Elizabeth stood up. “It was nice of you to drop by, Mrs. Meehan. I’m afraid I have to change now. I always like to take a swim before I go to bed.”
“I know. They talked about that at the table. Craig—is that his name, Mr. Winters’ assistant—?”
“Yes.”
“He asked the Baroness how long you were going to stay. She told him probably until day after tomorrow because you were waiting to see someone named Sammy.”
“That’s right.”
“And Syd Melnick said that he has a hunch you’re going to avoid all of them. Then the Baroness said that the one place you can always find Elizabeth is swimming in the Olympic pool around ten o’clock at night. I guess she was right.”
“She knows I like to swim. Do you know your way to your cottage, Mrs. Meehan? If not, I’ll walk with you. It can be confusing in the dark.”
“No, I’m fine. I enjoyed talking to you.” Alvirah pulled herself up from the chair and, ignoring the path, began to cut across the lawn to her bungalow. She was disappointed that Elizabeth hadn’t said anything that would be helpful for her articles. But on the other hand, she had gotten a lot of material at dinner. She certainly could do a meaty article on jealousy!
Wouldn’t the reading public be interested to hear that Leila LaSalle’s very best friends all acted as if they were glad she was dead!
15
CAREFULLY, HE DREW THE SHADES AND EXTINGUISHED the lights. He was frantic to hurry. It might already be too late, but there was no way he could have ventured out before now. When he opened the outside door, he shivered for a moment. The air had become chilly, and he was wearing only swim trunks and a dark T-shirt.
The grounds were quiet, lighted only by the now dimmed lanterns along the footpaths and in the trees. It was easy to stay hidden in the shadows as he hurried toward the Olympic pool. Would she still be there?
The change in wind had caused a mist to blow in from the sea. In minutes, the stars had been covered by clouds, the moon had disappeared. Even if anyone happened to stand at a window and look out, he would not be seen.
Elizabeth planned to stay at the Spa until she saw Sammy tomorrow night. That gave him only a day and a half—until Tuesday morning—to arrange her death. He stopped at the shrubbery that edged the patio around the Olympic pool. In the darkness he could barely see Elizabeth’s moving form as she swam with swift, sure strokes from one end of the pool to the other. Carefully, he calculated his chance of success. The idea had come to him when Min said Elizabeth was always in this pool around ten o’clock. Even strong swimmers have accidents. A sudden cramp, no one within hearing distance if she cried out, no marks, no signs of struggle . . . His plan was to slip into the pool when she was almost at the opposite end, wait and pounce on her as she passed him, hold her down until she stopped struggling. Now, he edged his way from behind the shrubbery. It was dark enough to risk a closer look.
He had forgotten how fast she swam. Though she was so slender, the muscles in her arms were like steel. Suppose she was able to fight long enough to attract attention? And she was probably wearing one of those damn whistles Min insisted lone swimmers put on.
His eyes narrowed in anger and frustration as he crouched nearer and nearer the edge of the pool, ready to spring, not sure if this was the precisely right moment. She was faster swimmer than he was. In the water she might have the advantage over him. . . .
He could not afford to make a second mistake.
* * *
IN AQUA SANITAS. The Romans had chiseled the motto into the walls of their bathhouses. If I believed in reincarnation, I would think I had lived in those times, Elizabeth thought as she glided across the dark recess of the pool. When she had begun to swim, it had been possible to see not only the perimeter of the pool, but the surrounding area with its lounge chairs and umbrella tables and flowering hedges. Now they were only dark silhouettes.
The persistent headache she’d had all evening began to ebb, the sense of enclosure faded; once again she began to experience the release she had always found in water. “Do you think it started in the womb?” she’d once joked to Leila. “I mean this absolute sensation of being free when I’m immersed.”
Leila’s answer had shocked her: “Maybe Mama was happy when she was carrying you, Sparrow. I’ve always thought that your father was Senator Lange. He and Mama had a big thing going after my daddy dear split the scene. When I was in the womb, I gather they called me ‘the mistake.’”
