Free Murder Between the Covers by Elaine Viets Page B

were posted at the Coronado entrances.
    Helen went to her apartment and paced. Thumbs paced with her. The sirens hurt his ears and the unexpected activity unsettled him. Helen was equally jumpy. Police made her nervous. What if they found out she was on the run? They’d ship her back to St. Louis. She tried to imagine life without the Coronado. She needed the sunset wine sessions with Peggy by the flower-draped pool. The jibes of her purpleclad landlady. The taffeta rustle of palm trees and the perpetual burning-leaf smell of Phil’s weed.
    Oh, my Lord, she thought. Phil! He must have slipped back in during the excitement. If he was in a marijuana daze, he’d be busted for sure. She had to warn him. She’d never seen him, but he’d saved her life once. She owed him. She opened her door and saw the uniformed police officer at his post. She was about to make a warning racket when she sniffed the air. It reeked of patchouli oil, the scent of the sixties. Phil must have set fire to a barrel of the stuff. He was safe.
    For the rest of the evening, Helen stood at the window and stared out between the slits of her miniblinds. She watched the crime-scene unit arrive, two women. Then the Broward County medical examiner, a man. The police brass were next, all men, all self-important.
    It was seven o’clock when the two homicide detectives, Tom Levinson and Clarence Jax, knocked on her door. Jax was short and burly, with abrupt, aggressive movements. He had red hair and freckles and, she suspected, the temper to go with them. Levinson was taller and slimmer, with a rugged face and dark hair. He had quick, light movements, and Helen wondered if he’d had martial-arts training. Even in their boxy suits, Helen could see the muscles bulging on their thighs, arms, and shoulders. Too bad they were cops.
    Jax sat down on her turquoise couch with the black triangle pattern. Levinson was walking around, examining the 1950s furniture—the lamps like nuclear reactors, the boomerang coffee table. “Neat stuff you’ve got here,” he said, but he wasn’t admiring her secondhand furniture. That cop had eyes like a laser. What was he looking for? Drugs? Contraband? Evidence she’d killed Page Turner? Could he see the suitcase stuffed with seven thousand dollars stashed back in her closet?
    She offered the men coffee or soda. Both said no. Jax wanted to get down to business. “Your name?”
    “Helen Hawthorne,” she said. The first words out of my mouth are a lie, she thought.
    “How long have you lived at the Coronado?”
    “About eight months,” she said, glad she could tell the truth that time.
    “And before that?”
    I was crisscrossing the country, hoping to lose my pursuers. Before that, I was in St. Louis, living in a fool’s paradise with an unfaithful husband.
    “I was in the Midwest, like most Floridians. Nobody’s from here.” Helen tried to smile. Her lips were dry and awkward.
    “Where in the Midwest?” Jax’s question sounded casual, but she was sure it wasn’t. His partner, Levinson, was still laser-searching her apartment, picking up knickknacks, examining flower vases. She wished she could hold Thumbs, but her cat had abandoned her. He was hiding under the bed. She wanted to join him.
    Where indeed? She couldn’t say St. Louis. Jax would find out about her past for sure. She knew Chicago well, but didn’t have a Chicago accent. Helen picked a city she figured no one knew anything about.
    “Cincinnati.”
    “Nice city on the river. Sort of like St. Louis, where I went to college, except Cincinnati makes better use of its river views. Where’d you live in Cincy?”
    “Near the baseball stadium,” she said. The only thing she knew about Cincinnati was that it had a stadium like St. Louis. Just her luck Jax knew St. Louis. Helen was sweating now. She could feel sweat popping out on her forehead, running down her arms. She looked Jax in the eye and wondered if all liars did that. A fat drop of sweat plopped