by Dee Brice
Desperate to end this emotion-laden narrative delivered in an emotionless voice that told more of Esmé’s pain than tears could, TC unfolded her legs, then scooted toward her stepmother. Esmé’s voice droned on.
“I envied Marlene, your mother. She had everything I wanted. Beauty, grace. Height,” she added, a whimsical note invading her voice, a genuine smile brightening her eyes. “Most of all, she had Charles.”
Taking a drag off her cigarette, she drew the smoke deep into her lungs, then exhaled with a satisfied sigh. “Marlene was so poised, so unendingly gracious, that it took a long time to see through the façade. Like a star going nova, she glowed brighter and brighter until she vanished.
“I didn’t care. Charles had fallen out of love with her, had divorced her and sent her packing because he had fallen in love with me. Or so he said. But he began every day standing before her portrait, regaling her with her failures and his triumphs.”
Esmé drew another drag off her cigarette, her eyes blank. She seemed lost in memories. Shrugging off whatever had taken her away for a moment, she said, “I still didn’t care, because I had Marlene’s golden life. I had the beautiful child she had deserted. I had the magnificent lover she had betrayed with his best friend. I had everything I had ever wanted. It took years for me to realize I had nothing. Charles still loved Marlene, always had, always would.” She laughed, a bitter sound that ended on a cough. “And he hated her. Almost as much as I hate him.”
Esmé ground out her cigarette and turned toward TC. She looked just as she had on countless weekends when TC came home from boarding school. Any minute now, TC expected Esmé to pat the couch next to her, hold out her hands for TC to take and raise her cheek for TC’s kiss.
Instead, in a casual tone that struck terror in TC’s soul, Esmé said, “He killed her, you know. All the years of their marriage, inch by inch, drop by drop, he drained the life from your mother. I believe he would have killed her when he found out she was pregnant except, even knowing the baby wasn’t his, I think he prayed for a boy. An heir he could mold in his own image, the coup de gras to Marlene’s faithless heart. But Marlene had the final laugh after all.”
“Me,” TC whispered.
Esmé held out her hands and TC grabbed them like a lifeline. “You, my precious darling.”
TC burrowed into the loving arms of the only mother she could remember clearly and found the never-ending comfort she had always felt there. “Why didn’t you leave him?”
“I made a promise to your mother. I promised her I would protect you and try to love you as much as she did.” TC felt Esmé’s smile against her cheek and snuggled closer. “Loving you wasn’t hard. Protecting you was. Charles was determined to mold you into a monster, thereby having not only the ultimate triumph over Marlene, but making you into a creature your real father would hate.”
“Did he succeed, Esmé? Did Charles make my father hate me?”
“No, love, he did not succeed. Your father loved you when you were his daughter-in-law. And he loves you now.”
Every muscle in her body tightened as if desperately trying to hold flesh and bone together. “Sir James is my father?” Horrified, she pushed from Esmé’s arms, paced away and then whirled to face the older woman.
“What’s wrong, darling? I thought you’d be pleased.”
“What’s wrong? My oh-so-loving father let me marry my own brother, that’s what’s wrong. And you thought it would please me? What kind of monsters are you people?”
In the blink of TC’s eyes Esmé transformed from loving parent into hard-eyed bitch. “In the first place, William was James’ adopted son. In the second place, incest was never an issue. Despite the fact that you adored William, James knew William’s tastes ran in another direction.”
“Don’t you think I knew that? Did you think I had my romantic little head up my butt? That I was too young, too naїve, to see that William loved Jerry more than he loved anyone? Did you think me so stupid that I would accept cancer as the cause of William’s death? Good Lord, don’t you think I know the difference between cancer and AIDS?” She paced the length of the room, then whirled back to face her stepmother. “William was a homosexual. A promiscuous homosexual who thought he was immortal. And why not? We all worshipped him. Forgave him any transgression. Let him walk all over our little peasant hearts, despite the fact that we knew—we knew—he was killing himself. William was my best friend, yet I killed him as surely as if I’d taken a knife to his throat.”
