Weep No More My Lady (31 page)

“I don't think you can make either one stick, no.”

“So that means even if we can make a stab at figuring who would want those women dead—and have the guts to attempt to kill them at a place like the Spa—we still may not be able to prove anything.”

“That's more your line of work than mine, but I'd agree.”

Scott had one parting question: “Mrs. Meehan has been trying to talk.
She finally came out with a single word—
'voices.'
Is it likely that someone in her condition is really trying to communicate something that makes sense?”

Whitley shrugged. “My impression is that her coma is still too deep to be certain as to her recall. But I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.”

*   *   *

Again Scott conferred with Willy Meehan in the corridor. Alvirah was planning to write a series of articles. The editor of the
New York Globe
had told her to get all the inside information she could on celebrities. Scott remembered her endless questions the night he had been at the Spa for dinner. He wondered what Alvirah might unwittingly have learned. At least it gave some reason for the attack on her—if there had been an attack. And it explained the expensive recording equipment in her suitcase.

He was scheduled to meet with the mayor of Carmel at five o'clock. On his two-way car radio, he learned that Elizabeth had phoned him twice. The second call was urgent.

Some instinct made him cancel his appointment with the mayor for the second time in two days and go directly to the Spa.

*   *   *

Through the picture window, he could see Elizabeth on the phone. He waited until she put the receiver down before he knocked. In the thirty-second interval, he had a chance to study her. The afternoon sun was sending slanted rays into the room which created shadows on her face and revealed the high cheekbones, the wide, sensitive mouth, the luminous eyes. If I were a sculptor, I'd want her to model for me, he thought. She has an elegance that goes beyond beauty.

Eventually she would have surpassed Leila.

Elizabeth turned the tapes over to him. She indicated the writing pad with its lines of notations. “Do me a favor, Scott,” she asked him. “Listen to these tapes very, very carefully. This one”—she indicated the cassette she had taken from the sunburst pin—”is going to shock you. Play it over and see if you don't catch what I think I've heard.”

Now there was a determined thrust to her jaw, a glitter in her eyes. “Elizabeth, what are you up to?” he asked.

“Something that I have to do—that
only
I can do.”

Despite Scott's increasingly stern demands for an explanation, she would not tell him more. He did remember to tell her that Alvirah Meehan had managed to utter one word. “Does ‘voices' suggest anything to you?”

Elizabeth's smile was enigmatic.

“You bet it does,” she said grimly.

TED HAD BOLTED FROM THE SPA GROUNDS IN EARLY afternoon. By five o'clock he had still not returned. Henry Bartlett was visibly chafing to go back to New York. “We came here to prepare Ted's defense,” he said. “I hope he realized his trial is scheduled to start in five days. If he won't meet with me, I'm not doing any good sitting around here.”

The phone rang. Craig jumped to answer it. “Elizabeth. What a nice surprise. . . . Yes, it's true. I'd like to think we can still persuade the district attorney to accept a plea, but that's pretty unrealistic. . . . We hadn't talked about dinner yet, but of course it would be good to be with you. . . . Oh, that! I don't know. It just didn't seem funny anymore. And it always annoyed Ted. Fine. . . . See you at dinner.”

*   *   *

Scott drove home with the windows of the car open, appreciating the cool breeze that had begun to blow in from the ocean. It felt good, but he could not shake the sense of apprehension that was overcoming him. Elizabeth was up to something, and every instinct told him that whatever it was, it might be dangerous.

A faint mist was setting in along the shoreline of Pacific Grove. It would develop into a heavy fog later on. He turned the corner and pulled into the driveway of a pleasant narrow house a block from the ocean. For six years now he had been coming home to this empty place and never once not felt that moment of nostalgia that Jeanie was no longer here waiting for him. He used to talk cases through with her. Tonight he would have asked her some hypothetical questions. Would you say that there is a connection between Dora Samuels' death and Alvirah Meehan's coma? Another question jumped into his mind. Would you say that there is a connection between those two women and Leila's death?

