One Dangerous Lady

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “You must promise to let me show you my house one day soon, Jo. I know you’d find it fascinating. Unfortunately so much of it’s in disrepair. The maintenance is simply staggering. Old houses are like old mistresses, what? They cost a bundle, yet one can’t find it in one’s heart to abandon them.”

  It was an unfortunate analogy, I thought, and I began to get the feeling that the real love of Max Vermilion’s life was Taunton Hall.

  Max and I stood in front of the picture window in the living room looking out over Central Park, which lay before us like a black velvet cloak studded with sequins of lamplight.

  “Marvelous view,” he said.

  “I love living on the park and watching the seasons change.”

  I was about to go fix us a drink when Max suddenly and somewhat stealthily slipped his hand around my waist. I understood this to be a pass.

  “What a jolly girl you are, Jo,” he said, tugging me to him. “Great fun being with you, what?”

  I tilted my head against his shoulder to show that I was not averse to intimacy. With that bit of encouragement, he grabbed my chin with his other hand, pulled my face around, and planted a rather harsh kiss on my mouth. I knew immediately that there was no spark between me and Max. In fact, his kiss felt oddly obligatory, a little like he was closing his eyes and thinking of England—or of his house, more likely. When it was over, he stared down at me and said, “What do you think, Jo? Shall we have a go at it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘have a go at it’?”

  “Go to bed. Might be fun, what?”

  I was so amused by this rather perfunctory invitation that I burst out laughing. Max looked wounded.

  “I’m deflating rapidly,” he said dryly.

  “I’m sorry, Max,” I said, still laughing. “I can’t help it. I don’t think we really like each other in that way. Do you? Really?”

  He seemed bewildered. “How does one know until one tries?”

  “But you can’t try if you don’t feel any passion, can you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. If everyone one slept with had to be the love of one’s life . . .”

  “I’m not talking about being the love of your life, Max. I’m talking attraction. I don’t think we’re attracted to each other, are we?”

  “Speak for yourself, m’dear. I find you most attractive.”

  I smiled. I didn’t believe him. “You’re very gallant, Max. But I think we’re both better off being great friends.”

  “Can’t we be friends after we’ve gotten this out of the way?”

  I laughed again. “Do you think that sex is something that needs to be gotten out of the way?”

  He thought for a moment. “Quite candidly, I find it hard to be friends with a woman until we’ve sorted that out.”

  “Why?” I was incredulous.

  “Well, unless a man’s gay, he’s bound to have feelings about a woman, if she’s halfway attractive. As I said, one wants to sort it out before one abandons the quest.”

  “Did you sort it out with Lulu?” I asked.

  He held up his hand, palm outward. “Oh, my dear, I learned long ago never to kiss and tell. I will say this, however: Once one has been intimate with someone, one has a very special feeling about them. Mind you, the intimacy needn’t continue. In fact, it’s preferable if it doesn’t. I find that sex creates all sorts of problems in a relationship eventually, so it’s better to get it over with as quickly as possible, as I said. But to me there are no better friends than old lovers. Of course, I’m not counting wives in that equation. That’s a whole other category of misery.”

  I literally couldn’t stop laughing. Max’s convoluted thought processes made me realize just how screwed up he was.

  “Max, you are a true original,” I said.

  He looked at me like a forlorn little boy. “I take it from your ongoing mirth that the answer is no?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Max. But thanks anyway. I appreciate the offer.”

  “I’m devastated.” Max had such a wry way about him, I could never tell if he was being serious or not. “Involved with someone else, are you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the difference? Come on, Jo, let’s have a go. In the eighteenth century, sex was considered a sport—like hunting or shooting.”

  “Yes, but we’re in the twenty-first century now, Max. And when and if I do get involved with someone, I’m going to have to feel passionate about them. It’s just the way I’m built.”

  “One of those women, eh?” He sighed. “Well, perhaps one day you’ll feel that way about me, Jo.”

  “Max, can I tell you something honestly?”

  “Better than dishonestly, I s’pose,” he replied.

  “I don’t think you really want me to feel that way about you.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because I don’t think you feel remotely that way about me.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “What makes you say that?”

  “You haven’t been turned down by a lot of ladies, have you?”

  He scratched his ear and thought for a moment. “Not really, no. But I do have sense enough to know that most of them are far more interested in Lord Vermilion than they are in little Maxy,” he said with charming self-effacement. “The thing about you is that you don’t seem to want or need anything from me. To be perfectly honest with you, Jo, I prefer women who are slightly more disadvantaged than you are—and not just in the monetary sense.”

  “I think you felt obliged to make a pass at me, didn’t you? You thought I expected it.”

  “Don’t most ladies expect it?”

  “No!”

  “Forgive me, Jo, but I think they do.”

  “Well, this lady doesn’t.” I took his hand and looked him straight in the eye. “Max, dear, I think it would be a great relief to both of us if we could just pretend we’d been to bed together, gotten it out of the way and over with, as you say, so now we can just be pals.”

