Half-Price Homicide (3 page)

“Hey!” Danny said, stepping toward her. “I’ll barely break even on the Orchid House project.”

“Right,” Loretta said. “That’s why you’re fighting so hard for that height variance. For nothing.”

This fight was too good to watch from a distance, Helen thought. She slid behind a clothes rack near the dressing room and started buttoning shirts.

Vera, the shop owner, broke up the discussion. She took Danny’s arm and dragged him to a rack of men’s shoes. “I have some wonderful Bruno Maglis,” she said.

“I don’t wear used shoes,” Danny said. “They’re disgusting.”

“They’re new,” Vera said. “These are four hundred dollars, Danny, and I’m selling them for less than a hundred. I think they’ll fit you.” She slid shoes the size of sleds into Danny’s hands.

Next, Vera steered Chrissy toward the dresses. “Try on this pretty cotton dress. It’s cool, but simple.”

“Perfect for a simple person,” Loretta said.

“Ladies!” Vera sounded like a disapproving schoolteacher. “Chrissy, you are the wife of a major developer caught in a controversy. You can’t be seen fighting.” She handed her the dress and pushed her toward the back dressing room next to her office.

“But—,” Chrissy began.

“It doesn’t hurt to try it on,” Vera interrupted.

“Wait!” Chrissy grabbed Vera’s arm and dropped her voice. Helen leaned closer and heard Chrissy say, “Don’t tell him about our deal, please. You can keep the Prada purse. I don’t care if I get any money for it. But he can’t find out.”

“I know how to keep secrets or I wouldn’t be in this business,” Vera said. She shut the dressing room door on the desperate Chrissy, then dashed back to Loretta.

“You, dear, are an elected official who must behave as well as she dresses,” Vera said. “Come see my new things. I haven’t put them out yet. Perhaps I can find you a little extra tact.”

Loretta docilely followed Vera into her office.

Vera stopped at the curtain to the back room and said, “Helen, forget those shirts. I see dust on those shelves next to the dressing room. Clean them now.”

More dusting. Helen tried not to sigh. She picked up a Limoges pineapple lightly coated with gray fur and wiped it down. Why did rich people think this junk was ornamental? she thought sourly.

She’d dusted a graceful Blue Willow bowl and shined six Venetian wineglasses when the doorbells jingled.

Helen recognized this new customer. Jordan lived in Helen’s apartment complex. She practically haunted Snapdragon’s. Jordan had straight dark hair, slanted green eyes and a long nose that made her look rather like an anteater. A stylish anteater. She shimmied in, wearing a summer dress tight as a tourniquet.

“Helen!” she said. “Any new cocktail dresses from Paris Hilton?”

“Going someplace special?” Helen asked.

Jordan dropped her voice and said, “I’ve found a man, a special man. He wants to take me clubbing in South Beach. Paris’s clothes would be perfect.”

“But what about—?” Helen said, then stopped. Jordan was living with Mark. But that was Mark’s problem, not hers.

“What? ” Jordan asked.

“The price,” Helen finished. “Paris left two dresses, but they’re three hundred each.”

“Don’t worry. I can get the money from Mark. A girl has to move up in the world, doesn’t she? Let me see the dresses. Are they slutty?”

“Slightly,” Helen said.

“Good. I want raw sex. My new man has to pop the question. I’m not getting any younger.” Jordan should have sounded hard, but her frank remarks were refreshing.

“Then try them on,” Helen said. “But I’d better warn you, you could walk into a domestic argument back there.”

“Oooh, free entertainment.” Jordan gave an extra swish to her hips as she followed Helen to the back. Danny the real estate developer was pushing through the designer racks, and Jordan ran straight into him. Helen watched Jordan’s face light up and her eyes soften. “Why, Danny,” she said.

Danny surveyed her as if she were a virus under a microscope. “Do I know you?”

Jordan stepped back as though she’d been slapped. “Danny, how can you say that? After—”

She never finished. Danny dropped the monster Maglis on the floor with a clatter. “You!” He pointed to Helen. “Tell Vera I’m not interested in castoffs.” He stormed out.

Jordan, Helen’s neighbor, was still as a stone. Maybe the skintight dress had cut off her circulation.

