Murder Unleashed by Elaine Viets Page A

that much box wine. Margery bought the stuff at the Winn-Dixie supermarket. The wine didn’t have a vintage year. It had an expiration date. It didn’t claim any connection to a grape. WHITE WINE was all the cardboard box said. It had a spigot for easy guzzling. But it was cold, wet, and had alcohol in it, and right now that was what she needed.
    By the second glass, Helen was nicely numb. She and Margery were sitting out by the pool at the Coronado Tropic Apartments on a warm September evening. The two-story white stucco building rose like an iceberg above a sea of palm trees. The window air conditioners rattled their night song. The sunset-streaked pool glowed pink, like the inside of a seashell. Usually Helen found that romantic. Tonight it gave her the creeps. She kept seeing Tammie’s pool and her dead body.
    “So you found the Yorkie’s owner out by the pool,” Margery said, “and she was definitely naked and dead.”
    “Real dead.” Helen took a gulp of wine and waited for its woozy warmth before she continued. “There were flies crawling on her legs. The scissors were driven deep into her chest. It was awful, even if there wasn’t much blood.”
    “The scissors probably plugged it up,” Margery said. “Must have been a shock finding her like that. Did you have to sit down before you called the police?”
    “I didn’t sit. I ran. I took Tammie’s bathrobe, wiped down the door with it, picked up the Yorkie, and took off.”
    “That was dumb,” Margery said. “Cops are like dogs. They chase whatever runs.”
    It’s true, Helen thought. They came after me when I fled St. Louis. My sister said the police questioned her about where I might go, but Kathy didn’t know. How could she? I didn’t know, either, until I got here.
    For months Helen had zigzagged wildly around the country before she ended up in South Florida. Helen had never wanted to live in Fort Lauderdale. She didn’t have the fond memories of childhood vacations that lured so many people to settle in Florida. But it turned out to be the perfect place for her. Florida accepted everyone from snowbirds to serial killers. Local etiquette said you never asked anyone where they were from and you never questioned anything they said about their past. Maybe the old guy with the six grandchildren and the marinara sauce bubbling on his stove really had been an accountant up in New Jersey, just like he said. It wasn’t polite—or healthy—to pry.
    Helen wondered how Margery got her view of the police. Her landlady didn’t look like the seventy-six-year-olds Helen knew in St. Louis—not in her tie-dyed shorts and gauzy purple top. Helen wished she had Margery’s straw huaraches. Her face was wrinkled as a flophouse sheet, but Margery had style. She lit a Marlboro and puffed on it like an actress in a forties movie, while she considered Helen’s dilemma.
    “You panicked and ran. It’s understandable, but the police are going to find you,” Margery said. Smoke curled around her like wisps from a sacrifice. She looked like an ancient priestess predicting the future. In Helen’s case, the news was bad.
    “I don’t think so,” Helen said. “I was careful. I wiped everything down. Anyway, no one notices me. I’m a servant.”
    “Are you kidding? How did you get to Tammie’s house? You don’t have a car.”
    Helen couldn’t afford one with the money she made in her dead-end job. Somewhere in Kansas, she’d traded in her nearly new Lexus for what turned out to be a junker in disguise. If Helen ever got back that way, she’d pay that used-car salesman a little visit. She’d like to give him a free alignment. Or maybe not. When the heap died in Fort Lauderdale, she’d found Margery and the Coronado. The crook did her a favor.
    “Were you driving that pink pimpmobile?” Margery said.
    “It’s the Pupmobile,” Helen said.
    “I was right the first time. Even a blind man can see that thing.” Margery tapped her cigarette on the edge of