One Dangerous Lady

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  That night, Larry called me, sounding very excited. He asked if I was free to spend the next day with him and, if so, would I mind driving us somewhere. I said I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do.

  “Where are we going, by the way?”

  “A place called Golden Crest.”

  “Which is?”

  “A very private hospital for very rich people.”

  “Russell Cole?” I asked.

  “Among others,” he said with a little smile.

  Golden Crest was a private sanatorium located forty miles east of Poughkeepsie. The entrance to the facility was an unmarked driveway vanishing into a dense forest. We drove down a narrow, winding dirt road, at the end of which was a gate with an electric eye nestled snugly between the trees. Larry pulled up alongside a little black box on a metal rod a few feet in front of the gate and pressed the red button. The gate slowly opened outward and we drove on through. I noticed there was a camera in one of the trees, moving as we moved, tracking us.

  After a quarter mile or so, the woods stopped abruptly and we came to a vast clearing dominated in the distance by a huge, old brown shingled house in the Queen Anne revival style of the late-nineteenth century. With its little turrets and fussy white wood trimming, it looked like a gingerbread mansion. A thin stream of water spouted up from a carved stone fountain in the middle of the circular driveway. I pulled up near the big house next to a couple of other cars, which were parked just short of the dried-out winter lawn. Larry and I got out of the car and stretched ourselves. We were both a bit stiff after the two-hour-plus journey. It was much colder there than in the city. Still, the country air smelled wonderfully fresh and clean. As we headed up the front steps of the house to the wide porch studded with fine antique wicker chairs and rockers, a thin, middle-aged woman with cropped, brown hair and a pinched face appeared at the door. She was hugging a green cardigan sweater around her shoulders.

  “Come in, come in,” she beckoned us. “It’s winter out there.”

  We followed her into the warmth of the old house, whose dark mahogany paneling and period Victorian furniture gave it the look and feel of a quieter century. The woman kept glancing at Larry, acting like a schoolgirl with a crush. It was clear she was dying to say something to him, but couldn’t quite bring herself around to it.

  “Would you please tell Dr. Auer that Larry Locket is here to see him,” Larry said.

  This gave her the opening. Awestruck, she looked at him and said, “Oh, Mr. Locket, you don’t have to tell me who you are. I’ve read every single one of your books and articles. And I was wondering if, before you left, you might be kind enough to autograph a book for me. I brought it along because I knew you were coming.”

  Larry, always gracious, said, “I’d be honored. What is your name?”

  “Doris Spillson, but please call me Doris.”

  We all stood around for an awkward moment while Doris gazed reverentially at Larry. Then, as if suddenly remembering the reason for his visit, she said, “Let me just go tell Dr. Auer you’re here, Mr. Locket.”

  “Larry,” he said.

  A beatific look came over her face as though the Sun King had just asked her to call him Louis.

  “Larry,” she repeated.

  When she was out of earshot, I said to Larry, “How does it feel to have an adoring fan club?”

  “Honey, it feels just swell,” he said.

  A short time later, Dr. Auer came out to greet Larry. From the look on Doris’s face, I gathered this was a rare occurrence. Auer was a stilt of a man who had thinning white hair, a short white beard, and walked with a slightly arthritic stoop. Dressed in a three-piece suit and tie, he looked like a kind of skinny, road-company Freud. There was a rigid, old-world air about him. When Larry introduced us, Auer looked me straight in the eye, said, “How do you do, Mrs. Slater?” and gave me a too-firm handshake, as if to prove he wasn’t frail. That was the extent of his greeting. No small talk at all. He and Larry walked away down the corridor toward his office.

  While Larry was meeting with Dr. Auer, I made myself comfortable in the waiting room, a little Victorian parlor with mahogany tufted furniture and fringed lampshades. There were no magazines or newspapers, just books. I was thumbing through a tattered paperback copy of Larry’s second novel, entitled The Heiress Apparent, with a main character loosely based on the Demont heiress who got away with the murder of her second husband, a stable groom. Larry was a good storyteller and I found myself becoming engrossed in the book all over again when Doris came back, rubbing her hands together, flushed with excitement.

