by Elaine Viets
“I mean we’ll all have to leave. Every last one of us. They pump the whole place full of poison gas. It’s the only way to kill the little bastards.”
Madame Muffy was right, Helen thought. Here was death and destruction. Now all they needed was murder.
Chapter 3
Helen woke up. She did not know where she was. She could not move her arm.
Her cat, Thumbs, gave an indignant yowl and hit her in the face with his tail. The ten-pound tom had been snoozing on her elbow, and he did not appreciate this abrupt awakening. Helen realized where she was now. She’d been sleeping on Margery’s sofa. After the termite attack last night, she had not wanted to go back to her apartment.
She looked at her watch. It was six a.m. She’d slept in her clothes. Her mouth felt stuffed with cat fur. She pulled on her shoes, folded the sheets and blanket, and picked up Thumbs. She should get out of Margery’s before her landlady woke up. Officially the Coronado had a no-pets policy.
That meant everyone had to pretend Pete the parrot and Thumbs did not exist, except in emergencies like last night.
No point in waving the illegal cat in Margery’s face.
As she tiptoed through the living room she heard Margery say, “You want coffee?”
“I’ll be right back,” Helen said. She slipped out the kitchen door into the sparkling, dew-covered dawn and walked across the courtyard. She opened her door and dumped Thumbs inside to face the bugs alone. “Sorry, boy,” she said. “I can’t do this without coffee.”
It took two cups and a chocolate doughnut before Helen could face her apartment. A tail-twitching Thumbs met her at the door and led her straight to his water bowl. Hordes of dead insects floated on the surface.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” she said. Her stomach flopped over when she saw his food dish. It was covered with a mound of dead beige bugs, like nuts on a sundae. She gingerly pushed the mess down the disposal.
The rest of the house was not as bad as she thought it would be. The floor had drifts and piles of insects, almost all dead, thank goodness. Wings, like fluttery bits of cellophane, littered the sills and tables. Helen got her clogged vacuum working again, then spent the next two hours cleaning.
Occasionally Thumbs would find a live bug blindly creeping up a wall or across a counter, and howl for Helen.
She’d suck it up with the vacuum. By nine that morning, her home had been swept and polished and dusted until not a trace of the insect invasion remained. Thumbs prowled the perimeter as if he expected the enemy to return any moment.
Even after a shower, Helen still felt crawly. She pulled a blouse out of her closet to wear for work. There was a single wingless termite on the collar, like a decoration. She brushed it off with a shudder.
What if those horrible blind bugs had killed the Coronado? As she walked to work, all Helen could think about was her pretty little apartment complex, menaced by unseen invaders inside its walls.
There were no customers in the bookstore at ten that morning. The staff was at the front cash register, listening to Matt, the youngest bookseller. Whatever he was telling them, they weren’t happy.
That was unusual. Around Matt, most people looked dazzled. His tight white T-shirt accented a body that set male and female hearts fluttering on Las Olas. Matt had dramatic shoulder-length dreads and a long dark face with a knife-blade nose. It was an unusual combination: the rebellious dreads and the sensitive face.
Helen walked in to hear him say, “The whole Page Turners chain will be closed by the end of the month. The Palm Beach store is just the start.”
“They’re closing Palm Beach?” Helen said. “That’s their new showcase. It can’t be closing.”
“They’re announcing it tomorrow,” Matt said. “That’s what I heard, anyway. The store quit getting in new books three weeks ago. That was the first tip-off something was wrong.”
“Ridiculous,” said Albert, the day manager. Albert was fifty-six, a dried-up, fussy man who walked as if he had a broomstick shoved alongside his backbone. He wore starched white shirts that he ironed himself, and, even more unusual for South Florida, a necktie.
“I know the Turner family personally,” Albert said. Once a year he went to a cocktail party at the Turner mansion and never stopped talking about it for the next twelve months.
“I’ve worked here thirty years. I knew the first Page Turner.”
“He’s dead,” Matt said. His dreads and T-shirt were a sharp contrast to Albert’s buttoned-up starch. “If I were you, I’d start cranking on my résumé.”
