Dying to Call You

by Elaine Viets

  The Happy Cow did not have fashionable food. Its clientele wanted a steak tender enough to chomp with dentures and food that filled them up: potato salad, macaroni salad, rice salad, green bean salad, black bean salad, corn salad, carrot salad with raisins. The bread was hot, white and puffy. Lettuce was covered with croutons and creamy dressing. Baked potatoes were piled with butter and sour cream. This crowd did not worry about cholesterol. They had already outlived the weak sisters with heart trouble.

  “Fred and Ethel are experienced all-you-can-eat restaurant goers,” Margery said. “They skip the starchy salads and bread and go for the expensive fruit and vegetables. Fred’s got at least five bucks’ worth of produce on his plate.”

  Fred’s plate was loaded with salad, sliced mushrooms, fresh strawberries, cantaloupe and pineapple chunks.

  “What’s Ethel doing with those mounds of potato salad and bread?” Helen said.

  “Getting tonight’s dinner. Watch.”

  Back at their table, Ethel slid into the booth first. Fred’s paunch provided privacy, but Helen could see over it on her tall barstool. Ethel opened her purse and eased most of the potato salad and bread inside.

  “That’s disgusting. She’s putting food in her purse.” Helen imagined it landing on hairbrushes and old Kleenex and nearly gagged.

  “Relax,” Margery said. “Her purse is lined with Ziploc bags. Look around the restaurant. Everyone is doing it.”

  Sure enough, when the waitresses turned their backs, satchel-sized purses snapped open and swallowed salads, vegetables and bread. Sugar and sweetener packs disappeared off the tables. Butter pats and creamers, ketchup and mustard packets all went into the leather maws.

  When Ethel’s steak arrived, she cut it in two and dropped half in her purse. Her baked potato went the same way.

  In fifteen minutes, Fred and Ethel put away enough food to feed a frat house. Fred ate his. Ethel stuffed most of hers in her purse. She did have a bowl of clam chowder, along with her half-steak and half-potato. She hit the dessert bar three times. The first time, a big gooey chocolate brownie went into her purse. The second time, she ate the Key lime pie. On the third swing through, she got the bread pudding and slathered it with sauce.

  “She’s going for it,” Helen said.

  Margery asked for the bar check. They watched as Ethel chewed her bread pudding. She gave a muffled shriek, then grabbed her cheek dramatically. Bright red blood gushed from her mouth.

  A woman with a macaroni salad screamed, “Help! Somebody call an ambulance.”

  “No ambulance!” Fred roared.

  “You bet he doesn’t want one,” Margery said. “That would ruin everything.” She put a twenty on the bar, but kept watching the drama. A worried waitress ran over to Fred and Ethel’s booth. The manager, a thin woman in a blue blazer, sprinted behind her.

  “Time for us to go to work,” Margery said.

  They started for the booth. The waitress was mopping up the blood with napkins. The manager was wringing her hands.

  “I’m not a suing kind of person, but I’ll have to take my poor wife to the emergency room,” Fred said. “And we have a four-hundred-dollar deductible on our insurance.”

  “Why, Fred and Ethel, what a surprise,” Margery said. “Is something wrong?”

  Fred looked up, startled. Ethel choked, but quickly recovered. The manager looked ready to leap in and do the Heimlich maneuver.

  “Ethel bit down on that metal in her bread pudding.” Fred pointed to a piece of metal about half an inch long, lying in a pool of blood. “She’s hurt bad. Look how my poor wife is bleeding.”

  “Wow,” Helen said. “Ethel must have magnets in her teeth. That’s the second time this week she’s found metal in her food. I was in the diner about two miles down the road when she got metal in her meal. You wanted four hundred dollars for your emergency room deductible there, too. Cash only. I don’t see any stitches from that accident, though. And Ethel bled all over. She was eating bread pudding that time, too. What a coincidence. I bet that piece of metal Ethel found in her food looks a lot like this.”

  Helen produced the sliver of metal she’d lifted from their kitchen and put it on the table next to Ethel’s bloody exhibit. They were identical.

  Fred’s jaws were working, but no sound came out. The waitress stared at Helen and Margery. The manager stopped wringing her hands. She had an idea where this was going.

