Murder Unleashed (21 page)

“I don’t go in until noon,” Helen said.

“Where’s Phil?”

“He’s digging up information for me. I need some from you, too.”

Ten minutes later Helen sat in Margery’s kitchen drinking coffee and running a list of names by her landlady. Margery didn’t know the dead Tammie or Willoughby or the blackmailed Jan Kurtz. “I don’t run with the Galt Ocean Mile crowd. Too rich for my blood.”

Helen was afraid she’d strike out completely, until she mentioned Betty Reichs-Martin. Margery gave her a wide smile. “Oh, yeah. Betty’s a good old girl. Very down-to-earth, despite her money. You know she actually goes to the shelter and shovels sh—”

“Yes,” Helen interrupted. “She’s generous with her time and money.”

“She also picks up the donations for the animal shelter charity auction,” Margery said. “She hounds—no pun intended—all her friends into giving something for those stray dogs. Betty’s not afraid to take some risks.”

“What do you mean?” Helen said.

“She’s been arrested once or twice for animal-rights issues. She beat up a neighbor who was abusing his dog. Punched out a guy twice her size when he left his dog outside with no water on a blistering summer day. Betty can’t stand to see animals suffer. She’d do anything for them.”

Even kill for them? Helen wondered.

“Betty should be able to tell you something about the people you’re interested in,” Margery said. “She’s been in most of the houses on the moneyed side of Lauderdale, collecting for her animals.”

“How long has Betty lived in Lauderdale?”

“You’d think forever, but she’s only been here a couple of years. Used to live on the other side.”

That’s how the east coast Floridians referred to the west coast of Florida, as though they’d stepped through the looking glass. Maybe they had. The state’s east coast was stranger, darker, more dangerous than “the other side.” Some people feared the east for that reason. Helen liked it. She’d lived on the safe side too long.

“I’ve talked with Betty at the store,” Helen said, “but I don’t know her well enough to call her, and I don’t want Jeff involved.”

“Let me make a phone call,” Margery said. “What time do you go in tomorrow? I’ll try to set something up with Betty for you.”

Half an hour later Helen was walking to work, cheerfully singing out of tune. Margery had gotten her an appointment with Betty tomorrow. Her meeting with Jan Kurtz went well. Now there was only Todd to deal with, and that sleazy little gigolo was no match for her.

When Helen got into work, Lulu greeted her at the door in a black dress, but there was no sign of Jeff. Todd was working in the stockroom, stacking cases of dog food. His sullen, slightly sweaty good looks might set some female hearts thumping, but Helen thought there was an ugly weakness in his pretty pink mouth. When he saw Helen, he started for the door with a case on his shoulder. Helen blocked his way.

“I know what you did to that woman,” she said.

Todd dropped the case, and cans of organic dog food rolled everywhere. He turned whiter than his T-shirt and backed away from Helen.

“You’re blackmailing Jan Kurtz,” Helen said. “I know it. I can prove it. If you ever talk to her again, I’ll tell Jeff. He’ll fire your ass and blacklist you with every grooming shop in Lauderdale.”

Todd simply nodded, but he seemed relieved. His color was coming back. “I promise I’ll never do it again,” he said. “I don’t know what got into me.” He hung his head and looked fetchingly contrite.

Todd was guilty, all right, Helen decided. But he wasn’t a hardened criminal. Look how quickly he promised to reform. Todd was young and pretty and he found rich, older women easy to manipulate. All their attention went to his handsome head. Look at him now, on his knees, scrambling to pick up the dog-food cans. Confession was obviously good for Todd’s soul.

Helen decided that since she had him where she wanted him, Todd should tell her more.

“The day of Tammie’s murder, was Jeff at the store all afternoon?” she said.

“No,” Todd said. “He slips out a couple of afternoons a week and meets a man. He leaves Lulu at the store and everyone thinks he’s still around somewhere.”

“Do you think he’s cheating on his interior decorator? They seem so happy together.”

“I don’t know,” Todd said. “But I’ve seen him with a man about five years older, a good-looking guy, drives a black van. Sometimes they sit in the van with the windows up and the air conditioner running. Sometimes they disappear together. I’ve seen him take big, thick envelopes with him, but I don’t know what’s in them.”

“Is he meeting with his silent partner, Ray Barker?”

