Murder Unleashed (33 page)

“I guess it was.” Helen told her landlady about Pinkie and the ribbons. Margery listened. With her wrinkled brown face, she looked like an intelligent shar-pei.

“That woman stabbed him in the heart,” Margery said. “Then he did the same thing to her.”

Helen heard the opening bars of Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” coming from her pants.

“That’s my phone,” Margery said. “I programmed it to play Florida’s state song.”

Helen pulled the phone out of her pocket, and Todd’s watch fell out with it. Once again Helen saw Todd’s confused face, heard his short shriek, and saw him falling toward the sunlit canal. It glittered like the diamonds on his watch. Helen’s wall of glass shattered, and she was crying.

“It’s about time,” Margery said, but her voice was soft with concern. She turned off the phone and plunked down a jumbo box of tissues. Helen wept noisily, then blew her nose with airhorn honks.

“Why don’t you sit in the recliner and rest?” Margery said.

“I don’t want to sleep.” Helen was afraid of what she might see when she closed her eyes.

“I didn’t say you had to,” Margery said. “Sit down.”

The purple recliner seemed to enfold Helen in its pillowy depths. She was so tired. She woke up at six o’clock that evening, wrapped in a purple afghan. Margery had turned up the volume on the TV.

“Hi, bright eyes,” she said. “I thought you’d want to hear this.”

It was a press conference with a police spokesman.

“Is the case closed then?” a reporter asked.

“We believe that Tammie Grimsby was killed by a jealous dog groomer, who then committed suicide out of remorse. We found several partially finished suicide notes in the suspect’s home.”

“It’s over,” Helen said. “They’re not going to arrest me or make me testify.”

“There’s that ego again. It’s not about you,” Margery said. “It never was.”

A TV reporter interviewed Tammie’s widower. Kent wore a shirt with black toucans all over it. Florida mourning. Kent tried to look solemn, but Helen thought he seemed gleefully relieved.

“This groomer guy, Todd, was, like, obsessed with my wife, Tammie, after he met her at a party,” Kent said. He did not mention the party entertainment. Apparently the reporter didn’t know.

“He came to the house with all these diamonds and sh—stuff. Tammie said she didn’t want them. She threw them on the lawn. She was a married woman, you know.”

Helen nearly choked. She was surprised that Tammie told her husband about the jewelry. Then it made perfect sense. The last piece fell into place.

Tammie had used Todd to make Kent jealous.

H
elen kept Todd’s watch on her dresser, and wound it every morning. She couldn’t figure out if it was Todd or her own guilt she was trying to keep alive.

She’d been arrogant and overconfident. Because she’d talked Francis out of killing himself, Helen thought she could save Todd, too. She misunderstood the situation. Pale Francis didn’t love or hate with Todd’s intensity. Willoughby’s husband had needed a reason to live, and Helen gave it to him.

Todd had wanted to die. He’d already made up his mind. He’d written those half-finished suicide notes, hoping to summon the courage to kill himself. She’d helped him over the balcony.

It was hard for Helen to walk into the Pampered Pet her first day back. It never got any easier. She saw Todd everywhere: flirting with his ladies, carrying heavy cases for customers, kissing his dogs.

A little murder and suicide didn’t hurt the store. In fact, business was better than usual. Everyone made an excuse to stop by and say they knew Todd was guilty and Jonathon was innocent.

Jonathon was back as the flamboyant star of the Lauderdale grooming world. He wore gold lamé for his return, and marched into his private room like a monarch reclaiming his throne. He would tantalize his admirers with glimpses of his outrageous outfits. But Jonathon still refused to talk to anyone. His tantrums were forces of nature. Customers were thrilled when he unleashed his rage on them. In the midst of one techno-tantrum, Helen thought he winked at her.

Jonathon’s secret was safe. Jeff and the Pampered Pet customers never learned he was a family man living in Davie.

Other secrets were revealed after Todd’s death. Jeff finally told Helen why he was meeting Rax in the van. “He’s painting a picture of my Bill,” Jeff confessed. “I keep taking him candid photos of Bill for the portrait, but Rax wants more. He’s such a perfectionist. I haven’t told anyone but you, because I want it to be a surprise.”

