Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories Read online

  “Are there any other relatives?” Twaddle asked.

  “My family—by that I mean my parents, two brothers and two sisters in Brentwood, California. Janice’s only relative was her sister.”

  “In that case, we will need you to stay here for at least a week. There will necessarily be an autopsy and we will need to question your wife in depth to learn anything her sister might have said to her that would have meaning to us.”

  Twaddle paused, then added, “The body will be moved in the next few minutes. My team will be finished processing the scene in about an hour. Do you plan to stay in the apartment tonight?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Mike said. “Our luggage is here.” Unconsciously he blinked and rubbed his eyes. “We have just been in an automobile accident. It will be easier for my wife if we stay here.”

  “Mr. Broad, I won’t trouble you anymore tonight. You are obviously very tired.”

  He turned and, Ben behind him, left the room. As he had expected, the body was in the process of being removed.

  • • •

  Ben had been making notes, as Twaddle, in a gentle voice continued to zero in on the sequence of events as dictated by Michael Broad.

  Ben was a faithful follower of the New York Post, which not only had an excellent business section but also kept him au courant of the news on current celebrities, some of whom his playboy cousin knew intimately, though Ben avoided personal publicity like the plague.

  The minute he heard the name Alexandra Saunders, he remembered that about five years ago, his cousin had dated her briefly and had a serious crush on her, but she had given him the brush-off.

  Ben remembered he had thought that she was one smart lady.

  • • •

  Emma Cooper arrived at the apartment, her face already settled in lines of grief. She realized she had inadvertently reached into her pocketbook for her key.

  “I’m the housekeeper,” she told the patrolman at the door. “They sent for me.”

  Bracing herself, she was about to go in when she had to step aside. A gurney with a body bag on it was being rolled out of the apartment.

  Her mind filled with visions of beautiful Alexandra and the three years she had worked for her. It had started when Alexandra bought this apartment.

  Alexandra had been twenty-five then and had just signed her first major modeling contract, to be the spokesperson for a perfume company. Her old agent had retired and she had gone with the Wilson Agency. That Wilson fellow had been around all the time, meeting here with the decorator, telling Alexandra that he’d make the final decision on the décor—that she had no experience with choosing furniture and wall covering and carpeting.

  Alexandra had clearly been in awe of him. But after he left, she had asked the decorator to stay. “Tell me where you think he’s wrong,” she had asked him.

  “I think that you would want some antique accessories but a comfortable couch and chairs.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Alexandra had said.

  Emma knew that day that, mingled with her insecurity, Alexandra could be bossed around only to a certain point. Was that what had happened here?

  Why am I thinking that? she asked herself. Unable to resist the temptation, she touched her hand to the body bag, ignoring the disapproving expressions of the cops pushing the gurney.

  The living room seemed filled with policemen. But it was the man who stepped forward to greet her who commanded her immediate attention.

  There was a sympathetic expression on his face and a gentleness in his tone when he said, “I am so sorry about this, Mrs. Cooper. Why don’t you step into the dining room with me? We can sit and talk without interruption. I am Detective Hubert Twaddle.”

  My God, what an awful name, Emma thought, forcing back an inadvertent smile. Beyond her shock and grief she steeled herself to be questioned about Alexandra.

  Before Twaddle’s hand under her arm guided her into the dining room, she absorbed the reality of that fine powder over Alexandra’s favorite chair and the fact that the door to the terrace was open.

  “I got a call saying that she was dead,” Emma said, her voice a whisper, still unbelieving. “I saw her body being wheeled out just now.”

  “I know,” Twaddle replied as he pulled out a chair for her at the dining room table.

  “Somebody killed her, right?”

  “Mrs. Cooper, wasn’t that your first question when you were called to inform you about Miss Saunders’s death?”

  Emma realized that someone else was entering the room, a boyish-looking younger man with red hair. He was carrying a glass of water and placed it in front of her.

  To her satisfaction, he was carrying a coaster to put under the glass. Nothing bothered her more than when a slob of a guest set a glass down on this table and the ones in the living room. They ought to know better, she thought, when they’re putting stuff down on a valuable antique table.

