Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories Read online

  “Then,” of course, could be months from now, but still he was glad she had said no. He had definitely decided to invite her to be his next guest, and when she disappeared there would be questions. The police would ring his bell, make inquiries. “Mr. Mensch, did you see Miss Matthews leave with anyone?” they would ask. “Did you notice anyone visiting her lately? How friendly were you with her?”

  He could answer truthfully: “We only spoke casually on the street if we ran into each other. She has a young man she seems to be dating. I’ve exchanged a few words with him from time to time. Tall, brown hair, about thirty or so. Believe he said his name is Carter. Kevin Carter.”

  The police would probably already know about Carter. When Matthews disappeared they would talk to her close friends first.

  He had never even been questioned about Tiffany. There had been no connection between them, no reason for anyone to ask. Occasionally they ran into each other at museums—he had found several of his young women in museums. The third or fourth time they met he made it a point to ask Tiffany her impression of a painting she was looking at.

  He had liked her instantly. Beautiful Tiffany, so appealing, so intelligent. She believed that because he claimed to share her enthusiasm for Gustav Klimt, he was a kindred spirit, a man to be trusted. She had been grateful for his offer of a ride back to Georgetown on a rainy day. He had picked her up as she was walking to the Metro.

  She had scarcely felt the prick of the needle that knocked her out. She slumped at his feet in the car, and he drove her back to his place. Matthews was just leaving her house as he pulled into the drive; he even nodded to her as he clicked the garage door opener. At that time he had no idea that Matthews would be next, of course.

  Every morning for the next three weeks, he had spent all his time with Tiffany. He loved having her there. The secret place was bright and cheerful. The floor had a thick yellow pad, like a comfortable mattress, and he had filled the room with books and games.

  He had even painted the windowless bathroom adjacent to it a cheery red and yellow, and he had installed a portable shower. Every morning he would lock her in the bathroom, and while she was showering he would vacuum and scrub the secret place. He kept it immaculate. As he did everything in his life. He couldn’t abide untidiness. He laid out clean clothes for her every day too. He also washed and ironed the clothes she came in, just as he had with the others. He had even had her jacket cleaned, that silly jacket with the name of cities all over the world. He didn’t want to have it cleaned, but noticing that spot on the sleeve drove him crazy. He couldn’t get it out of his head. Finally he gave in.

  He spent a lot of money cleaning his own clothes as well. Sometimes when he woke up, he would find himself trying to brush away crumbs from the sheets. Was that because he remembered having to do that? There were a lot of questions from his childhood, things he couldn’t fully remember. But maybe it was best that way.

  He knew he was fortunate. He was able to spend all his time with the women he chose because he didn’t have to work. He didn’t need the money. His father had never spent a cent on anything besides bare essentials. After high school, when he began working for the builder, his father demanded he turn over his paycheck to him. “I’m saving for you, August,” he had said. “It’s wasteful to spend money on women. They’re all like your mother. Taking everything you have and leaving with another man for California. Said she was too young when we got married, that nineteen was too young to have a baby. Not too young for my mother, I told her.”

  Ten years ago his father died suddenly, and he had been astonished to find that during all those years of penny-pinching, his father had invested in stocks. At thirty-four, he, August Mensch, was worth over a million dollars. Suddenly he could afford to travel and live the way he wanted to, the way he had dreamed about during all those years of sitting at home at night, listening to his father tell him how his mother neglected him when he was a baby. “She left you in the playpen for hours. When you cried, she’d throw a bottle or some crackers to you. You were her prisoner, not her baby. I bought baby books, but she wouldn’t even read to you. I’d come home from work and find you sitting in spilled milk and crumbs, cold and neglected.”

  August had moved to this place last year, rented this furnished and run-down town house cheaply, and made the necessary repairs himself. He had painted it and scrubbed the kitchen and bathrooms until they shone, and he cleaned the furniture and polished the floors daily. His lease ran out on May 1, only twenty days from now. He had already told the owner he was planning to leave. By then he would have had Matthews and it would be time to move on. He would be leaving the place greatly improved. The only thing he would have to take care of was to whitewash all the improvements he had made to the secret place, so no one would ever guess what had happened there.

