Dying to Call You dj-3

by Elaine Viets

  Chapter 21

  The Happy Cow belonged to the suicidal animal school of advertising. The restaurant’s neon sign featured a beaming bovine in a chef’s hat, eager to plunge a knife and fork into its own breast.

  “If you think about it, this is a weird place,” Helen said.

  Margery made a left-turn through the traffic on U.S. 1, and pulled into the Happy Cow parking lot. “What’s weird about an all-you-can-eat buffet in South Florida?”

  “That cow. It’s dying to become your dinner. How many happy cows, cheerful chickens, perky pigs and smiling shrimp have you seen, all thrilled to death because they’re going to wind up on your plate?”

  “So what do you want on the sign? A cow cowering in the corner while the butcher attacks it? That will sell a lot of steaks.”

  “No, I just wonder if people stop to think about it, that’s all.”

  “The only thing these old farts think about is getting home for a nap before they go out for the early-bird special.”

  Helen didn’t mention that some of the people coming out of the restaurant were younger than Margery. Some, but not many. The predominant customer hair color was snow white.

  At one-thirty in the afternoon, most of the walkers and canes were heading out the front door. The lunch hour was winding down.

  “Do you think we’ve missed Fred and Ethel?” Helen said.

  “Nope. Fred said they were going to a sale at Sears, then getting a late lunch here. I figured we should wait in the parking lot until they go inside. I don’t think anyone will notice my car.”

  Margery parked her big white Cadillac between a big white Lincoln and a big white Buick. The parking lot looked like a pod of white whales. Helen could never figure out why, once you turned seventy in Florida, you bought a large white car. It must be some biological urge.

  Helen and Margery watched the clientele totter out.

  “There are more chicken necks here than at a soup factory, Margery said. “This place must depress the hell out of you.”

  “Not me,” Helen said. “Usually I feel old. I’m a hot babe in this crowd.”

  Margery snorted. “You young people. Always talking about being old. You don’t know what age is. You are a hot babe. By the time you figure that out, you won’t be one anymore.”

  Helen looked in the side mirror. She could practically see her chin and chest sliding south. She could also see Fred and Ethel pulling up in a big white Chevy.

  “They’re here.” She ducked down in the seat, a decision she regretted. She got a cold blast of air conditioning in the face. By the time Fred and Ethel climbed out of their car, she’d have frozen to death.

  Helen poked her head above the window to keep her eyebrows from frosting up. She saw Fred first. An AMERICA—LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT T-shirt was stretched across his melon belly.

  “That’s a Nixon-era slogan. Where did he get that?” she said.

  “I think they’re bringing it back,” Margery said.

  Ethel toted a fat black purse the size of a carry-on suit-case. She wore a GOD BLESS AMERICA T-shirt with a sequinned flag on her chest.

  “Patriotism is the last refuge of these scoundrels,” Helen said. “I guess we should wait five minutes for them to get seated before we go inside.”

  “Good. It will give me time for a last cigarette, now that you can’t smoke in a Florida restaurant.” Margery rolled down her window and lit up. “I’ve been thinking how this should go down. I know the layout. I’ve been here with my bridge club.”

  “I didn’t know you played bridge.”

  “I don’t. We play poker, but restaurants don’t like that. So we tell them we’re playing bridge. We bring bridge pads and set them out. Nobody ever checks. We sit in the bar and play cards and drink enough manhattans to keep the help happy.

  Fred and Ethel are militant nondrinkers. They won’t go near the bar. We can sit in there and watch them where they can’t see us. You got the stuff?”

  “Right here.” Helen patted her pocket. “Let’s go.”

  Helen loved the bar at the Happy Cow. Its generous, curving black leather booths, dim lights and red-flocked wallpaper reminded her of the great old steak houses in St. Louis.

  The bar smelled pleasantly of mold, Lysol and stale cigarette smoke. That smell lingered long after the smoking ban.

  The two women sat on heavily padded black barstools and ordered white wine. The bartender, a woman about Margery’s age with an impressive figure and a blond beehive, was fast and efficient.

  Margery had picked a good spot. They could see the whole place in the mirrors behind the bar. The restaurant was long and narrow, with a soup, salad and dessert bar running down the middle. A soft-serve ice cream station and soft-drink section were against the wall. The walls were decorated with Florida beach scenes and NO DOGGY BAGS signs. The waitresses took the orders for grilled steaks and chicken.

  Then the diners raided the salad bar.

  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 wr
inging 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.