“The art of detection is to allow for the discovery. I assume it’s the same for writing.”
“You enjoy being impossible, don’t you?”
“It’s the fava beans,” she said contritely.
“Mrs. Conrad?” A man stood in the doorway, holding the manila envelope in his hand. He was tall and trim and wore an expensive gray suit. He was the same man smiling with Cybella in the photograph.
“Miss Conrad better describes my philosophy of life. This is my assistant, Maggie Hill.”
He gave me a quick nod. “I’m Sheridan Reynolds.” His wavy gray hair was just long enough to brush over the collar of his blue striped shirt, giving him the look of a careful wealthy rebel. On a better day he was the kind of man that women would like to be seen with. But right now he looked as if he were just barely holding it all together. His eyes, the color of razor blades, were weighted with dark circles. The downward corners of his mouth turned his wide handsome face grim. He quickly scanned the room, making sure there were no other men hiding in the deep leather chairs.
“Just who are you?” he demanded, approaching Claire.
“You haven’t heard of me?” His ignorance seemed more irritating than offensive.
“No, and I’m a little perplexed by these photographs.” He tapped a well-manicured finger on the manila envelope.
“The only redeeming quality of pornography is its absolute clarity. What is there to perplex you?”
“Your reason for wanting me to see these pictures.”
“I thought you might recognize one or both of the women.”
“Well, I don’t. The porter will show you out.” He threw the envelope on the coffee table and headed toward the door.
“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize Sarah Grange,” Claire said.
That stopped him.
“And by the way,” she continued, “I visited with Alison and your wife at Shadow Hills this morning.”
“You did what?”
“I guess Paul Quentin didn’t tell you.” She leaned against the mantel. Her hand rested on her walking stick. The hard intelligent eyes never left his.
“What was your purpose in seeing my wife and daughter?” he asked, reluctantly sitting down across from me.
“First tell me about the photographs.”
He decided to smile. It was a little tired and forced, but it had the same self-deprecating charm as Quentin’s. “I recognize Sarah, but I have no idea why she’s posing like that. Was the picture taken some time ago?”
“That’s what people would like us to believe. Did you recognize the other woman?” Claire asked.
“I’ve never seen her.”
“And the dress?”
“Dress? I didn’t notice.”
She handed him the picture of Jackie. He studied it, then carefully returned it in the envelope and placed that on the table. His hand rested on the envelope. He patted it the way you might stroke the lid of a coffin in farewell to a loved one. “It’s difficult to tell but the dress looks similar to a gown I bought for … someone.”
“Cybella?”
“Yes.” His voice cracked.
“When did you purchase the gown?”
“I don’t know. Six months ago. It was the last thing I bought for her before she … she died.” He rubbed his face with his hand. “What’s this all about?”
“Why did Cybella commit suicide?”
He leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be very honest with you. I have managed in my lifetime to make the two women I love very unhappy. I’m the reason my wife is back in Shadow Hills, and my mistress committed suicide.”
He looked too comfortable in his chair, too comfortable being the reason. I stood up and moved restlessly around the sofa. He watched me. “Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
I was taken aback by the question. “Of course.” My voice sounded like a parrot’s, repeating words it didn’t understand.
“Of course.” He echoed the hollowness of my voice. “I loved Cybella, with all my heart. But I didn’t love her with my guts. I didn’t love her with commitment.”
“And yet you were with her for a very long time,” Claire observed.
“Was I really? I never left my wife.” His eyes clouded with memory and the lines around his mouth deepened. “In the beginning, when we were young, that didn’t matter. Cybella didn’t want marriage. I would fly to Paris, to Rome to be with her. It was perfect. God, she was so beautiful then.” Again he rubbed his face with his hand as if trying to force himself back into the present. “The day before Cybella jumped, she told me she felt like an outsider looking in on her daughter’s life, looking in on my life. She felt that freedom was just another word for isolation.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“The next day I got a call from the doorman at Bedford Place telling me to hurry over. That a terrible accident had happened.”
“Accident?”
“He wasn’t going to use the word suicide, was he? Now why are you bothering my wife and daughter?”
“Why didn’t Cybella tell Sarah Grange that you’re her father?”
He stiffened. “Because I’m not. We had an argument, she hooked up with some French skier …”
“Your wife told us, Mr. Reynolds.”
“I see.” He studied his manicured hands. He didn’t look at us when he spoke. “Cybella was proud. She wanted Sarah to succeed on her own. And she has.”
“Why haven’t you told her?”
“Elizabeth can be irrational, cause scenes. I see no reason to upset my wife.”
“How do you convince a woman to give up her child?” I asked him.
He looked up from his hands, his troubled gaze came to rest on me. “Cybella was in her thirties when she got pregnant,” he said, as if he had nothing to do with it. “Her modeling career was over. The phone had stopped ringing. She was no longer Cybella, she was just a pregnant mistress. She went away to France, I thought to get rid of the baby, but she didn’t.” He paused. The razor gray eyes moved from me to the ashes in the fireplace.