  Why was she thinking that? she wondered. Oh, Miss Alexandra . . .

  “Let me introduce Detective Ben Lyons,” Twaddle was saying. “If you don’t mind, he will be taking notes of our conversation.”

  Emma nodded. “Okay.”

  The questioning began.

  Emma did not know that everything she said was being compared with what she had told Janice and Michael.

  “When were you expecting Miss Saunders to be home?” Twaddle watched closely as a momentary look of irritation crossed Emma Cooper’s face.

  “Last Monday. Now, I know these—shoots, they call them—can take a couple of days or a week. Usually it’s quiet when she gets back from a big job. She was supposed to get back Monday night. But this time the phone never stopped ringing on Tuesday. Everybody who was on the plane with her was looking for her.”

  “Weren’t you afraid that something might have happened to her?”

  “Only yesterday I started to worry. It wouldn’t be the first time Miss Alexandra skipped town after she finished a hard job.”

  “You used the word ‘hard,’ ” Twaddle said.

  “Yes, I did.” Emma’s voice became steely. “That Grant Wilson is a mean one. Alexandra’s his top model but she didn’t want to do that Beauty Mask job. She hated to put that stuff on her face. She said it felt like putting on one of those masks they used to make impressions of dead people’s faces.”

  “She said that?” Twaddle asked calmly.

  “Yes. I could see why she might want to get out of town, but at first I thought it was rude not to call me. It made it real tough for me what with the painter coming and making me say yes to the color. But when she was a no-show to meet her sister, I thought that don’t sound right.”

  “Did you know that she left the airport without her luggage?”

  “No one told me that! Why would she do something like that?” Emma demanded.

  “From what her sister was told by Mr. Ambrose, he had run up to check his office. Miss Saunders was to wait in the terminal for a few minutes. When he returned, he found the porter with both his luggage and hers. She had tipped the porter generously to wait with it.”

  “That don’t make sense,” Emma said flatly. “She must have had a good reason to just run away like that.”

  Hubert Twaddle nodded. “Mrs. Cooper, you are a very observant woman and you obviously dislike Grant Wilson. Tell me more about him.”

  “Bad tempered. A bully.”

  “If this is true, why would Miss Saunders have continued to work for him?”

  “I think it’s ’cause he has the biggest modeling agency and gets his people the best jobs.”

  “How well do you know Larry Thompson?”

  “Oh, he’s her favorite photographer. He’s a hard one to figure out. He kind of sits back and takes everything in, if you know what I mean. I know he had a hard time for a while. He and his wife split up. Then she got sick and they got back together. She died last year. But if you ask me, he’s another one who is sweet on Miss Alexandra. But then they all are.
”

  “Have you ever met the pilot of the plane, Marcus Ambrose?”

  “Oh, he’s been around. He calls her a lot.”

  She frowned and bit her lip. “There’s one thing you probably already know because we spoke to the cops about it. Miss Alexandra had someone stalking her last year. He’d leave creepy messages on the phone saying how much he loved her. Then he pasted notes on the terrace door at night. It was scary. The calls and notes just stopped. They never found him.”

  “Mrs. Cooper, thank you. You’ve been a great help. Those young people are resting in the guest bedroom. By now the police will have completed this phase of the investigation. May I suggest that you tidy up the living room and, late as it is, prepare a light snack for them? From what Michael Broad told me, they have not eaten since lunch.”

  Emma sprang up. “Happy to help. When you think that poor girl is still on their honeymoon . . .” Obviously grateful to be able to take some action, she got up and with purposeful steps left the room.

  Twaddle had stood up with Emma. He waited until she was out of earshot, then said, “We will interview the building employees who were on duty. I suspect they will not be able to tell us anything. The door to the back terrace cannot be seen by the doorman. Tomorrow morning we will interrogate the three men who seem to be most closely involved with Alexandra Saunders: Grant Wilson, Larry Thompson and Marcus Ambrose.”

