Murder Unleashed (13 page)

Todd was pouting. Jeff had banished the hunky young groomer to the cage room with a new three-speed fan. The windowless room reeked of wet dog.

“Are you ready for the storm?” she asked him.

“No, and I can’t get ready when people interrupt me,” he snapped.

Helen put Todd’s bad mood down mostly to the weather. Hers wasn’t much better. She was keyed up, tired, and lethargic, all at once. The customers’ dogs were shrill and yappy. Even Lulu was snappish. She tore off her daisy collar and refused to model anything else. She took an instant dislike to a large man in a very wet parrot shirt who wanted a bag of organic dog food. “Hell, I can’t remember what brand she feeds that mutt,” he said. “Let me call my wife.”

He speed-dialed her on his cell phone and said, “Hey, you still in bed or on the can?”

Lulu nipped his pants leg.

“What’s wrong with that crazy dog?” Parrot Shirt said. Lulu nimbly dodged his kick.

“I’m so sorry,” Jeff said. “The storm has her upset.”

Helen slipped Lulu a cheese-and-bacon treat. She would have bitten the guy, too, if she could have gotten away with it.

Jeff helped Parrot Shirt to the car with his sack of food and came back drenched. He dried his sopping hair with a dog groomer’s towel, and used one of the big dog hair dryers to get the water off his clothes.

“The storm is getting worse,” he said. “I think we’d better close about four p.m.”

The door opened with a wind-snapping sound, and two water-soaked men entered. One was short and solid. The other shook himself like a wet dog. It was homicide detectives Crayton and McGoogan. Helen’s heart sank.

“Could we talk to you a minute?” Detective Crayton asked Helen. The rain had not improved his mood. McGoogan brushed water drops off his suit like dandruff.

She looked at Jeff, hoping he’d say that he needed her behind the register.

“I can handle this,” Jeff said. “Go on back to the stockroom where you can have some privacy.” And the customers won’t see you, Helen thought.

The curtains to the grooming side twitched. Helen wondered if Todd or Jonathon were watching. She did not hear the roar of the dog dryer. Was someone trying to listen? Helen hoped the flirtatious Lulu would join them and distract the detectives, but she stayed with Jeff.

Detective Crayton did not sit down this time. He remained standing. His bald head barely came to Helen’s nose, but the detective seemed to fill the room. “Just wanted to ask you a quick question about the second time you came to the victim’s house and attempted to deliver the dog,” Crayton said.

“Yes?” Here it comes, Helen thought.

“A neighbor said your store’s pink Cadillac was parked in front of the victim’s house for nearly twenty minutes around four o’clock that afternoon. That’s a long time to knock on anyone’s door. Are you sure you didn’t go inside the house on that second visit?”

Detective McGoogan scratched his ear.

“Why would I do that?” Helen said.

“I don’t know,” Crayton said. “Maybe to kill Mrs. Grimsby.”

McGoogan scraped a splash of mud off his trouser leg.

“No!” Helen said. “Never. How can you say that? The neighbor was wrong. I knocked on the door and no one answered, so I took the dog back to the store.”

“We have the tape from the guard’s shack,” Crayton said. He leaned forward. Helen took a step back. “You came into the country club grounds at three fifty-nine p.m. and you left at four twenty-four p.m. That was a long time to knock on a door.”

Detective McGoogan wound his watch.

“I got lost,” Helen said. “Very twisty roads in that development.”

“That so?” Detective Crayton said. He looked like a brick wall. An angry wall. “Because you had no trouble finding your way back the first time. Took you about three minutes. But that’s your story, right, and you’re sticking to it? Sure you don’t want to change anything?”

Detective McGoogan was staring straight at her, eyes fixed on her lying face.

“I can’t,” Helen said. “That’s what happened.”

“Don’t go anywhere, Miss Hawthorne. We’ll be talking with you again.”

They left. Helen heard the door slam in the wind. She could feel the panic clawing at her guts. She stayed in the stockroom for a moment, trying to recover. In the small windowless bathroom, she plastered on more lipstick, then wiped it off. It looked like a bloody slash in her dead-white face. Helen splashed water on her face, then took a deep breath and went into the store.

“Everything all right?” Jeff said.

“Fine,” Helen said. She was glad when a little woman in a yellow rain slicker struggled against the wind to enter the shop. Helen ran to help her inside. It was Elsie, Margery’s friend.

