“You took the money out of Min’s Swiss account.”
He nodded. “Minna has guessed. What is the use?”
“Is it possible that she always knew? That she sent those letters because she wanted to upset Leila enough to destroy her performance? No one knew Leila’s emotional state better than Min.”
The Baron’s eyes widened. “But how magnificent. It is just the sort of thing Minna would do. Then she may have known all along that there was no money left. Could she have been simply punishing me?”
Elizabeth did not care if her face showed the disgust she felt. “I don’t share your admiration for that scheme, if it was Min’s doing.” She went to the desk and got a fresh pad. “You heard Ted struggling with Leila?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where were you? How did you get in? How long were you there? Exactly what did you hear?”
It helped to be writing, to concentrate on taking down word for word what he said. He had heard Leila pleading for her life, and he had not tried to help her.
When he had finished, perspiration was glistening on his smooth cheeks. She wanted to get him out of her sight, but she could not resist saying, “Suppose instead of running away, you had gone into that apartment? Leila might be alive right now. Ted might not be plea-bargaining for a lighter sentence if you hadn’t been so worried about saving yourself.”
“I don’t believe that, Elizabeth. It happened in seconds.” The Baron’s eyes widened. “But haven’t you heard? There is no plea bargain. It’s been on the news all afternoon. A second eyewitness saw Ted hold Leila over the terrace before he dropped her. The district attorney wants Ted to get life.”
Leila had not toppled over the railing in a struggle. He had held her, then deliberately dropped her. That Leila’s death had taken a few seconds longer seemed to Elizabeth even more cruel than her worst fears. I should be glad they’re going for the maximum penalty, she told herself. I should be glad to have the chance to testify against him.
She wanted desperately to be alone, but she managed to ask the Baron one more question: “Did you see Syd near Leila’s apartment that night?”
Could she trust the look of astonishment on his face? “No, I did not,” he said firmly. “Was he there?”
* * *
It is finished, Elizabeth told herself. She put in a call to Scott Alshorne. The sheriff was out on official business. Could someone else help her? No. She left a message for him to phone her. She would turn over Alvirah Meehan’s recording equipment to him and get on the next plane to New York. No wonder they’d all sounded so on edge from Alvirah’s relentless questioning. Most of them had something to hide.
The sunburst pin. She started to put it into a bag with the recorder and then realized she hadn’t listened to the last cassette. It occurred to her that Alvirah had been wearing the pin in the clinic. . . . She managed to extract the cassette from the tiny container. If Alvirah was so concerned about the collagen injections, would she have left the recorder on during the treatment?
She had. Elizabeth turned up the volume and held the recorder to her ear. The cassette began with Alvirah in the treatment room talking with the nurse. The nurse reassuring her, talking about Valium; the click of the door, Alvirah’s even breathing, the click of the door again . . . The Baron’s somewhat muffled and indistinct voice, reassuring Alvirah, starting the injection; the click of the door, Alvirah’s gasps, her attempt to call for help, her frenzied breath, a click of the door again, the nurse’s cheerful voice, “Well, here we are, Mrs. Meehan. All set for your beauty treatment?” And then the nurse, upset, on the edge of panic, saying, “Mrs. Meehan, what’s the matter? Doctor . . .”
There was a pause, then the voice of Helmut barking orders—”Open that robe!”—calling for oxygen. There was a pounding sound—that must have been when he was compressing her chest; then Helmut called for an intravenous. That was when I was there, Elizabeth thought. He tried to kill her. Whatever he gave her was meant to kill her. Alvirah’s persistent references to that sentence about “a butterfly floating on a cloud,” her constantly saying that that reminded her of something, her calling him a clever author—did he perceive that as her toying with him? Had he still hoped that somehow Min wouldn’t learn the truth about the play, about her Swiss bank account?
She replayed the last tape again and again. There was something about it she didn’t understand. What was it? What was she missing?
Not knowing what she was looking for, she reread the notes she had taken when Helmut described Leila’s death. Her eyes became riveted to one sentence. But that’s wrong, she thought.
Unless.
Like an exhausted climber within inches of an icy summit, she reviewed the notes she had made from Alvirah Meehan’s tapes.
And found the key.
It had always been there, waiting for her. Did he realize how close she had been to the truth?
Yes, he did.
She shivered, remembering the questions that had seemed so innocent, her own troubled answers that must have been so threatening to him.
Her hand flew to the phone. She would call Scott. And then she withdrew her fingers from the dial. Tell him what? There wasn’t a shred of proof. There never would be.
Unless she could force his hand.
8
FOR OVER AN HOUR, SCOTT SAT BY ALVIRAH’S BEDSIDE, hoping she would say something else. Then, touching Willy Meehan’s shoulder, he said, “I’ll be right back.” He had seen John Whitley at the nurses’ station and followed him into his office.
“Have you anything more you can tell me, John?”
“No.” The doctor looked both angry and perplexed. “I don’t like not knowing what I’m dealing with. Her blood sugar was so low that without a history of severe hypoglycemia we have to suspect that somebody injected her with insulin. She sure as hell has a puncture mark where we found the spot of blood on her cheek. If Von Schreiber claims he didn’t inject her face at all, something’s screwy.”
“What are her chances?” Scott asked.
John shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s too soon to tell if she has incurred any brain damage. If willpower can bring her back, that husband of hers will manage it. He’s doing everything right. Talking to her about chartering a plane to get here, about fixing the house when they go home. If she can hear him, she’ll want to stay around.”
John’s office overlooked the garden. Scott walked to the window, wishing he could spend some time alone, think this through. “We can’t prove Mrs. Meehan was the victim of an attempted murder. We can’t prove Miss Samuels was the victim of murder.”
“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.
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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.
9
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. . . .
10
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.”