Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories

by Mary Higgins Clark

  Lots of fun. I bet, he’d thought.

  And her parents were fine. Doting grandparents.

  Isn’t that grand?

  The acid in his throat had almost choked him as he’d walked back to his car.

  If Lisa hadn’t been so happy, so fulfilled—that was the word, fulfilled—he might have changed his mind. Smiling, happy Lisa had been the catalyst.

  Tonight was Genevieve Baxter’s turn.

  • • •

  Gen Baxter locked the door and turned the alarm on. It was almost ten-thirty and she was tired. She’d attended her nine-year-old granddaughter Laurie’s ballet recital. Afterward the family had gone out for pizza.

  The last few days had been warm for March, but tonight had turned sharply colder and the arthritis in her hands and ankles was sending throbbing pain throughout her limbs. I feel every day of my age, she thought ruefully as she changed into a warm nightgown, tied the sash of her robe, slid her feet into comfortable old slippers and went back downstairs.

  The hot cup of cocoa was a longtime tradition. Sip it propped in bed with a book or watching the eleven o’clock news.

  At the foot of the stairs Gen hesitated. It had been three years that she’d been alone in the house, but until lately she’d never felt nervous. The house was so familiar that she was sure she could go through it blindfolded and never make a misstep, but for some reason tonight was different.

  Oh stop it, she told herself. You’re imagining things. Why would anyone want to follow me? Of course it was silly. She knew that. It was just that she’d had an impression of being near the same person a couple of times in the last few weeks.

  I never was good at remembering faces unless I see them regularly, she reflected as she measured the cocoa into a cup and filled it with milk, then placed the cup in the microwave oven. That’s why today when that man was in line at the next checkout counter I knew that I’d seen him at least three or four times lately and that maybe I should recognize him.

  Today she’d been so sure that he was following her that she’d sat in the car until she saw him carry out his groceries and walk across the parking lot. She’d watched him load the groceries in the trunk of his car and start to drive toward the exit at the other end of the mall.

  I’ll follow him, she thought, just until I’m able to make out his license number and jot it down.

  The paper with the number was in her pocketbook. She’d almost talked to Mark, her son, about it at the ballet tonight, but it was such a happy night and he was so proud of Laurie being the swan princess in the recital that she hadn’t wanted to throw a shadow on the evening.

  Anyway the family would all joke and say that Mom is just trying to pick up a fellow, Gen told herself.

  The microwave beeped to indicate that the two minutes were up. With a potholder she took the cup out, put it on a saucer and started for the stairs. Charlie always used to say he didn’t know why I don’t blister my tongue the way I like everything so hot, she thought with an affectionate smile.

  Charlie. She missed him all the time in the quietly constant way that widows her age miss the husband they’d shared their lives with for so many years. But as Gen turned out the kitchen light and walked down the dimly lit hall to the staircase, she felt a wild primal need for Charlie to be there with her. She needed him.

  And then it began. The handle of the front door was turning.

  “Who is it?” The involuntary question died on her lips. The lock was clicking. She heard it release. The door opened.

  The man at the checkout counter was coming toward her.

  He did not bother to close the door but left it open and stood staring at her, his hands at his sides. He didn’t even seem to notice when the alarm began to shriek. Tall and gaunt with thinning black hair, his face had a dazed expression as though he had wandered in by mistake and was frightened.

  But then he said, “You should have tried to help her, you know,” and his hands were suddenly claws, snapping around her neck. Gen sank to her knees, gasping for breath that was no longer granted her. As the cup of cocoa fell from her hands and through waves of blackness she felt splashes of heat burning her skin, she realized who her assailant was. In the moment before she died, a flash of pure anger permeated her soul that he would dare to blame her for something she could not have foreseen.

  • • •

  Fred made his escape cutting around the house and through the backyard to the garden apartment development where he had parked his car.

  He was driving down the street when a squad car screamed past him, probably called by the security monitoring service that responded to the alarm at Gen Baxter’s home. A few minutes later, as he turned onto the highway, he relived the moment Gen Baxter had died. Just before her eyes became fixed and staring, he’d seen an expression in them. What was it? Anger. Yes, and reproach. How dare she reproach him? How dare she be angry at him? She had helped to kill his only child and had now paid the price for that terrible deed.

