscription. She told me to do something nasty.
Is that what you go through all day?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know how you stand it.”
“No matter what they say, they can’t shoot me,” Helen said. “It’s your part-time job that scares me, working nights at a stop-and-rob on State Road 7.”
The Tank did a smoky cha-cha as they passed through the glass-brick pillars of the Palmingo Apartments. Cuddling in a coffin must pay well, Helen thought. Kristi’s building was a sleek white stucco and glass affair overlooking a palm-lined canal. White-clad couples played tennis. Bikinied men and women lounged by the pool. No one swam in its outrageously blue water. True Floridians never went in a pool.
Luckily, the building did not have a doorman. He would have never allowed the Tank to leak oil and transmission fluid in the parking lot.
Helen and Savannah checked the directory in the lobby.
“She’s on the third floor. I’ll get us inside,” Savannah said.
“She may recognize you and refuse to open up.”
Savannah stood in front of the door and knocked politely.
She looked deceptively harmless.
The door opened a few inches. Helen saw one suspicious blue eye.
“Hi,” Savannah said brightly. “I’m collecting for the—”
“We don’t want any,” Kristi said, starting to slam the door.
“Oh, yes, you do.” Savannah hit the door so hard it smacked Kristi in the face. She pushed her way inside. Helen followed.
“You hurt me,” Kristi said, rubbing her face like a little kid. “I could get a black eye.” There was already a red mark.
Kristi didn’t seem afraid. Maybe in her line of work, she was used to rough treatment.
“Your kinky customers would probably like that.” Savannah, freckled and stringy, towered over the lush little blonde.
Kristi’s hair tumbled down her shoulders. Her breasts threatened to spill out of her hot pink halter top.
“Who are you?” Kristi demanded, looking as fierce as her five-feet-four frame allowed. “Get out before I call the cops.”
“Go ahead and call them,” Helen said. “I’m sure they’d love to know you make your living doing the horizontal bop in a coffin. So would the IRS.”
Kristi went pale as death.
The white living room increased her corpselike color. It was done in Beach Bauhaus. The white overstuffed couches and love seats had swooping curved arms. The carpet, curtains and lamps were white. So were the silk flowers and plaster seashells on the coffee table.
The plaster seashells were the essence of the Beach Bauhaus style. The beaches were littered with real seashells, but Floridians adored fakes, and paid good money for them.
In the midst of this arctic wilderness, Kristi seemed small and scared.
“I was at the party last night,” Helen said. “I saw you in the back room.”
Kristi grabbed a white chair arm for support. Savannah took two steps forward. Kristi took one back.
“We want to know about my sister, Laredo,” Savannah said. “We heard she worked with you.”
“I don’t know anything about Laredo except she’s gone, Kristi said. A lock of blond hair flopped in her eyes. She pushed it away defiantly.
“She’s gone, all right,” Savannah said. “She’s dead. And you’re going to tell me everything.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Kristi said.
Savannah made a buzzing sound. “Wrong! The correct answer is, ‘I thought she left on a trip.’ You just told me you know way too much.”
Savannah reached into her bottomless black purse and brought out a plastic bottle filled with a clear liquid. She stuck it in Kristi’s face. The dead-white woman whimpered.
“Savannah, you promised,” Helen said.
“I promised no guns or oven cleaner.
“This is ammonia and bleach,” she said to Kristi. “It forms a highly toxic chlorine gas. If I squirt it, you die.”
Kristi put her hands up to protect her face.
