Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories (10 page)

Alexandra could be caustic when she wrote about celebrities—and sympathetic to others whose careers were not working out. She mentioned helping out some friends who were having money problems.
I know they'll probably never be able to repay me but that's not what it's about.

Sometimes there were no entries for two or three years. And then an entry would start,
I'm mad at myself that I didn't keep up with more frequent entries but nothing particularly new to report. As usual I go out a lot but so far nobody I can visualize looking at over the breakfast table for forty or fifty years.

But the entry of two years ago was the one Janice had wanted to find.

Met Lisa Markey at a shoot today. Genuine, funny and honest. She told me she knows she'll never be another Suzy Parker but she gets lots of jobs posing for the Sears and Roebuck catalogs. She said it's a riot the way the fashion editor will pin a dress or a jacket or slacks so they look great on camera. But when they take out the pins! Talk about a bunch of shapeless rags.

A year and a half ago Alexandra had written,
Audrey died today. I am so sorry for her. She was so furious at what was happening to her that she made Larry's life hell. I saw him yesterday. He looks twice his age.

A week later she had written that Lisa Markey told her that her grandfather had died and left her his ski cabin.

Alexandra had gone skiing and loved it. She hadn't said with whom. I even thought it might have been with a guy, Janice recalled.

Janice continued reading from the diary.

Lisa was so excited. She had her first helicopter ride. Said it was thrilling. They were shooting a Sea and Ski commercial in the Catskills. Told her I was jealous. I've always wanted to ride in a helicopter.

There were more and more references to Larry Thompson, Janice observed.

Larry looks better. He went to visit some friends in France and I think it did him a world of good.

Larry and I went out to dinner. I started to complain about how miserable it is to work for Grant Wilson. If I expected sympathy, I didn't get it. He said “I was trying to warn you.” I was ready to throw something at him, but then he smiled. And I knew that as usual he was trying to get a rise out of me.

Another entry read,
Audrey has been gone a year. Larry was at dinner at 21 last night. And according to Rona Barrett he was paying special attention to socialite Robin Reeves.

I wonder if Alexandra is in love with him, Janice thought. It certainly sounds like it to me.

Mike had dumped the deep top drawer on the bed and had been going through it item by item. She began to close the diary as Mike handed her a picture of Alexandra and another pretty woman holding their skis. Their resemblance to each other was remarkable. It was taken while they were in front of a ski lodge. Over the lodge was a sign that said
WINDHAM
.

“Mike, if Lisa Markey has a ski house in Windham—”

Mike cut her off. “I was thinking the same thing. That could be a place to look for Alexandra.”

•  •  •

Hubert Twaddle and Ben Lyons had just reached their desks minutes earlier when the call from Mike came in. Twaddle had just finished ordering a squad of detectives to immediately start ringing the doorbells of all the apartments in Lisa Markey's building to see if anyone knew the address of the cabin.

Twaddle did not waste time.

“What kind of picture is it?”

“It's the kind of picture they take at resorts and sell to you. It's in a cardboard frame. It has a ‘Welcome to Windham' sign on it.”

“Windham, are you sure it says Windham?” Twaddle asked urgently.

“Yes, of course. It's spelled out. W-I-N-D-H-A-M. According to an entry in her diary, Alexandra was there a year and a half ago—”

Twaddle interrupted him.

“Mike, that is very important information. Thank you for it.”

He hung up abruptly and turned to Ben.

He had earlier left instructions that the backgrounds of the three men who had arrived at the airport with Alexandra on Monday be thoroughly checked. They were still waiting for the reports.

Twaddle's phone rang again. It was the garage attendant at Lisa Markey's building.

“You asked me to call you if anybody came asking about Miss Markey or her car. Someone did.”

“Did you get his name?” Twaddle snapped.

“No, I didn't.”

“What did he ask about Miss Markey?”