  “My, my,” Margery said. “Ethel is a regular horror show. Lotta blood running out of her mouth. Of course it looks worse when you smear it all over your face like that. What blood type are you, Ethel?”

  Helen took a blood capsule from her pocket, held it up for everyone to see, then squeezed it. Fake blood squirted richly across the sequinned flag on Ethel’s chest.

  “F-positive,” Helen said. “I’m positive you’re a fraud.”

  The waitress gasped. The manager smiled.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Fred said. “I’ll sue you for slander. I’ll call the police. I’ll—”

  As he talked, he and Ethel eased themselves out of the booth and down the aisle. Margery blocked their way.

  “I won’t have you two crooks on my property. You have twenty-four hours to pack up and get out, or I’ll call the police and tell them about your hobby. Don’t even think of asking for your deposit back.”

  Fred and Ethel scuttled out.

  “My name is Gladys,” the manager said. “Can I buy you lunch and a drink?” With the tension gone from her face, she looked years younger.

  “No, thanks. We have to be about our business,” Margery said. Helen thought she sounded like a gunslinger leaving town after rounding up the cattle rustlers.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” Gladys said. “Let me give you two free dinner certificates to the Happy Cow. Come back any time. We’d be honored to have you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Helen said. “We’ll just be moseying along.” Margery glared at her.

  On the way out to the car, Helen said, “Well, we got rid of Fred and Ethel.”

  “I promise I’ll never rent to anyone normal again,” Margery said.

  Chapter 22

  “Hold it. Stop right there. I’ve got a gun.”

  That was Margery. Something was wrong at the Coronado.

  Helen sat up in bed, sending the cat flying into the dark. What time was it? She stared blearily at her bedside clock. It was one twenty-seven in the morning.

  “I won’t hesitate to shoot,” Margery said.

  The killer. Margery had caught the killer. He’d come to murder Helen and Margery surprised him in her yard. Now her seventy-six-year-old landlady was trying to hold him off with a gun. She saw Margery, frail but fearless, an ancient revolver in her liver-spotted hands.

  Margery didn’t have a chance. He’d strangled a strong young waitress with her own hair. He would walk up and rip the gun from an old woman.

  A weapon. Helen needed a weapon. She grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen counter, threw on a robe and ran outside. Low-lying fog swirled and drifted across the grass, turning the night into a slasher-movie set. She felt foolish creeping down the sidewalk, kitchen cutlery in hand, but she didn’t know what else to do. She had to save Margery.

  She heard the rattle of a jalousie door and jumped.

  Phil slid out of his apartment wearing black jeans, sandals and no shirt. All her senses were on red alert. She noticed his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and intimidating weapon. What was that thing? Some new federal experiment? It looked like a ray gun from a fifties science fiction movie.

  “I didn’t realize you had nuclear capability,” Helen whispered.

  “What are you going to do with that butcher knife—make cutting remarks?” he said.

  “I said drop it.” Margery’s voice cracked with anger.

  Helen and Phil looked at each other, then sprinted across the wet grass toward their landlady’s apartment. Margery was standing on her doorstep, wearing red curlers
and a purple chenille bathrobe. A loose curler flopped over her left ear. The .38 Special looked enormous in her bony hands.

  It was pointed at Fred and Ethel Mertz. Fred was carrying a TV set, balanced on his enormous gut. Ethel was wheeling a bulging black suitcase toward the parking lot. They looked angry but unafraid.

  “What’s going on here?” Helen asked.

  “They’re walking off with my TV and God knows what else.” Margery waved her weapon at the suitcase. “Two C is a furnished unit. Or used to be, before these two stripped it.”

  “Open the suitcase,” Phil said.

  “I don’t have to,” Ethel said. “You don’t have a search warrant.”

  “Don’t need one,” Phil said. “I’ve got this.” He raised his ray gun. Helen hoped he would vaporize Ethel in her WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA T-shirt. Fred, too, while Phil was at it.

  Ethel looked at Fred. He nodded. She unzipped the suitcase. It was brimming with purple terry cloth.

