“No problem.” Craig’s tone was hearty and genial.
Craig had always had a knack for defusing situations, Ted thought. They’d met at Dartmouth as freshmen. Craig had been chunky then. At seventeen, he’d looked like a big blond Swede. At thirty-four he was trim, the chunkiness hardened into solid muscle. The strong, heavy features were more becoming to a mature man than to a kid. Craig had had a partial scholarship to college but had worked his backside off at every job he could get—as a dishwasher in the kitchen, as a room clerk in the Hanover Inn, as an orderly in the local hospital.
And still he’s always been around for me, Ted reminded himself. After college, he’d been surprised to bump into Craig in the washroom at the executive office of Winters Enterprises. “Why didn’t you ask me if you wanted a job here?” He hadn’t been sure he was pleased.
“Because if I’m any good, I’ll make it on my own.”
You couldn’t argue with that. And he’d made it, clear up to executive vice-president. If I go to prison, Ted thought, he gets to run the show. I wonder how often he thinks about that. A sense of disgust at his own mental processes washed over him. I think like a cornered rat. I am a cornered rat!
They drove past the Pebble Beach Lodge, the golf course, the Crocker Woodland, and the grounds of Cypress Point Spa came into view. “Pretty soon you’ll understand why we wanted to come here,” Craig told Henry. He looked directly at Ted. “We’re going to put together an airtight defense. You know this place has always been lucky for you.” Then, as he glanced out the side window, he stiffened. “Oh, my God, I don’t believe it. The convertible—Cheryl and Syd are here!”
Grimly he turned to Henry Bartlett. “I’m beginning to think you’re right. We should have gone to Connecticut.”
5
MIN HAD ASSIGNED ELIZABETH THE BUNGALOW WHERE Leila had always stayed. It was one of the most expensive units, but Elizabeth was not sure that she was flattered. Everything in these rooms shouted Leila’s name: the slipcovers in the shade of emerald green Leila loved, the deep armchair with the matching ottoman. Leila used to sprawl on that after a strenuous exercise class—”My God, Sparrow, if I keep this up they can measure me for a thin shroud”; the exquisite inlaid writing desk—”Sparrow, remember the furniture in poor Mama’s place? Early Garage Sale.”
In the short time Elizabeth had been with Min and Helmut, a maid had unpacked her bags. A blue tank suit and ivory terry-cloth robe were lying on the bed. Pinned to the robe was the schedule of her afternoon appointments: four o’clock, massage; five o’clock, facial.
The building housing the women’s spa facilities was at one end of the Olympic pool—a rambling, self-contained one-story structure built to resemble a Spanish adobe. Placid from the outside, it was usually a whirlwind of activity within as women of all ages and shapes hurried along the tiled floors in terry-cloth robes, rushing to their next appointments.
Elizabeth braced herself to see familiar faces—some of the regulars who came to the Spa every three months or so and whom she had gotten to know well during her summers working here. She knew that inevitably condolences would be offered, heads shaken: “I never would have believed Ted Winters capable . . .”
But she did not see one single familiar face in the array of women padding from exercise classes to beauty treatments. Nor did the spa seem as busy as usual. At peak it accommodated about sixty women; the men’s spa held about the same number. There were nothing like that many.
She reminded herself of the color coding of the doors: pink for facial rooms; yellow for massage; orchid for herbal wraps; white for steam cabinets; blue for sloofing. The exercise rooms were beyond the indoor pool and seemed to have been enlarged. There were more individual Jacuzzis in the central solarium. With a touch of disappointment, Elizabeth realized it was too late to soak in one of them for even a few minutes.
Tonight, she promised herself, she’d go for a long swim.
The masseuse who had been assigned to her was one of the old-timers. Small of frame but with powerful arms and hands, Gina was clearly delighted to see her. “You’re coming back to work here, I hope? Of course not. No such luck.”
The massage rooms had obviously been done over. Did Min never stop spending money on this place? But the new tables were luxuriously padded, and under the expert hands of Gina she could feel herself begin to relax.
Gina was kneading her shoulder muscles. “You’re in knots.”
“I guess I am.”
“You have plenty of reason.”