Elsie pulled off the slicker and draped it over the counter. Jeff’s eyes bugged. Elsie was seventy-eight. If her heart was as young as her wardrobe, Elsie’s ticker was about eighteen. She wore tight green satin low-rise pants, a yellow halter top, and turquoise high heels. Her substantial breasts hung low, which was good. They covered most of her bare middle. Helen thought the barbed-wire tattoo on her arm was probably henna. Elsie’s fluffy hair was orange with green streaks. The effect was surreal but oddly appealing, like an old colorized photo.

Elsie had a sweet, dithery manner. “Helen, dear, Margery didn’t tell me you were working here. I came in to pick up my Corkie. Today is her first cut. That’s an important time in a doggie’s life, and I didn’t want to miss it.”

“I’ll get her,” Helen said.

Corkie was a fluffy white dog with a black button nose, who’d waited patiently in her cage. She yipped ecstatically when she climbed into Elsie’s arms, then licked her face, removing most of her mistress’s makeup. Helen thought Corkie’s instincts were good, but she was in no position to be giving fashion advice today.

In the middle of the reunion, Jonathon stalked into the boutique side like a rock star, rhinestones flashing in the fluorescent light, orange satin shining, long mane waving. As he strode by Elsie, Helen was nearly blinded by their combined colors.

Elsie didn’t realize protocol required her not to speak to the star groomer. “Excuse me, young man,” she said in her soft, slightly trembly voice. “Don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” Jonathon said. He looked at Elsie like she was a hair in his butter.

“I think I saw you at a pet shop in Tampa,” Elsie said, stopping his sparkling progress. “You worked there about four years ago.”

“I’ve never been to Tampa,” Jonathon said. He stepped around Elsie and talked briefly to Jeff about his schedule. The next thing Helen knew, Jonathon had packed up his scissors and left.

“I don’t think I am mistaken,” Elsie said. “I’m very good with faces. Well, it’s not important. I want a case of puppy food and some treats for Corkie. She’s a teacup poodle. Very expensive, she was, but I bought a lot of love.”

“She’s adorable,” Jeff said, and scratched the little dog’s ears. Corkie wagged her tail and whimpered happily. She was still a pup, but big for a teacup poodle. Helen thought Jeff was giving Corkie a close examination. Was there something wrong with Jonathon’s grooming?

Elsie packed Corkie into her carrying case and tottered out on her turquoise spikes. Helen followed with the dog food. The wind hit the women so hard, they had trouble talking. Helen made sure Elsie and her pup were safely in her red Miata. Then she stowed the dog food and treats in the backseat.

“I’m sure I’ve seen that young man before,” Elsie said, once she was inside the car. “That groomer. What’s his name?”

“Jonathon,” Helen said.

“I don’t think so,” Elsie said. “That’s not the name he used when I knew him.”

H
elen’s hair hung in wet tangles. Her soaked shirt stuck to her skin. Her shoes squished. All she did was carry Elsie’s dog food to the car, and she was drenched.

“The parking lot is flooding,” she told Jeff.

“The storm drains must have backed up,” he said.

“I’ll say. The water was up to my ankles. It will be over the curb and into the store soon.”

“I’d better get some dog towels to pack around the door,” Jeff said. He opened the grooming room dryer and threw Helen a warm towel.

“Ahh,” she said as she dried her face. “That’s heaven.”

Jeff draped a second warm towel around her shivering shoulders. “How well do you know Elsie?”

“She’s a friend of my landlady, Margery Flax,” Helen said. “Elsie is a sweetie.” Her hair was dripping on her soggy shoes.

“Maybe she’s too sweet,” Jeff said. “I think she was ripped off. Corkie isn’t a teacup poodle. Teapot is more like it. That dog is too big to be a teacup. Adult teacups weigh between three and four pounds, and that puppy is nearly five pounds now. It’s not even a full-blooded poodle. Did you see her nose? A poodle nose is pointed. Elsie’s dog has a button nose, like a bichon.”

“Elsie got scammed,” Helen said. “It isn’t the first time. She’s a con artist’s dream.”

“She probably spent a lot of money for that cute little mutt,” Jeff said. “Want some coffee?”

“Yes, I’m freezing in this air-conditioning.”

