Beauty Dies

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  “She’s eccentric,” I explained.

  “Claire Conrad’s full of shit,” McGuire snorted.

  I thought it best not to respond.

  “If it weren’t for her knowing this Sitwell, she’d be in jail and you along with her,” McGuire threatened. His powder blue jacket pulled at the seams.

  I said nothing. Boulton came into the room and stood near the double doors. Alvarez ignored him. McGuire’s body tensed.

  “You armed?” he demanded.

  Boulton nodded.

  “Lay off,” Alvarez warned McGuire.

  “I don’t like this. Three flakes coming in from L.A. and giving us the runaround. Gloves, my ass. My ass!” The last was said, I believe, to impress Boulton. I’ll never understand men. Want their big arms around me, yes, understand them, no.

  “Tell us,” Alvarez said, his opaque, possibly dangerous eyes confronting mine. “Did you find the gloves you were looking for?”

  “No. You see she can only wear black gloves or white gloves, depending on which day of the week it is.”

  I thought Alvarez was going to bite through his lower lip but he restrained himself. “Why does she only wear white or black?”

  “I can’t believe you’re going along with this shit,” McGuire snapped.

  “Answer the question,” Alvarez said to me.

  I took a deep breath. I always do when I don’t know what in the hell I’m doing. “You see it has something to do with the light side and the dark side of life.”

  “You mean skin color?” Alvarez’s eyes narrowed.

  “Jesus Christ,” McGuire muttered.

  “Nothing to do with race,” I assured Alvarez. “It’s the two different worlds Claire Conrad works and lives in, not unlike you. One is the honest world, the world of light, of answers, of truth. The other is the world of lies, of murder, of evil.” I couldn’t look at Boulton. McGuire was getting perilously red in the face.

  “Yeah?” He bellied up to my desk. “Let’s see these gloves.”

  I got up and went into Claire’s room. The drapes were drawn. A small lamp glowed dimly on her dresser. She was lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her strong profile etched against the dusky light.

  “Comfy?” I asked.

  “Third drawer on your right,” she said. “Even in the best hotels the walls are thin.”

  “Sorry to disturb your nap.”

  I opened the drawer and took out the package of gloves I had picked up two days ago. A lifetime ago.

  “Miss Hill?”

  “Yes?”

  “I liked what you said about the gloves. Use that when you write about me, when you remember to write about me, that is. It creates myth. Myth is good.”

  “But is it true?”

  “In 1948 I was ten years old. My family and I were in England.” The dark blue eyes never looked away from the ceiling. “It was a summer evening. Still light. My mother was wearing the most beautiful white evening gown. My father had on a black tuxedo. They each kissed me goodbye. I gave her a bouquet of wildflowers. They got into the Bentley and the chauffeur drove to the end of the long gravel drive. I waved. The Bentley exploded into a thousand pieces of metal and flesh. As I ran to them I was cut by the flying shrapnel that had once been their car. I never felt it. I only felt the absolute terror of not being able to find them, to help them. I can still hear Mother screaming, even though I know she had no time to cry out. I’ll always hear it.”

  I said nothing. I knew she wouldn’t want me to.

  “I wear white on one day, black on the next, as a reminder of the one murder I have not solved. My parents’ murder.”

  I took the gloves out of the package and stared at them. A white pair to go with a white evening gown. A black pair to go with a black tuxedo.

  “But your version is not bad, Miss Hill. I rather like it. It has style.”

  I walked quietly out of the room and laid the gloves on my desk. McGuire picked them up. I didn’t like him touching them. I jerked them out of his hands. He grabbed my arm. Boulton moved toward him. “Let go of her.”

  McGuire smiled. “You gonna use your gun?”

  “Back off,” Alvarez warned Boulton.

  McGuire let go of me.

  “I don’t see anything that says Bergdorf Goodman on these gloves. Where’s the receipt?” Alvarez asked me.

  “Bergdorf’s didn’t have what I wanted. So I went to this little store run by a Frenchwoman.” I gave them her name and address. She had never looked up from her glove-making. She wouldn’t know what day or time I was in there. She’d only know what kind of gloves she made and I bought.

