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  Shop Till You Drop

  ( Dead-End Job - 1 )

  Elaine Viets

  Once on the fast track to success, Helen Hawthorne is now going nowhere fast. She traded in her chic life for a shabby one. And now she's on the run, jumping from city to city and dead-end job to dead-end job, trying to stay one step ahead of her past...

  After two weeks as the new salesclerk at Juliana's, Fort Lauderdale's ultra-exclusive clothing boutique, Helen still feels out of fashion. And since the only crime likely to be committed around here is being old-or worse, looking old-Helen figures she's safe. Until she discovers the manager has been embezzling money and selling designer drugs along with the designer clothes. Add murder to the mix-and Helen's dead-end job is downright deadly.

  Praise for Shop till You Drop

  “Elaine Viets has come up with all the ingredients for an irresistible mystery: a heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue, an atmospheric South Florida backdrop, a cast of entertaining secondary characters, and some really nasty crimes. I’m looking forward to the next installment in her new Dead-End Job series.”

  —Jane Heller, author of The Secret Ingredient and Lucky Stars

  “Elaine Viets’s debut Dead-End Job mystery is a live wire. It’s Janet Evanovich meets

  The Fugitive

  as Helen Hawthorne takes Florida by storm. Shop no further—this is the one.”

  —Tim Dorsey, author of Florida Roadkill and The Stingray Shuffle

  “Elaine Viets is fabulous. I fell in love with her dead-on funny Dead-End Job mysteries and so will you.”

  —Jerrilyn Farmer, author of Mumbo Gumbo

  “I loved this book. With a stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos,

  Shop till You Drop

  provides tons of fun. Six-toed cats, expensive clothes, sexy guys on motorcycles—this book has it all.”

  —Charlaine Harris, author of Club Dead and Poppy Done to Death

  “Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series by Elaine Viets.”

  —Nancy Pickard, national bestselling author of Ring of Truth

  “Fresh, funny, and fiendishly constructed,

  Shop till You Drop

  gleefully skewers cosmetic surgery, ultraexclusive clothing boutiques, cheating ex-husbands, and the Florida dating game, as attractive newcomer Helen Hawthorne takes on the first of her deliciously awful dead-end jobs and finds herself enmeshed in drugs, embezzlement, and murder. A bright start to an exciting new series. This one is hard to beat.”

  —Parnell Hall, author of the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries

  Praise for Elaine Viets and her mysteries

  “Refreshing.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “I’m looking forward to reading more.”

  —John Lutz

  “Great dialogue, colorful repeat characters who seem to grow on the reader—and a deft hand at surprise endings.”

  —Gannett News Service

  “Plenty of laughs and likable characters.”

  —Arizona Republic

  “Amusing . . . has a universal ring of truth whether you’re from the Midwest or South Florida.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “Fun.”

  —St. Louis Journalism Review

  “Viets is a natural-born storyteller.”

  —AudioFile Magazine

  “Believable. . . . Viets can tell a tale.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  For Anne Watts and Thumbs, who both enjoy curling up with a good book

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my husband, Don Crinklaw, for his patience. When I asked him “Do you think it would sound better if I changed the ‘a’ to ‘the’?” he actually gave me a serious answer.

  And my pitbull agent, David Hendin.

  And my enthusiastic editor, Genny Ostertag, who keeps dreaming up dead-end jobs for me, so I can have the job I really want.

  Thanks to the Penguin Putnam copy editors and production staff, who were so careful.

  So many people helped with this book. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out.

  Thanks to Joanne Sinchuk and John Spera at Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida. They encouraged me to write a Florida series. I hope they like this one.

  Thanks to Jim Brennan of Brennan Thomsen Associates Inc. Carolyn Cain, author of The Secret at the Breakers Hotel for her knowledge of home fires, which she gained the hard way. To Valerie Cannata for her courtroom information. Thanks also to Sarah Watts-Casinger, who saved Thumbs from a life on the streets. And Jinny Gender, Karen Grace, Kay Gordy, Debbie Henson and Janet Smith for their help and encouragement.

  Shannon May gave me her South Beach expertise. I appreciate the help of Ann Meng, broker, Buy the Beach Realty Inc.; Art Rosen Real Estate; Yolanda at the Florida Center for Cosmetic Surgery; M. Diane Vogt, author of The Silicone Solution; and premier Internet researcher Martin Walsh.

  Thanks to John R. Levy and mystery lover Debra Davis at Shelton Ferrari in Fort Lauderdale, which has a splendid Barchetta.

  Rita Scott does indeed make cat toys packed with the most powerful catnip in kittendom. They have sent my cats into frenzies of ecstasy. Read all about them at www.catshigh.us.

  Ed Seelig at Silver Strings Music gave me a “Clapton Is God” T-shirt. It is one of my treasured possessions.

  Julie Dost let me wander around her weight-training class like a zombie. Her workouts jar something loose in my brain that helps me write.

  Thanks to Detective RC White, Fort Lauderdale Police Department (retired), who answered countless questions on police interrogations and procedures. Any mistakes are mine, not his.

  Jerry Sanford, author of Miami Heat and federal prosecutor for the northern district of Florida, answered many complicated legal questions.

