by Elaine Viets
But Millicent was on the phone, sounding desperate. “Rebecca, sweetie, you can’t cancel. You’ll lose your deposit. Of course you care. Three thousand dollars is a lot of money. Rebecca, please listen—Rebecca?”
Millicent stared at the dead phone. “That’s the third cancellation this morning.”
The phone rang again, shrill and angry.
“Don’t answer that,” Helen said. “Read this first.”
Millicent gave a little shriek when she saw the headline. She was spitting fury by the time she finished. “That bitch at Haute Bridal did this. She’s trying to ruin me. I’ll sue her. I’ll get her if it’s the last thing I do.”
“We have to find out for sure who placed the ad,” Helen said. “I’ll call the paper.”
“They won’t know anything,” Millicent said.
“They might,” Helen said. “You listen on the extension.”
Helen told Eric in the advertising department about the ad.
“Weird. Why would some stranger buy an ad for your store?” Eric said.
“To destroy our business,” Helen said. “Do you know who did this?”
“I took the ad myself.” Eric sounded nervous now. “Saturday afternoon about three. It was a rush job for Monday. A walk-in at our office. The buyer paid cash.”
“Who was the buyer?”
“A woman. She wore a red jacket and black pants. I couldn’t see her face real good because she had on these big dark sunglasses. But she had long white hair and really red nail polish, like blood or something.”
“Millicent, that sounds like you,” Helen said. “How old was she?”
“Old. Older than my mom,” Eric said. “I’d say she was about fifty-five.”
“I am not.” Millicent was outraged. She hung up on Eric.
Helen’s head hurt from all the slamming phones.
Millicent paced the pink salon in a red rage. “What did I tell you? It’s Haute Bridal. The woman will stoop to anything. And she’s older than me. She put on a white wig and placed that ad. She was furious when Kiki came here and canceled the order with her shop.”
“How did she find out Kiki was dead? I didn’t call you until five.”
“It was on the news from about two o’clock on,” Millicent said.
Of course. Helen had been holed up at the church all afternoon, but that didn’t mean the rest of the world was locked away. She’d seen the TV vans outside the cathedral.
“This is a public relations disaster,” Millicent said.
For the first time, she looked old and desperate. “Helen, what am I going to do? I’ve had three cancellations already. Desiree has refused to pay the balance of Kiki’s order. I’ll lose my business. I’m too old to start over again. I’ve worked so hard for everything and now it’s gone horribly wrong.”
Millicent put her head down on her desk and began to weep. Helen couldn’t stand to watch a strong woman cry.
“Don’t!” she pleaded. “I’ll think of something.”
“What can you do?”
Nothing, Helen thought. I’m a shopgirl. I won’t even be that if Millicent goes out of business. I’ll have to look for another job, and that’s harder work than working. Any job I find won’t be as nice as this one.
She recalled some of her previous dead-end jobs. She’d been a clumsy crockery-dropping waitress at a Greek diner. She shuddered when she thought of the owner, his hands fastened on her breasts like hairy suction cups.
She did time as a telemarketer and was cursed from coast to coast. Working at Millicent’s was a dream compared to those places. There was only one way to save her job.
“I can find the killer,” Helen said. “I’ve done it before.” Her brave words sounded silly.
“Even if the cops catch the killer that won’t help us. The damage here is permanent.” Millicent waved the “Weddings to Die For” ad at Helen, then threw it down on her desk.
The store was dead. The white wedding dresses hung like shrouds. Helen sat with Millicent like a mourner, while the phone rang and rang and the answering machine recorded one cancellation after another.
Chapter 11
“Customers!” Millicent said, and pulled herself out of the packing boxes like a shipwreck survivor who’d seen help on the horizon. She was starved for business. No bride would come near her store.
“We have customers! It’s a couple in their late thirties. Probably a second marriage. Good. She’ll be working and have money. She’s thin, too. She can wear clothes. I’ve got just the gown for her.”
