Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories (28 page)

Wrong! Bree frowned grimly as she sipped coffee. My Pierre Deux wall hangings are stained and peeling. And it's not wall
paper
, mind you, not when you spring for seventy dollars a yard. At that price the stuff becomes wall
hanging
. She frowned as she remembered explaining that to Kevin, who had said, “Now, that's what I call pretentious.” Just what she needed to hear!

Mentally she reviewed everything she would tell the judge: “The Persian carpet that Granny proudly put on the floor of her first house is rolled and wrapped in plastic to be sure no new leaks can damage it further, and the polish on the parquet floors is dull and stained. I've got pictures to show just how bad my home looks. I wish you'd look at them, Your Honor. Now I'm waiting for the painter and floor guy to come back to charge a fortune to redo what they did perfectly well four months ago.

“I asked, pleaded, begged, even snarled at that contractor, trying to get him to take care of the leak. Then when he finally did show up, he told me that the water was coming from my neighbor's roof, and I believed him. I made a dope of myself ringing his bell, accusing poor Mr. Mensch of causing all the problems. You see, Your Honor, we share a common wall, and the contractor said the water was getting in that way. I, of course, believed him. He is supposed to be the expert.”

Bree thought of her next-door neighbor, the balding guy with the graying ponytail who looked embarrassed just to say hello if they ran into each other on the street. The day that she had gone storming over, he had invited her in. At first he had listened to her rant with calm, unblinking eyes, his face thoughtful—as she imagined a priest would look during confession, if she could see through the screen, of course. Then he had suddenly started blushing and perspiring and almost whispered his protest that it couldn't be his roof, because surely he would have a leak too. She should call another contractor, he said.

“I scared the poor guy out of his wits,” she had told Kevin that night. “I should have known the minute I saw the way he keeps his place that he'd never tolerate a leaking roof. The polish on the floor in his foyer almost blinded me. I bet when he was a kid he got a medal for being the neatest boy in camp.”

Kevin. That was something else. Try as she might, she couldn't
keep him from coming to mind. She would be seeing him this morning, the first time in a while. He had insisted on meeting her in court even though they were no longer dating.

I've never brought anyone to court, she thought, and going there is definitely not my idea of a good time, particularly since I absolutely do not want to see Kevin. Pouring herself a second cup of coffee, she settled back at the breakfast bar. Just because Kev helped me file the complaint, she thought, he's going to be Johnny-on-the-spot in court today, which thank you very much I don't need. I do not want to see him. At all. And it's such a gloomy day all around. Bree looked out the window at the thick fog. She shook her head, her mouth set in a hard line. In fact, her irritation with Kevin had become so pronounced she practically blamed him for the leaking roof. He no longer called every morning, or sent flowers on the seventeenth of every month, the seventeenth being the day on which they had their first date. That was ten months ago, just after Bree had moved in to the town house. Bree felt the hard line of her mouth turning down at the corners, and she shook her head again. I love being independent, she thought ruefully, but sometimes I hate being alone.

Bree knew she had to get over all this. She realized that she was getting in the habit of regularly rearguing her quarrel with Kevin Carter. She also realized that when she missed him most—like this past Saturday, when she had moped around, going to a movie and having dinner alone, or yesterday when she stayed in bed feeling lonely and lousy—she needed to reinforce her sense of being in the right.

Bree remembered their fight, which like most had started out small and soon took on epic, life-changing proportions. Kev said I was foolish not to accept the settlement the contractor offered me, she recalled, that I probably won't get much more by going to court, but I wouldn't think of it. I'm pigheaded and love a fight and always shoot from the hip. Telling me that I was becoming irrational about this, he said that, for example, I had no business storming next door
after that shy little guy. I reminded him that I apologized profusely, and Mr. Mensch was so sweet about it that he even offered to fix that broken blind in the living room window.

Somewhat uncomfortably, Bree remembered that there had been a pause in their exchange, but instead of letting it go, she had then told Kevin that he seemed to be the one who loved a fight, and why did he have to always take everybody else's side? That was when he said maybe we should step back and examine our relationship. And I said that if it has to be examined, then it didn't exist, so good-bye.

