The Fashion Hound Murders (33 page)

When your cat wants out:
Some cats love to roam, but many pet experts say that may not be good for you feline’s health or for your neighbor’s flower beds. If your cat has a yen for the outdoors, try a safe outdoor enclosure.

The Humane Society of Missouri has deck and patio cat runs, penthouse enclosures, and a wild “Ferris Wheel” enclosure. The feline “Funhouse” and a giant “Town and Country” enclosure work for multiple cats or one fat cat. Prices range from $75 to $259.95 at
www.hsmo.org
.

If you want to adopt a puppy mill dog:
Of course, you want to help those poor dogs. Many animal lovers read about puppy mill animals, or see the heartrending videos and rush out to adopt one.

Animal shelters warn against this generous impulse. By all means, adopt a puppy mill pet if you have the time, money, patience—and don’t mind replacing your carpeting.

But the Humane Society of Missouri says puppy mill dogs can be difficult. The dogs are not house-trained and may never be. “They will eliminate anywhere and everywhere,” HSMO says.

Puppy mill dogs may be fearful, shy, difficult with children, and terrified of visitors. They could have ongoing medical expenses and psychological problems.

If you adopt puppy mill pets, be prepared for years of hard work and disappointment. Even if you believe you can take on a puppy mill animal, your family may not want to live with the stress and mess of a rescue dog.

There are many ways to help besides adopting a rescue pet. Animal shelters need volunteers with a wide range of talents. Some volunteer jobs involve direct contact with animals, such as socializing and exercising shelter dogs. Others require people skills or office abilities.

Check with your local animal shelter volunteer program, or look at their online wish list. Donations of supplies are welcome and may be tax deductible. The Humane Society of Missouri has a wish list as well as a gift-in-kind donation form at
www.hsmo.org
.

You can also make a donation in your pet’s name to the animal shelter of your choice to help less fortunate animals.

One more thing:
The ASPCA, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is one of many organizations working to prevent cruelty and pass tougher laws. If you want to help, campaign for federal and state laws that protect animals and punish their abusers. Go to
www.aspca.org
to find out how. Then let your legislators know you are part of the animal protection lobby. Get laws with teeth in them.

Read on for a sneak peek at the next novel in Elaine Viets’s national bestselling Dead-End Job Mystery series,
HALF-PRICE HOMICIDE

Praise for the Dead-End Job Mysteries Winner of the Anthony Award and the Agatha Award

“A stubborn and intelligent heroine . . . a wonderful South Florida setting.”

—Charlaine Harris, #1
New York Times
bestselling author
of the Sookie Stackhouse novels

“Clever.”—
The New York Times Book Review

“Wickedly funny.”—
The Miami Herald

“Viets keeps the action popping until the cliff-hanging ending.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Hilarious.”—
Kirkus Reviews

“A fast-paced story and nonstop wisecracks. . . . Elaine Viets knows how to turn minimum wage into maximum hilarity.”

—Nancy Martin, author of
Murder Melts in Your Mouth

“Fans of Janet Evanovich and Parnell Hall will appreciate Viets’s humor.”—
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“A quick summer read for fans of humorous mysteries with clever premises.”—
Library Journal

“Laugh-out-loud comedy with enough twists and turns to make it to the top of the mystery bestseller charts.”

—
Florida Today

“A heroine with a sense of humor and a gift for snappy dialogue.” —Jane Heller, author of
Some Nerve

“I need to see Vera right away,” the pocket-sized blonde said. Her voice was a sweet whisper.

Helen Hawthorne could barely see the woman’s curly head over the counter. She reminded Helen of a cream pie with her high-piled sugar white hair and lush curves. A size two, Helen estimated, based on her years in retail.

Cutie-pie was no tourist vacationing in Fort Lauderdale. She belonged on fashionable Las Olas Boulevard. But Helen figured Cutie-pie would pay full price for her skimpy white dress, not hunt bargains at Snapdragon’s Second Thoughts.

Cutie-pie dropped a stack of soiled men’s shirts on the counter. They landed with a thud that told Helen extra starch wasn’t what weighed them down. She hoped the dark red stain on the white shirt was ketchup.

“Do you have any dry cleaning for pickup?” Helen asked.

