Dying to Call You (23 page)

“Is that chocolate-covered, too?”

“Just breathe in the air. You’ll feel better.”

Helen had never seen so much chocolate, ribbons and flowers. It was as if her favorite maiden aunt was a chocoholic. There were mounds of rum, piña colada and key lime truffles. There were shelves of dark chocolate turtles, hand-dipped Oreo cookies, and chocolate-covered pretzels. Rows of chocolate-covered fruit: kiwi, pears, oranges. The chocolate-dipped strawberries were big as peaches.

“They’re dipped first in white and then in dark chocolate,” the salesperson said.

“Try the chocolate-covered orange peel,” Sarah said. “It’s tart—a word that seems to describe you lately.”

Helen made a face, then took a bite. The orange peel was not sweet. It was rich, with a nifty little zing that was almost alcoholic. “Oh, my. If I had Jimmie, I wouldn’t need other men. This is better than...”

“Sex?” Sarah said.

Helen thought of Phil, the visible non-pothead.

“Almost anything else,” she said.

“OK, who is he this time?” Sarah said. “Let’s go over to the café side and discuss this.”

Sarah ordered champagne and more chocolate, which gave Helen time to collect her thoughts. A waitress brought two glasses and a cold bottle of champagne.

“Nobody,” Helen said. “My romance was over before it began. I took your advice and went out with a guy from the boiler room.”

“Not the boiler room.” Sarah slammed back a surprising gulp of champagne. “I wanted you to meet a decent man.”

“Well, I didn’t. I need a chocolate-covered strawberry before I can go any further.”

Helen told Sarah about Jack the bailiff boy between bites.

The story didn’t seem so bad. Champagne was the right accompaniment for a romance gone wrong.

“I am sorry,” Sarah said. “But you handled the whole thing well. Your exit line was perfect. Besides, you don’t sound too broken up. I know there’s someone else.”

“I’m not dating him. I just saw him.”

“Who?” Sarah’s champagne glass hung in midair. “Don’t let me sit here sounding like an owl.”

“I’ve finally seen Phil the invisible pothead.”

“After all this time? I want details.”

“He looks like a rock star. Dark-blue eyes, slightly crooked nose, long hair, lean face, nice muscles, good tan.”

“All this and a druggie, too,” Sarah said.

“But he’s not. It’s an act. He’s undercover. Margery knew all along he wasn’t a pothead. That’s why she rented to him.

She won’t tell me which agency he’s with. She says he’s single, straight and dangerous.”

“Sounds like your kind of man.”

“Not according to Margery. You disapprove, too, don’t you?”

“You’d be bored with a nice, safe man,” Sarah said. “If he’s good enough for Margery, he’s good enough for you.”

“That’s practically an endorsement,” Helen said.

They clinked champagne glasses.

“Always agree with the customers.”

Vito was giving another pep talk in his dingy office. He was the televangelist of telemarketing, exhorting his ragtag flock to salvation. If they didn’t sell more, they were damned to eternal unemployment.

“If someone says, ‘I don’t buy over the phone,’ what do you say?”

The boiler-room crew looked up hopefully.

“You say, ‘I agree, ma’am. You don’t buy. First, you use our product for thirty days. Then you buy it.’ See, you’re agreeing with them.”

Helen was fascinated by Vito’s round head and spherical muscles. He was a bundle of ovoid energy.

“If they say, ‘I can’t afford it.’ You say, ‘I agree. You can’t afford it. But you can’t
not
afford it. If your septic tank backs up, it will cost you seven thousand dollars to dig up your yard. Seven thousand dollars.’ “First, sell them fear. Then, sell them peace of mind. Be like the guy who has three cups and puts the bean under one.

Keep moving that argument.”

Vito raised his muscular arms toward heaven—or at least the cobwebs on the ceiling. “Now, go out there and sell. And remember, never, ever give out our toll-free number.”

When Vito finished talking, Helen wanted to buy the product, and she didn’t even have a septic tank. She made six sales that morning, beating her all-time record.

Vito sent her to survey heaven. She could do her research on the Mowbrys’ party that night.

It was easy work on the survey side. Helen had to sign up people with in-ground swimming pools. In Florida, everyone who was anyone had a concreted, chlorined hole in their yard. Helen was back in the A-list, the richest of the rich. It was her natural hunting ground. But she couldn’t start checking the newspaper yet. She had to sign up survey customers first.

