Murder With Reservations (31 page)

If Helen believed in signs, she could take this as a blessing on her plan for Cheryl. Helen didn’t. Believe, that is. But as she walked home from the Full Moon, she felt at peace for the first time since she’d looked into the lake of blood. She would find Phil as soon as she got home. She’d dress up and they’d go out and celebrate. She’d been moping alone in her room too long. Of course, she couldn’t tell Phil why she was celebrating. He thought too much like a cop to understand. But he’d be happy that her mood had finally lightened.

When she got back to the Coronado, Margery had already started celebrating. She met Helen at the gate and handed her a chilled flute of champagne. “Cheers,” she said. “You’re a free woman.”

“What happened?” Helen said.

“Marcella is going to marry your ex-husband on her yacht, the
Brandy Alexander.
The wedding’s at sunset tonight.”

Helen spilled her drink on the sidewalk. “Ohmigod. That’s less than an hour away. We have to do something. We can’t let Rob marry the Black Widow.”

“Why not? You’re divorced. Why should you care?” Margery said.

“I’m not a murderer,” Helen said.

“You won’t be killing him,” Margery said.

The way she said it, Helen wasn’t sure if she meant Rob was in no danger—or she was absolving Helen from blame when Marcella killed him.

“What do you know about this Marcella?” Helen said. “Tell me the truth.”

“She’s someone I’ve known forever,” Margery said. “We were in the secretarial pool together when we were very young. I was already married when I met her. She married the company owner and hit it big. We keep in touch, maybe because we still remember what we used to be and no one else does. We have dinner when she’s in town between husbands.”

“I heard she was beautiful,” Helen said.

“When she was young, she was a knockout,” Margery said. “I was cute, but she had the real thing. She looked like Annabella Sciorra, only sexier.”

“Tony Soprano’s dead girlfriend?”

“Among other roles. The first time, Marcella married for money and got it. She spent the rest of her life trying to marry for love.”

“Will she get it?” Helen asked.

“No, she only finds soul mates—other people like herself. When she’s disappointed, she moves on to another man.”

“After she murders the man she married,” Helen said. “She’s a self-made widow.”

“You can’t prove that,” Margery said. “Her husbands died from accidents or natural causes.”

“But they’re all dead. Rob will be number six,” Helen said. “He’ll die, too.”

“Not if he really loves her,” Margery said. “If it’s true love, he’ll live happily ever after.”

“He never loved anyone,” Helen said. She was surprised by the bitterness in her voice.

“He never loved you,” Margery said. “That’s not the same thing. This is Rob’s last chance to catch a rich wife. Don’t you see his potbelly, his thinning hair, his thickening features? His looks are going. He’s been cute all his life, but the teddy bear is going to turn into a gargoyle real soon, unless he gets a major infusion of money for a makeover. He won’t even be attractive to a woman Marcella’s age much longer. Rob can’t support himself, not the way he likes to live. Let him try to have the life he wants. Let him go.”

But Helen couldn’t. She’d wanted to kill Rob. In her daydreams she stabbed, shot and strangled him a thousand times. But she couldn’t send him off to be murdered in cold blood. He’d been a lousy husband, but he didn’t deserve the death penalty for adultery. She had to warn him. It was a question of justice.

“I have to go to the port,” Helen said. “You told me her yacht was there.”

“Find your own way,” Margery said. “I’m not driving you. I won’t help you screw up your life.”

“Phil will help me,” Helen said.

“Don’t count on it,” Margery said. “Anyway, he’s not home. He and Peggy are picking up something for me at Home Depot.”

“You deliberately sent them away,” Helen said.

Margery said nothing.

Helen didn’t have time to argue. She grabbed her purse and ran for the bus stop on Las Olas. She’d missed the five-thirty bus. The next one wasn’t for another forty minutes, if it was on time. A cab. She could take a cab. She checked her purse. She had three dollars and twenty-one cents. She’d lose valuable time walking back to her apartment for her money. Calling a cab would take more time. Port Everglades was what—two, maybe three miles? She started running.

