by Elaine Viets
A French-rolled brunette shoved Helen so hard her forehead hit the wall. I’m going to die if I don’t get out of here, she thought. The open window was her quickest way out. She climbed over the sill and nearly lost her balance. It was a fifteen-foot drop to the ground. If she was lucky, she’d land in the soft garden. If she wasn’t, she’d hit the concrete like a watermelon dropped off a roof. She sat on the sill, hoping someone would come along below and help her down.
With a whoosh, a fireball exploded down the hall, turning the panicked pushers and shovers into living torches. The heat scorched Helen’s back. She didn’t hesitate any longer. She dropped straight down.
Helen landed in the mulch-cushioned flower bed and rolled onto the concrete, knocking her head against a teak chaise longue. She saw stars. Then she saw feet. A man’s feet in neat black Bally loafers.
“I see you fell for me again.” Phil said.
“This is no time for jokes.” Helen brushed the major mulch bits out of her eyes. “Hank Asporth just killed Mindy Mowbry. He shot her in the head. He has Laredo’s disk and he’s headed that way.”
Helen pointed toward the hall entrance. Phil didn’t ask what disk. He took off after Hank. Helen ran after him, but Phil was faster. She could hear sirens in the distance as they ran in the cool night air. The cops could chase Hank better than she could. But she kept running.
Phil raced around the building, Helen trailing after him. She saw Hank running across the wide lawn toward the dock.
“Phil! He’s heading for the boat!”
Hellfire, the Cigarette boat, was still at the Mowbrys’ dock. The painted flames licking its hull no longer seemed childish. They were a prophecy.
Phil poured on the speed. Helen tried to run faster, but she was panting like an old dog on a hot day. She hadn’t exercised much while she worked in the boiler room. All those salt-and-vinegar chips slowed her down.
Hank jumped aboard the boat.
“He’s untying the ropes! He’s getting away,” Helen said.
The five-hundred-horsepower twin engines started up. They sounded like an explosion and Helen was nearly deafened again. She could feel their rumble. Blue-white gasoline smoke poured from the exhaust. Just before the boat shot forward like a rocket, Phil sprang onto the deck with a corsair’s leap.
Helen made a leap, too. She missed the boat, nearly landing in the water. She grabbed a piling to keep from winding up in the drink, and scraped her arm.
“Shit!” Helen said.
The Cigarette boat was gone in a roar of smoke. Helen hauled herself back on the dock and stood there, trying to catch her breath. She was surprised to see that she was still holding her toolbox. She ran to the water-taxi stand.
She was in luck. There was a taxi waiting. It was empty, too. The captain was young and blond and looked like a Coast Guard recruiting poster. He was wearing a white captain’s shirt with four gold bars. His air of authority was undermined by his peach-fuzz cheeks.
Helen jumped on the water taxi. It rocked rudely under her weight, reminding her of that thirty-pound remark.
“Follow that boat!” She pointed at the Cigarette boat disappearing in the distance.
“Sorry, lady. I don’t leave for another four minutes.”
“You’re following that boat.” Helen pulled Savannah’s can of oven cleaner out of the toolbox. “Do what I say or I’ll shoot.”
The captain did not look frightened. “Is that pepper spray?”
“Oven cleaner. Do you know what this can do?”
“No. My oven’s self-cleaning,” the captain said.
“It contains lye. It can blind you. Now get going.”
“Aww, Jesus, lady. Can’t you just carry a gun like everyone else in South Florida?”
“Hurry! They’re getting away.”
“Of course they’re getting away. That’s a Cigarette boat. This is a tub.”
Helen shook the can. “Try,” she snarled.
“I can’t go fast. It’s a no-wake zone,” the captain said.
“I’ll pay the fine. Now floor it, or whatever you do with boats.” She put her finger on the nozzle. He still didn’t look scared, but at least he got the boat moving. They chugged through a wide, mansion-lined section of the Intracoastal Waterway. The channel was broad, flat and black.