“The Turner family would never abandon us. People as rich as they are have a sense of duty,” Albert said. “If they are closing the Palm Beach store, it’s just temporary. You’ll see.”
“People as rich as they are love money,” said a third bookseller, Brad. “If the stores threaten their income, they’ll close them in a heartbeat. We’ll all be out of work.”
At forty, Brad was skinny as a boy. He had two hopeless loves: Jennifer Lopez and young blond men with pouty lips.
He read every word written on J.Lo, and sighed over her love life. Alas, Brad’s choice in men was not much better than J.Lo’s. Everyone but Brad could see his romances with the blond pretty boys were doomed. Yet he stayed cheerful despite constant rejection. Except now.
“I hate looking for new jobs,” he said.
Helen wondered who to believe: Albert, who had known the Turner family for years, or young, cynical Matt? She wanted to believe Albert. But she’d spent too much time in corporations. Matt was probably right. She felt the panic scratching in her insides like a small sharp-toothed animal.
It had taken months to find this job. She was barely getting by with the weekly paychecks. If Page Turners went out of business, how would she pay the rent? She was still paying off Thumbs’ three-hundred-dollar vet bill at ten dollars a week. It didn’t matter that she was dating Dr. Rich.
Helen did not want charity.
June was the wrong time to look for a job in South Florida. The tourist season was over. Businesses were cutting back on staff or closing for the summer. The animal panic started gnawing at her guts.
Helen’s cheerless thoughts were interrupted by an impossible vision. A young coast guardsman marched up to the counter and practically saluted. The rosy-faced blond looked like he’d stepped out of a recruiting poster. His uniform was white and crisp. His eyes were ocean blue. His manner was respectful.
“I’m here to pick up a special order of twenty-four sea-rescue manuals, ma’am,” he said, making Helen feel a hundred years old. The two-inch-thick manuals were on a shelf behind the register.
“I’ll get them,” Brad said. The skinny bookseller suddenly morphed into Arnold Schwarzenegger. He staggered to the counter with the mighty manuals.
Helen rang up the order. “Thank you, ma’am,” the guardsman said.
He did not see Brad. “Could I help you carry your books?” Brad asked, hopeful as a schoolboy.
“No, thank you, sir,” the strapping coast guardsman said.
He scooped up the twenty-four manuals in his massive arms and broke Brad’s heart. Brad stared at the young man’s tightly tailored pants all the way down Las Olas.
“How’s J.Lo?” Helen said, hoping to distract him.
“She’s on the cover of National Scandal again, and they picked the worst possible picture. They do that on purpose, you know.”
He held up the offending magazine. A white card fluttered to the floor.
“Look at that floor,” Brad said. “I picked up cards all morning and now there are another fifty. I’m so frustrated.”
Helen did not think the cards caused his frustration. But the bookstore’s magazine section did have a perpetual snowfall of postage-paid subscription cards. Blow-in cards, they were called. Mostly, they blew out. The white cards fell out of the magazines like square dandruff. Booksellers spent hours picking up the blasted things.
Brad kicked at the cards, then tore off his name ta
g. “I’m going to lunch.”
Poor Brad, Helen thought, with the smug generosity of someone who was currently lucky in love. She was seeing Dr. Rich Petton, the vet who looked like a shaggy Mel Gibson. Her job worries disappeared in the pink haze that surrounded Dr. Rich.
She wished Brad could be as happy as she was. At least he came back from lunch smiling. “I’ve got it. I’ve been driven half-crazy by those magazine cards. Now I’ll have my revenge.”
Brad picked up all the postage-paid cards on the floor— an inch-thick stack. “I’m mailing them. I won’t fill them in.
I’ll just drop them in the mail. The magazines want to hear from me, well, they will. But they’ll pay.”
His revenge was so perfect Helen couldn’t stop laughing.
Not even when a pale young woman asked her to find a book about “the last Russian princess, Anesthesia.”