  Thanks to Merrilyn Rathbun, research director at the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society, and Florida expert Stuart McIver, who has written too many books to list here.

  Thanks to the librarians at the Broward County Library and the St. Louis Public Library who researched my questions, no matter how wacky.

  Special thanks to librarian Anne Watts, the person who lives with Thumbs the cat. Thumbs is a real six-toed cat, although his own coat is a richer brown. He agreed to go gray for his role in this series.

  Chapter 1

  On Wednesday, Helen met a woman who could not frown.

  The frownless female was another amazing customer at Juliana’s. The store was on Las Olas Boulevard, the fashionable, palm-fringed shopping area in downtown Fort Lauderdale. After working two weeks there, Helen thought she’d seen every kind of expensive kept woman.

  The woman who could not frown did not seem all that different from the other customers who were buzzed inside. You could not simply walk into Juliana’s. The elegant green door was locked to keep out undesirables: sunburned tourists in “I Love Florida” T-shirts, harried mothers with sticky-fingered children, and the hopelessly unfashionable.

  This exclusive policy was never stated, but everyone on Las Olas knew it. Some women walked on by, never ringing Juliana’s doorbell. They knew the green door would not open for them.

  Woe to those who tried and failed. A woman turned away from Juliana’s might tell herself that the clothes were overpriced and made for skinny little bimbos. That was true. But it was also true that Ms. Reject had been publicly branded as without style, and worse, that Juliana’s could not help her.

  This added to the thrill of those who were admitted by Christina, the head saleswoman. When the green door swung open, some women had the same celestial look of relief an
d joy that wavering saints must wear when admitted into heaven.

  But Brittney, the woman who could not frown, did not register any emotion at all, not even when she squealed “Christina!” and air-kissed her.

  Brittney was a longtime customer and a big spender. Helen could tell that by the way Christina had moved across the room, like a quick cat pouncing on her prey. She even hugged Brittney. Christina only touched people who spent lots of money.

  As they stood implant to implant, Helen thought the two women looked enough alike to be sisters. Both had long blonde hair (dyed), plump pouty lips (collagened), and sapphire blue eyes (contacts). It went without saying that they dieted to starvation.

  They were dressed alike, too. Both wore casual clothes that cost a fortune and stayed in style about two and a half seconds. By next season, Brittney would have given her thousand-dollar outfit to the maid, and Christina would have sent hers to the consignment shop.

  Before she worked at Juliana’s, Helen had only seen these styles on MTV. Christina and Brittney wore low-rise pants tight enough to show the freckles on their butts, high heels and low necklines. Both bared their shoulders and flat tummies pierced with silver rings.

  But Christina looked like Brittney’s older sister, although Helen suspected they were the same age. Brittney belonged in those revealing clothes. Christina looked a little too old for them. Maybe it was the lines running from her nose to her mouth or the fine furrows in her forehead. The nights she spent crawling the South Beach clubs were starting to show in Christina’s skin.

  Brittney didn’t have any wrinkles, and she hadn’t had a facelift, either. Helen had worked at the shop long enough to know what good and bad facelifts looked like.

  “Let me see. Let me see,” Christina said, examining Brittney’s smooth oval face. “It looks perfect.”

  “It worked,” Brittney said, in a soft, sultry voice that sounded like a sigh in a seraglio. “I’ve met a wonderful new man. He has a house in Golden Beach.”

  Golden Beach was aptly named. Oceanfront homes there started at just under three million dollars. Brittney had a rich catch. She presented Christina with a small gold gift bag, packed with crimson tissue paper. “I brought you a little present.”

  Many of Christina’s customers brought her little presents. Helen thought they were trying to curry favor, so that green door would always open for them.

  Christina’s long, slender hand rustled around in the tissue paper like a small predator and pulled out a Movado watch with a mother-of-pearl museum dial and a matching lizard strap. “Pink! The new color. Although my favorite color is green,” she said, and laughed.

  Brittney did not laugh. Maybe she couldn’t, Helen thought.

  “Come on back and sit down,” Christina said, as if she was inviting a friend into her home for a chat. Helen was relieved when she saw Brittney head for the sitting area. Juliana’s sales associates were only allowed to sit if a customer sat first. If there were no customers, they had to stand. The owner spot-checked the security camera tapes to make sure that rule was followed.

  Christina offered Brittney a drink.

  “Evian, please,” she said, in that velvet whisper.

  The super-skinny ones always wanted water. Christina hurried to the back room for Evian water. Helen and Brittney strolled past a single Hermes scarf draped on a mahogany sideboard that had once been in a Rockefeller mansion. (“This isn’t a rummage sale,” Christina had told Helen. “Never put out a pile of anything.”)

  They passed two pale blue six-hundred-dollar blouses on a dark, sleek wood rack. Hanging next to them were the matching jackets. They were two thousand each.

  Brittney spotted a spaghetti-strap knit top on a rosewood wine table. It was a turquoise knit edged with hot pink crocheted lace. Made of viscose and polyester, the scrap of cloth weighed little more than a Kleenex.

  “How much?” Brittney said. Juliana’s never used price tags.

