One Dangerous Lady

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “Of course, dear.”

  “I’ll go on ahead and get you a glass of champagne,” Max said, tactfully retreating.

  Courtney and I sat down in the back of the empty box. Courtney cleared her throat and said, “Mrs. Slater, I’d like to talk to you about my father, if I may.”

  “How can I help you, dear?”

  Like everyone else in New York, I’d heard that Russell Cole and his only daughter, Courtney, had been estranged since her parents’ breakup. Word was that Courtney was none too fond of her new stepmother and that her refusal to accept Carla had caused a terrible rift between her and her father. Of course, that was all rumor, and I had no real way of knowing whether it was true or merely another instance of false “inside information” spread around for want of new gossip.

  “I know you were down in Barbados when my dad disappeared. I was just wondering if you got a chance to talk to him at all.”

  I felt real sympathy for this young woman and I decided to be frank with her.

  “Courtney, I don’t know your father very well. We were social friends years ago when I was married to my late husband. I always liked him. And since you ask me, we did have a conversation that strikes me as odd, particularly in light of what’s happened.”

  Her attention sharpened and she leaned in closer to me. “Oh, please tell me.”

  I told her the green monkey story, including Russell’s haunting line to me: “Sometimes I think I get a glimpse of myself, and then I disappear.”

  Courtney let out an inadvertent little gasp. “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  She stared off into the distance for a long moment, then snapped her dark eyes back onto mine.

  “Did he say anything to you about my stepmother?”

  “No.”

  “Look, Mrs. Slater, I know my mother’s nuts on the subject of Carla. And that’s partly because I think she’s still in love with Dad.” I was dying to ask her about her mother’s relationship with Max, but I decided that would be too tacky. She went on. “I took my mother’s side in the divorce because, well, she’s my mother. But the truth is, I never thought Carla was bad. I actually liked her. I knew how unhappy my parents were together. I’m not stupid. I was probably the only one who wasn’t surprised when my father left. Carla always made a huge effort with me. She made my dad very happy. And that made me happy. She was really fun and nice—at least in the beginning.”

  “But that changed?”

  “And how.” She nodded emphatically. “See, before they got married, Carla kept telling Dad how much she hated New York and social life and how she really just wanted to be alone with him. That’s why he built her the yacht.”

  “For people who hated social life, they certainly entertained a lot on that boat.”

  Courtney snickered. “Yeah, well, sure. Carla lied. Now my dad—he truly does hate social life. He hated it when he was married to Mom. He never even wanted to move away from Tulsa. It was all Mom’s idea to come to New York. So then he met Carla and she convinced him she wasn’t interested in social life—despite all evidence to the contrary, I have to say. But he was in love with her so he believed anything she told him. When they first got the boat they kept to themselves. But then she started entertaining, nonstop. I remember being on the yacht a couple of times when Carla gave these huge parties and Dad would just retreat to his cabin and go on his computer. All he really wanted to do was sail. He just got more and more unhappy as time went on, and he realized that Carla wasn’t the person he thought she was when he married her. Far from it.”

  “So why didn’t he leave her?”

  “My dad is obsessed with Carla. He’d never leave her. Plus, he was probably afraid the whole world would laugh at him again. People thought he was crazy to divorce Mom and marry her in the first place. Carla has this weird hold on my father. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s very strong. You’re certain he never said anything about her to you?”

  I liked this young woman. I liked her candor and her kindness. “No . . . but Carla said something about him.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  “Carla told me she was sure your father wasn’t . . .” I was going to say dead, but decided that sounded harsh, so I amended it to, “She was sure your father would be found because he’s disappeared before.”

  Courtney’s tense posture deflated in a beleaguered sigh. “So she told you, huh?”

  “Has he disappeared before?”

  The young woman nodded. “Yeah . . . my dad’s had some real problems.”

  “What kinds of problems?”

  Courtney hesitated. “I guess it’ll be all over the papers soon anyway.” She took a deep breath. “Years ago, he was diagnosed with something called Dissociative Fugue Disorder. It’s this very rare thing where people go away and forget who they are and they take on a whole new identity. Sometimes they come back and then don’t remember where they’ve been. Other times, they just wake up one day, something triggers a memory, and they know who they are but they don’t know how they got where they are. They just want to get home—if they remember where home is. It’s horrible.”

  “Like schizophrenia?”

  “No. It’s its own thing, really.”

  “Do they know what causes it?”

  “There are lots of theories. Some doctors think it could be triggered by a form of epilepsy. Some think it’s set off by severe emotional distress. But no one really knows. Anyway, my dad’s had some serious episodes in the past, which were hushed up for obvious reasons. But he told Carla about it before they were married. It wouldn’t have been fair to her if he hadn’t.”

  I suddenly wondered if the real reason that Russell had paid all that money to Lulu in the divorce settlement was to keep her from divulging his condition. I cocked my head to one side, probing her face. “Well, isn’t this good news? Doesn’t this mean he could still be alive, like Carla says?”