Millicent spun this fantasy while she picked white threads off her suit and slipped on her shoes. The old fire was in her eyes. She marched confidently down the balcony stairs to the salon, determined to make this sale.
Helen looked over the balcony and nearly threw up on the happy couple. It was homicide detectives Bill McIntyre and Janet Smith. She saw Millicent’s shoulders sag as she got closer and recognized them. Helen started down the steps. Her feet felt like cinder blocks.
The Sunnysea detectives sat side by side on the gray husband couch. Both wore suits, but McIntyre’s was better tailored. Male detectives seemed to have a streak of vanity the women did not.
“They want to talk to you,” Millicent said. Helen could hear the relief in her boss’s voice.
Helen took a pink chair and sat down quickly, before she panicked and ran out the door. If I slip, they’ll send me back to my old, cold life in St. Louis, she thought. She saw her hands were white from gripping the chair arms and tried to relax.
The pumped-up McIntyre started talking this time. Helen wondered what weights he lifted to get a muscle-bound neck. As he spoke, little muscles moved like a living anatomy lesson. Helen expected his voice to be burly, too, but it was a light, pleasant tenor.
“We want to ask you a few more questions about the day of the wedding,” Detective McIntyre said. Even his mustache was muscular.
Helen stalled for time. “Have you found anything interesting?”
“We found some fingerprints on the wedding dress that was wrapped around the victim’s head,” he said. “Also on the dress the victim was wearing.”
“You can get fingerprints from cloth?” Helen said.
“Yes. Some kinds of cloth.”
“Do you think the prints belong to the killer?” Helen said.
“We thought maybe you could tell us.”
“Whose are they?” Helen said.
“Yours,” McIntyre said.
Helen wanted to put her head between her knees, the way the nuns made her when she felt sick at school. She wanted to bolt for the door.
Think, she told herself. You haven’t done anything wrong.
“Of course my fingerprints are on both dresses.” Helen’s voice was shaky and slightly too high. “I helped the bride into her gown during several fittings. I helped Kiki put on the rose dress. I carried both dresses into the church and hung them up.”
“Mind telling us where you were between eleven and two the night of the rehearsal dinner?” Detective Janet Smith said.
Helen felt her face grow hot with embarrassment. “I was with my boyfriend at my place.”
“All night?” Smith said.
Detective McIntyre sat there like a muscle monument. Helen wished he’d leer or do something human.
“Phil left about seven the next morning.”
“Anyone see him leave?” Detective Smith said.
“Probably my landlady. She knows everything that goes on at the Coronado,” Helen said.
“And your boyfriend will confirm this?”
“We had a fight and we’re not speaking, but yes. You can check with him.”
“We will. What aren’t you telling us?” Detective Smith said.
“What do you mean?” Helen tried to look her in the eye and failed.
“You know something,” Smith said.
I know a lot of things, Helen thought, but nothing I can tell you.
I know the bride didn’t want me to open th
e closet door where her mother’s body was stashed. I know her father and the best man virtually forced her into that marriage. I know the groom was determined to be in that Michael Mann movie, no matter what his mother-in-law said. I know the best man will save his theater with the money he inherited from Kiki. I know the chauffeur will inherit a million dollars.
Here’s the most important thing I know: I can’t afford to say anything. These people are rich and powerful. They can ruin me.
Maybe she could hint around about Jason. Actors had neither money nor power. Sorry, Jason, she thought, but the sharks are circling. I’m throwing you overboard. She might have felt guiltier if he wasn’t such a conceited twit.
“You tested Kiki’s body for DNA, right?” Helen said. “She might have been with someone the night of the rehearsal.”
“Been with how?” Detective McIntyre said.
“Sexually.” The word sounded prim and salacious at the same time.
“Believe it or not, we’ve heard of DNA,” McIntyre said.
“We watch the cop shows, too.” Detective Smith had a sarcastic streak.
Say something, Helen thought, but don’t babble. “The rose dress, the one Kiki was killed in? She couldn’t get into that dress by herself. It had a four-foot-wide hoop skirt.”
