Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories Read online

  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?”

  “Eight o’clock. Ned will be with her.”

  “Fine. Willy will go with you. He’ll be on the floor in the backseat of the car. For a big man he sure can roll himself into a beach ball. He’ll keep an eye on you. They certainly won’t try anything in that house. It would be too risky. Next to Willy, my sunburst pin is my greatest treasure,” she said. “I’ll show you how to use it.”

  Throughout the afternoon, Alvirah coached Cynthia on what to say to her stepsister. “She’s got to be the one who put up the money for the restaurant. Probably through some sham investment companies. Tell her unless she pays up, you’re going to contact a top accountant you know who used to work for the government.”

  “She knows I don’t have any money.”

  “She doesn’t know who might have taken an interest in your case. That fellow who did the program on women in prison did, right?”

  “Yes. Jeff took an interest.”

  Alvirah’s eyes narrowed, then sparked. “Something between you and Jeff?”

  “If I’m exonerated for Stuart Richards’s death, yes. If I’m not, there’ll never be anything between Jeff and me or anyone else and me.”

  • • •

 
At six o’clock the phone rang again. Alvirah said, “I’ll answer. Let them know I’m here with you.” Her booming “Hello” was followed by a warm greeting. “Jeff, we were just talking about you. Cynthia is right here. My, what a pretty girl. You should see her new outfit. She’s been telling me all about you. Wait. I’ll put her on.”

  Alvirah frankly listened in as Cynthia explained, “Alvirah rents the next cottage. She’s helping me. . . . No, I’m not coming back. . . . Yes, there is a reason to stay here. Tonight just maybe I’ll be able to get proof I wasn’t guilty of Stuart’s death. . . . No, don’t come down. I don’t want to see you, Jeff, not now. . . . Jeff, yes, yes, I love you. . . . Yes, if I clear my name, I’ll marry you.”

  When Cynthia hung up she was close to tears. “Alvirah, I want to have a life with him so much. You know what he just said? He quoted ‘The Highwayman.’ He said, ‘I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.’ ”

  “I like him,” Alvirah said flatly. “I can read a person from his voice on the phone. Is he coming tonight? I don’t want you getting upset or being talked out of this.”

  “No. He’s been made anchorman for the ten o’clock news. But I bet anything he drives down tomorrow.”

  “We’ll see about that. The more people in this, the more chance of having Ned and Lillian smell a rat.” Alvirah glanced out the window. “Oh, look, here comes Willy. Stars above, he caught more of those darn bluefish. They gave me heartburn, but I’d never tell him. Whenever he goes fishing I keep a package of Tums in my pocket. Oh, well.”

  She opened the door and waved over a beaming Willy, who was proudly holding a line from which two limp bluefish dangled forlornly. Willy’s smile vanished as he took in Alvirah’s bright red mop of unruly hair and the purple print dress that squeezed her body into rolls of flesh. “Aw, nuts,” he said. “How come they took back the lottery money?”

  • • •

  At seven-thirty, after having dined on Willy’s latest catch, Alvirah placed a cup of tea in front of Cynthia. “You haven’t eaten a thing,” she said. “You’ve got to eat to keep your brain clear. Now, have you got it all straight?”

  Cynthia fingered the sunburst pin. “I think so. It seems clear.”

  “Remember, money had to have changed hands between those two—and I don’t care how clever they were, it can be traced. If they agree to pay you, offer to come down in price if they’ll give you the satisfaction of admitting the truth. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  At seven-fifty Cynthia drove down the winding lane with Willy on the floor of the backseat. The brilliantly sunny day had turned into a cloudy evening. Alvirah walked through the cottage to the back deck. Wind was whipping the bay into a frenzy of waves that slammed onto the beach. The rumbling of thunder could be heard in the distance. The temperature had plummeted, and suddenly it felt more like October than August. Shivering, she debated about going next door to her own cottage and getting a sweater, then decided against it. In case anyone phoned, she wanted to be right here.

  She made a second cup of tea for herself and settled at the dinette table, her back to the door leading from the deck. Then she began writing a first draft of the article she was sure she would be sending to the New York Globe. Satisfied, she read aloud what she had written. “ ‘Cynthia Lathem, who was nineteen years old when she was sentenced to a term of twelve years in prison for a murder she did not commit, can now prove her innocence. . . .’ ”

  From behind her a voice said, “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Alvirah swiveled around and stared up into the angry face of Ned Creighton.

  • • •

  Cynthia waited on the porch steps of the Richards mansion. Through the handsome mahogany door she could hear the faint sound of chimes. She had the incongruous thought that she still had her own key to this place, and she wondered if Lillian had changed the locks.

  The door swung open. Lillian was standing in the wide hallway, light from the overhead Tiffany lamp accentuating her high cheekbones, wide blue eyes, silvery blond hair. Cynthia felt a chill race through her body. In these twelve years, Lillian had become a clone of Stuart Richards. Smaller of course. Younger, but still a feminine version of his outstanding looks. And with that same hint of cruelty around the eyes.