Cutie-pie looked around as though checking for spies, then said, “Tell Vera it’s Angelina Jolie. It’s urgent.”

“She’s in the back room,” Helen said. “I’ll get her.”

“Hurry,” the blonde said. “He can’t know I’m here.”

Helen didn’t run through the cluttered store. But her long, loping stride covered several feet at a time. She cut through bins of dirty laundry, dodged a display of designer purses, tiptoed past the Waterford, and powered through the consignment-clothes racks. Versace, Gucci, True Religion, and other designer names flashed by.

Helen parted the print curtains leading to Vera Salinda’s office. The owner of Snapdragon’s Second Thoughts nested in a welter of bills, invoices, and boxes. Vera’s sleek dark hair was like an ax blade. Her plump red lips looked like fresh blood. Her pearl white skin had an otherwordly glow in the underlit room. She was frowning at her computer.

“What?” Vera asked Helen.

“Chrissy Marlet is here,” Helen said. “She wants to see you. She says it’s urgent.”

“Hell’s bells,” Vera said. “Not her. The only thing worse would be Kate Winslet.”

Vera hurried toward the front, adjusting her bloodred mouth into a scary smile. Tight black Versace jeans and a pink tank top showed off her gym-toned body.

Helen picked up the Windex and starting cleaning the costume jewelry case so she could listen. She didn’t want to miss this.

“Chrissy Marlet, how are you?” Vera asked. She swung her cutting-edge hairstyle and leaned on the counter. Muscles rippled under her hot pink top.

“In a hurry,” Chrissy said. Her sweet, breathy voice was a breeze through a bakery. “I have something to show you.”

She moved the soiled shirts to reveal a brown leopard print purse with a Prada logo. “It’s a pony-hair purse. Still has the original tags and the certificate of authenticity.”

Pony hair, Helen thought. A purse made from a baby horse? She decided the material wasn’t any creepier than calf.

Vera ran her fingers over the gold Prada logo, prodded the hairy purse with her long, bone white fingers, and unzipped it. Helen saw the signature brown lining.

“It’s the real deal,” Vera said. “I can sell it for four ninety five.”

Chrissy went even whiter. “What? That means I’ll only get half. Two hundred fifty dollars.”

“Two forty-seven fifty,” Vera corrected. “And that’s if I sell it.”

“I can’t do anything with that kind of money,” Chrissy said. Her sweet whisper changed to a thin vinegar whine. “That purse was three thousand dollars.”

“It’s like a car, Chrissy. Once you drive it off the lot, it loses its value. Leopard print is so last year.” Vera’s voice was harder than her fake nails.

“What about Tansey? Call her. She’ll take it.” Chrissy couldn’t hide her desperation.

“Tansey hasn’t been buying,” Vera said. “Her ad agency is laying off staff.”

“Couldn’t you give me a little more money? I have the tags
and
the receipts. Unlike some of your sources, I don’t steal.”

“Nobody cares about your receipts,” Vera said.

“The police would,” Chrissy said, then returned to sweet-talking. “Please, Vera. You know me. My code name is—”

“I know your real identity,” Vera said, quickly cutting her off. “Hush. You never know who could walk in.”

With a screech of brakes, a black BMW with a grille like a hungry mouth slid into the loading zone in front of the shop. The driver’s door slammed. A man filled the shop door, blocking out the harsh August sun.

Chrissy looked frightened. “It’s Danny,” she whispered, and hastily dropped the soiled shirts back on top of the pony-hair purse.

Big didn’t begin to describe Danny Marlet. He was as dark and threatening as a thunderstorm. His black eyebrows were like low-hanging clouds. His eyes flashed with barely controlled anger. He wore a navy suit, but didn’t sweat in the sweltering August heat.

“Chrissy, pumpkin, you’re up early,” he said. “It’s not even noon.” His smile showed sharp teeth that made Helen shudder.

“I’m taking your shirts in for laundering.” Chrissy’s voice trembled slightly. “Vera is the best dry cleaner in town. I want only the best for my hardworking man.”

“Be sure and show her that ketchup stain on my white shirt,” Danny said. He grabbed the Hugo Boss shirt, exposing the pony-hair purse.

“What’s that?” he said.

“It’s a purse,” Chrissy said.