And finally: Jeanie, what the hell is Elizabeth up to?

To clear his head, Scott showered, changed into old slacks and a sweater. He made a pot of coffee and put a hamburger on the grill. When he was ready to eat, he turned on the first of Alvirah's tapes.

He began listening at quarter of five. At six o'clock, his notebook, like Elizabeth's, was filled with jottings. At quarter of seven, he heard the tape that documented the attack on Alvirah. “That son of a bitch, Von Schreiber!” he muttered. He
did
inject her with something. But with what? Suppose he had started the collagen and seen her go into some sort of attack? He had returned almost immediately with the nurse.

Scott replayed the tape, then played it a third time and finally realized what Elizabeth had wanted him to hear. There was something odd about the Baron's voice the first time he spoke to Mrs. Meehan. It was hoarse, guttural, startlingly different from his voice a moment or two later, when he was shouting orders to the nurse.

He phoned the hospital and asked for Dr. Whitley. He had one question for him. “Do you think an injection that drew blood is the kind that a doctor would have administered?”

“I've seen some sloppy injections given by topflight surgeons. And if a doctor gave the shot that was meant to harm Mrs. Meehan—he may have had the grace to be nervous.”

“Thanks, John.”

“Don't mention it.”

*   *   *

He was reheating the coffee when his bell rang. In quick strides he reached the door, flung it open to face Ted Winters.

His clothes were rumpled, his face smudged with dirt, his hair matted; vivid, fresh scratches covered his arms and legs. He stumbled forward and would have fallen if Scott had not reached out to grasp him.

“Scott, you've got to help me. Somebody's got to help me. It's a trap, I swear it is. Scott, I tried for hours and I couldn't do it. I couldn't make myself do it.”

“Easy . . . easy.” Scott put his arm around Ted and guided him to the couch. “You're ready to pass out.” He poured a generous amount of brandy into a tumbler. “Come on, drink this.”

After a few sips, Ted ran his hand over his face, as if trying to erase the naked panic he had shown. His attempt at a smile was a wan failure, and he slumped with weariness. He looked young, vulnerable, totally unlike
the sophisticated head of a multimillion-dollar corporation. Twenty-five years vanished, and Scott felt that he was looking at the nine-year-old boy who used to go fishing with him.

“Have you eaten today?” he asked.

“Not that I remember.”

“Then sip that brandy slowly, and I'll get you a sandwich and coffee.”

He waited until Ted had finished the sandwich before he said, “All right, you'd better tell me all about it.”

“Scott, I don't know what's happening, but I
do
know this: I could not have killed Leila the way they're trying to say I did. I don't care how many witnesses come out of the woodwork—something is wrong.”

He leaned forward. Now his eyes were pleading.

“Scott, you remember how terrified Mother was of heights?”

“She had good cause to be. That bastard of a father of yours—”

Ted interrupted him. “He was disgusted because he could see that I was developing that same phobia. One day when I was about eight, he made her stand out on the terrace of the penthouse and look down. She began to cry. She said, ‘Come on, Teddy,' and we started to go inside. He grabbed her and picked her up, and that son of a bitch held her over the railing. It was thirty-eight floors up. She was screaming, begging. I was clawing at him. He didn't pull her in until she'd fainted. Then he just dropped her on the terrace floor and said to me, ‘If I ever see you look frightened out here, I'll do the same thing to you.'”

Ted swallowed. His voice broke. “This new eyewitness says I did that to Leila. Today I tried to make myself walk down the cliffs at Point Sur.
I couldn't do it!
I couldn't make my legs go to the edge.”

“People under stress can do some pretty funny things.”

“No. No. If I'd killed Leila, I'd have done it some other way. I know that. To say that drunk or sober, I could hold her over the railing . . . Syd swears I told him that my
father
pushed Leila off the terrace; he may have known that story about my father. Maybe everybody's lying to me. Scott, I've
got
to remember what happened that night.”

