Weep No More My Lady (28 page)

—DRYDEN

DEAR CYPRESS POINT SPA GUEST,

A cheery good morning to you. I hope as you read this you are sipping one of our delicious fruit-juice eye-openers. As some of you know, all the oranges and grapefruits are specially grown for the Spa.

Have you shopped in our boutique this week? If not, you must come and see the stunning fashions we have just received for both men and women.

One-of-a-kind only, of course. Each of our guests is unique.

A health reminder. By now you may be feeling muscles you'd forgotten you had. Remember, exercise is never pain. Mild discomfort shows you are achieving the stretch. And whenever you exercise, keep your knees relaxed.

Are you looking your very best? For those tiny lines that time and life's experience trace on our face, remember, collagen, like a gentle hand, is waiting to smooth them away.

Be serene. Be tranquil. Be merry. And have a pretty day.

Baron and Baroness Helmut von Schreiber

LONG BEFORE THE FIRST RAYS OF THE SUN PROCLAIMED yet another brilliant day on the Monterey Peninsula, Ted lay awake thinking about the weeks ahead. The courtroom. The defendant's table where he would sit, feeling the eyes of the spectators on him, trying to get a sense of the impact of the testimony on the jurors. The verdict: Guilty of Murder in the Second Degree. Why Second Degree? he had asked his first lawyer. “Because in New York State, First Degree is reserved for killing a peace officer. For what it's worth, it amounts to about the same, as far as sentencing goes.” Life, he told himself. A life in prison.

At six o'clock he got up to jog. The morning was cool and clear, but it would be a hot day. Without a sense of where he wanted to run, he let his feet follow whatever roads they chose and was not surprised to find himself after forty minutes in front of his grandfather's house in Carmel. It was on the ocean block. It used to be white, but the present owners had painted it a moss green—attractive enough, but he preferred the way the white paint used to gleam in the afternoon sun. One of his earliest memories was of this beach. His mother helped him to build a castle; laughing, her dark hair swirling around her face, so happy to be here instead of New York, so grateful for the reprieve. That bloody bastard who was his father! The way he'd ridiculed her, mimicked her, hammered at her.
Why?
What gives anyone a streak of cruelty like that? Or was it simply alcohol that brought out something savage and evil in his father, until he was drinking so much that the savage streak became his personality, all there was, the bottle and the fists?
And had he inherited the same savage streak?

Ted stood on the beach, staring at the house, seeing his mother and grandmother on the porch, seeing his grandparents at his mother's funeral, hearing his grandfather say, “We should have made her leave him.”

His grandmother whispered, “She wouldn't leave him—it would have meant giving up Ted.”

Had it been his fault? he wondered as a child. He still asked himself the same question. There was still no answer.

There was someone watching him from a window. Quickly he continued to jog down the beach.

*   *   *

Bartlett and Craig were waiting in his bungalow. They'd already had breakfast. He went to the phone and ordered juice, toast, coffee. “I'll be right back,” he told them. He showered and put on shorts and a T-shirt. The tray was waiting when he came out. “Quick service here, isn't it? Min really knows how to run a spa! It would have been a good idea to franchise this place for new hotels.”

Neither man answered him. They sat at the library table watching him, seeming to know that he neither expected nor wanted comment. He swallowed the orange juice in one gulp and reached for the coffee. “I'm going to the spa for the morning,” he said. “I might as well have a decent workout. We'll leave for New York tomorrow. Craig, call an emergency board meeting for Saturday morning. I'm resigning as president and chairman of the company, and appointing you in my place.”

His expression warned Craig not to argue. He turned to Bartlett, his eyes ice-cold. “I've decided to plea-bargain, Henry. Give me the best and worst possible scenarios of what kind of sentence I can expect to get.”

ELIZABETH WAS STILL IN BED WHEN VICKY BROUGHT IN her breakfast tray. She set it down next to the bed and studied Elizabeth. “You're not feeling well.”