  “My new towels,” Margery said. “I just bought them for that unit this season. That’s my bath mat, too. And my clock radio. Damn tourists. Can’t have anything nice or they take it.”

  Helen thought of the couple’s sanctimonious speeches on America’s declining morals. They’d ruined so many evenings by the pool. “In my day,” she said, “respectable retired people did not steal towels and TV sets.”

  “We’re not stealing.” Fred pointed his finger dramatically at Margery. “She is. She won’t give us back our deposit and last month’s rent. We’re out eighteen hundred dollars.”

  “I’m out more than that,” Margery said. “It’s only November. You signed a lease for the season. You owe me through March.”

  “We would have paid you through March if you’d let us stay.” Fred was shouting, beet red with anger.

  “I won’t have thieves on my property,” Margery said. “You stole from those poor little restaurants and now you’re stealing from me. I ought to pop you on principle. I could say my finger slipped on the trigger. Poor shaky old lady. Do you think a Florida jury would convict me?”

  Margery grinned crazily.

  For the first time, Fred and Ethel looked frightened. Helen was scared, too. Margery was quite an actress. Helen could imagine her crafty landlady crying before a jury of her trembly peers. “I didn’t mean to kill that couple, even if they were robbing me blind. Something went wrong and . . .”

  “Should I check their car?” Helen said, hoping to distract her landlady. “Just in case they’ve helped themselves to more of your things.”

  “You bet. We’ll all go. Come on.” Margery pointed the gun toward the parking lot. Fred and Ethel quietly abandoned the TV and the suitcase on the sidewalk and Helen breathed a little easier.

  “Margery, don’t you think you should aim that gun at the ground? What if you trip and it accidentally goes off?” Phil said.

  “Then it won’t be my fault,” Margery said. “Listen, sonny, don’t patronize me. I’m old but I’m not stupid. Come on, you two. March.”

  The Mertzes reluctantly walked toward their car, while Margery held the gun on them. Phil followed, looking faintly amused, his ray gun at his side. If he tripped, he’d vaporize the sidewalk. Helen was last in line, clutching her kitchen knife and debating whether the back or the front view of Phil was better. The front, she decided. She liked those raised eyebrows.

  “Why, you thieving buzzards,” Margery said.

  Fred and Ethel’s big white Chevy looked like the Clampetts’ truck from The Beverly Hillbillies.

  Roped into the trunk was a wicker rocking chair from the living room. Through the rear window, Helen could see three plastic wastebaskets, two pillows, and a purple blanket.

  Margery ran to the car and peered inside. “They even took my shell mirror.”

  This time, her weapon did wobble. How hard did Margery have to squeeze the trigger to plug the couple? Fred held his wife protectively, but Helen noticed he was standing behind her sturdy figure. If the shooting started, she’d make a handy shield. Phil moved in closer, as if deciding whether to grab the gun from the outraged Margery. If he was really a cop, shouldn’t he take it from her? What was going on here?

  “Do you want me to call the police?” Helen hoped that would make Margery put down the gun.

  “I can settle this without the cops,” Margery said. “What if they keep my stuff for evidence? I’ve got my own way of dealing with thieves.”

  “We aren’t thieves. We didn’t take a penny more than we were entitled. This all came to eighteen hundred dollars,” Fred said righteously.

  “Wholesale or retail?” Margery snarled. She held the .38 on them while Helen and Phil started carrying the swag back to 2C. Helen gently unloaded the mirror with its frame of delicate seashells. Fred and Ethel had packed it in pilfered bath towels.

  When Phil picked up the heavy rocker, Helen noticed how his shoulder and back muscles rippled. His abs were absolutely flat. The wrong men got naked at the Mowbrys’ party.

  Helen hung the mirror back in 2C, then dragged an army green footlocker out of the Mertzes’ car trunk. Over Fred and Ethel’s protests, she opened it.

  On top was a purple oven mitt. “Is this yours?” she asked Margery.

  “Yep. And that’s my new Martha Stewart kitchenware.” She pointed to a set of beige mixing bowls under the mitt.

  “Martha has been convicted. Is it stealing to take her stuff?” Helen said.

  “She was framed,” Margery said.

  Helen didn’t argue with a woman holding a gun. She piled Margery’s belongings on the grass.

