Murder Between the Covers dj-2

by Elaine Viets

  “What happens then?”

  “Some live. Some die.” He shrugged. “There’s no known antidote and the symptoms are different for every person.

  You might have a heart attack. I might have convulsions.

  Vikane affects different people in different ways. It’s not a good way to die.

  “One man went back into his place during a tenting, sat down in his favorite chair, and turned on the TV. He’d lost his business and wanted to commit suicide. They found him with his finger still on the remote, flipping through the channels for all eternity.

  “A pair of cheating lovers sneaked back in because they knew his partner would never think of looking in the tented bedroom. They were found dead together.”

  The canvas tarps were shrouding the windows now, and the rooms were dark as caves. The canvas flapped in the breeze and created an odd snapping sound. As Helen walked through the dark, hot rooms, she seemed to see death everywhere. She wondered why Trevor bothered with the locks, when the windows were left open.

  Margery must have been thinking the same thing. “What about burglars?” she said.

  “They die, too,” Trevor said. “If a thief gets in there, well, he’s not going to tell the hospital he inhaled Vikane in a termite tent. By the time the hospital figures it out, he’s dead.”

  “So how do you survive inside when the tents come off?” she said.

  “I use a SCBA respirator,” Trevor said. “George has one, too, in case I get overcome. I’ll go in and open everything up. It will be safe for you to come back late Monday.”

  “What’s a SCBA respirator?” Margery said.

  “It looks like a diving tank, but it has a full face mask connected to the breathing hose. It’s not to be confused with a scuba tank. Diving gear doesn’t really work for this.”

  “What about those charcoal gas masks, the kind used in Desert Storm?”

  “We tried them,” Trevor said. “They don’t work as well.

  You need a self-contained breathing apparatus. You can buy it at a fire-equipment place or on the Internet.”

  “So why don’t burglars use them?” Margery asked.

  “Too expensive,” Trevor said. “A SCBA unit costs about two thousand dollars a tank. If a burglar had two thousand dollars, he wouldn’t need to be a burglar.”

  “Breaking into this place wouldn’t pay for the tank. Nobody here has the Star of India on her dresser,” Margery said. “All a burglar would get was some old TV sets, a video camera or two, and Grandma’s engagement ring.”

  Helen thought her landlady had a real talent for crime.

  “It’s not worth the risk,” Trevor agreed.

  Still, Helen was glad she’d taken her suitcase full of cash to the beach.

  Madame Muffy’s place was as dull as its owner. The living room was still a palm-reading parlor. The bed had a beige comforter. Three unpacked boxes served as a nightstand. There were no photos, pictures, or anything personal.

  Helen had seen hotel rooms with more personality.

  Finally, they entered the home of Phil the invisible pothead. This was the apartment Helen had been waiting to see. Naturally, it reeked of pot. The sagging couch was covered with a madras throw and High Times magazines. Three coffee-ringed pine boards on cinder blocks served as a coffee table. It held a bong, a roach clip, a Clapton mug with black coffee, and a barrette in the shape of a guitar.

  “What’s he doing with a hair barrette?” Helen said.

  “It holds his ponytail. That’s no ordinary guitar,” Margery said respectfully. “It’s a Fender Strat, same as Clapton plays, in solid silver.”

  “You’d think he’d use pot metal,” Helen said. Once again, she wondered how her landlady knew these things.

  She examined the plastic milk crates full of albums. “I’d love to help myself to these.” There were original LPs from Clapton’s days with Cream, the Yardbirds, and John Mayall and the BluesBreakers. Helen slid out one record. Oddly, it was beautifully cared for, without the dirt and scratches druggies inflicted on their albums.

  The walls were covered with vintage posters, including one for Cream’s Goodbye album. The room’s centerpiece was on a stand: A Clapton-model Fender Strat guitar. It was 7-UP-can green, better known as stoner green.

  There were no medicines in the bathroom. In the kitchen, Trevor opened the freezer. Inside was a glass vial of clear yellow liquid and a fat bag of pot.