“No, Ray lives in New York most of the year,” Todd said. “They talk by phone several times a week. Ray has gray hair. Doesn’t look like the man in the black van at all. I don’t know who this person is. Jeff has only started seeing him in the last four or five weeks.”

Helen went home that evening, satisfied with her day’s work. She’d solved a mystery, stopped a blackmailer, and helped a woman in trouble.

Too bad none of it helped her.

H
elen heard Phil unlocking his front door about eight thirty that night. He seemed to be fumbling with the key. Hmm. Had he been drinking? Was he hurt? What did he have to do to get her information?

Helen came flying out her door. She hardly recognized Phil. He was scruffy and unshaven, his shining white hair in dirty gray tangles. Phil wore a stained Sturgis T-shirt and a rebel-flag tattoo. His wallet had a long, thick chain, and his scuffed boots looked like they were made for stomping faces. His greasy jeans showed his butt crack.

Yuck. If Phil was undercover, he was a little too authentic. Her dream lover had turned into her nightmare man.

“Phil?” Helen said. “Is that you?”

“I’m a little unsteady, babe,” he said. “I’ve had to drink beer in redneck bars up near Okeechobee.”

“Poor you,” Helen said, with a touch of sarcasm. “I bet they pried your mouth open and made you drink that disgusting beer.”

“I had to drink it or the customers wouldn’t talk to me,” Phil said. “Cheap beer gives me a headache. Before that, I had to drink puckery lemonade with a sweet old lady, and that was almost as bad.”

“An old woman let you in her kitchen looking like that?”

“She kept me on her front porch,” Phil said. “In full view of the neighbors. Miss Bonnie didn’t live to be eighty-seven by taking risks. But I wasn’t dressed like this. She was my first stop of the day. She saw me in my respectable investigator’s suit. Somehow she got it into her head that I was with the police.”

“I wonder where she got that idea,” Helen said.

“Can’t imagine,” Phil said, and hiccupped.

“Come in for coffee and a sandwich and we can talk,” Helen said.

Phil followed Helen into her kitchen. Thumbs came out to greet his pal. He sniffed Phil thoroughly, then walked away, tail in the air.

“Thumbs doesn’t like your brand of beer,” Helen said.

“Ungrateful beast,” Phil said. “After all the scratches I’ve given him.”

While Helen fixed Phil a turkey sandwich on rye and a mug of black coffee, he told her about his adventures in Okeechobee. She poured herself a cup, set the coffeepot on the back burner, and joined him at her kitchen table.

“I had to get some information on Todd,” Phil said. “I started with the high school, looking at the yearbooks. I figured he was somewhere between twenty-one and thirty. He’s twenty-six. First thing I learned was that Todd wasn’t his real name. He was called Jarrod back then. He was in the freshman and sophomore classes, but Todd never graduated. I found Miss Bonnie, his freshman English teacher. She was retired, and willing to talk to me if there was a chance of saving the young man. She believes there is good in him.”

“He seems willing to reform,” Helen said, “if you put the fear of the Lord in him like I did.”

“Miss Bonnie felt sorry for Todd and gave him special tutoring. She also says a great wrong was done to him as a boy. I got some of his story from Miss Bonnie, and the raunchier bits in a run-down bar near the Dixie Highway. Turns out the old-timers knew Todd and his family. They told me his mother was a prostitute, but she gave it away about as often as she got paid. His father was a burglar who surprised a woman in her home and beat her to death. After that Todd—or Jarrod—was in several foster homes, and didn’t do well in any of them. Miss Bonnie says he was small for his age, shy and sensitive, and had trouble getting along with bigger, tougher boys.”

“If Todd is pretty at twenty-six,” Helen said, “he must have looked really girlish as a kid.”

“That was Todd’s problem. Kids can be mean, and school bullies picked on him. He was poor, effeminate-looking, and he wore castoffs. Miss Bonnie said he had a crush on a pretty cheerleader. Followed her like a puppy. She was a coldhearted little number.

“The cheerleader’s name was Mindy, and she dated the captain of the football team. When Todd was fifteen, Mindy invited Todd to a party at her house. Miss Bonnie still remembers the way his face glowed. She said, ‘He looked like Saint Peter had invited him into heaven.’ Todd thought he was finally going to be accepted by the high school in-crowd. He told Miss Bonnie about it. She gave Todd some money to buy himself a new shirt. She saw him walking to the party, his hair slicked down with water. His new shirt still had the package creases in it.

