Shop Till You Drop

Table of Contents

 

 

“Elaine Viets has come up with all the ingredients for an irresistible mystery: a heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue, an atmospheric South Florida backdrop, a cast of entertaining secondary characters, and some really nasty crimes. I’m looking forward to the next installment in her new Dead-End Job series.”

—Jane Heller, author of
The Secret Ingredient
and
Lucky Stars

“Elaine Viets’s debut Dead-End Job mystery is a live wire. It’s Janet Evanovich meets
The Fugitive
as Helen Hawthorne takes Florida by storm. Shop no further—this is the one.”

—Tim Dorsey, author of
Florida Roadkill
and
The Stingray Shuffle

“Elaine Viets is fabulous. I fell in love with her dead-on funny Dead-End Job mysteries and so will you.”

—Jerrilyn Farmer, author of
Mumbo Gumbo

“I loved this book. With a stubborn and intelligent heroine, a wonderful South Florida setting, and a cast of more-or-less lethal bimbos,
Shop till You Drop
provides tons of fun. Six-toed cats, expensive clothes, sexy guys on motorcycles—this book has it all.”

—Charlaine Harris, author of
Club Dead
and
Poppy Done to Death

“Wit, murder, and sunshine . . . it must be Florida. I love this new series by Elaine Viets.”

—Nancy Pickard, national bestselling author of
Ring of Truth

“Fresh, funny, and fiendishly constructed,
Shop till You Drop
gleefully skewers cosmetic surgery, ultraexclusive clothing boutiques, cheating ex-husbands, and the Florida dating game, as attractive newcomer Helen Hawthorne takes on the first of her deliciously awful dead-end jobs and finds herself enmeshed in drugs, embezzlement, and murder. A bright start to an exciting new series. This one is hard to beat.”

—Parnell Hall, author of the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries

“Refreshing.”

“I’m looking forward to reading more.”

—John Lutz

 

“Great dialogue, colorful repeat characters who seem to grow on the reader—and a deft hand at surprise endings.”

—Gannett News Service

 

“Plenty of laughs and likable characters.”

—
Arizona Republic

 

“Amusing . . . has a universal ring of truth whether you’re from the Midwest or South Florida.”

—
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

 

“Fun.”

—
St. Louis Journalism Review

 

“Viets is a natural-born storyteller.”

—
AudioFile Magazine

 

“Believable. . . . Viets can tell a tale.”

—
St. Petersburg Times

SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,
London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,
Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First Printing, May 2003

Copyright © Elaine Viets, 2003

All rights reserved

eISBN : 978-1-101-09885-1

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

 

 

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I want to thank my husband, Don Crinklaw, for his patience. When I asked him “Do you think it would sound better if I changed the ‘a’ to ‘the’?” he actually gave me a serious answer.

And my pitbull agent, David Hendin.

And my enthusiastic editor, Genny Ostertag, who keeps dreaming up dead-end jobs for me, so I can have the job I really want.

Thanks to the Penguin Putnam copy editors and production staff, who were so careful.

So many people helped with this book. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out.

Thanks to Joanne Sinchuk and John Spera at Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach, Florida. They encouraged me to write a Florida series. I hope they like this one.

Thanks to Jim Brennan of Brennan Thomsen Associates Inc. Carolyn Cain, author of
The Secret at the Breakers Hotel
for her knowledge of home fires, which she gained the hard way. To Valerie Cannata for her courtroom information. Thanks also to Sarah Watts-Casinger, who saved Thumbs from a life on the streets. And Jinny Gender, Karen Grace, Kay Gordy, Debbie Henson and Janet Smith for their help and encouragement.

Shannon May gave me her South Beach expertise. I appreciate the help of Ann Meng, broker, Buy the Beach Realty Inc.; Art Rosen Real Estate; Yolanda at the Florida Center for Cosmetic Surgery; M. Diane Vogt, author of
The Silicone Solution
; and premier Internet researcher Martin Walsh.

Thanks to John R. Levy and mystery lover Debra Davis at Shelton Ferrari in Fort Lauderdale, which has a splendid Barchetta.

Rita Scott does indeed make cat toys packed with the most powerful catnip in kittendom. They have sent my cats into frenzies of ecstasy. Read all about them at
www.catshigh.us
.

Ed Seelig at Silver Strings Music gave me a “Clapton Is God” T-shirt. It is one of my treasured possessions.

Julie Dost let me wander around her weight-training class like a zombie. Her workouts jar something loose in my brain that helps me write.

Thanks to Detective RC White, Fort Lauderdale Police Department (retired), who answered countless questions on police interrogations and procedures. Any mistakes are mine, not his.

Jerry Sanford, author of
Miami Heat
and federal prosecutor for the northern district of Florida, answered many complicated legal questions.

Thanks to Merrilyn Rathbun, research director at the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society, and Florida expert Stuart McIver, who has written too many books to list here.

Thanks to the librarians at the Broward County Library and the St. Louis Public Library who researched my questions, no matter how wacky.

Special thanks to librarian Anne Watts, the person who lives with Thumbs the cat. Thumbs is a real six-toed cat, although his own coat is a richer brown. He agreed to go gray for his role in this series.

On Wednesday, Helen met a woman who could not frown.

The frownless female was another amazing customer at Juliana’s. The store was on Las Olas Boulevard, the fashionable, palm-fringed shopping area in downtown Fort Lauderdale. After working two weeks there, Helen thought she’d seen every kind of expensive kept woman.

The woman who could not frown did not seem all that different from the other customers who were buzzed inside. You could not simply walk into Juliana’s. The elegant green door was locked to keep out undesirables: sunburned tourists in “I Love Florida” T-shirts, harried mothers with sticky-fingered children, and the hopelessly unfashionable.

This exclusive policy was never stated, but everyone on Las Olas knew it. Some women walked on by, never ringing Juliana’s doorbell. They knew the green door would not open for them.

Woe to those who tried and failed. A woman turned away from Juliana’s might tell herself that the clothes were overpriced and made for skinny little bimbos. That was true. But it was also true that Ms. Reject had been publicly branded as without style, and worse, that Juliana’s could not help her.

This added to the thrill of those who were admitted by Christina, the head saleswoman. When the green door swung open, some women had the same celestial look of relief and joy that wavering saints must wear when admitted into heaven.