  “Got to get rid of that, ma’am,” the fumigator said. “The herb will get contaminated.”

  Helen started to pack the pot with the bananas, but Margery said, “Throw that out. I’m not driving around with an illegal substance in my car. What if I got stopped?”

  Helen couldn’t imagine the cops stopping Margery for a drug bust, but she did not argue.

  “And what’s this?” her landlady asked, pointing to the vial.

  “Urine sample, ma’am,” Trevor said. “For drug tests. If you smoke the herb, you can’t pass the test. Some people buy clean samples on the Internet. If their job requires mandatory drug testing, they palm the sample and use it instead of their own fluid. But the gas will ruin it. It should be thrown out, too.”

  “Why don’t you throw that out while the inspector and I walk through my place?” Margery said, and Helen knew she was not invited to look in her landlady’s closets and cabinets. Helen owed Margery a few favors, but she thought handling a frozen urine sample canceled them all.

  She found a plastic grocery bag, picked up the vial with it, and dropped it in the Dumpster.

  The Coronado was nearly covered with tarps. Clear plastic hoses for the poison gas snaked along the sidewalks and across the pool. The ends of the hoses were taped to floor fans in the hallways. The fans were whirring softly. They would dissipate the poison gas through the apartments.

  The Coronado looked like a disaster scene, as if a tornado or hurricane had hit. The chaise longues by the pool no longer seemed inviting. Helen saw an abandoned pair of flip-flops. They looked sad.

  In the harsh sunlight, Helen could see the cracks that had been cheaply patched and painted over. The Coronado was showing its age. So was Margery. She came out of her own apartment and suddenly looked every day of her seventy-six years.

  Helen and Margery left Trevor as he was pumping poison gas into the apartments. The Coronado was wrapped like a present.

  Helen felt tired and sad. This should be a hopeful occasion, she thought. The Coronado could be saved. But it looked like death in a pretty package.

  Chapter 6

  Dr. Rich was waiting for Helen when she returned from the Coronado. She stopped at the entrance to the motel courtyard to admire her man. She liked his slightly shaggy blond hair and beard, his subtle brown Tommy Bahama shirt and khaki shorts. He looked cool and relaxed, sitting under a striped umbrella.

  “How’s the Lab?” she asked, kissing him hello. Rich smelled of spicy aftershave, coffee, and lime.

  “He lost a leg, but he’ll make it. How’s my buddy Thumbs?”

  “He’s fat and happy. Want to see him?” They went inside to Helen’s room. Rich sat on the sagging bed and scratched the cat’s belly until he purred. Helen began to get restless.

  Was he ever going to forget his animals and remember her?

  When the cat was drooling in stupefied delight, Rich looked up and said, “What do you want to do today? Sit out on the beach?”

  “Not really,” Helen said. “I burn easily.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I could think of a few things,” she said. How dense was this man?

  “Like what?” he said, scratching the cat again.

  Like leaving that damn cat alone, Helen almost said.

  Then she saw he was grinning. He reached out and pulled her onto the bed and kissed her. His lips were soft and his beard was nicely scratchy and his weight on her was just right, not too heavy, but solid and muscular. He kissed her so hard, she forgot about the bookstore, her money worries, and wh
ere she would find another job.

  “Why, Rich, you animal,” she purred.

  “You didn’t get much of a tan for someone who spent three days on the beach,” grumped Margery on Monday afternoon.

  “I burn easily,” Helen said. Boy, do I, she thought. I’ve had one hot weekend.

  “Humph,” Margery said. “I can’t see the point of an ocean-view room if you keep the curtains shut the whole weekend.”

  “We took lovely moonlit walks on the beach,” Helen said. Because we didn’t get out of bed until after dark, she thought. If Thumbs hadn’t woken us demanding dinner, we might have slept all night in each other’s arms. Sunday was more of the same. When Rich left at five Monday morning, she’d stretched luxuriantly, then drifted off again on sleep-warm pillows that smelled of his spicy aftershave. She woke up at noon and treated herself to lunch at a beach restaurant with the eleven dollars she found in Chocolate the stuffed bear.