The animal-loving Betty told Margery where she was the day Tammie died. She really did go to play golf at the country club. The tee time was in her friend Zelda’s name. But as the two women were heading for the country club, Zelda got a call. Her aging mother had taken a turn for the worse at a Boca Raton nursing home. The golf date was canceled. Zelda rushed off to see her mother. Betty stopped by Tammie’s to squeeze more money out of her. Tammie insulted her and she left. Then Lourdes the housekeeper got the call from Francis and she left. Tammie was alone at home when Todd arrived.

Perhaps if Tammie had been more polite to Betty—or more generous—Betty would have stayed longer and Tammie might be alive today.

Francis admitted that he’d locked Helen in the big cage. He’d come to the shop to kill her. Willoughby had confronted him with Helen’s find. She’d said that Helen had a witness who saw him pull that alibi receipt out of the trash. She also told her husband that Tammie was a better man than he was. Francis killed his wife in a red rage. He was lucky, at least for a while. Willoughby hadn’t called Detective Ted Brogers with Helen’s find yet.

Francis drove straight to the store to kill Helen before she went to the police with her alibi-breaking information. He was going to wait for her in the parking lot. But then he saw Todd and Jeff leave. The shop door was unlocked. When the lights went off, Francis thought it would be easy to kill Helen in the store. He could make it look like a botched robbery. Inside the pitch-black store, he realized Helen would be the perfect suspect for Willoughby’s murder. Francis left her alive and trapped in the cage.

Barkley the model pup lost her contract with the Davis Family Dollar department stores when they learned of her mistress’s lesbian love affair. The dog was ruined as a family store mascot. Her only job offers were for Internet porn sites. Francis pleaded guilty and was serving eight to ten years. He couldn’t keep the dog, anyway. He wasn’t permitted to profit from his crime.

Willoughby’s only relative, an eighty-year-old aunt with a tiny apartment, didn’t want the boisterous pup. She gave Barkley to the one person who really wanted her—Tammie’s housekeeper, Lourdes. Barkley lived happily ever after, frolicking in the yard in Hialeah.

A month after Todd jumped off his balcony, Helen picked his watch off her dresser. She took the bus to the Fort Lauderdale beach. It was the same endless ocean she’d seen from Todd’s balcony, but up close it seemed warm and friendly. She watched a young mother and her baby laugh and slap at the waves. Then a big wave drenched the pair, and Mom snatched her child back from the wild water.

Poor Todd, Helen thought. Love took him by surprise. Men like Todd didn’t fall in love with women. They were supposed to love him. Tammie was indeed his soul mate: as coldhearted as he was and just as mercenary.

The wave-slapped little boy had stopped crying. His mother gently dried his face with a blue beach towel and tickled him until he giggled.

At least Todd loved someone, Helen thought, however heartless she was. That was an achievement. It was more than Tammie had managed.

Helen looked at the sparkling Cartier watch with the broken leather band. Then she threw it into the sea. She walked to the nearest resort hotel and went in the back way to the employee entrance. She was met by a gruff guard in a beige uniform.

“Are you hiring?” she asked.

Ah, the wonders of Florida. Helen had no hotel skills. But she spoke English and she didn’t have to worry about a green card. She was hired on the spot as a chambermaid.

She gave her notice to Jeff that same day.

“Why, Helen?” Jeff seemed hurt that she was leaving. “I thought you liked it here. Didn’t I treat you right?”

“I love you,” she said. “But I can’t stay here. I keep seeing Todd everywhere. I think I need the company of strangers.”

“What will you be doing?” Jeff said.

“I have a job at a hotel as a maid. I won’t be tempted to get to know people. They’ll stay a few days and leave. I’ll like it that way.”

They shook hands, and then Jeff drew her in for a hug. “Come back if you change your mind,” he said.

Lulu followed Helen to the shop door, her tail wagging. Lulu’s outfits were getting as outrageous as Jonathon’s. Today she swanned around in a leather biker outfit embroidered with BITCH WITH A BAD ATTITUDE.

When Helen opened the door, Lulu made a mad dash for the Briny Irish Pub. “You go, girl,” she said, and laughed.