  “Yeah, it does. But that doesn’t mean he’s not in trouble. One time when it happened, he was living in this horrible dive in Providence, which is where he went to college. He was panhandling and he got mugged. They took him to the hospital. That’s how Mom eventually found him. Surviving in this world without an identity or money automatically puts you on the fringes of society and in very unsafe places.”

  “When was this?”

  “Several years ago.”

  “And how long was he gone?”

  “Nine weeks. And that wasn’t even the longest of his episodes.”

  “My God.”

  “Mom told everyone he was away on business. And when he came back, he went into a sanitorium.”

  “Well, maybe this man they have in custody really is your father. You never know.”

  “It’s not. We know that for a fact. If it were, my mother wouldn’t be here. She’d be down there with him. She still loves him. She’ll never love anyone else. . . . And there’s another thing. . . .” She hesitated. I could tell this was difficult for her. “Did Dad ever mention anything to you about another woman?”

  I was astonished by the question. “No. Why? Do you think your father was having an affair?”

  “No . . .” She hesitated again. “I think Carla is.”

  “With a woman?”

  “Sure, why not? It happens,” she said with a shrug. “I mean, I’m lesbian. I have affairs with women.” She announced her sexuality so matter-of-factly it seemed banal.

  Of course, I was well aware that one of the best-kept secrets of so-called New York society is that many of the women, married and single, have had affairs with each other at one time or another, which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gay—just adventurous. I thought of what Larry Locket had told me about Carla living with a woman in London years ago when she was single.

  “What makes you think Carla’s having an affai
r with a woman?”

  “I’m not sure it’s a woman, okay? But my dad’s very jealous of someone in Carla’s life. And we think it’s a woman because he’s, like, so secretive about it.”

  “But why a woman?”

  “Mom thinks it is. During the divorce she dug up all this dirt on Carla. She found out she was living in London with a woman and that she’d had affairs with women in the past. She’s not allowed to talk about it, of course. The whole thing was hushed up. Dad claims Carla confessed everything to him. But just think how humiliating it would be for my father if after everything he went through to get her, after everything he gave up, all that money he paid Mom, plus the public scandal, Carla turns around and starts having an affair with a woman! My dad’s really old-fashioned, Mrs. Slater. I mean, it’s the one thing Mom and I can think of that would drive him absolutely up the wall. He just couldn’t take it.”

  “But it’s just a hunch you have. You’re not sure. You don’t have any proof.”

  She shook her head. “No . . . look, Mrs. Slater, I couldn’t care less if Carla is gay, straight, having an affair, whatever. But I do care if she’s done anything to hurt my dad.”

  “And you think she has?”

  She leveled me with a hard gaze. “He’s missing, isn’t he? And Mom definitely thinks she killed him. Or had him killed.”

  “But what about you? What do you think?”

  “I just don’t know. She doesn’t have that much to gain if he’s dead.”

  “Presumably she’d get a lot of money, no? Half the estate.”

  “Um, well, actually no. Under the terms of my father’s will she only gets ten million dollars. In fact, that’s the reason I don’t think she killed him. I told Mom, she’s much better off with him alive because if he dies all the money goes to me. I know she tried to get my dad to change the will at one point, but he never would—thank God.”

  “What happens if they get divorced?”

  “Same thing. Prenup . . . but I just have this weird feeling she’s up to something. And I can’t figure out what it is. That’s what I’m trying to find out. I thought my dad might have said something to you that would give us a clue as to what’s going on.”

  “Just the green monkey episode. That’s all I can think of,” I said, glancing down at the huge orchestra section below us. People were beginning to file back in and find their seats for the next act. “Based on what you say, Courtney, and based on your father’s comment to me, it really sounds like he could be having an episode.”

  She nodded. “I think you’re right. I just pray he’s okay,” she said as if she wanted me to reassure her that her father was alive.

  “I’m sure he is, dear,” I said, without really believing it.

  Just then, Max ambled in with champagne flutes for me and Courtney. Courtney declined, but I hoovered mine right down. God knows I needed a drink. Everyone gradually returned to the box, infused with new life from having socialized at intermission. June had clearly found many more people to tell about Russell.

  As the lights went down, Max leaned into me and whispered, “Interesting talk?”

  “Yes. She’s a lovely young lady,” I said evasively.

  “Does nothing with her looks, though, what?”

  With that, the lights went down.

  I couldn’t concentrate on the opera in light of what Courtney Cole had told me. I watched this Swedish Tosca sing her heart out without really hearing her, thinking instead about what Carla had said to me about us being “sisters under the skin.” Had Carla been coming on to me in some subtle way? Or had she perhaps had an affair with Oliva, my blackmailer? Was that how she knew about me sending payments to Las Vegas? The last time I saw Oliva she had been dressed in costume as a man. And in my dealings with her, she had always struck me as a sexy sociopath who would go any which way you asked her as long as you paid her enough. I also thought more deeply about my green monkey conversation with Russell Cole. He’d asked me how we could ever really know another person if we didn’t really know ourselves. Was it just that he felt one of his episodes coming on? Or was he perhaps talking about Carla and her sexuality? About Carla and a lover?

  Of course there was one other, more profound reason that Carla might have called us “sisters under the skin.” And that was if she, like myself, had planned a murder.