  How many cities had he lived in during the last ten years? he wondered. He had lost track. Seven? Eight? More? Starting with finding his mother in San Diego. He liked Washington, would have stayed there longer. But he knew that after Bree Matthews it wouldn’t be a good idea.

  What kind of guest would she be? he wondered. Tiffany had been both frightened and angry. She ridiculed the books he bought for her, refusing to read them. She told him her family had no money, as if that was what he wanted. She told him she wanted to paint. He even bought an easel and art supplies for her.

  She actually started one painting while she was visiting, a painting of a man and woman kissing. It was going to be a copy of Klimt’s The Kiss. He tore it off the easel and told her to copy one of the nice illustrations in the children’s books he had given her. That was when she had picked up an open jar of paint and thrown it at him.

  August Mensch didn’t quite remember the next minutes, just that when he looked down at the sticky mess on his jacket and trousers, he had lunged at her.

  When her body was pulled out of a Washington canal the next day, they questioned her ex-boyfriends. The papers were full of the case. He laughed at the speculation about where she had been the three weeks she was missing.

  Mensch sighed. He didn’t want to think of Tiffany now. He wanted to dust and polish the room again to make it ready for Matthews. Then he had to finish chiseling mortar from the cinder blocks in the wall that separated his basement from hers.

  He would remove enough of those blocks to gain entry into Matthews’s basement. He would bring her back the same way. He knew she had installed a security system, but this way it wouldn’t do her any good. Then he would replace the cinder blocks and carefully re-cement.

  It was Sunday night. He had watched her house all day. She hadn’t gone out at all. Lately she had stayed in on Sundays, since Carter stopped coming around. He had seen him there last a couple of weeks ago.

  He brushed away an invisible piece of dust. Tomorrow at this time she would be with him; she’d be his companion. He had bought a stack of Dr. Seuss books for her to read to him. He had thrown out all the other books. Some had been splattered with red paint. All of them reminded him how Tiffany had refused to read to him.

  Over the years, he had always tried to make his guests comfortable. It wasn’t his fault that they were always ungrateful. He remembered how the one in Kansas City told him she wanted a steak. He had bought a thick one, the thickest he could find. When he came back he could see that she had used the time he was out to try to escape. She hadn’t wanted the steak at all. He’d lost his temper. He couldn’t remember exactly what happened after that.

  He hoped Bree would be nicer.

  He’d soon know. Tomorrow morning he would make his move.

  • • •

  “What is that?” Bree muttered to herself as she stood at the head of the stairs leading to her basement. She could hear a faint scraping sound emanating from the basement of the adjacent town house.

  She shook her head. What did it matter? She couldn’t sleep anyway. It was irritating, though. Only six o’clock on a Monday morning, and Mensch was already on some
do-it-yourself project. Some neat-as-a-pin improvement, no doubt, she said to herself, already in a bad temper. She sighed. What a rotten day it was going to be. She had a lousy cold. There was no point getting up so early, but she wasn’t sleepy. She had felt miserable yesterday and had stayed in bed all day, dozing. She hadn’t even bothered to pick up the phone, just listened to messages. Her folks were away. Gran didn’t call, and a certain Mr. Kevin Carter never put his finger on the touch tone.

  Now cold or no cold, she was due in court at 9 A.M. to try to make that first contractor pay for the repairs she had to do to the roof he was supposed to have fixed. To say nothing of getting him to pay for the damage inside caused by the leaks. She closed the basement door decisively and went into the kitchen, squeezed a grapefruit, made coffee, toasted an English muffin, settled at the breakfast bar.

  She had begun to refer to this town house as the dwelling-from-hell, but once all the damage was repaired she had to admit it would be lovely.

  She tried to eat her breakfast, but found she couldn’t. I’ve never testified in court, she thought. That’s why I’m nervous and down. But I’m sure the judge will side with me, she reassured herself. No judge would put up with having his or her house ruined.