She sighed. It had been a very long two weeks.

I really wish Mensch would stop that damn tinkering or whatever he's doing in his basement, she thought, hearing the noise again. Lately he had been giving her the creeps. She had seen him watching her when she got out of the car, and she had felt his eyes following her whenever she moved about her yard. Maybe he did take offense that day and is brooding about it, she reasoned. She had been thinking about telling Kevin that Mensch was making her nervous—but then they had the quarrel, and she never got the chance. Anyway, Mensch seemed harmless enough.

Bree shrugged, then got up, still holding her coffee cup. I'm just all around jumpy, she thought, but in a couple of hours this will be behind me, one way or the other. Tonight I'll come home early, go to bed and sleep off this damn cold, and tomorrow I'll start to get the house in shipshape again.

Again the scraping sound came from the basement. Knock it off, she almost said aloud. Briefly debating going down to see what was causing the noise, she decided against it. So Mensch has a do-it-yourself project going, she thought. It's none of my business.

Then the scraping noise stopped, followed by hollow silence. Was that a footstep on the basement stairs? Impossible. The basement door that led outside was bolted and armed. Then what was causing it? . . .

She whirled around to see her next-door neighbor standing behind her, a hypodermic needle in his hand.

As she dropped the coffee cup, he plunged the needle deep into her arm.

•  •  •

Kevin Carter,
J.D.
, felt the level of his irritability hit the danger zone. This was just another example of Bree's total inability to listen to reason, he thought. She's pigheaded. Strong-willed. Impulsive. So where in hell was she?

The contractor, Richie Omberg, had shown up on time. A surly-looking guy, he kept looking at his watch and mumbling about being due on a job. He raised his voice as he reiterated his position to the lawyer: “I offered to fix the leak, but by then she'd had it done at six times what I coulda done it for. Twice I'd sent someone to look at it and she wasn't home. Once the guy who inspected it said he thought it was coming from the next roof, said there hasta be a leak there. Guess that little squirt who rented next door fixed it. Anyhow, I offered to pay what it woulda cost me.”

Bree had been due in court at nine o'clock. When she hadn't showed up by ten, the judge dismissed the complaint.

A furious Kevin Carter went to his job at the State Department. He did not call Bridget Matthews at Douglas Public Relations, where she worked, nor did he attempt to call her at home. The next call between them was going to come from her. She owed him an apology. He tried not to remember that after she had gotten her day in court, he had planned to tell her that he missed her like hell and please, let's make up.

•  •  •

Mensch dragged Bree's limp body through the kitchen to the hallway that led to the basement stairs. He slid her down, step by step, until he reached the bottom; then he bent down and picked her up. Clearly
she hadn't bothered to do anything with her basement. The cinder-block walls were gray and dreary, the floor tiles were clean but shabby. He had made the opening in the wall in the boiler room where it would be least noticed. He had pulled the cinder blocks into his basement, so now all he had to do was to secure her in the secret place, come back to get her clothing, then replace and re-mortar the blocks.

The opening he had made was just large enough to slide her body through and then crawl in after her. In his basement he picked her up again and carried her to the secret place. She was still knocked out, so there was no resistance as he attached the restraints to her wrists and ankles, and, as a precaution, tied the scarf loosely around her mouth. He could tell from her breathing that she had a cold. He certainly didn't want her to suffocate.

For a moment he reveled in the sight of her, limp and lovely, her hair tumbling onto the mattress, her body relaxed and peaceful. He straightened her terry-cloth robe and tucked it around her.

Now that she was here, he felt so strong, so calm. He had been shocked to find her in the kitchen so early in the morning. Now he had to move quickly: to get her clothes and her purse, to wipe up that spilled coffee. It had to look as if she disappeared after she left the house.

•  •  •

He looked at the answering machine in her kitchen, the blinking light indicating there had been seven calls. That was odd, he thought. He knew she hadn't gone out at all yesterday. Was it possible she didn't bother to answer the phone all day?

