The color drained from Jeff’s face. “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked. Helen noticed he couldn’t quite keep his voice steady.
“You have a groomer here by the name of Jonathon?” Detective Crayton said.
“Yes, he’s working in the back,” Jeff said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
The detectives and four officers marched toward the grooming room. “Wait!” Jeff said. “You can’t disturb him. Please. I’ll—”
The police brushed past Jeff as if he weren’t there. He followed them into the grooming room, wringing his hands.
Jonathon was clipping a collie with a thick, handsome coat. Jonathon’s own coat was equally stunning. His avocado disco suit with the plunging neckline was made of some shiny material that changed to gold. The effect was dazzling with his hair.
The collie stood absolutely still while Jonathon expertly snipped around its back legs. Dog and groomer looked up when the police crowded into the room.
“Are you Jonathon, also known as Bertram Reginald Falkner?” Detective Crayton asked.
“I am,” Jonathon said. He was holding his ten-inch grooming scissors. They seemed menacing.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Tamara Grimsby. You have the right to remain silent—”
Crayton recited law enforcement’s familiar chant while the uniformed police officers took the scissors from Jonathon, patted him down, and cuffed him. The collie whimpered. So did Jeff.
“You’re going after Jonathon because he’s gay,” Jeff said. “Jonathon! Don’t worry. I’ll call my lawyer right away.”
“Save your money,” Detective Crayton said. “Unless you like men who kill women.”
Helen was stunned. She should have expected this, but seeing Jonathon in handcuffs was frightening. A weird, silly thought bubbled up in her brain: The silver handcuffs didn’t go with the gold in his disco suit, but she caught herself before she blurted it out. The exotic Jonathon looked smaller now, sad and shaken. The cops were wrong. They had to be.
“Jonathon didn’t kill anyone,” Helen said. “He—” She felt the two remaining police officers on either side of her. They seemed too close, even in this small room. Suddenly they both clamped down on her arms.
“Helen Hawthorne,” Detective Crayton said, “I’m taking you downtown for questioning in the murder of Tamara Grimsby. You have the right to remain silent—”
The roaring in Helen’s ears blocked out the rest of the recitation of her Miranda rights. This couldn’t be happening. Helen didn’t stay silent at all. “Jeff,” she said. “Call my landlady, Margery Flax.”
The female officer started patting her down. The male yanked Helen’s arms backward and snapped handcuffs on her wrists. That
snap!
sound was worse than the cage door closing on her in the dark.
Helen fought back her panic. She had to get in touch with Margery. She had to let her know what had happened.
Jeff stood there, paralyzed. Helen wasn’t sure if he’d heard her or not. “My landlady, Margery Flax,” she repeated. She was shouting now. “You have her number.”
Jeff looked at her blankly, too dazed to react.
The last thing Helen saw, as she stumbled out the door, was Todd. He was smiling slyly.
CHAPTER 19
H
elen had never been handcuffed before—not even when she went after her ex-husband with a crowbar. With her hands locked behind her, Helen felt helpless, trapped, and ashamed. She hadn’t done anything wrong, except maybe lie to the police. OK, she’d wiped off her fingerprints and possibly destroyed some evidence. But she didn’t kill anyone.
Now she felt overwhelmed with guilt.
Helen kept her head down on the endless walk to the police car. Her face was hot with embarrassment. She prayed that no one coming out of the Briny Irish Pub or the hair salon saw her handcuffed between two police officers. The perp walk—wasn’t that what this hangdog procession was called? She’d always thought those people looked guilty, with their heads down and their hands cuffed. Now she was one.
It wasn’t any better inside the patrol car. All the way to the Stately Palms police headquarters, Helen wondered if the cops had discovered her real name and learned what happened in St. Louis. She hoped that Jeff had called Margery. She wished she’d followed her landlady’s advice, and Phil’s, too. Just yesterday her lover had warned her that the police would be furious if they found out Helen had lied.
Now she was dumped in the backseat of a police car behind a security screen.
“Excuse me, Officers,” Helen said. “Do you know how long I’ll be detained?”
No answer. The two uniformed officers were silent as crash-test dummies.