She read the personal information on the first pool subject on the computer screen:

“Angela Hawson. Birth date 2/16/76. Single. No children.

Occupation: Tax lawyer. Income: $100,000-plus. Number of computers in home: Three. Number of swimming pools:

Two, one indoor. Pets: Two cats. Cars: Drives a 2002 Lexus.

Suffers from depression. Takes Prozac. Has a weight problem.”

Helen was amazed what people told survey takers. She’d tear out her tongue before she’d tell a stranger she was taking mood-altering prescription drugs. But phone-survey takers heard more secrets than priests in the confessional.

People told her they were in rehab, bipolar, being treated for venereal disease. Helen thought they were too trusting.

“Hi, Angela. This is Helen with Girdner Surveys. We’re conducting a swimming pool survey that pays—”

“I told you to take my name out of your database,” Angela said. “I don’t want your annoying calls.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll make a note of it.”

But I won’t take your name out, Helen thought. I couldn’t, even if I wanted. Angela didn’t understand that once she gave her name to a survey taker, it was in the database forever.

Now it would simply have a notation: “Do not call.”

Even death would not remove Angela. When she turned up her toes, her entry would say, “Dead. Do not call.”

A database was faithful unto death.

After she’d made enough survey calls to meet the minimum quota, Helen started checking the names in the newspaper story.

Ten of the twelve names were in the Girdner database.

The real estate agent in the La Perla panties was divorced, made two hundred thousand a year, and had a hysterectomy.

Parrish Davenport was mortgaged to his shamrock shorts.

Helen wasn’t surprised. Girdner’s records showed he’d been married four times. His current wife was twenty-eight. Helen suspected she was real tired of shamrocks.

Dr. Melton Mowbry wasn’t in the database, but Mindy was. She used tampons and kept tropical fish. She drank beer, wine and liquor. She was allergic to shellfish, which disqualified her for many restaurant surveys. She had three cars and a Cigarette boat. Helen wondered if she really drove the boat or if Melton had put it in her name for some tax dodge.

The lecherous plastic surgeon, Damian Putnam, was the most interesting entry. Helen was surprised to see that he was sixty-three. She’d thought he was about forty. He must be into recreational nips and tucks. He was a partner in the Prestige Perfect Plastic Surgery Group. Where had she seen that name before? In the newspaper. That was Dr. Melton Mowbry’s company. Interesting.

Dr. Putnam lived on the mansion side of Brideport, a finial or two from the Mowbry house. The database thoughtfully provided his address, all four phone numbers and his wife’s name.

Was she at the party, too? Helen checked the newspaper.

That was her, in a shiny evening suit of silk shantung. Helen had seen that facelift before, in the back room. Dr. Putnam’s wife had been with another man. While her husband was grabbing tits like a dairy farmer, she and a naked man were playing with a custom coke kit. Nice couple.

She was forty-one—the perfect age for her husband’s art.

She owned a Pekinese. She’d also kept her own last name, which was unusual for a doctor’s wife: Patricia Wellneck.

That name was familiar. There was a chain of South Florida funeral homes called The Wellneck Group. And wouldn’t you know it? The database said Patricia was its CEO.

Helen wondered if she gave the Mowbrys a good price on an ebony coffin.

Chapter 21

The Happy Cow belonged to the suicidal animal school of advertising. The restaurant’s neon sign featured a beaming bovine in a chef’s hat, eager to plunge a knife and fork into its own breast.

“If you think about it, this is a weird place,” Helen said.

Margery made a left-turn through the traffic on U.S. 1, and pulled into the Happy Cow parking lot. “What’s weird about an all-you-can-eat buffet in South Florida?”

“That cow. It’s dying to become your dinner. How many happy cows, cheerful chickens, perky pigs and smiling shrimp have you seen, all thrilled to death because they’re going to wind up on your plate?”

“So what do you want on the sign? A cow cowering in the corner while the butcher attacks it? That will sell a lot of steaks.”

“No, I just wonder if people stop to think about it, that’s all.”

“The only thing these old farts think about is getting home for a nap before they go out for the early-bird special.”

Helen didn’t mention that some of the people coming out of the restaurant were younger than Margery. Some, but not many. The predominant customer hair color was snow white.

At one-thirty in the afternoon, most of the walkers and canes were heading out the front door. The lunch hour was winding down.