Even a landlubber like Helen could see the captain was right. Their lumbering craft was no match for the sleek Cigarette boat. It seemed to be miles ahead. It barely touched the water, racing through the channel with great leaping belly flops. Whump! Whump! Whump! The Cigarette boat walloped along at what looked like a hundred miles an hour. Water shot up behind it in a curving arc. The powerful engines roared like an army of leaf blowers.
The tubby taxi wallowed along, rolling and shifting. Cold, dirty water splashed through its open sides. The water taxi was doing one thing really fast—falling behind. Helen could barely see the Cigarette boat.
“We’ve got to stop them,” Helen cried. “Call the Coast Guard.”
“I’ve radioed twice, lady. They’re on their way.”
Then, in the distance, they saw a little dinghy crossing in front of the Cigarette boat. It was small, slow and headed for disaster.
“Don’t look,” the captain said. “It’s going to be ugly.”
The Cigarette boat tried to avoid the dinghy. It went into a frantic spin, plowing the water on its side. The passengers in the dinghy took one look at what was heading their way and jumped into the water. The Cigarette boat missed them and hit a dock with a tremendous crack!
“Jesus,” the captain said, as bodies tumbled into the water. The single word sounded like a prayer.
Helen kicked off her shoes and dove into the churning canal. It was nearly twenty-five years since her Red Cross lifeguard course at the Webster Groves pool. She hoped she remembered what to do.
The water was cold, oily and oddly thick, but Helen felt revived. It cooled the burn on her scorched back. Now she was glad for all those salt-and-vinegar chips. A little extra body fat would keep her buoyant.
The first person she spotted was Hank, floundering in the water. He was still clutching the disk in his hand. Helen grabbed him by his hair.
“Ow!” he yelled. “Those are plugs. Cost a frigging fortune. They’ve just taken root. Don’t pull them out!”
“Give me that.” Helen reached for the disk.
“No way.” Hank would rather be snatched bald than give up that disk. On land, Helen had no chance of defeating him. But the big man was desperately afraid of the water. She pushed his hair-plugged head under again. Hank came up spluttering and choking.
“Help me. I can’t swim.” Hank grabbed Helen’s arm in a death grip and nearly pulled her under. She could drown with the desperate Hank. She chopped at Hank’s grasping hand until he let go of her arm.
Helen pushed his newly sodded head under once more. That did it. She pried the disk out of Hank’s hand and stuck it in her pants pocket. Then she let go of Hank.
“Please, don’t let me drown.” Hank kept sinking and swallowing water. Helen grabbed his collar. She started to tow Hank to the water taxi when she saw another body in the canal.
It was Phil, floating face-down.
Helen let go of Hank. When he tried to cling to her, she kicked him hard in the gut. She reached Phil in two strokes and pulled his head out of the water.
“Phil,” she said. “Phil, please talk to me.”
He was unconscious. The back of his shirt was dry. Helen hoped that meant he’d just gone into the water. She tried to turn him over on his back, but his body was too heavy and slippery. All she could do was keep his head clear of the water and try to drag him to the taxi. She forced herself not to think about the things brushing against her legs.
Helen was so exhausted, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to hold onto him. To keep her concentration, she talked as she towed Phil toward the water taxi.
“All this time, I thought you were invisible,” she said. “Do y
ou know how hard I tried to see what you looked like? I’d get up at six in the morning. I’d stay up until three A.M. I didn’t get a glimpse. I called you Phil the invisible pothead.
“When you saved me from that fire, I tried to thank you in person. I even left Cherry Garcia ice cream on your doorstep. You took it and said nothing. Didn’t even give me a peek at your face. What was that all about?”
Phil’s face was like something carved on a sarcophagus. If she kissed his cold marble lips, would he come back to life? That happened only in fairy tales, not in dirty canals. Helen kept paddling toward the water taxi, splashing and floundering, but moving forward.
“I even envied your pot-smoking because you could summon your dreams whenever you wanted. I was involved with a couple of jerks. Those guys were real nightmares. It was much harder to make them go away.”
Phil’s eyes stayed closed.
“Please don’t die,” she pleaded. “You’re the only decent guy I’ve met in Florida.”