By the time Helen reached Federal Highway, she knew she should have waited for the bus. She was hot and sweaty. Her shoulder ached and her head throbbed. She had to go into the tunnel under the river, and it was dark and thick with exhaust fumes. Cars honked and darted around one another, ignoring the
STAY IN YOUR LANE
signs. She was coughing and drenched with sweat when she climbed out of the steep—or what passed for steep in flat Florida—tunnel. She ran faster.

Davie. She was at Davie Boulevard, eager to cross the street. Every nerve seemed to burn and crackle under her skin. But the red light lasted an aeon. Entire species went extinct, stars died and mountains pushed up out of the sea while she waited for the light to change.

Finally, it was green. Run! she told herself. Faster! She tried not to think about Rob and all the ways he’d cheated and humiliated her. She didn’t want to remember the other women’s perfume on his shirts, the lipsticked cigarettes in his SUV ashtray, the single gold earring she’d found wedged in the seat. An earring that did not belong to her.

She tried not to remember the good times, either, the long nights in their four-poster bed. Rob had always been an enthusiastic lover, at least until the end. She remembered the night they were married, when he’d given her a full-body kiss, starting with—

She pulled herself out of the past. Where was she?

At some big intersection. A sub shop was on one corner, a Denny’s on another, and a Burger King squatted on a third. She could be at any city intersection in America.

Wait! There was the street sign. It was Southeast Seventeenth Street. The port was down here. All she had to do was turn left.

Again, the red light refused to change. She tapped her foot impatiently. She caught a glimpse of herself in the window of a turning car. She looked like a crazy woman with her wild hair and damp, bedraggled clothes. How was she going to convince Rob he was with the Black Widow? Marcella would be cool, calm and insanely rich. Her ex would never listen to Helen. He’d never listened to her even when they’d been married.

I’ll worry about that later. First, I have to find him.

Helen ran past pizza places, burger joints and chicken shacks. By the time she hit Miami Road, the shops and restaurants were richer. The stoplights were kinder, too. They turned a friendly green when she reached the corner. Now she was running past gourmet delis and yacht outfitters. Even the supermarket had an ornamental fountain, like a park. A bus stop bench said,
INJURED ON 
A SEA CRUISE? CALL 1-800-SEASICK.

Yep, she was definitely approaching the port. There it was, the entrance to Port Everglades, where the giant cruise ships docked. Traffic was backed up for nearly half a mile, an impatient line of cars and trucks. Helen skimmed past the lumbering, rumbling machines spewing exhaust. Now she was glad she was on foot. She was swift. She was sure. She was going to make it. Then she got to the guard kiosk and skidded to a stop.

“May I see your identification, ma’am?”

“My identification?” she repeated, panting, trying to catch her breath.

“Your driver’s license or passport. I need a picture ID.”

Helen didn’t have one. She didn’t cash checks, use a credit card or an ATM machine. She didn’t carry her fake driver’s license unless she was actually driving. It was at home in a drawer.

“It’s—” Helen said, and stopped. She wanted to tell the guard, “It’s a matter of life and death.” But she could see his face clouding. She was a disheveled, hysterical-sounding woman with no identification. She would seem crazy—or worse, threatening—if she made a scene.

Helen gave up. She knew it was hopeless. “It’s at home. I forgot it. I’ll go get it.”

The guard turned away from the silly woman to confront a honking truck.

Helen felt hot, scared and furious. This is all your fault, Rob, she thought as she ran back to Seventeenth Street. If you hadn’t betrayed me and tried to take all my money … If I wasn’t on the run from you … I would have a car and a driver’s license. And you wouldn’t be marrying your killer.

Then Helen saw one more chance to save her ex-husband. The megayachts were parked—no, docked, they docked boats, didn’t they?— near the Seventeenth Street Causeway. Maybe Helen could get Rob’s attention from the monster drawbridge. She started running again.