“Do you think we’ve missed Fred and Ethel?” Helen said.

“Nope. Fred said they were going to a sale at Sears, then getting a late lunch here. I figured we should wait in the parking lot until they go inside. I don’t think anyone will notice my car.”

Margery parked her big white Cadillac between a big white Lincoln and a big white Buick. The parking lot looked like a pod of white whales. Helen could never figure out why, once you turned seventy in Florida, you bought a large white car. It must be some biological urge.

Helen and Margery watched the clientele totter out.

“There are more chicken necks here than at a soup factory, Margery said. “This place must depress the hell out of you.”

“Not me,” Helen said. “Usually I feel old. I’m a hot babe in this crowd.”

Margery snorted. “You young people. Always talking about being old. You don’t know what age is. You
are
a hot babe. By the time you figure that out, you won’t be one anymore.”

Helen looked in the side mirror. She could practically see her chin and chest sliding south. She could also see Fred and Ethel pulling up in a big white Chevy.

“They’re here.” She ducked down in the seat, a decision she regretted. She got a cold blast of air conditioning in the face. By the time Fred and Ethel climbed out of their car, she’d have frozen to death.

Helen poked her head above the window to keep her eyebrows from frosting up. She saw Fred first. An AMERICA—LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT T-shirt was stretched across his melon belly.

“That’s a Nixon-era slogan. Where did he get that?” she said.

“I think they’re bringing it back,” Margery said.

Ethel toted a fat black purse the size of a carry-on suit-case. She wore a GOD BLESS AMERICA T-shirt with a sequinned flag on her chest.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of these scoundrels,” Helen said. “I guess we should wait five minutes for them to get seated before we go inside.”

“Good. It will give me time for a last cigarette, now that you can’t smoke in a Florida restaurant.” Margery rolled down her window and lit up. “I’ve been thinking how this should go down. I know the layout. I’ve been here with my bridge club.”

“I didn’t know you played bridge.”

“I don’t. We play poker, but restaurants don’t like that. So we tell them we’re playing bridge. We bring bridge pads and set them out. Nobody ever checks. We sit in the bar and play cards and drink enough manhattans to keep the help happy.

Fred and Ethel are militant nondrinkers. They won’t go near the bar. We can sit in there and watch them where they can’t see us. You got the stuff?”

“Right here.” Helen patted her pocket. “Let’s go.”

Helen loved the bar at the Happy Cow. Its generous, curving black leather booths, dim lights and red-flocked wallpaper reminded her of the great old steak houses in St. Louis.

The bar smelled pleasantly of mold, Lysol and stale cigarette smoke. That smell lingered long after the smoking ban.

The two women sat on heavily padded black barstools and ordered white wine. The bartender, a woman about Margery’s age with an impressive figure and a blond beehive, was fast and efficient.

Margery had picked a good spot. They could see the whole place in the mirrors behind the bar. The restaurant was long and narrow, with a soup, salad and dessert bar running down the middle. A soft-serve ice cream station and soft-drink section were against the wall. The walls were decorated with Florida beach scenes and NO DOGGY BAGS signs. The waitresses took the orders for grilled steaks and chicken.

Then the diners raided the salad bar.

The Happy Cow did not have fashionable food. Its clientele wanted a steak tender enough to chomp with dentures and food that filled them up: potato salad, macaroni salad, rice salad, green bean salad, black bean salad, corn salad, carrot salad with raisins. The bread was hot, white and puffy.

Lettuce was covered with croutons and creamy dressing.

Baked potatoes were piled with butter and sour cream. This crowd did not worry about cholesterol. They had already outlived the weak sisters with heart trouble.

“Fred and Ethel are experienced all-you-can-eat restaurant goers,” Margery said. “They skip the starchy salads and bread and go for the expensive fruit and vegetables. Fred’s got at least five bucks’ worth of produce on his plate.”

Fred’s plate was loaded with salad, sliced mushrooms, fresh strawberries, cantaloupe and pineapple chunks.

“What’s Ethel doing with those mounds of potato salad and bread?” Helen said.

“Getting tonight’s dinner. Watch.”

Back at their table, Ethel slid into the booth first. Fred’s paunch provided privacy, but Helen could see over it on her tall barstool. Ethel opened her purse and eased most of the potato salad and bread inside.