Half-Price Homicide (10 page)

Then Helen asked, “I don’t understand why Detective McNally is going after you. Isn’t the husband the chief suspect when a wife dies?”

“I thought so, but the cops are all over me like fleas on a hound. Aw, crap. I’ve dripped hollandaise on my Lilly Pulitzer shirt.” Vera dunked her napkin in her water glass and dabbed at the stain on the turquoise-and-white-striped shirt.

“New shirt? ” Helen asked.

“New old shirt,” Vera said. “Mrs. Vanderbilt brought it in. I think she wore it once.”

“Why did you code name your Lilly Pulitzer source Mrs. Van-derbilt?” Helen asked. “She’s a dreadful snob, right?”

“Right. She sees herself as the social arbiter of Hendin Island. She’s pleased to be named after the creator of the Four Hundred. My Mrs. Vanderbilt has never seen any photos of the society leader. The real Mrs. V. was no size two.”

“Your major jeans source is Sookie Stackhouse,” Helen said, “but she doesn’t look anything like Anna Paquin, the
True Blood
actress.”

“My Sookie dates a real bloodsucker,” Vera said. “My code names are little jokes, and the jokes are on my ladies. But they don’t know it.” Vera’s smile was a hard blood-red slash.

“Why name them at all?” Helen asked.

“Helps me keep track of things.” Vera took another sip of coffee. “In their world, it would be a disaster if anyone found out Mrs. Big Bucks was buying Mrs. Fat Cat’s castoffs. Planets would collide and stars would fall from the sky. So I choose buyers from outside their orbits.

“My Glenn Close serves on a lot of boards and wears serious suits. Emily usually buys them. She’s a drug rep who needs to dress well when she visits doctors’ offices, but she can’t afford designer suits. The rest of Glenn’s suits are usually bought by Commissioner Stranahan and Tara, an up-and-coming young lawyer.”

“What if your Glenn’s husband had an affair with Tara?” Helen asked. “Wouldn’t he notice she was wearing his wife’s old suit?”

“That’s the sad part,” Vera said. “Once the honeymoon is over, the trophy wives are invisible to their husbands. Glenn’s husband would rip that secondhand suit off Tara so fast, he’d never see it.”

Helen forked in another mouthful of blueberry pancake. “What I don’t get is why Chrissy had to sell her clothes at Snapdragon’s in the first place. Her maneuvers cost Danny a fortune, just so she could have some spending money. Danny would have been better off giving her three grand rather than having her collect two hundred fifty after you sold a purse that he bought for three thousand dollars.”

“It’s not about money,” Vera said. “It’s about control. Some of these rich men give their wives allowances like little kids, but the women have no money of their own. The wives have unlimited shopping at places like the Galleria. They’re on a tight leash. The clever ones figure out how to get off the leash. They buy expensive things, wait until the store’s return policy expires, then sell the clothes to me on consignment. They only get a fraction of the money back, but it’s
their
money, not their husband’s. The husband keeps the illusion that he’s in control. The leashed wives have their secret bank accounts or stashes for their cash. Maybe they use it to buy gold cigarette lighters for their boy toys, or drugs, or maybe they’re saving it to pay a divorce lawyer. But they are desperate for money of their own.”

“My grandmother did that,” Helen said. “She wasn’t rich, but she was a traditional wife. My grandfather wouldn’t give her spending money. She was on a tight household budget, figured down to the last can of cleanser. She’d wait until Grandpa had a few beers and fell asleep. Then she’d tiptoe into their bedroom and take his pocket change. But that was almost a hundred years ago.”

“In the world of the rich, marriage hasn’t changed that much,” Vera said. She mopped up the last of her hollandaise sauce with a triangle of English muffin.

“What about murder?” Helen asked.

“That’s why Chrissy’s murder is so complicated,” Vera said. “All the suspects are either rich or politicians.”

“Don’t forget bargain-hunting Jordan,” Helen said. “She was there, too, and alone in the back.”

“She’s poor but weird,” Vera said.

“What about Roger?” Helen asked. “He’s not rich.”