It was Leila who had suggested that Elizabeth use the stage name Lange. “It probably should be your real name, Sparrow,” she had said. “Why not?”
As soon as Leila began making money, she had sent a check to Mama every month. One day the check was returned uncashed by Mama’s last boyfriend. Mama had died of acute alcoholism.
Elizabeth touched the far wall, brought her knees to her chest and flipped her body over, changing from a backstroke to a breaststroke in one fluid movement. Was it possible that Leila’s fear of personal relationships had begun at the moment of conception? Can a speck of protoplasm sense that the climate is hostile, and can that realization color a whole life? Wasn’t it because of Leila that she’d never experienced that terrible sense of parental rejection? She remembered her mother’s description of bringing her home from the hospital: “Leila took her out of my arms. She moved the crib into her room. She was only eleven, but she became that child’s mother. I wanted to call her Laverne, but Leila put her foot down. She said, ‘Her name is Elizabeth!’” One more reason to be grateful to Leila, Elizabeth thought.
The soft ripple that her body made as she moved through the water masked the faint sound of footsteps at the other end of the pool. She had reached the north end and was starting back. For some reason she began to swim furiously, as though sensing danger.
The shadowy figure edged its way along the wall. He coldly calculated the speed of her swift, graceful progress. Timing was essential. Grab her from behind as she passed, lie over her body, hold her face in the water until she stopped struggling. How long would it take? A minute? Two? But suppose she wasn’t that easy to subdue? This had to appear to be an accidental drowning.
Then an idea came to him, and in the darkness his lips stretched in the semblance of a smile. Why hadn’t he thought of the scuba equipment earlier? Wearing the oxygen tank would make it possible for him to hold her at the bottom of the pool until he was certain she was dead. The wet suit, the gloves, the mask, the goggles were a perfect disguise, if anyone happened to see him cutting across the grounds.
He watched as she began to swim toward the steps. The impulse to get rid of her now was almost overwhelming. Tomorrow night, he promised himself. Carefully he moved closer as she placed her foot on the bottom step of the ladder and straightened up. His narrowed eyes strained to watch as she slipped on her robe and began to walk along the path to her bungalow.
Tomorrow night he would be waiting here for her. The next morning someone would spot her body at the bottom of the pool, as the workman had spotted Leila’s body in the courtyard.
And he would have nothing left to fear.
Monday,
August 31
QUOTE FOR THE DAY:
A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
—GEORGE MEREDITH
GOOD MORNING, DEAR GUESTS.
We hope you have slept blissfully. The weatherman promises us yet another beautiful Cypress Point Spa day.
A little reminder. Some of us are forgetting to fill out our luncheon menu. We don’t want you to have to wait for service after all that vigorous exercise and delicious pampering of the morning. So do please take a tiny moment to circle your choices before you leave your room now.
In just a moment, we’ll be greeting you on our morning walk Hurry and join us.
And remember, another day at Cypress Point Spa means another set of dazzling hours dedicated to making you a more beautiful person, the kind of person people long to be with, to touch, to love.
Baron and Baroness Helmut von Schreiber
1
ELIZABETH WOKE LONG BEFORE DAWN ON MONDAY MORNING. Even the swim had not performed its usual magic. For what seemed most of the night, she had been troubled with broken dreams, fragments that came and went intermittently. They were all in the dreams: Mama, Leila, Ted, Craig, Syd, Cheryl, Sammy, Min, Helmut—even Leila’s two husbands, those transitory charlatans who had used her success to get themselves into the spotlight: the first an actor, the second a would-be producer and socialite. . . .
At six o’clock she got out of bed, pulled up the shade, then huddled back under the light covers. It was chilly, but she loved to watch the sun come up. It seemed to her that the early morning had a dreamy quality of its own, the human quiet was so absolute. The only sounds came from the seabirds along the shore.
