Checked Out (22 page)

Helen saw the bird holding his wings slightly away from his sides, his chest sticking out. From the back, his wings did look like a heart.

“That means Pete’s in love,” Peggy said. “He’s flirting.”

“Here’s to high-flying love,” Helen said. She raised her water bottle and they all toasted.

“Congratulations, lovebirds,” Peggy said.

Phil kissed her gently. “That’s us,” he said. “I love you. We solved two tough cases.”

“Three,” Helen corrected. “I love you, too.”

He kissed her again. The next time she looked up, everyone was gone—Margery, Markos, Peggy and the parrots. It was just her and Phil alone by the pool.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

“We are home,” he said.

“C
hampagne, everybody!” Helen and Phil cried. “The caterers are here. It’s a celebration!”

The PI couple was out by the pool, ready for a sunset salute.

A magnum of champagne was sweating in a silver ice bucket, surrounded by six glasses. Three caterers carried out silver trays of sumptuous pink delicacies—smoked salmon, chilled lobsters and stone crabs, their rosy, rock-hard claws dramatically tipped in black—and set them on tables draped in purple.

Margery floated out of her apartment, looking like an exiled queen in a lavender caftan with a striking amethyst necklace. Peggy and Daniel hurried out of her home, breathless and slightly disheveled, but adorably flushed. Markos coolly strolled out of his place wearing tight black jeans and a white wifebeater. Ordinarily, Helen didn’t like wifebeater shirts, but Markos’s was helping change her mind.

“Did you get him?” Margery asked, and reached for a stone crab claw.

“Finally,” Helen said, heaping her plate with cold lobster,
smoked salmon on toast points, and stone crabs with creamy mustard sauce.

“After six weeks and heaven knows how many slippery lawyers,” Phil said, “Standiford W. Lohan the Third has been convicted of twenty counts of first-degree felony grand theft.”

Daniel, Peggy’s lawyer boyfriend, whistled. “He’s looking at thirty years.”

“And a ten-thousand-dollar fine,” Phil said.

“Poor Trey had to sell his Ferrari,” Helen said.

“I didn’t think they’d ever convict him,” Margery said.

“Trey’s family has money,” Helen said, “but they made powerful enemies. You don’t want to mess with the Coakleys. And Trey’s shoplifting ring targeted the big-box stores. They were determined to bring him down.”

“And his good friend, Ozzie Ormond, testified against him to save his own scaly skin,” Phil said. “Snake Boy cut a good deal with the prosecution.”

“Trey’s father nearly bankrupted himself fighting Trey’s charges,” Daniel said. “At least that’s what I heard.”

“He’ll make the money back renting those substandard apartments,” Helen said.

“Or not,” Phil said, stuffing his mouth with smoked salmon. He winked at her, and Helen wondered what her crafty spouse was up to.

“You aren’t eating, Markos,” Margery said.

“There’s so much of it and it’s so beautiful,” Markos said.

“All of it’s healthy, too,” Phil said, filling the champagne glasses.

“Almost all,” Markos said. “Smoked salmon is a healthy protein and, as a fatty fish, it has the daily allowance for oil. But there are nutritional drawbacks to smoked fish. It’s very high in sodium and . . .”

Margery popped a bite of cold lobster into his mouth and said, “Enjoy! Everybody has to die of something.”

“Cheers,” Peggy said, and raised her glass.

“To Helen and Phil,” the Coronado residents said, and toasted the successful private eyes.

*   *   *

Dave, the crooked owner of Fore! Sale, was arrested for trafficking in stolen property. Many of the pre-owned golf carts in his warehouse showroom were still owned. Dave suddenly recovered his memory and testified against Trey and Ozzie Ormond. He pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony and served two years. He was forced to sell his business. After he left prison, Dave worked as a caddy at the golf course next to his former shop.

*   *   *

Ozzie Ormond, aka Snake Boy, Trey’s accomplice at golf cart rustling and the shoplifting ring, cut a deal with the prosecution, and pleaded guilty. He’s currently serving five years. Chloe has no contact with her former boyfriend, but Aunt Blair sends him letters from prison.

*   *   *

Police could find no criminal connection between Standiford W. Lohan, Junior, and his son Trey’s shoplifting ring. LCC’s chintzy “affordable urban apartments” might be a crime, but they weren’t a police matter.

Shortly after Trey’s trial and sentencing, Phil filed a complaint with the city’s code enforcement authority. Trey’s father is so busy bringing his apartments up to code, he hardly has time to visit his son.

