Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories (19 page)

Alvirah turned off the recorder. It certainly must have occurred to someone that when Cynthia was found guilty of murdering her stepfather, she would lose her inheritance, and Lillian would receive everything. Lillian had married somebody from New York shortly after the trial was over. She'd been divorced three times since then. So it didn't look as though Ned and she had ever had any romance going. That left only the restaurant. Who were Ned's backers? Motive for Ned to lie, she thought. Who gave him the money to open his restaurant?

Willy came in from the deck, carrying the bluefish fillets he'd prepared. “Still at it?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” Alvirah picked up one of the clippings. “Orange-red hair, chunky build, in her late forties. Would you say that description might have fit me twelve years ago?”

“Now, you know I would never call you chunky,” Willy protested.

“I didn't say you would. I'll be right back. I want to talk to Cynthia. I saw her coming in a few minutes ago.”

•  •  •

The next afternoon, after having packed Willy off on another charter fishing boat, Alvirah attached her sunburst pin to her new purple print dress and drove with Cynthia to the Mooncusser restaurant in Barnstable. Along the way Alvirah coached her. “Now remember, if he's there, point him out to me right away. I'll keep staring at him. He'll recognize you. He's bound to come over. You know what to say, don't you?”

“I do.” Was it possible? Cynthia wondered. Would Ned believe them?

The restaurant was an impressive white colonial-style building with a long, winding driveway. Alvirah took in the building, the exquisitely landscaped property that extended to the water.

“Very, very expensive,” she said to Cynthia. “He didn't start this place on a shoestring.”

The interior was decorated in Wedgwood blue-and-white. The paintings on the wall were fine ones. For twenty years—until she and Willy hit the lottery—Alvirah had cleaned every Tuesday for Mrs. Rawlings, and her house was one big museum. Mrs. Rawlings enjoyed recounting the history of each painting, how much she paid for it then and, gleefully, how much it was worth right now. Alvirah often thought that with a little practice she could probably be a tour guide at an art museum. “Observe the use of lighting, the splendid details of sunrays brightening the dust on the table.” She had the Rawlings spiel down pat.

Knowing Cynthia was nervous, Alvirah tried to distract her by telling her about Mrs. Rawlings after the maître d'hotel escorted them to a window table.

Cynthia felt a reluctant smile come to her lips as Alvirah told her that, with all her money, Mrs. Rawlings never once gave her so much as a postcard for Christmas. “Meanest, cheapest old biddy in the world, but I felt kind of sorry for her,” Alvirah said. “No one else would work for her. But when my time comes, I intend to point out to the Lord that I get a lot of Rawlings points in my plus column.”

“If this idea works, you get a lot of Lathem points in your plus column,” Cynthia said.

“You bet I do. Now don't lose that smile. You've got to look like the cat who ate the canary. Is he here?”

“I haven't seen him yet.”

“Good. When that stuffed shirt comes back with the menu, ask for him.”

The maître d' was approaching them, a professional smile on his bland face. “May I offer you a beverage?”

“Yes. Two glasses of white wine, and is Mr. Creighton here?” Cynthia asked.

“I believe he's in the kitchen speaking with the chef.”

“I'm an old friend,” Cynthia said. “Ask him to drop by when he's free.”

“Certainly.”

“You could be an actress,” Alvirah whispered, holding the menu in front of her face. She always felt that you had to be so careful, because someone might be able to read lips. “And I'm glad I made you buy that outfit this morning. What you had in your closet was hopeless.”

Cynthia was wearing a short lemon-colored linen jacket and a black linen skirt. A splashy yellow, black and white silk scarf was dramatically tied on one shoulder. Alvirah had also escorted her to the beauty parlor. Now Cynthia's collar-length hair was blown soft and loose around her face. A light beige foundation covered her abnormal paleness and returned color to her wide hazel eyes. “You're gorgeous,” Alvirah said.