  “Isn’t that a wonderful book?” she said, sort of crouching down and leaning to one side, as if she were trying to see what page I was on.

  “Yes. I haven’t read it in a long time. I’d forgotten how good it is.”

  “Are you a good friend of Mr. Locket’s?” she whispered, her taut face straining with inquisitiveness. She looked like an anxious whippet.

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  I saw from the light in her eyes that my stock was continuing to rise.

  “He’s my absolute favorite writer,” she said. “Would you like to take a tour of the property while he’s in with Dr. Auer? There’s a warm coat there you can wear.”

  “Thank you, I’d like that.”

  Doris Spillson was a gossipy spinster whose personal range of experience seemed limited to mild expectations or great disappointments—I couldn’t quite tell which. She talked to me nonstop as we strolled around the grounds. It was a cold day and the place appeared to be completely deserted. The pretty property was dotted with twelve neat, white cottages, with shutters trimmed in dark green, each named after a tree. As we headed toward Maple Cottage, Doris explained that only twelve patients were ever admitted to Golden Crest at one time.

  “Why so few?” I asked her.

  “Are you kidding? With the level of service we have to give each one of them, that’s all we can cope with.”

  Doris informed me that every patient had his or her own private cottage and staff. Maple Cottage was vacant, so she showed me into the luxurious little house.

  “Each cottage is decorated differently,” she explained. “A famous New York decorator came up here and did them. . . . The sheets and towels cost thousands,” she whispered. “Rich people like good linens. And with what they charge you here, everything has to be the very best, you know?”

  “What do they charge?”

  “Around fifty thousand dollars a week. It can be more, depending,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Why so much?”

  “Oh, you get the royal treatment here, you really do. Facials, massages, herbal therapy, special diet. It’s like a spa with doctors . . . and drugs,” she whispered.

  “Drugs? What kinds of drugs?”

  She quickly put her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t say a word! They’re not illegal drugs. They’re just, you know . . . legal drugs that make you relax and feel better. So many of our patients are under a lot of stress.”

  From the way Doris described it, Golden Crest was a far cry from most of the rehab centers I’d ever heard about. Over the years I’d known several friends and acquaintances who’d checked into treatment clinics for various addictions. But they had all been described to me as fairly utilitarian centers with many more than a dozen residents and usually possessed of a communal spirit. By contrast, this place seemed to be a glorified rest home for very rich, neurotic people who were more interested in a deluxe shelter to continue their bad habits rather than in a lasting cure for what ailed them.

  “Oh, you would simply not believe some of the people who come here,” Doris went on. “I’m telling you that if Mr. Locket came and spent a few months here, he’d have enough material for a dozen books. Two dozen! No kidding!”

  “I suppose I can’t ask you who?”

&
nbsp; She laughed. “No . . . ! But, trust me, we’ve had royalty, billionaires, movie stars, rock stars, heads of state. Important people from all over the world. That’s why I just love Mr. Locket’s books because he writes about all the people I see. Shows you what they’re really like and how they got here,” she said with a little laugh.

  As Doris and I walked back up to the main house, she asked me what Larry was working on now.

  “The Cole case,” I said. “Russell Cole? The missing billionaire?”

  She nodded excitedly. “Oh, yes! Such a lovely gentleman, Mr. Cole. I remember when—” She stopped herself, putting her hand to her mouth again.

  “That’s all right. I know he was here.”

  We walked on. I could see Doris was champing at the bit.

  “Well, seeing as how you already know he was here . . .” she began. “I was very fond of Mr. Cole. Such a nice man. Very shy. I didn’t care much for his wife, though. Stuck-up type, you know?” She made a face. “Nose in the air. Never said hello or good-bye. Just treated you like furniture. If you ask me, he didn’t much care for her, either.”

  “How long did Mr. Cole stay here?”

