Shop Till You Drop (22 page)

Then she gave Helen something. “You were right,” Grace told her. “Christina Smithson had a cat. I went back and checked her apartment.”

“Did you find Thumbs?” Helen said, hoping the cuddly animal was safe.

“No, I saw the rubbing marks.”

“The what?”

“I have a cat named Cookie. Cats mark their territory by rubbing their heads and faces on furniture, doorjambs, and corners. It leaves a dirty gray spot at cat height, no matter how clean you are,” Detective Grace said. “I found the rubbing spots at Christina’s. There was one near a kitchen cabinet where she probably kept the cat food. Way in the back, behind some folded paper bags, were a few food pellets and a grooming brush. The brush was full of hair. The lab says it’s domestic cat hair. She had a cat sometime while she lived there.”

It was a small victory for Helen. Detective Grace didn’t come out and say it, but she believed Helen was telling the truth—about the cat, anyway. She gave Helen her card and said, “Call me if you think of anything else.”

Her partner was another problem. Dwight Hansel treated Helen as if she was lying, and he went out of his way to tell her.“I still haven’t found anything to substantiate your story,” he said.

Stay polite, she told herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I hear women of a certain age can start making up stories,” he said. “Has to do with hormones or something. Unless you’re just plain lying.”

Don’t let him rattle you, she told herself. “I’m not lying,” she said.

“You were the last one to see her alive,” he said. “And that makes you especially interesting to me.”

I’ve got to find out who killed Christina before Dwight Hansel looks into my life, Helen thought. He’ll send me home to Rob for pure spite. Now the snakes were slithering in a pit lit by slashes of panic.

At ten a.m., she was no longer alone in her misery. Tara arrived for work and turned pale when she saw the two detectives. Helen thought Tara looked thin and vulnerable in her tiny tight skirt and lowcut top. Tara kept pulling her long black hair across her face like a curtain, hoping to hide behind it.

She told Detective Hansel she was a new employee and had only worked for Christina for one week, which was true. Tara forgot to mention that she’d been a customer at Juliana’s for six years. Helen didn’t tell the cops, either. Her last attempt at being a solid citizen had been a disaster.

The search was swift and efficient. The police took some papers and computer disks, but it seemed clear they found nothing exciting. Christina had removed her troublesome special purses before she left for vacation. The police did find some tiny baggies, but they held extra buttons. If there were any stray pills from the infamous purse spill, the cleaning service had vacuumed them up weeks ago.

The two detectives gave Helen a receipt for the items they took and said they would get more detailed records from the phone company. Helen wondered if they would find any suspicious calls and felt another jagged stab of fear. There was no way she could prove Christina made those calls, not her.

Helen and Tara were both relieved when the two detectives left but wary of talking about the search.

“Did they bring in the drug-sniffing dogs?” Tara asked.

“No,” Helen said.

“We’re lucky Detective Hansel is lazy,” Tara said. “The cops did that to a friend of mine. He’d moved his stash, but the dogs knew it had been there and set up a racket. The cops made his life hell.”

Tara knows about the purses, Helen thought. But all she said was, “Detective Hansel didn’t mention anything about the two armed men who forced their way in here.”

“Oh,” Tara said. That single syllable held immeasurable relief. Both women hoped the poor communication between the two police departments would keep that event buried.

The awkward silence was broken when the doorbell rang. Juliana’s regulars began stopping by like mourners visiting a funeral home. They were dressed in impeccable black and had the air of women at a wake. They knew Christina would have no memorial service. This was the only way her favorites could pay their respects.

Brittney, Tiffany, and Bianca all showed up, fortunately after the police left. The three chief mourners huddled together on the silk-satin loveseats with Tara, drinking bottled water, remembering Christina, and discussing their favorite plastic surgeries. Helen, mindful that she was not one of them, stood respectfully nearby, feeling like a funeral home attendant. Actually, she felt more like the corpse. She was still hungover from last night.

Brittney was talking about a society dinner party. “The hostess was a rich doctor’s wife,” she said in a ghostly whisper.

“Aren’t they all?” Tiffany said.

“Except for the rich lawyer’s wives,” Tara said.

“Her penthouse condo cost millions,” Brittney said. “It was right on the water. But she has the worst eye job in Lauderdale. When she blinked, one eyelid closed slower than the other. I couldn’t stop looking at her. Finally, I had to ask the name of her surgeon. I wanted to make sure I never went to him.”

The others shuddered delicately. Tiffany seemed unaware that her own eye job was less than successful.

“It takes such courage to have any work done,” said the radically rearranged Brazilian, Bianca. “One slip and you’re ugly forever.” Helen figured with all the surgery they’d had, these women had the courage of a Roman legion.

They discussed who did the best eye jobs (upper and lower), which plastic surgeons corrected the other doctors’ mistakes, and the merits of face lifts versus fat injections.

“Fat injections have less risk, but they only last eight months,” Tara said.

“And that’s if the doctor doesn’t get greedy and dilute the fat. If he does, then it’s four to six months,” Tiffany said.

“Or if
she
does,” whispered Brittney. “Women doctors are just as greedy as men.”

“Greed is the one place where women have true equality,” Tara said. Helen found that line strangely haunting.

The doorbell chimed, and the women looked up. “Helen, you can’t let that one in,” Tara said, alarmed. “She’s wearing a beige Ann Taylor suit. Christina said anyone who wore Ann Taylor was too boring for words. This woman is definitely too boring for Juliana’s.”

Helen liked the suit. In fact, she had one almost like it. “She’s carrying a Kate Spade bag,” Helen said firmly.

