"Do you know of any failing-out she might have had with this Laura Gabelli?" Aaron asked.
"No. But it wouldn't surprise me. Just like Mama, Bev had failings-out with damn near everyone." Millie paused. "Look, guys—all these questions about the two of them, then all these old names of people Bev didn't like. You're scaring me a little bit. I think the time's come for you to explain."
She looked to Janek, then to Aaron, and then back to Janek again. There was something so open and vulnerable about her that Janek was hesitant to fill her in. But he knew he had to. He owed her that, and he could see that she was the kind of person who'd rather know the truth, no matter how harsh, than be lied to or kept in the dark.
"Bertha Parce, the MacDonalds, Cynthia Morse and her two daughters, the Wexler family, and the Scotto family all had one thing in common," he said. "They all were murdered within the past fourteen months by a woman named Diana Proctor, who also happened to be your sister's patient."
Millie, mouth partly open, gazed at Janek. For a moment she appeared to be relieved. Then, abruptly, she sat up, as if the implications of what he'd said had hit her like a blow.
"But you don't really think—! I mean, you couldn't possibly believe—!" Her forehead creased; her pupils dilated. "You think Bev had something to do with . . . that Bev may have directed—?" And then: "You do think that, don't you? Yes, I see you do." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, my God!"
Millie Cannaday began to scream. Her shrieks of anguish echoed through the house.
They stayed with her until she calmed down. Then Janek explained to her that yes, Beverly was a suspect, although so far no more than that. He and Aaron had come to Cleveland, he explained, on account of the portrait of her mother, which they'd seen in Beverly's bedroom. Certain objects, taken from the homicide victims, had been arranged in what seemed to be a votive offering style before the painting. Thus the question arose as to whether Victoria Archer had in some way been the inspiration for the Wallflower murders. Janek readily admitted that such a theory must seem farfetched; he was certainly not prepared to tell Millie her sister was a murderess. Still, the case remained open. By the way, did Millie know anything about the portrait?
"The full-length one of Mama in her red dress? Sure, I know about it. A man named Peter Aretzsky painted it about twelve years ago. It took up a whole wall of Mama's bedroom."
"Your sister inherited it?"
Millie smiled. "Bev wanted that picture something awful. That, Mama's red dresses, her miniature piano, and her big old four-poster bed." Millie rolled her eyes. "Bev always had her eye on the picture. She loved it, said it showed Mama the way she really was. Which is pretty funny . . . considering. You see, there's a story behind that painting." Millie turned to Aaron. "Are you taking him to see Melissa Walters?" Aaron nodded. "Ask her about the painting, Lieutenant. She can fill you in about that and a lot of other stuff. She was Mama's best friend . . . if in fact, Mama ever had one."
"Shit! She knew Bobby Wexler and Laura Scotto. That's proof she lied to us, Frank. So we got her, don't we?" Aaron hit the steering wheel with delight. "I'm starting to feel good about this case."
They were back in their rental car, driving to their final appointment of the day. The snow had stopped falling. Although it was only four-thirty, the sky was already turning dark.
Janek wasn't sure that proof of Beverly's lies quite meant that they'd "got her." But he did think it might be enough to persuade Kit to grant them more time. So far the trip to Cleveland was working out. Now how the hell am I going to get a confession? he wondered.
The lobby of the Alhambra Residential Hotel was a Moorish fantasy, a pastiche of thick walls, Arab columns, Córdoba arches, a central courtyard embracing a fountain, and a rectangular tiled pool stocked with carp.
Built in the late 1920s as a luxury establishment, the hotel was so well constructed that even now, after years of wear, it still emitted an aura of luxury and class. Palms planted in large terracotta pots occupied the corners. Ceiling fans, still now that it was winter, stood poised to whirl and cool perspiring guests.
A creaking elevator, paneled in mahogany and trimmed with brass, took them to the fifth floor. Here they followed a corridor, one side open to the courtyard, until they reached the door to Melissa Walters's suite.
A short old lady opened up, a lady who clearly did not wish her visitors to find her old. Her hair was blued, her forehead was powdered, her cheeks were rouged, her eyebrows were drawn, and her lips were waxed bright scarlet. Melissa Walters showed the soft smile and refined social mannerisms of another era.
