Half-Price Homicide Read online

Helen felt like she’d kicked a puppy. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

  “Apology accepted.” Jordan managed a smile through her tears.

  “Thanks,” Helen said. “That dress looks nice on you, even when you’re upset.”

  Helen heard Vera tell the 911 operator, “I think the woman committed suicide. Unless she was murdered. I’m not sure what happened, except she’s dead. No, I can’t stay on the phone. Just send someone, quick.”

  Vera slammed down the phone and said, “The 911 operator gave us our orders. We’re not supposed to touch anything, sell anything or change anything. We’re not supposed to change our clothes or wash our hands. I’m not supposed to admit any customers or let anyone leave.”

  “Can I at least get out of this dress and into my own clothes?” Jordan asked.

  “I don’t think you’d better,” Vera said.

  “The police might want to take the dress and check it for hair and fibers,” Helen said.

  “Why?” Jordan said. “I didn’t kill Chrissy.” More fat tears slid down her cheeks.

  “But you were in the store when Chrissy was murdered,” Helen said. “Of course, so was the developer Daniel Martlet, Roger, and Loretta, the county commissioner. But Loretta wouldn’t hurt a voter. She’s a rising star.”

  “Danny wouldn’t kill anyone, either. He’s too gentle,” Jordan said, her voice suddenly fierce. The tears dried up like a summer rain shower.

  Danny? Helen wondered. Did Jordan know him?

  “Gentle?” Helen said. “You weren’t here when ‘gentle’ Danny dragged his wife back to this dressing room. His fingers bruised Chrissy’s arm. The cops will see his finger marks when they investigate this murder.”

  “She wasn’t murdered. She committed suicide,” Vera said.

  “Maybe,” Helen said. “I still say she was murdered.”

  “I can’t believe Danny would kill his wife,” Jordan said.

  “That’s for the police to decide,” Helen said.

  “Can I put ten dollars down on this dress so no one else takes it? I really like it,” she said.

  “Why are you buying a dress when we have a dead woman in the store?” Helen asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know how to react,” Jordan said. “The only dead person I ever saw was my grandma. She was old and sick. We knew she was going to die. I saw her at the funeral parlor. I didn’t find her hanging in a store. I’ve never seen someone who died unplanned. I’m twenty-one.”

  I’m twenty years older, Helen thought. She opened her mouth to say something when Vera interrupted—or erupted. “Helen, you told me you’ve been under a lot of strain. I’ve made allowances for the fact that your wedding was canceled at the altar and your mother is in a nursing home. But I won’t have you attacking my customers.”

  She’s right, Helen thought. I’ve been behaving badly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Chrissy’s death was an awful shock to all three of us. I shouldn’t have said anything. There is no normal way to behave when someone is murdered.”

  “Commits suicide,” Vera corrected.

  Helen gave Jordan a hug, and accidentally pulled her long hair.

  “Ow,” Jordan said. “You hurt me.”

  The sirens interrupted Helen’s clumsy attempted reconciliation. Police cars parked every which way, blocking Las Olas Boulevard. The long, narrow shop was overrun by an army of blue uniforms, until a sergeant sorted things out. Yellow crime-scene tape was strung to block off the store from the cash register on back. White jumpsuited crime-scene technicians arrived. Helen heard one say, “Do you know how many fingerprints there are in this place?”

  “We’re about to find out,” her partner said.

  Snapdragon’s was near the Floridian, a venerable grease spot that defied the trendy look of Las Olas. Patrons poured out of the restaurant and gawked in the shop window as if it were an exhibit at the fair. Helen recognized Johnny, a Floridian regular who held court daily at the restaurant’s outdoor tables with his little yellow Lab, Buster. Pretty women loved to pet Buster. Tourists liked to be photographed with him.

  Johnny lifted the pup so it could see inside Snapdragon’s. A blonde in shorts and a red bikini top reached up to pat Buster on his soft, furry head and gave Johnny a view that made his eyes widen. Buster was born to be a chick magnet.

  A few folks tried the shop’s door handle until a uniform was posted there. Then the morbidly curious were turned away. Another officer put out the store’s freshly fingerprinted CLOSED sign.