  Back in the motel, he poured a drink from the bottle of scotch that was his bedside companion. He stripped to his shorts and got into bed, but for hours lay sleepless. He had expected Genevieve Baxter’s death to give him a measure of release, but he sensed immediately that release would only come when all four were dead.

  Tomorrow it would be Vinnie D’Angelo. The weather prediction was good, so he was bound to go out in his boat. Then in the next day or two, Stuart Kling would pay for his role in the tragedy. He would be a little harder, a little more challenging. Fred smiled to himself, a sad, tired smile. Planning Kling’s death would keep his mind occupied, keep the demons away. Or at least he hoped so.

  • • •

  Detective Joe O’Connor of the Nassau Police Department had known Mrs. Genevieve Baxter since he was a kid. He’d gone to high school with her son Mark and had even dated her daughter Kay when they were teenagers. He asked to be assigned to investigate the Baxter murder.

  Now, three days after the funeral, he sat having coffee with Mark in the kitchen of the home that had become a crime scene. “I can’t help thinking how much you look like your mother,” Joe told him.

  A hint of a smile turned up the corners of Mark’s lips. “I guess so. I hope so.” Forty-three years old, he was a handsome man with blue-gray eyes, a well-shaped nose, sensitive mouth and firm chin. His sandy hair was streaked with gray. He was clenching and unclenching the coffee cup he was holding.

  “Mark, it doesn’t make sense.” Joe’s beefy frame was hunched forward, his dark eyes narrowed in frustration barely in check. “There was no robbery. This guy broke in, strangled your mother, and got out. Was he some nut who just happened to pick this house, or is there some reason he wanted to kill her?”

  “Who in the name of God would want to kill my mother?” Mark asked wearily. “She always kept the front door locked. How could he have forced it open so easily? It’s obvious she was just about to start upstairs with the cocoa. She must have heard or seen him trying to get in. She never even had time to push the panic button. It was right there in the vestibule next to the door.”

  “That lock was probably the one that came with the house forty-some-odd years ago,” O’Connor told him. “The guy had to have had a professional tool that jammed and released it in ten seconds. I think your mother was targeted. Maybe the guy who did it is a nut, but I don’t believe this is a random murder. Mark, you’ve got to help me. First, start thinking. Did your mother say anything about anyone bothering her with phone calls or maybe mention that a repairman was at the house lately? You know what I mean. When you go through her clothes and mail, keep an eye out for anything that in any way seems unusual.”

  Mark nodded. “I understand.”

  The next day he called O’Connor at headquarters. “Joe, something did occur to me. The last time I saw my mother was at Laurie’s ballet recital. You know that. Then we went out for pizza and she started to say—I remember her exact words—‘The funniest thing has been happening lately
,’ and unless I’m imagining it now, Mom looked worried. But then the waitress came and took our order and some people came up to the table to congratulate Laurie on her dancing and that was it. Mom didn’t bring it up again.”

  Something was going on that had her worried, Joe thought. I knew it. “Mark, whatever it might have been, you couldn’t have prevented what happened to her a few hours later,” he said, “but this is exactly what I meant when I asked you to keep alert for anything that seems unusual. And remember, watch for any repair bills that might come in the mail in these next few weeks.”

  • • •

  Fred was at the pier in Babylon waiting for Vinnie D’Angelo to show up, and suddenly he decided to call Helen in Atlanta. Even though they had divorced ten years go, as Jenny had kept them together in life, by her death she also had created an unbreakable bond between them. It was the one thing they had ever really shared, the joy she had given, the grief she had left.

  “Where are you, Fred? You didn’t sound good when I spoke to you last month.”

  Last month, February 28, had been the fifteenth anniversary of Jenny’s death.

  “Oh, thought I’d come back up to the old neighorhood. Sentimental journey, I guess. Hasn’t changed much. Visited Jenny’s grave. Put some flowers on it.”