It was so exciting to meet real live detectives! Would the gentlemen like something to drink? Port? Sherry? She had some fine old Madeira—could she tempt them with that? And she had taken the liberty of ordering in some prepared canapés, as well as a good selection of cookies from Damons, Cleveland's finest bakery.
Melissa Walters settled into her favorite chair.
Oh, yes, she remembered Vicky Archer. My goodness, they'd been the best of friends! Impossible to forget her. A great entertainer, a great personality. She'd been the life of this city for a time. Had the gentlemen been to the Fairmount Club Lounge? Perhaps they should go down there and take a look. Not that the place was anything now but a shadow of its former self. Still, at one time, not too long ago either, the lounge had been Cleveland's premier night spot and Vicky Archer had been its most glittering star. But please forgive her. She was rambling; she knew she was. She apologized for that. She had so few visitors these days, most of her friends having passed away. Vicky had been one of the first. It was tragic the way she died so suddenly and so young. They'd been confidantes even though she, Melissa, was fifteen years Vicky's senior. Oh, they'd had some great times together, wonderful times. . . . What? What was that they were asking? The painting, Aretzsky's painting? Of course, she remembered it! She'd seen it practically every day. Whenever she visited Vicky's suite, just two doors down the hall. A story? Oh, yes, there was a story about that picture, a scandal if they wanted to know the truth. Oh, they did, did they? What sly devils they were! Well, certainly, she'd tell them about it. In fact, it would be a pleasure. But would the gentlemen take a glass of Madeira first . . . ?
Janek and Aaron accepted her glasses of Madeira. They even licked their lips over her delicate canapés and grinned foolishly as they nibbled on her tasty little cookies. Anything to keep the old lady talking. Janek, who'd conducted thousands of interviews over the course of his career, recognized that Melissa Walters was a potential gold mine of information. If there was a secret about Beverly and Victoria, a secret even deeper than what he and Aaron had managed to dig up so far, this lady might reveal it if she were handled carefully enough. The way she sang Victoria Archer's praises suggested a profound ambivalence. He had picked up on undertones of anger, envy, even dislike.
"Aretzsky! Ha!" Melissa's scarlet painted lips parted in a smile. "He was smitten by her, of course. Utterly smitten! He would come around the lounge every night just to see her, watch her move, listen to her sing, perhaps be so fortunate as to be the recipient of one of her ravishing smiles. He was an excellent painter as it happened, probably Cleveland's best. But so temperamental! He'd refuse to paint a person he didn't like. He lost out on a lot of lucrative corporate work on account of that little peccadillo. Still, Aretzsky was your first choice if you wanted your portrait done. That's how he got Vicky's attention . . . although he didn't hold it very long."
Melissa asked if she could refresh their drinks. When they shook their heads, she shrugged and poured herself a double.
"I remember the night Aretzsky presented her with some drawings, quick little sketches he'd made of her right there in the lounge. She liked them, of course. She was no fool. And when he told her he wanted to paint her in oil, big, life size, maybe even bigger than life size, she certainly did not refuse him although she may have pretended to waver a little bit. Well, then he had her; at least he thought he did, the idiot! She began go
ing to his studio to sit every afternoon. That dreary dump he lived in, near the lounge down at Carnegie and One Hundred Fourth, up four flights to a big, undusted room with his easel and messy paints at one end and his awful, smelly unmade bed at the other. They made love on that bed, of course. Vicky always knew how to inspire a man! I know he made nude sketches of her. She showed them to me once. But the big painting was the thing. Vicky in her red dress surrounded by a halo of reddish light. That's how they always lit her down at the lounge, you see. Oh, he made her look terrific—vibrant, bursting with energy and life. She was always glamorous, but he doubled her glamour. He idealized her. It was a picture painted by a lover. You couldn't look at it and fail to see that."