“I have never generated a dime on my own. I’d grown accustomed to certain things.” An elegant shrug. “When she came back with the baby, I had to leave her. Now Cybella was an ex-mistress with a child. She needed money, so she gave the baby to her parents and tried acting. The still camera loved her, the moving camera didn’t. It made her look awkward and stiff. Her voice sounded empty. She was devastated. She went to Europe and tried acting there and failed. Five, six years later she came back. I put her up in Bedford Place.”
“For old time’s sake,” I said.
“You might say that. Her parents didn’t want her to see Sarah; they had never liked Cybella’s way of life. And Cybella couldn’t face the child. She became my mistress again, accompanying me certain places, always there waiting for me.”
“Why? Because you could offer her Bedford Place? Clothes? Money?” I asked.
“No, because I still made her feel beautiful.” He stood.
“So beautiful she killed herself,” Claire said.
“I’ve answered your questions.”
“Just one more, Mr. Reynolds. Why are you staying at your club and not at your home?”
“I thought it inappropriate to grieve for my mistress in front of my daughter. I’ll get the porter to show you out.” He left us. The clock ticked. Claire poked the ashes.
“A father’s love, nothing like it,” I finally said.
Fifteen
THAT NIGHT GERTA COOKED us a sumptuous dinner. Claire went to bed early. There were no phone calls. Nobody was murdered. Trying not to forget why Watson had sat down to write, I did a little work myself, then went to bed.
I dreamed I was standing in front of my mother’s closet. It was filled with red evening gowns and, of course, a nun. Her heavy black skirts and drifting dark veils tangled around me like long dark hair. My mother prayed for my return.
The next day Claire took to her Queen Anne. Sh
e sat in meditative silence. I asked her if she wanted me to do anything but she just shook her head. I knew she was thinking, sifting through the information we had gathered so far. I tried some sifting on my own and decided everyone we had talked to was the murderer—or maybe not. We were just sitting down to lunch when the phone rang. I got up from the table and answered it. A muffled woman’s voice told me to get over to the Duke immediately. I told Claire.
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“Could be Linda Hansen.”
She stared despondently at her plate of untouched shrimp risotto. “Bring the car around, Boulton.”
Violet waited in her chair. The young drunk had slept it off and was long gone. The hotel clerk watched a talk show on a portable TV. Today he had on a hoodless green sweatshirt. Long, thin strands of white hair tried to protect a tender pink scalp. The rabbity eyes followed us. We made our way down the dim corridor and up the stairs. Claire walked by the closed door of the whimpering woman as if she didn’t exist, as if only Boulton and I knew she was in there.
Jackie’s door stood slightly open. When Boulton pushed, it swung wide. The gray light from the window sifted down onto the bed and the crushed flowers. Goldie was on the floor, his head propped up against the side of the bed. His chin rested on his chest. One leg was bent, the other extended. Arms flopped at his side, palms facing up. A dark stain spread over his belly.
“This is very inconvenient,” Claire said indignantly. “Close the door, Miss Hill.”
“It seems to me, Goldie’s the one who should be upset,” I replied, closing the door.
“Turn a light on, Boulton.”
They knelt beside the body. I stared at Goldie. He stared at the blood on his belly as if he were still trying to figure out how it got there.
“Knife wounds,” Boulton said.
“Yes. I don’t hear you breathing, Miss Hill. Breathe.”
I breathed in the smell of wilted carnations and booze and death. I was better off not breathing.
She took in the room. “Something’s not right, Boulton.”
He looked around. “What is it? What’s troubling you?” he asked.
“Something …” She cocked her head.
All three of us gave the room a quick look, avoiding what I thought was obviously wrong, the body on the floor.
“I can’t quite grasp it. Never mind.” She put on her black gloves and carefully began to go through Goldie’s pockets. She came out with a telephone number written on the back of a Peep Thrills card. “Do you recognize the number, Miss Hill?”
“Bonton.”
She slipped the card into her pocket.
“I think it’s safe to assume that he knew who killed Jackie,” Boulton said.
“Could a woman easily kill a man that size?” I asked.
“He’d been drinking and there is always the element of surprise,” Claire answered.
“Men are doomed to be surprised by women,” Boulton observed sadly.
“Unless of course Goldie was surprised by a man,” I replied.
“I suppose we can’t avoid calling the police,” Claire said.
“The hotel clerk saw us come up here,” Boulton said.
“Get him.”
“Right.” He left the room.
“Don’t you ever long for a normal, happy life?” I asked forlornly.
“I have always avoided the normal, happy life, Miss Hill.” She leaned on her walking stick and stared down at the corpse as if he were personally annoying her. “Goldie identified Jackie’s body. The police will eventually make the connection between Jackie and me at the hotel. They’re not going to like the fact that I lied about not knowing her.”
“What about client privilege?” I said.
“I don’t think that will impress them since my client was dead before she became my client. Just out of pique they’ll probably take us in for questioning.” She glared at Goldie, the bane of her existence, then looked at me as if I were next on her list of annoyances. “After we talk to the clerk I want you to leave here.”