“He’s a hanger-on. Or maybe that’s banger-on. He likes to bed his rich ladies. There are no normal suspects.”

Helen was home before noon. She changed into a dark pantsuit and climbed into Margery’s big white rectangular car. The cozy, sugar-scented Coral Rose Cafe vanished in a cloud of Margery’s cigarette smoke as they drove to the Florida Family Funeral Home.

Even on the porch, the air smelled of hothouse flowers and felt heavier, as if accumulated sorrow weighed it down. A grandfather clock gave a single, solemn
bong!
as Helen and Margery entered the funeral home.

“Why do grandfather clocks sound so gloomy in funeral homes?” Helen asked.

“What do you expect?” Margery asked. “It’s a place for grieving. Though some funerals I’ve been to needed a cuckoo clock— and a referee.”

Helen barely recognized her landlady this afternoon. Margery wore a pale lavender shirtwaist. Matching pumps hid her orange pedicure. Her fingernail polish was a subdued pink. She’d left her wild outfits and gladiator sandals at the Coronado.

Margery had stubbed out her cigarette on the porch, but Helen thought smoke still trailed after her.

“Why are you staring at me?” Margery asked.

“You’re dressed for a June Cleaver look-alike contest.”

“I’m trying to look like a respectable citizen who can fork over enough dough for a funeral,” Margery said. “You don’t have any money.”

“I have eight hundred dollars in cash,” Helen said. “Hah. This will cost five thousand minimum. Where will you get the other forty-two hundred?” “Phil gave me the money.”

“Good,” Margery said. “That’s what a fiancé is supposed to do.”

“His gift comes with strings,” Helen said. “He made me promise that when we fly to St. Louis for the funeral, we’ll hire a good lawyer to fight my divorce. He wants all the paperwork in order so we can get married legally.”

“Thank the Lord,” Margery said. “And why are you whispering? We’re not in church.”

“It’s all the stained glass and candles,” Helen said.

A sober-suited receptionist appeared. “We have an appointment with Cassie, your preneed specialist,” Margery told her.

The receptionist seated them in an office the size of an upright coffin, painted a lugubrious shade of pink. There was room for an undersized desk, two client chairs and a rack of pamphlets headlined
Plan for Dignity at the End of Life.

Cassie squeezed in between the wall and the desk and sat down. The preneed specialist looked like an overgrown cheerleader: small, smiley and chirpy. She had a perky dark bob and a cat pin on her gray suit. A black cat.

Cassie arranged her smiling face into a professionally sad expression. “Now, how may we help you—Miss … ?”

“I’m Helen Hawthorne and this is my friend Margery Flax. We’re here about my mother. She’s in a nursing home in Fort Lauderdale. Her doctor says she hasn’t much time left. Mother was down here on a trip and took ill suddenly. She wants to be buried in St. Louis, where she’s lived all her life. I want to make the arrangements now, while I can think clearly.”

“Wise,” Cassie said. “We offer thoughtful care and affordable dignity. Let me explain the process.

“When the time comes, we would pick up your mother and bring her to our care. She will be washed, embalmed and dressed here. We will have her transported by plane to St. Louis. We will ask that you call the St. Louis funeral home to receive her at the airport. Picking her up and preparing her in our care is twenty-eight hundred ninety-five dollars.”

Helen wondered why the home didn’t round out the price to a flat twenty-nine hundred dollars.

“That price will include a one-hour viewing for the immediate family,” Cassie said.

“I’m the only one here and I’ve seen her,” Helen said. “I mean, alive.”

“You don’t have to have a private viewing if you don’t wish one,” Cassie said. “Our caskets start at eight hundred ninety-five dollars and go up.”

Again that ninety-five dollars. Helen felt a wild urge to giggle.

“The actual cost of returning your mother home will depend upon the casket you choose,” Cassie said. “You can make that choice today. When your mother is ready to leave, we will drive her to the airport.”

Cassie made it sound like a taxi service. Maybe they had a special airport shuttle for the dead, Helen thought, using black vans.