“Mindy got Todd drunk at the party, and he passed out. He woke up the next morning in front of the school. He was naked, and his manhood—that’s what Miss Bonnie called it—was tied up with pink ribbons.”

“That’s awful,” Helen said.

“The whole school knew about it,” Phil said. “They taunted him. Called him ‘Pinkie.’ It was like part of Todd died. He lost all interest in school.”

“I can’t imagine what that would do to a fifteen-year-old boy,” Helen said. The story made her sick. She still didn’t like Todd, but at least she understood why he made his living off women.

“Miss Bonnie blamed Mindy and her bully-boy friends, but the incident took place off school grounds and there was nothing she could do about it. She did tell me that Mindy married a shoe salesman who knocked her up and then left her for another woman. Mindy now works at Wal-Mart. Miss Bonnie thought it served her right.

“Todd drifted around school like a ghost for the rest of the year, trying to make himself invisible. He got a summer job working in the fields, and the hard work filled him out and toughened him up some. At sixteen everything changed, including his name and address. Todd met a rich, older Palm Beach woman. By then, the skinny little boy was a handsome young man. Todd left school, left the area, and moved in with this rich woman.”

“Didn’t the authorities go looking for him?” Helen said.

“Not really. Even Miss Bonnie thought Todd was better off gone, even if he was ‘living in sin,’ as she said. His rich lady friend taught him how to dress, how to talk, how to walk, how to eat in the best restaurants. She sent him to a good dentist to straighten his teeth. She bought him a Cartier diamond watch.”

“He still wears it,” Helen said.

“When Todd turned twenty, the woman tired of him. She’d found a younger, prettier boy. She bought Todd a condo at Sailboat House in Fort Lauderdale.”

“I’ve heard of that. It’s fairly expensive. His lady friend was smart enough to send him to another city,” Helen said.

“Yep. She also sent him to dog-grooming school.”

“Sort of like those Victorian dandies who set up their castoff mistresses with a hat shop when they tired of them,” Helen said.

“Exactly,” Phil said. “Dog grooming was the perfect trade for Todd. He loved animals, plus he’d always have a steady supply of older women to buy him presents and pay his condo fees. I can’t find out much else about him. Todd has no arrest record and no history of violence. He lives beyond his means sometimes, but when he needs money he goes to the pawnshops with cuff links, rings, watches, and cigarette cases from places like Tiffany’s. I talked with a couple of pawnshops.”

“Let me guess,” Helen said. “Somehow they got the impression you were a cop.”

Phil shrugged and grinned modestly.

“Sounds like Todd is exactly what we expected,” Helen said. “A young man who makes his money off wealthy older women. At least I understand why he seems so heartless.”

“There’s only one oddity,” Phil said. “Recently he began buying expensive women’s jewelry at the pawnshops. He purchased a tennis bracelet, a diamond pendant, and yellow diamond earrings.”

“Think he fell in love with someone?” Helen said.

“A gigolo like Todd? I doubt it. More likely he has a rich woman on the string,” Phil said. “An heiress likes a man to buy her expensive presents. Then she can kid herself that he’s not after her money. Once he has the heiress hooked, she buys the presents for him.”

“So the pawnshop gifts would be an investment,” Helen said.

“That’s how I see it. Appreciate the sandwich and coffee,” Phil said, taking his empty plate to the sink. “Did I get you good information?”

“You did indeed,” Helen said, and threw her arms around him. He smelled slightly beery. His beard was nicely scratchy. She gave him a long, lingering kiss. “Hmmm. I think I could learn to like lowlifes.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve worked all day for you, lady. I want my pay.”

“Wanna take it out in trade?” Helen said, and kissed him again.

Phil unbuttoned her blouse. “I think we could work out an easy payment plan,” he said, as he freed her breasts from their tight bra.

Helen was surprised her slightly wobbly kitchen table could hold their weight. She didn’t notice that the coffee turned to sludge on the back burner. They both ignored the problem that had them fighting so bitterly just days ago.

Betty really did shovel out dirty cages at the animal shelter. Today Helen was right beside her, both of them dressed in cutoffs and baggy T-shirts. Betty’s fat old bichon, Barney, waddled behind her, snuffling and sniffing, picking up the scent of other not-so-lucky dogs.