Weep No More My Lady (11 page)

At six o'clock she got out of bed, pulled up the shade, then huddled back under the light covers. It was chilly, but she loved to watch the sun come up. It seemed to her that the early morning had a dreamy quality of its own, the human quiet was so absolute. The only sounds came from the seabirds along the shore.

At six thirty there was a tap on the door. Vicky, the maid who brought in the wake-up glass of juice, had been with the Spa for years. She was a sturdy sixty-year-old woman who supplemented her husband's pension by what she sardonically called “carrying breakfast roses to fading blossoms.” They greeted each other with the warmth of old friends.

“It feels strange to be on the guest end of the place,” Elizabeth commented.

“You earned your right to be here. I saw you in
Hilltop.
You're a damn good actress.”

“I still feel surer of myself teaching water aerobics.”

“And Princess Di can always get a job teaching kindergarten. Come off it.”

She deliberately waited until she was sure that the daily procession called The Cypress Hike was in progress. By the time she went out, the marchers, led by Min and the Baron, were already nearing the path that led to the coast. The hike took in the Spa property, the Crocker wooded preserve and Cypress Point, wound past the Pebble Beach golf course,
circled the Lodge and backtracked to the Spa. In all, it was a brisk fifty-minute exercise, followed by breakfast.

Elizabeth waited until the hikers were out of sight before she began jogging in the opposite direction from them. It was still early, and traffic was light. She would have preferred to run along the coast, where she could have an unbroken view of the ocean, but that would have meant risking being noticed by the others.

If only Sammy were back, she thought as she began to quicken her pace. I could talk to her and be on a plane this afternoon. She wanted to get away from here. If Alvirah Meehan was to be believed, Cheryl had called Leila a “washed-up drunk” last night. And except for Ted, her murderer, everyone else had laughed.

Min, Helmut, Syd, Cheryl, Craig, Ted. The people who had been closest to Leila; the weeping mourners at her memorial service. Oh, Leila! Elizabeth thought. Incongruously, lines from a song she had learned as a child came back to her.

Though all the world betray thee,

One sword at least thy rights shall guard,

One faithful heart shall praise thee.

I'll sing your praises, Leila! Tears stung her eyes, and she dabbed at them impatiently. She began to jog faster, as if to outrun her thoughts. The early-morning mist was being burned away by the sun; the thick shrubbery that bordered the homes along the road was bathed in morning dew; the sea gulls arced overhead and swooped back to the shore. How accurate a witness was Alvirah Meehan? There was something oddly intense about the woman, something that went beyond her excitement at being here.

She was passing the Pebble Beach golf links. Early golfers were already on the course. She had taken up golf in college. Leila had never played. She used to tell Ted that someday she'd make time to learn. She never would have, Elizabeth thought, and a smile touched her lips; Leila was too impatient to traipse after a ball for four or five hours. . . .

Her breath was coming in gulps, and she slowed her pace. I'm out of shape, she thought. Today she would go to the women's spa and take a full schedule of exercises and treatments. It would be a useful way to pass the time. She turned down the road that led back to the Spa—and collided with Ted.

He grasped her arms to keep her from falling. Gasping at the force of
the impact, she struggled to push him away from her. “Let go of me.” Her voice rose.
“I said, let go of me.”
She was aware that there was no one else on the road. He was perspiring, his T-shirt clinging to his body. The expensive watch Leila had given him glistened in the sun.

He released her. Stunned and frightened, she watched as he stared down at her, his expression inscrutable. “Elizabeth, I've got to talk to you.”

He wasn't even going to pretend he hadn't planned this.

“Say what you have to say in court.” She tried to pass him, but he blocked her way. Inadvertently she stepped back. Was this what Leila had felt at the end: this sense of being trapped?

“I said listen to me.” It seemed that he had sensed her fear and was infuriated by it.

“Elizabeth, you haven't given me a chance. I know how it looks. Maybe—and this is something I just don't know—
maybe
you're right, and I went back upstairs. I
was
drunk and angry, but I was also terribly worried about Leila. Elizabeth, think about this: if you are right, if I did go back up, if that woman is right who says she saw me struggling with Leila, won't you at least grant that I might have been trying to
save
her? You know how depressed Leila was that day. She was almost out of her mind.”

“If
you went back upstairs. Are you telling me now that you're willing to concede you went back upstairs?” Elizabeth felt as though her lungs were closing. The air seemed suddenly humid and heavy with the scent of still-damp cypress leaves and moist earth. Ted was just over six feet tall, but the three-inch difference in their heights seemed to disappear as they stared at each other. She was aware again of the intensity of the lines that seared the skin around his eyes and mouth.

“Elizabeth, I know how you must feel about me, but there is something you
have
to understand. I don't remember what happened that night. I was so damn drunk; so damn upset. Over these months I've begun to have some vague impression of being at the door of Leila's apartment, of pushing it open. So maybe you're right, maybe you
did
hear me call something to her.
But I have absolutely no memory beyond that!
That is the truth as I know it. The next question: do you think, drunk or sober, that I'm capable of murder?”

His dark blue eyes were clouded with pain. He bit his lip and held his
hands out imploringly. “Well, Elizabeth?”

In a quick move she darted around him and ran for the gates of the Spa. The district attorney had predicted this. If Ted didn't think he could lie his way out of being on the terrace with Leila, he would say he was trying to save her.

She didn't look back until she was at the gates. Ted had not attempted to follow her. He was standing where she had left him, staring after her, his hands on his hips.

Her arms were still burning from the force with which his hands had grabbed her. She remembered something else the district attorney had told her.

