Dying to Call You (8 page)

“My sister drove an old yellow Honda.” Drove.

“What does Ms. Patterson drive?”

“A new black BMW,” Savannah said. “Her housekeeper has an old brown Ford. It was the first and last time Mrs.

Kercher saw that yellow car. Too bad she didn’t see who drove it.

“I think it was Laredo’s car. You can’t park on the street in Brideport. Before the police showed up, Hank Asporth moved Laredo’s car to the driveway next door. Nice old Hank takes in his neighbor’s mail. He knew the saleslady wouldn’t be back that night.”

“Do you really think he’d have time to move a car and clean up any sign of a struggle before the police came?”

“That’s the hitch. It doesn’t seem likely, does it?” Savannah said. “Do you think he had help?”

“If he did, the police didn’t mention another person.

Wouldn’t Hank have produced him as a witness? You know, ‘Officer, George and I were watching the movie all afternoon.’ Did Mrs. Kercher say she saw another car in Hank’s driveway?”

“No. I asked her. The only car she remembers was the yellow Honda in the drive next door. But what was Laredo’s car doing there?”

“Maybe your sister parked it over there so Hank wouldn’t see her coming,” Helen said.

“Why would she do that?”

Savannah had created more questions and found no answers. “I’m going to scrub floors at Ms. Patterson’s and see if I can find out anything more.”

“I’ll call Steve and see if I can get that charity bartender’s gig,” Helen said.

“At least we’re making money while we’re detecting.”

Savannah dumped her soda can in the trash. “Back to work.”

Helen called Steve from a pay phone. He wasn’t there.

“Call back after eleven tonight,” a woman said. She slammed down the phone.

Helen’s life seemed to be nothing but phone abuse, personally and professionally. In the boiler room, she hadn’t made a sale all morning. She longed for the quiet of survey duty. But Vito had put his foot down: “No sales, no surveys.”

Tonight, she was working the boiler room.

The jittery Nick was not sitting next to her. He did not show up for work. Helen wondered how much longer he would last. Shellie, a bouncy blond cheerleader type, took his seat. Helen found her more irritating than the junkie.

Shellie oozed enthusiasm, squealing with delight when she said, “Yes, sir, Tank Titan is guaranteed to help reduce large chunks, odors and wet spots.”

Helen felt a mean, secret satisfaction when she heard Shellie say, “Ewww. That’s disgusting.” She dropped the phone like it was covered with slime.

“What did he want?” Helen said.

“A blow job. Vito’s got to take that line about wet spots out of the sales pitch.”

Helen was taking her own lumps. A Texas woman screamed, “It’s eight fifteen at night. We’re getting ready to settle into bed. We’re tired. We don’t appreciate calls this late.”

They packed it in early, deep in the heart of Texas.

Bill, the next caller, was rested and ready. Helen was halfway through her spiel when he said, “You have a good product there, Helen, but I have a better one. Have you ever thought of exploring the Amway opportunity? I could sponsor you. I’m an IBO—independent business owner, and—”

“Uh, thanks, Bill. I gotta go. My doorbell’s ringing, Helen said. The words came automatically. It was what she always said to telemarketers, back when she had a phone.

Helen didn’t think the night would ever end. But it finally did. At ten twenty, she was sitting out by the Coronado pool with Peggy and Margery. The lights on the turquoise water were as romantic as ever. The palm trees whispered night secrets. But Helen did not enjoy her evenings there anymore.

Fred and Ethel, the new tenants in 2C, infested her enchanted place. Even the most harmless conversation triggered one of their diatribes.

Tonight, they were smugly swigging root beer. Helen, Margery and Peggy were drinking cheap white wine. Pete was sitting on Peggy’s shoulder with his head under his wing. He couldn’t stand Fred and Ethel, either.

Conversation was a struggle. There were long, uncomfortable silences. Peggy broke one by saying, “I think the starter’s going on my car. I’m going to need a new one.”

“That’s what you get for driving a foreign car,” Fred said.

“You pay for that foreign prestige. Nothing beats American-made. That’s what I always say.”

Helen didn’t see much prestige in Peggy’s green Kia, but she couldn’t say that without hurting Peggy’s feelings.

“American-made isn’t what it used to be,” Ethel said. Her eyes were small and hard as BBs. “You ask me, it’s the American workers. They want too much money for too little work.”