  Vera, Jordan and Helen were separated and interviewed by uniformed officers. Vera was taken to her back office. Jordan sat in a sale chair by the ginger jars, and Helen perched on a tall chair at the counter up front.

  Helen was going over her account of the fatal morning for the second time when the front doorbells jingled merrily.

  In walked the last man Helen wanted to see.

  CHAPTER 4

  Detective Richard McNally wore a suit the color of iron bars. His shirt was bone white, his tie a blood slash. His handcuff tie tack was a warning, at least to Helen. The man had been trouble for her before and he was going to be a problem now.

  A dark suit and tie in Fort Lauderdale in August was an invitation to heatstroke. Detective McNally looked cool as a Canadian winter.

  Helen did not. She felt queasy when the man walked through the door. She felt sicker when he put on protective booties and went back to see Chrissy’s body. She felt even worse when he returned with that knowing smile.

  “Miss Hawthorne,” he said. “Or is it ‘Mrs.’ now?”

  “Ms.,” Helen said. She meant to sound defiant, but couldn’t quite hide the quaver in her voice.

  “I gave you a wedding present three months ago when I let you walk,” he said. “Now there’s another dead body and here you are.”

  “I didn’t kill Chrissy,” Helen said.

  “But you just happened to be here when she died. And you just happened to be at the scene when that gossip King died. Imagine my surprise when I found you were also working at a Fort Lauderdale hotel when a maid just happened to be murdered there.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Rhonda’s death,” Helen said.

  “You weren’t arrested for it. But you are what we call a link in three murders.”

  At least he doesn’t know about the others, Helen thought.

  As if he’d read her mind, Detective McNally said, “If I put together those links, I bet I’ll find a long chain. If I yanked that chain, I’m sure I’d find something you’ve been hiding, Ms. Hawthorne. Something you don’t want the police to know.”

  Helen knew he would. McNally was smart. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out Helen had been on the run for more than two years. So far, no Florida cop had tumbled to her secret. But McNally would. He only seemed handsome and harmless. With his blue eyes and white hair, he looked like those older men in the drug commercials. But Helen knew he wasn’t a smiley male model pushing pricey prescription pills. His eyes were blue steel and his heart was hard.

  “How was your wedding?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t,” Helen said.

  “Did the groom wise up?” he asked.

  She winced. “It was more complicated than that.”

  “With you, there are always complications, Ms. Hawthorne.” McNally said “Ms.” with a buzz like an angry insect. “Why aren’t you working at that hair salon anymore? Was there a falling-out among thieves?”

  “Miguel Angel and I are still friends,” she said. “My mother had a heart attack when she came here for my wedding and I have to be with her. She’s too sick to go home to St. Louis. She’s in a nursing home now. I couldn’t bear to go back to the salon where I’d been a happy bride-to-be. Miguel understood. He told me Vera had an opening at Snapdragon’s Second Thoughts, and I started working here about a month ago.”

  “How well did you know the victim?” he asked.

  “Hardly at all,” Helen said. “Vera kn
ew her. Chrissy Martlet was a regular customer.”

  “Martlet. Is she the big developer’s wife?” Helen was sure McNally already knew that.

  “That’s what I heard,” Helen said. She was sitting on the tall chair at the register, behind a barricade of shell jewelry and battery-powered toys. Tourist lures.

  McNally stood next to the counter. The detective didn’t lean on it. The man stayed alert and focused.

  “Why would a rich lady buy used clothes?” McNally asked. “Danny Martlet has a multimillion-dollar project in the works.”

  “Chrissy didn’t buy our clothes, as I understand it,” Helen said. “She sold her designer clothes here. She said her husband let her shop all she wanted, but he wouldn’t give her any spending money.”

  “That’s strange,” Detective McNally said.

  “He was a control freak,” Helen said. “That’s how Vera explained him. It happens more than you’d think. Rich wives bring in their barely worn designer clothes all the time.”

  “So when did the victim come to the store?” Detective McNally asked.

