corn salad, carrot salad with raisins. The bread was hot, white and puffy.
Lettuce was covered with croutons and creamy dressing.
Baked potatoes were piled with butter and sour cream. This crowd did not worry about cholesterol. They had already outlived the weak sisters with heart trouble.
“Fred and Ethel are experienced all-you-can-eat restaurant goers,” Margery said. “They skip the starchy salads and bread and go for the expensive fruit and vegetables. Fred’s got at least five bucks’ worth of produce on his plate.”
Fred’s plate was loaded with salad, sliced mushrooms, fresh strawberries, cantaloupe and pineapple chunks.
“What’s Ethel doing with those mounds of potato salad and bread?” Helen said.
“Getting tonight’s dinner. Watch.”
Back at their table, Ethel slid into the booth first. Fred’s paunch provided privacy, but Helen could see over it on her tall barstool. Ethel opened her purse and eased most of the potato salad and bread inside.
“That’s disgusting. She’s putting food in her purse.”
Helen imagined it landing on hairbrushes and old Kleenex and nearly gagged.
“Relax,” Margery said. “Her purse is lined with Ziploc bags. Look around the restaurant. Everyone is doing it.”
Sure enough, when the waitresses turned their backs, satchel-sized purses snapped open and swallowed salads, vegetables and bread. Sugar and sweetener packs disappeared off the tables. Butter pats and creamers, ketchup and mustard packets all went into the leather maws.
When Ethel’s steak arrived, she cut it in two and dropped half in her purse. Her baked potato went the same way.
In fifteen minutes, Fred and Ethel put away enough food to feed a frat house. Fred ate his. Ethel stuffed most of hers in her purse. She did have a bowl of clam chowder, along with her half-steak and half-potato. She hit the dessert bar three times. The first time, a big gooey chocolate brownie went into her purse. The second time, she ate the Key lime pie. On the third swing through, she got the bread pudding and slathered it with sauce.
“She’s going for it,” Helen said.
Margery asked for the bar check. They watched as Ethel chewed her bread pudding. She gave a muffled shriek, then grabbed her cheek dramatically. Bright red blood gushed from her mouth.
A woman with a macaroni salad screamed, “Help! Somebody call an ambulance.”
“No ambulance!” Fred roared.
“You bet he doesn’t want one,” Margery said. “That would ruin everything.” She put a twenty on the bar, but kept watching the drama. A worried waitress ran over to Fred and Ethel’s booth. The manager, a thin woman in a blue blazer, sprinted behind her.
“Time for us to go to work,” Margery said.
They started for the booth. The waitress was mopping up the blood with napkins. The manager was wringing her hands.
“I’m not a suing kind of person, but I’ll have to take my poor wife to the emergency room,” Fred said. “And we have a four-hundred-dollar deductible on our insurance.”
“Why, Fred and Ethel, what a surprise,” Margery said. “Is something wrong?”
Fred looked up, startled. Ethel choked, but quickly recovered. The manager looked ready to leap in and do the Heimlich maneuver.
“Ethel bit down on that metal in her bread pudding.” Fred pointed to a piece of metal about half an inch long, lying in a pool of blood. “She’s hurt bad. Look how my poor wife is bleeding.”
“Wow,” Helen said. “Ethel must have magnets in her teeth. That’s the second time this week she’s found metal in her food. I was in the diner about two miles down the road when she got metal in her meal. You wanted four hundred dollars for your emergency room deductible there, too. Cash only. I don’t see any stitches from that accident, though. And Ethel bled all over. She was eating bread pudding that time, too. What a coincidence. I bet that piece of metal Ethel found in her food looks a lot like this.”
Helen produced the sliver of metal she’d lifted from their kitchen and put it on the table next to Ethel’s bloody exhibit.
They were identical.
Fred’s jaws were working, but no sound came out. The waitress stared at Helen and Margery. The manager stopped wringing her hands. She had an idea where this was going.
“My, my,” Margery said. “Ethel is a regular horror show.
Lotta blood running out of her mouth. Of course it looks worse when you smear it all over your face like that. What blood type are you, Ethel?”
Helen took a blood capsule from her pocket, held it up for everyone to see, then squeezed it. Fake blood squirted richly across the sequinned flag on Ethel’s chest.
“F-positive,” Helen said. “I’m positive you’re a fraud.”
The waitress gasped. The manager smiled.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Fred said. “I’ll sue you for slander. I’ll call the police. I’ll—”
As he talked, he and Ethel eased themselves out of the booth and down the aisle. Margery blocked their way.
“I won’t have you two crooks on my property. You have twenty-four hours to pack up and get out, or I’ll call the police and tell them about your hobby. Don’t even think of asking for your deposit back.”
Fred and Ethel scuttled out.
“My name is Gladys,” the manager said. “Can I buy you lunch and a drink?” With the tension gone from her face, she looked years younger.
“No, thanks. We have to be about our business,” Margery said. Helen thought she sounded like a gunslinger leaving town after rounding up the cattle rustlers.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Gladys said. “Let me give you two free dinner certificates to the Happy Cow. Come back any time. We’d be honored to have you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Helen said. “We’ll just be moseying along.” Margery glared at her.
On the way out to the car, Helen said, “Well, we got rid of Fred and Ethel.”
“I promise I’ll never rent to anyone normal again, Margery said.
Chapter 22
“Hold it. Stop right there. I’ve got a gun.”
That was Margery. Something was wrong at the Coronado.
Helen sat up in bed, sending the cat flying into the dark.
What time was it? She stared blearily at her bedside clock. It was one twenty-seven in the morning.
“I won’t hesitate to shoot,” Margery said.
The killer. Margery had caught the killer. He’d come to murder Helen and Margery surprised him in her yard. Now her seventy-six-year-old landlady was trying to hold him off with a gun. She saw Margery, frail but fearless, an ancient revolver in her liver-spotted hands.
Margery didn’t have a chance. He’d strangled a strong young waitress with her own hair. He would walk up and rip the gun from an old woman.
A weapon. Helen needed a weapon. She grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen counter, threw on a robe and ran outside. Low-lying fog swirled and drifted across the grass, turning the night into a slasher-movie set. She felt foolish creeping down the sidewalk, kitchen cutlery in hand, but she didn’t know what else to do. She had to save Margery.
She heard the rattle of a jalousie door and jumped.
Phil slid out of his apartment wearing black jeans, sandals and no shirt. All her senses were on red alert. She noticed his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and intimidating weapon.
What was that thing? Some new federal experiment? It looked like a ray gun from a fifties science fiction movie.
