“‘Since when?’ I says. Mr. Z. let me speak my mind, though I tried not to take advantage of it.
“She says, ‘Since our cruise. That’s where Arthur discovered curry.’ She turns to Mr. Z. and says, ‘You like it spicy, don’t you, sweetie?’ She gives him a goopy look and he grins at her like he doesn’t have a brain in his head.
“The next day she took over my kitchen and shooed me out, except when she couldn’t find a pot for the rice. The kitchen counter was covered with strange stuff she’d bought herself. A bunch of leaves she called coriander. It looked like parsley and I saw no harm in that. I recognized the bay leaves, garlic, cinnamon, poppy seeds, gingerroot and cayenne powder. But there were two other powders I never saw before: one yellow-green and the other one orange.
“I asked straight out what they were. ‘Spices,’ she says. I didn’t trust her. I snuck a pinch each in a Baggie, just in case. That was my mistake. I should have thrown it all out. I’d still be fired, but Mr. Z. would be healthy. But I let her serve that foreign slop and now he’s dying.”
“Was any curry left over?” Helen said.
“No,” Fran said. “That’s suspicious, too. She made a big potful. After dinner, she cleaned the pot and washed both their plates, then left the rest for me to clean up.
“Mr. Z. took sick during the night and she called 911. The next day I went to the police with those Baggies and—” Fran stopped, her face pink. “Made a fool of myself. But that curry was poisoned.”
“You still think that?” Helen asked.
“I know it. I saved the wrong part, that’s all. I’ll tell you something else, too.” Fran leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Blossom has herself a boyfriend.”
“Did you see him?” Helen asked.
“No, but I saw her going out at midnight all dressed up. She wasn’t wearing her regular rich-lady clothes. She had on a skintight skirt and a blouse cut to her navel. She was clickety-clacking across the drive to her car when she set off the security lights. That woke me up. I saw her plain as day, dolled up and wearing false eyelashes. She never dressed like that around Mr. Z.
“I mentioned it when I brought her morning tea. She says real casual-like, ‘Oh, yes, I couldn’t sleep. I went for a drive.’ She was dressed for a man, not a midnight drive.”
“Did Blossom ever call a man from the house?” Helen asked.
“No,” Fran said. “I’d hear her ordering things from stores and talking to Mr. Z.’s friends when they called. She didn’t have any friends of her own.
“She fired me after she found out I went to the police. Next time I saw Mr. Z., he was in the ICU in a coma. I sneaked in when his partner Mr. Roger sat with him. One look and I knew Mr. Z. was dying, but I can’t say that to Miss Violet.”
“She believes he’ll recover,” Helen said.
“She hasn’t lived as long as I have,” Fran said.
She finished her coffee, then said, “Here’s something else about Blossom. She won’t let anyone clean her dressing room. Cleans it herself. There’s something in that room she doesn’t want me to see.”
“Did you search it?” Helen asked.
“Too afraid,” Fran said. “She was looking to can me. Now she has.”
The housekeeper was quiet now, as if she’d exhausted the subject and herself.
Helen thanked Fran and drove home. She parked the Igloo in front of the Coronado Tropic Apartments, pausing briefly to admire the building’s sweeping Art Moderne curves in the fading light. The Coronado was built in 1949, when their landlady was a bride.
Helen and Phil rented half the units in the L-shaped apartment building. Their Coronado Investigations office was upstairs in apartment 2C. They lived downstairs in an odd arrangement: After their marriage, Helen and Phil kept their same small apartments next door to each other. They slept mostly at Phil’s.
Helen thought slipping into Phil’s bedroom to spend the night made their legal love feel illicit. But Phil sometimes retreated to his place to play loud music and Helen occasionally read alone in her apartment. Her cat, Thumbs, didn’t mind the arrangement as long as he was fed.
The palm trees in the courtyard rustled like old-fashioned petticoats. Helen heard laughter and found Phil, Margery and their neighbors Peggy and Pete sitting by the pool for the nightly sunset salute, a Coronado tradition.
Their landlady wore a filmy lavender caftan and a swirl of cigarette smoke. A stylish seventy-six, Margery wore her gray hair in a swingy bob and her wrinkles as marks of distinction.
She raised her glass of white wine and said, “You look tired, Your Holiness. Take a pew. Have a drink.” She poured Helen a cold glass from a box labeled “White Wine.” Even the grapes in the photo looked plastic.
“Hi, Helen,” said Peggy, a redhead with a dramatic nose. Her little black dress skimmed her figure and showcased her pale good looks.
“Hello!” said Pete. The Quaker parrot had emerald green feathers and a sober gray head. He was perched on Peggy’s shoulder.
“Hi,” Helen said. “You’re dressed up for a poolside party, Peggy.”
“I’m going to dinner with Danny,” Peggy said. “Phil said you were ordained today. Congratulations. Should I call you Reverend Hawthorne?”
“No,” Helen said. “I was ordained in the line of duty and it doesn’t feel quite right.”
“You’ll make a better minister than most seminary graduates,” Peggy said. “We’re also celebrating your agency’s two new jobs.”
“Just one,” Helen said. “Phil is working undercover as an estate manager.”
“Not yet,” Phil said. “The lady is talking to me tomorrow afternoon. If I don’t get hired, we’ll have to rethink this investigation. Meanwhile, I found us another job when I stopped at a restaurant on Seventeenth Street. I had a burger at the bar and got talking to a yacht captain at the next seat.”
“A lot of yacht crews hang out in that area,” Peggy said.
“Turns out the captain is looking for a detective. His name is Josiah Swingle.”
“Josiah sounds like a good name for a sea captain,” Helen said.
“He’s from an old New England family,” Phil said. “Josiah captains a luxury yacht docked on the New River. Says the owners mostly cruise the Caribbean. On the last trip they went to Atlantis in the Bahamas.”
“The fancy hotel and casino on Paradise Island?” Peggy asked.
“That’s the one,” Phil said.
“I’ve seen the photos,” Helen said. “Atlantis looks gorgeous.”
“You may get to see it in person,” Phil said. “The captain is worried there’s a smuggler aboard his yacht and wants to hire a detective to find him. It has to be a woman. You can work it.”
He added quickly, “If you want, Helen. I said we’d only take the job if you approve.”
“How will I watch our client’s father?” Helen asked.
“I don’t think he’s long for this world,” Phil said. “But if he lasts, Margery can babysit him.”
“I’m a minister, too, you know.” Margery grinned and exhaled an unholy amount of smoke.
“Tell me about this yacht,” Helen said.
“The captain says it’s got a cool sky lounge, a Jacuzzi and a dining room big enough for a dozen people. You’ll be one of the crew.”
“Doing what?” Helen asked.
“You’ll find out tomorrow morning at seven thirty,” Phil said. “That’s when the captain will be in our office. This job comes with an awesome ocean view.”
CHAPTER 5