*   *   *

During the trial, testimony revealed Bree Coakley’s wild lifestyle, including the drugs. Her parents were appalled when this information made the news, and their punishment was swift and dire. They cut off Bree’s allowance, forcing her to get a job. To escape that dreadful fate, Bree married a lawyer in her father’s firm.

*   *   *

Chloe Coakley’s parents never discovered her beer-buying scheme for her underage classmates, but they were displeased that her
boyfriend, Ozzie, was a convicted felon. She was forced to get a part-time job at a Palm Beach dress shop. Chloe was thrilled with her generous staff discount, until she spent two thousand dollars more on clothes than she made. She was fired for telling a size-eight woman, “The fat clothes are over there.”

Chloe’s parents insisted on tough love and refused to pay her debts. She now works at a fast-food restaurant and asks customers, “Do you want fries with that?”

*   *   *

Charlee and John, the underpaid Coakley gardeners, took the jobs they wanted in Boca Raton that paid a dollar an hour extra. Ana still cooks her magnificent lunches for the new gardeners. Helen and Phil have a standing invitation to stop by for lunch anytime.

*   *   *

Peerless Point crimes-against-property detective Stanley Morgan turned down a promotion after he cracked the shoplifting ring case. “I’d be a desk jockey,” he told Phil over beers. “I’d go crazy shuffling papers and kissing ass. I didn’t turn down the raise, though. Another beer?”

Bettencourt detective Micah Doben took a small buyout offer and retired.

Bettencourt detective Earline V. Culver was given a raise for arresting Charlotte Ann Dams’s killer. She was promoted to Detective Doben’s job after his retirement.

*   *   *

Blair Hoagland, the former head of the Flora Park Friends of the Library, was charged with the vehicular homicide of Charlotte Ann Dams. Her court-appointed attorney claimed that Blair was stressed by the potential loss of her beloved library. She was sentenced to twenty years in prison, three hundred hours of community service, and a five-thousand-dollar fine. Blair might have received a lighter sentence if she hadn’t burst into a tirade against
the “tasteless” Kingsleys, and the late Davis Kingsley’s trashy LeRoy Neiman baseball painting. His Honor was a great admirer of Mr. Neiman’s work.

*   *   *

Lisa Hamilton Jackson found a quality nursing home for her mother in Himmarshee, a town in Central Florida’s horse country, where the cost of living is considerably cheaper than Fort Lauderdale. She sold her mother’s Flora Park home as a fixer-upper and moved to the small town to be near her.

Lisa handles the nursing home’s medical billing service and is on the board of the town library. She even has time for some happiness. She’s dating a man from one of the first families in Central Florida. Lisa insists that he is not a cowboy, or a cowman, or even a Cracker, but a cattleman.

*   *   *

Seraphina Ormond, Elizabeth Kingsley’s friend, was so delighted with the tiramisu Alexa brought her, she promised to spearhead the fund-raising campaign to reinforce the Flora Park Library floors, and kicked it off by donating a million dollars of her own money. Alexa said she’d keep her in tiramisu while Seraphina labored for the library.

Seraphina was grateful for the distraction, after the horror of Ozzie’s trial. She raised all the money the library needed for the new floors. She also sweet-talked old Mr. Ritter, who owned two houses in Flora Park, into donating one as the library’s temporary home during the construction. Then the dynamo collected enough funds to cover the move. A window nook with Mr. Ritter’s wing chair and the latest Sunday
New York Times
were permanently reserved for him.

Seraphina was unanimously elected president of the library board.

When the Flora Park Library finally reopened, Seraphina was
honored at a special gala banquet, and tiramisu was served in her honor. Her custom-made gown cleverly hid the twenty pounds she’d gained.

*   *   *

During the renovation, Paris, the library cat, was the official greeter at the temporary library, a living link to the past and a promise that Flora Portland’s library would reopen. The cat has become quite spoiled and now refuses to catch mice.

*   *   *

When the Flora Park Library reopened, the temporary library building became the Flora Park Ritter Center, dedicated to helping the homeless.

*   *   *

Ted, the library’s homeless man, now had his own apartment in the center. In exchange, he carefully screens the homeless people who come to the new Ritter Center, and determines who needs psychological treatment, who has outstanding warrants and would be of interest to the police, and who needs a job.

Ted opened a café in the center, staffed by the homeless people he’d trained. He also trains other people to become gardeners and household help, or helps them get grants to finish their schooling. The Flora Park Ritter Center’s programs for the homeless offer haircuts, showers, job interview clothes, blood pressure screening and business counseling.