  “Three hundred fifteen dollars,” Helen said. She could say that now with a straight face. When Helen first saw the top, she thought it looked like a Kmart special, and that polyester and viscose belonged on trailer trash. Now she knew what it could do for the right woman. So did Brittney.

  “It’s adorable,” she said, and draped it over one arm.

  “We have the pants to go with it,” Helen said. Brittney didn’t reply. Her attention was captured by a snakeskin handbag. “How much?” she said, stroking it with exquisitely manicured fingers.

  “Four fifty,” Helen said.

  Brittney draped the turquoise top over the snake bag and carried both to the back of the store. Three black silk-satin loveseats formed a triangle in front of a gilt-framed triple mirror. Behind the loveseats, on a black marble pedestal, was a porcelain vase filled with fashionable flowers that looked like sex toys and bath brushes.

  Helen, a solid size twelve, sank into the loveseat. Brittney was so tiny, she barely disturbed the surface. Even her couch doesn’t wrinkle, thought Helen.

  Helen wanted to hate Brittney, but she couldn’t. She liked the woman. There was something winsome about her. Brittney didn’t ignore Helen, the way some customers did. While she waited for Christina to return, Brittney said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. You are?”

  “Helen Hawthorne. I’m the new sales associate.”

  Brittney held out her hand, and Helen shook it. It felt soft but strong. Brittney’s skinny arms were corded with high-priced gym muscle.

  “How long have you lived here?” asked Brittney.

  This was the polite greeting in South Florida. Almost no one was from here. No one you wanted to know, anyway.

  “Not too long,” Helen said.

  “She moved down here from the Midwest,” Christina said, coming back with Evian and a chilled crystal goblet.

  “Oh,” Brittney said. No one ever cared enough to ask where in the Midwest. Fort Lauderdale was a suburb of New York, which had no interest in the nation’s boring midsection. The Midwest was the land of pot roasts and pot bellies. No one went there. No one would pry into Helen’s secret.

  “And what did you do there?” Brittney said. Helen knew how to stop that line of questioning. She gave her real job title. “I was a director of pensions and employee benefits.”

  She could see Brittney’s eyes getting a glaze on them like a jelly doughnut. But to be sure, Helen started reciting her job description. Even Helen could not endure the whole thing: “I planned and directed implementation and administration of benefits programs—”

  “How nice,” Brittney said, hurriedly cutting her off. Helen relaxed. There would be no further questions about her past.

  But Brittney ambushed her with “Why are you working in a dress shop?”

  “Working here has given me a new challenge and a chance to brush up on my people skills,” Helen said, hating herself for slipping into corporate speak.

  Like all good liars, Helen stuck to the truth as much as possible. Serious jobs in Lauderdale were far outnumbered by dead-end jobs in shops and fast-food places that paid six or seven dollars an hour. Even Brittney, who’d never held a serious job in her life, knew that. It was why most of Juliana’s women dated rich old men.

  “I was lucky to find this job within walking distance of my apartment,” Helen said brightly.

  Some luck, she thought, resentfully. I make six seventy an hour, no benefits, no commission until I’ve worked here six months. Helen wanted her wages to be in cash, off the books. She made thirty cents an hour less than the standard sales associate. The store owner explained why he was stiffing her. “I’m not taking out any deductions, so you’re really making more. You understand that you’ll have no Social Security, no health insurance, and if I fire you, no unemployment?”

  Helen had understood. She wanted it that way. She did not want her name turning up in any computer database. She did not want the court tracking her down. But the irony didn’t escape her. She’d fled St. Louis because she caught her husband—
make that ex-husband—Rob with a younger woman. A woman who looked a lot like the customers at Juliana’s.

  I used to make six figures, she thought, and now I’m selling bustiers to bimbos.

  Christina directed the conversation back to Brittney, as was proper. “Let’s get a look at your new, improved face,” she said. Brittney put her face up expectantly, as if waiting for an expert’s approval. Helen thought she’d never seen a more perfect oval. There was not a wrinkle, line, blemish or enlarged pore. The skin was smooth and velvety, the striking sapphire eyes large and clear and fringed with dark lashes. The effect was stunning and slightly scary. There was an odd deadness in this perfection.

  “Doctor Mariposa did a splendid job,” Christina said, admiringly.

  “I can’t thank you enough for sending me to her,” Brittney said.

  Christina shrugged. “I know all the good ones,” she said. “And all the bad ones, too. Did you see Tiffany’s eye job? She didn’t consult me first. The damned doctor’s got her so tight she can’t shut her eyes any more. Tiffany’s happy with his work. I haven’t the heart to tell her she looks like she’s permanently startled.”

  “Surgery is so risky,” Brittney said. “Thanks for the warning. That way I won’t look startled next time I see her.”

  “What did the doctor do to you, Brittney?” Helen asked.

  “Injected my wrinkles with biopolymer,” she said, shy but proud.

  “What’s that?” Helen said.

  “It’s like collagen, only better,” Brittney said. “It’s very big in Europe, but it hasn’t been approved in the U.S. yet. I’ve heard Bo Derek had it done. Her forehead used to look like crepe paper.”