“It’s last season’s,” Bianca sniffed. “They sell them at no-name designer sales. Look inside. It will be stamped ‘salvage. ’ ”

Helen buzzed in the woman anyway, to the fierce disapproval of the loveseat set. It was not enough for them to be admitted. Others must be excluded. Otherwise, the green door meant nothing.

The Ann Taylor woman only confirmed Helen’s poor judgment in their surgically altered eyes. She committed one faux pas after another.

Ms. Taylor asked where the price tags were, and the loveseat women rolled their eyes. Juliana’s customers knew price tags were never displayed.

They sniggered openly when Ms. Taylor said, “Excuse me, but someone left her high heels in the dressing room.” Juliana’s customers knew the shoes were there as a courtesy if they needed to see how a dress looked with heels.

They were not surprised when Ms. Taylor left without buying anything.

Helen sighed and, for the tenth time that morning, wished Christina was there. She always knew what to say to her regulars, how to sell to them, and how to soothe them. Helen liked Juliana’s customers, most of the time. She pitied them sometimes, and she always envied their money. But she felt they were from some alien planet. They were so small, so delicate, so dependent on men.

But we’re all dependent on men, Helen thought. I could only go so far at my corporation before I hit my head on the glass ceiling, and I hit it hard.

Director of Human Resources was the title with the money and the power. It was the job Helen wanted, but it always went to a man at her company. Helen settled for second best, the duller, safer title of benefits director. Her career was good, but not great. But she had her marriage. Then she found out her husband had betrayed her, and she’d picked up the crowbar that wrecked her life. In court, the judge, another man, decided her awful future.

Maybe we aren’t so different after all, Helen thought. But she could never say that to Juliana’s women. They seemed to know that Helen’s pantyhose had runs in the toes stopped with clear nail polish. They would look at her self-manicured nails and four-year-old Ungaro suit and see no resemblance.

Precisely at one, Bianca, Brittney, and Tiffany rose gracefully from the silk-satin loveseats. Each woman told Helen how sorry she was to learn of Christina’s death. Each bought something for a few hundred dollars—a purse or a scarf or a belt—as if she was making a memorial donation in Christina’s name. Then they were gone. Helen wondered if they would come back.

Helen knew she was not the right person to run Juliana’s. There was something wrong with her. She hated needless cosmetic surgery. Helen thought most people looked better with their original face, unless they were disfigured. To her, the marks of maturity were not disfiguring. They gave people character. So she told the regulars she didn’t know who did the best lip work and breast implants. They knew she was lying. These women did not want to hear Helen’s lectures on the dangers of silicone and collagen.

When Juliana’s regulars wanted biopolymer injections, Helen did not tell them about exotic South American doctors, like Christina did. Instead, Helen gave them the phone numbers of the reporters who investigated the horrific damages. No one took the numbers.

The next afternoon, Helen made her worst mistake. It was with Melissa, the little blonde with the large implants and the sexy, slightly popped gray eyes. Helen knew she’d mishandled the woman, but she felt she had to try to stop her.

“You’ve taken over for Christina?” Melissa asked her.

Helen said yes.

“Then you must have her list of plastic surgeons. I need my eyes done. I have terrible bags.”

Helen looked at Melissa’s smooth pale skin. It was flawless.

“How old are you, Melissa?” Helen asked.

“Twenty-seven,” she said.

“You don’t need an eye job,” she said. “Your skin is perfection.”

“It’s not,” Melissa said. She squeezed out one crystal tear. “My boyfriend left me for a younger woman. It’s my eyes. I know it. If my eyes were OK, I’d still have him.”

“Did you ever wonder if the problem was not your face?” Helen said.

“What do you mean?” Melissa said, suddenly alert and tear-free.

“I mean,” Helen said, “that you are beautiful, but you don’t believe it. You cannot see yourself as others do. Why let some quack cut on you? He could ruin your looks forever. A therapist would be less painful.”

“Are you calling me crazy?” Melissa’s eyes were not popped now, but hard and narrowed.

“I’m merely suggesting—” Helen began.

“I’m outta here,” she said. “And I’m not coming back. I don’t have to listen to some nowhere sales clerk tell me I’m crazy.”

Melissa stalked out, slamming the green door.

Another customer lost forever, Helen thought. Soon, the sharp-eyed owner would notice that sales were down. Helen would be out of a job. No one else could take Christina’s place. No one else had the right combination of sophistication and sleaze.

Juliana’s was slowly dying, and Helen could not prevent that death, either.

It was two a.m. and too hot to sleep. Helen didn’t want to turn on the window air conditioner. Its rattling would only keep her awake. Besides, it was expensive to run. She had to save money.

Helen got up and slid open the patio door. Cool night air poured into her stuffy apartment. She stood in the doorway, letting the tropical night embrace her. Something sweet bloomed in the velvety dark and sent out a heavy perfume. She heard some small creature rustling in the foliage. Unknown insects sang a high-pitched chant.

Then Helen heard another, wilder sound. At first, she thought it was two cats. Then she realized the wild moans were from Daniel’s apartment. Some woman was having perfect sex with the perfect man. The stripper with the Day-Glo bra? Or had he moved on to someone else? Daniel had not promised to be faithful. Unlike Rob, her ex-husband.

The moans grew louder, sweeter, and more excited. She and Rob had sounded like that, long ago. Love with Rob had been good, right up until the day she discovered him with another woman. Only later did their love feel wrong. Rob had betrayed her with dozens of women, while Helen foolishly believed he’d loved only her. When Helen finally realized her husband had been unfaithful, she felt as if acid had been thrown on her soul.

In South Florida, she seemed to be healing. Her anger had faded to a deep, piercing sadness. Her recovery was slow, but it was happening. Around single men, Helen still felt awkward as a teenager, except she had zits
and
wrinkles.