“Prick!” Jordan wiped away tears and smeared her mascara.

“He’s not worth crying over,” Helen whispered. “And his wife is in the back dressing room. Come look at these dresses.” She steered Jordan to the cocktail-dress rack. “The pink and the red dresses were both Paris’s.”

“What about that yellow?” Jordan asked.

“That’s a hand-painted silk scarf.” Helen picked it off a hanger. “Feel it.”

“I’m not interested in covering anything up,” Jordan said. “It’s showtime.”

Helen settled Jordan and the two dresses in the other dressing room, then picked up the shoes Danny had dropped on the floor and put them back on the shelf.

Vera came out of her office, took a deep breath and said, “I need a break.” She settled wearily behind the front counter. “Is it really only eleven fifteen?” Vera took a long drink of bottled water and popped two aspirin. “Anyone still here?”

“I have Jordan in the dressing room,” Helen said. “She’s trying on dresses.”

“I got rid of Roger,” Vera said.

“Sorry I interrupted,” Helen said.

“Why? ” Vera stopped. “Wait. You thought I do the wild thing with Roger?”

“I thought you had a relationship,” Helen said.

“A relationship!” Vera laughed. Helen felt her face redden.

“Roger is dumber than a box of rocks,” Vera said. “Stupid men make bad lovers, in my experience. They’re not inventive. I’m not some man with a midlife crisis who needs my ego stroked by a Gucci geisha.

“You want to know my relationship with Roger? He brings me clothes and shoes. First-rate names—True Religion, Jimmy Choo, Moschino. I sell them.”

Helen made a clumsy effort to switch the subject. “Is Loretta, the best-dressed county commissioner, still here?”

“I let her out the back entrance after I got rid of Roger,” Vera said. “Loretta didn’t like anything I showed her. I couldn’t risk having her run into Danny and Chrissy again.”

“You handled their fight well,” Helen said.

“Thanks,” Vera said. “I used to do live radio in the nineties. I learned to think on my feet. It was just a little college station that played punk music, but I loved working there.”

“So that’s why you listen to such cool music,” Helen said. “But it doesn’t sound like the punk bands I remember.”

“I hope you’re not talking about this background music,” Vera said. “It’s like syrup pouring in my ear.”

“No, the music you were playing in your office when I came to work this morning.”

“That’s punk,” Vera said. “The Pixies.”

“They sound too soft and inventive to be connected to that monotonous seventies sound,” Helen said.

“That’s what punk evolved into,” Vera said. “The term ‘indie’ is better. The bands I like all have that do-it-yourself attitude.”

“Do the Dandy Warhols count?” Helen said. “They did the theme for
Veronica Mars,
‘We Used to Be Friends.’ “

“Maybe in the beginning, before they became a crappy pop band. They’re sellouts now, like me. I hustle old clothes.”

“You’re recycling,” Helen said. “Why did you leave radio, if you loved it?”

“I got fired,” Vera said. “I played music and read the news on the hour. At two o’clock one morning, I decided to tell the truth about a staff resignation. I can still recite it.”

Vera switched to a newsreader’s voice: “And in news you won’t hear on this campus station, the dean of students was caught banging a freshman in his office. He was allowed to resign with a full pension. The dean said they were deeply in love. She said his love wasn’t that deep. Maybe two inches on his best day.”

“You said that on the air?” Helen said.

“Oh, yeah,” Vera said. “You’d be surprised who listens to a nowhere campus station at two a.m. The GM came in and personally fired me. I was out of the business.

“It’s my own damn fault. My mom lent me the money to buy this place and I joined the wonderful world of retail.”

“Is it always this crazy here at Snapdragon’s?” Helen asked.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Vera said. “This is an emotional business. Everyone wants to look richer than they are. Loretta is the easiest type to deal with, a professional who has to look good.

“Your neighbor Jordan is hunting for a man. She’s convinced if she finds the right dress, she’ll get a rich guy and be happy.”

“It didn’t help Chrissy,” Helen said.

“Poor Chrissy. Her husband, Danny, is a control freak.”