With compassionate eyes, Scott studied Ted, taking in the exhausted droop of his shoulders, the fatigue that emanated from his body. He'd been walking all afternoon, trying to make himself stand at the edge of a cliff, battling his own personal demon in search of the truth. “Did you tell them this when they began questioning you about Leila's death?”

“It would have sounded ridiculous. I build hotels where we make people
want
terraces. I've always been able to avoid going out on them without making an issue of it.”

Darkness was setting in. Beads of perspiration like unchecked tears were running down Ted's cheeks. Scott switched on a light. The room with its comfortable overstuffed furniture, the pillows Jeanie had embroidered, the tall-backed rocking chair, the pine bookcase came to life. Ted did not seem to notice. He was in a world where he was trapped by other people's testimony, on the verge of being confined to prison for the next twenty or thirty years. He's right, Scott decided. His only hope is to go back to that night. “Are you willing to have hypnosis or sodium pentothal?” he asked.

“Either . . . both . . . it doesn't matter.”

Scott went to the phone and called John Whitley at the hospital again. “Don't you ever go home?” he asked.

“I do get there, now and again. In fact, I'm on my way now.”

“I'm afraid not, John. We have another emergency. . . .

CRAIG AND BARTLETT WALKED TOGETHER TOWARD THE main house. They had deliberately skipped the “cocktail” hour and could see the last of the guests leaving the veranda as the muted gong announced dinner. A cool breeze had come up from the ocean, and the webs of lichen hanging from the giant pines that formed the border of the north end of the property swayed in a rhythmic, solemn movement that was accentuated by the tinted lights scattered throughout the grounds.

“I don't like it,” Bartlett told Craig. “Elizabeth Lange is up to something pretty strange when she asks to have dinner with us. I can tell you the district attorney isn't going to like it one damn bit if he hears his star witness is breaking bread with the enemy.”

“Former star witness,” Craig reminded him.

“Still star witness. That Ross woman is a total nut. The other one is a petty thief. I won't mind being the one to cross-examine those two on the stand.”

Craig stopped and grabbed his arm. “You mean you think Ted may still have a chance?”

“Hell, of course not. He's guilty. And he's not a good enough liar to help himself.”

There was a placard in the foyer. Tonight there would be a flute-and-harp recital. Bartlett read the names of the artists. “They're first-rate. I heard them in Carnegie Hall last year. You ever go there?”

“Sometimes.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Bach fugues. And I suppose that surprises you.”

“Frankly, I never thought about it one way or another,” Bartlett said shortly. Christ, he thought, I'll be glad when this case is over. A guilty client who doesn't know how to lie and a second-in-command with a chip on his shoulder who would never get over his inferiority complex.

Min, the Baron, Syd, Cheryl and Elizabeth were already at the table. Only Elizabeth seemed perfectly relaxed. She, rather than Min, had somehow assumed the role of hostess. The place on either side of her was vacant. When she saw them approaching, she reached out her hands to them in a welcoming gesture. “I saved these seats specially for you.”

And what the hell is that supposed to mean? Bartlett wondered sourly.

Elizabeth watched as the waiter filled their glasses with nonalcoholic wine. She said, “Min, I don't mind telling you that when I get home I'll enjoy a good, stiff drink.”

“You should be like everyone else,” Syd told her. “Where's your padlocked suitcase?”

“Its contents are much more interesting than liquor,” she told him. Throughout dinner she led the conversation, reminiscing on the times they had been together at the Spa.

Once dessert was served, it was Bartlett who challenged her. “Miss Lange, I've had the distinct impression that you're playing some sort of game, and I for one don't believe in participating in games unless I know the rules.”

Elizabeth was raising a spoonful of raspberries to her lips. She swallowed them, then put down the spoon. “You're quite right,” she told him. “I wanted to be with all of you tonight for a very specific reason. You should all know that I no longer believe Ted is responsible for my sister's death.”

They stared at her, their faces shocked.

“Let's talk about it,” Elizabeth said. “Someone deliberately destroyed Leila by sending those poison-pen letters to her. I think it was you or you.” She pointed at Cheryl, then at Min.