  He looked deeply into my eyes and for the first time, I saw some connection there.

  “I do like you, Jo.”

  “I like you, too, Max. So let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

  He leaned down and gave me a platonic kiss on the forehead. “I’m going back to England tomorrow. But I still want you to come stay with me and see my house,” he said.

  “And I want you to call me whenever you come to New York. Will you do that?”

  “Oh, m’dear, it’s a promise.”

  That night I went to bed alone, thinking what an odd duck Max Vermilion was. I was just as happy to be his friend, although I knew Betty would be sorely disappointed. In fact, she called me at the crack of dawn, launching in without so much as a hello.

  “I hear you were at the opera with Max last night and that the two of you went off alone together afterward. So tell all! What happened?!”

  I knew right away that June had given her a blow by blow.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Come on, Jo! Give me a break. Max sleeps with everyone at least once. He’s like One Pounce Potter.”

  “Who’s One Pounce Potter?” I asked her.

  “Don’t you remember Peter Potter from years ago? Bootsie Baines’s horrible cousin who always attacked everyone on the first date and then was never to be heard from again?”

  “Vaguely,” I said.

  “Well, Max is supposed to be like One Pounce Potter. Only he likes to stay friends once the thing is over with. That’s what happened with Lulu—at least according to June. Lulu told June that Max really doesn’t enjoy sex he doesn’t have to pay for.”

  “Really? Well, that would explain it.”

  “So? What happened?”

  “He made a pass at me, but his heart definitely wasn’t in
it. I turned him down and that was that. We’re friends.”

  “Damn! I was counting on you being the twentieth Lady Vermilion, or whatever number you’d be.”

  “I get the feeling you don’t necessarily have to sleep with Max to become Lady Vermilion. In fact, I think the odds are better if you don’t.”

  “Well, anyway,” Betty said with a sigh, “the other reason I’m calling? Take a look at the paper this morning and call me back.”

  By “the paper,” Betty did not mean the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or any other comparably serious publication. She meant very specifically the New York Post. Betty called the Post “the paper for those who love fiction in the morning.” I have to admit I enjoy the tabloids myself because they’re always filled with horrible news that’s fun to read, as opposed to horrible news that’s horrible to read.

  The headline on the front page of the New York Post read simply, “SURVIVOR?” Underneath was a blurry photograph of the camera-shy Russell Cole taken some years ago when he was still married to Lulu. I read the coverage, which in the Post, at least, had muscled aside all other news.

  The story was about the mystery man being held in custody in Castries. Was he really Russell Cole? Well, I knew from Courtney that he wasn’t, but that wasn’t what was interesting about the article. What was interesting was that it delved into the missing billionaire’s psychiatric history and his bouts with Dissociative Fugue Disorder. A staff psychiatrist at the Payne Whitney Clinic in New York was interviewed. Though she admitted to having no direct knowledge of Russell Cole’s particular case, she described the disorder generally.

  “Dissociative Fugue, or Psychogenic Fugue, as it was once known, is an unanticipated and sudden departure from one’s home with an inability to recall one’s past,” she was quoted as saying. “It’s pretty rare, but we’re seeing more cases of it nowadays than we used to. Just recently, in fact, there was a case of a man who walked into his house again after six years with absolutely no recollection where he’d been for all that time. He found his wife living with a whole new family.”

  Betty phoned me back just as I was finishing the piece.

  “So whadya think? Is it Russell?” she asked.

  “I doubt it. Courtney Cole was at the opera last night and she says definitely not.”

  “Well, Trish just called me. I hear you and Lulu made up.”

  “That’s not quite true. She apologized.”

  “About time. Trish and June are barely speaking, though.”

  “Don’t I know it. They were icy to each other at the opera. I tell you, Betty, this place is turning into a war zone.”

  “Well, these things happen every so often, just like in the Mafia. Time to dust off the couture flak jackets,” she said, then hung up.

  Chapter 14

  That afternoon, a small package arrived from S. J. Phillip’s, the venerable old London shop renowned for its antique jewelry and silver. Enclosed was a card of heavy ecru stock with a gold coronet at the top. A note written in black ink in almost illegible penmanship read, “With love and admiration from your friend, Max.” “Friend” was underlined three times. I opened the little burgundy leather box with some excitement. There, on the white satin interior, lay an exquisite little diamond dragonfly pin.

  I was so touched by this gesture that I immediately called Betty to tell her. She was sanguine about the whole thing.

  “Are you sure you didn’t sleep with him?” she said.

  “Positive.”

  “Because he gives insect pins to all his mistresses. There’s a story about a party in London where several of Max’s former lovers showed up wearing the insect pins he’d given them and Max famously remarked, ‘Anyone got the bug spray?’ ”

  “Charming!” I said, repelled.