  At the end of the last act, Trish Bromire, who always saw herself as the star of anything she was watching, gasped at the sight of Tosca on the parapet poised to jump. Trish’s anguished cry startled me out of my reverie. I’d forgotten that this was an opera about a woman who leaps to her death—an image that for me in particular conjures up some pretty harrowing memories. But that’s another story.

  Chapter 13

  Rather than join the group for the late supper Lulu had organized at the Café des Artistes, Max and I said our thanks to our hostess and bid everyone good night. Lulu didn’t seem the least bit upset that Max and I were peeling off together. In fact, she gave me what I thought was a little wink. Max took me to Circo, a fashionable, brightly lit trattoria in midtown. The maître d’ and several of the waiters seemed to know him, but everyone maintained a rather deferential air around Max. We sat at a corner table of the lively, colorful restaurant and ordered the pasta special. Max was eager to know all about my conversation with Courtney Cole.

  “Tell me, Jo,” he began, “does the daughter support her mother’s contention that Carla has done away with Russell?”

  “Not really, because Carla has nothing to gain with Russell dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Courtney told me that the will leaves everything to her. Carla only gets a pittance compared to what there is. But she does think Carla’s up to something and she’s worried. How well do you know Carla, Max?”

  Max leaned back and thought for a moment. “Hardly ’tall. Heard about her for years, of course. When a woman like that marries as well as she did, one tends to hear about them.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a woman like that’?”

  “Poule deluxe. Grande horizontale. Courtesan . . . whatever you want to call her. She’s one of those women who sparks a great deal of controversy. People either love her or hate her. Very little middle ground, what?”

  “What about you? Do you like her?”

  “Oh, I find her quite charming, actually. And you? What do you think of her?”

  “I can’t quite make up my mind. She’s always been nice to me, but, to be honest, something about her makes me uneasy.”

  “Yes, I can see how women wouldn’t care for her. She’s much more of a man’s woman. She’s very interested in my house—which I always appreciate. Knows quite a lot about its history and everything—and the fact that it’s always in desperate need of repair,” he added with a rueful smile. “I’d love to show you Taunton Hall one day, Jo. I think you’d like it.”

  “I’d love to see it. Everyone says it’s magnificent.”

  “Oh, well, I s’pose it is,” he said dismissively. “But when you grow up in a place, you don’t think of it as magnificent. You think of it as a refuge. There are very cozy corners in the Hall. Those are the corners I’d like to show you. . . . Where did you grow up, Jo?”

  “Me? I’m just a hick from the sticks, I’m afraid. Born in Oklahoma City. My father was a chiropractor. My mother worked in a department store and made clothes for rich ladies. But I always knew I was going to get out of there. What do they say about people who know they were born in the wrong cradle? I met my husband while I was working out there and moved here to New York.”

  Max smiled at me. “I like it that you don’t put on airs,” he said. “Lots of ladies one meets in New York invent these grand heritages for themselves. It’s such a bore. And one can catch them out so easily.” He paused. “But you’ve been rather controversial in your day, I hear.”

  “Don’t I
know it!”

  “Had rather a bad patch, did you?”

  Max had obviously done his homework on me.

  “Yes. But I’d rather not talk about that, if you don’t mind. I don’t like to look back.”

  “No, I quite agree. Just let me say that I admire people who pick themselves up and get on with life, as it were. Can’t stand people who dwell on things that can’t be changed.”

  I couldn’t figure Max out. He was an emotional paradox, warm and distant at the same time. Sometimes he reminded me of a lion, surveying life from a lofty lair. Other times, he was as cozy as a pet tabby.

  We walked back to my apartment, and just for form’s sake, I asked him if he wanted to come up for a drink. I was surprised when he replied, “I’d love to, thanks.”

  The building attendants were not used to seeing me with a man, no less very late at night. Max and I got a couple of sidelong glances from the doorman and elevator man as we walked through the marble-floored lobby to the elevator in the back. The three of us—myself, Max, and the elevator man—rode up to the ninth floor in silence, with Max and me standing staring face front, trying to keep from looking at each other and cracking up. The elevator man bid me a pointed, “Good night,” and once Max and I stepped into the vestibule and the elevator door closed behind us, we burst out laughing.

  “You’re now the scandal of the building, Mrs. Slater,” Max said.

  “Oh, I’m sure I always was.”

  Max had never been to my apartment, so he was eager to take a look around. He said he was a fan of the Slater Gallery, those re-creations of French royal apartments that my late husband and I had donated to the Municipal Museum years ago, the nucleus of which was furniture and paintings from our own collection. Max had great taste in art and antiques, as well as a curatorial knowledge of certain periods—especially the Louis Seize period, which is my own particular favorite, both historically and as an area of collecting. I think he was a little disappointed. As I said, I’d relaxed my decorating standards quite a bit, and my new apartment was a far cry from the old days when nearly all the furniture was period and top quality, made by the great ebenistes of the eighteenth century. There were a few remaining pieces, of course, but not many. Max particularly liked the disturbing Francis Bacon that no one else cared for and told me I should move it back to the living room. After perusing what little there was in the way of really first-class stuff, he brought up Taunton Hall again.