The man had to be made of stone. Phil was growing heavier. Her fingers were cramping. She was afraid she’d lose him. Helen kept stroking toward the taxi, babbling to distract herself.
“Actually, I’m glad you’re out cold and can’t hear this. I can talk to you better that way. When you rescued me that time from the fire, I still remember how your hands felt. So strong and soft and hard at the same time. I figured a man with hands like that had to be good in bed.”
Helen’s own hands felt like lead. Her arms were logs of dead flesh. Her legs were lumps of rubber. She bumped into something hard. The boat. She’d reached it at last.
Strong hands lifted Phil into the water taxi while she treaded water. When Phil was safely aboard, she was lifted in. She saw flashing lights and knew the Coast Guard was on its way. She was vaguely aware of three wet-haired women and a sneezing young man huddled under blankets. They must have been in the dinghy.
I’m going to spend the rest of my life in jail for hijacking a water taxi, Helen thought. But at least I saved Phil.
He was stretched out on a bench, covered in blankets. His head was pillowed on a life jacket. She sat down beside him. Phil’s eyelashes fluttered. They were longer than hers. It wasn’t fair to waste lashes like that on a man. Then his eyes opened.
“Phil, you’re OK.”
“Better than OK. Who hauled me out of the water?”
“I did. Now we’re even.”
“Not yet.” Phil pulled her down and kissed her hard. This was no marble man. His lips were warm and deliciously wet.
The boat rocked as the Coast Guard arrived to take her away.
I’ll remember this kiss, no matter how many years I spend in prison, Helen thought.
Chapter 29
That kiss saved Helen.
She was still in a lip-lock with Phil when the Coast Guard arrived, flashing blue lights bouncing off the night-black water. The water taxi was flooded with pulsing color.
Helen didn’t stop kissing Phil. This memory had to last a long time. She was going to jail.
Helen took a peek. She saw two small Coast Guard boats, about the size of Boston Whalers. She counted six men in dark blue uniforms.
Helen heard a soft, cultured voice say, “Are you the Coast Guard?”
That must be one of the rescued women huddled under blankets on the water taxi.
Helen had seen enough. Once the captain started talking, it would be all over for her. Was boat-jacking a capital crime? She went back to kissing Phil.
“This is Capt. Jack Klobnak,” the rescued woman said, as if she was at a party. She’d bothered to learn his name. Helen had just threatened him.
“I’m Jan Kurtz. The captain saved us. He tried to head off that speedboat. It was running straight for our dinghy. The driver had to be drunk. That boat was going so fast. There’s no way the captain could have caught up with it. But he was there when we overturned. We would have drowned without him.”
Helen came up for air and sneaked another peek. Jan was about forty and would have been pretty if she hadn’t been dunked in a dirty canal. Her brown hair was plastered to her head and her eyeliner left muddy streaks.
“I think Capt. Klobnak saved the man over there, too,” Jan said. “That woman is giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“That will explain the lipstick all over your face,” Helen whispered in Phil’s ear. It felt like a fuzzy peach. She longed to nibble it.
“Ow. Don’t make me laugh. I’ve been kicked in the ribs,” Phil said. “You better stop resuscitating me, before they see you’ve revived another body part.”
Helen pulled herself away while Phil bunched the blankets strategically around his middle.
“Are you OK, sir?” The Coast Guard officer was twenty-something with a shaved head and a lobster-pink sunburn. “Do you need medical assistance?”
“I’m fine.”
He’s better than fine, Helen thought. The man kisses like a dream. She’d finally met her dream lover and she was going to jail for kidnaping a water taxi captain—if she didn’t die of pneumonia first. Her wet clothes weighed four thousand pounds. Her teeth were chattering.
“You’re cold.” Phil pulled off a blanket and wrapped it around her shivering shoulders. “Ouch. My ribs. Take this.”
Helen, bundled in coarse wool and wet khaki, felt a zing when she looked at Phil. Even soaking wet, that man was something. Especially wet. His shirt clung to his chest in interesting ways.