“I can see it’s a purse. I also see that Gucci bag on your shoulder. Since when do you carry two purses? Are you trying to spend twice as much of my money?”

Helen heard him accent “my.”

“No. I must have picked it up by accident.”

“Unless you were trying to sell it. This is a designer consignment shop. Was she bringing in that purse to sell, Vera?”

“I told her leopard print is so last season,” Vera said.

“You didn’t answer my question, Vera,” Danny said. “You sell designer clothes on consignment and my wife is addicted to logos.”

“So what if I am?” Chrissy exploded. “You want me to look better than all the other wives, but you won’t give me any money.”

“I don’t trust you around cash, sweetie,” Danny said. “It disappears at the touch of your little white fingers. But I let you shop as much as you want. You have unlimited credit at Neiman Marcus, Gucci, Prada, and every other major shop from here to Miami.”

“Did it ever occur to you I might want my own money?” Little Chrissy looked like a Chihuahua yapping at a Doberman.

“Then get off your lazy ass and make some,” Danny said.

“I can’t! I gave up my acting career when I married you.”

“I hardly think a mattress commercial and a straight-to-DVD movie counts as an acting career,” Danny said.

“I didn’t have a chance to develop my art,” Chrissy said.

Danny snorted. “The only acting you do is in the sack.” He meanly mimicked a woman in the throes of pretended passion: “ ‘Oh, Danny, more. More. More.’ More sex or more shopping, dear heart?”

Helen kept her head down and scrubbed at the already clean display case. This was way too much information.

Danny’s diatribe was interrupted by the clip-clop of high heels. A jingle of bells signaled Snapdragon’s door was opening. Vera slipped between the warring couple and said, “Continue your conversation elsewhere, please.”

Danny dragged his wife by the arm to the back of the store. There was a tiny tinkling sound in their wake. Helen found a woman’s gold wrist watch on the floor. Was it Chrissy’s?

She heard a dressing room door slam. She waited, then knocked on the door. Chrissy and Danny were facing each other in the cramped space. Chrissy’s face was bright red.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Helen said. “Is this your watch, Chrissy?”

“Yes, thank you. The clasp is loose. That’s my next errand.” She absently fastened it on her wrist as her husband shut the door in Helen’s face. She caught snatches of their argument over the store’s background music.

“What do you mean, am I cheating on you?” Danny said.

“I saw the way you stared at her last night!” Chrissy said.

“I wasn’t looking at her designer dress, that’s for sure.”

“No, you were looking at her fake tits,” Chrissy said. “Mine are real. So are my designer dresses. She wore a knock-off and everyone knew it.”

“And none of the men cared,” her husband taunted.

Back at the front of the store, Helen picked up her Windex bottle again. She heard Vera loudly welcome her new customer. “Loretta Stranahan. How nice to see the best-dressed woman on the Broward County board of commissioners.”

Helen nearly dropped the spray bottle. Loretta could have been Chrissy’s twin sister. Her blond hair was a shade or two yellower, but she was as small, creamy, and curvy as Danny’s wife. And as well-dressed, in a black Moschino dress and polka-dot heels. She looked about thirty and dangerous. No one would ever call her “little Loretta.”

“There are a lot of women commissioners,” Loretta said. “But I like competition. I came by to see if you got in more suits from Glenn Close.”

“Sorry,” Loretta said. “Glenn hasn’t made a delivery lately.”

“Is she hanging onto her suits longer now?” Loretta asked.

“Even the rich have money problems,” Vera said. “Men who never noticed the price of laundry now want their shirts on hangers instead of in boxes. You know why? Shirts are seventy-five cents cheaper on hangers. Seventy-five cents! These same men used to leave their change on the counter because it made holes in their pants pockets. Now they count pennies.”

“Please, let’s not go there,” Loretta said. “I’ve had endless meetings about the budget cuts. With the picketers, post-card campaigns, and petitions, I’m about to snap.”

“Let me show you my new arrivals in the back,” Vera said. “I’ll give Helen some instructions first.”

“Watch the store, Helen,” Vera whispered. “I have to make sure Loretta doesn’t run into Danny.”

Loretta trailed Vera through the store. Helen could hear Vera saying, “I have a Chanel suit in your size.”

“Too expensive looking,” Loretta said. “My constituents will think I’m on the take.”