The Dead-End Job Mysteries Box Set 1

by Elaine Viets

  Helen winced at Warren’s sappy words.

  Margery’s smile was savage. She held the toupee like a fresh scalp. “Nope. I got me a wild hair. Let’s go, Helen.”

  They left Warren flatfooted in his dance studio.

  Chapter 22

  “So how’s your investigation going, Sherlock?” Margery was weaving in and out of the tourist traffic on Las Olas. Warren’s captured toupee lay between them like a dead pet.

  Helen did not want to have this conversation. But if she didn’t, Margery would ask about Phil. She wanted to discuss her love life even less.

  “Why do you think I’m investigating anything?”

  “Your customer’s been murdered, the cops are asking the wrong questions, and you want me to give the right answers.”

  Margery slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a man in a parrot shirt. “Blasted brain-dead tourist. Did you see that? Walked right into the traffic. I should run him down to teach him a lesson.”

  Warren’s toupee slid across the seat. Now it was nuzzling Helen’s leg. “I could talk better if you’d get rid of that creepy hairpiece,” she said.

  Margery picked it up by its scruff and stuffed it in her pocket.

  “Speak,” she said.

  Helen did. When she finished, Margery said, “Was that wedding held in a briar patch? Why is everyone scratched?”

  “Not everyone,” Helen said. “Just three people. The cops think Kiki may have scratched her murderer. That could be why her nails were chopped off, to get rid of the incriminating DNA. Or maybe her killer was kinky. I saw her hands. They looked bizarre.”

  Those clutching dead-child hands flashed in her mind again.

  “Hello, Helen, are you there? Who else is scratched?” Margery said.

  Helen shook off the memory. “Chauncey has a scratch on his neck, but Donna Sue says he got it at the theater. Desiree has a scratch on her arm. She says it was a cat. Her father’s not saying how he got the scratches on his hands.”

  “All these scratches aren’t natural,” Margery said.

  “One isn’t natural,” Helen said. “The others just happened. Everyone gets scrapes and scratches.”

  “Yeah, right,” Margery said.

  “What’s that on your right hand?” Helen pointed to a long red scrape.

  “I was trimming the bougainvillea and it bit me,” Margery said.

  “I rest my case,” Helen said.

  “Watch it or I’ll get out that toupee again,” Margery said. “Have you checked that Jason guy for scratches?”

  “No. Come to think of it, he was wearing a sweater with long sleeves. Of course, it was chilly.”

  “He could be hiding something,” Margery said.

  “He is hiding something. Ever since I talked with him at the theater, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is. I know he sells Ecstasy. I suspect he’s also using his product. One actress said he’s real touchy-feely. He wore this super-soft sweater, cashmere or something. X makes you sensitive to touch, so users crave hugs, stuffed animals, soft things.”

  “What else do you know about Ecstasy?” Margery said.

  Like everyone in South Florida, Helen considered herself an expert on street drugs. “It gives you endless energy,” she said. “You can dance all night. It makes your teeth clench, so some people use suckers to relieve that symptom. Jason had a bunch in his car.”

  “Is it addictive?”

  “I guess so,” Helen said.

  “How?” Margery said. “Does it mellow you out like pot? Does it make you crazy like angel dust? Do you try to fly off buildings like with LSD? Or do you think you’re putting a stake through a vampire’s heart when you’re really killing the mother of the bride?”

  “I don’t know,” Helen said. “But I’d better find out. Could you drop me off at the library? I have time to do some Ecstasy research before I go to work.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Margery said. “After you do your research, we’ll see Jason and check him for scratches.”

  “He won’t be at the theater until six,” Helen said.

  “Who said anything about the theater? You can get home addresses on the Net.”

  I’m losing my edge, Helen thought. Too much time with chiffon, not enough with computers. “Glad somebody’s thinking,” she said. “We have a good chance of catching him at home before noon. Drug dealers are rarely early risers.”

  Helen put her name on the computer list at the library. Twenty minutes later, she was typing in “Ecstasy addiction.”

  “Bingo,” she said. “This article says X users may encounter problems similar to amphetamine and coke users, including addiction.”