Elizabeth propped her pillows against the headboard and sat up. “Oh, I guess I'll survive.” She attempted a smile. “One way or another, we have to, don't we?” She reached over and picked up the vase with the single flower from the tray. “What's that you always say about carrying roses to fading flowers?”

“I don't mean you.” Vicky's angular face softened. “I was off the last two days. I just heard about Miss Samuels. What a nice lady she was. But will you tell me what she was doing in the bathhouse? She once told me just
looking
at that place gave her the creeps. She said it reminded her of a tomb. Even if she wasn't feeling well, that would be the last place she'd go . . .”

After Vicky left, Elizabeth picked up the schedule that was on the breakfast tray. She hadn't intended to go to the Spa for either treatments or exercise, but changed her mind. She was slated for a massage with Gina at ten o'clock. Employees talk. Just now Vicky had underscored her own belief that Sammy would never have gone into the bathhouse on her own. When she had arrived on Sunday and had the massage, Gina had gossiped about the financial problems of the Spa. She might be able to hear more gossip if she asked the right questions.

As long as she was going there, Elizabeth decided to go through the full schedule. The first exercise class helped her to limber up, but it was hard not to look across the room to the place in the front row where Alvirah Meehan had been the other day. She had labored so hard to bend and twist that at the end of the class she had been puffing furiously, her face bright red. “But I kept up!” she had told Elizabeth proudly.

She ran into Cheryl in the corridor leading to the facial rooms. Cheryl
was wrapped in a terry-cloth robe. Her finger-and toenails were painted a brilliant bluish-pink. Elizabeth would have passed her without speaking, but Cheryl grasped her arm. “Elizabeth, I've got to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Those poison-pen letters. Is there any chance of finding any more of them?” Without waiting for an answer, she rushed on: “Because if you
have
any more, or
find
any more, I want them analyzed, or tested, or fingerprinted, or whatever you and the world of science can do to trace them back to the sender.
I did not send them!
Got it?”

Elizabeth watched her sweep down the corridor. As Scott had commented, she
sounded
convincing. On the other hand, if she was reasonably sure that those last two letters were the only ones likely to be found, it would be the perfect attitude for her to take. How good an actress was Cheryl?

*   *   *

At ten o'clock Elizabeth was on the massage table. Gina came into the room. “Pretty big excitement around this place,” she commented.

“I would say so.”

Gina wrapped Elizabeth's hair in a plastic cap. “I know. First Miss Samuels, then Mrs. Meehan. It's crazy.” She poured cream on her hands and began to massage Elizabeth's neck. “The tension's there again. This has been a lousy time for you. I know you and Miss Samuels were close.”

It was easier not to talk about Sammy. She managed to murmur, “Yes, we were,” then asked, “Gina, did you ever have Mrs. Meehan for a treatment?”

“Sure did. Monday and Tuesday. She's some character. What happened to her?”

“They're not sure. They're trying to check her medical history.”

“I'd have thought she was sound as a dollar. A little chunky, but good skin tone, good heartbeat, good breathing. She was scared of needles, but that doesn't give anyone cardiac arrest.”

Elizabeth felt the soreness in her shoulders as Gina's fingers kneaded the tight muscles.

Gina laughed ruefully. “Do you think there was anyone in the Spa who didn't know Mrs. Meehan was having a collagen injection in treatment room C? One of the girls overheard her ask Cheryl Manning if she'd ever had collagen there. Can you imagine?”

“No, I can't. Gina, the other day you told me the Spa hasn't been the same since Leila died. I know she attracted the celebrity-watchers, but the Baron used to bring in a pretty healthy bunch of new faces every year.”

Gina poured more cream into her palms. “It's funny. About two years ago that dried up. Nobody can figure out why. He was making enough trips, but most of them were in the New York area. Remember, he used to work the charity balls in a dozen major cities, personally present the certificate for a week at the Spa to whoever came up with the winning ticket, and by the time he got finished talking, the lucky winner had three of her friends going along for the ride—as paying guests.”

“Why do you think it stopped?”

