by Elaine Viets
But she did spot Phil, with his shining silver-white hair and black jacket. He was talking to the real estate dealer in the La Perla panties. Tonight, she was wearing a hot-pink thong. Ms. Realtor kept rubbing Phil’s arm like she was releasing a genie from a bottle. Phil had his hands wrapped around a beer, but he was smiling at the little—
Helen heard a noise. She saw a semi-naked couple walking down the far end of the hall. The woman’s high heels clicked on the floor. The man padded alongside her barefoot. They seemed to see only each other, but Helen wasn’t taking any chances. She streaked down the corridor and shot around the corner.
At last. There were the mahogany doors with the dancing dragons and demons. She’d reached the back room. The gold knobs gleamed in the shadows.
Helen opened the double doors. The blackness drew her in.
She saw the ebony casket, surrounded by flickering flames and white flowers. It held a pale woman in a white lace dress, with hair like a dandelion. Helen didn’t recognize her. Good. Kristi must have left town. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that young fool.
Helen’s ordeal was almost over. Once she had her hands on Laredo’s computer disk, her job was done. She’d turn it over to Phil. He’d give it to the authorities. Helen would be free.
All she had to do was find the disk.
Helen saw something else now in the wavering light. A naked man was fingering the undead corpse’s lily bouquet.
The dandelion blonde regarded him with absolute ennui. The man had to be dead to miss it. But he did. He also didn’t see Helen. The blonde didn’t care.
Helen reached into her pocket for Fred and Ethel’s metal slivers. She moved her hand along the edge of the casket and left a trail of metal bits.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I need to check this casket. Routine maintenance.”
“What?” the guy said. “Beat it. We’re busy.”
“You’re going to be on the floor at the crucial moment, buddy, if you don’t let me fix this. See the problem?” Helen pointed to the metal. “This coffin’s coming apart. I can fix it with a simple adjustment.” She showed him the toolbox.
The blonde looked frightened—the first emotion Helen had seen on that dead-white face. Her lipstick was a bloody slash. Maybe she saw herself in a casket for real.
“Come on, sweetie, it will just take a minute.” The blonde sounded like a nanny with a balky toddler. “Help me out of here.” She thrust her lacy bosom against his bare chest. It was too much for him to resist. He did the manly thing and helped her out of the casket. The blonde rolled her eyes at Helen when his back was turned.
“Thank you,” Helen said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“Nice set of tools, Billy,” leered the corpse-lover, eying Helen’s khaki chest. In this crowd, clothes were a perversion.
The dandelion blonde led her man into the blackness. She was having trouble keeping her dress on with that slit up the back.
Helen checked the coffin mattress first. It felt thin as a sofa bed. Helen hoped it was comfortable for the corpse. It would be hell to spend eternity in the guest room. She found no disk in the mattress. There were no slits in it, either.
The sides of the coffin were lined with pleated white satin. Helen wondered if she’d be able to feel the disk through the thick fabric. She kneaded it like bread dough. She massaged the coffin innards all the way down the long side and didn’t find anything. She was about halfway around the head end when she felt something flat and square. Helen leaned over for a closer look. In the dim candlelight, she saw a slit along a pleat. She stuck her hand in and slid out a red plastic computer disk.
She had it.
Helen took a deep breath. The worst was over.
“What are you doing? What’s that in your hand?” The voice cut like a knife.
Helen slowly turned. She recognized the face from the society pages. But the outfit was new.
It was Mindy Mowbry. In skin-tight black vinyl. With a wicked whip.
Chapter 27
Mindy’s whip was black leather, slender and flexible. Her heels were cruelly high.
She wore a catsuit like Diana Rigg in The Avengers. Except Mindy’s nipples were showing. And they were pierced with needles.
The black vinyl cat suit clung like slick, synthetic skin. A spotted scarf floated around her neck like a fashionable disease.
This can’t be real, Helen thought. I’m with the Wicked Whip of the West.
But she could smell the burning candle wax, the funereal flowers and her own fear. Pale, naked lovers crawled out of the shadows like resurrected corpses. They surrounded the black casket, watching Helen with dark, feral eyes. The room was a black cave. It was a long way to those demon-studded doors.