  Bree—short for Bridget—Matthews, thirty, single, blue-eyed and dark-haired, with porcelain skin that wouldn’t tolerate the sun, was admittedly jumpy by nature. Buying this place last year had so far been an expensive mistake. For once I should not have listened to Granny, she thought, then smiled unconsciously thinking of how from her retirement community in Connecticut her grandmother still burned up the wires giving her good advice.

  Eight years ago she was the one who told me I should take the job in Washington working for our congressman even though she thought he was a dope, Bree remembered as she forced herself to eat half of the English muffin. Then she advised me to grab the chance to join Douglas Public Relations when I got that offer. She’s been right about everything except about buying this place and renovating it, Bree thought. “Real estate’s a good way to make money, Bree,” she had said, “especially in Georgetown.”

  Wrong! Bree frowned grimly as she sipped coffee. My Pierre Deux wall hangings are stained and peeling. And it’s not wallpaper, mind you, not when you spring for seventy dollars a yard. At that price the stuff becomes wallhanging. She frowned as she remembered explaining that to Kevin, who had said, “Now, that’s what I call pretentious.” Just what she needed to hear!

  Mentally she reviewed everything she would tell the judge: “The Persian carpet that Granny proudly put on the floor of her first house is rolled and wrapped in plastic to be sure no new leaks can damage it further, and the polish on the parquet floors is dull and stained. I’ve got pictures to show just how bad my home looks. I wish you’d look at them, Your Honor. Now I’m waiting for the painter and floor guy to come back to charge a fortune to redo what they did perfectly well four months ago.

  “I asked, pleaded, begged, even snarled at that contractor, trying to get him to take care of the leak. Then when he finally did show up, he told me that the water was coming from my neighbor’s roof, and I believed him. I made a dope of myself ringing his bell, accusing poor Mr. Mensch of causing all the problems. You see, Your Honor, we share a common wall, and the contractor said the water was getting in that way. I, of course, believed him. He is supposed to be the expert.”

  Bree thought of her next-door neighbor, the balding guy with the graying ponytail who looked embarrassed just to say hello if they ran into each other on the street. The day that she had gone storming over, he had invited her in. At first he had listened to her rant with calm, unblinking eyes, his face thoughtful—as she imagined a priest would look during confession, if she could see through the screen, of course. Then he had suddenly started blushing and perspiring and almost whispered his protest that it couldn’t be his roof, because surely he would have a leak too. She should call another contractor, he said.

  “I scared the poor guy out of his wits,” she had told Kevin that night. “I should have known the minute I saw the way he keeps his place that he’d never tolerate a leaking roof. The polish on the floor in his foyer almost blinded me. I bet when he was a kid he got a medal for being the neatest boy in camp.”

  Kevin. That was something else. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep him from coming to mind. She would be seeing him this morning, the first time in a while. He had insisted on meeting her in court even though they were no longer dating.

  I’ve never brought anyone to court, she thought, and going there is definitely not my idea of a good time, particularly since I absolutely do not want to see Kevin. Pouring herself a second cup of coffee, she settled back at the breakfast bar. Just because Kev helped me file the complaint, she thought, he’s going to be Johnny-on-the-spot in court today, which thank you very much I don’t need. I do not want to see him. At all. And it’s such a gloomy day all around. Bree looked out the window at the thick fog. She shook her head, her mouth set in a hard line. In fact, her irritation with Kevin had become so pronounced she practically blamed him for the leaking roof. He no longer called every morning, or sent flowers on the seventeenth of every month, the seventeenth being the day on which they had their first date. That was ten months ago, just after Bree had moved in to the town house. Bree felt the hard line of her mouth turning down at the corners, and she shook her head again. I love being independent, she thought ruefully, but sometimes I hate being alone.

  Bree knew she had to get over all this. She realized that she was getting in the habit of regularly rearguing her quarrel with Kevin Carter. She also realized that when she missed him most—like this past Saturday, when she had moped around, going to a movie and having dinner alone, or yesterday when she stayed in bed feeling lonely and lousy—she needed to reinforce her sense of being in the right.

