One Dangerous Lady

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “That sounds a lot like Carla Cole as well.”

  “Definitely birds of a feather, those two,” Rankin said.

  “So what’s your theory about what happened?”

  Rankin took a deep breath. “Mr. Cole’s been raving on about ‘the game’ and ‘the silk,’ whatever that is. . . . I’m thinking that maybe they played some kind of sexual game that got out of hand, either accidentally or on purpose, and that it triggered an episode.”

  “But do you believe they tried to kill him?”

  Rankin nodded solemnly. “Well, I can’t go that far. But they were definitely up to something.”

  “Mike, why didn’t you tell all this to the police?”

  “I did. This detective from Interpol came to see me when they found that guy in Castries that they thought was Mr. Cole. I told him all about Jenks and everything. I told him my suspicions—and that was even before I had a look in that little room. You know what he asked me? He asked me if I was just bitter about being fired.”

  “That’s it. That’s all he said?”

  “Look, Mrs. Cole told everybody that I was pissed at them for canning me and that I couldn’t be trusted. I guess they believed her.” He shrugged. “But your friend, Mr. Locket, he believed me. He was the first one who ever really listened to me.”

  Before I went to bed that night, I called home on the satellite phone to check my messages. Betty had phoned with a long gossipy account of what was going on.

  “Jo, where the fuck are you?” the message started. “I hurt my knee playing tennis and we’ve got Missy and Woody staying with us. I’m going nuts. Woody is so boring. Just like his father, only smarter. Well, that wouldn’t be hard, let’s face it.”

  I learned that Dick Bromire’s pals were all flying down to visit him. It was definitely the thing to do. June was apparently on the mend and more militant than ever, trying to incite a revolution in the building and dethrone Carla. Carla, meanwhile, was holding her own, and was back in New York after a weekend with Max in Saint-Tropez.

  “They’re very lovey-dovey,” Betty said, adding that they were still renting the Bromires’ house in Southampton for August, according to Trish.

  “We all miss you! Me especially. Come home, for Chrissakes! I can’t take all the bullshit around here without you! I need someone to talk to aside from Looney Tune June.”

  There were several other messages from friends, including Ethan, who also wanted to know why he hadn’t heard from me. The last message was from Carla Cole.

  “Jo . . . Carla,” the sultry voice began. “I understand you are having fun in the sun on my old yacht. . . . Do be careful, cara Jo. You have such a pale complexion and the sun is so hot in the tropics, especially at this time of year. You could get very badly burned. . . . Oh, by the way, I am reading one of Larry Locket’s books. He was a wonderful writer. It is so sad he is no longer with us. . . . Ciao, bella.”

  I played it back. The obvious threat in her message only strengthened my resolve. I wasn’t afraid of her. I just wanted to get her. I turned off the light, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake in the dark, staring out at the sweep of rectangular portholes, watching shards of distant lightning pierce the night sky. It occurred to me that although Carla appeared to be holding all the cards, I was now in control of an ace: Russell. He was the one person who could do her some serious damage if my suspicions were right and they really had tried to kill him. I prayed that when he recovered, he would remember exactly what had happened to him.

  Chapter 39

  The next morning, I was having breakfast out on the deck when Rankin appeared, looking anxious.

  “He’s up,” he said.

  I immediately followed him down to the guest suite. Russell wasn’t in his bed. He was in the bathroom standing in front of the full-length mirror, wearing a terry cloth robe, rubbing his hands through his hair and up and down the sides of his face, studying his gaunt reflection in the glass as if he were looking at an alien being. When he turned and saw his former captain, his face showed a glimmer of recognition. Rankin approached him cautiously.

  “Mr. Cole?” Rankin said. “It’s Mike, sir. Mike Rankin. Do you remember me?”

  Russell narrowed his eyes. “Mike,” he said at last. “Yes, Mike, of course I remember you.” His eyes grew moist as he stared at his old captain.

  “Good to have you aboard again, sir,” Rankin said, moving forward to shake hands. He, too, was teary with emotion.

  “What’s happened to me?” Russell asked with childlike naïveté.

  “You’ve been away, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Russell furrowed his brow and nodded his head up and down, beginning to comprehend that he’d endured one of his episodes.

  “How long was I gone this time?” he said at last.

  “Over six months, sir,” Rankin informed him.

  He flung Rankin a horrified look, as if the captain had said twenty years.

  “My God . . . where’s Carla?”

  At this point, I stepped forward.

  “Russell?”

  He stared at me without seeming to recognize me.

  “It’s Jo, Russell. Jo Slater.”

  Suddenly, he broke into a smile. “Jo! Of course . . . where’s Carla?”

  “She’s not here,” I said.

  “Where is she? I need to see her. Would you go get her, please?” he said, growing increasingly agitated.

  Rankin and I glanced at each other.

  “She’s coming,” I said. “Don’t worry. Russell, do you know that the whole world is looking for you?”

  He said with tearful petulance, “I want Carla.”

