The four striking, smelly strangers rose. Their BO got up and went with them. Their table was quickly cleaned, and the Eurotrash were replaced by a very young woman and a very old man. His yellowish skin was so scored with wrinkles it looked like it had been cut with a razor. His eyes were flat and dead.
Now Helen thought she smelled sulfur.
The young woman had an angelic face and a burning desire for corruption. She almost thrust her high white bosom into his trembling old hands.
“Whatever he has, she wants it bad,” Helen said.
“You don’t want to know,” Sarah said. “This is South Beach. We can watch the show or we can talk. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? You’ve worked hard to avoid the subject.”
Helen’s insides were tied so tight, she could hardly talk. “I’m mixed up in a murder, Sarah, and I’m scared.”
There. She said it.
A waiter with a chiseled chin arrived, giving Helen a brief reprieve while they ordered lunch. Helen wondered if he was an actor, a model, or just another beautiful waiter. Everyone seemed to be seriously thin and glamorous. Helen felt fat and frumpy. She ordered the fruit plate as penance. Sarah wanted the Caesar salad with fried calamari. Helen wished she had her friend’s culinary courage.
After the waiter brought their food, Helen began the story of Kiki’s murder. Sarah started dismantling her salad with gusto. But as Helen talked, her friend’s appetite waned. By the time Helen got to the DNA demand, Sarah abandoned her fork.
Helen knew it was serious if her friend wasn’t eating. “You need a lawyer, Helen,” Sarah said.
“A lawyer will run up bills I can’t pay and tell me not to talk. If the cops arrest me, I’ll be stuck in jail.” Helen shuddered as she pictured herself in a prison jumpsuit on the other side of the Plexiglas.
“Then you need to solve the murder,” Sarah said.
Helen could feel her guts rotating into new knots. “How?” she said. “I don’t have the police resources. I don’t have their forensic knowledge. I can’t make people talk to me. I don’t know anything.”
“Sure you do. You know the time of death, right?” Sarah said.
“Well, I overheard the cops talking. They guessed Kiki had been dead about twelve hours. I saw that she’d been smothered. The police mentioned petechiae. You should have seen her face. It was like . . .”
Sarah turned as green as her salad. “I don’t need to know that,” she said quickly. “But you’re wrong, Helen. You already know two important things: the time and the cause of death. Do you think a man or a woman killed her?”
Helen saw Kiki’s doll-like corpse again. It had seemed so small. “The killer could have been a woman. Kiki weighed about a hundred pounds. A strong female could have thrown her facedown and smothered her. A big man could have done it easily.”
Helen thought she hadn’t eaten anything, but her plate was empty. How did that happen? “It’s the cut nails that got me,” Helen said. “They were a mutilation.”
“Kiki must have scratched her killer,” Sarah said. “Why else were her nails clipped? The police photographed your scratch, right? Did anyone else in the wedding party have scratches on their arms or neck?”
“Desiree had a long scratch on her arm,” Helen said. “She said the cook’s cat did it. Her father had some nasty scratches, too.”
“That cat gets around,” Sarah said.
“It’s odd,” Helen said. “Desiree doesn’t live with her father.”
“Maybe you need to look into that,” Sarah said.
Helen’s guts unkinked a notch. Perhaps this wasn’t hopeless after all. “Someone else had a scratch,” she said. “I remember hearing about it, but I can’t remember where.”
“It will come to you,” Sarah said confidently, as she speared a chunk of calamari. She was eating with enthusiasm again. “Here’s something else: Who locked the church after the rehearsal and who opened the doors in the morning?”
“Good question,” Helen said. “Kiki locked up after the rehearsal, but I heard her make a date to meet Jason in the church after the rehearsal dinner. She said churches made her hot.”
“Nice lady,” Sarah said.
“I don’t know who opened the church. Jeff, the wedding planner, would. He was there when I arrived the morning of the wedding, directing a flock of florists.”
There were swarms of people involved in this wedding: hairstylists, makeup artists, caterers, and guests. There must have been four hundred guests. Just the wedding party alone was huge. Sixteen attendants preceded the bride and groom to the altar. How many of those people hated Kiki?
The gut twisting started again. “What’s the use?” Helen said. “It’s too much for one person. I don’t have anything.”
Sarah pointed her fork at Helen. A crispy circle of calamari hung on the end. “You have one major advantage. You knew Kiki intimately. You heard her fight with her daughter, her ex, and other people the police may not know about. You have insights into her character they don’t. The police have to find that out secondhand.”
“True,” Helen said. “I even saw her naked. Do you know she had her pubic hair waxed into a dollar sign? What do you think that says?”
“Sex and money. It’s a dangerous combination. But that’s what I mean. You knew the victim alive. The police only saw her dead.”
“Victim,” Helen said. “That’s a funny word for Kiki. Tormentor would be more like it.”
“Would anyone she’d tormented want to kill her?”
“Everyone,” Helen said. Her guts twirled like a forkful of spaghetti. But Sarah wasn’t going to let her slide back into despair.
“So there is no shortage of suspects. Tell me the main ones,” Sarah said.
“The bride, the groom, the father of the bride, the best man.”
“Killer wedding party,” Sarah said.
“I’m not finished. There’s the chauffeur. And maybe Jason, the groomsman she was chasing at the rehearsal dinner. But why are we even making this list? I can’t interview them. Do you really think Desiree will talk with me?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “You bonded with her. You were her surrogate mother on her wedding day.”
“What about her father, the lawyer?”
“Well, no, I don’t think you can talk to him.” Sarah chewed some lettuce thoughtfully, then said, “I doubt if the police can, either. But I bet you could worm your way into his office for some background.”
“How? I don’t know anybody important.”
“That’s your strength, Helen. You’re a clerk, one of the invisible people who do the work. You can talk to his office staff. They’ll know more about him than anyone, including his wife.”
“How do I see the others? I can’t call up Chauncey. He’s a big local theater director.”
“Theaters always need volunteers,” Sarah said.
“I have two tickets to
“Sorry, can’t make it tonight. What about Phil?”
“He’s dumped me for his ex.”
“He hasn’t dumped you. And you haven’t dumped him. You’re waiting for him to come to his senses. When does his ex leave town?”
“Margery said her run’s been extended another week.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good. You need to work on this,” Sarah said briskly. She polished off the last of her calamari. “I think you’re on to something with that rose dress. Why would Kiki be wearing it? She was saving it for the reception. It was for her grand entrance, right?”
“Yep. It was way over the top for a mother of the bride, but she wanted to be a star at her daughter’s wedding.”
“So why was she wearing the rose dress when she died?” Sarah said.
Helen saw what Sarah was getting at. “Kiki wanted to impress someone with her fabulous gown. It had to be