  “Oh . . . let’s see . . .” She thought for a second. “One time he was here for about three months.”

  “So he’s been here more than once?”

  “I really shouldn’t say . . .” she said, with the air of someone who is dying to tell what she knows. “But, yes. He’s been here four times.”

  “How recently?”

  “I’d have to look back at the records.”

  “Would you mind?”

  She gave me a sheepish little smile. “Well . . . anything for a friend of Mr. Locket’s.”

  I was curious to know if Russell Cole had been in the facility since his marriage to Carla.

  Back in the main house, Doris sat down at her desk and called up patient records on her computer.

  “All the records, going back twenty years, are right here on this computer and a zip drive.” She paused, narrowing her bespectacled eyes as she examined the screen. “Okay, see, here we are . . . Russell T. Cole . . . first time admitted, January, 1986 . . . then again March of 1991 . . . then again in April of ’92. And then in May of ’96.” She let me see the screen.

  “What are ‘visiting records’?” I asked, pointing to a small banner in one corner.

  “We keep a daily record of all visitors—including deliverymen. Patients are only allowed visitors on Sundays and they all have to sign the visitors’ book. All those books have been scanned and they’re in here. I’ll give you an example. . . .” She called up another screen. It was a photocopy of a page from the visitors’ book, “This is Sunday, May tenth, as you can see from the heading. And Russell Cole had one visitor . . . Lulu Cole . . . see, there, she signed her name in the book right there . . .” She pointed to Lulu’s signature. “And it’s in his records. We keep meticulous records.”

  She was about to switch screens again, when another name on the list caught my eye.

  “Wait! That signature . . . ?” I said, pointing to the screen.

  She peered closely. “Another visitor. For someone else who was here.”

  “Carla Hernandez?”

  Doris sighed. “Well, I’m not really supposed to say . . . but seeing as you’re a friend of Mr. Locket’s. . . . Yes, that’s Mrs. Hernandez.”

  “Antonio Hernandez was here at the same time as Russell Cole?”

  She raised her hand to her mouth. “You’re going to get me into trouble now.”

  “I won’t say a word. Promise.”

  “Well . . . yes,” she said at last.

  This was fascinating news.

  “Let me ask you something, Doris. Would it have been possible for Mrs. Hernandez to have known Mr. Cole? Or known what he was in here for?”

  “I really shouldn’t be telling you this . . .” she said, voicing the last alibi of the inveterate gossip.

  “Trust me, Doris. I won’t say a thing.”

  Doris got that same eager look on her face that June Kahn got whenever she was about to spew out really confidential information. A little picture of June’s perky face flashed through my mind and made me suddenly sad, wondering if she would ever be the same again.

  “Well, this is a very small place,” Doris said. “Mrs. Cole didn’t come to visit very much. Mr. Cole seemed very lonely. And, well, I used to see Mrs. Hernandez and Mr. Cole strolling on the paths together sometimes,” she whispered. “I remember it distinctly because it was the only time I ever saw Mr. Cole laugh.”

  After concluding his appointment with Dr. Auer, Larry autographed a book for the starstruck Ms. Spillson and we left for the city. In the car, I eagerly told him what the receptionist had told me. But the news that Carla had known Russell Cole long before anyone suspected did not come as a great shock to Larry. On the contrary.

  “I need to level with you, Jo. Miguel Hernandez believes that Carla targeted his father because he was bipolar. He told me she was seeing one of his friends. That’s how they met. This man was even richer than his father, but she dropped him for Antonio. Miguel thinks that’s because she found out about his father’s history of depression. And he’s absolutely convinced she had a hand in his death. But he can’t prove it. Carla thought she was going to inherit everything when Hernandez died, but he tricked her with the fake will, as I told you. When Miguel mentioned to me that his father had been a patient here, I remembered Lulu telling me that Russell had been a patient here, too. Something in my brain twigged, and I suddenly wondered if their stays had ever overlapped.”