“Leave the scene of a crime? Isn’t that against the law?”
“Miss Hill, this is no time to collapse into a morass of middle-class morality.”
“Morass of what?! You’re not leaving the scene of the crime, I am. What happens when the clerk tells the police that I was with you and Boulton?”
“I’ll take care of everything. I want you to go to a pay phone and call New York Insurance. Talk to Graham Sitwell. See if he can put in a good word for me with the NYPD. I can’t avoid them but maybe I can shorten the ordeal.”
“What else?” I was resigned to being a fugitive.
“I want you to get Nora Brown and Sarah Grange, keep them at the Parkfaire until I get there.”
The door opened. The clerk poked his head in. He blew air through his thin pink lips. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Boulton pushed him into the room.
The clerk peered at the body. “It’s Goldie.” He ran his hand through his hair, leaving the white strands in disarray.
“Who came up here in the last hour?” Claire asked.
“You people.”
“Before we arrived. Think. Was it a woman?” she persisted. “A slender, middle-aged woman with dark short hair?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know if she came up here. But you people did.” He looked at us as if he were staring at three serial killers. “I’m calling the police.”
“In a minute. Do you know Linda Hansen? She works at Peep Thrills.”
“I seen her come in but I don’t see her go out.”
“Is there another way into this hotel?”
“Why are you asking me questions?”
“Answer her,” Boulton said.
“The only other entrance is a door to the alley but it’s kept locked.”
“Show us.”
“I’m calling the police.”
“Show us,” Boulton said, shoving him toward the door.
On the first floor under the stairs, was a door. Above it was an unlit exit sign.
“See?” He pushed on it. The door opened. Light the color of dishwater filled the alcove. “Jesus Christ, it’s supposed to be locked.”
Claire stepped outside, looked around the alley, then came back in. “Nora Brown came through the lobby. Someone else could have entered through this door and gone up to the room without being seen. And that someone would have to know about this door being unlocked.”
“It’s supposed to be locked,” the clerk repeated, angrily. “I probably got people staying here that haven’t paid.”
“Did you and Goldie talk?” Claire kept the door slightly open so she could see the clerk’s face. The light cast a dirty shadow over all of us.
“Yeah. Hello. Good-bye.”
“He never talked about himself?”
“Lady, Goldie wasn’t exactly introspective.” But a memory flickered in the clerk’s eyes.
“He did say something. What was it?” Claire prodded.
The clerk turned, trying to run down the hallway, but Boulton blocked his way.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” the clerk protested. “I gotta call the police.”
“Answer her,” Boulton ordered.
He looked at Claire. “Goldie came in here with some video equipment. And I told him he better not leave that stuff around, that it would get ripped off. That’s all.”
“Miss Hill?” Claire said, looking at my purse.
I reached in, took my gun out, and pointed it at the clerk. His eyes widened. Lips parted. His hands shot up in the air. White strands of hair fluttered.
“No, no, Miss Hill,” Claire said with all the patience of a dog trainer. “Not the gun. The money. I think our friend here would like some money.”
“Sorry, just a little fragmented.”
I put the gun back and rummaged around for my wallet. The clerk’s eyes darted nervously from Claire to Boulton to me. His hands stayed in the air. His fingers t
rembled. I came out with a twenty.
“Now,” Claire said to him, “what was Goldie doing with the video equipment? You may put your hands down.”
“Porno.”
“When was this?”
“On and off.”
“But you’re thinking of a particular time, aren’t you?”
“About four, five months ago.”
“Did you see any of the people who performed in the video?”
“I see this one girl, long dark hair, big sunglasses, beautiful. I showed her up to the room.”
“Did she have a garment bag with her?”
“More like a dry-cleaning bag with a red dress in it. I kept thinking she wasn’t going to need it.” He leered, looked nervously at me, then reached out and took my twenty.
“I’m calling the police now,” he spoke carefully, backing away from Boulton. “And none of you better leave.” He shook a bony finger at us.
He turned and beat it down the hall, stopped, threw his head back, and yelled toward the upper floors. “And I’m locking the back door, you bastards. You bunch of loonies!”
“Get those two silly women to the Parkfaire, Miss Hill, and don’t let them out of your sight. What time is it, Boulton?”
“A little after two o’clock.”
“Alison Reynolds is having her fitting at Bergdorf’s,” Clair continued. Find out what she knows about Sarah Grange, including Sarah’s parentage. It’s time to break the protective bond between mother and daughter.”
There was the sound of sirens converging on the hotel.
“Quickly, Miss Hill.”
I ran down the alley as if I had committed murder. I came out on the side street where trucks were lined up making their deliveries. A man with a cigar hanging out of his mouth carried a tray full of raw meat down the steps of a restaurant. Flies circled above the tray, like the dark angel’s halo. I followed him into a long, narrow empty restaurant. The only light came through the front windows. The delivery man walked straight to the back. An Asian in a loud sport shirt sat at a table smoking. He waved his hand at me as if I were one of the flies following the raw meat.
Beauty Dies Page 12