Elizabeth knew that that was Gina’s way of expressing her sympathy. She knew too that unless she began a conversation, Gina would be silent. One of Min’s firm rules to her help was that if guests wanted to talk, it was all right to converse with them. “But don’t you be yakking about your own problems,” Min would say at the weekly staff meetings. “Nobody wants to hear them.”
It would be helpful to get Gina’s impressions of how the Spa was doing. “It doesn’t seem to be too busy today,” she suggested. “Is everybody on the golf course?”
“I wish. Listen, this place hasn’t been busy in nearly two years. Relax, Elizabeth, your arm feels like a board.”
“Two years! What’s happened?”
“What can I say? It started with that stupid mausoleum. People don’t pay these prices to look at mounds of dirt or listen to hammering. And that place still isn’t finished. Will you tell me why they needed a Roman bath here?”
Elizabeth thought of Leila’s remarks about the Roman bath. “That’s what Leila used to say.”
“She was right. l’ll need to have you turn over now.” Expertly the masseuse re-draped the sheet. “And listen, you brought up her name. Do you realize how much glamour Leila gave this place? People wanted to be around her. They’d come here hoping to see her. She was a one-woman ad for the Spa. And she always talked about meeting Ted Winters here. Now—I don’t know. There’s something so different. The Baron spends money like a maniac—you saw the new Jacuzzis. The interior work on that bathhouse goes on and on. And Min is trying to cut corners. It’s a joke. He puts in a Roman bath, and she tells us not to waste towels!”
The facialist was new, a Japanese woman. The unwinding that had begun with the massage was completed by the warm mask she applied after the cleansing and steaming. Elizabeth drifted off to sleep. She was awakened by the woman’s soft voice. “Have you had a nice nap? I left you an extra forty minutes. You looked so peaceful, and I had plenty of time.”
6
WHILE THE MAID UNPACKED HER BAGS, ALVIRAH MEEHAN investigated her new quarters. She went from room to room, her eyes darting about, missing nothing. In her mind she was composing what she would dictate into her brand-new recording machine.
“Will that be all, madame?”
The maid was at the door of the sitting room. “Yes, thank you.” Alvirah tried to imitate the tone of her Tuesday job, Mrs. Stevens. A little hoity-toity, but still friendly.
The minute the door closed behind the maid, she raced to get her recorder out of her voluminous pocketbook. The reporter from the New York Globe had taught her how to use it. She settled herself on the couch in the living room and began:
“Well, here I am at Cypress Point Spa and buhlieve me it’s the cat’s meow. This is my first recording and I want to start by thanking Mr. Evans for his confidence in me. When he interviewed me and Willy about winning the lottery and I told him about my lifelong ambition to come to Cypress Point Spa, he said that I clearly have a sense of the dramatic and the Globe readers would love to know all about the goings-on in a classy spa from my point of view.
“He said that the kind of people I’ll be meeting would never think of me as a writer and so I might hear a lot of interesting stuff. Then when I explained I’d been a real fan of movie stars all my life, and know lots about the private lives of the stars, he said he had a hunch I could write a good series of articles and who knows, maybe even a book.”
Alvirah smiled blissfully and smooth
ed the skirt of her purple-and-pink traveling dress. The skirt tended to hike up.
“A book,” she continued, being careful to speak directly into the microphone. “Me, Alvirah Meehan. But when you think of all the celebrities who write books and how many of them really stink, I believe I just might be able to do that.
“To get to what’s happened so far, I rode in a limousine to the Spa with Elizabeth Lange. She is a lovely young woman and I feel so sorry for her. Her eyes are very sad, and you can tell she’s under a big strain. She slept practically the whole way from San Francisco. Elizabeth is Leila LaSalle’s sister, but very different in looks. Leila was a redhead with green eyes. She could look sexy and queenly at the same time—kind of like a cross between Dolly Parton and Greer Garson. I think a good way to describe Elizabeth is ‘wholesome.’