  “They did. Your friend, Doris, told me she saw Carla and Russell walking together. She said it was the only time she ever saw Russell laugh.”

  Larry nodded as if things were falling into place in his head.

  “You know what I’m beginning to think, Jo?” he said pensively.

  “What?”

  “I’m beginning to think that Carla may be more of a planner than anyone gives her credit for. She meets Russell up here, realizes he’s vulnerable, and files him away for future use, as it were.”

  “Are you saying that she targeted Russell just like she targeted Hernandez?”

  “Could be. Russell Cole was a good insurance policy in case things didn’t work out the way she’d planned with Hernandez. And, of course, they didn’t. Hernandez was too sneaky for her. When she was cut out of his will, she went after Russell. It wasn’t that difficult because she’d already gotten her hooks into him up here.”

  “Larry, do you really think anyone is that calculating?”

  Larry stared out the window at the passing scenery. “Oh, yes . . .” he said absently. “Some people are very, very calculating indeed. It’s a difficult thing to prove, though.”

  My mind drifted back to the way I had met my late husband at a restaurant in Oklahoma City when he was still married. After his wife died, he concocted this ruse about my having met him at Tiffany’s where I was working as a salesperson, an attempt to keep anyone from suspecting I’d been his mistress for over a year. I remember Lucius telling me to deny I was a salesgirl. “They’ll find out you were, think they’ve discovered the deep dark truth about you, and they won’t bother to look any deeper,” he said. “Just give the gossips something good to gossip about and you’ll put them off the scent.” Lucius taught me that “the lie within the lie” always works. I wondered if Carla and Russell had concocted something of the same sort. Carla’s old comment to me that we were “sisters under the skin” was taking on greater resonance as I got to know more about her.

  “So do you think she killed Hernandez?”

  “I have no idea. But Miguel says his father’s death was very suspicious.”

  “So did he shoot himself?”

  “That’s how it looked.”

  “Twice?”


  “No. That really is a myth. But there were questions about it being a suicide at the time. Differing accounts of where the gun was positioned when they found him, time of death, location of the wound. They cleaned up the scene and flew the body out before anyone could do any forensics.”

  “But Carla was away in Paris, wasn’t she?”

  Larry looked at me. “She wouldn’t be the first person in history to hire a hit man. Miguel told me that one of the guards on the estate left right after the shooting.”

  “Did they find him?”

  “No. He was a new man. He had given them a phony name and false identification.”

  “Why didn’t they prosecute him?”

  “First of all, they couldn’t find him. Second of all, I have a feeling that Miguel was none too anxious to have his father’s affairs looked into too deeply. I suspect that Mexico’s ‘pharmaceutical king’ may have had a muy grande drug problem. That revelation wouldn’t have been good for business, to say the least. Thirdly, they wanted Carla out of their hair. The family agreed not to pursue the case as a homicide if Carla agreed not to contest the will. According to Miguel, she walked away with no argument—which tells you something right there, doesn’t it?”

  “So she may have gotten away with the murder, but not with the money.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, the girl must have something, is all I can say. And I’d sure like to know what it is.”

  “Carla Cole is a woman who knows instinctively how to manipulate men sexually. And she purposely picks on wounded game,” he said.

  We drove in silence for a time, both contemplating the possibility that Carla Cole had set up two rich men.

  After a time, Larry said, “You know me, Jo. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as ‘normal’ when it comes to sex. Love and let love is my motto. But I do think that people with certain—shall we say—unusual sexual proclivities are more likely to have other problems. Compulsive sexual behavior seems to lead to other types of compulsive behavior. Or maybe it’s vice versa. Maybe compulsive behavior is the cause of sexual obsession. But one thing I do know for sure from years of watching human nature: you can’t keep a strong obsession in a watertight compartment. It’s bound to leak out. And even if you think you’ve got it under control in one area, it has a nasty way of spilling out into another. And, let’s face it, who better than a courtesan to understand and cater to obsession? That’s her stock in trade.”