Melissa spread her arms. "Poor Aretzsky! That ugly, little, shrunken waif of a man with his bad skin and little wisp of a mustache—did he really think he was good enough to hold the interest of the Great Victoria Archer? Poor idiot! She ditched him, of course, soon as she got her mitts on his painting. Then he was heartbroken, or perhaps worse—a man destroyed. He started to become a nuisance, too. Long, reproachful, beseeching stares at the lounge. Silent phone calls to her suite in the middle of the night. He must have sent her fifty letters drenched in tears. She didn't bother to open them; just a glance at the envelopes and she'd toss them in the trash. I remember seeing him hanging around the stage door at the lounge or here, in front of the Alhambra, hoping to beg a precious moment of her time. And of course, the deeper he humiliated himself, the more disgusted she became, and the greater her disgust, the more cruelly she behaved. For make no mistake about it, gentlemen—Vicky Archer could be a real bitch!"
But, Melissa explained, there was a second act to the story, the scandal that arose later on. Aretzsky, heartbroken, disdained and scorned, turned bitter and took to drink. And, as is so often the case, the excesses of his infatuation were equaled by the intensity of his disillusionment. After several months, unable to rid himself of his obsession, he began work on a second portrait of Victoria far different from the first. It was the same size: enormous. She was in the same pose: singing. She wore the same clothes and jewelry: her diamond necklace and scarlet dress. But there the resemblance stopped. Instead of the heroic, idealized features he had painted the first time around, the features in the second picture were deeply characterized. That second portrait, painted out of heartbreak and bitterness, purported to show her as she really was: spiteful; selfish; mean.
"I have to hand it to Aretzsky," Melissa said. "He caught something, no question about that. It wasn't the face Vicky showed the world, but it was a face I'd seen a couple of times when she was off her guard. Maybe it wasn't the real Vicky, but it did show a hidden side of her, particularly around the eyes and mouth. Aretzsky put everything he felt into it. It was truly a picture informed by hate. That's what people who saw it said. And people did see it! Aretzsky saw to that! He had a show at the Howard French Gallery at Shaker Square, and his big new picture of Vicky was the first thing you saw when you walked in.
"Well, she was furious! Who can blame her? Still, I think if Aretzsky's second portrait hadn't contained a certain amount of recognizable truth, she might have been able to laugh it off. But the way she went around expressing her outrage only made people eager to see it for themselves. And when they did, they began to talk. People were fascinated. The subject came up at dinner parties: Which picture showed the true Vicky, the first or the second? There were people who even reread that old Oscar Wilde story The Picture of Dorian Gray and then expounded on the parallels. And there was talk, too, that ugly though the second picture was, it was also, because of its passion, Aretzsky's greatest work. I remember Vicky coming in here at the time, sitting in the very chair you're sitting in now, Lieutenant, looking at me, shaking her head. 'Oh, Lisa'—she always called me that—'why did I ever let him paint me in the first place?' Why?"
Melissa turned to Janek, widened her eyes. Clearly she reveled in the effect of her tale.
"The answer, of course, was her insatiable vanity, which Aretzsky was more than happy to requite. But she didn't really want to know the answer to her question, so I kept my thoughts to myself. She did, however, try to do something about that second picture. She approached certain of her wealthy admirers and begged them to buy the portrait so she could have the pleasure of seeing it destroyed. From what I understand some fairly substantial offers were actually made. But no matter how much he was offered, Aretzsky refused. The man simply wouldn't sell. And why should he? Think about it. That picture was his revenge. You don't sell out your revenge, do you, Lieutenant? At least not if you feel wronged the way Aretzsky did . . ."
Peter Aretzsky, as it turned out, died just a year after Victoria Archer. In Melissa's judgment, he never recovered from his obsession with the singer. The second portrait? Melissa had no idea where it was. The scandal subsided long before Vicky died. Wasn't it always like that? Melissa asked. People couldn't get enough of something, gossiped about it endlessly, then, a year later, wondered why they ever cared.