“He said he had a lunch date with her and that she didn't show up. He said he rang the doorbell of her apartment and nobody answered. He said he was worried about her and asked me if she had taken her car out. Just like you told me, I said that I was not permitted to give out personal information about the tenants.”

Twaddle detected a hesitation in the man's voice. “Did you give him any information at all?”

“He was so upset. He was afraid something had happened to Miss Markey. He said he worried about her driving that old car. I told him she lent it to a friend who hadn't returned it. So don't worry about her.”

“Did you say anything about where Miss Markey's friend may have gone?”

“I didn't say anything, but then he asked if the friend might have gone to the ski house.”

“And what did you say?” Twaddle asked.

“I told him the cops said I'm not allowed to say that.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a big guy. Looked like a football player. Reddish brown hair. Kinda curly.”

Ben had moved closer to Twaddle to hear both ends of the conversation.

Twaddle hurriedly thanked the garage attendant and put down the phone. They looked at each other. “Marcus Ambrose,” they said in unison.

•  •  •

Twaddle ordered, “Ben, find out if there is a phone number for Lisa Markey in Windham.”

Thirty seconds later Ben said, “There is no such listing.”

“Then phone the town clerk in Windham and ask him to check the records for a property listed in Lisa Markey's name. We have to find the address of her cabin. Thanks to that loose-lipped garage attendant, Marcus Ambrose may be headed there now.”

Rapidly, he continued to bark orders.

“Contact the local precinct in Windham to see if they know where her home is. She's not an ordinary owner of a ski cottage. Lisa Markey was a beautiful young woman and would have been noticed if she was there every season.”

The lead detective who had been probing further into the backgrounds of the people who had flown with Alexandra in the chartered plane—Marcus Ambrose, Grant Wilson and Larry Thompson—appeared at Twaddle's desk. “We found something, Hubert,” he said.

Twaddle scanned the reports. “It is exactly what I suspected. As always, it's about money.”

He fished in his pocket and found Marcus Ambrose's business card. He waited as the phone rang twice before it was picked up.

“Executair Airlines. Good afternoon.”

Recognizing her voice he said, “Good afternoon, Miss Lansing. This is Detective Twaddle. Am I right that your firm has a helicopter for hire?”

“Oh, indeed we have.”

“Is it available right now?”

“I'm so sorry but Mr. Ambrose just took off in it.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” Twaddle remarked mildly. “Do you happen to know where he is going?”

“No, I don't. He doesn't tell me his comings and goings.” Miss Lansing giggled. “After all, he's a bachelor and good-looking and rich. I only wish I was twenty years younger.”

Twaddle had no interest in responding to inane chatter.

“Miss Lansing, did Executair provide a helicopter to take a party to Windham, New York, last winter?”

“I think so. Let me look.” A minute later she was back on the phone. “In February of 1973 we brought a party to Windham, New York. The client was the Ford Modeling Agency.”

“Do you keep a log of which of your pilots flew on each reservation?”

“Of course we do. On this flight Mr. Ambrose, himself, was the pilot.”

“Thank you, Miss Lansing,” Twaddle responded crisply and hung up the phone.

“Ben, call the Windham Police Station. Tell them that a potential murderer is on his way to Windham. They must find the name of the grandfather who died and left his cabin to Lisa Markey. I will have
a police helicopter waiting for us at the heliport. We have got to get there on time.”

•  •  •

In murky darkness, Alexandra got off the bed and reached to turn on the lamp. It didn't work. She then flipped the wall switch for the overhead light. Again, nothing. She felt her way into the living room. The rain was beating savagely against the windows and roof. She had noticed there was a flashlight on the shelf over the kitchen sink. Her foot hit the ottoman in front of the television and she lost her balance but managed to steady herself before she fell. Disoriented in the unfamiliar surroundings, she made herself stand perfectly still and think. The entrance to the kitchen was on the right side of the living room. The couch was facing the television and was across the room from the ottoman. Extending her arms, she sidestepped until she felt the wall and then went forward, making her way into the kitchen.

