Instead, she would take advantage of Harrison's illness and the multiple tragedies of the past week to secure her heart's desire: her granddaughter's custody. As Tom's bread was lavishly buttered by the Harrison holdings, all he could do was follow orders.
“I have papers for you to sign.”
“What kind of papers?” She cocked her head to one side. Tom thought that without any makeup she looked like a very tired little girl. “Papers drawn up by whom? Who are you representing here, Tom? I thought it might be me.” It suddenly occurred to her that he was the same family friend and lawyer who had encouraged her to sign the divorce papers over lunch at the 21 Club. The deal that had forced her out of the country—to this place—in order to keep her children.
“Where's Harrison?”
“Claire…” He tried to soften the blow. Their love affair had never been a secret to him. “Harrison is still recovering. He's suffered a stroke.”
“A stroke?’ She was confused. How could he have had a stroke? She had made love to him barely a week ago. She looked down at her watch, but it wasn't on her wrist. Then she remembered that she had traded it for a stale cup of coffee from one of her dead-eyed jailers.
“Ophelia says…”
“What stroke?” She rose weakly. “Tell me what happened!” Her high-pitched hysteria brought two alert guards armed with carbine guns to the bars.
Tom felt he could no longer suppress his impulse to protect the fragile figure before him. He took her in his arms and felt the light weight of her body collapse against his. She sobbed into his chest.
“He's not dead, too, is he? Oh, no, he's not gone, tell me! Oh, please!”
“No. No. He's had some speech impairment. That's all. His arm, his leg, some mild paralysis. But he's resting and in therapy. It'll all come back. Eventually. It was just a small stroke.”
“A stroke.” They had all had quite a stroke of bad luck. She wiped her tears away. She didn't want Tom Brewster's sympathy. She wanted to know what was in his briefcase.
He translated the document from legalese. In exchange for them dropping all charges against her, Duccio's brothers and sisters demanded that she relinquish all claims to his fortune, his houses, paintings, her jewels, even her own clothes. The stocks he held in her name and her own personal fortune, everything that Duccio had overseen, was to become part of his estate. On Italy's legal books the death would be classified as accidental—like her son's. She was to leave Italy at once with just her funeral suit and her handbag.
Tom did not reveal how he had arrived at Palazzo Duccio to find the plump sisters, sisters-in-law, and cousins from Calabria decked out in Claire's necklaces and fur stoles, using her dainty, custom-made underwear for handkerchiefs as they sat around in the stifling heat and mourned their loss, the women as well as the men puffing on Duccio's fat cigars. Pictures of Claire had been torn from the walls and spat upon, although some of the relatives hotly argued in a southern Italian dialect over who would be the one to get the picture of Claire hugging a radiant Princess Grace. A confused lot, they had loved Claire from afar for her dignified pulchritude—like a Venus de Milo in couture—while detesting their brother for his selfish arrogance and the tightfisted way he mistreated them. Now they glorified his memory and publicly booed Claire the villainess, although in reality they were grateful to the long-lashed American for bumping off their brother and leaving them flush. Besides, what good would it have done to have a trial in which some of Duccio's real deals might be exposed as well, not to mention some of his illegal business practices? The state could demand heavier taxes. At the very least, his former partners might file lawsuits that would erode their inherited fortune, perhaps tying up their money in the courts for years. And what, saints preserve them, if the lovely lady with the face of an angel and those lilac eyes was found innocent? All Duccio's fortunes would then be inherited by her. No, get her out of the country and quietly count their lira. The lawyer from New York was right. Run with the money. And let Claire go.
“Go where?”
“Paris.” He wiped the sweat from his face and neck with his starched handkerchief, the moisture staining the burgundy monogram. He pulled the one-way ticket from his inside pocket and handed it to her.
“Paris?” There was a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the ticket cover.
“It's the only place I could think of where you don't have enemies. But you have lots of friends, I'm told.” He spoke in a polite, careful voice, but his message was clear, just as it had been years ago. You have no choice.