"Bev? Of course, I remember Bev. She's a psychoanalyst in New York, isn't she? Oh, just a therapist? Well, it's all the same to me. I don't know much about that kind of thing, but I know Vicky did a real job on the girl. The way she scampered around after her beloved 'Mama' like there was an invisible leash and collar around her neck! You had to wonder what she got out of it. The honor of being Vicky Archer's daughter, I suppose. Still, everyone thought it was pretty peculiar, but no one dared say a word. 'Oh, Bev's just going through an awkward stage right now'—that's what Vicky would say if you gingerly brought the matter up. 'A stage'! 'Right now'! You had to laugh! Vicky kept Bev awkward from the day she was born. I sometimes wondered if she kept her that way to make herself look better by contrast. Because, you know, the other daughter, Millie, wasn't drab at all. That's the way it is sometimes: One daughter serves the mother while the other strikes out on her own. I've seen it happen again and again. I just hope Bev has straightened herself out. Sometimes you can't do that, you know. You get twisted, and then, after the person who twisted you passes away, it's too late to change and have a normal life. . . ."
Janek decided to let her ramble on. Better that she reminisce at random, he thought, and add her little homilies about life, than for him to question her too closely about Beverly and then be forced to explain why he was interested.
"How good a singer was Vicky Archer? You're really putting me on the spot, Lieutenant. Let's just say she was very good. Did you know she was on network TV once? The Carson show, I think. After that she played a club date in New York. But she wasn't quite good enough to make it there, so she came back here, where she could be sure she'd always be a star. And for a few years, at least, she had this city at her feet. Well, maybe I exaggerate. But you have to understand, the Fairmount Club Lounge, where she hung out and sang, was a kind of mecca for a number of us. Vicky was a goddess there."
Melissa shook her head. "If I close my eyes—"she closed them—"I can still see her standing in that cone of red light they always put on her, sultry, sexy, her hair red like a flame, crooning those great old songs, 'Black Coffee,' 'My One and Only Love,' 'Don't Smoke in Bed.'" Melissa opened her eyes again. "So, how good was she? Still want to know? Let's say she was Cleveland's answer to Peggy Lee. But let's face it, even at its height the Fairmount Club Lounge was no Persian Room. Cleveland just isn't New York, is it? I'm afraid not," Melissa added crisply, a ripe smile signifying a slightly mean satisfaction at finally being able to pin her old friend a little lower on the board of talent than perhaps old Vicky would have liked.
It was past seven when they got back to their motel. Aaron, who'd bought a Cleveland restaurant guide and had been eating his way through it since the day he'd arrived in town, wanted to try a highly recommended Chinese restaurant in a shopping center not far away. They drove there, ordered dinner, but didn't like it much. Every single dish was sweet.
Back at the motel Janek watched TV for a while, then went to bed. At 1:00
A.M. he was awakened by his phone. It was Melissa Walters. She sounded slightly frantic and very drunk.
"Sorry to wake you, Lieutenant, but I had to call. Something's been preying on me ever since you left. Then, when I phoned Millie Cannaday and found out why you're here, I just couldn't rest easy until we spoke."
Was she a crazy old lady, or did she really have something for him?
"About what?" Janek asked.
"About Bev. I don't think anyone else knows it except for me. Anyone else living, that is."
"Knows what?"
"It has to do with her being a wallflower. It's a terrible thing, Lieutenant. I'd rather not discuss it on the phone if you don't mind."
She suggested he join her for breakfast the following morning at a coffee shop around the corner from the Alhambra. She would explain everything then, she promised. Again she apologized for waking him up.
He had Aaron drop him off, feeling this was one interview he might handle better on his own. Melissa Walters was waiting for him, already sipping coffee. No powder, eye shadow, lipstick, or rouge was on her face that day. It was a ravaged old lady who sat across from him. Two plastic place mats, doubling as breakfast menus, decorated the table, along with a single rose lying on a dainty plate.
Janek ordered toast and coffee. Then he turned to Melissa.
"Well?" he asked.
"There was something Vicky told me once, back years ago. She was drunk when she said it. I'm sure she didn't remember afterwards." Melissa paused. "It was a terrible thing, Lieutenant. A truly terrible thing . . ."
It concerned the two MacDonald boys, Stuart and James. The brothers, it seemed, had had some kind of crush on Victoria. They came around to the lounge all the time, gazed at her intently, mesmerized by the way she sang. Vicky always liked young men, liked their fresh young bodies, but the MacDonalds, still in their teens, were too young even for her.
Wallflower Page 29