The great sweep of the causeway loomed before her, a concrete mountain.

Once again she underestimated the distance. Fifteen minutes later she reached the bridge, gasping for breath. She clung to the railing and looked down over the edge at the wide port. All she saw were cruise ships.

Damn! The big yachts must be in the marinas on the other side. Helen darted through the screaming, honking bridge traffic and narrowly missed getting sideswiped by a scooter. “Are you nuts, lady?” the rider screamed.

“Yes!” Helen shouted.

When she got to the middle of the causeway, she saw it was actually two spans, with a gap in between. She’d have to go back down to the bottom and climb up the other side.

There was nothing to do but run. At last Helen was across the wide, white lanes. Her clothes were soaked with sweat and she was gasping like a beached fish. She clutched the railing and looked over the side of the bridge.

Marcella’s yacht was there. The
Brandy Alexander
was almost as big as a cruise ship, and a lot better looking. It was sleek white with black glass. The decks were draped with garlands of flowers and white ribbons.

Helen stared at the yacht. There was too much space between the dock and the water. No, wait. The ship was moving away from the dock. It was leaving Port Everglades. It was going to sail under the bridge and be gone forever.

She could see a man and a woman on board, dressed in white and toasting each other with champagne. “Rob!” Helen screamed. “Rob! Come back! Stop!”

She shouted and waved and called Rob’s name, but he only saw the woman in white.

The yacht was sailing under the bridge. They were far below her, but Helen could see her ex-husband wore an ice-cream suit, a white tie and a white rose in his lapel. Margery was right. He did have a potbelly and he was developing a small bald spot. His new bride had unnaturally dark hair, bright makeup and a formfitting white lace suit.

“Rob!” Helen shrieked, and her throat felt like it would burst.

Rob toasted his new bride and looked into Marcella’s eyes. He would never see Helen again.

“Rob!” Helen cried once more, but now her voice was a useless croak. She had screamed herself hoarse. Rob hadn’t heard her.

She ran down to the end of the bridge and over to the other side, more slowly this time, knowing she could never stop him now. She watched the yacht disappear into the pink glow of the sunset. Then the dark ocean swallowed it.

She knew she was watching her ex-husband go to his death. She knew she couldn’t stop him. She’d tried to save him. She really had. Whatever happened to Rob, Helen had a clear conscience.

She wondered if Margery had arranged that, too.

M
issouri Man Killed in Boating Accident near St. Thomas.” Helen dropped her morning coffee when she saw the headline in the newspaper, and the milky brown liquid splashed across the Coronado pool deck.

She’d been getting up early to read the paper before work. For three weeks she had checked every drowning, heart attack and boating accident in the Caribbean, trying to reassure herself that Rob was safe. Helen kept seeing her ex sail into the sunset with his serial-killer wife, oblivious to her warnings.

Helen had never felt so hopeless, or so useless. She didn’t even tell Phil that Rob had married Marcella. She didn’t know how he would react.

Helen read the headline again, in case she’d made a mistake. Her hands were shaking so badly the newspaper crackled. Rob was dead. She knew it. She didn’t have to read the rest of the story. The Black Widow had struck less than a month after her sixth marriage. Rob hadn’t lasted as long as the dim-witted bodybuilder.

How did Marcella get away with murder this time? Helen didn’t want to know. Yes, she did. The answer was right in front of her. She forced herself to read the story. It was such a small tragedy, only three paragraphs.

“A 26-year-old Joplin, Mo., man drowned when his sailboat collided with a speedboat,” the story began.

Helen stopped reading. It wasn’t Rob. Some other man had died. Nobody would mistake Rob for a twenty-six-year-old, even if Marcella bought him the best trainer and tailor in the Caribbean. Besides, Rob was from St. Louis.

She sank back in her chaise and closed her eyes, dizzy with relief.

“The son of a bitch is safe,” Margery said. “Some other poor slob died in the Virgin Islands. Too bad.”