Dying to Call You by Elaine Viets Page B

Soon only the rich would live here.
    Porta-Potties and construction Dumpsters camped on every block. A construction worker whistled at her, and Helen glared at him. He was the enemy, the destroyer. She shouldn’t complain about Fred and Ethel. If her landlady couldn’t keep their unit rented, the Coronado might be torn down, too. Then where would she live? In a soulless shoebox like Debbie.
    Everything she cared about seemed to be slipping away.
    She couldn’t stop the construction, but she could keep in touch with her friends.
    Helen rummaged in her purse for change, and then for Sarah’s phone number. She found a pay phone on Las Olas.
    “Hi, Sarah,” she said. “I haven’t talked to you in way too long. Want to meet for lunch sometime this week?”
    “Anything wrong with today?” Sarah said. “When do you have to be back at work?”
    “Not till five.”
    “Good. Do you like crab?”
    “Love it,” Helen said.
    “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”
    Helen ran back to her apartment. The pool was once more deserted. Helen was glad she didn’t have to face Margery after her outburst. She fed Thumbs and changed into her good black pantsuit, which was only a little tight from the potato chip binges.
    Chocolate, her stuffed bear, was nice and fat. She reached inside for a fistful of money and caught a flicker out of the corner of her eye. Someone had passed her window. She hadn’t shut the blinds. She tiptoed to the window hoping she would finally see her neighbor Phil, but no one was there.
    The man was maddening.
    Sarah pulled up in her Range Rover right on time, and Helen settled into its unaccustomed luxury. Her friend had played the stock market, parlaying a small inheritance into major money, thanks to Krispy Kreme doughnut stock. Now she indulged a taste for pretty clothes and jewelry. Today, she wore a silver and shell pink necklace that highlighted her rosy skin and dark hair.
    “Nice jewelry,” Helen said.
    “It’s a modern Navajo design,” Sarah said.
    The Range Rover was soon in the desolate wilderness by the Lauderdale airport. “Where are you taking me?” Helen said, looking uneasily at the acres of empty scrub, abandoned boatyards and rusting trailer parks. Sarah was wearing a small fortune around her neck.
    “Ever been to the Rustic Inn Crabhouse?”
    “Never heard of it. But if you say it’s good, it must be.”
    Sarah was a woman of size, free of the modern mania for dieting. She liked to eat well.
    The Rustic Inn lived up to its name. It was a series of long, low buildings sprawled along a canal. They looked like they’d been tossed there. Inside, the decor was early beer sign with offbeat touches: a Victorian bronze of a boy holding a crab, art-glass windows, a monster lobster claw over the bar. The claw was as long as an average lobster. Helen wondered what the outrageous crustacean had weighed.
    She breathed in the air, a heady mixture of butter and garlic. Then she heard the pounding. It sounded like the building was infested with carpenters. The tables were covered with newspapers and set with wooden mallets. The customers wore bibs, and were happily pounding crab legs and cracking claws.
    A waitress tied bibs on Helen and Sarah, and brought out their crab samplers: long golden crab legs, garlicky little blue crabs, pink Jonah crabs and half a lobster with clam stuffing, all swimming in butter.
    Helen picked up her mallet and hit a thick Jonah crab claw. Nothing happened.
    “You’re too polite,” Sarah said. “You’ve got to whack it hard, like this.” She dealt her crab claw a crushing blow.
    Helen swung her mallet harder. The claw cracked slightly.
    She thought of Nick and Vito, and Fred and Ethel, and hit the claw with a resounding thwack. It split wide open. This meal was downright therapeutic.
    “A little frustrated, are we?” Sarah said. “Want to tell me about it?”
    Helen did, starting with the night she heard Laredo die.
    When she finished, Sarah said,