Eventually Helen found out exactly how long she’d have to wait: four hours and eleven minutes. Every minute was agonizing.
The uniformed officers took Helen to a box of a room. It had a table bolted to the floor, a two-way mirror, and a couple of chairs. They uncuffed her hands from behind her back, then cuffed her right hand to a chair. It felt good to get one hand free and the other in front of her.
Stately Palms was a new community, and so was its police headquarters. Was the dark gray color on the walls and floor specially chosen by a decorator to induce fear and remorse? Helen was definitely sorry.
Her neck prickled. She thought someone was watching her through the mirror.
After the second hour, the air-conditioning went off. Helen suspected that was deliberate. The single hand-cuff chafed her wrist. It also hurt her conscience. Why should a metal bracelet make her feel so guilty?
By the third hour she was tormented by visions of her mother and the nuns from school, all weeping with shame. She could see Dolores standing in front of her. Her mother was thin and sad, wearing a luxuriant brown wig meant for a much younger woman. Dolores kept wringing her hands and asking where she had gone wrong: Didn’t she make sure Helen had a good Catholic education? Next to her mother was Sister Mary Margaret, Helen’s algebra teacher. She asked how an honor student had come to this.
Helen didn’t know. She had to go to the bathroom really bad. Her stomach growled. She’d confess to killing Nicole Simpson for a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
By the fourth hour she was squirming in her seat. Sweat ran down her neck and soaked her shirt. She was tormented by questions she couldn’t answer: What did the detectives know about her? What did they want? What were they going to do? Did they connect the murders of Tammie and Willoughby to the shop—and to her?
At six o’clock the door opened, and homicide detectives Crayton and McGoogan entered. They looked exhausted. Helen wondered if they’d been interrogating Jonathon for four straight hours. If the cops were exhausted, what did Jonathon look like? The air-conditioning came back on with a cooling burst.
The short, solid Detective Crayton sat across from Helen. He didn’t seem like a Russian doll anymore. He looked like a KGB torturer. The lanky McGoogan sat next to him and picked lint off his suit jacket.
Detective Crayton radiated anger: in his face, his hunched shoulders, and his clenched hands. “You’ve got one chance, and one chance only, to get this right,” he said. “Do you know anything about a white terry robe left in a Dumpster in a shopping center on Federal Highway?”
They know, Helen thought. Someone saw me. She decided to tell the truth. It was her only way out. The silence stretched on while Helen found the courage to say four words: “I put it there.”
McGoogan pulled at the knot on his tie.
Once she admitted that, the rest seemed easy. The words came flooding out. “I found Tammie’s body. I panicked and ran. I wiped down the front door with the robe. After I drove off, I realized I still had it in the car, so I threw it away behind a little strip shopping center.”
They made her repeat her story again and again. While she told this part, Detective McGoogan didn’t twitch, itch, or move. He stared straight at Helen with hard cop’s eyes. She felt like a germ under a microscope, but she kept talking. She hoped the truth would set her free.
“Why did you have the victim’s robe in the first place?” Detective Crayton asked.
“Because I didn’t want to see Tammie naked again,” Helen said. “The live Tammie, I mean. Or the dead one, for that matter. Except I didn’t know she was dead when I went back to her house.”
Helen was so tangled in her sentences, she backed up and started again. “The first time I visited her house, Tammie wasn’t wearing any clothes. I don’t like looking at naked women. If she pulled that stunt again when I came back with her dog, I was going to hand her the robe and tell her to cover up.”
“So you were angry at her,” Detective Crayton said.
“Not angry. Disgusted. Just because I’m a servant doesn’t mean I have to put up with that.”
“Did Tammie make advances toward you?” Crayton said. “Is that why you killed her?”
“I didn’t kill her,” Helen said. “I don’t know why the woman was naked. It may have been a power play. I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to see her without her clothes. So I took her robe out of the master bath.”
“What was your relationship with the deceased?”
“I didn’t have any,” Helen said. “I saw her for the first time that day.”
“Were you ever in her house?”
“Just when I picked up her dog, Prince, and then when I tried to return him.”