“What are you doing here?” Mindy had the clothes of a porn queen and the languid lockjaw voice of a rich woman.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” Mindy’s eyes shone with crazy light. Helen thought if she looked into them, they would steal her soul.
“Maintenance.” Helen’s voice sounded surprisingly normal. She hoped the bluff would buy her a few seconds.
“Liar. You found something in that coffin. Hand it over. Now.” Mindy’s whip tore through Helen’s shirt and left welts on her neck. No hesitation. No warning. No change in those crazy eyes. She lashed out, and the disk spun out of Helen’s hand.
The pain stunned Helen. Then it enraged her.
This house and all its kinky riches came from the Mowbrys’ telemarketing sweatshop. Helen spent her days in that filthy boiler room, so Mindy could spend her nights in extravagant depravity. She thought of her coworkers, cheated and abused in the boiler room. The money they needed to live decent lives cost less than Mindy’s twisted flowers.
Now this vinyl-coated scum had slashed her with a whip. It was too much.
Helen swung her metal toolbox and caught Mindy in the face. She went down like a sack of cement. Her whip flew from her hand and hit a serpentine flower vase standing by the casket. The vase toppled and took down a tall candle. The ebony casket rocked backward, but righted itself.
Helen flung herself on top of Mindy, throwing punches wildly. Some slid off uselessly. Some landed. One caught Mindy in the mouth. Her teeth cut Helen’s knuckles.
“You miserable, greedy, no good—-” Words failed Helen, so she hit Mindy again. She saw with satisfaction that Mindy’s face was bloody.
The women rolled around on the carpet, trying to bite, scratch and kick each other. Mindy’s razor-sharp heels cut Helen’s leg. She bit Helen’s hand and scratched her face. Helen landed a good jab in Mindy’s gut and pulled out a hunk of sprayed hair. Hah! Try wearing that hairdo to the Langley School PTA.
Some orgy goers thought the wrestling match was staged for their entertainment. They shouted advice and encouragement.
“Get her eyes.”
“Hit her in the boobs.”
“Kick her in the crotch.”
“Five on Mindy.”
“Fifty on the big brunette, Billy.”
“A hundred on Billy.”
The major money is on me, Helen thought, and couldn’t help being pleased. Then she heard why: “That Billy babe’s got a good thirty pounds on Mindy.”
I do not! Helen wanted to shout. It was ten pounds. OK, fifteen—max. She’d stopped pummeling the porn queen a second for this weighty issue. Mindy took advantage of her hesitation. She punched Helen hard in the right breast. The pain was so bad, Helen fell backward on the floor, gasping.
Mindy got to her knees. Then, wobbly as a newborn colt, she stood. The crowd cheered. Mindy accepted their applause with a regal incline of her head.
Too soon to be taking your bows, Helen thought. This fight isn’t over yet. She dragged herself upright and kneed Mindy in the groin. She’d read that maneuver had the same effect on a woman as a man. The article was right. Mindy doubled over, clutching herself.
This time, there were no cheers. The crowd was ominously silent. Helen felt
something cold and hard at the base of her skull. The rage drained out of her, replaced by freezing fear.
“Move and you’re dead,” a man said. “Now, down on your knees.”
He’s got a gun, Helen thought. He’s going to blow my head off. No one will help me. These ghouls will watch me die—and enjoy it. I won’t whimper. I won’t beg. And I won’t lay down and die. I thought my way in here and I can think my way out.
“Darling.” Mindy’s voice was silky as her scarf. “You’ve saved me. It’s so delightfully old-fashioned.”
“You can take care of yourself, babe. But this farce has gone on long enough. You women look stupid when you fight, all that hair pulling and rolling around and shit. You can’t throw a decent punch.”
That voice, Helen thought. I’ve heard it before. But where? Mindy’s husband, Dr. Melton? No, Melton Mowbry came from money. This guy sure didn’t have a private-school accent. Helen couldn’t turn around and look at him with the gun barrel jammed in her head. Her mind was working so slowly.
“We girls are lovers,” Mindy cooed, “not fighters.”
“Get the disk, Mindy, and let’s get out of here.” The man sounded impatient. And frustratingly familiar.
