Dying to Call You (17 page)

I do what I have to do, Helen thought. I don’t know those people. They won’t see me. I’ll be another anonymous worker. I won’t have a face.

I’ll be half-naked for a bunch of rich jerks.

I’m forty-two, not some blushing virgin. Besides, there are doctors at this party. They see naked people all day.

But not healthy naked people. They see the sick, the injured and the dying. For them, good health is a turn-on.

Then Helen remembered the way the police had looked at her, as if she was a hysterical woman. That was worse than being naked.

Besides, said a nasty little voice. It’s five hundred bucks.

After the break-in, she could use the money.

Helen put the lemon peels, lime wedges and maraschino cherries into little glasses on the bar. She checked the ice.

She counted the glasses and set out the cocktail napkins.

She unbuttoned her blouse. There were six buttons. She’d never noticed before. Now each one counted.

She was standing at her bar with her shirt open. She looked around. No one was pointing and laughing. The guests were inside the mansion, changing out of their clothes. The other bartenders and servers were already topless, looking like they did it every day.

Helen took a deep breath, removed her blouse and unhooked her bra. She stuck them both in her purse.

Going topless wasn’t as bad as she expected. It was a little chilly, since her bar was outside, but that perked things up.

The men stared at her chest, which made her uncomfortable at first. Then she felt better. She knew they’d never remember her face. Their eyes would never get up that high.

I’m invisible, she thought. I am a pair of breasts. I have no other identity.

Some guests had stripped to their underwear. Only a few men stayed dressed. Helen was grateful to the guys who kept their clothes on. Clothes did make the man, she thought. Especially when he was over forty.

A skinny woman whose pool house had been featured in a recent Sunday paper strolled by, clad only in pink thong panties and a push-up bra. Helen was pleased to see she had cellulite.

Helen served a beer to a naked politician. He had on a wedding ring, but he stared at her chest as if he’d never seen a bare one before.

She was getting used to the fat men in their underwear. It wasn’t any worse than the beach during tourist season. Most of the sex and drugs seemed to be inside the house, so she was spared those scenes.

It’s not bad, she thought.

Then the lizard, Mr. Cavarelli, slithered up to her bar.

“I’m invisible. Management never deigns to notice boiler-room staff,” she told herself, as she poured his red wine. And she was. Mr. Cavarelli never looked at her face or noticed her shaking hands. His flat yellow eyes were fixed on her breasts. Helen wondered if he engaged in interspecies sex.

Her skin crawled.

What was the boiler-room boss of bosses doing at a society party? He was better dressed and fitter than most of the men. He’d also kept his clothes on. Thank God. She didn’t want to look at his lizard hide. Cavarelli took his wine and slid into the jungle of palms near the pool.

Suddenly, she found herself staring at another man’s chest. A man wearing a well-cut black sport coat and a black T-shirt that said, CLAPTON IS GOD.

She knew only one person who had a shirt like that. The man she’d wanted to see for more than a year. The man who had eluded her so thoroughly, she’d begun to doubt he existed.

It was Phil the invisible pothead.

He was real after all. And he could see her, too. Way too much of her. Helen grabbed a pair of liter soda bottles to cover her naked chest.

“What are you doing here?” Helen and Phil said simultaneously.

“You’re Phil the invisible pothead.” Helen had waited so long to see him, and now she couldn’t look at him. Instead, she talked to his chest, the way the men talked to hers.

“I’m your neighbor, yes,” he said. His voice was soft and low. Another time, it would have been sexy. Now, it was like being doused with cold water. “What are you doing here?”

“Tending bar,” Helen said. She could feel a full-body blush creeping down past her shoulders. She adjusted her soda bottles to make sure they covered as much chest as possible.

“Helen, you—”

“How do you know my name?”

“Margery told me. I pulled you out of the fire, remember?

Does she know you’re here tonight?”

“She’s not my mother,” Helen said.

“She loves you like a daughter,” Phil said. “This stunt would worry her sick. You’ve got to get out of here. It’s dangerous.”

“Don’t be such a guy. I have a job to do.” It was hard to look serious with two soda bottles stuck on your chest.