  “Come in, Cynthia.” Lillian’s voice hadn’t changed. Clear, well-bred, but with that familiar sharp, angry undertone that had always characterized Stuart Richards’s speech.

  Silently, Cynthia followed Lillian down the hallway. The living room was dimly lighted. It looked very much as she remembered it. The placement of the furniture, the Oriental carpets, the painting over the fireplace—all were the same. The baronial dining room on the left still had the same unused appearance. They’d usually eaten in the small dining room off the library.

  She had expected that Lillian would take her to the library. Instead, Lillian went directly back to the study where Stuart had died. Cynthia narrowed her lips, felt for the sunburst pin. Was this an attempt to intimidate her? she wondered.

  Lillian sat behind the massive desk.

  Cynthia thought again of the night she’d come into this room and found Stuart sprawled on the carpet beside that desk. She knew her hands were clammy. Perspiration was forming on her forehead. Outside she could hear the wind wailing as it increased in velocity. Lillian folded her hands and looked up at Cynthia.

  “You might as well sit down.”

  Cynthia bit her lip. The rest of her life would be determined by what she said in these next minutes. “I think I’m the one who should suggest the seating arrangements,” she told Lillian. “Your father did leave this house to me. When you phoned, you talked about a settlement. Don’t play games now. And don’t try to intimidate me. Prison took all the shyness out of me, I promise you that. Where is Ned?”

  “He’ll be along any minute. Cynthia, those accusations you made to him are insane. You know that.”

  “I thought I came here to discuss receiving my share of Stuart’s estate.”

  “You came here because I’m sorry for you and because I want to give you a chance to go away somewhere and begin a new life. I’m prepared to set up a trust fund that will give you a monthly income. Another woman wouldn’t be so generous to her father’s murderer.”

  Cynthia stared at Lillian, taking in the contempt in her eyes, the icy calm of her demeanor. She had to break that calm. She walked over to the window and looked out. The rain was beating against the house. Claps of thunder shattered the silence in the room. “I wonder what Ned would have done to keep me out of the house that night if it had been raining like this,” she said. “The weather worked out for him, didn’t it? Warm and cloudy. No other boats nearby. Only that one witness, and now I’ve found her. Didn’t Ned tell you that she positively identified him?”

  “How many people would believe that anyone could recognize a stranger after nearly thirteen years? Cynthia, I don’t know whom you’ve hired for this charade, but I’m warning you—drop it. Accept my offer, or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for harassment. Don’t forget it’s very easy to get a criminal’s parole revoked.”

  “A criminal’s parole. I agree. But I’m not a criminal, and you know it.” Cynthia walked over to the Jacobean armoire and pulled open the top drawer. “I knew Stuart kept a gun here. But you certainly knew too. You claimed he had never told you that he’d changed his will and was leaving the Dartmouth half of his estate to me. But you were lying. If Stuart sent for me to tell me about his will, he certainly didn’t hide what he was doing from you.”

  “He did not tell me. I hadn’t seen him for three months.”

  “You may not have seen him, but you spoke to him, didn’t you? You could have put up with Dartmouth getting half his fortune but couldn’t stand the idea of splitting his money with me. You hated me for the years I lived in this house, for the fact that he liked me, while you two always clashed. You’ve got that same vile temper he ha
d.”

  Lillian stood up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Cynthia slammed the drawer shut. “Oh, yes, I do. And every fact that convicted me will convict you. I had a key to this house. You had a key. There was no sign of a struggle. I don’t think you sent anyone to murder him. I think you did it yourself. Stuart had a panic button on his desk. He didn’t push it. He never thought his own daughter would harm him. Why did Ned just happen to stop by that afternoon? You knew Stuart had invited me here for the weekend. You knew that he’d encourage me to go out with Ned. Stuart liked company and then he liked to be alone. Maybe Ned hasn’t made it clear to you. That witness I found keeps a diary. She showed it to me. She’s been writing in it every night since she was twenty. There was no way that entry could have been doctored. She described me. She described Ned’s car. She even wrote about the noisy kids on line and how impatient everyone was with them.”

  I’m getting to her, Cynthia thought. Lillian’s face was pale. Her throat was closing convulsively. Deliberately, Cynthia walked back to the desk so that the sunburst pin was pointed directly at Lillian. “You played it smart, didn’t you?” she asked. “Ned didn’t start pouring money into that restaurant until after I was safely in prison. And I’m sure that on the surface he has some respectable investors. But today the government is awfully good at getting to the source of laundered money. Your money, Lillian.”

  “You’ll never prove it.” But Lillian’s voice had become shrill.

  Oh God, if I can just get her to admit it, Cynthia thought. She grasped the edge of the desk with both hands and leaned forward. “Possibly not. But don’t take the chance. Let me tell you how it feels to be fingerprinted and handcuffed. How it feels to sit next to a lawyer and hear the district attorney accuse you of murder. How it feels to study the faces of the jury. Jurors are ordinary-looking people. Old. Young. Black. White. Well dressed. Shabby. But they hold the rest of your life in their hands. And, Lillian, you won’t like it. The waiting. The damning evidence that fits you much more than it ever fitted me. You don’t have the temperament or the guts to go through with it.”