Esmé sat up straighter and applauded, her hands coming together slowly, a mockery of approval. “Bravo, TC. A remarkable performance, one Charles would approve of wholeheartedly.”
“You could have protected me from Charles, kept him from turning me into a thief. Did you hope I’d get caught? Would that have suited you? Seeing my name and Charles’ smeared all over the newspapers? Damn you, Esmé. Damn you to hell.” Before she burst into tears, TC fled the suite.
“A remarkable performance, indeed,” a familiar voice observed from the door to Esmé’s bedroom.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
“The maid let me in,” he said. Smiling, he sauntered across the room, then opened the sliding glass door to the veranda.
Esmé reached for the telephone, but the man tore the cord from the wall and caught her wrist in an iron grip. The pressure was unbearable. She bit her lip until it bled, screamed when she felt the bones snap.
“You bastard!” she shrieked, clawing at him with her undamaged hand. He backhanded her face, making her feel lightheaded despite the pain ripping through her. He lifted her, spun her until dizziness overcame her. Surely this sensation of falling was only an extension of the pain and the ringing in her ears, she thought. Then her body became a mass of blinding agony and she thought no more.
The man did not watch her fall. Although he wanted to, he could not afford to lose those few precious seconds, the seconds it took for her to fall twenty stories to her death.
Wishing the girl had clomped across the room or shouted before she left, the man shoved a small tape recorder between the cushions. How he would have loved to have that on tape! The sound of rushing footsteps, the shriek of rage that would convince any listener that Tiffany Cartierri had pushed her loving stepmother over the parapet to her death.
Oh well. What was done was done.
* * * * *
TC rounded the corner of the hotel at a dead run, then skidded to a stop. People were running toward the hotel. Others, shrieking, ran away. In the distance, over the shouts and shocked moans, she could hear the sound of a klaxon growing ever louder as it neared. A small circle formed around an object in the street, then expanded slightly. She could imagine the words—“Move back.” “Give us room to work. To breathe.”—although she couldn’t hear them. She caught a glimpse of red—Titian, the shade of Esmé’s hair—a splash of yellow and orange, the colors of Esmé’s caftan.
“No,” she whispered. The denial rose in her throat like gorge. She screamed “no” over and over while she shoved and elbowed and kicked her way through the crowd until she reached the inner circle.
Then Ian was there, his wide shoulders blocking her view, his hard chest absorbing her tears. She fought him while the phrase of a song clamored through her mind—”a hank of hair, a piece of bone.”
That couldn’t be all that was left of Esmé. Esmé was too vibrant, too full of life to be reduced to a limp pile of rags lying in the street like tossed-out garbage.
“Let me go, Ian. She needs me. Even if she’s unconscious, she’ll know I’m with her. I’ll hold her hand all the way to the hospital and she’ll know she’s not alone. Please, Ian.”
His voice sounding very far away, Ian said, “She isn’t going to the hospital, Tiffany love.”
“Then she’s all right? We’ll take her upstairs and put her to bed. We’ll order room service and buy out the flower shop. Esmé loves flowers. Charles had a greenhouse built so that she could always have flowe
rs.” She looked up at him. “Can we do that, Ian? Can we?”
“If that’s what you want, love.” Tucking her shoulders under his arm, Damian maneuvered them through the crowd and into an elevator.
“They’ll be gentle with her, won’t they, Ian? She’ll be sore, so they’ll need to be gentle with her.”
“They will be,” he said. Finding her key in the pocket of her jeans, he opened the door to the suite. Though most of his attention was focused on Tiffany, he noted the open door to the veranda, the telephone pulled from the wall, an odd pattern in the thick carpet that looked as if someone had danced there. They could not stay here, the scene of what might be murder.
Closing the door, he guided Tiffany to the fire exit door and half-carried her down the stairs. At the door to his suite, she balked.