“Like Scarlett O’Hara?” McIntyre said.
“Exactly,” Helen said. “Scarlett had help. So did Kiki. That dress was fragile. It would be easy to step wrong and tear the skirt. Kiki couldn’t even sit down in a regular chair. She couldn’t put that dress on alone. So who helped her?”
The two detectives looked unimpressed. Helen guessed they didn’t understand clothes that required maids.
“Maybe you can explain something else about that dress,” Detective Janet Smith said. “We found blood on the skirt. We have a warrant for your DNA.”
“My blood?” Helen’s voice was a squeak. “You want my blood? You think I killed her?”
“How else did your blood get on that dress?”
“I scratched my arm,” Helen said.
“So you don’t deny it’s your blood?”
“I’m not saying it’s my blood. It could be someone else’s. But I might have dripped a drop or two on the dress. I didn’t think Kiki would notice.”
“We think she did,” Detective Smith said. “You fought with her Friday night and she threatened to have you fired. You were fighting over that damaged dress, weren’t you?”
“No. That’s not what it was about. Kiki thought I was eavesdropping on an argument she had with her ex.”
“Now you’ve decided to tell us about the fight. You didn’t mention it before,” Detective Smith said. “But we heard about it from other people.”
Helen remembered the four frightened bridesmaids staring over the wedding planner’s shoulder. Did they tell? Or was it Jeff, the wedding planner?
“It wasn’t a big deal. Kiki said something nasty, and I refused to take her rudeness. She said she’d buy the bridal shop and have me fired. But she wouldn’t spend major money to nail a minimum-wage clerk. It would be bad publicity for Ms. Florida Philanthropist to go after a poor workingwoman.”
“Maybe. But if you ruined that dress, she’d make you pay for it,” Detective Smith said.
“I didn’t ruin it,” Helen said.
Smith kept talking. “That dress cost three thousand dollars. You make what? Six dollars an hour?”
“Six-seventy, plus commission.” Helen’s pay sounded pitiful when she said it out loud. “But—”
“You’d have to sell a lot of wedding gowns to pay for that rose dress,” Detective Smith said. “It would take you three months to make that kind of money, if you kept your job. The victim said she’d make sure you never worked again.”
Helen was beyond fear now. She was furious. “It’s a lot easier to arrest a shop clerk than someone with thirty million dollars,” Helen said. “I’m not the only one Kiki threatened. You’d better talk to Luke. Kiki also told the groom he couldn’t take a big part in a Michael Mann movie.”
“We heard that, too,” Detective Smith said. “But not from you. Now let’s get that DNA sample.”
“Are you going to stick me with a needle?” Helen said.
“I’m going to run a Q-tip on the inside of your cheek. It won’t hurt.”
But it did. Helen felt shame, like a fiery brand, where the Q-tip touched her.
Detective Smith dropped it in a plastic evidence bag. “We’ll be seeing you again,” she said.
It was a promise and a threat.
My sister, Helen thought. I have to warn Kathy. What if she gets a call from the police? Those two detectives could find out what happened in St. Louis. She doesn’t deserve this. Helen felt bad that Kathy was mixed up in her troubles. She deserved a better sister.
Kathy was almost perfect. She lived in a white house with a picket fence in suburban Webster Groves. The house needed new plumbing and a coat of paint, but it was an oasis of domesticity. Kathy was different from Helen, but she understood her sister better than anyone.
Kathy was the only person from her old life Helen really missed—and the only one who knew where Helen was. Helen called her once a month. Her next call wasn’t due for two weeks. But she had to talk to Kathy now.
On her lunch hour, Helen ran home like an animal to her burrow. She locked the door, pulled the blinds down, and opened the storage closet. She lugged out the red Samsonite suitcase and dug out the cell phone buried in the pile of old-lady underwear.