  Crammed in the footlocker was every tourist T-shirt sold in Florida, especially the disgusting ones. “Did you or Fred wear this?” Helen held up a T-shirt that said: DON’T FOLLOW ME. I JUST FARTED A BIG ONE.

  The Mertzes maintained a dignified silence. Phil was stone-faced, but Helen thought his lips twitched.

  Helen pulled out a pair of jockey shorts with HOME OF THE WHOPPER across the front.

  “You should have gotten the T-shirt instead, Fred,” Margery said.

  Even Phil couldn’t keep a straight face that time.

  Under all the clothes, Helen found a black Bible. “What about this?”

  “It’s not mine. I’m not running a hotel,” Margery said. “Besides, they need it more than I do. Maybe they’ll read the part about ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”

  “We weren’t stealing,” Fred said. “I told you—”

  That’s when Helen saw the brown furry ear in the footlocker. She tugged on it and a stuffed animal popped out.

  “My teddy bear,” she said. “You took my bear, Chocolate. You broke into my apartment and stole my money. That was you sneaking around my window when I got money out of my bear. You saw me and ransacked my place for cash.”

  “I—” Fred said.

  “We—” Ethel said.

  “Shut up,” Margery said. “You broke my lamp when you trashed her apartment. You owe me for that, too.”

  “You had your hands on my underwear, you perverts.”

  Helen was glad she was no longer holding the knife. She wanted to plunge it in Fred’s fat gut.

  She picked up her bear and patted it. Chocolate was oddly lumpy.

  She reached into the slit in the bear’s back. Instead of money, she felt . . . a plastic bag. Helen pulled it out. It was stuffed with long plastic objects. Salt-and-pepper shakers?

  “Those are my love toys,” Ethel said, indignantly.

  A bag of vibrators. Helen dropped it. She had a sudden searing vision of Fred in his HOME OF THE WHOPPER underwear and Ethel in a flag-draped negligee.

  “Where’s Helen’s money?” Margery said. “Don’t make me use this.” The gun was right in Fred’s face, and this time Helen didn’t care if she fired it. “What did you do with it?”

  “It’s gone,” Fred said. “We went on the gambling boats.”

  “You blew my money gambling?” Helen thought of the brutal hours she’d worked t
o earn that cash. Now it was all lost. Only suckers played the gambling boats. The Mertzes might as well have dumped her hard-earned money in the ocean.

  “Open your wallets,” Margery said. “Get them out. Right now.”

  “What? You can’t do this.” But Fred and Ethel fished out their wallets and handed them to Margery. She looked through Ethel’s fat wallet first, pulling out a driver’s license. Then she searched Fred’s wallet.

  “There’s two sets of ID in here,” Margery said. “Are you Fred and Ethel Mertz—or John and Mary Smith?”

  “Our real name is Smith,” Ethel said. “But it’s so common. It was embarrassing when we checked into a motel. We had trouble cashing checks. We got tired of the jokes and changed our names.”

  “You’re I Love Lucy fans?” Helen said.

  “We never watched that silly show,” Ethel said haughtily. “I named myself for Ethel Merman. He’s a Fred MacMurray fan.”

  “So why aren’t you Mr. and Mrs. Fred MacMurray?”

  “That would make us into a joke,” Ethel said. Helen gave up.

  “Quit gabbing,” Margery said. She seemed to have borrowed her dialogue from late-night movies. “Phil, will you search their car for cash?”

  Phil pulled everything out of the Mertzes’ Chevy, even the backseat. He checked the glove box, the wheel wells and the spare-tire compartment. He felt under the seats and dash. He even took off the door panels. Helen went through every box and suitcase in the car. They didn’t find another nickel. Helen’s thirty-two hundred dollars was gone for good.

  Margery found five hundred dollars in the Mertzes’ wallets. She extracted a twenty.

  “That will pay for my broken lamp,” she said. “Here, Helen, the rest is yours. I’m sorry I couldn’t get it all back.”

  “I never expected to see this much,” Helen said.

  “Hey, how are we going to buy gas?” Fred said.

  “In my day,” Margery said, “people worked for their money. You might try it.”