“I have to go upstairs, Ian. I have to be there when Esmé comes back. I need to draw a bath for her, turn back the covers and call the flower shop.”
“All that will keep for a few minutes,” he soothed, opening the door and leading her inside. Holding her shoulders, he gazed into her shock-glazed eyes. “I am only going to say this once, so listen closely and do not argue. If you fight me, I shall have the hotel doctor give you a sedative and have my wicked way with you. ¿Comprendes?”
“Gotcha,” she said, feathering her fingertips over his waggling eyebrows and smiling wanly.
“I will check the shower while you get undressed.”
“Déjà vu all over again.”
“Yeah, but this time we will shower together.” Seeing the protest forming in her eyes like glowering thunderheads, he shook her gently. “Shower or shot, Tiffany darling.”
“Shower,” she mumbled. “But only if it’s safe.”
“It had better be,” he muttered, stalking away. He was not sure what they had on the floor above, suicide or murder. All he knew for certain was that Tiffany was in no condition to answer questions. He needed her to stay that way long enough to get some answers from other sources.
He started the shower, turned toward the door and found Tiffany standing there, her eyes glistening like dew-kissed spring leaves.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes, love, she is.”
“Oh Lord, Ian, what’s happening? We had a fight, but it wasn’t—”
“Hush, love. We will talk about it later.” He shed his clothes, skimmed the lime-colored blouse from Tiffany’s body and tugged off her jeans. He guided her into the shower.
Like a puppet with its strings cut, she let him bathe her, let him turn her as he would. He hated the way she looked like no one lived in her body, yet he knew she needed to retreat. She would need every ounce of strength later, but for now she needed rest.
Eyes vacant of all emotion, Tiffany swallowed the sleeping pills he handed her, then snuggled down under the covers. Damian kissed her forehead before looking down into her open eyes.
“I don’t trust you,” she said.
“I know, love, but you will. We are in this together—for better or worse.”
Her snort of disbelief turned into a yawn and she slept.
Damian found Nick in the living room.
“Have you reached Colonel Mendez yet?”
“I didn’t try. I think you better hear this first.” Using the tip of his pen, Nick pushed the play button on the tape recorder. Tiffany’s voice, then that of another woman, sounded in the otherwise silent room.
“Where did you find it?” Damian asked when the tape ended with an abrupt click.
“Upstairs, between the cushions on the couch.”
“Put it back, then call Mendez. And see if you can find Reynard. His vanishing act is making me itchy.”
“Put it back?” Nick said, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Are you crazy? This tape incriminates Tiffany as if it were an eyewitness. Motive and opportunity.”
“It seems to,” Damian agreed. “Use a phone in the lobby, will you? And on your way down the stairs, time the descent. There’s a good chap.”
“Don’t patronize me, good chap. Why aren’t you burning that tape? Protecting the woman you love?”
“I am protecting her, Nick. We saw Esmé Cartierri fall, did we not?” Wearing a deep frown and a befuddled expression, Nick nodded. “And not thirty seconds later we saw Tiffany round the corner of the hotel.”
“At a dead run,” Nick said pointedly.
Damian echoed Nick’s words, then said, “How did she get from the twentieth to the ground floor in thirty seconds? And even if she could, we still have one unanswered question.”
“Which is?”
“Who turned off the tape recorder?”
Chapter Sixteen
Despite his prayers, when Tiffany opened her swollen eyes the next morning, Damian could read the memory of yesterday’s tragedy in them.
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” she said in a flat tone.
“No.”
“She wouldn’t have jumped, Ian.”
“I know, love. You need to get dressed. We have company.”
“The police?” She sounded resigned and unwilling to fight for her freedom should she need to.
Although he wanted to pump her up to defend herself, Damian just nodded. Carefully watching her expression, he said, “And your father.”
“I don’t have a father.” She kicked off the covers and then surged to her feet, magnificently regal and unashamed of her nakedness. “Make them go away, Ian. I don’t want to see either of them.”
“You have no choice. Colonel Mendez wants to question all of you together.”