  “And then what?” he asked.

  “I came back here and waited for Claire.”

  We went around and around for another fifteen minutes. But my heart wasn’t in the battle. They abruptly left, not without a lot of threats. Boulton showed them out. He came back into the living room and leaned against the fireplace.

  “What’s wrong, Maggie?”

  I stared down at the gloves. “She just told me why she’s a detective.” I leaned back in my chair. We stared at each other across the room. “Who was driving the car, Boulton?”

  “My grandfather.”

  The phone rang, startling me. My hand jerked out and grabbed it.

  “Conrad Suite.”

  “This is Sheridan Reynolds. I’m in the lobby. I want to see Claire Conrad.”

  “Just a minute.” I looked at Boulton. “Ask Claire if she wants to see Sheridan Reynolds.”

  Claire appeared in the doorway. Her tall, lean body tilted slightly toward the hand that rested on her ebony walking stick. Her silvery white hair caught the light. Her keen eyes glistened. I wondered who she looked like. Her mother? Her father? Can a ten-year-old girl’s sunshine blond hair—or was she brunette—turn to white in one horrible moment? She nodded.

  “Claire Conrad is receiving,” I spoke into the phone.

  Twenty

  CLAIRE WAS ENSCONCED IN the Queen Anne and I was still behind my desk when Boulton went to answer the door. We could hear Reynolds’s angry voice, then the sound of scuffling. There was a crash. Glass shattered.

  “Do you think that was the dreadful little green vase?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Desanto will be very upset.”

  “Yes.” I smiled.

  Sheridan Reynolds stumbled into the living room. Boulton, holding a gun in one hand and an ostrich leather briefcase in the other, was right after him.

  “This is outrageous!” Reynolds’s striped tie was pulled crooked and his wavy gray hair a little messed, but I didn’t see any bruises. His wide handsome face was still heavy with fatigue, making his razor gray eyes appear even smaller.

  “Sit down.” Boulton shoved him onto the sofa, then placed the briefcase on my desk. “There is a gun and an envelope with approximately a hundred thousand dollars in here.” He opened the case and handed Claire the envelope. “The gun has not been fired recently.”

  “May I at least have the keys to my case back?” Reynolds asked peevishly. Boulton tossed them to him. He caught them easily, like catching the gold ring on the merry-go-round.

  “What is the cash for, Mr. Reynolds?” Claire peered into the envelope.

  “A business transaction,” he said carefully.

  “Do you always do your transactions in cash?”

  “No.” He smoothed his hair and straightened his tie. “It’s for you.”

  “A bribe?”

  “If you wish to call it that. I wouldn’t use such a harsh word.”

  “And the gun?”

  “Wouldn’t you have a gun if you were carrying around that kind of cash?”

  “And what do you want for your money?”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Peace.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Can you give me peace for a hundred thousand?”

  “I think Mr. Reynolds could use a brandy, Boulton. Maybe we all could.”

 
Boulton slipped his gun back into his shoulder holster and poured three brandies.

  “I don’t think I can give you peace, Mr. Reynolds, for any amount of money,” Claire said. “A hundred thousand is not a large sum.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Thank God for a wealthy wife,” I observed.

  He leaped to his feet. Boulton moved swiftly, jamming the edge of a silver serving tray into Sheridan’s chest. The three crystal glasses tinkled. A little brandy spilled. But that was all.

  “Your drink, sir,” Boulton offered.

  “How nice. The man who roughs me up serves me my brandy.” He grabbed a glass. Boulton didn’t move.

  “Most of our guests show Boulton what he wants to see, avoiding unnecessary physical contact,” Claire explained delicately.

  “I wasn’t expecting to be searched. I don’t like it.” This last was said to Boulton.

  “I think you’ll enjoy your brandy more if you sit down,” the butler voice warned.

  Reynolds sat on the sofa and swallowed half his brandy. Boulton served us, then stood behind Reynolds.

  “What do you really want, Mr. Reynolds?” Claire swirled the brandy in her glass.

  “I want you to leave my family alone. I want you to stop this investigation.”

  “Do you consider Paul Quentin part of your family?” She extended her long legs and took a sip.