Helen jumped at a faint scraping sound. She saw the captain scooting her toolbox under a bench with his heroic foot, as if he didn’t want anyone to know he’d been hijacked by a woman wielding oven cleaner.
Maybe I won’t go to jail for water-taxi piracy after all, Helen thought.
The rescued Jan was still praising Capt. Klobnak and giving party introductions. “He saved my nephew, Christian Muys, and my friends Megan Kellner and Elaine Naiman. And me, too. He’s a hero.”
The captain blushed deep red, even in the flashing blue lights. But Jan was right. The man was a hero. And if Helen was going to save herself, he’d better stay one. She slathered on praise while covering her waterlogged rear end.
“That’s right, officers,” she said. “The captain was supposed to take me to Las Olas, way in the other direction. But he saw that speedboat go flying by, and he knew something was wrong. He went after it. I’m glad he did. When I saw that boat heading for those poor people, I thought they were goners.”
“Capt. Klobnak saved us all,” Jan said. “Well, not all. I saw the Cigarette boat driver go into the water, but I don’t know what happened to him. I was too busy jumping out of the way.”
There was a flap-flap of helicopter rotors and bright white lights blazed on the water.
“What’s that?” Helen said.
“The Coast Guard chopper is looking for bodies,” Phil said.
Helen shivered, and this time it wasn’t from the cold. The helicopter searchlights over the flashing blue lights were disorienting. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. Helen couldn’t take in any more. She stared at the wrecked Cigarette boat and abandoned dinghy.
Debris fanned out from the swamped boats: suntan-lotion bottles, beer cans, beach toys. She saw a beer cooler bob by, a canvas seat cushion and a bloody head.
A head?
Helen shook off her lethargy. The head belonged to the half-drowned Hank Asporth. He was doing a pathetic one-armed dog paddle while he clung desperately to a boat bumper. Hank paddled mostly in circles, although an occasional wild sweep of his arm would move him forward. Another sweep would splash water in his face and set off convulsive gasping and choking.
Helen saw a round red wound in his scalp. I must have pulled out one of his precious hair plugs, she thought.
“That’s the maniac who was driving the Cigarette boat!” Jan said.
The dripping, snuffling Hank was pulled into the closest Coast Guard boat. Phil threw off his blankets and produced his ID. “I’m a private investigator.
This man is Henry Asporth. He was running from the scene of a homicide. He shot and killed Mindy Mowbry.”
Capt. Klobnak whistled. “He killed the rich lady in that waterfront mansion?”
“I did not!” It was the first time Hank said anything. He looked like a walking dead man, the red hole in his scalp echoing the bullet wound in Mindy’s head. “There was a terrible fire. Mindy’s clothes were melting into her skin. She was screaming in pain. You’ve never heard a sound like that. She wasn’t going to survive those burns. I loved her. I couldn’t stand to see her suffer.”
Hank started to weep. His sobs sounded like someone opening a rusty grate. Helen almost felt sorry for him, until she remembered how he’d stepped over Mindy’s dead body to get the disk. Was he in shock or a stone-cold killer? She didn’t know. But she patted her pocket. Laredo’s disk was still there.
“And this woman here . . .” Phil smiled at Helen.
Oh, no, she thought. I can’t be mixed up in this. She elbowed Phil hard in his injured ribs.
“Urf!” he said.
“Are you OK, sir?” the sunburned Coast Guard officer said.
“My ribs.” Phil clutched his side.
“You were saying about this woman?”
Helen shook her head slightly and hoped Phil got the signal.
“She was in the water taxi when Capt. Klobnak saved me,” Phil said. “Hank Asporth tried to kill me.”
“I didn’t see any of that,” Helen said. “I closed my eyes when it looked like the boats were going to collide. I didn’t want to see those people die.”
“We’ll get a statement from you later, Billy,” the Coast Guardsman said.
Billy? Who’s Billy? Helen almost blurted, then realized she was still wearing Margery’s work shirt with BILLY on the pocket.
The Coast Guard boat took Hank Asporth away, blue lights flashing ominously.