He played the messages back. All calls from friends. “How are you?” “Let's get together.” “Good luck in court.” “Hope you make that contractor pay.” The last message was from the same person as the first: “Guess you're still out. I'll try you tomorrow.”

Mensch took a moment to sit down at the breakfast bar. It was
very important that he think all this through. Matthews had not gone out at all yesterday. It seemed as though she also hadn't answered her phone all day. Suppose instead of just taking her clothes to make it look as though she'd left for work, I tidied up the house so that people would think she hadn't reached home at all Saturday night. After all, he had seen her come up the block alone at around eleven, the newspaper under her arm. Who was there to say she had arrived safely?

Mensch got up. He already had his latex gloves on. He started looking about. The garbage container under the kitchen sink was empty. He took a fresh disposable bag from the drawer and put in it the squeezed grapefruit, coffee grinds, and pieces of the cup Bree had dropped.

Working methodically, he cleaned the kitchen, even taking time to scour the pot she had left on the stove. How careless of her to let it get burned, he thought.

Upstairs in her bedroom, he made the bed and picked up the Sunday edition of the
Washington Post
that was on the floor next to it. He put the paper in the garbage bag. She had left a suit on the bed. He hung it up in the closet where she kept that kind of clothing.

Next he cleaned the bathroom. Her washer and dryer were in the bathroom, concealed by louvered doors. On top of the washer he found the jeans and sweater he had seen her wearing on Saturday. It hadn't started raining at the time, but she had also had on her yellow raincoat. He collected the sweater and jeans and her undergarments and sneakers and socks. Then from her dresser he selected more undergarments. From her closets he took a few pairs of slacks and sweaters. They were basically nondescript, and he knew they would never be missed.

He found her raincoat and shoulder bag in the foyer by the front door. Mensch looked at his watch. It was seven-thirty, time to go. He had to replace and re-mortar the cinder blocks. He looked around to
be sure he had missed nothing. His eye fell on the lopsided venetian blind in the front window. A knife-like pain went through his skull; his gorge rose. He felt almost physically ill. He couldn't stand to look at it.

Mensch put the clothing and purse and garbage bag on the floor. In quick, determined steps he reached the window and put his gloved hand on the blind.

The cord was broken, but there was enough slack to tie it and still level the blind. He breathed a long sigh of relief when he finished the task. It now stopped at exactly the same level as the other two and as his, just grazing the sill.

He felt much better now. With neat, compact movements he gathered up Bree's coat, shoulder bag, clothing, and the garbage bag.

Two minutes later he was in his own basement, replacing the cinder blocks.

•  •  •

At first Bree thought she was having a nightmare—a Disney World nightmare. When she woke up she opened her eyes to see cinder-block walls painted with evenly spaced brown slats. The space was small, not much more than six by nine feet, and she was lying on a bright yellow plastic mattress of some sort. It was soft, as though it had quilts inside it. About three feet from the ceiling a band of yellow paint connected the slats at the top to resemble a railing. Above the band, decals lined the walls: Mickey Mouse. Cinderella. Kermit the Frog. Miss Piggy. Sleeping Beauty. Pocahontas.

She suddenly realized that there was a gag over her face, and she tried to push it away, but could only move her arm a few inches. Her arms and legs were held in some kind of restraints.

The grogginess was lifting now. Where was she? What had happened? Panic overwhelmed her as she remembered turning to see Mensch, her neighbor, standing over her in the kitchen. Where had he taken her? Where was he now?

She looked around slowly, then her eyes widened. This room, wherever it was, resembled an oversized playpen. Stacked nearby were a series of children's books, all with thin spines except for the thick volume at the bottom. She could read the lettering:
Grimm's Fairy Tales
.

How had she gotten here? She remembered she had been about to get dressed to go to court. She had tossed the suit she had planned to wear across the bed. It was new. She wanted to look good, and in truth, more for Kevin than for the judge. Now she admitted that much to herself.