A worried Albert and a defiant Matt went home at four-thirty, and Gayle, the night-shift manager, came on. Helen kept ringing up sales. At five o’clock, a short, plump, white-haired man of about sixty-five walked importantly up to the counter. He seemed to have an entourage with him, even when he was alone.
“Is Mr. Turner here?” he asked.
“Yes, he’s in his office.”
“Could you tell him Burt Plank is here?”
“Burt Plank the author?” Helen said.
“That’s me,” said the little man, basking in her recognition. Helen couldn’t believe it. Burt Plank wrote the Dirk Rockingham mystery series. He was a New York Times best-selling author. His character, Dirk, a millionaire cop, always got his man. He also got his woman. Fabulously beautiful females were always sliding under restaurant tables to give Dirk oral sex.
“Do you live in Fort Lauderdale?” Helen said.
Burt looked slightly offended. “Palm Beach,” he said. “I have a private plane. I fly down to see my old friend Page Turner. Then I have dinner and return home. When do you get off work?”
“Seven o’clock,” Helen said.
“Would you like to dine with me at the Riverside Hotel?”
“I’d love to,” Helen said. “But I’d have to go home and change first.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “You’re fine just the way you are.”
Burt Plank, best-selling author, thought Helen looked fine. Even the appearance of Page Turner couldn’t spoil that moment.
“Burt!” Page Turner said expansively. “I hope you’ll autograph some more stock for us. Those books of yours just keep on selling. Come on up to my office for a drink.”
“See you at seven,” Burt said.
Gayle the manager had been watching with disapproval.
“Be careful. He’s a real hound, just like Page. I’ll bet he asked you out to dinner.”
“He did. The Riverside Hotel.”
“That’s so he can sit outside and everyone going past can say, ‘Is that Burt Plank?’ ”
“I thought it was because the place has good food,” Helen said coolly. She liked Gayle, but the manager was overprotective. Gayle was gay, but she never hit on Helen.
Rumor said that Gayle had a married lover who wasn’t out of the closet. Of course, rumor also said the store was closing.
“Besides, aren’t you seeing someone?” Gayle said.
“I am, but Burt”—Helen got a little thrill at dropping a celebrity name—“and I are only having dinner. There’s nothing romantic about him. He’s short, pudgy, and old enough to be my father. He certainly doesn’t look like his character Dirk Rockingham.”
“He does in his own mind. There he’s a foot taller, thirty years younger, and a lot more muscular.”
“Gayle, relax. It’s only dinner. I thought it would be fun to have some literary conversation.”
“The closest you’ll get to literary conversation is when he talks about all the money he makes from those books.”
Gayle was waiting at the bookstore counter like a stern mother when Burt Plank came out of Page Turner’s office.
That is, if moms wore black jeans, metal-studded leather belts, and Doc Martens. Her arms were folded across her chest. “Take good care of my best saleswoman,” she told Burt.
“I plan to wine her and dine her.” Helen could smell bourbon on his breath. Burt guided her out of the store with his small damp hand on her back. His hand slid a little down past her waist and rested almost on her buttock.
Helen thought of removing it, but decided not to make a scene. Instead she moved briskly ahead until his hand slid off naturally.
Burt was dressed for Palm Beach, which meant he looked silly in Fort Lauderdale. The British yachting jacket and white linen pants seemed pretentious. The gold chains at his neck and wrist were overdone. He’s supposed to be overdone, Helen thought. He’s a celebrity.
She wished he didn’t look quite so much like a sugar daddy. At least no one will confuse me with a bimbo, she thought. Not in a six-year-old pantsuit and flat shoes.
When they walked between the golden lions at the entrance to Indigo, the hotel restaurant, the staff started fussing over them. Helen enjoyed it. Burt was offered the best table in the house, but he did not want to sit inside. He insisted on a table outside on Las Olas, practically on the sidewalk. They ate their appetizers to a whispered chorus of “Isn’t that Burt Plank?” Burt puffed out his chest every time he heard those words.