At six thirty there was a tap on the door. Vicky, the maid who brought in the wake-up glass of juice, had been with the Spa for years. She was a sturdy sixty-year-old woman who supplemented her husband’s pension by what she sardonically called “carrying breakfast roses to fading blossoms.” They greeted each other with the warmth of old friends.
“It feels strange to be on the guest end of the place,” Elizabeth commented.
“You earned your right to be here. I saw you in Hilltop. You’re a damn good actress.”
“I still feel surer of myself teaching water aerobics.”
“And Princess Di can always get a job teaching kindergarten. Come off it.”
She deliberately waited until she was sure that the daily procession called The Cypress Hike was in progress. By the time she went out, the marchers, led by Min and the Baron, were already nearing the path that led to the coast. The hike took in the Spa property, the Crocker wooded preserve and Cypress Point, wound past the Pebble Beach golf course, circled the Lodge and backtracked to the Spa. In all, it was a brisk fifty-minute exercise, followed by breakfast.
Elizabeth waited until the hikers were out of sight before she began jogging in the opposite direction from them. It was still early, and traffic was light. She would have preferred to run along the coast, where she could have an unbroken view of the ocean, but that would have meant risking being noticed by the others.
If only Sammy were back, she thought as she began to quicken her pace. I could talk to her and be on a plane this afternoon. She wanted to get away from here. If Alvirah Meehan was to be believed, Cheryl had called Leila a “washed-up drunk” last night. And except for Ted, her murderer, everyone else had laughed.
Min, Helmut, Syd, Cheryl, Craig, Ted. The people who had been closest to Leila; the weeping mourners at her memorial service. Oh, Leila! Elizabeth thought. Incongruously, lines from a song she had learned as a child came back to her.
Though all the world betray thee,
One sword at least thy rights shall guard,
One faithful heart shall praise thee.
I’ll sing your praises, Leila! Tears stung her eyes, and she dabbed at them impatiently. She began to jog faster, as if to outrun her thoughts. The early-morning mist was being burned away by the sun; the thick shrubbery that bordered the homes along the road was bathed in morning dew; the sea gulls arced overhead and swooped back to the shore. How accurate a witness was Alvirah Meehan? There was something oddly intense about the woman, something that went beyond her excitement at being here.
She was passing the Pebble Beach golf links. Early golfers were already on the course. She had taken up golf in college. Leila had never played. She used to tell Ted that someday she’d make time to learn. She never would have, Elizabeth thought, and a smile touched her lips; Leila was too impatient to traipse after a ball for four or five hours. . . .
Her breath was coming in gulps, and she slowed her pace. I’m out of shape, she thought. Today she would go to the women’s spa and take a full schedule of exercises and treatments. It would be a useful way to pass the time. She turned down the road that led back to the Spa—and collided with Ted.
He grasped her arms to keep her from falling. Gasping at the force of the impact, she struggled to push him away from her. “Let go of me.” Her voice rose. “I said, let go of me.” She was aware that there was no one else on the road. He was perspiring, his T-shirt clinging to his body. The expensive watch Leila had given him glistened in the sun.
He released her. Stunned and frightened, she watched as he stared down at her, his expression inscrutable. “Elizabeth, I’ve got to talk to you.”
He wasn’t even going to pretend he hadn’t planned this.
“Say what you have to say in court.” She tried to pass him, but he blocked her way. Inadvertently she stepped back. Was this what Leila had felt at the end: this sense of being trapped?
“I said listen to me.” It seemed that he had sensed her fear and was infuriated by it.
“Elizabeth, you haven’t given me a chance. I know how it looks. Maybe—and this is something I just don’t know—maybe you’re right, and I went back upstairs. I was drunk and angry, but I was also terribly worried about Leila. Elizabeth, think about this: if you are right, if I did go back up, if that woman is right who says she saw me struggling with Leila, won’t you at least grant that I might have been trying to save her? You know how depressed Leila was that day. She was almost out of her mind.”
