Shop Till You Drop (16 page)

The little bit of Tara visible behind the curtain of hair seemed to grow paler.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think they walked by the jewelry store. I think they got out of a cab in front of this store.”

“A cab,” the officer said. “That’s good. Cabs keep records.”

“Or maybe it wasn’t a cab,” Tara said quickly. “No, I was wrong. It was a regular car. A white car. Like those white cabs, except this car didn’t have the yellow stripe the way the cabs do.”

She’s lying, Helen thought. Even I can tell she’s lying.

“Did you see the driver?” MacWilliams asked. But before Tara could lie again, Paulie’s angry voice thundered through the store.

“What the hell do you mean, why did I wait almost three hours to call someone? Are you questioning me? Me? I been worried sick. Tara told me she was going to the supermarket. She should have been home about seven, seven-thirty at the latest. When she didn’t come home, I called the hospitals and the police, afraid she’d been in a car accident. Then I called Helen. Why didn’t I just drive over here? Because we live in friggin’ Coral Springs. It would take forty-five mintues to get here. Now, do I have to call my lawyer, or are you gonna let us out of this place?” Tara looked up, and her hair fell back to reveal a bruised but hopeful face.

“Do you want to make a sworn statement now?” the officer asked Tara.

“No,” Tara said, and put down the black curtain of hair again. “I’m too sick.”

“You’ve badgered this poor girl enough,” Paulie said, outraged. He stomped angrily back toward the black silk-satin loveseats. His gut bulged out of a navy golf shirt two sizes too small, but for the first time, Helen liked Paulie.

The officer ignored him and said to Tara, “You will prosecute these men if we find them.”

“Damn right she will,” Paulie said. “But you jerkoffs couldn’t find your ass with both hands. I don’t think you’ll ever find them.”

Helen didn’t think the police would find the two men, either—because they did not exist.

“She’s not coming back here tomorrow,” Paulie said. He scooped Tara into his arms and carried her out the door. Tara’s long hair hung down, a dark flag of surrender.

“Tara’s whole story is phoney as a South Beach boob job,” Margery said.

“I was going to say three-dollar bill,” Peggy said. “Either way, it’s a fake.”

Helen felt better. On the walk home from Juliana’s, she had begun to doubt herself. What if two men really had forced their way into Juliana’s? What if they were connected with Christina and her drugs?

When Helen got home to the Coronado apartments, it was after eleven. A worried Peggy and Margery were waiting for her by the pool. Helen felt so drained, she could hardly walk across the lawn to talk to them.

“You look terrible,” Margery said. “What happened? Are you OK? Is Tara OK?”

“Tara was attacked by two men. At least, I think she was,” Helen said. “It’s all my fault. I should have never left her alone.”

They made Helen sit down and drink tea and eat dark chocolate. “You need sugar when you’re stressed,” Margery said.

Margery gave her a Godiva dark chocolate bar. Peggy brought over a box of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies she kept in the freezer. Helen ate the Godiva bar in four bites. A half dozen Thin Mints disappeared off her plate, so she must have eaten those, too.

After that jolt of caffeine, she had enough energy to talk about what happened in full detail. Margery and Peggy were as skeptical as the police when they heard the story, and that reassured Helen.

“She’s lying,” Peggy said flatly. Pete, sitting on her shoulder, squawked his agreement.

“Two black men in gloves and ski masks on Las Olas?” Margery said. “They might as well show up in that getup at a Klan rally. Even crackheads aren’t that nuts.”

“I know South Florida is full of crazy criminals,” Helen said, “but I can’t believe two men would force their way into Juliana’s and not take any money. There was five hundred dollars cash in the register. And why rob a dress shop, when there are jewelry stores on the same street?”

“Nothing is missing at Juliana’s, right?” Margery said.

“Not so much as a scarf,” Helen said. “And our internal security cameras were turned off.”

“Sounds like Tara faked a robbery,” Peggy said.

“But why do that, if nothing is missing? Did Tara want the attention? Or was she trying to hide something?” Helen said.

“Hmmm,” Margery said, chewing thoughtfully on a Thin Mint. “I wonder if she was seeing a lover, and the time got away from her. She couldn’t explain her absence to her boyfriend, Paulie, so she staged the robbery and blamed those favorite fantasy culprits, the two black men.”

“Maybe she just wanted rid of that ugly snakeskin top,” Peggy said.

Helen laughed. “Listen, I’m exhausted. Thanks for waiting up for me and for the chocolate. I have to go to work in the morning. I’d better . . .” She stopped dead.

A luminous orange bra and stiletto heels were floating toward them in the darkness. The three women stared in awestruck silence at the approaching bra like it was a 38D UFO.

As it got closer, they saw the glow-in-the-dark bra and heels were worn by a young woman. She had on a thong swimsuit, except the lower part didn’t glow. The woman had yards of brown hair, but her suit was spectacularly small. She looked like Wonder Woman in an orange thong. Helen had never seen any breasts, real or fake, jut out like that.

“Excuse me,” the glowing young woman said. “Do any of you drive a green Kia?”

“I do,” Peggy said.

“I’m staying at Danny’s, and I’m blocked in. Could you move your car? I have to be at work at midnight. Oh, is that your cute little birdie?”

Pete made a sweet chirping sound that Helen had never heard before.

“I’ll be glad to move my car,” Peggy told her. “Come along, traitor,” she said to Pete.

