Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories Read online

  “She was gone!” Mike and Janice exclaimed together.

  Ambrose frowned and shook his head. “I’ve been trying to decide if I should have gone to the police. And there’s one more thing.”

  Janice stood up. She pressed both hands, palms flat, on his desk. “What else could there possibly be?” she demanded.

  Marcus Ambrose strode over to the closet in his office. He pushed back the sliding door. Janice and Mike stared at the floor of the closet. Side by side, almost completely filling the available space, were two large blue suitcases engraved with the initials A.S.

  “They were outside with mine in the terminal. The porter was waiting with them. She had told him that I’d be right down to collect them. And then she disappeared.”

  “It sounds as though she ran off in a panic,” Mike said tersely, not wanting to look at Janice. “It may be that she just takes off sometimes and she was terribly upset about the commercials.”

  “And the other possibility is that she spotted paparazzi in the terminal and didn’t want to be photographed,” Ambrose said, a note of hope in his voice.

  • • •

  Alexandra’s luggage in the trunk, they rode away from the airport in brooding silence. Janice sat rigidly straight, her hands locked together in her lap. Mike glanced at her, started to speak, then thought better of what he’d been about to say, that Marcus Ambrose looked vaguely familiar to him. That’s impossible, he thought, and turned his full attention to the driving. The clouds that had been hovering overhead became a persistent driving rain that slapped against the windshield. Mike waited until they’d gotten well away from the airport traffic before he reached over and covered Janice’s hands with his own.

  She raised his hand to her lips and brushed it against her cheek. “Oh, Mike,” she said. “I’m so scared. It’s such a horrible night. I keep wondering where Alexandra is right now and imagining those people all trying to find her. They want her because she means money to them. They must have hurt her so much to make her just run away like that.”

  “Janice,” Mike said. “Think carefully. How well do you really know your sister?” He felt her body stiffen. “Now, don’t get mad. Think. You’ve got a preconceived notion of a sister who was the most important person in your world while you were growing up. Right?”

  “Yes.” Janice’s voice was thoughtful. “Daddy was wonderful but remote somehow. You could never talk to him easily. For years after she left, Alexandra would phone once a week and I’d tell her all about school and everything I was doing. When I was in high school, all I had to say was I was going to a dance or a party and there would be a dress special-delivered in time for it. This is the last one she sent me for Christmas. She paid my way through college and paid all of Daddy’s bills when he got sick.”

  She hesitated, then demanded, “Mike, what are you trying to make me say? I know you. You’re getting at something.”

  Mike nodded. “Just answer me a couple of questions. What’s Alexandra’s favorite drink? . . . How much does she drink? Has she ever told you about any steady boyfriends? How much money has she got? Did she ever tell you she had a problem with a stalker last year?”

  “She never even hinted it!”

  “Well, that’s my point. Honey, you see your sister as an all-generous, all-beautiful fairy godmother. You don’t really know her as a person. From everything we heard today, I’d say she needs you badly.”

  They drove over the Throgs Neck Bridge, through the Bronx into Manhattan and down the FDR Drive in silence. Then Janice said, “There’s just one thing I remember. When I was starting the spring semester this year, my tuition check was late. When Alexandra paid it, she sent me a note saying she was sorry it hadn’t been on time but she’d been away and didn’t have her checkbook with her. I didn’t think anything of it then but now I wonder, could it have meant she was short of funds?”

  “As soon as we get back to her apartment we’ll go through her desk and see if we can find anything to indicate where she might have gone. Damn . . .” Mike suddenly reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror. “That idiot behind us has his brights on.”

  “Why doesn’t he just pass?” Janice asked. She glanced over her shoulder, then cried, “Mike, be careful!” Through the now torrential rain, the lights suddenly weren’t being reflected in the rearview mirror. The car that was tailgating them had pulled out and was weaving next to them, forcing them against the guardrail on the right side of the Drive.

  Janice screamed.