A fifty-something man in blue boxers interrupted. “Hey, what do I have to do to get a drink?”

“Sorry,” Phil said. “You’ll have to use the other bar. My friend is going home. She has a chest cold.” He took off his sport coat and threw it over Helen. It felt soft and warm.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Helen said. “You’re not pulling that big brave male stuff on me.” She wanted to hand back his coat, but she couldn’t let go of the bottles. She shrugged it off instead.

Phil caught it and said through gritted teeth, “Helen, look at me.”

She’d waited a whole year for this moment. She’d sneaked peeks out her mini-blinds. She’d risen at dawn and stayed up late, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Now he was standing before her and she couldn’t look at him.

Slowly, she raised her eyes to his. They were electric blue with long dark lashes. Sparks were flying everywhere.

This man was worth waiting for. He was in his forties, with a thin, sensitive face. His nose was a little too long and made a slight jog to the left. She wondered how it had been broken. He had deep laugh lines. His skin was tanned and his thick white hair was pulled into a ponytail. The effect was devastating. He looked like an actor or a rock star.

“I’m not being sexist,” Phil said. “I’d advise a man to do the same thing: Get out of here. Now will you listen to me?”

“I need Kristi’s address,” she said in an equally low voice.

“She’s the blonde who works in the back room. I’m not leaving until I get it. Period.”

“I know who Kristi is. I’ll get her address from Steve. I’ll tell him I’m taking you home. It happens all the time. He’ll give you brownie points for pleasing a customer. But you’ve got to leave. Now. Please.” He put the coat back around her shoulders. This time, she left it on.

“Alright, but I have to put the bar away in the storage room.”

“Fine. I’ll track down Steve and square your absence with him. I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.”

Helen broke down her bar and wheeled it to the storage room. She wouldn’t be missed. The second party was in full swing and the guests were occupied with more exotic activities than boozing.

The Mowbry mansion was a labyrinth of halls and cul-de-sacs. On the way back, she must have turned left when she should have gone right. Two more wrong turns, and she knew this was not the way to the pool. At the end of the hall were two massive mahogany doors, twelve feet high. The doorknobs and hinges were solid gold. Dragons and demons danced on the door panels.

Was this the fabled back room?

Helen wouldn’t need Kristi. She could see for herself what went on in there.

The heavy double doors were shut, but not locked. Helen slid them open an inch and peered inside.

The room was dense black. Tall candles flamed on silver stands. The air was thick with incense and license. Bodies writhed in the corners. A naked couple opened a teakwood box that held white powder, a mirror and a tiny silver spoon.

The flickering shadows were fantastic and evil.

Helen couldn’t take her eyes off these scenes. Then suddenly, she heard the music, a swell of powerful sadness. A requiem. Brahms, she thought. Next, she saw the heavy black velvet curtains across the back wall. They seemed to absorb the candlelight.

An ebony coffin stood in front of the black curtains. It was flanked by seven-foot candles and serpentine vases with dead white flowers.

In the coffin was a blonde wearing a white lace dress and holding a bouquet of lilies.

It was Kristi.

Chapter 15

Kristi was in a black coffin, with white lace and lilies. No one cried. No one cared. No one even looked at her. But Helen could not stop staring.

Kristi blond hair was fanned out on a silk pillow. Her massive chest was modestly covered with white lace. Her skin was as pale as her lily bouquet.

Now a man rose out of the flickering shadows and approached the coffin. His dark hair stood in peaks like horns.

He had thick black hair all over his back, like a pelt. His studded leather codpiece seemed more perverse than nakedness.

The leather man ran one finger down the curve of Kristi’s bare white throat. Helen shuddered. The finger traveled downward over the white lace. Then both his hands grabbed Kristi’s breasts. The man moaned and pressed himself against the black coffin.

Helen watched in horror. It was obscene. The woman was lying in her coffin. How could he touch her like that?

Then Kristi sat up, tossed the bouquet aside and pulled the man into her black coffin.

Helen gave a little shriek, but no one heard her. The coffin rocked slightly as the leather man climbed inside, his horned hair making devilish shadows.