“If you went back upstairs. Are you telling me now that you’re willing to concede you went back upstairs?” Elizabeth felt as though her lungs were closing. The air seemed suddenly humid and heavy with the scent of still-damp cypress leaves and moist earth. Ted was just over six feet tall, but the three-inch difference in their heights seemed to disappear as they stared at each other. She was aware again of the intensity of the lines that seared the skin around his eyes and mouth.
“Elizabeth, I know how you must feel about me, but there is something you have to understand. I don’t remember what happened that night. I was so damn drunk; so damn upset. Over these months I’ve begun to have some vague impression of being at the door of Leila’s apartment, of pushing it open. So maybe you’re right, maybe you did hear me call something to her. But I have absolutely no memory beyond that! That is the truth as I know it. The next question: do you think, drunk or sober, that I’m capable of murder?”
His dark blue eyes were clouded with pain. He bit his lip and held his hands out imploringly. “Well, Elizabeth?”
In a quick move she darted around him and ran for the gates of the Spa. The district attorney had predicted this. If Ted didn’t think he could lie his way out of being on the terrace with Leila, he would say he was trying to save her.
She didn’t look back until she was at the gates. Ted had not attempted to follow her. He was standing where she had left him, staring after her, his hands on his hips.
Her arms were still burning from the force with which his hands had grabbed her. She remembered something else the district attorney had told her.
Without her as a witness, Ted would go free.
2
AT EIGHT A.M., DORA “SAMMY” SAMUELS BACKED HER car out of her cousin Elsie’s driveway and with a sigh of relief began the drive from the Napa Valley to the Monterey Peninsula. With any luck, she’d be there about two o’clock. Originally she’d planned to leave in the late afternoon, and Elsie had been openly annoyed that she’d changed her mind, but she was eager to get back to the Spa and go through the rest of the mailbags.
She was a wiry seventy-one-year-old woman with steel-gray hair pulled back in a neat bun. Old-fashioned rimless glasses sat on the bridge of her small, straight nose. It had been a year and a half since an aneurism had nearly killed her, and the massive surgery had left her with a permanent air of fragility, but until now she had always impatiently shaken off any talk of retirement.
It had been a disquieting weekend. Her cousin had always disapproved of Dora’s job with Leila. “Answering fan mail from vapid women” was the way she put it. “I should think with your brains, you’d find a better way to spend your tim
e. Why don’t you do volunteer teaching?”
Long ago, Dora had given up trying to explain to Elsie that after thirty-five years of teaching, she never wanted to see a textbook again, that the eight years she’d worked for Leila had been the most exciting of her own uneventful life.
This weekend had been particularly trying, because when Elsie saw her going through the sack of fan mail, she’d been astonished. “You mean to tell me that seventeen months after that woman died, you’re still writing to her fans? Are you crazy?”
No, she wasn’t, Dora told herself as she drove well within the speed limit through the wine country. It was a hot, lazy day, but even so, busloads of sightseers were already passing her, heading for vineyard tours and wine-tasting parties.
She had not tried to explain to Elsie that sending personal notes to the people who had loved Leila was a way of assuaging her own sense of loss. She had also not told her cousin the reason why she had brought up the heavy sack of mail. She was searching to see if Leila had received other poison-pen letters than the one she had already found.
That one had been mailed three days before Leila died. The address on the envelope and the enclosed note were put together with words and phrases snipped from magazines and newspapers. It read:
Thinking of that note, of the others that must have preceded it, brought a fresh burst of outrage. Leila, Leila, she whispered. Who would do that to you?
She of all people had understood Leila’s terrible vulnerability, understood that her outward confidence, her flamboyant public image was the facade of a deeply insecure woman.
She remembered how Elizabeth had gone off to school just at the time she’d started working for Leila. She’d seen Leila come back from the airport, lonely, devastated, in tears. “God, Sammy,” she said. “I can’t believe I may not see Sparrow for months. But a Swiss boarding school! Won’t that be a great experience for her? A big difference from Lumber Creek High, my alma mater.” Then she said hesitantly, “Sammy, I’m not doing anything tonight. Will you stay, and let’s get something to eat?”