Just Murdered (10 page)

The blackboard’s emptiness was tempting. Helen wrote the suspects’ names on it. There were a lot of them. Enough, she hoped, to keep the cops interested in someone besides herself. Then she added four lines that looked almost like poetry:

It looked like everyone had a good reason for wanting Kiki dead. The only one who lost out was Jason. Whatever his motive for cozying up to Kiki last night, it was too soon for him to reap any benefits.

She wondered if writing down the names looked suspicious. She erased the blackboard.

Pace. Pace. Pace. Helen tried to stay calm. She had a bad moment when she was fingerprinted in a room down the hall. Airhead Amy came out of the room as Helen went in.

“They put black stuff on my fingers.” Amy dabbed at them with a lace handkerchief.

“At least it matches your dress,” Helen said.

The tech explained he needed Helen’s fingerprints for elimination purposes, since she’d grabbed the closet door handle.

I have nothing to fear, Helen told herself. My prints aren’t on file in St. Louis. She’d never been booked for the assault on her ex-husband, Rob. I’m nobody. There’s no way they’ll find out I’m wanted by the court in St. Louis.

She wanted to believe that. But she’d also believed Rob would love her forever and they would live happily ever after.

Back in the classroom with the pint-sized chairs, Helen paced and looked at the Jesus Loves Me posters. The cathedral believed in a blond country-club Christ, even though there were few natural blonds in the Middle East. If the real Jesus appeared, would they hand him a mop and make him clean the johns?

The sun was in a late-afternoon slant when Helen finally met the two Sunnysea homicide detectives. They were in the minister’s office, a gloomy room full of guilt and power. The dark furniture was designed to overwhelm. Helen wondered how many major donors wrote checks just to get out of there.

Detective Bill McIntyre had the pumped-up body she saw in lots of younger cops. His thick neck and puffed pecs were muscular, but the effect was oddly soft. His dark mustache looked like a woolly bear caterpillar. Helen’s grandmother could predict cold weather by the woolly bears. It’s going to be a bad winter, Helen thought.

Detective Janet Smith was the scary one. Helen had seen her confront Brendan. She was a thin blonde with a long crooked nose and hard brown eyes. She had yellow nicotine stains on her fingers and no wedding ring.

Smith’s hair was sensibly short. Her dark pantsuit was professional but not stylish. Her black lace-up shoes would not come off if she chased a suspect. If I tried to bolt, Helen thought, she’d run me down.

Detectives Smith and McIntyre asked her a million questions, mostly about the room.

What time did Helen get there? Who else was there when she arrived? Were the lights turned on or off when she arrived? Were the doors open, closed, locked, or unlocked? What about the bathroom door? The windows?

Helen’s head hurt. The more the two detectives asked, the less she knew. She thought the doors were open—no, closed. She wasn’t sure. The windows were definitely closed. Unless they were open.

“That’s a nasty scratch on your arm,” Detective Smith said.

“A wedding dress got me,” Helen said. “I was scratched by the crystal beading.”

“Mind if we photograph it?”

Helen let Detective McIntyre take Polaroids of her arm. She hoped she looked calm. She could feel the panic rising inside her, drowning out any reasonable thought.

The two detectives escorted her across the parking lot and back to the bride’s room. Techs were still working in the room, and black fingerprint powder was everywhere. Helen felt sick, even though Kiki’s body was gone.

“We’d like you to walk us through what you did when you arrived this morning,” Detective Smith said.

Helen closed her eyes and tried to remember. “I came in this door. It was open. The light was on. Jeff—he’s the wedding planner—had coffee going. He’d set out a breakfast buffet. I checked the room and the bathroom to make sure they were clean. Everything was fine.”

She went through the details of that endless day until she said, “I opened the closet door and found Kiki. I don’t have to open the door again, do I?”

“No,” Smith said.

It was bad enough having to walk over there. It was an ordinary closet with a couple of padded hangers. Now it yawned, evil and empty, the air around it heavy with hate and fear.

Helen knew this was her imagination, but it didn’t help.

“When you opened the closet door, did you touch the body?” Detective Smith said.

“I’m not sure,” Helen said. “I tried to catch Kiki when she fell. I think I grabbed her dress.”

She saw the skirt flip up again, felt the falling fabric and the tumbling legs. Then the scene shifted and Helen saw Brendan and his buddies lift the body, and Kiki moon the wedding party. It was Kiki’s final shot at her ex. Helen started laughing and couldn’t stop.

“What’s so funny?” Detective Smith sounded suspicious. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because I can’t cry,” Helen said. She was sick from fatigue, shock, and a day-long stew of ugly emotions.

“Is there anything else you want to tell us?” Detective Smith said.

Helen couldn’t think of anything. She couldn’t think, period.

It was nearly six o’clock when Helen was finally free to leave. She used the pay phone in the church hall to tell Millicent the bad news: Kiki was dead.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” Millicent said.

She was the first person who actually said so, Helen thought.

But then Millicent kept talking. “Kiki still hasn’t paid for those dresses. I called her last night and she promised to give you the check this morning. Her daughter heard me, and I wasn’t very nice. In fact, I sort of lost it. I can hardly run over there now to offer my condolences and collect the check.”

“What’s going to happen?” Helen said.

“I’ll have to collect the money from the estate,” Millicent said. “That may be faster than trying to get it out of Kiki. She liked to play power games with her money—you saw how she treated Chauncey. She may have done me a favor, getting herself murdered.”

Millicent sounded almost cheerful when she hung up.

Helen wondered if the wedding reception had been canceled. She didn’t care. The wedding was in ruins. The bridal gowns had been bagged and tagged as evidence. The makeup jobs were streaked with tears. The bridesmaids’ Vera Wangs were wrinkled and ripe with fear sweat. The miserable day was over.