  Friday

  Grant Wilson lived on Fifth Avenue, in the apartment house next to the one where Jackie Kennedy had moved shortly after her husband’s assassination. It gave him a secret thrill to occasionally leave it at the same time she was leaving hers and have a chance to wish her a pleasant day.

  It had just happened this morning, and he was savoring the memory of the glamorous former first lady as he started his mile-and-a-half walk to the office. Then he was stopped by the doorman running after him to say that two detectives from the District Attorney’s Office urgently needed to see him.

  His mouth suddenly went dry with fear. He turned. They were standing at the entrance to the apartment building. Not wanting to say anything in the presence of the doorman, Wilson invited them up to his apartment before he demanded to know why they were there.

  Before they had a chance to answer, he burst out, “It can’t be that something has happened to Alexandra?”

  Hubert Twaddle had already wondered if this might not be the response from the head of the modeling agency. After all, Wilson’s star model had been missing for three days. He had left countless messages begging her to be in touch and reminding her that the Beauty Mask campaign was in jeopardy. Now, seeing the sudden pallor that came over Wilson’s face, Twaddle concluded that the man might be genuinely afraid of what he might hear.

  “Clearly you have not heard the news, Mr. Wilson,” Twaddle said. “Miss Alexandra Saunders was murdered in her apartment last night.”

  Wilson sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. “Not Alexandra,” he said, his tone unbelieving.

  For the next hour, step by step, Twaddle and Ben Lyons heard from Grant Wilson the same story they had heard from Michael Broad. Alexandra had not been seen since Monday night when their chartered plane had landed at Kennedy Airport. Wilson had been in constant touch with both Larry Thompson, the photographer, and Marcus Ambrose, the owner of the charter airline, as to where Alexandra might have gone.

  “Where were you last night from seven o’clock on?” Twaddle asked.

  “I was at a black-tie dinner at the Lotos Club. It’s on 66th Street just off Fifth Avenue.”

  “Were you there all evening?”

  “Yes, of course. It began at six-thirty.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “When the dinner was over, about ten o’clock. I went directly home from there.”

  Ben knew what his partner was thinking. If Wilson had left the Lotos Club around 10 P.M., he had plenty of time to go to Alexandra’s apartment around the time of the murder.

  “Do Thompson and Ambrose know about Alexandra’s death?” Wilson asked dully.

  “I do not know if they have heard it on the news,” Twaddle answered. “If they haven’t, they will hear it from me very soon.”

  • • •

  Larry Thompson had a late breakfast meeting with an account director of Lehman Advertising Agency and his two assistants. Over eggs Benedict, coffee and cigarettes they informed him that he had been chosen to be the producer of a series of commercials for the most popular breakfast cereal in their client’s array of products. It would be a lucrative engagement for Larry except for the fact that all the commercials would involve having young child actors in them. Thinking of the chaos of yesterday’s shoot, he knew it would be a difficult assignment but career enhancing.

  He also knew that for the money he would be getting it would be worth it. Even so, Larry was barely able to contain himself as the account director and his assistants decided to again refill their coffee cups.

  Had they found Alexandra? he kept wondering. When would they find her? It was a question that haunted him as he said a final good-bye to the agency men and took a cab to his townhouse on East 48th Street. At the front door, he found a note taped to the doorknob. Detective Hubert Twaddle requested that he phone him immediately.

  It was a warm morning, but even so, as Grant Wilson had earlier, Larry found himself breaking into a cold sweat. Impatiently he turned the key in the lock and, not waiting until he went up to his apartment, grabbed the phone in the studio and dialed the number on the card.

  Unable to reach either Thompson or Marcus Ambrose at home, Hubert Twaddle and Ben Lyons had returned to their desks in the detective section of the District Attorney’s Office. Ben studied Twaddle’s face as he told Thompson that Alexandra Saunders was dead. But, as usual, neither by voice nor demeanor did he give Ben the slightest hint of what kind of reaction he was getting from Thompson. It was the kind of inscrutable expression that Ben wanted to develop for himself.