Please, please be home, Helen prayed as she dialed. The phone rang four times before Kathy picked up, breathless. “Sorry, I was in the basement. Helen, is that you? Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, Kathy. But if the police start asking questions about me, you don’t know where I am.”
“Of course. That’s what I’d tell them, anyway. No one’s been around. Are you sure you’re not in trouble?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” It was their childhood pledge that they were telling the truth. Helen used it when she lied to reassure her sister.
“Something’s wrong,” Kathy said. “You aren’t due to call yet. Did Rob track you down? He’s been trying to charm your location out of Mom. He’s desperate for money again. Another rich girlfriend dropped him.”
“How long did this one take to wise up?” Helen said.
“She saw through him in six months.”
“It took me seventeen years,” Helen said. “If I hadn’t caught him in the act, I would have never figured it out.”
“You had a disadvantage,” Kathy said. “You were blinded by love.”
“I was blinded by stupidity. I let that man live off me for five years while he supposedly looked for work.”
“Helen, don’t be mean to yourself. When you finally caught that lowlife, you made him skip.”
“Skip naked,” Helen said. “I wish you could have seen him.”
Rob had been buck-naked with their neighbor, Sandy. First, Helen saw a lot of pink skin. Then she saw red. Helen picked up a crowbar and started swinging. Rob abandoned his lady love and ran for the protection of his Land Cruiser. Helen bought that for him, too.
She hit Rob where it hurt the most—right in the radiator. She reduced the Land Cruiser to rubble while Rob cowered inside. By the time the police arrived, the SUV was totaled. Rob and Sandy refused to press assault charges.
“It’s the court, right?” Kathy said. “They’ve tracked you down.”
“Ah, yes, the judge,” Helen said. “The man who was dropped on his head at birth.”
Helen filed for divorce. But a slick lawyer convinced the judge that Rob was the victim, a house husband who put up with a crazy career woman.
His lovers testified that Rob provided invaluable services. He did, too. He serviced them all. Helen wanted her lawyer to ask the women if they’d had sex with Helen’s husband. The lawyer refused. He was too much of a gentleman.
The judge said Helen made six figures because of
Rob’s love and support. He gave Rob half the house, even though Helen made all the payments. She had steeled herself for that. Then the judge awarded Rob half of Helen’s future income, because her worthless husband made her career possible “at the expense of his own livelihood.”
Rage flowed through her like molten lava, wiping out her old life forever. Helen grabbed the familiar black book with the gold lettering and said, “I swear on this Bible that my husband, Rob, will not get another nickel of my salary.”
The Bible turned out to be the Missouri Revised Statutes. But Helen considered the oath binding.
She left the next day, zigzagging across the country before winding up in South Florida. Now she worked dead-end jobs to stay untraceable.
“It’s your new job, isn’t it?” Kathy said. “You’re in trouble again.”
“I wouldn’t call it trouble exactly,” Helen said. “One of our customers died. The police have been asking questions. I don’t want them asking anything about me, that’s all. How’s Mom?”
“That was a subtle change of subject,” Kathy said. But she suddenly sounded too cheerful. “Listen, Helen, I’m glad you called. I have some news. Mom’s getting married again.”
“Oh, no. Mom’s not going to marry Lawn Boy Larry,” Helen said.
“They’ve been dating for almost a year, Helen. The wedding is next week.”
“I can’t believe she’s marrying that old buzzard. All he wants to do is get his hands on her grass.”
“Helen! She’s been a widow for ten years. And she’s lonely. She’s having a wonderful time planning the wedding.”
“Tell me about this wedding.”
“Well, she’s got this guy from the senior center to sing ‘Oh, Promise Me.’ ”
“Mr. Carmichael?”
“That’s him.”
“I don’t believe it. She wanted to inflict him on my wedding,” Helen said. “He’s this horrible ice-cream tenor. We had a big fight about it.”
“You had a big fight about everything.”
“I couldn’t be perfect like you, Kathy. Mom hated my bridesmaid dresses.”
“Orange harem pants were unusual, Helen.”
“It beat baby pink formals.”