  Helen scrolled down the story. “Wow. Jason is using it for sure. Listen to this: “‘The designer drug Ecstasy, or MDMA, causes long-lasting damage to brain areas that are critical for thought and memory. . . . Researchers found that four days of exposure to the drug caused damage that persisted six to seven years later.’ No wonder Jason was dropping lines in Richard the Third. The other actors were complaining about it.”

  “That boy’s in big trouble,” Margery said. “Actors depend on their memory for their living.”

  “Here’s a list of where to get help,” Helen said. “Florida has a major rehab industry. Jeez. Clean doesn’t come cheap. A top rehab center costs as much as a good college.”

  Margery checked her watch. “Your computer time is about up. Did you look up Jason’s home address?”

  “Yes. He lives in a town house in Dania,” Helen said.

  Half an hour later, Margery pulled her white whale of a car into The Gardens at San Andrino. Florida developers loved to give subdivisions splendid names. The semi-Spanish town houses had an impressive entrance and a velvety green lawn.

  “Margery, paranoia is a symptom of Ecstasy addiction,” Helen said. “Jason may think the two of us are ganging up on him. I’d better talk to him alone. Would you mind waiting in the car?”

  “OK. I can grab a smoke. If you’re not out in fifteen minutes, I’m coming in after you.”

  Margery sounded like a late-night movie, but Helen felt a little safer. Jason had a nasty streak for a guy taking a huggy drug.

  Jason’s town house was one of six set around a tropical courtyard. Helen knocked on his door. No answer. She knocked harder and a voice called out, “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  Jason swung open the door and blinked at the bright light. His face was puffy from sleep, but startlingly handsome. He wore a blue velvet robe and nothing else. His chest was perfectly tanned and toned. Helen wondered if he waxed it.

  Jason’s beauty was only skin deep. He had an ugly mouth. “I said I didn’t want to talk to you, bitch,” he snarled. “Beat it.”

  A small, determined woman in her sixties came out two doors down. She stood on her porch, cell phone in hand, and glared at Jason.

  Helen lowered her voice. “You can invite me in for five minutes or I can tell your neighbor there how you make your money. I don’t think she’ll be happy living by a drug dealer.”

  Jason reluctantly opened the door. His right wrist was wrapped in an Ace bandage.

  Helen waved at the woman as she stepped through the door. Her protector nodded but didn’t budge from her porch or put away her cell phone. Good. She’d be listening for sounds of mayhem.

  The cold air hit Helen immediately. It was like walking into an upright freezer. She caught a glimpse of a kitchen sink piled with dirty pots. That was the last normal sight in the town house.

  The living-room walls were covered with dark blue velvet. The couches were dark velvet, too, a fabric way too warm for Florida. No wonder Jason had the air-conditioning set at subzero.

  Midnight-blue curtains blocked the light. In the soft velvety darkness, the white marble fireplace had a graveyard glow. Over the mantel, in place of a picture, was a flat-screen TV.

  Helen felt like she was trapped inside a jewelry box. The dark velvet made Jason’s green eyes glow like emeralds. Hi
s face was cold white stone. He made a grab for Helen’s arm, but she stepped back and put a velvet chair between them. She picked up a black marble candlestick from the mantel and hefted it.

  “Nice,” she said. “And heavy.”

  Jason backed off. “All right, bitch. What are you doing here?”

  “What happened to your wrist?” Helen said.

  “I sprained it during a sword fight at rehearsal,” he said.

  Helen saw blood spots on the bandage. Sprains didn’t bleed. “When did that happen?” she said.

  “None of your frigging business. You want to tell me what this is about?”

  “I saw your performance as Richard.”

  “And you came by for my autograph?” A nasty sneer disfigured his face.

  Helen knew how to wipe it off. “You’re losing your memory.”

  He shrugged. “It happens to actors.”

  “It happens to X users,” Helen said. “Ecstasy destroys memory. You’re using your product.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He opened his mouth to deny it, then burst out with, “I didn’t know it did that. Nobody told me. I didn’t find out until too late. At first, all I knew was X gave me energy. I could rehearse till midnight, then party till dawn. I felt like a god. I’d discovered the secret of the universe. The other actors were working shit jobs and struggling to pay their bills. X made me all this money. It gave me all this energy.”

