Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories (36 page)

“No. He did tell me Lisa was her friend and was supposed to go shopping with her that day but changed her mind. But that was all he said.”

“There's a reason he might have held back, something he's never been able to face. I've got to call the Nassau police. Who did you speak to there?”

•  •  •

Mark was just about to leave when Helen Rand phoned. He watched as the furrows on O'Connor's face deepened. “You say her married name is Scanlon and you think she lives in Locust Valley. We'll get right on it.” O'Connor hung up and looked at him. “There may be someone else on his list, Mark.”

•  •  •

“Okay, you two, have a good day.” With a final kiss, Lisa watched her twins climb onto the bus and hurried back home. Ever since the morning she'd locked herself out, she not only unlocked the door
when she went to the corner with the twins but also left it slightly ajar.

For those two minutes she left fifteen-month-old Kelly in the playpen with plastic blocks she couldn't possible swallow and a rubber ball. Anything she could put in her mouth was out of reach.

But this morning, it was clear that something had frightened Kelly. She had pulled herself to her feet and was wailing, “
Mammmaaaaa!
”

Lisa picked her up. “Hey. What's your problem?”

I'm her problem, Fred thought. He was in the vestibule closet, aware he didn't have to rush. He could wait five or ten minutes and savor his generosity in granting Lisa a few minutes more of life.

And he certainly wouldn't kill her while she was holding the baby. He wanted to see her more clearly and carefully pushed the door open a fraction wider, then realized it had made a noise. Had she noticed?

•  •  •

Lisa heard a familiar faint creaking of the vestibule door opening. There's someone here. That's why the baby is frightened, she thought. What should I do?

Don't let him know you're aware of him. Pick up the baby and walk toward the door. Push the panic button.

Oh, God, please help me.

She
had
noticed. He could tell by the sudden rigidity of her body. “Lisa,” he said softly.

Lisa spun around.

“Put the baby back in the playpen and then walk away from it. I don't want anything to happen to her. Sometimes bullets ricochet, you know.”

Jenny's father was standing there, a gun in his hand. Why was he here? She knew. Because he hates me. He hates me because I'm alive
and Jenny is dead. She had felt strange after she met him that day. She remembered how she had prattled on and on about her life and watched his eyes grow bleak and angry. He was going to kill her.

She tried not to show how afraid she was. “Please, I'll do anything you say. Let me put the baby down and let's walk into the kitchen.”

“That's very motherly of you. Too bad you weren't as good a friend.”

Lisa held Kelly tightly, kissed her and started to put her back in the playpen. Kelly wrapped her arms around her neck. “No, no, no.”

Gently Lisa tried to disengage them.

“Hurry up, Lisa.” Fred heard the wail of a siren. A police car was pulling into the driveway. “Hurry up,” he shouted.

Frantically Lisa bent over the playpen, pulled the baby's arms from around her neck and dropped her onto the plastic matting. The rubber ball rolled forward. A sudden incongruous image of Jenny and herself, the stars of the softball team, she pitching, Jenny catching, jumped into her mind and she knew she might have a chance to save herself. In one lightning movement Lisa scooped up the ball, bolted away from the playpen, whirled around, and with a powerful thrust of her arm threw the ball at Fred. The ball hit his hand and the barrel of the gun leapt up as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet passed inches over her head and lodged in the wall. Before he could aim again the police were in the house wrestling him to the ground.

•  •  •

Fifteen minutes later, Detective Joe O'Connor called Helen Rand. “Thanks to you, Lisa is okay, Mrs. Rand,” O'Connor said. “Our guys got there in the nick of time. Lisa told us that she didn't think she had a chance but then when she saw the ball in the playpen it reminded her of playing softball with Jenny. She felt as though Jenny was telling her what to do.”

“Fred?”

“Under arrest. Violent. Not sorry he killed them. Blamed them for Jenny's death. You know that.”