No one asked her. The conversation lay there like a dead fish.

Margery, who usually had an opinion on everything, puffed quietly on her Marlboro. Peggy said nothing. Even Pete stayed silent.

Helen studied Ethel’s tightly permed hair. How did you get a style like that, she wondered? Did you go into a beauty shop and say, “I want to look like a complete frump?”

“Our son, Fred Jr., is coming for a visit,” Ethel said. “He’s single. He’s a good Christian man, Helen. Doesn’t smoke or drink and fears the Lord.”

“Uh, thanks, but I’m dating someone.”

“What’s his name?” Ethel said. It was a demand and a challenge.

“Phil,” Helen said. “Lives nearby. You must have seen him.”

Peggy choked on her wine. “I think I’ll turn in.” Pete woke up and screeched his approval.

“We’re tuckered out, too,” Fred said. “Think we’ll head inside.” He patted his gourd-like gut as if it were a baby. Ethel followed respectfully behind him.

When Helen heard their apartment door slam she said, “How can you stand them?”

“It doesn’t hurt to spend some time with normal people, Margery said.

“Normal does not have to mean boring,” Helen said.

She left her landlady sitting alone in the darkness. It was soothing to walk through Phil’s perpetual pot fog to her own apartment. She breathed in the sharp, oily sensimilla smell.

Phil was too laid-back to criticize his neighbors. He was too invisible to bother them. Fred and Ethel could take a leaf from his book. A spiky green leaf.

Thumbs, her six-toed cat, greeted her at the door. Helen scratched his gray ears until he purred. Then she found some change. It was getting harder to find a pay phone. They all seemed to be occupied by kids making drug deals or Canadians too cheap to use their hotel phones.

It was eleven thirty when she finally called Steve. He answered on the first ring.

“I hear you’re looking for servers for charity parties, Helen said.

“Where’d you find out about us?” His voice was abrupt and demanding. Helen wondered if it was his New York accent, or if the guy was just rude.

“Tammy at Gator Bill’s gave me your card,” she said.

“Tammy has a good eye for talent,” Steve said, sounding friendlier.

How could Tammy spot a talent for bartending by watching Helen drink club soda?

“Ever tend bar before?” Steve said.

“Yes,” Helen lied.

“It’s not hard. We’ll put you on a portable bar outside by the pool. It will be just your wine, beer, liquor and your soft drinks. Your blender drinks and specialty martinis will be at the main bar. You won’t have to do those.”

Helen relaxed. Even she could open a beer.

“You’ll be working with your movers and shakers. We got your doctors, your lawyers, your school board members, people like that. They live in your better areas, like Brideport. They bankroll your worthy causes. Saturday night, it’s the Langley School in Lauderdale.”

That was worthy indeed. Langley was one of the richest schools in the area.

“Can you work then?”

Helen could. There was no telemarketing on Saturday night.

“Wear a white shirt and black pants. You’ll work the first party. You’ll get two hundred dollars for three hours. There’s another party after that for the heavy hitters. If we like you, we’ll ask you to work the second party next time. That pays five hundred. Cash. You keep your tips, of course.”

This was some bartending gig. It paid almost a week’s wages to pour wine and beer. That was way too much money, especially for South Florida.

So what exactly did Steve want her to do? Bartending couldn’t be all that was expected of her.

Chapter 7

Helen did not have a car, but she treated herself to a water taxi for her well-paying bartending job Saturday night. Fort Lauderdale had more than two hundred miles of canals. For five dollars, she could ride all day on a water taxi. It made regular stops on a route like a bus.

The little yellow boat met her at the dock behind the Riverside Hotel on Las Olas. The setting sun stained the sky a brilliant flamingo and turned the water a delicate pink, like the inside of a seashell.

Fort Lauderdale floated on oceans of money. Billionaires’ yachts had their own helicopter landing pads. Casino ships took seagoing suckers on cruises to nowhere. Cruise ships pampered the over-privileged.

Tonight, Helen felt a kinship with the moneyed boaters. In any other city, I’d be sitting in a bus in rush-hour traffic, eating exhaust, Helen thought. In Fort Lauderdale, I’m riding to work like a Venetian doge.

And working in a palace. Mindy and Melton Mowbrys’ mansion was in the obscenely rich part of Brideport, where houses were the size of shopping malls. Their owners were perpetually in the papers. One Sunday, they’d be praised in the society pages. The next Sunday, they’d be indicted on the front page.