  “Fred, are you taking your medicine?”

  “Sure. Love my medicine. Makes me feel happy all the time.”

  “Fred, go home. See your doctor.”

  “I’ll see him when I get back. Everything okay with you, Helen?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Still like your job?” After Jenny died, they’d moved to Florida and Helen had gone to nursing school. She was now a pediatric nurse in a hospital in Atlanta.

  “I love it. Take care of yourself, Fred.”

  “Yeah. I rented a boat. I’m going fishing today.”

  “Now, that’s good. How’s the weather up there?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” Suddenly he was eager to end the conversation. He could see Vinnie D’Angelo, fishing gear in hand, heading for his boat. “Gotta go, Helen. Be well.”

  He had attempted to pass time in Florida by buying a top-of-the-line thirty-five-foot Chris-Craft and taking up fishing. Now his hands felt sure on the wheel as he followed D’Angelo’s boat out from the marina. It was still so early in the season that there were few other boats out, and as he had hoped, D’Angelo went a good distance from the others.

  An hour later he was drifting past D’Angelo’s boat. He was sunning on the deck, his rod fixed in place in a bracket. “Any chance of a tow?” Fred called. “This thing conked out on me.”

  It was even easier than killing Gen Baxter. In his boat, D’Angelo the retired hotshot head of security was a jovial Good Samaritan. Hail-fellow-well-met; come aboard; have-a-beer; you-should-know-better-than-to-rent-from-that-jerk; all-his-boats-are-worn-out-tubs!

  It was when D’Angelo was bending to get a beer out of the cooler that Fred took the hammer out of his windbreaker and struck the blow. D’Angelo slumped over, blood gushing from the back of his head. He was a thick-bodied man and it was a struggle to drag him up and then shove him over the side of the boat.

  Fred sat down and had a beer, then found a towel, mopped up the blood and threw the towel in the water. He got back into his rented boat and sped away, enjoying the sequence he knew would follow.

  On the days he’d observed Vinnie’s habits, he’d seen that Vinnie fished until one o’clock and then drove to his house about fifteen minutes away. Probably had lunch with his wife. Nice and cozy for the two of them.

  Around two o’clock she’d probably call the boat to see what was keeping him. No answer. Then she’d call the manager’s office at the pier. No, Vinnie isn’t back. His slip is empty. Probably they’d notify the coast guard or ask someone to go looking for him. Or maybe by then someone in a passing boat would have wondered that there didn’t seem to be anyone on board a boat that had been anchored in the same spot for so long. Maybe even one of good old Vinnie’s buddies would have pulled alongside and taken a look to see if he was okay.

  I know all about the ritual of learning that someone is missing, Fred thought. I know all about the waiting.

  He returned the rented boat, got into his car, and drove to the motel to shower and change his clothes. The motel was in Garden City, far enough away from Manhasset where Gen had lived, and Babylon where Vinnie had lived, and Syosset where Stuart Kling lived, to make him confident he wouldn’t run into anyone who might know he’d been hanging round observing Baxter or D’Angelo.

  Stuart Kling was next. He was a lieutenant in the Nassau County police. No more prowling around in a squad car on the highway for Stu. No more books of traffic tickets to fill. Fred had already figured the best way to get him. Nice and simple. Kling worked out in the gym early mornings three days a week. He wouldn’t be armed going in or coming out of there.

  Fred tore a page out of his daily reminder notebook, in block letters printed: “TRAFFIC TICKET TO HELL,” and put it carefully in the pocket of the jacket he would wear in the morning.

  He’d throw it on Stu’s body after he shot him.

  • • •

  In Atlanta, Helen Rand was about to leave for the hospital when she received the phone call from her ex-husband. As always, speaking to him was an unsettling experience. In the fifteen years since Jenny’s murder, she had managed to create a new life for herself. The intensive nurses training course had kept her busy and exhausted those first few years, then the job in the hospital in St. Augustine, combined with studying for her master’s degree at night.

  And finally ten years ago when she knew she could no longer live with Fred, she took the job in Atlanta and filed for divorce.