He pulled out a stack of documents from his bulging briefcase. As soon as Claire signed, the chief of police, the magistrate, everyone would follow like falling dominoes. He would personally escort her to the airport, he assured her. In Paris she could stay at Harrison's apartment at the Ritz. It had already been paid for in advance.
“Yes.” She had been planning to go there with Sara and Six to join Harrison and begin their life together. A lifetime ago. Two lifetimes.
“Three months. You'll have three months at the Ritz.” He smiled gently at her. “It isn't prison, you know?”
She wondered if it wasn't. “Sara. How soon can Sara join me? She needs me.”
“I'm afraid you've lost Sara, Claire. You're a murderess. You're front-page headlines everywhere. In the eyes of the world you're quite unfit to be a mother.”
“I was just protecting my children. My child. Oh Tom, you've got to help me. You don't know what's happened. Sara's going to need so much love. And not the Harrison kind.” She stood more erect as she grew stronger.
“It's out of my control.” The words were icy, but beneath them Tom was melting. Claire's sober responses were confirming his suspicions. Something about Six's death followed by Duccio's sudden murder was darker than it seemed. If he were Claire's lawyer, he would suspect that his client was protecting someone. But the bright attorney had made his pact with power a long time ago. His wagon was hitched to the Harrisons’ star, not to this young woman who had just fallen out of the sky.
“You're right,” Tom continued. “Sara does need help, expensive professional treatments. The kind the Harrisons can provide.” He had seen the girl and found her strangely damaged. And without saying it, he guessed she'd had her child's hand in all this.
“Frankly, Claire, you don't have two nickels to rub together. Not anymore. You couldn't even provide food or clothes for her, let alone battle Ophelia in court. But at least when you sign these papers Sara won't be the daughter of a murderer.”
A murderer. She looked around her filthy cell. This was how the world treated a killer. She would never be sorry she had saved her daughter from spending even one night in a place like this.
Even in her anguish she knew just how much help Sara needed. More help than she could now afford. And what was her alternative? Stay in jail and lose Sara anyway? The irony was inescapable. By protecting her daughter she had lost her.
“Where have they taken Six?” Claire spoke in whispery surrender.
“The family plot at Charlotte Hall. Someday”—Claire caught a glimpse of compassion in his eyes—”someday you'll be able to visit him. It's my other grim duty to bring him home.” He delivered the line that would guarantee her signature. “The Duccios will release his body after these documents are official.”
The idea that her son hadn't been laid to rest yet caused Claire's hands to tremble. She would sign any piece of paper. She struggled to hang on to any rational thoughts.
“Then take Violet with you. I want her to go along.” She shakily took his hands in both of hers and fought back the tears. Only after he promised that Violet would accompany Six on his journey back home did she sign the stack of documents that set her free—free from the physical walls of her jail cell but not from the limitless expanse of grief that lay before her, a far more bitter sentence than any prison term.
The concierge tried not to stare as he handed her a dog-eared copy of the Herald Tribune along with the brass room key.
The newspaper ran Anita Lace's column on page one along with the same photograph that had stared back at her from every kiosk in both airports. Damn Duccio. He had garbed her in the sheer veil that concealed nothing, that only highlighted the grief in her eyes and the otherworldly smile on her full lips. She had been thinking about Six on his cloud to heaven at the time, but in the grainy black-and-white photo that was cropped just below the huge jeweled cross around her neck, she looked guilty of everything from murder to bad taste.
She tried to read the paper again, her vision clouded. Her tragedy was being covered as thoroughly as the war. Anita Lace, the official megaphone of international gossip, was keeping Claire on the front burner:
Suicide by speargun seems to be the verdict of the Roman Magistrate. Claire Harrison Duccio was set free today after a week of interrogation in a Rome jailhouse. The stylish lady was charged with nothing worse than you and I have done: a speeding ticket for leaving Italy in record time. But you and I have never left a husband lying on the floor with a spear in his chest. Turns out the fabulously rich Fulco Duccio evidently had his own domestic suspicions. He left the big zero to the black widow. Most of that vast booty of his went to his understated brothers and sisters, who live quietly in Calabria, and a charitable chunk of it to the Roman Catholic Church. Meanwhile, my sources hear the lady in question has gone to that Holy Mecca of the famous and infamous: the Ritz in Paris. Arrivedérci, Claire.