“Why did you run when you found the victim’s body? Were you afraid for your own safety?”
“I panicked,” Helen said. “I guess I was afraid. I was certainly afraid to be with a dead body.”
“You used the victim’s robe to wipe down the front door?” Detective Crayton said. McGoogan gnawed on his pen tip like a puppy.
“Yes,” Helen said.
“Did you realize that you knowingly destroyed evidence? Do you understand that’s a crime?”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said. “I didn’t mean to. I freaked. I saw Tammie with these scissors sticking out of her chest. It was horrible. I ran, and that was wrong. But I did call 911 to let the police know she was dead.”
Detective Crayton hit the tabletop with his thick, meaty hand. Helen jumped. “You didn’t tell the police what really happened. You delayed our investigation because of your lies.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said. How many times did they want her to apologize?
“Do you know or suspect anyone who might have wanted to kill the victim?”
Just Tammie’s husband, Kent, Helen thought. But if I say I think he’s the killer because he wanted to put her dog to sleep, I’ll sound even more unstable. Oh, and by the way, a little old lady with orange hair and turquoise toreador pants says he used to be a crooked vet named Lance.
“No, sir,” Helen said. “I don’t know anyone.”
“Have you ever been arrested?” the detective said.
“Me?” Helen squeaked like a mouse. “No.” That was technically true.
“Are you hiding anything else?”
“No,” Helen said. That was a lie.
“Write down your statement, sign it, and get out of here,” Crayton said. “This afternoon was just a taste of the future. If I catch you in another lie, I’ll lock you up and throw away the key.”
Half an hour later Helen stumbled into the lobby, feeling like she’d crawled out of a car wreck. She looked like it, too. Her hair was limp and greasy. Her shirt was wrinkled and torn on one shoulder. She was angry at herself, but she had tear tracks on her cheeks. That made her madder.
Phil was waiting for her on a hard plastic bench. In the dark lobby his hair shone like a beacon. Helen ran into his arms and he held her, crooning to her and smoothing her hair. He smelled of coffee and something citrusy.
“It’s all right, babe. It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Let’s get out of here and get you some food.”
“I can’t go to a restaurant looking like this,” Helen said.
“We’ll go to your place. The electricity is back on. I’ll scramble you some eggs while you shower and change.”
Helen felt better after she was clean and sitting in front of a steaming plate of eggs and slightly burned buttered toast. Phil treated her with tenderness, but the tension between them wasn’t completely gone. Helen could feel it like a small stone in her shoe.
Phil even fed Thumbs. The big-pawed cat jumped in his lap for a long scratch while Helen wolfed down her food.
“I talked with the two homicide detectives while you wrote out your statement,” Phil said. “They were more interested in pumping me about you than telling me anything.”
Helen put down her fork, instantly wary. “What did you tell them?”
“That you were a complete ditz,” Phil said. “I said I wasn’t surprised that you ran away when you found the dead woman.”
“Thanks a lot,” Helen said.
“They believed me,” Phil said. “I was trying to get you off the hook.”
Maybe he was, but Helen still thought it was an angry thing to say. The cops weren’t the only ones who were furious at her.
“They did tell me a few things,” Phil said. He was scratching Thumbs’s ears. The cat rolled over on his back and presented his belly. “As I suspected, they brought you in because they were mad.” Phil didn’t say, “I told you so.” He didn’t have to. “They wanted to scare the shit out of you.”
“They succeeded,” Helen said.
“You did the right thing, telling them the truth.” Helen heard the unspoken “this time.”
“The police have you on tape tossing that robe into the Dumpster,” Phil said. “You picked a Dumpster by a doctor’s building with security cameras. The docs have had a lot of drug break-ins.
“A security guard noticed you dumping the robe. He picked it out. It had a woman’s name embroidered on it. When he saw the news later that night, and realized that was the name of the murder victim, he called the Stately Palms police. If you’d lied about the robe, the cops would have arrested you for sure.”
“They’ve already arrested our star groomer, Jonathon, for Tammie’s murder,” Helen said. “If they have a suspect, why are they asking me all these questions?”