The Mowbry mansion was bristling with towers and bursting with bay windows, slathered with pink stucco and encrusted with red barrel tile. The architecture looked like Mizner on magic mushrooms. The massive wood and wrought iron double doors belonged on a Spanish cathedral.

Helen knew she could not walk through the front door. She went around back to the service entrance, a mean little area with a cheap screen door. She could hear someone screaming in the steamy kitchen.

“I’m looking for Steve,” she said to a man in a white chef’s coat carrying a silver coffee urn.

“Follow the shrieks,” he said in a weary voice.

Steve was dressing down two waiters. The reprimand sounded worse in his harsh New York accent. “I don’t want to ever see that again, understand?”

The waiters nodded, too scared to speak, and backed out of the room.

Steve was small and dark and needed a shave. He pointed to Helen and said, “You! Don’t stand there like a potted plant. Are you the new bartender?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Speak up,” he said. “Are you a woman or a mouse?”

“I’m somebody here to work, not take abuse,” she said.

Steve broke into a smile. “Good-looking and sassy. I like that. You’ll do.”

He planted her at a service bar by the swimming pool. It was landscaped to look like a jungle pool with a waterfall.

Ferns and pink orchids grew along the waterfall. Thick pink clouds of frilly blossoms bloomed alongside the paths. Pink-flowered vines dripped from the trees.

Long serving tables were covered with crisp pink cloths and lavish hors d’oeuvres. Huge bouquets of pink roses were being carried outside. Candles were lit. An ice sculpture dripped. A busboy brought Helen a tub of ice. She checked out the booze. No box wine here. The Mowbrys served only the finest wine and liquor.

The first guests trickled in half an hour later. By eight, the party was in full swing, and Helen was pouring drinks one after another. This was a thirsty crowd.

Brideport parties had people of breeding. In fact, it was all they talked about. As she scrambled for ice and bottles, Helen heard a white-haired man in a yachting jacket say, “We really need better birth-control programs at the schools for the great unwashed. Those people have too many children.

Indiscriminate breeding, I tell you. They all grow up to be Democrats.” The man said “Democrat” the way others might say “child molester.”

Helen thought his three double scotches made him talk that way.

But a face-lifted brunette in red sparkles had had only one white wine when she said, “How can we encourage people like us to have more children? I know they’re terribly expensive, but people of our class must understand their duty. Otherwise, we’re going to be overtaken by the wrong sort.”

Her balding companion nodded sagely and downed another neat bourbon.

A hatchet-faced man with dyed black hair ordered two red wines and told the man next to him, “There must be some way to sterilize Chelsea Clinton, so the Clinton genes are not passed on.”

Helen nearly dropped a full bottle of club soda at that one, but caught it before she was spotted as a Democrat sympathizer.

Otherwise, it was a typical, dull charity party. Helen had attended too many when she’d been in corporate life. The women were mostly blond and thin. The men were mostly overweight and over fifty. A bored photographer from the local paper snapped pictures of the partygoers and said they would run in a week or two. The fundraising chair gave a long speech thanking everyone, “including our gracious host, Dr. Mowbry and his beautiful wife, Mindy.” Whatever kind of doctoring Mowbry did, it must have paid well. There was lots of booze, decent hors d’oeuvres and a mediocre band that played tired old songs like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Helen wondered why rich people liked stodgy music.

The men flirted with her and asked if she was staying for the second party. Helen said, “Not this time.” Some seemed genuinely disappointed.

Helen thought that was odd. No one noticed the servers at parties. The women were suitably cold, but she saw few of them at her bar. The men mostly did drinks duty. That was fine with Helen. These guys handed out five-and ten-dollar tips like business cards. One short, chubby old man with a white toothbrush mustache gave her a twenty, “So you’ll be sure to remember me at the second party.”

“Oh, I couldn’t forget you, sir,” Helens said, stuffing the money in her pants pocket. Not in that getup. The old guy was wearing a tux with a shamrock bow tie and cummerbund.

The bar opposite hers, manned by a blonde named Kristi, was even busier than Helen’s. Kristi offered the same drink choices as Helen, but the men lined up as if she was giving away vintage champagne. Her line was twice as long as Helen’s.