Helen's long-held control snapped. “He's blaming them! Do you know who killed my daughter? Fred did. He had family money but he was always cheap. Jenny was his only child. He bought her a car when she was eighteen. Sure he did. An old car with bald tires. That's why Lisa's father wouldn't let her ride in it that day. I begged Jenny not to set foot in it, but he told her to go ahead. He'd replace the tires when Sears had a sale. Tell him something for me. Tell him he killed his own child.”

She choked back a sob. “I should have made him face the truth a long time ago. He was heartbroken after Jenny died. I felt so sorry for him but I should have made him face it.”

“Mrs. Rand, you couldn't have made him believe Jenny's death was his fault. People like your ex-husband always blame everyone except themselves. And always remember that if you hadn't phoned me, Lisa would be dead now. You saved her life.”

“No,” Helen whispered. “You're wrong. You just told me yourself. Jenny saved Lisa's life.” She managed a smile. “Jenny was one terrific kid and it looks as though even now, wherever she is up there, she hasn't changed a bit.”

T
here comes a time when in the name of common decency grandmothers ought to die. I confess that in the early stages of my life I had a halfhearted affection for my grandmother but that time is long since past. She is now well up in her eighties and still exceedingly vain even though at night her teeth repose in a water glass by her bed. She has a constant struggle every morning to get her contact lenses popped into her myopic eyes and requires a cane to support her arthritic knees. The cane is a custom-made affair designed to resemble the walking stick Fred Astaire used in some of his dances. Grandma's story is that she danced with him when she was young and the cane/walking stick is her good-luck charm.

Her mind is still very keen and seems to become keener even as her eccentricities grow. She, who always proudly considered herself frugal, is spending money like water. Thanks to several investments her husband, my grandfather, made, she is downright wealthy and it has been with great pleasure that I have observed her simple lifestyle. But now it is different. For example, she just put an elevator, which cost forty thousand dollars, in her modest home. She is sure she will live to be one hundred and is contemplating building a state-of-the-art
gym in the backyard because she read in a Harvard medical report that exercise is good for arthritis.

I submit to you that a better cure for her arthritis is to put an end to it forever. This I propose to do.

You must realize that I am her sole grandson and heir. Her only child, my mother, departed this earth shortly after I graduated from college. In the twenty-six years since then I have married and divorced twice and been involved in many ill-fated ventures. It is time for me to stop wasting my time on useless enterprises and enjoy a life of comfort. I must help to make that possible.

Obviously her demise would need to seem natural. At her advanced age, it would not be unlikely to have her pass away in her sleep, but if someone holding a pillow were to help that situation occur there is always the danger of a bruise that might make the police suspicious. Police always look for motive and I would be a living, breathing motive. I am uncomfortable about the fact that when under the influence of wine I was heard to say that the only present I wanted from my grandmother for my next birthday was a ticket to her funeral.

How then was I to help my grandmother sail across the River Styx without arousing suspicion?

I was quite simply at a loss. I could push her down the stairs and claim she fell but if she survived the fall, she would know that I caused it.

I could try to disable her car but that ancient old Bentley she drives with the skill of Mario Andretti would probably survive a crash.

Poison is easily detectable.

My problem was solved in a most unexpected way.

I had been invited to have dinner at the home of a successful friend, Clifford Winkle. I value Clifford's superb wines and gourmet
table far more than I value Clifford. Also I find his wife, Belinda, insipid. But I was in the mood for a splendid dinner in comfortable circumstances and looked forward to the evening with pleasure.

I was seated with Clifford and his wife, enjoying a generous scotch on the rocks that I knew had been poured from a two-hundred-dollar bottle of single malt reserve, when their little treasure, ten-year-old Perry, burst into the room.

“I've decided, I've decided,” he shouted, spittle spraying from the space between his upper front teeth.

The parents smiled indulgently. “Perry has been reading the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe this week,” Clifford told me.

The last time I was a guest I had endured Perry's endless description of a book he had read about fly-fishing, and how by reading it, he could really, really understand all about baiting and casting and catching and why fly-fishing was really, really special. I wanted desperately to interrupt him and tell him I had already seen
A River Runs Through It
, Robert Redford's splendid film on the subject but, of course, I did not.

