Weep No More My Lady (26 page)

To ensure absolute privacy, the note said, patients entered the treatment rooms by the individual outside doors. Alvirah was to go to treatment room C at three P.M. and settle herself on the table. In view of the fact that Mrs. Meehan had an aversion to needles, she would be given a special-strength Valium and allowed to rest until three thirty, at which time Dr. von Schreiber would perform the treatment. She would continue to rest for an additional half-hour to allow the Valium to wear off.

*   *   *

The flowering hedges were over six feet high, and walking between them made her feel like a young girl in a bower. The day had become really warm, but in here the hedges held moisture, and the azaleas made her think of her own azalea plants in front of the house. They'd been really pretty last spring.

She was at the treatment-room door. It was painted a pale blue, and a tiny gold
C
confirmed that she was in the right place. Hesitantly, she turned the handle and went in.

The room looked like a lady's boudoir. It had flowered wallpaper and a pale green carpet, a little dressing table and a love seat. The treatment table was made up like a bed, with sheets that matched the wallpaper, a pale pink comforter and a lace-edged pillow. On the closet door was a gilt-framed mirror with beveled edges. Only the presence of a cabinet with medical supplies suggested the real purpose of the room, and even that was finished in white wood with leaded glass doors.

Alvirah removed her sandals and placed them, neatly, side by side under the table. She had a size nine foot and didn't want the doctor tripping when he was giving the collagen injections. She lay down on the table, pulled up the comforter and closed her eyes.

They sprang open a moment later when the nurse came in. She was Regina Owens, the chief assistant, the one who had taken her medical history. “Don't look so worried,” Miss Owens said. Alvirah liked her. She reminded her of one of the women whose houses she cleaned. She was about forty, with dark short hair, nice wide eyes and a pleasant smile.

She brought a glass of water and a couple of pills to Alvirah. “These will make you feel nice and drowsy, and you won't even know you're getting made gorgeous.”

Obediently Alvirah put them into her mouth and swallowed the water. “I feel like a baby,” she apologized.

“Not at all. You'd be amazed how many people are terrified of needles.” Miss Owens came behind her and began massaging her temples. “You
are
tense. Now, I'm going to put a nice, cool cloth over your eyes and you just let yourself drift off to sleep. The doctor and I will be back in about a half-hour. By then you probably won't even know we're here.”

Alvirah felt the strong fingers press against her temples. “That feels good,” she murmured

“I'll bet it does.” For a few minutes Miss Owens continued to knead Alvirah's forehead, the back of her neck. Alvirah felt herself drifting into a pleasantly dreamy state. Then a cool cloth was placed over her eyes. She barely heard the click of the door when Miss Owens tiptoed out.

There were so many thoughts running through her head, like loose threads that she couldn't quite pull together.

A butterfly floating on a cloud . . .

She was beginning to remember why that seemed familiar. It was almost there.

“Can you hear me, Mrs. Meehan?”

She hadn't realized that Baron von Schreiber had come in. His voice sounded low and a little hoarse. She hoped the microphone would pick it up. She wanted everything on record.

“Yes.” Her own voice sounded far away.

“Don't be afraid. You'll barely feel a pinprick.”

He was right. She felt hardly anything, just a tiny sensation like a mosquito bite. And to think, she'd been worried! She waited. The doctor had told her he'd be injecting the collagen in ten or twelve spots on each side of her mouth. What was he waiting for?

It was getting hard to breathe. She
couldn't
breathe. “Help!” she cried, but the word wouldn't come out. She opened her mouth, gasping desperately. She was slipping away. Her arms, her chest, nothing moved. Oh, God, help me, help me, she thought.

Then darkness overcame her as the door opened and Nurse Owens said briskly, “Well, here we are, Mrs. Meehan. All set for your beauty treatment?”

WHAT DOES IT PROVE? ELIZABETH ASKED HERSELF AS SHE walked from the main house along the path to the clinic. If Helmut wrote that play, he must be going through hell. The author had put one million dollars into the production. That was why Min was calling Switzerland. Her nest egg in a numbered account was a standing joke. “I'll never be broke,” she had always bragged.