  “Just after we opened at ten this morning. Chrissy had her husband’s dirty shirts. We do laundry and dry cleaning, too. She tried to sell Vera a pony-hair purse. Then Danny the developer came in and she hid the pony purse in the pile of shirts. But he—”

  “Whoa, slow down,” McNally said. “Now we’ve got ponies.”

  “Just their hair,” Helen said. “Chrissy had a Prada purse made out of pony hair that cost three thousand dollars.”

  “Three grand for a purse? Did it have wheels and a motor?” The cop looked shocked. “I owe my wife an apology. I bitched when she spent eighty bucks for a Couch bag.”

  “It was probably a Coach bag, not a Couch,” Helen said. “They’re good, too. Chrissy’s purse was a Prada, which is extremely expensive. It still had the tags on it.”

  “Did she shoplift it?”

  “No,” Helen said. “She had the store sales receipt and the authenticity documents to prove it wasn’t a counterfeit. Vera said she could sell the purse for about five hundred dollars. Chrissy’s cut would have been about two hundred fifty. Chrissy said that wasn’t enough.

  “They were still bargaining when Danny’s BMW roared up out front. Chrissy panicked when she saw her husband in the doorway. She tried to hide the purse in his shirts, but he saw it and they started arguing.”

  “Tell me everything you remember about this argument,” McNally said. “Every detail.”

  Helen tried. But she was woozy from a long morning, the shock of seeing the dead woman and her fear of Detective McNally. Breakfast was a distant memory and there was no lunch in sight. She was sure she forgot something.

  “Danny was making fun of Chrissy, saying she faked sex to get what she wanted from him. That’s when Loretta Stranahan walked in.”

  “The county commissioner?” Detective McNally said. “She was here, too?”

  Helen nodded.

  “What a cluster fu—mess this is,” he said.

  “Vera wanted Danny and Chrissy to leave. Instead Danny hauled Chrissy to the back dressing room to continue their argument. He gripped her arm hard. I saw the bruises. Those are his fingerprints on her arm.”

  “What were you doing while they were fighting?” McNally asked.

  “I was working. I wiped down that display case,” Helen said.

  “Where you could hear every word,” McNally said.

  “It would be hard to miss what they were saying.” Helen said. “Danny and Chrissy were yelling loud enough you could hear them all over the store.”

  “Were they still arguing about money?” McNally said.

  “No. Chrissy accused Danny of being unfaithful, of staring at another woman’s uh . . . chest. Then Commissioner Loretta Stranahan walked back and saw Danny and his wife. The women seemed to know each other, but I don’t think Chrissy liked the commissioner. Chrissy made a remark about Loretta calling her husband too often. Loretta said Chrissy was too stupid to understand they were discussing business.

  “That’s when Vera stepped in. She showed Danny some Bruno Magli shoes, sent Chrissy to the back dressing room to try on a summer dress and took Loretta to her office to see some blouses she hadn’t put on the racks yet.”

  “Those Bruno Maglis, is that the brand O. J. wore?” McNally asked.

  “I think so. O. J. called the shoes cheap, but they weren’t. Anyway, Vera separated everyone and the store was quiet. That’s when Jordan came in, wanting some of Paris Hilton’s cocktail dresses.”

  “Paris Hilton sells her used clothes here?” McNally asked.

  “No, Vera gives her regular sellers code names that sort of match their personalities. They all have regular buyers. Vera’s Paris Hilton is a rich, young woman who likes to party, sort of like the real celebrity. Loretta likes Glenn Close’s suits.”

  “Does this seller woman look like Glenn Close?” McNally asked.

  “No, she’s a brunette businesswoman who likes married men,” Helen said. “Vera knows she can’t sell clothes to women who run in the same circles. They would be embarrassed to be seen in a friend’s cast-off dress. She shows them to people they’ll never meet. Jordan lives at my apartment complex. She’s safe to sell to because there aren’t any rich party girls hanging around the Coronado Tropic Apartments. Jordan wanted to try on two Paris Hilton cocktail dresses. She ran into Danny and he was rude to her. He was rude to me, too. He threw the shoes on the floor and walked out.”