The food was sculpted into artistic shapes and placed into pools of colored sauce. It sure beat her usual dining experience—a can of water-packed tuna over the kitchen sink.
“You are the most interesting woman at the store,” Burt said, ordering more wine. It was a rather thin compliment.
The only other woman was Gayle, and she had no interest in Burt or any other man. It was also the last time he devoted any conversation to Helen.
“Tell me about your next book,” Helen said. She wanted to know how he worked out his exciting plots. Maybe he’d drop the names of New York editors and agents.
“Like Dirk, I enjoy flying my own plane,” he said. “But I’m thinking of trading in my Cessna for a single-pilot jet.
A Raytheon Premier One. I made more than a million dollars on my last book, including the movie rights, and it’s time Dirk and I had an upgrade. It’s not an extravagance.
With my own jet, I don’t waste time hanging around airports, waiting for a flight. Do you like to fly?”
“Hate it,” Helen said, wondering when Burt would talk about how he wrote those books. “Do you use a word processor?”
“Yes. I’ve just bought a new laptop. It’s the lightest one available. Cost me ...”
Helen concentrated on her duck, oven-roasted with jasmine-scented charcoal. Burt had ordered for both of them. It sure beat canned tuna.
“And then I thought I’d get a Ferrari.”
“A Barchetta?” said Helen, who knew a little about Ferraris.
Burt looked startled. “No, a Testarossa.”
“Nice car. And about two hundred thousand dollars cheaper than the Barchetta,” Helen said. Burt looked like he’d been punched in the stomach by Dirk Rockingham.
The waiter removed their empty plates. Burt ordered cappuccino for two, without consulting Helen, and began talking about his “seaside mansion” in Palm Beach. He actually used those words. Helen stifled a yawn.
“Are you sleepy?” he said.
“It’s been a long day.” And this dinner was as literary as a stock-market report.
Helen felt a tickling sensation on her thigh. Oh, god, not another bug. Not after last night. If it was a palmetto bug she’d scream, even if she was in one of the best restaurants on Las Olas.
“You need to relax,” Burt said. “I’ve had a vasectomy.
I’m safe.” That’s when she realized the small creature creeping along her thigh was Burt Plank’s hand.
Helen removed it like a cockroach. Burt looked surprised.
“You’d better get your dessert from the menu.” Helen stood up and left the r
estaurant, passing the waiter holding two cappuccinos. The last thing she heard was, “Is that the woman with Burt Plank?”
What a fool she was. A literary dinner indeed. She was just another cheap date. For the price of a meal, she was supposed to warm the great Burt Plank’s bed while he talked about the one he loved—himself. She had a perfectly good man, but no, she had to dine with a literary light.
Nothing had gone right today. First the rumors about the store closings, then the long, dull dinner with Burt. It was nine o’clock, and she suspected Margery would have more bad news when she got home.
Her landlady was sitting by the pool, smoking Marlboros and staring sadly into the night. Her deep purple shorts set looked like mourning clothes.
“I was right, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be. We got termites,” Margery said. “The inspector came out today.
They can save the place, but they’re going to have to tent it.”
“What’s that mean?” Helen said.
“I forgot. You’re not from around here. They wrap the whole building in giant tarps, and then pump in poison gas.
Everyone has to be evacuated for three days.”
“Three days! Do I have to move out now?”
“No, it takes awhile to set it up.”
“Will the termites come back tonight?” Helen said. “Is it safe to sleep in my place?” She couldn’t stand to fight another insect horde.
“Keep your front lights off after dark. That’s probably what attracted the swarm.”
“Where will we live during the tenting?”
“I’ve got a friend who has a beach motel in Hollywood.
I’ll put you up at my expense. How’s that? Three days on the beach. It’s my present for the inconvenience.”
Helen no longer saw the sadness in Margery’s face. All she heard were those three words: a beach vacation. Helen hadn’t had a vacation in years. Even in St. Louis, she’d either worked through most of her vacations or spent the time calling her office to learn the latest disaster. Now she’d have three days on the beach. Her life was definitely taking a turn for the better.