  Captain Rankin and Nancy spent the day cleaning Russell up and getting him back to a semblance of his old self. He was still very weak. Rankin had to help him shower and shave, then gave him clean clothes—including one of the white T-shirts worn by the crew and given out to guests. The name THE LADY C was stitched discreetly in red thread on the upper lefthand side. When Russell saw the shirt, he said, “Carla designed these, you know. I need to see her. Where is she?”

  We all dodged this question again and again, putting him off by telling him we’d explain everything after he’d had a chance to recover. Above all, he had to rest and regain his strength. He accepted our evasions, for the moment at least, like a man in shock accepts whatever he is told. But, also like a man in shock, Russell obsessively returned to the subject of Carla over and over, forgetting what we had said.

  After Russell got a haircut, the four of us walked up to the main deck. Rankin took Russell’s arm to steady him. As we were proceeding slowly through the yacht, Russell stopped abruptly in front of a dramatic photograph of the Taj Mahal at dawn, hanging in one of the built-in frames. He cried out in a panic, “My Cézanne! Where’s my Cézanne? It should be here!”

  The three of us all glanced at one another. Rankin nodded to me as if to say, “You handle this.”

  “It’s safe, Russell,” I assured him. Rankin did likewise.

  “But where is it?” He looked around and focused in on the other photographs along the corridor. “They’re all gone! What’s happened to them? Where are they? Where are my paintings? What are those photographs doing here?”

  He reeled. I helped Rankin steady him. We flanked him and gently urged him to move forward, but it was no use. He refused to budge. Obsessed with the photographs that had replaced his art, he stood his ground, demanding to know where his paintings were and when Carla was coming.

  “I’m going to tell you the whole story, Russell,” I said in a very calm voice. “But first you need to get some food in you. You need to be strong.”

  Finally, Rankin and I steered Russell back to his room. We gave him some broth, then Rankin gave him a tranquilizer, hoping that a good night’s rest wo
uld help him.

  Russell was moved to his old stateroom, and over the next few days he gradually regained his strength and some of his equilibrium. He stopped asking about Carla so much. I sensed that he knew the worst was coming and had been trying to prepare himself, difficult as it was. At least now he seemed capable of hearing what I had to say. One rainy evening, Rankin and I sat Russell down in the library for a drink before dinner. Russell and I each had a glass of wine. Rankin abstained.

  “Russell,” I began hesitantly, “I have some difficult things to tell you.”

  “I’m ready.” He gave me a solemn nod and stared at me intently with his sad, sunken eyes.

  I proceeded to tell him everything, starting with the morning he had disappeared. I told him about the worldwide search for him and how there had been several sightings. I told him about the reward Carla had offered, which made him smile. The wine relaxed him, just as I hoped it would. I knew the hardest part was still to come. I then eased into the more personal aspects of the story. He couldn’t believe it when I told him that Carla had sold the yacht, which was why Captain Rankin was back in command. The new owner had rehired him. He looked to Rankin, hoping the captain would refute the fact, but Rankin just nodded, confirming what I’d said.

  I told him that Carla had bought the Wilman apartment in New York and that she had spent millions doing it up in grand style.

  “But she knows I hated that apartment and I don’t want to live in New York,” he said, unable to comprehend what she had done. When Russell then absently questioned where she had gotten the money to buy it, I told him that Carla had used the powers of attorney he had given her to transfer the vast portion of his fortune to herself. I told him that in an effort to stop her from plundering his fortune, his own daughter, who I assured him loved him dearly, was trying to get him declared legally dead.

  “Courtney’s afraid that there won’t be anything left in your name by the time Carla’s through,” I said bluntly.

  Russell listened to these things with an intensely perplexed expression on his face, like someone who is looking at a puzzle he cannot begin to solve. I saw that he was trying to figure it out, to take it all in, but that it was too big an effort. He kept shaking his head from side to side, as if to say, “That’s not possible . . . Carla wouldn’t do that.”

  I saved what I thought was the worst for last.

  “And finally, Russell,” I said, pausing to give this bit of news the full weight it deserved, “Carla has donated your collection to the Municipal Museum.”

  Blanching and no longer able to contain himself, he literally shot up from his chair and started pacing around the room, in complete and utter dismay. Finally he turned and said, “My pictures? She donated my collection?”

  I nodded. “Along with a grant of one hundred million dollars to build the wing that will house it.”

  Russell sat down again and stared into space for a long time. He took several sips of wine without letting go of the glass. His breathing grew heavier as he seethed under the weight of this news. Neither Rankin nor I said a word. We just stared at him with a combination of pity and morbid fascination, wondering what he would say or do next. I had just described the unraveling of his entire life, an impossible thing to take in all at once.

  I failed to notice how tightly he was squeezing his wineglass, so when it shattered in his hand, I let out a startled cry. Russell didn’t move, even though his hand was cut and there was blood. Rankin rose from his chair and gently pried open Russell’s hand, picking out the fragments of glass from his palm. I dipped my napkin in a glass of water and dotted the tiny wounds. As we ministered to him, Russell just stared at his hand, a blank expression on his face. He didn’t seem to feel any pain—or if he did, he didn’t care.