  A short distance ahead of them was the solid mass of a concrete stanchion. Mike wrenched the steering wheel to the left but the other car prevented him from turning. Their car hit the barrier head-on. The impact threw them forward, then back. Janice smashed her head against the windshield, then snapped back against the headrest. As she slumped down, she felt Mike reach for her, but it wasn’t his voice that sounded in her ears as she drifted into unconsciousness. Instead it seemed that far off in the distance she was hearing Alexandra cry, “Janice, help me, help me.”

  • • •

  Sirens . . . a light shining in her face . . . voices . . . “Mike.”

  “Just stay still, honey, don’t move.”

  The feeling of being lifted out of the car . . . rain pelting on her face. The ambulance pulling away with the sirens screeching in her ears.

  Mike was beside her. She tried to sit up and felt him gently hold her down. “Mike, are you all right?”

  “Fine, honey. Just a few bumps. We need to get you X-rayed. That was a pretty hard bang your head took.”

  “Mike, I think that car tried to cut us off. I saw the way he turned the wheel.”

  “I think so too, honey.”

  “I’m not staying in a hospital. I’m all right.”

  “You won’t have to stay unless it’s absolutely necessary. I promise.”

  Janice felt the dizziness begin to recede. Her head throbbed violently and her back and neck were stiff. But she could think clearly. Had someone really tried to cut them off? Or was it a careless or drunk driver? Alexandra calling to her . . . She had to get to Alexandra’s apartment. She had to go through her desk and try to find out where Alexandra might be.

  But any hope she had of getting out of the hospital quickly was dashed. The emergency room doctor at Mount Sinai insisted on a complete set of head X-rays. It was a full two hours before she was told that she’d been lucky . . . she was all right except for a mild concussion. The doctor suggested she stay overnight in the hospital but agreed to let her go home as long as she promised to go directly to bed.

  “She’ll be very sore tomorrow,” he warned Mike. “Incidentally,” he added, “there’s a policeman waiting outside who wants to talk to you. He has to make a report on the accident.”

  In the lobby the policeman asked Janice how she was feeling. “From the look of that car, it’s a miracle either one of you is alive,” he said. “We have the driver who sideswiped you. He was extremely intoxicated. When he wakes up, he will find out how much trouble he is in.”

  “I hope his insurance is up-to-date,” Mike said tersely. He brought out his license and the registration, silently thanking the fates that Alexandra had kept the registration in the glove compartment.

  “It’s not only that he nearly killed us. This isn’t our car. It belongs to my sister-in-law.”

  Mike hailed a cab outside the hospital. He opened the door for Janice before putting Alexandra’s luggage, which the police had removed from their car, in the trunk. The rain had diminished and now it was a thin, chilly drizzle. Mike gave the cabbie Alexandra’s address. The man was just starting to snap the flag down to begin the meter. When he glanced in the mirror and saw Janice, he spun around. He flipped the backseat light on and stared at her. “What’s the matter?” Mike demanded. “Don’t you know where that address is?”

  The cabbie snorted. “Are you kidding, mister? I drove the young lady here only a couple of hours ago. Don’t you remember me, miss?”

&n
bsp; Janice gripped the seat. A wave of dizziness washed over her and she was afraid she was going to faint. “What did you say?” she demanded. To her own ears her voice sounded hoarse and strained.

  The cabbie pulled away from the curb, then glanced into the rearview mirror. “Gee, miss, don’t put me on. I even said how much I liked that dress and asked you if it was real expensive or would I be able to buy it for my wife, remember? You told me it was a . . . some foreign name.”

  “A Pucci,” Janice whispered. “Alexandra,” she said. “Mike, he must have driven Alexandra today. Remember I told you she bought the same one for herself.”

  “Where did you pick that woman up?” Mike demanded.

  The cabbie sounded uneasy. “Wow, maybe I’m wrong. It’s just you look so much alike . . . and that long blonde hair . . . and that dress . . . and you’re going to the same place. Say, could you be related to her?”