Helen did not want to see any more. She slid the great paneled doors shut. Their dancing demons and dragons grinned at her as she turned and ran back to meet Phil. This time, she had no trouble negotiating the mansion’s maze of halls. Helen arrived at the pool, panting and white with shock.

“What’s wrong?” Phil said. “What did they do to you?”

“I saw Kristi in a coffin. What was she doing?”

“Exactly what you think,” Phil said.

“The Six Feet Unders. That’s what they are. Debbie told me about them right before she died.”

“We don’t have time to sit here and chat,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”

“Do you have Kristi’s address? I’m not leaving without it.”

“Here.” Phil handed Helen a white card. “Steve told us to have a good time. He gave me your money, too. Five hundred bucks. Now let’s go.”

“Turn your back,” Helen said.

“What? Why?”

“I have to put on my blouse. It will just take a second.” It was ridiculous to insist on modesty after she’d spent the night half-naked, but Helen couldn’t put on her clothes in front of Phil. He turned his back and mercifully didn’t say a word. The man was a gentleman.

“Thanks for your jacket,” she said, when she was decent again.

“Why don’t you keep it until we get home? It’s chilly after midnight.” That sentence soothed her humiliation. She wasn’t a topless slut. She was shivering in the night air and a man offered her his jacket.

As they walked to his car in silence, Helen studied Phil by the streetlight, drawn to those deep blue eyes and that tanned face framed by the startling white hair. She wanted to trace her finger along his slightly crooked nose. He looked like an eighteenth-century swashbuckler. She could imagine him with a sword, in satin knee breeches. She could imagine him without those breeches, too.

How could a man this good-looking live right next to her and she never knew it?

Because he didn’t want you to know, she thought. So don’t go daydreaming. You’ve had enough man trouble without falling for a druggie.

But Phil’s eyes were clear and so was his skin. He was fit and muscular. His gut did not have the telltale liver bulge of longtime drug users. He didn’t use drugs.

“You’re undercover, aren’t you?” Helen said.

Phil said nothing.

“DEA?”

Silence.

“FBI? ATF? Local?”

The silence grew, blacker and heavier. Phil said softly, “This is not a game. People are getting killed.”

“I know,” Helen said. “That’s why I was at the party. I heard a woman die. She was strangled and I couldn’t stop it.

Her name was Laredo Manson. She worked the back room with Kristi.”

“How did you hear her die?”

“I’m a telemarketer and—”

“A what? Where?”

“For Girdner Sales.”

“Oh, my God. They’re owned by the Mob.”

“I figured. Either that or the boss, Vito, was hanging around with the cast of
The Sopranos
.”

“Will you quit joking?”

“Will you quit flying off the handle? I’m a grown woman.

I’ve taken care of myself for a long time.”

Phil took a deep breath. “OK,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let me take you home and you can tell me what happened.”

Phil drove a beat-up black Jeep, dusty and stripped to the essentials. Helen liked the zippered windows. This was a working vehicle, not some yuppie fantasy. When they were out of the maze of Brideport streets, Phil said, “How did this Laredo woman die?”

“I was working on a vodka survey. I called a man who lived in Brideport. He started to answer my questions, then put down the phone. Next, I heard him arguing with a woman.”

“What about?” Phil said.

“I don’t know,” Helen said. “At first the woman sounded defiant. She said he’d better give her what she wanted. I couldn’t hear what the man said but he seemed angry. She was pressuring him. She called him a liar and yelled other things I didn’t understand. Then she became afraid and screamed, ‘No, Hank!’ “Her scream was cut off and she made this terrible gurgling noise. It was a sound I’ve never heard anywhere else. He strangled her. Then he hung up the phone.”

Helen felt the hot tears rise up. She would not cry in front of Phil. It was weak and useless. She swallowed her tears.

They tasted like bitter medicine, but they did not make her feel better.

“I called 911 and the police went to the house. They didn’t find any sign of a struggle. There was no body, no blood, no strange cars in the driveway. The police searched his house, cars and boat. Nothing.

“The guy claimed I’d heard a movie, and the cops believed him. They acted like I was a nutcase. But that was no movie. I heard that horrible sound and I heard her call his name.”

“His name was Hank? Hank who?”