Without her as a witness, Ted would go free.

AT EIGHT A.M., DORA “SAMMY” SAMUELS BACKED HER car out of her cousin Elsie's driveway and with a sigh of relief began the drive from the Napa Valley to the Monterey Peninsula. With any luck, she'd be there about two o'clock. Originally she'd planned to leave in the late afternoon, and Elsie had been openly annoyed that she'd changed her mind, but she was eager to get back to the Spa and go through the rest of the mailbags.

She was a wiry seventy-one-year-old woman with steel-gray hair pulled back in a neat bun. Old-fashioned rimless glasses sat on the bridge of her small, straight nose. It had been a year and a half since an aneurism had nearly killed her, and the massive surgery had left her with a permanent air of fragility, but until now she had always impatiently shaken off any talk of retirement.

It had been a disquieting weekend. Her cousin had always disapproved of Dora's job with Leila. “Answering fan mail from vapid women” was the way she put it. “I should think with your brains, you'd find a better way to spend your time. Why don't you do volunteer teaching?”

Long ago, Dora had given up trying to explain to Elsie that after thirty-five years of teaching, she never wanted to see a textbook again, that the eight years she'd worked for Leila had been the most exciting of her own uneventful life.

This weekend had been particularly trying, because when Elsie saw her going through the sack of fan mail, she'd been astonished. “You mean to tell me that seventeen months after that woman died, you're
still
writing to her fans? Are you crazy?”

No, she wasn't, Dora told herself as she drove well within the speed limit through the wine country. It was a hot, lazy day, but even so, busloads of sightseers were already passing her, heading for vineyard tours and wine-tasting parties.

She had not tried to explain to Elsie that sending personal notes to the people who had loved Leila was a way of assuaging her own sense of loss. She had also
not
told her cousin the reason why she had brought up the heavy sack of mail. She was searching to see if Leila had received other poison-pen letters than the one she had already found.

That one had been mailed three days before Leila died. The address on the envelope and the enclosed note were put together with words and phrases snipped from magazines and newspapers. It read:

Thinking of that note, of the others that must have preceded it, brought a fresh burst of outrage. Leila, Leila, she whispered. Who would
do
that to you?

She of all people had understood Leila's terrible vulnerability, understood that her outward confidence, her flamboyant public image was the facade of a deeply insecure woman.

She remembered how Elizabeth had gone off to school just at the time she'd started working for Leila. She'd seen Leila come back from the airport, lonely, devastated, in tears. “God, Sammy,” she said. “I can't believe I may not see Sparrow for months. But a Swiss boarding school! Won't that be a great experience for her? A big difference from Lumber Creek High, my alma mater.” Then she said hesitantly, “Sammy, I'm not doing anything tonight. Will you stay, and let's get something to eat?”

The years went by so quickly, Dora thought as another bus honked impatiently and passed her. Today, for some reason, the memory of Leila
seemed particularly vivid to her: Leila with her wild extravagances, spending money as fast as she made it; Leila's two marriages. . . . Dora had begged her not to marry the second one.
“Haven't you learned your lesson yet?” she pleaded. “You can't afford another leech.”

Leila with her arms hugging her knees. “Sammy, he's not that bad. He makes me laugh, and that's a plus.”

“If you want to laugh, hire a clown.”

Leila's fierce hug. “Oh, Sammy, promise you'll always say it straight. You're probably right, but I guess I'll go through with it.”

Getting rid of the funnyman had cost her two million dollars.

Leila with Ted. “Sammy, it can't last. Nobody's that wonderful. What does he see in me?”

“Are you crazy? Have you stopped looking in the mirror?”

Leila, always so apprehensive when she started a new film.” Sammy, I stink in this part. Shouldn't have taken it. It's not me.”

“Come off it. I saw the dailies too. You're wonderful.”

She'd won the Oscar for that performance.

But in those last few years she had been miscast in three films. Her worry about her career became an obsession. Her love for Ted was equaled only by her fear of losing him. And then Syd had brought her the play. “Sammy, I swear I don't have to act in this one. I just have to be me. I love it.”

Then it was over, Dora thought. In the end, each of us left her alone. I was sick, she told herself; Elizabeth was touring with her own play; Ted was constantly away on business. And someone who knew Leila well attacked her with those poison-pen letters, shattered that fragile ego, precipitated the drinking. . . .

Dora realized that her hands were trembling. She scanned the road for signs of a restaurant. Perhaps she would feel better if she stopped for a cup of tea. When she got to the Spa, she would begin going through the rest of the unopened mail.

She knew that Elizabeth would somehow find a way to trace the poison-pen mail back to its sender.

WHEN ELIZABETH REACHED HER BUNGALOW, SHE FOUND A note from Min pinned with her schedule to the terrycloth robe folded on the bed. It read:

My dear Elizabeth,

I do hope that while you are here you will enjoy a day of treatment and exercise at the Spa.

As you know, it is necessary that all new guests consult briefly with Helmut before beginning any activities. I have scheduled you for his first appointment.

Please know that your ultimate happiness and well-being are very important to me.

The letter had been written in Min's florid, sweeping penmanship. Quickly, Elizabeth scanned her schedule. Interview with Dr. Helmut von Schreiber at 8:45; aerobic dance class at 9; massage at 9:30; trampoline at 10; advanced water aerobics at 10:30—that had been the class she taught when she worked here; facial at 11; cypress curves 11:30; herbal wrap at noon. The afternoon schedule included a loofah, a manicure, a yoga class, a pedicure, two more water exercises . . .