“She’s a little too thin; her shoulders are broad; she has wide blue eyes with dark lashes, and honey-colored hair that falls around her shoulders. She has strong, beautiful teeth, and the one time she smiled she gave off just the warmest glow. She’s pretty tall—about five foot nine, I guess. I bet she sings. Her speaking voice is so pleasant, but not that exaggerated actress voice you hear from so many of these young starlets. I guess you don’t call them starlets anymore. Maybe if I get friendly with her, she’ll tell me some interesting things about her sister and Ted Winters. I wonder if the Globe will want me to cover the trial.”
Alvirah paused, pushed the rewind button and then the replay. It was all right. The machine was working. She thought she ought to say something about her surroundings.
“Mrs. von Schreiber escorted me to my bungalow. I almost laughed out loud when she called it a bungalow. We used to rent a bungalow in Rockaway Beach on Ninety-ninth Street right near the amusement park. The place used to shake every time the roller coaster went down the last steep drop, which was every five minutes during the summer.
“This bungalow has a sitting room all done in light blue chintz and Oriental scatter rugs . . . they’re handmade—I checked . . . a bedroom with a canopy bed, a small desk, a slipper chair, a bureau, a vanity table filled with cosmetics and lotions, and two huge bathrooms, each with its own Jacuzzi. There’s also a room with built-in bookshelves, a real leather couch and chairs and an oval table. Upstairs there are two more bedrooms and baths, which of course I really don’t need. Luxury! I keep pinching myself.
“Baroness von Schreiber told me that the day starts at seven A.M. with a brisk walk, which everyone in the Spa is requested to take. After that I will be served a low-calorie breakfast in my own dining room. The maid will also bring my personal daily schedule, which will include things like a facial, a massage, a herbal wrap, a sloofing treatment—whatever that is—the steam cabinet, a pedicure and a manicure and a hair treatment. Imagine! After I have been checked out by the doctor, they will add my exercise classes.
“Now I’m going to take a little rest, and then it will be time to dress for dinner. I’m going to wear my rainbow caftan, which I bought at Martha’s on Park Avenue. I showed it to the Baroness and she said it would be perfect, but not to wear the crystal beads I won at the shooting gallery in Coney Island.”
Alvirah turned off the recorder and beamed in satisfaction. Who ever said writing was hard? With a recorder it was a cinch. Recorder! Quickly, she got up and reached for her pocketbook. From inside a zippered compartment she took out a small box containing a sunburst pin.
But not just any sunburst pin, she thought proudly. This one had a microphone, and the editor had told her to wear it to record conversations. “That way,” he had explained, “no one can claim you misquoted them later on.”
7
“SORRY TO DO THIS TO YOU, TED, BUT WE SIMPLY DON’T have the luxury of time.” Henry Bartlett leaned back in the upholstered armchair at the end of the library table.
Ted was aware that his left temple was throbbing, and shafts of pain were finding a target behind and above his left eye. Deliberately he moved his head to avoid the streams of late-afternoon sun that were coming through the window opposite him.
They were in the study of Ted’s bungalow in the Meadowcluster area, one of the two most expensive accommodations at Cypress Point Spa. Craig was sitting diagonally across from him, his face grave, his hazel eyes cloudy with worry.
Henry had wanted a conference before dinner. “Time is running out,” he had said, “and until we decide on our final strategy, we can’t make any progress.”
Twenty years in prison, Ted thought incredulously. That was the sentence he was facing. He’d be fifty-four years old when he got out. Incongruously, all the old gangster movies he’d used to watch late at night sprang into his mind. Steel bars, tough prison guards, Jimmy Cagney starring as a mad-dog killer. He used to revel in them.
“We have two ways we can go,” Henry Bartlett said. “We can stick to your original story—”
“My original story,” Ted snapped.
“Hear me out! You left Leila’s apartment at about ten after nine. You went to your own apartment. You tried to phone Craig.” He turned to Craig. “It’s a damn shame you didn’t pick up the phone.”
“I was watching a program I wanted to see. The telephone recorder was on. I figured I’d call back anyone who left a message. And I can swear the phone rang at nine twenty, just as Ted says.”
“Why didn’t you leave a message, Ted?”
“Because I hate talking to machines, and especially that one.” His lips tightened. Craig’s habit of talking like a Japanese houseboy on his recorder irritated Ted wildly.