She moved forward until she felt the wooden door frame at the entryway. Steadying herself against it, Alexandra visualized the layout of the kitchen. The refrigerator was on the right. The sink was just past it. Once she had the flashlight, she would be all right. Praying that the batteries would work, she moved slowly until her fingers touched the cold steel of the sink. She reached up and felt the shelf and then groped until she felt the cool plastic frame of the flashlight. Afraid she might drop it, she wrapped both hands around it. Probing the surface, her thumb found a switch that she was able to slide forward. The welcome beam of light brought a huge sigh of relief.

She knew there was nothing she could do until either the electricity came back on or it was light in the morning. Feeling famished, she opened the refrigerator door and shined the flashlight inside. Taking an apple, she padded to the big chair in the living room. She felt herself shivering and realized how cold the room had become. The flashlight's beam revealed a blanket folded on the ottoman. She
wrapped the blanket around her and shined the beam on her wristwatch. It was only 5
P.M.

She finished the apple, put the core in an ashtray and closed her eyes. She was so tired again. So unreasonably tired. She started to drift off, unable to fight the overwhelming fatigue.

•  •  •

A patrol car, its siren screeching, raced Twaddle and Lyons to the heliport on East 34th Street.

“We don't have much time,” Twaddle said. “And we still don't have Lisa Markey's address in Windham. But while they are searching for it, we will be on our way there. By the time we get to the helipad, Ambrose, if that's where he's gone, will already be at least thirty minutes ahead of us.”

The pilot was already at the controls of the helicopter when the squad car pulled up. Twaddle and Lyons scrambled aboard.

“There is a major storm in the Windham area,” the pilot informed them. “If it hasn't passed, we may have to circle around until it does.”

“That could work to our advantage,” Twaddle said. “Pray God, it does.”

The next hour was spent in silence, broken only by Twaddle's one remark. “I should have known immediately,” he said. “Why else would she have fled the airport without her suitcases? Ambrose was the one she was afraid of. And now looking at his dossier, we have the whole picture.”

Finally they spotted the emergency landing lights of the Windham helipad.

•  •  •

Janice and Mike found nothing else in Alexandra's papers to suggest where she might have gone. At six o'clock they tried to concentrate on the evening news. The Watergate scandal was the top story.

A harried-looking President Nixon was being threatened with impeachment. The calls for his resignation were growing louder.

The Big Apple's steady drumbeat of fiscal problems was raising the possibility of bankruptcy.

A neighbor had reported a new piece of evidence against a young mother who was under suspicion for the murder of her two children.

When the doorbell rang, a persistent demanding ring, they both were startled. Michael sprang up to answer it. Larry Thompson was at the door.

“I thought she was dead,” he said in a near shout. “A newspaper reporter who has sources inside the police department told me that when they removed the Beauty Mask, you said the dead girl was not your sister.” His face was deadly white, his tone of voice ragged and demanding. “You've got to tell me. Is Alexandra alive? Is she alive?”

They had promised Twaddle that they would not reveal the truth to anyone. But looking at the tortured expression in Larry Thompson's eyes, Janice was compelled to answer. “Yes, she is,” she said flatly.

The icy calm she had managed to maintain broke.

In a burst of words, she sobbed, “The police believe that whoever murdered Lisa Markey did it by mistake and is stalking Alexandra. The detectives are on their way to Windham in a helicopter, hoping that she is staying in Lisa's ski cabin. But they're not sure that she is there. And they still don't know the exact address in Windham.”

Thompson stared at her as wildly conflicting emotions played out on his face. He grasped Janice's arm. “Why didn't they ask me?” he demanded. “I know the address. I KNOW IT.”

•  •  •

Alexandra opened her eyes. Although it was still raining, it was not the torrential rain of the early afternoon. Without the flashlight she
could see the bare outlines of the furniture in the room. She was still exhausted, but the consuming fatigue that had kept her sleeping almost round the clock since she had arrived here three days ago was diminishing.