Half-Price Homicide Read Free Page B

to move up in the world, doesn’t she? Let me see the dresses. Are they slutty?”
    “Slightly,” Helen said.
    “Good. I want raw sex. My new man has to pop the question. I’m not getting any younger.” Jordan should have sounded hard, but her frank remarks were refreshing.
    “Then try them on,” Helen said. “But I’d better warn you, you could walk into a domestic argument back there.”
    “Oooh, free entertainment.” Jordan gave an extra swish to her hips as she followed Helen to the back. Danny the real estate developer was pushing through the designer racks, and Jordan ran straight into him. Helen watched Jordan’s face light up and her eyes soften. “Why, Danny,” she said.
    Danny surveyed her as if she were a virus under a microscope. “Do I know you?”
    Jordan stepped back as though she’d been slapped. “Danny, how can you say that? After—”
    She never finished. Danny dropped the monster Maglis on the floor with a clatter. “You!” He pointed to Helen. “Tell Vera I’m not interested in castoffs.” He stormed out.
    Jordan, Helen’s neighbor, was still as a stone. Maybe the skintight dress had cut off her circulation.
    “Prick!” Jordan wiped away tears and smeared her mascara.
    “He’s not worth crying over,” Helen whispered. “And his wife is in the back dressing room. Come look at these dresses.” She steered Jordan to the cocktail-dress rack. “The pink and the red dresses were both Paris’s.”
    “What about that yellow?” Jordan asked.
    “That’s a hand-painted silk scarf.” Helen picked it off a hanger. “Feel it.”
    “I’m not interested in covering anything up,” Jordan said. “It’s showtime.”
    Helen settled Jordan and the two dresses in the other dressing room, then picked up the shoes Danny had dropped on the floor and put them back on the shelf.
    Vera came out of her office, took a deep breath and said, “I need a break.” She settled wearily behind the front counter. “Is it really only eleven fifteen?” Vera took a long drink of bottled water and popped two aspirin. “Anyone still here?”
    “I have Jordan in the dressing room,” Helen said. “She’s trying on dresses.”
    “I got rid of Roger,” Vera said.
    “Sorry I interrupted,” Helen said.
    “Why? ” Vera stopped. “Wait. You thought I do the wild thing with Roger?”
    “I thought you had a relationship,” Helen said.
    “A relationship!” Vera laughed. Helen felt her face redden.
    “Roger is dumber than a box of rocks,” Vera said. “Stupid men make bad lovers, in my experience. They’re not inventive. I’m not some man with a midlife crisis who needs my ego stroked by a Gucci geisha.
    “You want to know my relationship with Roger? He brings me clothes and shoes. First-rate names—True Religion, Jimmy Choo, Moschino. I sell them.”
    Helen made a clumsy effort to switch the subject. “Is Loretta, the best-dressed county commissioner, still here?”
    “I let her out the back entrance after I got rid of Roger,” Vera said. “Loretta didn’t like anything I showed her. I couldn’t risk having her run into Danny and Chrissy again.”
    “You handled their fight well,” Helen said.
    “Thanks,” Vera said. “I used to do live radio in the nineties. I learned to think on my feet. It was just a little college station that played punk music, but I loved working there.”
    “So that’s why you listen to such cool music,” Helen said. “But it doesn’t sound like the punk bands I remember.”
    “I hope you’re not talking about this background music,” Vera said. “It’s like syrup pouring in my ear.”
    “No, the music you were playing in your office when I came to work this morning.”
    “That’s punk,” Vera said. “The Pixies.”
    “They sound too soft and inventive to be connected to that monotonous seventies sound,” Helen said.
    “That’s what punk evolved into,” Vera said. “The term ‘indie’ is better. The bands I like all have that