Just Murdered

She floated on clouds of love and painkillers.

Margery and Peggy were drinking white wine out of a new box. Pete the parrot celebrated with a fat cashew. Phil munched more cashews and drank a beer.

“Can I get you anything?” Phil asked her.

“I have everything,” Helen said.

Margery rolled her eyes. She looked festive in ruffled shorts and flip-flops trimmed with purple daisies. Except if they were purple, weren’t they asters? The question was too difficult for Helen in her current state.

Margery did not want to sit and enjoy the sunset. She had unfinished business. “This morning, I found this on my doorstep.”

Margery held a ripped-up paper. It looked like a legal document.

“It’s Elsie’s dance-lesson contract. She’s out two thousand dollars, but that’s a stupidity fee. The rest of the contract is canceled.”

The party applauded.

“When did that happen?” Helen said.

“I found the door to apartment 2C wide open at six this morning. All those cops running around last night must have scared Warren, and he skipped. He took my bath towels, but the TV and the furniture are OK. I’ll rent that apartment quickly during the season. Besides, I still have his toupee.” Margery held it up, grinning like a crazed scalper.

“Awwwk!” Pete flapped his wings and paced Peggy’s shoulder.

“Put that thing away,” Helen said. “Pete hates it as much as I do.”

When Pete settled down, Peggy said, “Helen, you have to give us the gory details. You’ve kept us waiting long enough. You slept all day.”

Margery snorted and blew out more smoke than a city bus.

Helen blushed. She’d been in bed, but she hadn’t been sleeping. She was amazed what she and Phil could do despite her seventy-six stitches.

“I got some of this from the police,” Helen said. “The rest I overheard in the emergency room. It was a circus last night. Luke needed a tetanus shot and stitches for his hand. I bit him pretty hard. I also scratched his eyelid.”

“Good,” Margery said. The cigarette smoke gave that one word a hellish emphasis.

“The police let Luke call his wife,” Helen said. “Desiree called her daddy. Luke tried to explain everything to Desiree. He thought he could throw himself on her mercy.”

“I’d rather throw myself on a cactus bed,” Margery said.

“Don’t the police usually keep suspects separate?” Phil said.

“Luke asked for his lawyer, who was also his father-in-law,” Helen said. “Brendan brought Desiree with him as his associate. I don’t think the beat cops recognized her. Desiree’s been all over the papers, but she gets overlooked.”

Peggy and Pete were getting impatient. “Are you going to tell us what happened or not?” Peggy said.

“Awwwk!” Pete said. Phil fed him another cashew.

“Luke told them everything,” Helen said. “I heard him. I was in the next ER cubicle. The murder was simple. After the rehearsal dinner, Luke went to the church to talk to Kiki. He had to be in that movie and he had to marry Desiree. He needed her money to finance his career, although he didn’t say that to his wife. Luke was sure if he told Kiki how important the movie role was for his career, she would change her mind.”

Margery took another drag on her cigarette. “The poor dumb bastard,” she said. “Kiki would stop him from taking that role because it meant so much to him.”

“How did you know?” Helen said.

“I’ve been around,” Margery said. Helen was afraid to ask where.

“When Luke got to the church, Jason and Desiree had already left. Kiki was upstairs. She was wearing the rose dress and she couldn’t get out of it. Kiki was about to call her chauffeur to come back, when Luke walked in.

“ ‘Good, you can help me out of this dress,’ she said. Kiki was standing in front of the open closet with the cobweb wedding dress.

“ ‘Only if you let me be a movie star.’ Luke said it as a joke, but he was dead serious.

“So was Kiki. ‘Never,’ she said. ‘I won’t have my son-in-law playing a retard. If you want to live on my daughter’s money, you have to make some sacrifice. It’s hard work being a kept man.’ ”

“Awwwk!” Pete said.

“This is a sensitive subject. I keep him in cashews,” Peggy said, smoothing his ruffled feathers.

“Then Kiki grabbed Luke you-know-where and said, ‘Maybe if you try hard enough, I could change my mind.’ ”

“What a witch,” Phil said. “She really propositioned her son-in-law on the eve of his wedding?”

“It gets nastier,” Helen said. “Kiki pulled out her daughter’s favorite wedding dress. ‘I can’t believe she wants to wear this thing,’ she said. ‘She thinks she looks good in it. But then she thinks you love her. And you think you’re going to act. Well, start acting now, big boy. If you’re good enough, you may fuck your way into the movies. This is your audition.

“ ‘And if you say anything to my daughter, I’ll say you came after me.’ ”

“Luke went crazy,” Helen said. “He was going to be a sex slave to the mother-in-law from hell. Kiki would have complete control over him. When she tired of Luke, all she had to do was tell her daughter, and he’d be out on the street. He reacted to preserve his freedom and his career.

“Luke tore the wedding dress from Kiki’s hands and threw it over her head. She thrashed and fought in the clingy, cobwebby fabric while he forced her down on the floor. Her hoop skirt tilted up toward her head. Luke pressed down with all his strength and smothered her in yards of white lace and red-black taffeta. It wasn’t difficult. Kiki was small and drunk.

“All that fabric protected Luke. Kiki fought hard, but she only left a small scratch on his hand.

“Luke knew about DNA under the nails—he had a small part in some murder mystery. He clipped Kiki’s nails with a scissors from the bride’s room. He flushed the clippings down the toilet, washed the scissors, and put them away. He bundled the body into the closet and shut the door.”

“The perfect murder,” Phil said.

“He couldn’t have done better if he’d planned it.” Helen stopped, distracted by the sight of Phil. With his silver-white hair in a ponytail, he looked like a blue-eyed brigand.

Margery cleared her throat. Helen started talking before her landlady said something snarly.

“Luke figured that closet wouldn’t be opened until after the wedding. He’d heard his bride go on and on about when all the dresses would be worn. Once he married Desiree, Kiki’s body had to be found quickly. He wanted his new wife to inherit her fortune.

“The next morning, Luke stuffed everything he’d worn at the rehearsal in a charity pickup box. He still had to explain his scraped hand, but he knew how to do that. He’d seen how the crystal gown had scratched me. Luke made a big deal of scratching his hand during the wedding ceremony. It was captured by all the cameras. His plan was brilliant. He hid the evidence of the murder in plain sight. No wonder Luke held up his new bride’s hand like a victorious prizefighter. He’d won.”

“So why didn’t he get away with murder?” Peggy asked.

“Because he had to find out what I knew. He’d heard that I’d investigated a murder at that bookstore. He talked Desiree into meeting me at Lester’s. Luke threw suspicion on Jason, and Desiree blamed Millicent. I got nicely sidetracked.

“Then the whole thing unraveled. When I went to their house, Luke heard part of the conversation with Desiree—the last part. She’d tried to buy my nonexistent evidence. I said someone in the house was a killer and I was going to take the proof to the police. I didn’t mention any name. I thought Desiree had smothered her mother. Luke thought I was talking about him. He had to kill me to save his career. Unlike Kiki’s murder, my killing was planned.”

Helen shivered when she said that. She couldn’t help it. Phil put his arm around her, and she was ready to go on.

“Luke used his acting skills. He went to the theater for the disguise. Luke had been there often after hours.