“You know what Esmé told me yesterday, don’t you? How? How do you know? And how did you find me?”
“Get dressed, Tiffany. We will talk later.”
When she entered the living room some twenty minutes later, TC’s gaze flew to Sir James Foster. My father, she thought, striving to steel her heart against him and failing.
He looked as if he had aged a lifetime since she had last seen him two nights ago. His hair lay in lank clumps against his scalp and pink flesh showed between them. His face was as gray as his eyes. His shoulders, always held so proudly, so militarily proper, slumped under a burden obviously too heavy for him to carry. Guilt? she wondered. Or shame for the life she’d had to lead without him in it?
Charles Cartierri, on the other hand, looked as if he had just stepped out of Savile Row. His linen jacket fell straight from its padded shoulders, his trousers’ creases were sharp as knife blades, his hair and fingernails as perfect, as if he had come from the barber and manicurist only moments ago. To give the devil his due, his eyes were red and puffy. Either he had wept all night or he’d drowned his sorrows in a bottle of demon rum. Or whatever he was drinking these days. Uncharitable, TC mused. But, given what Esmé had told her yesterday, perhaps not unfounded.
Ian’s frown disapproved her own apparel, a frothy confection of swirling orange, yellow and hot pink. She didn’t care. These were Esmé’s favorite colors and TC wore them proudly, mourning her stepmother in her own way.
“Señorita Cartierri, I am sorry for your loss.”
Looking into the limpid pools of Colonel Mendez’s eyes, TC believed him. Of all the men in this room, this stranger seemed the most sincere in his sympathy.
“Thank you, Colonel Mendez,” she said, letting him lead her to the couch. She gratefully sank onto it and accepted a cup of coffee from Nick. “What is that?” she asked, pointing at the tape recorder on the coffee table. Lifting her gaze to Ian’s face, she willed him to explain. If Colonel Mendez intended to question her, shouldn’t she have a lawyer at her side?
“It’s a recording of your argument with Esmé,” Charles Cartierri said from across the room. His voice sounded tear-clogged and his shoulders slumped. Perhaps he had truly loved Esmé and they might have worked through their differences. Then he added, “The argument you had with her before you—before she died.”
Any sympathy she had for him shriveled. He’d always been a cold man
. No one had ever lived up to his expectations—especially not TC.
“Silencio,” Colonel Mendez ordered in a low voice that achieved his purpose. “You did not know of the recorder?”
“No.” Feeling helpless under the scrutiny of five intense men, TC could only stare at the now-silent witness to her shame. “Why…did she tape us?”
“Señor Cartierri has explained that la señora was a psychologist before they married. She sometimes took new patients and always taped her sessions.”
TC didn’t know what to say so kept silent.
“Were you aware of that, señorita?”
“I suppose I was, on a subliminal level. I know she quit her practice when she married my—when she married Charles. And I recall that she went back to it, off and on, once I started school.”
“When you traveled together, which Señor Cartierri says you did often, did your stepmother carry a recorder?”
“Not to my knowledge. Esmé always said that our time together was too precious to let work intrude.” Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She brushed them away with the backs of her hands, but accepted Colonel Mendez’s snowy white handkerchief. It smelled of sandalwood, a scent TC found so comforting she cried even harder.
“Good Lord, TC, compose yourself. You’re behaving like a fool.” Charles Cartierri looked as if he wished the earth would open and swallow her whole.
“Shut up, Charles, or I’ll throw you off the balcony,” James Foster said, drawing TC’s blurred gaze to him.
He looked more like himself now, she thought, glad to see once more the leonine tilt to his head, the lift of his shoulders. But the haze of violence in his eyes made her shiver, as did his reference to the balcony. Had he thrown Esmé to her death? But why would he? Unless… Did he know what Esmé had told her? Would he fear Esmé would disclose TC’s parentage?
Cutting off this line of inquiry, Colonel Mendez said, “You never saw a recorder in la señora’s luggage?”