“You’re so masterful,” Mindy mocked. “Whatever you say, Hank.”
Hank? Of course. It was Hank Asporth. How could Helen forget his voice? He was Mindy’s lover? She had a husband and little twin girls. And I am such a Midwesterner, Helen thought. Melton and Mindy were hardly Ozzie and Harriet.
Then Helen heard someone shout, “Hey! The curtains are on fire.”
The candles. One had been knocked over during the fight. No one had seen the fire start. They were too busy watching the women wrestle. Now the dry black velvet curtains behind the coffin were in flames. The fire was small and energetic. It seemed an acre away in the huge room.
But Helen saw little flames, like malignant sprites, running along the silk rug toward the ebony casket. It burst into flames. The satin lining caught fire. A crazy giggle rose up inside her. Shouldn’t a casket be fireproof—especially for this crowd?
Smoke from the finest ebony smelled like the world’s best autumn bonfire. Helen also smelled raw panic. Naked people were screaming and pushing one another as they ran for the double doors. The doors were closed, the demons dancing insolently in the fiery haze.
A skinny woman rushed by, her waist-length hair on fire. A muscular middle-aged man was knocked sideways against the double doors. His black toupee came loose and slid along the floor like a hairy hockey puck, until it hit the blaze and burst into flames. But the newly bald man was strong. He pushed and punched his way back to the doors. Then he tore them open and escaped.
An older, flabbier man was not so lucky. He was trampled by panicked people rushing toward the doors. He tried to rise to his knees, but someone kicked him in the head. His body was pushed back toward the flames, and he did not move again.
Helen hoped the man was unconscious when the fire engulfed him. She felt oddly numb, as if she were watching a movie.
Hank and Mindy stayed cool in the chaos. Flames did not frighten them. Hell was their home.
“Get the disk, Mindy, and I’ll put a bullet through her head,” Hank said.
“Can’t I strangle her?” Mindy twisted her long filmy scarf.
“There’s no time,” Hank said.
“I’ll be quick. I always am.”
Her eyes were savage. Helen saw one thing clearly in the smoky darkness: Mindy liked to murder.
“You killed her,” Helen said. “You strangled Debbie.”
“Of course, you idiot. And that stupid piece of trailer trash.”
“Laredo? You killed Laredo? Hank strangled her. I heard him.”
“You heard me,” Mindy said. “Hank watched. Hank likes to watch. This time, he saw more than he wanted. Scared the poor baby.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Hank snapped. “I was angry. You shut her up too soon.”
“And now you want to rush.” Mindy slowly drew the scarf through her fingers.
The air was electric with heat and black with smoke. Helen could see the disk on the floor, next to her abandoned toolbox. Soon, the only link to Laredo’s murder would be a lump of melted plastic. Little fires burned along the floor only a few yards away.
“Mindy, move,” Hank said. “The place is on fire.”
“I know it is, lover, and it’s glorious.” Mindy seemed to delight in the destruction of her home. She threw out her arms and shouted, “Welcome to hell!”
There was an odd whump and Mindy’s sheer scarf ignited. Flames ran down her vinyl catsuit and up into her hair. Mindy shrieked and beat at the fire with her hands, but the vinyl melted into her skin. Her screams turned to hellish howls. She collapsed on the floor, rolling frantically to smother the flames. Her blazing body tossed and tumbled dangerously close to the computer disk.
“Make it stop!” she shrieked. “Make it stop!”
Hank was paralyzed. Helen could feel the gun pressing harder into her skull, but Hank’s hand was shaking. Mindy gave another inhuman cry and the gun barrel lurched upward, digging a trench in Helen’s scalp.
The pain made Helen look away from the madly screaming Mindy.
“Help meeeee!” But no one could help her now.
Helen had to run for it or she’d burn, too. The way Hank’s hands were trembling, he might miss if he tried to shoot her. Helen had a chance if she moved fast. But she wasn’t leaving without that disk.
She hit the hot floor and felt around for the disk. She found the toolbox. It was warm. The oven cleaner! Savannah’s oven cleaner was inside. Mindy, burning and screaming, was inches away. If the oven-cleaner can exploded in the fire, the metal toolbox would disintegrate into deadly shrapnel.