Now Perry's all-consuming passion was obviously Edgar Allan Poe. “ ‘The Tell-Tale Heart' is my favorite,” he crowed, his short red hair spiking up on the crown of his skull, “but I could write a better ending, I know I could.”

Barefoot boy with cheek out-Poes Poe
, I thought. However, I wanted to show some small degree of interest. I was down to my last sip of the two-hundred-dollar scotch and hoped that by directing attention to myself, Clifford might notice my empty glass and not neglect his duty as my host. “In high school I wrote a new ending to ‘The Cask of Amantillado,' ” I volunteered. “I got an A in my English class for it. I remember how it began.” I cleared my throat. “ ‘Yes. I killed him. I killed him a long fifty years ago. . . .' ”

Perry ignored me. “You see in the ‘The Tell-Tale Heart' the guy
killed the old man because he can't stand looking at his eye. Then he buries the old man's heart but when the cops come he thinks he hears the heart beating and goes nuts and confesses. Right?”

“Right!” Clifford affirmed enthusiastically.

“Exactly. Um-hmm,” Belinda agreed, beaming at her whiz kid.

“In my book, the guy kills the old man, but another guy watches him do it, then helps him cut up the body and bury the heart under the floor. When the cops come in, the murderer laughs and jokes with them and thinks he's getting away with it. Then when the cops go, the friend comes back and as a joke says he can hear the old man's heart beating. Isn't that good?”

Fascinating, I thought. If only Poe had lived to meet Perry.

“But then the murderer, 'cause he doesn't know it's a joke, believes he really is hearing the heart, and you know what?”

“What?” Clifford asked.

“I can't guess,” Belinda gushed, her eyes wide, her hands clutching the arms of her chair.

“The murderer dies of fright because of the heart he thinks he's hearing.”

Perry beamed at his own brilliance. Send for the Nobel Prize, I thought, not realizing there was more to come.

“And the twist is that his friend was going to split the money the old man had hidden somewhere in London and now he realizes he'll never know where to find it so he's punished for the crime too.” Perry grinned triumphantly, an ear-to-ear grin that made all the freckles on his cheeks bond together in a henna-tinted mass.

It was I who led the applause and my reaction was genuine.
The sound had scared the murderer to death
. My grandmother's fear of cats rushed into my mind. She shakes and trembles to the point of almost fainting at the sight or sound of one. It goes back, I am told, over eighty years ago when a rabid cat attacked her in the garden. She still bears a scar on her left cheek from that long-ago encounter.

My grandmother has a new elevator.

Suppose . . . just suppose, Grandma got stuck in her new elevator in the dark during a power failure. And then she hears the sounds of cats yowling and hissing and howling and purring. She hears them scratching at the door of the elevator. She is sure they will break through. She cowers, shrieking, against the back of the elevator, then crumples onto the floor, the memory of that long-ago attack overwhelming her. No, it is not a memory. It is happening. She is sure that the cat is poised to attack her again, not just one cat but all the cats in this crazed, menacing pack, foaming at the mouth, teeth bared.

There is only one way to escape the panic. She is frightened into heart failure and her death would be blamed on her being trapped, alone, at night, in the new elevator.

I was so excited and thrilled at this solution to my problem that I hardly tasted the excellent dinner and was uncommonly responsive to Perry who, of course, dined with us and never shut up.

I planned my grandmother's death very carefully. Nothing must arouse even the slightest suspicion. Fortunately there are frequent power failures in her area of northern Connecticut during wind storms. She has talked of installing a home generator but so far that has not happened. Still, I knew I had to move swiftly.

Night after night for the next few weeks, I roamed through the nearby towns, slithering through dark alleys and around abandoned buildings, any place where wild cats gathered. I tossed pieces of meat and cheese to get them fighting with one another, their teeth bared, their ungodly yowls rumbling from their throats, getting it all on tape. One night I was attacked by a cat who, frantic for the food in my hand, sprung on me, her front claw ripping my left cheek in the same spot my grandmother was scarred.