Gina lowered her voice. “He was up to something. No one could figure out what—including Min, I guess. . . . She started to travel with him a lot. She was getting plenty worried that His Royal Highness, or whatever he calls himself, had something going in New York. . . .”

Something going?
As Gina kneaded and pounded her body, Elizabeth fell silent. Was that something a play called
Merry-Go-Round?
And if so, had Min guessed the truth long ago?

TED LEFT THE SPA AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK. AFTER TWO HOURS of using the Nautilus equipment and swimming laps, he'd had a massage and then sat in one of the private open-air Jacuzzis that dotted the enclosure of the men's spa. The sun was warm; there was no breeze; a flock of cormorants drifted overhead, like a floating black cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky. Waiters were setting up for lunch service on the patio. The striped umbrellas in soft tones of lime green and yellow that shaded the tables complemented the colorful slates on the ground.

Again Ted was aware of how well the place was run.

If things were different, he'd put Min and the Baron in charge of creating a dozen Cypress Point Spas all over the world. He almost smiled. Not
completely in
charge—all the Baron's proposed expenditures would be monitored by a hawk-eyed accountant.

Bartlett had probably been on the phone with the district attorney. By now he would have some idea of the kind of sentence he might expect. It still seemed absolutely incredible. Something he had no memory of doing had forced him to become a totally different person, had forced him to lead a totally different life.

He walked slowly to his bungalow, nodding distantly to the guests who'd cut the last exercise class and were lazing by the Olympic pool. He didn't want to get into a conversation with them. He didn't want to face the discussions he would have with Henry Bartlett.

Memory. A word that haunted him. Bits and pieces. Going back up in the elevator. Being in the hall. Swaying. He'd been so goddamn drunk. And then what? Why had he blotted it out? Because he didn't want to
remember what he had done?

Prison. Confinement in a cell. It might be better to . . .

There was no one in his bungalow. That, at least, was a break. He'd expected to find them again around the library table. He should have given Bartlett this unit and taken the smaller one himself. At least then he'd have more peace. The odds were they'd be back for lunch.

Craig. He was a good detail man. The company wouldn't grow with him at the helm, but he might be able to keep it on a holding course. He should be grateful for Craig. Craig had stepped in when the plane with eight top company executives had crashed in Paris. Craig had been indispensable when Kathy and Teddy died. Craig was indispensable now. And to think . . .

How many years would he have to serve? Seven? Ten? Fifteen?

There was one more job he needed to do. He took personal stationery from his briefcase and began to write. When he had finished he sealed the envelope, rang for a maid and asked her to deliver it to Elizabeth's bungalow.

He would have preferred to wait until just before he left tomorrow; but perhaps if she knew there wouldn't be any trial, she might stay here a little longer.

*   *   *

When she returned to her bungalow at noon, Elizabeth found the note propped on the table. The sight of the envelope, white bordered in cerise, the flag colors of Winters Enterprises, with her name written in the firm, straight hand that was so familiar, made her mouth go dry. How many times in her dressing room had a note on that paper, in that handwriting, been delivered between acts?
“Hi, Elizabeth. Just got into town. How about late supper—unless you're tied up? First act was great. Love, Ted.”
They'd have supper and call Leila from the restaurant. “Watch my guy for me, Sparrow. Don't let some painted bitch try to stake him out.”

They'd both have their ears pressed to the phone. “You staked me out, Star,” Ted would say.

And she would be aware of his nearness, of his cheek grazing hers, and dig her fingers into the phone, always wishing she'd had
the courage not to see him.

She opened the envelope. She read two sentences before she let out a stifled cry and then had to wait before she could force herself to go back to finishing Ted's letter.

Dear Elizabeth,

I can only tell you that I am sorry, and that word is meaningless. You were right. The Baron heard me struggling with Leila that night. Syd saw me on the street. I told him Leila was dead. There's no use any longer in trying to pretend I wasn't there. Believe me, I have absolutely no memory of those moments, but in light of all the facts, I am going to enter a plea of guilty to manslaughter when I return to New York.