Min had wanted Ted acquitted so that she could license Cypress Point Spas in all his new hotels. Helmut had a much more compelling reason. If he was “Clayton Anderson,” he knew that even the nest egg was gone.

She would force him to tell her the truth, Elizabeth decided.

The foyer of the clinic was hushed and quiet, but the receptionist was not at her desk. From down the hall, Elizabeth heard running feet, raised voices. She hurried toward the sounds. Doors were open on the corridor as guests in the process of treatment peeked out. The room at the end of the hall was open. It was from there that the sounds were coming.

Room C. Dear God, that was where Mrs. Meehan was going to have the collagen treatment. There wasn't anyone in the Spa who hadn't heard about it. Had something gone wrong? Elizabeth almost collided with a nurse coming out of the room.

“You can't go in there!” The nurse was trembling.

Elizabeth pushed her aside.

Helmut was bent over the treatment table. He was compressing Alvirah Meehan's chest. An oxygen mask was on Alvirah's face. The noise of a respirator dominated the room. The coverlet had been pulled back; her robe was crumpled under her, the incongruous sunburst pin gleaming upward. As Elizabeth watched, too horrified to speak, a nurse handed Helmut a needle. He attached it to tubing and started an intravenous in Alvirah's arm. A male nurse took over compressing her chest.

From the distance Elizabeth could hear the wail of an ambulance siren
screeching through the gates of the Spa.

It was four fifteen when Scott was notified that Alvirah Meehan, the forty-million-dollar lottery winner, was in the Monterey Peninsula hospital, a possible victim of an attempted homicide. The deputy who phoned had responded to the emergency call and accompanied the ambulance to the Spa. The attendants suspected foul play, and the emergency-room doctor agreed with them. Dr. von Schreiber claimed that she had not yet received a collagen treatment; but a drop of blood on her face seemed to indicate a very recent injection.

Alvirah Meehan! Scott rubbed his hands over suddenly weary eyes. That woman was bright. He thought of her comments at dinner. She was like the child in the fable
The Emperor's New Clothes
who says, “But he has no clothes on!”

Why would anyone want to hurt Alvirah Meehan? Scott had hoped she wouldn't get caught up with charlatans trying to invest her money for her, but the thought that anyone might deliberately try to kill her was incredible. “I'll be right there,” he said as he slammed down the phone.

The waiting room of the community hospital was open and pleasant, with greenery and an indoor pond, not unlike the lobby of a small hotel. He never saw it without remembering the hours he had sat here, when Jeanie was a patient . . .

He was informed that the doctors were working on Mrs. Meehan, that Dr. Whitley would be available to see him shortly. Elizabeth came in while he was waiting.

“How is she?”

“I don't know.”

“She shouldn't have had those injections. She really
was
afraid. She had a heart attack, didn't she?”

“We don't know yet. How did you get here?”

“Min. We came in her car. She's parking it now. Helmut rode in the ambulance with Mrs. Meehan. This can't be happening.” Her voice rose. People in nearby chairs turned to stare at her.

Scott forced her to sit on the sofa beside him. “Elizabeth, get hold of yourself. You only met Mrs. Meehan a few days ago. You can't let yourself get this upset.”

“Where's Helmut?” Min's voice, coming from behind them, was as flat as though there were no emotion left in her. She too seemed to be in a
state of disbelief and shock. She came around the couch and sank into the chair facing them. “He must be so distraught . . .” She broke off. “Here he is.”

To Scott's practiced eye, the Baron looked as though he had seen a ghost. He was still wearing the exquisitely tailored blue smock that was his surgical costume. He sank heavily into the chair beside Min and groped for her hand. “She is in a coma. They say she had some sort of injection. Min, it is impossible, I swear to you, impossible.”

“Stay here.” Scott's look included the three of them. From the long corridor that led to the emergency area, he had seen the chief of the hospital beckon to him.

