Read Online Half-Price Homicide by Elaine Viets - Free Book Online

said.
    He stripped away the last shred of silk. “I want my money in thirty days, Helen Hawthorne,” he said. “You owe me fifteen thousand dollars.”
    “Do you have an address in St. Louis?” she asked.
    “Not sure where I’ll be. But I’ll let you know where to send it. I’ll keep in touch. Remember, thirty days for the big payment, then the little ones once a month. Keep them coming. And don’t be late.”
    Helen threw the cordless receiver across the room.
     

“Want a cigarette?” wheezed the skinny white-haired man in the wheelchair.
    Joe’s big hands were dotted with yellow nicotine stains. Joe zipped around the Sunset Rest Retirement Home in his “Ferrari”—a red motorized wheelchair with black racing stripes and a miniature marine flag flying proudly. He wore a black baseball cap and held his cigarette at a jaunty angle.
    “No, thanks, Joe,” Helen said, and laughed. “I still don’t smoke.”
    “Smart girl,” Joe said. “You’re young. You’ve got some good times left. Cigarettes can’t hurt us old coots. They’re one of the few pleasures we have left. Oh, I see you brought me flowers. You shouldn’t have.” He batted his eyelashes flirtatiously.
    “They’re for my mother,” Helen said.
    “Don’t listen to this old fool,” Rita interrupted. “How is your mother, dear?” Rita wore red lipstick and a matching bow probably filched from a flower arrangement. Rita’s thin hair was the same color as her swirling cigarette smoke.
    “That’s what I’m hoping to find out this morning when I talk with her doctor,” Helen said. “He ordered a CT scan. He’ll tell me the results today. Thanks for asking.”
    Joe and Rita were two of the smokers who gathered in the palm-shaded Sunset Rest courtyard. They lit up at dawn and puffed happily until the doors were locked at night.
    “Have fun with old Filthy,” Joe said.
    Rita elbowed him with a chubby arm. “Quiet,” she said. “If Dr. Lucre takes a dislike to you, your bony ass will be out on the street.”
    “Such language from a lady,” Joe mocked. Rita giggled.
    “Filthy can’t afford to throw me out,” Joe said. “I have too much money. I’ll leave here feet-first.”
    Helen wished her mother had been well enough to enjoy her neighbors. Dolores, determined to stop Helen’s wedding, had taken a long, hot bus ride from St. Louis to Fort Lauderdale. She achieved her goal, but at great cost. Helen’s mother had a minor heart attack and hit her head on the Coronado’s concrete sidewalk. At the hospital, when the doctors treated her heart, they also found a brain bleed from the fall.
    A neurosurgeon operated to relieve the pressure. After a month, the doctors said they could do nothing more at the hospital and suggested a nursing home. Helen visited four recommended nursing homes. She’d walked out of the first two because they smelled like urine and stale soup. The third home had lines of older people tied into wheelchairs and parked in the aisles. Her mother wasn’t going to a human warehouse.
    Sunset Rest’s lobby was painted a pretty pastel blue and had a tropical fish tank. The halls had photos of Florida beaches. Helen had eaten two meals in the dining room and thought the food was fairly good. She hoped her mother would get well enough to play bridge, go to the weekly music nights, then go home to her grandchildren.
    It never happened. Helen’s mother never woke up after her surgery. The neurosurgeon said the bleed had damaged her brain stem. Even after the pressure was relieved, he said it did not look hopeful that Dolores would recover.
    Helen’s sister, Kathy, and her brother-in-law, Tom, stayed another week after Helen’s interrupted wedding, but both had to return to their jobs in St. Louis. Helen promised to look after Dolores and call if there was any news, good or bad.
    The surgeon had explained, “Your mother is in a shadow world of partial consciousness. She may answer a few simple yes or no