Regretfully Alvirah had undergone a different metamorphosis. She'd had her Sassoon hair color changed back to its old orange-red and cut unevenly. She'd also had the tips removed from her nails and had left them unpolished. After helping Cynthia select the yellow-and-black outfit, she'd gone to the sale rack, where for very good reasons the purple print she was wearing had been reduced to ten dollars. The fact that it was a size too small for her accentuated the bulges that Willy always explained were only nature's way of padding us for the last big fall.

When Cynthia had protested the desecration of her nails and hairdo, Alvirah simply said, “Every time you talked about that woman, the missing witness, you said she was chunky, had dyed red hair and was dressed like someone who shopped from a pushcart. I've got to be believable.”

“I said her outfit looked inexpensive,” Cynthia corrected.

“Same thing.”

Now Alvirah watched as Cynthia's smile faded. “He's coming?” she asked quickly.

Cynthia nodded.

“Smile at me. Come on. Relax. Don't show him you're nervous.”

Cynthia rewarded her with a warm smile and leaned her elbows lightly on the table.

A man was standing over them. Beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead. He moistened his lips. “Cynthia, how good to see you.” He reached for her hand.

Alvirah studied him intently. Not bad-looking in a weak kind of way. Narrow eyes almost lost in puffy flesh. He was a good twenty pounds heavier than in the pictures in the files. One of the kind who are handsome as kids and after that it's all downhill, Alvirah decided.

“Is it good to see me, Ned?” Cynthia asked, still smiling.

“That's him,” Alvirah announced emphatically. “I'm absolutely sure. He was ahead of me on line in the hamburger joint. I noticed
him 'cause he was sore as hell that the kids in front were hemming and hawing about what they wanted on their burgers.”

“What are you talking about?” Ned Creighton demanded.

“Why don't you sit down, Ned?” Cynthia said. “I know this is your place, but I still feel as though I should entertain you. After all, you did buy me dinner one night years ago.”

Good girl, Alvirah thought. “I'm absolutely sure it was you that night, even though you've put on weight,” she snapped indignantly to Creighton. “It's a crying shame that because of your lies this girl had to spend twelve years of her life in prison.”

The smile vanished from Cynthia's face.

“Twelve years, six months and ten days,” she corrected. “All my twenties, when I should have been finishing college, getting my first job, dating.”

Ned Creighton's face hardened. “You're bluffing. This is a cheap trick.”

The waiter arrived with two glasses of wine and placed them before Cynthia and Alvirah. “Mr. Creighton?”

Creighton glared at him. “Nothing.”

“This is really a lovely place, Ned,” Cynthia said quietly. “An awful lot of money must have gone into it. Where did you get it? From Lillian? My share of Stuart Richards's estate was nearly ten million dollars. How much did she give you?” She did not wait for an answer. “Ned, this woman is the witness I could never find. She remembers talking to me that night. Nobody believed me when I told them about a woman slamming her car door against the side of your car. But she remembers doing it. And she remembers seeing you very well. All her life she's kept a daily diary. That night she wrote about what happened in the parking lot.”

As she kept nodding her head in agreement, Alvirah studied Ned's face. He's getting rattled, she thought, but he's not convinced. It was time for her to take over. “I left the Cape the very next day,” she said.
“I live in Arizona. My husband was sick, real sick. That's why we never did come back. I lost him last year.” Sorry, Willy, she thought, but this is important. “Then last week I was watching television, and you know how boring television usually is in the summer. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw a rerun of that show about women in prison and then my own picture right there on the screen.”

Cynthia reached for the envelope she had placed beside her chair. “This is the picture I drew of the woman I'd spoken to in the parking lot.”

Ned Creighton reached for it.

“I'll hold it,” Cynthia said.

The sketch showed a woman's face framed by an open car window. The features were shadowy and the background was dark, but the likeness to Alvirah was astonishing.

Cynthia pushed back her chair. Alvirah rose with her.

“You can't give me back twelve years. I know what you're thinking. Even with this proof a jury might not believe me. They didn't believe me twelve years ago. But they might, just might, now. And I don't think you should take that chance, Ned. I think you'd better talk it over with whoever paid you to set me up that night and tell them that I want ten million dollars. That's my rightful share of Stuart's estate.”

“You're crazy.” Anger had driven the fear from Ned Creighton's face.