  Janice felt her knuckles whiten as she dug her nails into her palms. “Please,” she said. “Please. Where did you pick up the woman who looked like me?”

  “At Kennedy Airport. Tonight . . . around eight o’clock. I’d just dropped a fare off there and she hailed me. Was I glad that she was coming to my territory. Told her what a break it was for me. That’s how we got to talking.”

  “Kennedy Airport,” Janice said. “Could we have just walked past Alexandra? We were all there around the same time.”

  “Yeah. This lady asked me to take her to the address on Riverside. She looked all upset and worried, so I kept up a conversation. I’m kinda good at getting people to talk and relax. Anyhow, she said she was meeting two people on the London flight. They were supposed to come in at eight this evening from Europe but never showed. She told me she checked at the airline and found out that their flight came in at eight this morning.”

  “Eight this evening . . .” Janice felt giddy. She remembered that last phone conversation with Alexandra. Alexandra had been so distracted and upset about not making the wedding. Janice remembered how she’d repeated the airline and the time twice.

  “Anyhow, she was rushing home to see if you were waiting at that apartment. Just dropped her off around nine o’clock. So you’re the people from London. How about that? Wait till I tell the missus. Believe me, miss, New York is just a little town after all. I’m not kiddin’. There’s more of this sort of thing than you’d guess in a hundred years.”

  Alexandra was home. Alexandra was home. She’d just been away and she’d come home in time to meet the flight that she’d expected Janice to be on. Janice felt hysterical tears of relief crowding her throat. She forced them back. Everything was all right. Everything was fine. In just a few minutes they’d be laughing about the mix-up. She leaned back and closed her eyes, aware of the throbbing in her forehead.

  In less than fifteen minutes the cabbie said, “Here we are.” He turned into the driveway and went around the building to the first private entrance. Two steps led to the enclosed terrace of Alexandra’s apartment. When Janice looked up, she saw a light in the living room window.

  She almost fell in her rush to get out of the cab. Mike caught her as she tripped. “Easy, honey.” He paid the driver as Janice hurried up the stairs. She became aware of the ache in her back and shoulders.

  The door of the apartment was locked. Impatiently she waited while Mike reached in his pocket for the key. He turned the key and opened the door. Janice rushed past him. She started to call Alexandra’s name but it froze on her lips. From the foyer she stared into the living room. The lamp on the table next to the club chair was on and like a spotlight it illuminated the figure in the chair.

  Alexandra was wearing the Pucci print. But she wasn’t waiting for anyone. She was slumped back in the chair, her beautiful blonde hair tousled around her neck and shoulders, a narrow cord around her throat. Her face was white, thick chalk white. Little droplets of blood had dripped from her lips. Her huge blue eyes were open and staring at Janice . . . through Janice.

  Janice opened her mouth to scream but no sound came. She tried to move but could not. She raised her hand to hide the nightmarish sight. But when she touched her forehead she vibrated to the soreness there and knew this was no dream. She felt Mike’s arms go around her, but tore herself away from him. She began to scream, a shrill tearing sound as she stumbled across the room, threw herself down in front of the chair and reached up her arms to embrace her dead sister. The still warm body crumpled against her shoulder. As she screamed Alexandra’s name, she was barely aware of Mike’s strong hands grasping her fingers, forcing them open and half carrying, half dragging her out of the room.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. You shouldn’t touch the body. We have to call the police.”

  • • •

  Hubert Twaddle, age fifty-two, a big man, stout without being fat, with a shining dome rimmed by mostly salt-and-pepper hair, was the head detective in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

  He knew that his name, Hubert Twaddle, made the people he met for the first time try to conceal an involuntary smile. They didn’t know that Twaddle was a familiar name in Scotland. Twaddle chuckled to himself as he recalled voting for Hubert Humphrey solely on the basis of their shared first name.

  People didn’t realize that by their inclination to smile, they were also psychologically relaxing. Hubert Twaddle found that fact enormously helpful when he was questioning a family member, friend, associate or enemy of a murder victim.