Helen heard Hank take quick strides toward her, as she frantically searched for the disk in the smoke. Now he was right behind her.
“Pleeeeeeease,” Mindy pleaded.
Helen started to crawl forward, but Hank’s huge hand grabbed her around the neck. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She heard him draw back the trigger. He was so close, Hank couldn’t miss if he tried.
This is it, Helen thought. I’m dead.
Chapter 28
I can’t hear, Helen thought. He shot me in the head.
The silence was frightening. She could see people screaming, but there was no sound. She didn’t feel any pain. Helen knew that was shock. The pain would come later.
Hank had let go of her. She sat up.
Helen felt her face for the sticky spurt of heart-pumped blood. Nothing. She checked the back of her head for leaking brains. No squishy mass. Both ears were still attached. There were no gaping gunshot wounds on her arms, legs or gut.
He didn’t kill me, she realized with dazed wonder. Unless I’m dead and don’t know it. I could be in hell.
Smoke swirled around her. Helen smelled roasting meat, but her mind skittered away from that. A million miles away at the far end of the room, the black velvet curtains flared into yellow sheets of fire. The coffin was a brimstone baptismal font.
A small fireball ran along the floor like a mouse. Helen gawked, then gulped like a goldfish. That cleared her ears. They opened to unearthly sounds: infernal shrieks of panic, squeals of pain.
Helen heard another shot, and hit the floor. A bullet zinged past her and buried itself in the floor three feet away. Hank wasn’t aiming at her. He was shooting at Mindy.
“Aahhhhgh!” Mindy’s burned lips could no longer make human sounds. Her body bucked and tossed in the flames.
Hank fired two more shots. Both went wild. One hit near Mindy’s smoking shoulder, the other by her fiery hair.
Another shot, and Mindy’s lost-soul wails stopped.
Mindy lay deathly still, tiny flames crackling quietly on her vinyl catsuit. Helen saw the bullet wound in her forehead, a red hole like a third eye.
Even in hell, I will never see anything this horrible, Helen thought.
Hank Asporth had shot his lover. Four of his bullets had gone wild. But the fifth hit the mark. He had one shot left.
Helen could see Hank lurching through the smoke. His big body was hunched like a cave creature. His jaw was slack with shock. His eyes were white and wild in his smoke-smeared face.
Now he pointed the gun straight at Helen. It was a revolver. It looked small in his huge hand, like Det. Lennie Brisco’s little revolver in Law & Order. Helen looked down the short barrel for a long eternity.
“You made me kill her,” Hank said. “I loved her. She’s dead and it’s your fault.”
“No,” Helen said. “No, you don’t—”
Hank pulled the trigger. I’m never going to sleep with Phil, she thought. I’ll burn in hell because my last thought was about boffing the hunk next door. She braced herself for the impact. She heard a loud snap.
Snap? What kind of noise was that?
The gun was empty. Of course. The Law & Order gun was a five-shot snub-nosed .38, not a six-shot at all. Helen nearly collapsed with relief.
Hank threw the useless gun into the smoke, then scooped up Laredo’s disk and began a clumsy splay-legged run for the door.
She couldn’t let him get away. Helen started after Hank, her own gait wobbly and erratic. She coughed and choked on the smoke. Her lungs were dead sponges. They wouldn’t take in any air. She pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth to help her breathe. That was a little better, but she still couldn’t move with any speed. She could hardly see. The demon doors were in another dimension. She’d never reach them.
You can’t let Hank escape with that disk, she told herself. Laredo bought it with her life. Helen kept slogging through the smoke-thick air. The demon doors never seemed to get any closer. A short, furry man ran past her. His hairy back was on fire.
Then, just like that, she was out and into the long corridor. She looked for Hank, but he was too far ahead. The air was better in the hall, but the panicked crowd was more dangerous. People pushed her forward. She could not stop. She’d be trampled if she tried. Helen struggled to stay upright.
Suddenly, she felt a stream of deliciously cool air. Was she near the entrance? No, the fresh air was coming from the tall window. Ten minutes ago, she’d stood there looking down at a lavish party. Now the portable bars were overturned, and the food and flowers were trampled. A naked woman floated face-down in the pool.