  “What time was that?” McNally said.

  “Around eleven fifteen.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?”

  “Vera and I took a breather and she looked at the clock. Then she went back to the dressing room to ask Chrissy about the pony-hair purse and found her dead.”

  Helen stopped. This was the bad part. The cheerful clutter of the store seemed to close in on her. She gulped, afraid she might cry, and grabbed the edge of the counter. She didn’t want to show any weakness around McNally.

  “Do you want some water, Ms. Hawthorne?” Detective McNally asked.

  “I have a bottle here under the counter,” she said. She took a sip of water and felt a little better. The relentless questioning had stopped for a moment.

  “You said Vera found the body,” McNally prompted.

  “I heard Vera screaming and I ran to the back,” Helen said. She felt calmer now. “Jordan was in the front dressing room trying on a cocktail dress. She came out of the room in a half-zipped pink satin dress. Vera called 911. That’s all I remember.”

  She left out their debate about whether Chrissy’s death was murder or suicide.

  Helen stared out the window. Heat waves rose from the sidewalks. The relentless sun was bleaching the brightly painted shops and colorful canvas awnings. Sensible locals were inside, except for the uniformed cop on duty outside the shop door. He was dripping sweat. Only the window-shopping tourists were on the sidewalks, determined to enjoy their vacations. They were as wilted as week-old bouquets.

  “We found something,” a crime-scene tech announced. She showed Detective McNally the warty porcelain pineapple. On the bottom edge was a thick dark smear and what Helen thought was a couple of hairs clinging to it. Her stomach turned.

  “It was on the top shelf,” the tech said. “We’ve photographed it.”

  “Which top shelf?” he asked.

  “Under the fan, next to the armoire,” the tech said.

  “So a tall person could reach it easily?” McNally said.

  “So could a short one,” Helen said. “There’s a chair next to it.”

  “We didn’t find any footprints or shoe prints on the chair seat,” the tech said.

  “Can you get any fingerprints off the pineapple?” McNally asked.

  “With that surface, probably not,” the tech said. “Maybe some smears. We can take it back and fume it.”

  “I’ve dusted everything in this store,” Helen said. “I dusted that
pineapple this morning. My prints will be on it.”

  “I think you’d better come back to the station with me, Ms. Hawthorne,” McNally said.

  “Why? Am I under arrest?”

  “No, I want you to give your statement again and sign it. Then I want to take your prints. Just for elimination.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Helen asked.

  “Only if you’re guilty,” McNally said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Helen staggered out of the Hendin Island police station and squinted into the scalding sun. She felt like a drunk who’d left a bar after hours of carousing. She was surprised that it was only six o’clock and still daylight. Detective McNally’s interrogation seemed to last for days.

  Steam rose from the wet pavement, and puddles soaked her shoes. Fort Lauderdale had already had its afternoon monsoon. The brief, hard summer rain drenched everything and cooled nothing.

  Helen hoped the troubled citizens of Hendin Island never needed to find their police station in a hurry. The sign was so small and discreet, it could have been a private clinic behind that high ficus hedge. The nasty business of police work was hidden by a pretty facade, the way people once hid outhouses in fragrant gardens. The rich Hendin Islanders wanted no reminder of life’s ugly necessities.

  Helen sloshed through lukewarm puddles until her shoes squished. She felt battered by Detective McNally’s relentless questions. She was too tired to walk home through this sauna. Besides, Helen had a new cell phone. She could call her fiancé.

  Phil answered the phone after two rings. “Helen, where are you? What’s the matter? You got off work two hours ago and you aren’t home. Did I forget that you were going somewhere?”

  “There’s been a problem,” Helen said. “A Snapdragon customer was murdered. Chrissy Martlet.”

  “The developer’s wife?” Phil asked.

  “That’s her.”

  Phil whistled, then said, “Are you all right? Were you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. I couldn’t call. I had to go to the Hendin Island police station and give a statement. They took my fingerprints and palm prints, but didn’t arrest me.”

  “That’s good,” Phil said. “How did the woman die? Was she shot?”