  Now it was two-thirty. Time to return to reality. Margery would drive her back to the Coronado. She had just enough time to unpack and get Thumbs settled. She had to be at the bookstore at five. Helen had to work one more night, but she didn’t even mind that.

  She sighed happily and put the cat carrier in Margery’s big white car. Her body ached in all the right places.

  “Think Rich is a keeper?” Margery said.

  “That would be nice,” Helen said. But complicated. How would she explain her ex-husband and that awful scene in court? How could she tell Rich that she was on the run?

  What had he said as he left this morning? “Now that I’ve found you, I won’t ever let you go.” His words sent shivers through Helen, but they weren’t entirely of delight. Was Rich romantic or possessive? I’ll worry about it later, she thought, loading her last suitcase into the trunk.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “Let’s see what they’ve done to the Coronado,” Margery said. Now that she was going back home, Margery sounded like herself again. She looked like herself, too, in an outrageous shorts set abloom with magenta roses. She wore cherry-red nail polish and flirtatious dark purple kitten-heeled slides that showed off her good legs and slender ankles.

  The giant tarps were gone from the Coronado. The DANGER signs had disappeared. Purple bougainvillea blossoms floated in the pool once more. Parrots screeched in the palms. Newspapers waited at the front doors. The Coronado was its old romantic self, except for the termite company’s locked shields on the doorknobs.

  All the Coronado residents were gathered by the pool, minus Phil the invisible pothead. Helen had never seen him, but she figured she’d recognize him by his smell.

  Trevor removed a doorknob shield with ceremony and opened Cal’s apartment. The Canadian looked inside and said, “Nothing’s changed. I thought you might exterminate the dirt.”

  There was polite laughter. Madame Muffy was next. The preppie psychic went into her place without a word. The shields were taken off Margery’s, Phil’s, and Helen’s doors.

  Peggy’s apartment was last, but Helen did not stick around for the final opening. Thumbs was howling to go home.

  She set his carrier down in her kitchen. He was climbing out with ruffled dignity when the screaming started.

  She heard Trevor say, “Oh, Lord, no.” Helen opened her door and saw him run inside Peggy’s apartment.

  Peggy ran after him, then screamed. Pete the parrot, confined to a cage in her car, began making a racket.

  Margery pushed her way into Peggy’s apartment, then said, “What the hell?” in a stunned voice.

  Helen followed them, slightly dazed. She could smell something powerfully bad. Poison gas? Then why had Trevor run in without his breathing gear?

  Peggy, Margery, and Trevor were standing in the bedroom. The room was dominated by an enormous four-poster bed. It seemed bigger than ordinary king-size.

  Emperor, maybe, or potentate. The bed was covered with pale sensual linens, soft piles of pillows, and gauzy hangings. No woman should sleep alone in a bed like that, Helen thought.

  There was a man in Peggy’s bed. A rich man. He wore a suit that Helen could see was expensive, even from across the room. Sticking out of his well-tailored back was a cheap butcher knife.

  “Is he alive?” Margery said. Helen knew he wasn’t. That wasn’t poison gas she’d smelled, but death and decay.

  “Let’s turn him over to make sure,” Trevor said. He moved the body enough so they could see the face. It was obvious the man was dead.

  It was also obvious he was Page Turner III.

  What was a dead Page Turner doing in Peggy’s bed?

  He sure wasn’t there when the place was tented on Saturday. Helen could testify to that. She’d seen Peggy’s empty bed. She’d watched Trevor lock the door.

  Did Peggy know Page? Helen had never heard her mention his name. She’d never seen the man at the Coronado.

  So how did Page get in that apartment? Who knifed him in the back? It had to have happened this weekend, when the place was tented and pumped full of poison gas.

  Peggy’s door was double-locked. She didn’t have the key to open her own home. The only one who could get in the tented building alive was Trevor.

  Helen thought Trevor had acted oddly from the moment Page Turner’s body was found. While Margery called 911, Trevor whipped out his cell phone and called an attorney.