  “We will be at your studio in twenty minutes,” Twaddle concluded, and hung up the phone. He turned to Ben.

  “A second grief-stricken and shocked associate of Miss Saunders. This one claims he was home all evening,” he said dryly. “Now, since Mr. Ambrose’s secretary has just left word that he will be in his office at one o’clock, we will go directly to Kennedy Airport after we see Mr. Thompson. The Medical Examiner’s Office said that the autopsy will be completed and the body ready for formal identification by three o’clock. We will pick up Miss Saunders’s sister and brother-in-law at two-thirty. And now let’s pay Mr. Thompson a visit.”

  • • •

  Larry Thompson’s assistant, Peggy Martin, came to work at 10:30 A.M. happy in the fact that it was going to be a normal business day. Not that yesterday’s models had been bad kids. It was just that Kathy dropping the milk bottle too soon had caused a delay while they cleaned and rewaxed the floor.

  Peggy went inside and to her surprise found Larry sitting by the phone in the studio, his hand still on it. For a moment she thought he might have had a stroke. She rushed over to him and shook his arm. He turned to look at her, his eyes staring. He said “Peggy” tentatively, as though he wasn’t sure who she was.

  “Larry, what’s the matter?” Peggy demanded.

  “Alexandra is dead,” he said, his voice a monotone. “Peggy, Alexandra was murdered last night.”

  “No, that’s impossible,” Peggy said, then recognized the futility of her words. She realized that there was nothing she could say to him now. Instead she took the phone from Larry to call the modeling agency and cancel the afternoon booking.

  “Peggy, that’s going to cost Larry plenty,” the agent said. “When you don’t give twenty-four hours’ notice, you pay full rate.”

  “So bill us,” Peggy snapped and slammed down the phone. She turned to Larry as the buzzer sounded. She rushed from the studio through the foyer and opened the door. Two men, their expressions hard to read, were standing there. T
hey wasted no time on pleasantries.

  “We are Detectives Twaddle and Lyons,” Ben said. “We are here to see Mr. Thompson.”

  Peggy led them into the studio and placed two folding chairs across from where Larry was sitting.

  “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” she said, her eyes now filling with tears.

  Larry Thompson did not greet them. Twaddle told him who they were as he scrutinized Larry’s expression. Before they began to question him, Larry said, “You told me Alexandra was murdered. How?”

  “Miss Saunders’s body was found in her apartment. We are speaking to anyone who might have seen or spoken to her Monday evening. Was there anything unusual in her mood or behavior after she got off the plane?”

  “At first I thought that the strain of the Beauty Mask campaign had gotten to be too much for Alexandra. But when I heard that she didn’t meet her sister’s plane yesterday, I couldn’t believe it. She talked about nothing but how much she wanted to see her and meet her new husband. When she didn’t come to the airport, I knew something was terribly wrong.”

  “Did you see or hear from Miss Saunders after leaving the airport Monday evening?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Where were you last evening starting at seven o’clock?”

  “I was home by myself.”

  “Did you to speak to or telephone anyone from seven o’clock on?”

  “No, I didn’t. We’d had a rough day on the set and I was worried about Alexandra. I wanted to be here in case she phoned.” Then he burst out, “Have you any idea who could have done this to Alexandra?”

  “Not yet,” Twaddle told him. “But I assure you we will soon.”

  He got up and Ben followed suit. “We will be in touch with you, Mr. Thompson,” Twaddle said. As they walked to the curb and got in the car, Twaddle commented, “Such a splendid performance from a former child actor. But no supporting cast to verify that he was home last night.”

  • • •

  Promptly at one o’clock Twaddle and Lyons arrived at the Executair Airlines office at Kennedy Airport. As they took in the décor of the reception area, their thoughts were interchangeable. One didn’t need a decorator’s eye to see that every piece of furniture—the desk, chairs, bookcases, filing cabinets—had been ordered from a catalog. There was not a single picture on the walls. The thin, faded blue carpet was of the indoor/outdoor variety. Certainly any profits from this airline were not wasted on frills.