*   *   *

They spoke in the private office. “She was injected with something that brought on shock,” Dr. Whitley said flatly. He was a tall, lean sixty-three-year-old whose usual expression was affable and sympathetic. Now it was steely, and Scott remembered that his longtime friend had been an Army fighter pilot in World War II.

“Will she live?”

“Absolutely impossible to say. She's in a coma which may become irreversible. She tried to say something before she went totally under.”

“What was it?”

“It sounded like ‘voy.' That's as much as she got out.”

“That's no help. What does the Baron have to say? Does he have any idea how this could have happened?”

“We didn't let him near her, Scott, frankly.”

“I gather you don't think much of the good doctor?”

“I have no reason to doubt his medical capabilities. But there's something about him that shouts ‘phony' at me every time I see him. And if
he
didn't inject Mrs. Meehan, then who the hell did?”

Scott pushed back his chair. “That's just what I intend to find out.”

As he left the office, Whitley called him back. “Scott, something that might help us—could someone check Mrs. Meehan's rooms and bring in any medication she may have been taking? Until we reach her husband and get her medical history, we don't know what we may be dealing with.”

“I'll take care of it myself.”

Elizabeth drove back to the Spa with Scott. On the way he told her
about finding the shred of paper in Cheryl's bungalow. “Then she did write those letters!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

Scott shook his head. “I know it sounds crazy, and I know Cheryl can lie as easily as most of us can breathe, but I've been thinking about this all day, and my gut feeling is she's telling the truth.”

“What about Syd? Did you talk to him?”

“Not yet. She's bound to tell him she admitted that she stole the letter and that he tore it up. I decided to let him stew before I question him. That sometimes works. But I'm telling you, I'm inclined to believe her story.”

“But if
she
didn't write the letters, who did?”

Scott shot a glance at her. “I don't know.” He paused, then said, “What I mean is, I don't know
yet.
”

*   *   *

Min and the Baron followed Scott's car in her convertible. Min drove. “The only way I can help you is to know the truth,” she told her husband. “Did you do something to that woman?”

The Baron lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. His china-blue eyes watered. The reddish tint in his hair seemed brassy under the late-afternoon sun. The top of the convertible was down. A cool land breeze had dispelled the last of the daytime warmth. A sense of autumn was in the air.

“Minna, what crazy talk is that? I went into the room. She wasn't breathing. I saved her life. What reason would I have to hurt her?”

“Helmut, who is Clayton Anderson?”

He dropped the cigarette. It fell on the leather seat beside him. Min reached over and picked it up. “You'd better not ruin this car. There won't be a replacement. I repeat: Who is Clayton Anderson?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he whispered.

“Oh, I think you do. Elizabeth came to see me. She read the play. That's why you were so upset this morning, isn't it? It wasn't the appointment book. It was the
play.
Leila had made notes in the margin. She picked up that idiotic phrase you use in the ads. Elizabeth caught it too. So did Mrs. Meehan. She saw one of the previews. That's why you tried to kill her, isn't it? You were still hoping to conceal the fact
you
wrote that play.”

“Minna, I am telling you—you are
crazy!
For all we know that woman was self-injecting.”

“That's nonsense. She talked constantly about her fear of needles.”

“That could have been a cover-up.”

“The playwright put over a million dollars in that play. If you
are
that playwright, where would you have gotten the money?”

They were at the gates of the Spa. Min slowed down and glanced at him, unsmiling. “I tried to phone Switzerland to check on my balance. Of course, it was after business hours there. I will call tomorrow, Helmut. I hope—for your sake—that money is in my account.”

His expression was as bland as ever, but his eyes were those of a man about to be hanged.

*   *   *

They met on the porch of Alvirah Meehan's bungalow. The Baron opened the door and they went in. Scott saw that Min had clearly taken advantage of Alvirah's naivete. This was the most expensive of their accommodations-the rooms the First Lady used when she saw fit to seek R-and-R at the Spa. There were a living room, a dining room, a library, a huge master bedroom, two full baths on the first floor.
You sure socked it to her,
Scott thought.