  They had been called back to the office earlier that evening to interview a witness in a homicide case. Moments after they had finished, a call had come from the local precinct of West 74th Street at 11:30 P.M. Famed Alexandra Saunders, the beautiful fashion model, had been found murdered in her apartment.

  Hubert Twaddle did not waste words. “I will be there directly,” he said and hung up the phone. “Ben,” he called to the younger detective, his partner, who always accompanied him on his cases.

  Bennington Lyons sprang up from his chair. His desk was next to Twaddle’s. He looked even younger than his twenty-nine years. He had bright red hair, a cherubic face and a gym-toned body. Already a legend in the department, he had been promoted to Detective second grade after having been shot and nearly killed when, in his patrol car, he’d come upon two longtime felons breaking into Tiffany’s, the famed jewelry store on Fifth Avenue.

  A bullet to his shoulder, another to his leg, lying on the sidewalk, he had returned fire, wounding both suspects, preventing their escape. Few besides Twaddle knew that Ben was the heir to the Lyons oil refineries and had been brought up on Park Avenue, gone to Harvard and gotten his master’s at John Jay College.

  To avoid the limelight he now lived in a rental apartment in Queens, happily pursuing his career in the police department.

  Twaddle was sure that one day Bennington Lyons would be police commissioner.

  When they arrived at Alexandra’s apartment, they found that the medical examiner’s van was already parked and a crowd was gathering outside the building. The doorman, his voice shaken, directed them to Alexandra’s pied-à-terre. There, a policeman was outside, guarding the door.

  When he saw Twaddle and Lyons he stood aside to let them in. Twaddle stepped forward, his eyes narrowed as they registered the crime scene. At least six policemen were in the room. Even so, it was eerily quiet. A police photographer was snapping pictures. The medical examiner, Milton Helpern, was bending over the figure of a woman leaning to one side in the large club chair.

  Even Twaddle, as he came closer, was startled out of his usual calm when he saw that the victim’s face was covered by a chalklike mask.

  It was obvious that the knotted cord around the victim’s neck was the cause of death.

  “The lock on the door to the terrace was jimmied. My guess is the victim was sitting in this chair and may not have even heard the perpetrator come in behind her until it was too late. There is no sign of a struggle,” Helpern said.

  “When?” Twaddle asked.

 
“Not more than three hours ago. Maybe less.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Her sister and the sister’s husband. The sister went into shock. They’re in the guest bedroom. There’s a doctor who lives in the building. He came up and gave the sister a sedative. The victim was supposed to have met them at the airport. I got that from the sister’s husband.”

  Briefly he recounted what Mike had told him, including the fact that a cab driver claimed he had driven the victim home.

  Ben voiced the thought that was on Twaddle’s mind. “Then someone either followed her or was waiting for her.”

  Twaddle’s eyes went from one end of the room to the other. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Under different circumstances he would have admired the tastefully furnished room, but now he was only looking for any sign of a struggle.

  There was none.

  The layout of the apartment was easy to perceive. The double glass doors led to the terrace where the killer must have waited for Alexandra. To the right he could see a small dining room and knew that the kitchen would be connected to it.

  The hallway off the living room obviously led to the bedrooms. With Ben behind him, he headed there. They passed the master suite, then farther down the hallway, knocked on the closed door of the guest bedroom.

  Mike, red-eyed from lack of sleep, opened it. For the second time in a few minutes Twaddle was startled out of his usual impenetrable calm. The slender young woman, blonde hair spilling on the pillow, her eyes closed, was wearing exactly the same dress as the victim. She appeared to be asleep.

  In the next few minutes, with step-by-step clarity, Mike told Twaddle the events of the day, starting with Alexandra not meeting them, the answering service giving them the name of the three associates who had been frantically calling her, and the cab driver who claimed he had driven her home.

  Finally Twaddle asked Mike how long he and his wife had been planning to stay in New York.

  “We were to stay here with Alexandra for the next week,” Mike said quietly.