When they left, Margery said, “That’s Daniel’s girlfriend. That man needs to find a nice girl. He’s dating a stripper.”

“Are you sure?” Helen said.

“What do you think she is, dressed like that and going to work at midnight? A nurse?”

“I’m beat. I’m not thinking at all,” Helen said. “Good night, Margery. Thanks again.”

Helen headed to her place, which suddenly seemed far away. She waded through the thick fog of pot smoke swirling around Phil’s door, then opened her own apartment. Its familiar smell of tropical mold and trapped heat felt like home.

She was exhausted but jittery from the caffeine in the tea and the chocolate. Helen finally fell into a restless sleep, still worrying about Tara and the strange events at Juliana’s.

 

Helen was awakened by the sound of a key in the lock. Was someone opening her door? she wondered groggily.

She willed herself alert. Wait. That wasn’t her door. It was her neighbor Phil’s door.

Phil!

He really did exist. Helen scrambled out of bed, determined to finally see the invisible pothead. She didn’t bother throwing on a robe over her T-shirt. She ran barefoot across the cool terrazzo floor and flung open her front door, blinking at the bright morning light.

Helen was too late. All she saw was two brown plastic grocery bags disappearing into Phil’s place. Nothing else. She did not even get a glimpse of Phil’s hand. One bag seemed to be filled with anonymous canned goods. The other contained the biggest bag of Oreo cookies in captivity.

“Nice shirt,” drawled a man’s voice. It was Daniel. “Is that Elvis with an American flag? Very patriotic.”

Helen blushed. Then she realized she wasn’t wearing any underwear and blushed more. The T-shirt was long enough to cover the vital areas, but she was standing barefoot and pantieless in front of the most gorgeous man in South Florida.

Naturally, he had to be dressed. Daniel was wearing a perfectly tailored navy blue uniform with official-looking red patches on his bulging biceps. Helen thought he looked even better in his uniform than he did in his gym shorts.

“Nice uniform,” she said. A new record. Now she’d said two coherent words to Daniel.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m off to work. See you later.”

Daniel was working on a sunny day, Helen thought, when many single men would be heading for the beach or the bar. But Daniel was different from your average South Florida single man. He had ambition.

She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was only seven-thirty. She didn’t have to go to work yet. She went back to her lumpy bed. It squeaked loudly, but it squeaked for her alone.

Daniel is perfect, she thought. Absolutely perfect.

Too bad he already had the perfect girlfriend. Helen remembered Wonder Woman in the glow-in-the-dark bra and sighed.

I can’t compete with a woman who looks like that, she thought. The perfect man is one flight up, and he might as well be a thousand miles away. No, a thousand miles would be better. Then I wouldn’t know he existed. Daniel is handsome, hardworking, and polite. He’s too good to be real, except he is. I don’t have a chance with that man.

But Helen’s mind would not stay on the divine Daniel. She was filled with a nameless dread. It grew larger and larger and would not go away, not even at work. Nothing bad happened at Juliana’s. In fact, Thursday passed swiftly and pleasantly with her favorite customers, and the cash register rang merrily.

But Helen was afraid, and she did not know why. The fear grew all day, sitting on her spirit like some dark unnamed monster.

By Thursday night, the fear had a name: Christina.

Did Christina really arrange Desiree’s death? Helen had to know. She could not work for a murderer. She would mention Desiree’s death first thing Friday when she came back. She could tell by Christina’s reaction if she was guilty.

If Christina really killed Desiree, then she would quit on the spot and go to the police. Unless quitting would get her killed, too. Maybe she should continue working there until the police arrested Christina.

Which was more dangerous: staying or quitting? Helen didn’t know.

All she knew for sure was Christina would be back tomorrow, and with her would come chaos.

Helen had dreaded this morning for a whole week. It was the day Christina came back to work.

Then something worse happened: Christina did not show up.

Helen opened the store by herself at nine-thirty. Christina is caught in the Third Avenue Bridge traffic, Helen told herself. She had been held up as much as twenty minutes by that blasted drawbridge. Nothing made Helen feel more like a wage slave than sitting in traffic waiting for some billionaire’s hundred-foot yacht to sail under the lifted bridge.

At ten a.m., Helen decided that Christina had been delayed in an accident on I-95. The highway was notorious for bad driving. Everyone on it was either eighty going twenty or twenty going eighty. She turned on the stockroom radio and listened to the news and traffic. No accidents.

At ten-thirty she realized Christina had overslept. She had turned off the alarm and gone back to sleep. Helen called Christina’s home phone. It rang and rang in that echoey way that happens only in an empty home. Helen called Christina’s cell phone. She got a generic recording: “The subscriber you have called does not answer. Please try your call again. Message DH124.”

At eleven o’clock, she called the store’s Canadian owner, Gilbert Roget. He gave her some sensible advice.

“Are you there alone, Helen? Then stay at the store until six and close up. Go by Christina’s place tonight, and see if she’s sick. If no one answers, call the police and report her missing. And get that girl, what’s her name, Tara, back working at the shop.”

Helen had downplayed the trumped-up robbery to Mr. Roget. He’d shrugged it off. He thought America was a violent place, anyway. No damage was done, nothing was taken. It was no big deal.

Helen hoped Tara would return. Actually, she hoped she wouldn’t need Tara. Suddenly, she wanted Christina back. Helen wanted everything to be the way it was when she first started working at Juliana’s. But she knew that was not possible.