A crowd of hungry reporters waited on the cathedral steps. Helen ducked out the side door, ran for the shop van, and drove out of the church lot.

Millicent’s was closed by the time she arrived. Helen parked the van behind the shop and poked the keys through the mail slot. Then she started walking home barefoot, enjoying the feel of the sun-warmed concrete on her feet. Because it was Florida, no one noticed she wasn’t wearing shoes.

Helen was nearly at the Coronado when she realized she hadn’t told the detectives about her fight with Kiki.

It’s not important, she decided. I just want to go home and get that glass of wine.

This day couldn’t get any worse. But Helen was wrong about that, too.

When she got home, Helen didn’t want that drink after all. She wanted the comfort of Phil’s arms. She could feel him wrapped around her. She could feel his soft hair and smell his spicy aftershave.

Helen wasn’t a woman alone anymore. She had a man who loved her—a faithful man. Phil was nothing like Rob, the rat she’d married.

The day had taken its toll. Helen felt like the detectives had beaten her with a rubber hose. Her hair stuck out in six directions. She was sweaty and shoeless. Her feet were dirty from the city sidewalks, and she limped a bit after stepping on the last bottle cap in America. She needed a shower. Then she needed Phil.

In the Coronado parking lot, Helen saw a woman with long curly red hair struggling with a pile of bulky luggage. She was trying to drag two black wheeled suitcases and a surfboard-sized piece of equipment over the curb and up the sidewalk. Her skin-tight jeans and spike heels made it hard for her to lift the bags.

“Can I help you?” Helen said.

The woman stuck out a taloned hand and said, “I’m Kendra, the Kentucky Songbird. I have a song on the
Billboard
charts. I’m staying with my husband.”

“Warren?” Poor Margery, Helen thought. She was in for a surprise. Her handsome dancing partner had a much younger wife.

“No, Phil. Didn’t he tell you about me?”

“No,” Helen said. The rest of her words wilted and died.

Kendra gave a gusty sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that man. I told him to let the neighbors know I’ll be moving in.”

“Moving in,” Helen repeated numbly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kendra said brightly. “You must be Helen. He told me all about you. You’re a—what? Oh, right, a clerk at a wedding dress shop.”

She looked at Helen’s dirty bare feet. “Must be one of those hippy-dippy places. Even country brides aren’t barefoot and pregnant nowadays.”

Kendra’s heels were red and glittery. And round, Helen thought nastily.

“I have a gig here in Fort Lauderdale at a big night-club on U.S. 1, and of course I’m staying with my husband.” Kendra’s soft country accent was a cross between Billy Ray Cyrus and The Judds.

“Your husband,” Helen said.

“Thanks for offering to help carry this. Phil said how nice and friendly you were. He’d said you’d do just about anything for a person when you hardly knew him.”

Helen thought about what she’d done for Phil last night. She’d been real friendly. She felt the hot blood rush to her face.

“Sure,” Helen said. One word was all she could handle without killing herself or Kendra.

Kendra promptly dumped both suitcases on Helen as if she were a porter. “Here. I’ll keep the keyboard. You take these,” she said.

It was like moving a pair of refrigerators. Helen staggered behind the woman. On closer inspection, Kendra’s hair was orange-red, a color not found in nature unless you were an opium poppy. It reached almost to her round behind, which switched rhythmically back and forth as she walked. Kendra pointed to Phil’s apartment. “That’s his place there.”

Kendra was wearing stage makeup. Her dramatic black eyeliner gave her Egyptian eyes. Her short pink sweater showed her nipples. She moved in a sweet, heavy cloud of perfume.

“I know,” Helen said. Last night we made the bed-springs rock, she thought. Phil did absolutely everything, except tell me about you. Oh, wait. He did mention you. He said, “The romance went out of my marriage with the wedding. My ex got caught up in making sure the bridesmaids’ ribbons matched the groomsmen’s cummerbunds.”

“My ex.” Not “my wife.”

What else had Phil said? Helen searched her shell-shocked brain. “I felt like an afterthought. I never lost that feeling.”

I am Phil’s afterthought. I’m the fool he screwed while his wife was on the road. Friendly old Helen, providing aid and comfort to lonely husbands. She wanted to hurl Kendra’s luggage into the pool. She wanted to throw Phil in after it. She wanted to drag out his drowned body and stomp him into the ground. She wanted to bury him under twenty tons of coral rock. Then she wanted to dig him up, so she could kill him all over again.

“You’re a country singer?” Helen said with an odd croak.

“Number ninety-seven on the Billboard country music chart.” Kendra thrust out her chest proudly, as if the chart was printed on her front. Her breasts and her dangly earrings jiggled simultaneously. Kendra didn’t look like a country singer to Helen. She looked like a man-stealing twit.

“What’s your song called?” Helen said.

“ ‘You Can’t Divorce My Heart.’ ” Kendra’s perfume drifted back to Helen in a choking cloud.

“I see,” Helen said. And she did.

“Well, here’s his place. Don’t you want to come in and see Phil?” Kendra said.

“I already have,” Helen said.

She dropped the suitcases in front of Phil’s door and ran to her apartment. Her hands shook so badly she had trouble unlocking her door. Her ex had betrayed her with their next-door neighbor Sandy. Now Phil, the first man she’d loved in a long time, betrayed her too. She raced to the bathroom and stood in the shower until she was sure the water running down her face was not tears.

She got out, wrapped herself in a big robe, and turned on her hair dryer. She couldn’t hear her sobs over the motor’s howl. By the time her hair was dry, so were her eyes. When she shut off the hair dryer, she heard the pounding on her door.

“Helen, open up. Please. I have to talk to you.”