It was the first time she’d laughed since Todd’s death.

Helen still couldn’t sleep through the night. In her dreams she was forever reaching for Todd. She’d wake up to find the sheets twisted and sweaty. The bedroom walls would close in on her, and she’d go outside in the cool night air.

Phil found her at six o’clock one morning, standing by the Coronado pool, staring at nothing. He’d just gotten up himself, and his hair had a cute little-boy cowlick.

“Still feeling bad about Todd?” he said.

She nodded.

“Come for a ride with me,” he said.

Helen would have followed him anywhere with that cowlick. They climbed into his battered black Jeep. It was a chilly morning, and the plastic windows were zipped up. The sky was streaked pink and orange. A1A, the oceanside highway, was free of the tourist hordes at that hour.

At the old beach town Lauderdale by the Sea, Phil found a parking spot near the ocean. “Let’s walk on the beach,” he said.

The ocean was a translucent pearly gray. The morning was theirs, except for the seabirds and another pair of lovers sitting cross-legged on the beach, watching the sunrise.

Helen and Phil walked in comfortable silence, following the curve of the beach.

An old man was swimming in the cold water. A young man sat on the sand in a yoga position that made Helen’s legs ache. Helen walked and watched the waves until she felt tired and peaceful.

Finally they came to Anglin’s Fishing Pier. Warning signs declared the pier closed due to storm damage, but the Pier Coffee Shop was open. It was a gray building about the size of a boxcar. Tacked on the outside were battered turquoise booths overlooking the water.

Helen and Phil sat at an outside booth, the sharp morning wind driving them closer together. A waitress poured hot mugs of coffee to warm them.

“Number two,” yelled the cook from the kitchen, and the waitress scurried inside to pick up an order, then came back out for theirs.

Helen and Phil watched a red tractor trundling down the beach, pulling a triangular attachment that cleaned and smoothed the sand, wiping away all traces of yesterday.

“I love you, Helen,” Phil said. “But I won’t live with lies and secrets. Tell me what happened to you. If you don’t trust me, I understand. But then it’s over between us.”

Helen saw her life without Phil, stretching into lonely infinity.

“I want to, Phil,” she said. “But then you’ll know too much about me. You can send me to jail. I trusted a man once and he betrayed me, and that’s how I wound up on the run. What if I trust you, and you do the same thing to me? I’ll lose everything: my life, my home, my new friends. I can’t start over again, Phil. I won’t. I can’t give you that power over me.”

“But I gave you that power,” Phil said. “You know I do undercover investigations. You can burn me. You can kill me.”

Helen felt as if he’d slapped her. “I would never do that to you,” she said. “How could you even think that?”

“And I would never betray you,” Phil said. “My life is in your hands, as your life will be in mine. If you tell me, we will be equals. We will both have everything to lose—and give.”

Helen looked at the man she loved, and saw he was right. It wasn’t a question of power anymore. They both held the same power over one another. And so she told him her story. Phil didn’t offer solutions. He didn’t interrupt. He seemed to listen with his whole body until she finished.

“My ex-husband, Rob, and the court are looking for me and if they find me I’ll have to go back to St. Louis,” she said. “Nobody but my sister, Kathy, knows where I am. I can’t even trust my mother. She wants me to go back to Rob.”

“What do you want to do?” he said.

“I want to stay at the Coronado,” Helen said. “I want to keep on living this life. I want to love you.”

“Then that’s what you’ll do. If you ever want to try to straighten things out in St. Louis, I will help you.”

“I don’t trust the law, Phil,” Helen said. “I don’t believe in legal justice, not anymore.”

“Then we’ll do it your way.”

Seagulls screamed around them. They held hands and watched two shaggy dogs play in the surf.

“This place is enchanted,” Helen said. “But I read somewhere they may sell the pier to developers and close the coffee shop.”

Phil shrugged. “I hear that rumor every other week, and the place is still going strong. It’s true the coffee shop could close someday. A hurricane could come by next week and blow it away. Or the hurricane could blow us away. Unless we’re hit by a car or run over by a bus.

“It’s here now, Helen, and so are we, and that’s all that matters.”

Then he kissed her, and at that moment she believed him.