Many Flora Park residents hire the trainees and say they make reliable, affordable live-in staff. The board hired two efficient assistants for Jared the janitor and he enjoys supervising his staff.

*   *   *

The center’s new Paris Café is famed for its lattes, and the library staff no longer drinks the break-room sludge. Paris the cat reigns in the café named for her. Charlotte Ann Dams’s name appears
nowhere in the Ritter Center, but Helen believes it’s a fitting memorial to the young woman.

*   *   *

Before Charlotte’s body was flown home to her mother in Missouri, Helen gathered a bouquet of sweet-smelling tropical flowers from the library garden, and asked the funeral director to put it inside her casket. Charlotte now has Florida with her forever.

*   *   *

Paris may have retired from mouse-catching, but mice still scamper across the old library’s rebuilt floors and frolic in its endless rooms. One day, a calico cat appeared at the library’s staff door, the spitting image of Flora Portland’s pet. She was promptly named Flora and became an organic mouse catcher, though she’s partial to treats.

The
Flora Park Gazette
asked Alexa if the calico was the ghost of Flora Portland’s pet. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” the library director said. “It’s simply a coincidence that a calico cat happened to show up at the library.”

*   *   *

Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley was disappointed that her John Singer Sargent print,
Muddy Alligators
, sold for $850,500 at auction to an anonymous bidder, even though the price was about seven thousand more than the most recent price for a similar watercolor. Elizabeth had been sure that the painting’s glamorous, deadly history would bring the price up to at least a million dollars. But art sales are tricky, and once again, Davis Kingsley was wrong. He didn’t leave his daughter a million-dollar watercolor after all.

Elizabeth presented Helen with a check for eighty-five hundred dollars.

“What’s this?” Helen said. “We have a contract and you owe me ten thousand dollars, Elizabeth.”

“I was expecting to recoup a million dollars for the watercolor,” Elizabeth said. “Instead, all I’ll receive is a mere 850,500 dollars. And you may call me Ms. Kingsley.”

“Then I suggest you invest it wisely,” Helen said. “And that you write me a check for the correct amount. Otherwise, you may call me Sue.”

Elizabeth Kingsley paid in full, and followed the rest of Helen’s advice.

*   *   *

Six months after the sale of
Muddy Alligators
, Seraphina Ormond revealed that she was the anonymous buyer of the painting. She donated it to the library. “Consider it a trust fund for any future problems,” she said.

The library board gratefully accepted the gift. The “double hanging” gala Seraphina held to install
Muddy Alligators
in the newly renovated lobby, across from Flora Portland’s portrait, was the party of the year.

Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley did not attend.

*   *   *

Alexa Andrews, the Flora Park Library director, was extremely pleased with the results of Helen’s two investigations. One week after Blair Hoagland was arrested for the murder of Charlotte Ann Dams, Helen stopped by the library to pick up her check and have tea with the stylish director.

Helen enjoyed sipping tea on the yellow sofa in Alexa’s office. Paris the cat stopped by for a scratch and danced on the soft carpet, while Helen fed her treats.

Alexa looked like a work of art in a hot-pink suit. She handed Helen the check, then said, “Wait. I have something else for you.”

She brought out the colossal copy of Edward S. Curtis’s
Portraits from North American Indian Life
.

“This is the book where the watercolor was hidden,” Helen said.

“I thought you’d like to look at it now that you have the time,” Alexa said.

“Oh, Helen.” Gladys waved to her from the checkout desk.
She looked street chic in a military-cut jacket, mini, fishnet stockings and her buckled biker boots. “I wanted to thank you for the lovely gift basket of champagne, caviar and bonbons.”

“Me?” Helen said.

“There wasn’t a card with the basket, but I know you sent it. I love the Ferrari key chain. That’s just the sort of kind thing you’d do.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Helen said, and winked.

“Yes, you do,” Gladys said. “Thank you so much.”

*   *   *

Phil was waiting in Helen’s apartment when she came back from the library. She was wearing a white blouse and a black pencil skirt, and carrying the massive book. He put his arms around her, and she inhaled his scent of coffee and sandalwood.

“You look like my fantasy librarian,” he said.

“I’m not working for the library anymore,” she said.

“Sh!” he said. “Don’t spoil it. Smart, sexy women are hot. Did I ever tell you my library fantasy?”

He whispered it in Helen’s ear, then kissed her. She kissed him back, a long, lingering kiss.