“Am I? I don't think so.” Cynthia reached into her pocket. “Here's my address and phone number. Alvirah is staying with me. Call me by seven tonight. If I don't hear from you, I'm hiring a lawyer and getting my case reopened.” She threw a ten-dollar bill on the table. “That should pay for the wine. Now we're even for that dinner you bought me.”

She walked rapidly from the restaurant, Alvirah a step behind her.
Alvirah was aware of the buzz from diners at the other tables. They know something's up, she thought. Good.

•  •  •

She and Cynthia did not speak until they were in the car. Then Cynthia asked shakily, “How was I?”

“Great.”

“Alvirah, it just won't work. If they check the sketch that Jeff showed on the program, they'll see all the details I added to make it look like you.”

“They haven't got time to do that. Are you sure you saw your stepsister yesterday at the Richards house?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then my guess is that Ned Creighton is talking to her right now.”

Cynthia drove automatically, not seeing the sunny brightness of the afternoon. “Stuart was despised by a lot of people. Why are you so sure Lillian is involved?”

Alvirah unfastened the zipper on the purple print.

“This dress is so tight I swear I'm going to choke.” Ruefully she ran her hand through her erratically chopped hair. “It'll take an army of Sassoons to put me back together after this. I guess I'll have to go back to Cypress Point Spa. What did you ask? Oh, Lillian. She has to be involved. Look at it this way. Your stepfather had a lot of people who hated his guts, but they wouldn't need a Ned Creighton to set you up. Lillian always knew her father was leaving half his money to Dartmouth College. Right?”

“Yes.” Cynthia turned down the road that led to the cottages.

“I don't care how many people might have hated your stepfather, Lillian was the only one who
benefited
by you being set up to be found guilty of his murder. She knew Ned. Ned was trying to raise money to open a restaurant. Her father must have told her he was
leaving half his fortune to you instead of Dartmouth. She always hated you. You told me that. So she makes a deal with Ned. He takes you out on his boat and pretends that it breaks down. Somebody kills Stuart Richards. Lillian had an alibi. She was in New York. She probably hired someone to kill her father. You almost spoiled everything that night by insisting on having a hamburger. And Ned didn't know you'd spoken to anyone. They must have been plenty scared that witness would show up.”

“Suppose someone recognized him that night and said they'd seen him buying the burger?”

“In that case he'd have said that he went out on his boat and stopped afterward for a hamburger, and you were so desperate for an alibi you begged him to say you were with him. But no one came forward.”

“It sounds so risky,” Cynthia protested.

“Not risky. Simple,” Alvirah corrected. “Buh-lieve me, I've studied up on this a lot. You'd be amazed in how many cases the one who commits the murder is the chief mourner at the funeral. It's a fact.”

They had arrived back at the cottages. “What now?” Cynthia asked.

“Now we go to your place and wait for your stepsister to phone.” Alvirah shook her head at Cynthia. “You still don't believe me. Wait and see. I'll make us a nice cup of tea. It's too bad Creighton showed up before we had lunch. That was a good menu.”

They were eating tuna salad sandwiches on the deck of Cynthia's cottage when the phone rang.

“Lillian for you,” Alvirah said. She followed Cynthia into the kitchen as Cynthia answered the call.

“Hello.” Cynthia's voice was almost a whisper. Alvirah watched as the color drained from her face. “Hello, Lillian.”

Alvirah squeezed Cynthia's arm and nodded her head vigorously.
“Yes, Lillian, I just saw Ned. . . . No, I'm not joking. I don't see anything funny about this. . . . Yes. I'll come over tonight. Don't bother about dinner. Your presence has a way of making my throat close. And, Lillian, I told Ned what I want. I won't change my mind.”

Cynthia hung up and sank into a chair. “Alvirah, Lillian said that my accusation was ridiculous but that she knows her father could drive anyone to the point of losing control. She's smart.”

“That doesn't help us clear your name. I'll give you my sunburst pin so you can record the conversation. You've got to get her to admit that you had absolutely nothing to do with the murder, that she set Ned up to trap you. What time did you tell her you'd go over to her house?”