“What were you calling Craig about, anyhow?”
“It’s blurry. I was drunk. My impression is that I wanted to tell him I was taking off for a while.”
“That doesn’t help us. Probably if you had reached him it wouldn’t help us. Not unless he can back you up that you were talking to him at precisely nine thirty-one P.M.”
Craig slammed his hand on the table. “Then I’ll say it. I’m not in favor of lying under oath, but neither am I in favor of Ted getting railroaded for something he didn’t do.”
“It’s too late for that. You’ve already made a statement. You change it now and the situation gets worse.” Bartlett skimmed the papers he had pulled from his briefcase. Ted got up and walked to the window. He had planned to go to the men’s spa and work out for a while. But Bartlett had been insistent about this meeting. Already his freedom was being infringed.
How many times had he come to Cypress Point with Leila in their three-year relationship? Eight or ten probably. Leila had loved it here. She’d been amused by Min’s bossiness, by the Baron’s pretentiousness. She’d enjoyed long hikes along the cliffs. “All right, Falcon, if you won’t come with me, play your darn golf and I’ll meet you at my pad later.” That mischievous wink, the deliberate leer, her long, slender fingers running along his shoulders. “God, Falcon, you do turn me on.” Lying with her in his arms on the couch watching late-night movies. Her murmured “Min knows better than to give us any of those damn narrow antiques of hers. She knows I like to cuddle with my fellow.” It was here that he had found the Leila he loved; the Leila she herself wanted to be.
What was Bartlett saying? “Either we attempt to flatly contradict Elizabeth Lange and the so-called eyewitness or we try to turn that testimony to our benefit.”
“How does one do that?” God, I hate this man, Ted thought. Look at him sitting there, cool and comfortable. You’d think he was discussing a chess game, not the rest of my life. Irrational fury almost choked him. He had to get out of this spot. Even being in a room with someone he disliked gave him claustrophobia. How could he share a cell with another man for two or three decades? He couldn’t. At any price, he couldn’t do it.
“You have no memory of hailing the cab, of the ride to Connecticut.”
“Absolutely none.”
“Your last conscious memory of that evening. Tell me again: what was it?”
“I had been with Leila for several hours. She was hys
terical. Kept accusing me of cheating on her.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why did she accuse you?”
“Leila was—terribly insecure. She’d had bad experiences with men. She had convinced herself she could never trust one. I thought I’d gotten her over that as far as our relationship was concerned, but every once in a while she’d throw a jealous fit.” That scene in the apartment. Leila lunging at him, scratching his face; her wild accusations. His hands on her wrists, restraining her. What had he felt? Anger. Fury. And disgust.
“You tried to give her back the engagement ring?”
“Yes, and she refused it.”
“Then what happened?”
“Elizabeth phoned. Leila began sobbing into the phone and shouting at me to get out. I told her to put the phone down. I wanted to get to the bottom of what had brought all this on.
“I saw it was hopeless and left. I went to my own apartment. I think I changed my shirt. I tried to call Craig. I remember leaving the apartment. I don’t remember anything else until the next day when I woke up in Connecticut.”
“Teddy, do you realize what the prosecutor will do to that story? Do you know how many cases are on record of people who kill in a fit of rage and then have a psychotic episode where they block it out? As your lawyer I have to tell you something: That story stinks! It’s no defense. Sure, if it weren’t for Elizabeth Lange there wouldn’t be a problem. . . . Hell, there wouldn’t even be a case. I could make mincemeat of that socalled eyewitness. She’s a nut, a real off-the-wall nut. But with Elizabeth swearing you were in the apartment fighting with Leila at nine thirty, the nut becomes believable when she says you shoved Leila off the terrace at nine thirty-one.”
“Then what do we do about it?” Craig asked.
“We gamble,” Bartlett said. “Ted agrees with Elizabeth’s story. He now remembers going back upstairs. Leila was still hysterical. She slammed the phone down and ran to the terrace. Everybody who was in Elaine’s the night before can testify to her emotional state. Her sister admits she had been drinking. She was despondent about her career. She had decided to break off her relationship with you. She felt washed up. She wouldn’t be the first one to take a dive in that situation.”