“Will she fly on a cargo plane?” Helen asked.

“Your mother will fly commercial,” Cassie said. “It’s a well-kept secret, but most commercial flights have at least one casket on board, especially here in Florida, where so many of our citizens come from other states.”

“Will the passengers see her getting on the plane?” Helen asked. She had a vision of her mother’s casket waiting on the tarmac, piled high with rolling suitcases, baby strollers and golf bags.

“No,” Cassie said. “The casket will be placed in an air tray, which has a wood cover.”

“So the airline won’t roll the casket out with the luggage?” Helen asked.

Margery looked at her strangely.

Cassie said smoothly, “Nothing like that. The air tray, which is required by the airlines, is one hundred twenty-five dollars. No one on the flight will know there’s a casket on board. We will make sure that your mother travels with dignity. The airfare will be about five hundred dollars.”

“How soon after she … uh … passes,” Helen began. Suddenly, “dies” seemed too difficult to say. “… can Mom go home?”

“She could go home within the week after the certificate is signed by the doctor. There probably won’t be an autopsy, since your mother is under a doctor’s care. Any death certificates needed are ten dollars each. Would you like to see our caskets now? We offer dignity no matter what your budget.”

“Let’s go,” Helen said. The room was claustrophobic. Helen hoped if she moved around, she would lose the urge to giggle.

The showroom reminded Helen of a used-car lot, with polished caskets lined up in rows. She settled on a mid-priced wooden casket with a mahogany finish and silver handles.

“The lining has pink overtones to flatter the complexion. This is a very warm look,” Cassie said.

“Right,” Helen said. “We wouldn’t want Mother to look cold.”

Margery glared her into silence.

“Will you be purchasing a slumber robe?” Cassie asked. “A what?” Helen said.

“She means a shroud,” Margery said. “They look like nightgowns to me.”

“They’re very well made and dignified,” Cassie said.

“I think Mother would be more comfortable in her own clothes,” Helen said. “I can ask my sister to FedEx our mother’s favorite dress.”

“Very good. Do you have a recent picture of your mother? That will help us prepare her hair and makeup so she looks as natural as possible.”

“My sister can send that, too,” Helen said. “Mother has her own wig, and that’s been washed and styled.”

“Good,” Cassie said. “Then her hair will look just the way she always wears it.”

They were crammed back in the sorrowful pink room. Cassie reached into the undersized desk and pulled out a pile of papers and a black pen.

“If your mother passes in the night after our business hours,” she said, “it would help if you signed the paperwork now so that you could contact us and we could take her into our care. The total, including preparations, casket, airfare and air tray, comes to four thousand, nine hundred seventy dollars. Would you like to order any death certificates in advance?

“You will need one death certificate for every life insurance policy,” Cassie said, “if your mother has them, as well as pension plans, any property in her name, the IRS, all her credit cards, checking and savings accounts, CDs, stocks and bonds. Some banks require an original certificate for every account.”

Helen was adding up the money Larry would need for the death certificates to claim her mother’s small estate. She’d make sure Larry would buy every certificate he needed. Each ten-dollar charge would hurt that skinflint as if it were stripped from his hide.

“I’ll take three death certificates,” Helen said. “Might as well make the price an even five thousand. I’ll write you a check.”

“Very good,” Cassie said. “And could I interest you in our pre-need payment plan? For just ten dollars a week—”

Helen interrupted. “Cassie, right now, I can barely afford to live, much less die.”

The line straggled halfway down the block from Snapdragon’s, and it was only nine in the morning. Two television vans were parked out front. Helen nipped around the back and knocked on the store’s door. Vera peeked out and unlocked it.

“Quick!” Vera grabbed Helen by the wrist and hauled her into the back room. In the dim light, Helen could see Vera was not her usual stylish self. Her silky straight hair was badly frizzed. She had an ugly zit on her chin, and lint on her black clamdiggers.

“You look a little harried,” Helen said. “That forest green micro-fiber dustcloth clashes with your lime top.”

“Only old ladies like matchy-matchy,” Vera said. “Have you seen that crowd outside?”