  At first he’d called her constantly, not because he missed her, but because he needed to be sure that she still shared his heartache about losing Jenny. It was typical of him, she thought, to call to tell her he had visited Jenny’s grave.

  A year ago he had told her he was seeing a psychiatrist and taking medication for depression. But there was something else. About six months ago when he called, he began talking about the trial and cursing the people who testified at it. Jenny’s murderer had been a twenty-six-year-old ne’er-do-well who had been hanging around the mall trying to urge young women to get into the van that belonged to the service station where he had a part-time job.

  One of them had complained to the security guard who was going off duty. Instead of detaining him, the guard had shoved the guy into his van and told him to get out of the mall. Under cross-examination the guard had admitted that he hadn’t wanted to be detained. He was meeting his bowling team.

  Another witness had been that nice woman who’d cried when she talked about seeing Jenny being pulled off the highway with a flat tire. “I drove onto the breakdown lane to see if I could help her,” she’d explained, “but then the van from the gas station pulled in ahead of her car and I thought she had phoned for help, so I didn’t stay.”

  If the guard at the mall had done his job, if the woman had stayed to be sure Jenny was all right, if the cop who actually saw her getting into the van had checked to be sure she was all right instead of going after the speeder, if Lisa had gone shopping with Jenny that day . . . If . . . If . . . If . . .

  And the biggest if was the one that was never spoken.

  Whenever she talked to Fred now, Helen felt as though all the terrible pain and anger she tried so hard to put behind her poured back into her soul. Stop it, stop it, she told herself. But maybe I should call his psychiatrist, she thought as she reached for her jacket. Fred mentioned his name once or twice. What was it? Raleigh? Renwood? Raines?

  She lived in an apartment building ten blocks from the hospital in downtown Atlanta, and unless it was pouring rain she walked both ways.

  Today was a bit overcast, but early spring was in the air and Helen felt better as soon as she stepped outside. She would be sixty her next birthday, but knew she looked at
least five years younger. Her hair was salt and pepper and cut short with the natural wave framing her face. When she was young she’d worn it long. Old friends from her days at St. Mary’s Academy always said that at eighteen Jenny had been a mirror image of her.

  Jenny. Eighteen, never going to see nineteen.

  Jenny. Eighteen, going on eternity.

  Jenny. Eighteen and accepted at Georgetown, the college she and Lisa had planned to attend together and take by storm.

  I didn’t think I could ever get up in the morning again after she died, Helen thought, her mind still awash in the remembered pain Fred’s phone call had triggered. But then, Fred’s terrible inability to accept or cope had forced her to be strong for his sake. Until she could no longer put up with his . . . say it, she thought . . . his dishonesty.

  Unconsciously, she walked more quickly as though hoping to outpace her thoughts. Resolutely she made herself think of her life as it was now, Atlanta, the new friends, the pediatrics intensive care unit where she was part of the team that helped keep the flicker of life alive in a dying child. And in the last year, after all this time, Gene, sixty-three years old, a widower, the director of Orthopedic Surgery. They were seeing each other regularly.

  Raleigh. Renwood. Raines. What was that psychiatrist’s name? Something was shouting at her to get in touch with him. She knew what she’d do. There had to be a list of psychiatrists who practiced in or around St. Augustine. She’d ask Gene to see if any of the doctors in the psychiatric section could check for her. Then if they could identify the right one, she could phone and explain that she was Fred Rand’s ex-wife and worried that he might be on the verge of some sort of breakdown.

  If she would talk to Fred’s doctor, maybe he could call Fred on his cell phone. At least it was worth a try.

  Or maybe she should just stay out of it. Fred always calmed down eventually, and she didn’t even know where he was staying. He probably wouldn’t answer his cell phone anyway. He almost never did.

  • • •

  Early the next morning Stuart Kling did an extra half hour at the gym. He showered and changed into sweats. From there he planned to go straight to headquarters. Feeling particularly pleased with himself that he’d finally shed the five pounds he’d been trying to lose since Christmas, his step was light as he walked out the side entrance of the gym to the parking lot.