At the manager's suggestion, she was discreetly whisked up the back elevator along with a Pomeranian and his walker. Claire wasn't certain whether this was to protect her or the hotel's reputation. It was also suggested to her that she might feel more comfortable dining in the privacy of her suite. And where last week she might have tipped Jean-Luc or Monsieur Gireau, now she just whispered “Merci,” knowing all she had in the world was the five hundred dollars Tom had slipped into her Hermes handbag. She wasn't going to waste it.
She was sitting in the dark on the silken bedspread, clutching her bag to her chest and rocking, trying to clear her head. The insistently ringing buzzer wasn't helping. Finally the determined banging on the door roused her from her trance. She tried to focus her mind. Who could it be? Sara run away from Ophelia so they could grieve together and share their secret truth? Harrison, once again robust and strong enough for both of them? Perhaps it could be Six, all apple-cheeked and sun bronzed, back to awaken her from a very bad dream. Just the thought brought a smile. Or was it just the dinner she had no appetite for? But the room service cart would offer her a choice of knives and crystal goblets sharp enough to sever a vein. She stared at her thin white wrist, a blue artery pumping blood to her broken heart. If only she were a priceless piece of cracked porcelain, or shattered Baccarat glass, she could be sent to the third-floor fix-it shop at Marshall Field's, where the man with special glue could put her back together.
She moved like a zombie to the door. If it was the Angel of Death come for her she would gladly usher him in.
She stepped back to let the crazy escapee from the flea market waddle into her rooms. In her exhaustion something close to a laugh tumbled out of her mouth. She let the portly lady hug her before she realized it was Lorenza underneath six layers of dresses and one taffeta petticoat heisted from Claire's closet.
“Oh, signóra. I took what I can. They are tróppo vulgar, that Duccio lot. They go barefoot and smoke bad smell cigars even at breakfast table. Holy Maria.”
Claire's Dior cocktail hat was balanced on top of her chiffon-and-straw Ascot boater, both plunked devil-may-care over Lorenza's long, dark tresses, the whole of her body padded two feet deep with Chanel, Fath, and Givenchy.
“How in the world did the Rite guards let you up to the suite?”
“I told them I was with my lady Signóra Duccio, and they took me right up. Subito! In the baggage elevator. My cousin is the assistant to the breadmaker chef in the kitchen so it wasn't a problem to find you. Everyone knows you are here!”
She tottered on Claire's purloined pumps as she looked around the rooms as if scouting for spies.
“Wait until signóra sees what I sew into the hem of my bottom dress.” She had been allowed one suitcase when she left Palazzo Duccio so she had piled as much as she could on herself like a packmule and joined her lady. Lorenza turned a dozen different shades as she shed layer after layer of colorful clothing. Claire looked on in amazement.
Finally, the one-woman fashion show stopped at Claire's favorite wasp-waisted black day dress. Lorenza waved a pair of manicure scissors from her purse and began to snip open the hem.
“Signóra, here. I did not know what was your favorite and all the Duccio sisters have got the importante things from the safes. I hope I did okay.” With almost human exuberance out tumbled a pair of Verdura's chandelier earrings and the godforsaken cross.
“Oh, Lorenza. This is the kindest thing anyone's ever done for me.” Although she would have preferred never to see these hated reminders of Duccio again, Claire was grateful for the girl's loyalty.
“More, signóra.” Lorenza's moistened eyes twinkled. She was glad to please her lady, who looked so haggard and sad. Claire's dead eyes sparkled too, for just an instant, when she saw the booty, wrapped in towels, that filled the entire suitcase. Lorenza had smuggled out all the framed photographs that had sat on Claire's dressing table. Six in his soccer uniform, Sara on horseback, the three of them holding hands, Claire and Harrison gazing adoringly at Six. The photographs gave her a reason to bathe, have a little supper, and live at least one more day to gaze at the memories that were her life.