  Bree remembered their fight, which like most had started out small and soon took on epic, life-changing proportions. Kev said I was foolish not to accept the settlement the contractor offered me, she recalled, that I probably won’t get much more by going to court, but I wouldn’t think of it. I’m pigheaded and love a fight and always shoot from the hip. Telling me that I was becoming irrational about this, he said that, for example, I had no business storming next door after that shy little guy. I reminded him that I apologized profusely, and Mr. Mensch was so sweet about it that he even offered to fix that broken blind in the living room window.

  Somewhat uncomfortably, Bree remembered that there had been a pause in their exchange, but instead of letting it go, she had then told Kevin that he seemed to be the one who loved a fight, and why did he have to always take everybody else’s side? That was when he said maybe we should step back and examine our relationship. And I said that if it has to be examined, then it didn’t exist, so good-bye.

  She sighed. It had been a very long two weeks.

  I really wish Mensch would stop that damn tinkering or whatever he’s doing in his basement, she thought, hearing the noise again. Lately he had been giving her the creeps. She had seen him watching her when she got out of the car, and she had felt his eyes following her whenever she moved about her yard. Maybe he did take offense that day and is brooding about it, she reasoned. She had been thinking about telling Kevin that Mensch was making her nervous—but then they had the quarrel, and she never got the chance. Anyway, Mensch seemed harmless enough.

  Bree shrugged, then got up, still holding her coffee cup. I’m just all around jumpy, she thought, but in a couple of hours this will be behind me, one way or the other. Tonight I’ll come home early, go to bed and sleep off this damn cold, and tomorrow I’ll start to get the house in shipshape again.

  Again the scraping sound came from the basement. Knock it off, she almost said aloud. Briefly debating going down to see what was causing the noise, she decided against it. So Mensch has a do-it-yourself project going, she thought. It’s none of my business.

  Then the scraping noise stopped, followed by hollo
w silence. Was that a footstep on the basement stairs? Impossible. The basement door that led outside was bolted and armed. Then what was causing it? . . .

  She whirled around to see her next-door neighbor standing behind her, a hypodermic needle in his hand.

  As she dropped the coffee cup, he plunged the needle deep into her arm.

  • • •

  Kevin Carter, J.D., felt the level of his irritability hit the danger zone. This was just another example of Bree’s total inability to listen to reason, he thought. She’s pigheaded. Strong-willed. Impulsive. So where in hell was she?

  The contractor, Richie Omberg, had shown up on time. A surly-looking guy, he kept looking at his watch and mumbling about being due on a job. He raised his voice as he reiterated his position to the lawyer: “I offered to fix the leak, but by then she’d had it done at six times what I coulda done it for. Twice I’d sent someone to look at it and she wasn’t home. Once the guy who inspected it said he thought it was coming from the next roof, said there hasta be a leak there. Guess that little squirt who rented next door fixed it. Anyhow, I offered to pay what it woulda cost me.”

  Bree had been due in court at nine o’clock. When she hadn’t showed up by ten, the judge dismissed the complaint.

  A furious Kevin Carter went to his job at the State Department. He did not call Bridget Matthews at Douglas Public Relations, where she worked, nor did he attempt to call her at home. The next call between them was going to come from her. She owed him an apology. He tried not to remember that after she had gotten her day in court, he had planned to tell her that he missed her like hell and please, let’s make up.

  • • •

  Mensch dragged Bree’s limp body through the kitchen to the hallway that led to the basement stairs. He slid her down, step by step, until he reached the bottom; then he bent down and picked her up. Clearly she hadn’t bothered to do anything with her basement. The cinder-block walls were gray and dreary, the floor tiles were clean but shabby. He had made the opening in the wall in the boiler room where it would be least noticed. He had pulled the cinder blocks into his basement, so now all he had to do was to secure her in the secret place, come back to get her clothing, then replace and re-mortar the blocks.