  “Then it took it.” Helen said.

  “It took everything.” Jason’s voice was sticky with self-pity. Were those tears in his eyes? He’d gone from threats to tears in eighty seconds. If he’d shown that range onstage, he’d have been a great actor. He had no trouble remembering his lines for The Tragedy of Jason I.

  “Ecstasy took my memory. I started dropping my lines. It took my confidence. People talked about me behind my back.”

  “Paranoia is a symptom of addiction,” Helen said.

  “I saw that Web site, too.” That sneer again, a rictus of hate. But Helen remembered something else from the Web site. The last piece fell into place.

  “That’s why you were all over Kiki at the rehearsal. You wanted her to bankroll your rehab. A good rehab center would cost you twenty thousand bucks.”

  “She owed it to me as an artist. She had the money. It was nothing to her.”

  “Wrong, Jason. Money is everything to the very rich. They want value for their money. What could you give her?”

  “What do you think?” He thrust his pelvis forward. Helen prayed the robe stayed closed. She’d seen enough of Jason. “Where would an old bitch like her find a young stud like me?”

  Helen laughed. “Boys like you are on every street in Florida. Kiki had her boy toys drive her Rolls. Besides, she wouldn’t hand you the cash. She’d make you crawl until you hated her and hated yourself—then you wouldn’t get the money, after all. That’s what she did to her chauffeurs.”

  Jason petted his velvet sleeves. “Do you think it’s easy selling X? There’s not that much money. I don’t have a Miami penthouse and a Mercedes. I’m in Dania, driving an Eclipse. It’s not even a convertible.”

  The addict’s whine. Helen hated his self-pity. “Any struggling actor would love to live here and wear expensive clothes like yours.”

  The self-pity dried up. The sneer was back. “They’re from Sawgrass Mills Mall, moron. Whoever heard of a drug dealer shopping at an outlet mall?

  “Look, I admit it. I asked her for help. So what? Do you understand how time-consuming drugs are? They take energy, effort, and careful planning. Kiki was my last hope. I begged her. She didn’t understand. No one does. Having an addiction is like hiding a beautiful damaged child in your home. I hate it. I hate it.” He was sniveling again.

  “You love it,” Helen said. “You called your addiction a child, not a burden or a monkey on your back. You’ll never let go of this baby—and it will never let go of you. You thought Kiki would set you up in a nice apartment, maybe even pay for your rehab. You poor schmuck. I thought only women fell for rescue fantasies.”

  Jason gave a mean laugh. “Hey, Helen, you know what they say about you older women? You don’t swell, you don’t tell, and you’re so grateful.”

  Helen wanted to slap him. “Kiki never heard of gratitude. She turned you down and laughed at you. So you killed her.”

  Jason was sweating heavily now, despite the room’s freezing temperature. His hair was plastered to his forehead. Sweat slid down his tanned chest.

  “Are you crazy? I couldn’t even fuck her, much less kill her.”

  Helen felt the acid of his bottomless self-contempt. “You tried to hit up Desiree for the rehab money the day of her mother’s funeral, didn’t you?”

  “She owed it to me,” Jason said. “But she wouldn’t give it to me. And I didn’t kill her, did I? Just like I didn’t kill Kiki.”

  Helen left him alone in his velvet box, hugging himself.

  Chapter 23

  “This wedding dress makes my hips look fat!” The bride was so skinny, Helen could have pulled her through a wedding ring.

  “Stacey, you don’t have any hips!” Helen snapped.

  Stacey’s sunny little face clouded.

  “I mean, you’re lucky to be so thin,” Helen said. “Most brides would kill to be as slender as you.” The rest would be treated for anorexia.

  Stacey’s smile returned. She bought the dress. But Helen’s patience was shredded. She was tired of hearing: “My butt’s too big.” “My gut sticks out.” “I have cellulite on my thighs.”

  Each statement was pronounced in the tragic tones usually reserved for, “I have terminal cancer.”