  Whatever realization Russell had about Carla didn’t last long. He went to bed that night bent on exposing her treachery, but the very next morning, he announced that he missed her and that he needed to call her to “straighten things out.”

  “I have to see her,” he said. “I know there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. I’ve had time to think.”

  I always step back when people say they’ve had time to think. It usually means they’ve rationalized themselves into something they want to believe in order to cling to old pathologies. And indeed, Russell’s desire to get in touch with Carla had a frantic aspect to it, rather like the desperation of a homesick child. Despite all I had told him, he now refused to believe that his beloved wife had done anything to harm him. On the contrary, he had rationalized everything, convincing himself that she had done it all for his own good. Over breakfast, he insisted to me that there was a perfectly logical explanation for all her actions. He told me I was misinterpreting the facts. He started with the powers of attorney.

  “What you don’t realize, Jo, is that Carla and I understood something like this might happen one day. I have this condition, you see. I have to have someone with my interests at heart in charge of my business affairs. I don’t trust anyone but Carla,” he said to me in all earnestness. “I’ve given it a lot of thought and here’s what I think happened. I think the RTC board must have somehow been taking advantage of my absence, doing some things I wouldn’t have approved of. And Carla must have found out. I gave her my powers of attorney as a precaution against that very thing happening. She must have been forced to use them. By taking control, she’s really looking out for me and my interests. Can’t you see that?”

  Well, no, in fact I couldn’t see that. Russell’s naïveté astounded me. It just goes to show that the human mind can rationalize absolutely anything when it wants to.

  “Then why is your daughter fighting her?” I asked him.

  “I believe you told me last night that Courtney was trying to get me declared dead,” he said bitterly. “What does that tell you about her motives? She’d inherit everything if I died.”

  “But only because she was trying to stop Carla from putting everything into her own name!” I couldn’t believe he had so misinterpreted Courtney’s actions.

  Russell shook his head. “No, no. You just don’t understand the family dynamic. Courtney is under Lulu’s thumb and they both hate Carla. You don’t see this for what it is, Jo. It’s you who are mistaken. Mark my words, Carla is protecting me from those two. She always warned me that Courtney would try and get her hands on my money if I had an episode. When Carla finds out that I’m alive, she’ll transfer everything back to me. You just watch. She’s only doing things according to my wishes.”

  “Russell, ask yourself the following things,” I began. “Was it your wish to sell the boat? Was it your wish to buy an apartment in New York? Your wish to donate your collection to the Municipal Museum?”

  Russell had no answers to these questions and, indeed, they catapulted him into the miasma of confusion in which I had initially found him. The same dull, uncomprehending look came over him as he said, “I know there’s a good explanation. There must be. I know there is.”

  I decided to drop the subject, at least for the moment, because one thing was eminently clear to me: Russell Cole was deeply unstable. His ability to sound rational was more frightening, given his sudden retreats into a complete fantasy world. But even his moments of greatest clarity were tainted by a misguided trust in Carla.

  A little later on, Russell asked the captain for a portable computer and me for Carla’s new phone number in New York. He was very surly with me, and I could tell he was angry. Instead of Carla’s number, I gave him the number of my own private line in New York, which I knew would not answer. Rankin and I both agreed we couldn’t afford to have Russell contacting Carla just now. We needed time. First of all, we didn’t want anyone to learn just yet that Russell was alive, knowing what a media feeding frenzy the news would touch off. Second, and more importantly, Carla had all the money now. She was in control, whether Russell chose to believe it or not. And as I explained
to Rankin, if Russell ever were going to get his money back, he would need to devise a clever plan. In his present frame of mind, however, he would play right into her hands. Indeed, Russell now mistrusted me for having told him so many negative things. Kill the messenger.

  Knowing that Carla had disposed of everyone who ever got in her way, I figured she would try to dispose of Russell, too. She must have considered the possibility that he would show up again one day, and, in that event, it seemed to me that her easiest course of action would be to have him committed to an asylum. On the other hand, if she were bent on becoming the next Lady Vermilion, having her husband alive and incarcerated would be terribly inconvenient. What she really needed was to have Russell dead so she could be a widow and free to marry Max.

  How well Carla had planned this! I really had to take my hat off to her. She had pulled everyone, even her detractors, into her alternate universe of money and manipulation, where people see only what they want to see.

  Russell refused to come to dinner that night. The Rankins and I ate together, spending most of the time discussing how and when we would let the world know Russell Cole was alive. I wanted to postpone the moment for as long as possible, but Captain Rankin felt it was unfair to both Russell and his family not to reveal his whereabouts as soon as possible. I persuaded him to give me one more day and he reluctantly agreed.

  Later on, after dinner on the way to my room, I put my ear to the door of Russell’s suite and heard the click-click-click of typing on the computer, accompanied by a Rachmaninoff piano concerto playing softly in the background. I knocked on the door, but he told me to go away. I went to bed that night feeling disconsolate and helpless. I could just imagine what was going to happen when Russell returned to the States. It would be too late for him then and I would never be able to avenge Larry’s death. Carla would continue to reign over New York. She literally would have gotten away with murder. Several times over.