“I couldn’t imagine my fiancé, Phil, caring how many purses I have,” Helen said.

Vera took another long drink and said, “Phil doesn’t need to control you. I doubt if he could. Danny is a developer. Until his Orchid House hotel complex is approved, he’s in the spotlight. He doesn’t like it.”

“Then why do it?”

“Despite the way Danny was poor-mouthing, he stands to make millions,” Vera said. “Developers are like riverboat gamblers. One year they’re rich—the next they’re busted. He can’t help that. The only thing Danny can control is his wife. He won’t give her a dime, but she has unlimited shopping at all the major stores. Chrissy outfoxed him. She buys superexpensive merchandise, keeps it until she can’t return it to the store, then brings it to me for consignment. I sell it and we split the money. She’s hauled off about four thousand dollars so far this year. Danny never tumbled to her scheme until today. He’s usually too smart to blow up in public, but right now he’s playing a dangerous game.”

“How? ” Helen asked.

“He needs the approval of the county commission to tear down the old Orchid House and build a new project. That’s why he’s cozying up to Loretta. He’s after her vote, not her ass. She’s one of two holdouts.”

“Danny doesn’t play around?” Helen asked.

“Of course he does. Chrissy is his third wife. He has at least one sweetie on the side. I’ve seen him having dinner with pretty ladies in the restaurants along Las Olas. I don’t think he was asking them for loans.”

“Too bad for Chrissy,” Helen said.

“She’s no angel,” Vera said. “She’s a customer of the Exceptional Pool Service.”

Helen looked at her blankly. “What’s that mean? Our pool is cleaned by my landlady with a long-handled net.”

“Exceptional Service lives up to its name. Their ads promise, ‘We get into places you never consider.’ The joke is they’re exceptionally good at getting in bed with unhappy wives. Check out their ads online. Their employees look like Chippendales and their service uniform is tight white shorts and a tan. Almost makes me wish I had a pool.

“I’ve been up here yakking too long,” Vera said. “I’d better go check on Chrissy.”

“I’ll see about Jordan.”

Helen was almost at the dressing room when she heard Vera scream.

Chrissy was bizarrely beautiful in death. Her head drooped and her spun-sugar hair fell forward to hide the horrors of her hanged face. Her noose was a brilliant blue scarf. Chrissy hung on a wall hook meant for dresses. The flowered summer dress she was supposed to try on was draped on a white chair.

“She hung herself with a designer scarf,” Vera said. Her voice trembled. All trace of the cool, hip Vera was gone. Live radio didn’t prepare her for a dead customer.

“It’s Gucci,” Jordan said, her voice flat with shock. “Why would she commit suicide?”

Vera said some words the FCC still wouldn’t allow on the air. “Why the hell did Chrissy commit suicide in my store? Why couldn’t she use her car? Or her home?”

Then she stopped suddenly. “What’s wrong with me? I’m a total bitch,” Vera said. “Poor little Chrissy was afraid to go home to that bully. She killed herself to avoid him.”

“I don’t get it,” Jordan said in that strange, flat voice. “How could she commit suicide? Chrissy didn’t jump off the chair. It’s not turned over or anything.”

“Didn’t have to,” Vera said. “A girl in my dorm hung herself in a closet. She sort of bent her knees until she strangled.”

“Ew,” Jordan said. She started to cry.

“Maybe Chrissy didn’t commit suicide,” Helen said. “That’s blood on the dressing room floor.”

“Since when did you become Miss CSI?” Vera asked.

“Why would there be blood if she hung herself?” Helen asked. “See this?” She pointed to three dark dime-sized drops on the scuffed tile. One was slightly smudged. “Look at her head. There’s blood in her blond hair. Somebody could have hit Chrissy on the head and then hung her with the scarf. You can see more blood drips on the wall.”

“Maybe you’d better let the experts figure out what happened instead of shooting off your mouth,” Vera said. “Personally, suicide would be better for me than murder. If my customers think a mad strangler is lurking in the clothes racks, they’ll be afraid to try on dresses in this store. I guess that sounds cold.”

It did, but Vera had an excuse. “Shock makes your mind work funny,” Helen said. Her head felt like it had been kicked in a soccer match.