  “And that’s how one of his wives supposedly found out he was having an affair. Her best friend came to her house wearing three diamond bees and a spider. The best friend later became the next Lady Vermilion.”

  “Well, I didn’t sleep with him, Betty. You know I’d tell you if I had.”

  “If you wear it, everyone will think you did.”

  “Maybe that’s what he wants them to think,” I said. “I should probably send it back. I gave Carla back her throw.”

  “Oh, keep it, for Chrissakes!” Betty said. “Max won’t get the point if you send it back. He won’t even notice. I think he orders them by the gross.”

  As predicted, the man in Castries turned out not to be Russell Cole. But I learned from Larry Locket, who called me from Barbados, that Carla had flown down to check him out herself.

  “She’s backed out of three separate interviews with me,” he said on the phone, sounding more than irritated. “I come down here, she promises to see me twice, doesn’t, and then she leaves almost immediately. Then this man turns up in Castries. I go there and she promises to see me, and about an hour before we’re supposed to meet, her lawyer calls and cancels. Either she’s the rudest person in the world or she’s hiding something. Well, at least my time down here hasn’t been wasted, Jo,” he said. “I’m putting the jigsaw puzzle together.”

  I filled Larry in on the whole brouhaha regarding the Wilman apartment. He said he was traveling from Barbados to Florida, where he was going to try and interview Antonio Hernandez’s son about his former stepmother.

  “He’s reluctant to talk to me, but I’ve convinced him that our conversation will be off the record, so at least he’s agreed to see me. Now let’s hope he doesn’t back out.”

  Larry promised to call me the instant he got back to New York.

  Then I spoke to Betty, who said that Carla had called her, wanting to have lunch.

  “She’s on pins and needles about that fucking apartment,” Betty said. “I don’t have the heart to tell her my letter won’t make a damn bit of difference. The only way she’ll ever get into that building is over June’s dead body.”

  Prophetic words.

  On the eve of the board’s vote a week later, June called and asked if she could stop by on her way to the Winter Wonderland Ball. June, known as “the Iron Organizer,” was a philanthropic workhorse, involved with more worthy causes than the Red Cross. June’s motto has always been, You go to mine, I’ll go to yours. The only trouble is, most people can’t stand parties you have to pay for, whereas, according to Betty, June “never met a benefit she didn’t like.” June was always recruiting her pals to buy tickets to some big, dreary “gala evening,” as she put it. But this one was unquestionably the worst of the lot.

  The Winter Wonderland Ball, an annual party benefiting the Carnegie Hill Hospital, had been buried by an avalanche of really boring people years ago—the kinds of people who actually enjoy dressing up in dirndls and lederhosen and dancing polkas until dawn in a room decorated with Styrofoam sleighs and fake snow. One year I sat next to a man who had the largest beer stein collection in the world. I ask you. Rather than be stranded again in this social crevasse, I agreed to lend my name to the committee and send in my money—on the condition that I did not, under any circumstances, have to go.

  June arrived on the dot of six. I opened the door and she flew in, breezing past me without so much as a howdy-do, throwing her white fur cape on the hall settee along with the matching muff. Barking at poor Cyril to get her a white wine, June headed straight for the living room. Her dark hair was curled in an unflattering style and sprinkled with little diamond snowflakes. Her outfit—a floor-length, faded blue velvet dress with a ratty white fur hemline and matching ratty fur collar and cuffs—was a sight to behold. June, who was clearly pleased with the look, announced in passing that it was “vintage costume.” Vintage hideous, I thought. It looked like something the old-time skater, Sonja Henie, might have been buried in. And indeed, the vague smell of mothballs mingled unhappily with June’s signature floral scent of Joy perfume.

  “Thi
s is it, Jo! I’ve had it! I’ve come to the end of a long road of friendship!” she cried, throwing her hands in the air and facing me.

  “What’s up?”

  “Well!” she huffed, sinking down onto the yellow silk sofa in front of the coffee table. “I have just received all the letters that have been written to the board on the Coles’ behalf. The vote is tomorrow, as you know. And who do you think wrote a letter for them?”

  “Who?” I braced myself because I knew the answer.

  “Betty!” she cried.

  “Really?”

  “Yes! Our dear friend Betty!” June defiantly crossed her furcuffed arms in front of her. “Betty, it turns out, is a guerilla warrior—just like that awful man Che Godiva.”

  “You mean Che Guevara? The great revolutionary hero?”

  “Yes, him. Whatever. She’s a traitor. Now we know why Carla gave her that fur throw, don’t we? It was a bribe, pure and simple. She wanted Betty to write a letter for her, and Betty did. So much for loyalty!”

  I couldn’t face the fact that June now wouldn’t be speaking to Betty on account of Carla. That she and Trish were on the outs was bad enough. I tried to reason with her.

  “Junie, Russell is Missy’s godfather, after all. I mean, you have to take that into consideration. I’m sure that Betty agonized over this decision.”