  “Now, that looks suspicious,” Helen whispered to her landlady as they waited for the police. “An innocent man wouldn’t need a lawyer.”

  “An innocent African-American man would,” Margery said. “This state has an impressive record of railroading black people.”

  “I can see him getting a lawyer if the police questioned him,” Helen said. “But I can’t understand Trevor having a lawyer ready unless he was guilty.”

  “You’d make a good cop,” Margery said. It was not a compliment.

  Helen counted six police cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing. “We’re going to have a swarm of police,” Margery said. “Page Turner was a big political donor. His pals are going to put pressure on the police to solve his death. They’ll turn this place inside out.”

  Helen was suddenly aware of the afternoon sun beating down on them. She felt dizzy. Peggy looked ready to pass out. Cal was sweating in a most un-Canadian way. Even Margery was wilted.

  Two grim-looking homicide detectives arrived and asked everyone to wait in their apartments, after their places had been searched. Search warrants materialized.

  “Do they suspect us?” Helen said, horrified.

  “They suspect everybody,” Margery said. “This will be quick. They’re making sure we don’t flush away any evidence, or pull a gun on them, before they send us to our rooms.”

  The Coronado was armed to the rooftop. Floridians liked their firepower. Margery had a .38 police special and a permit for it. Madame Muffy had a neat little .22. The big surprise was Cal. He had a whopping Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum. “For protection,” he said. “America has more crime than Canada.”

  Helen didn’t have any weapons. She wondered if that made her look suspicious. When Margery got the OK to return to her apartment, Helen started to follow her, but the two detectives would not let the women stay together.

  “I need to use Margery’s phone,” Helen said. “I’m working at Page Turner’s bookstore tonight. I have to call the manager and tell her I’ll be late.” She also wanted to tell the booksellers their boss was dead in Peggy’s bed.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the detective said. “We’ll notify the bookstore that you won’t be in to work.”

  “I’m going to miss a whole night?” Should she sound more distraught over Page’s death? She couldn’t. Damn that man. She would not be paid for this lost time. Page Turner cost her another forty-six dollars and ninety cents.

  The cops meant business. Uniformed officers were posted at the Coronado entrances.

  Helen went to her apartment and paced. Thumbs paced with her. The sirens hurt his ears and the
unexpected activity unsettled him. Helen was equally jumpy. Police made her nervous. What if they found out she was on the run?

  They’d ship her back to St. Louis. She tried to imagine life without the Coronado. She needed the sunset wine sessions with Peggy by the flower-draped pool. The jibes of her purple-clad landlady. The taffeta rustle of palm trees and the perpetual burning-leaf smell of Phil’s weed.

  Oh, my Lord, she thought. Phil! He must have slipped back in during the excitement. If he was in a marijuana daze, he’d be busted for sure. She had to warn him. She’d never seen him, but he’d saved her life once. She owed him. She opened her door and saw the uniformed police officer at his post. She was about to make a warning racket when she sniffed the air. It reeked of patchouli oil, the scent of the sixties. Phil must have set fire to a barrel of the stuff.

  He was safe.

  For the rest of the evening, Helen stood at the window and stared out between the slits of her mini-blinds. She watched the crime-scene unit arrive, two women. Then the Broward County medical examiner, a man. The police brass were next, all men, all self-important.

  It was seven o’clock when the two homicide detectives, Tom Levinson and Clarence Jax, knocked on her door. Jax was short and burly, with abrupt, aggressive movements.

  He had red hair and freckles and, she suspected, the temper to go with them. Levinson was taller and slimmer, with a rugged face and dark hair. He had quick, light movements, and Helen wondered if he’d had martial-arts training. Even in their boxy suits, Helen could see the muscles bulging on their thighs, arms, and shoulders. Too bad they were cops.

  Jax sat down on her turquoise couch with the black triangle pattern. Levinson was walking around, examining the 1950s furniture—the lamps like nuclear reactors, the boomerang coffee table. “Neat stuff you’ve got here,” he said, but he wasn’t admiring her secondhand furniture. That cop had eyes like a laser. What was he looking for? Drugs?