Jeff poured Helen a cup. She wrapped her hands around it to warm them. “Happens all the time,” Jeff said. “Naive dog lovers are willing to pay several thousand dollars for the current fashionable pedigreed pup. Instead, they get a mixed breed. They’re easy to cheat when they don’t know anything about dogs. I see it so often in this business. I hear so many sad stories from my customers who got clipped.

“There’s a couple of local pet shops that pull these scams. They display the dogs behind glass, like works of art. They wait for suckers like Elsie, who can’t tell a poodle from a Pomeranian. They’ll hand her a puppy. ‘Just hold it,’ the pet store people say. ‘Love is free.’

“Once Elsie has that lovable puppy in her hands, she’s hooked. She’ll pay whatever they want. The price depends on how rich Elsie looks. Since your friend has designer clothes and a new Miata, I bet she paid two or three thousand dollars for Corkie.

“The store tells Elsie she has a registered, pedigreed teacup poodle. The teacup isn’t even an AKC variety. The store gave her fake papers. It’s a swindle, but dog owners rarely complain. By the time they find out they’ve been cheated, they’re in love. They wouldn’t dream of returning their dog.”

Helen knew they’d never pry Corkie away from Elsie.

“The crooked shops get away with their con jobs. It makes me sick. You know what really gets me?” Jeff said. “A lot of people can’t afford those fake pedigreed pups. The crooked shops sell the pet on credit. The dog owner winds up paying on a high-interest loan forever.”

“Poor Elsie. That sounds like something she’d do,” Helen said. “She never reads the fine print in contracts.”

“Are you going to tell her that Corkie isn’t a teacup poodle?” Jeff said.

“Why?” Helen said. “Elsie would never return that little dog. Besides, I saw the scar on her tummy. Corkie has been spayed. She won’t be bred. Telling Elsie the truth now would only upset her.”

“I guess it’s never good to know the truth about the one you love,” Jeff said. He went back to make more coffee.

Was it? Helen wondered, as she dried her damp hair with a dog dryer. The blast of warm air felt good, but the sound nearly deafened her.

Would Phil feel that way? He was flying into a hurricane for her, if the airport was open in this weather. She longed for her lover, but she was afraid to see him. When Phil looked into her eyes, would he believe her reasons for not telling him about Tammie? Would he wonder what else she was hiding from him? Would she tell him?

After she smashed her marriage with her swinging crowbar, Helen had dated a prize collection of drunks, druggies, and deadbeats. For a while she’d had a crush on Cal, her Canadian neighbor at the Coronado. She’d loved the charming way he said “a-boot” for “about.” His habit of forgetting his wallet when they went out to dinner was less charming. Helen had also dated a man who forgot he was married, and one who forgot she was single. He’d given Helen bruises when she’d talked to another man.

Helen was a loser in the dating game until she met Phil. She’d given up on the male species. Then he’d walked into her life. Actually, he’d been living next door for months on end. But she didn’t see him—literally—until a few months ago. It wasn’t love at first sight. Helen’s first encounter with her dream lover had been an embarrassing nightmare. But then she’d saved him from drowning, and he’d saved her from getting in too deep with the law. Now, after the beating her heart took from her ex-husband, she was slowly learning to love and trust another man. When she thought about their last night together on Phil’s black silk sheets, Helen felt hot, and it had nothing to do with the roaring hair dryer.

“Helen,” Jeff called. “Can you take care of Mrs. Thompson?”

The store was suddenly deluged with customers. Helen didn’t have time to think of Phil, Elsie’s nonpoodle, or her mysterious remark about Jonathon: “That’s not the name he used when I knew him.”

As the weather worsened, people were frantic to buy for their pets. Helen hauled out bags of dog food and cans of cat food until her arms ached. Customers did not stop to talk anymore. They no longer speculated on the path of the storm. They wanted to run their essential errands and get home. Streets were flooding. Shops were locking their doors. Drawbridges across the Intracoastal Waterway were closing. People bought, paid, and rushed out the door. They all gave the same touching good-bye: “Be safe.”

Be safe. It was what we wish most for ourselves and others, Helen thought.

Helen and Jeff worked for more than an hour before there was a break in the flood of customers. Todd came out of the grooming room looking dazed about the same time. His white T-shirt was covered with brown dog hair, and his jeans had stains Helen didn’t want to examine too closely. Todd smelled like a wet dog. Only his diamond Cartier watch retained its rich glow.