  What irritated Helen was that these young women didn’t have an ounce of extra fat. They were model thin, with thick glossy hair and sweet, firm skin. But they didn’t appreciate their natural gifts. They also didn’t realize how soon those gifts would be gone.

  Helen wanted to strip off her clothes and say, “This is cellulite, sweetie. This is fat. In twenty years, you’ll look like me—if you’re lucky. Most women my age look even worse.”

  Stacey barely had her nonfat thighs out the door before Helen had the celadon affair.

  Lindsey, a fragile redhead, came in to inspect her celadon bridesmaid dresses. Celadon looked like plain old celery green to Helen, but two-thousand-dollar dresses couldn’t be the color of a common vegetable.

  Helen thought the pale green dresses would look like an Impressionist’s dream on Lindsey’s redheaded sisters and cousins. She expected the bride to go into raptures.

  Instead, Lindsey fished two pale green carpet fibers out of a miniature purse. They looked like something the police picked up with tweezers at Kiki’s crime scene.

  The bride put the two fibers against the celadon dresses. Her rosebud mouth turned down. “They don’t match,” she wailed.

  “They don’t?” Helen squinted at the carpet bits. She could hardly see them.

  “The color scheme is wrong, wrong, wrong,” the bride cried. “The dresses are supposed to match the hotel carpet exactly.”

  Helen saw Lindsey sneaking into the hotel and snipping off the carpet fibers. She wondered if the rug had other bridal-induced bald spots.

  “My whole color scheme depends on this.” Lindsey sounded desperate. “The dresses have to match the carpet and the carpet has to match the chair covers.”

  Privileged brides rented chair covers so their guests wouldn’t see the naked metal legs.

  “Everything is ruined.” Two tears ran down Lindsey’s unlined face. “We’ll have to send back the dresses.”

  Helen saw an ugly shade of red. No way, missy, she thought. You’ll take those celery dresses if I have to chop them up and feed them to you. Helen summoned the last of her sanity and said, “Let me get Millicent.”

  Millicent was hauling white gowns out of brown boxes in the back room.

  “Another crisis,” Helen said. “Lindsey is crying because the dresses don’t match the car
pet. I can’t believe anyone would make an issue out of something so stupid.”

  “Helen, take a deep breath,” Millicent said. “I know it seems trivial to you, but it’s vital to her. I’ll handle this.” She ran her hands through her white hair, adjusted her black suit, and headed out to the salon floor.

  “Lindsey, darling,” Millicent said. “Please don’t tell me you want an exact match. That’s so Kmart.”

  Lindsey’s green eyes widened in horror. Helen could see the flashing blue lights.

  “You want something in the same color family, but it should be at least two shades off.” Millicent picked up a celadon dress. “This is perfect, like everything else in your wedding. Now have your bridesmaids call me for their fittings.”

  Lindsey put the fibers up against the dresses again.

  “See?” Millicent said. “Two shades. Precisely.”

  Lindsey sniffled. “You’ve saved my wedding.”

  “That’s my job, darling.” Millicent hugged her good-bye.

  “Move over Henry Kissinger,” Helen said. “If you were in the diplomatic corps, we’d have peace in the Middle East.”

  “World peace is not as important as celadon dresses,” Millicent said. “I’m unpacking stock in the back. Watch the store.”

  The shop was blessedly empty. Helen sank down in the pink chair. She was tired of the problems of people who had no problems. “Who cares?” she wanted to shout at the brides. “In twenty years, you’ll be divorced, anyway.”

  Like me, she thought. Had she ever shed tears over wedding trifles? She vaguely remembered some flap over baby’s breath and daisies. But it was almost two decades since she’d married Rob. She’d cried a river since then.

  The doorbell rang. Helen saw a woman of about forty sporting a plum-sized stone on her left hand. Hallelujah! A mature bride. They were usually easier to deal with. This one turned out to be a doctor with good sense and good money.

  Helen soon had the doctor bride in the fitting room with three gowns. Millicent was measuring another bride’s train. The doorbell rang again. It was Nora, a nervous mother of the bride.