Lorenza indulged her broken lady in every way. She applied old folk remedies to soothe her body: a warm poultice of rosemary herbs and chamomile leaves for her chest and a cold compress soaked in violet water for her forehead. To feed the ache in both their hearts, they shared stories of Six, even quietly laughing together when they remembered how at six o'clock one morning he had used his easy charms to convince Cook to make waffles with raspberries and homemade gelato for him and his entire soccer team. They never tired of retelling one another the funny things he had said or done, and never had enough reasons to look at her photographs and remember the pleasant moments right before the picture was snapped. The lady and her unpaid maid prayed together at the candles Lorenza lit at the little shrine she had arranged, and Claire read from the Bible as well as her Emily Dickinson. She invoked Protestant and Catholic rituals as well as some of Lorenza's country saints with their folklorish magic. But Claire's favorite pastime was making up pictures of Six in heaven, using their imaginations to decorate a room for him mere. First Claire put a leather armchair in his bedroom, with a cozy comforter to keep him warm, and then a table wide enough for his jigsaw puzzles. Lorenza added a bowl of fresh fruit, his favorite pears and sweet mangoes in an inexhaustible supply. They installed a wide picture window looking out onto all his favorite places: the oak tree outside his bedroom at Charlotte Hall, the soccer field in Rome, with his pony, GI Joe, saddled up and tethered to a tree. It was heaven, after all, so they could pick Six's favorite place for each season. Italy's seacoast in the summer, Rome in spring, Christmas at Charlotte Hall. For his shelves, they painstakingly selected his favorite books by Jack London and his baseball cards and of course his prize stamps. Finally, they inserted Six himself, bursting with energy and wearing his irrepressible smile. Now when Claire pictured her son, she could always find him in the “room” they had decorated for him Upstairs.
By the third week in Paris, Claire felt strong enough to take her first walk outside. Wearing sunglasses, scarves, and holding one another's arms, the two women crept along the still-asleep streets to a six A.M. service at Sacre Coeur, where they lit candles for Six. By the fourth week they discovered a tiny church near Chez Emilon where the priest welcomed them. Indeed, he greeted them each morning, expecting them when he opened the creaking iron doors. Claire always returned to the Ritz at the service entrance, walking the same path each day through the kitchen and to her room. It
was a routine she welcomed. But time was running out, and so was money.
In early October, when Violet and her husband Mr. Zolla surprised her on their honeymoon visit, Claire nervously joined them at a belated wedding breakfast for three at L'Espadon in the Ritz. It was her first time out in public. Inevitably, Violet turned the conversation to pressing practical matters.
“Where do you go from here?” Violet asked. She and Mr. Zolla could live very comfortably on his retirement savings and Sante Fe pension, but Claire was living in a four-figure-a-day luxury suite that was only paid for through the month.
“Have you made a plan yet? Do you know where you want to live? Of course you're welcome to come stay with us.” Violet took a sip from the bubbly champagne her husband had ordered. She had grieved for Six and then tucked her sorrow away in a drawer with life's other disappointments.
“I think I'll stay here.” She eyed her mother's champagne glass, resenting her return to life. “I'll start looking for a place I can afford” The square set of Claire's jaw was determined, and the full mouth, just a quiver away from tears, resigned. It was obvious she wasn't ready to go home, wherever that was now.
“Here. I have a little something for you.” Violet pulled an envelope out of her pocketbook and pushed it across the table to her daughter.
“But it's I who should be giving you a wedding gift” A deep blush traveled up from her neck. For five years running she had been on the International Best Dressed List, the mistress of luxurious homes, a two-fisted philanthropist, and here she was, at age thirty-two, on the receiving end of a cash envelope from her hardworking mother.
Violet was glad to see some pink replacing Claire's pallor, even if it was just the flush of embarrassment. “No. No, dear. Your wedding gift already came and went, the way of the unwanted lamp shade or your least favorite cousin's brass candlesticks. Returned.”
“Quite the little businesslady.” Mr. Zolla gently ribbed his bride with his elbow. “Couldn't sell the hot Tiepolo, so she swapped.”
The Chameleon Page 37