  “Of course.”

  “Miss Hill thinks he’s a murderer.” She could have been commenting on the weather.

  “Because he patronized Peep Thrills? I’m sure he’s not their only customer.”

  “When did Mr. Quentin tell you about Jackie?”

  “After he talked to her.” He jerked his head in my direction. “For God’s sakes, it doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. I know the man. He’s been with me for three years. And my wife has come to rely on him.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “She’s going to marry him.”

  “But if you thought there was just the slightest possibility of Mr. Quentin being involved in murder, I’d think you’d at least postpone the wedding,” Claire offered. “For your daughter’s sake.”

  “Well, he’s not. Let me try to explain something to you. When I had a daughter and not a son, I thought my actions, my own private life, were separate from hers. Then one day I looked closely at the man she wanted to marry. And guess who I saw? Me. Myself as a young man.” He stared down at a thick gold Rolex on his wrist. He ran his finger over the face of the watch as if it were a woman’s cheek.

  “Maybe that’s why I hired Paul in the first place. I used to be just like him. Poor but from good stock. All the right schools but no money. Ruthless. Didn’t particularly care how I got wealth as long as I didn’t have to work too hard for it.” He spoke in a flat, nonjudgmental voice, as if he didn’t want to offend anyone—especially himself.

  “Why not charm a rich young woman in the right circle and marry her? I could always have a mistress. I did.” He smiled. A ghost of Paul Quentin’s smile. “And Paul will always have his cheap girls. Alison is marrying charm, and she’s marrying betrayal. She’s marrying what she’s used to, what she grew up with. But she’s not marrying a killer.” He took a long swallow. “There’s something else I want for my money.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have any concrete evidence that Cybella’s suicide was murder?”

  “No, we have only Miss Hill’s wish that for once a beautiful woman did not kill herself.”

  Sheridan stared at her incredulously, his mouth slightly opened. “You don’t have all your ducks lined up, do you?”

  “Ducks?” she repeated.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he said angrily.

  “How did ducks get into the conversation?” she wondered.

  “He means,” I said, “you can’t shoot ducks in a gallery unless they’re lined up. In other words, you have nothing to go on. No real information.”

  “But why shoot your own decoys?” Claire asked.

  “Actually, madam,” Boulton said, “I think it comes from the mother duck lining up her ducklings.”

  “And then you shoot them?” she asked.

  “Could we forget the frigging ducks and concentrate on the fact that you’re tormenting my family and me for no reason?” Reynolds stormed.

  “I am never without reason, Mr. Reynolds.”

  “I suggest you take this money and go back to Los Angeles.”

  “I don’t have a paying client and God knows I do have overhead.” She gestured at me and Boulton as if we were the demented relatives she kept in the attic. “But alas, I can’t be bribed. Of course it never hurts to ask. It builds the ego of the private detective, gives her confidence, makes her think she might be getting close.”

  He scrambled to his feet. “You don’t know what harm you’ll cause.”

  “Give the man his money and his briefcase, Boulton.”

  “If you continue to harass my family, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers.” He jerked the case from Boulton’s hand and lunged out of the room. Boulton followed.

  Claire leaned back in her chair and finished off her brandy. “I still don’t understand how ducks got into the conversation.”

  I thought it best not to try to explain. Boulton came back into the room.

  “Have a brandy.”

  “Thank you, madam.”

  While he poured himself a drink she walked out into the foyer. I could hear her moving the broken pieces of the vase around with her walking stick. She came back in and leaned against the fireplace.

  “That was quite a tussle you had with Mr. Reynolds.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “He didn’t want you to check the contents of his briefcase?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why? Since he was going to walk in here and offer me the money.”

  “Some people overreact to being searched, madam. They take it personally.”

  “Are you saying that money wasn’t intended for you?” I asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “So who else does he want to keep quiet?” I wondered.

  “Maybe it was just the gun, madam,” Boulton said. “Maybe he didn’t want us to see it. I’ll check on the dinner.” He downed the last of his drink and left the room.

  “Somehow it always comes down to a gun.” Claire gazed into the fireplace.

  Boulton appeared in the doorway. “Dinner is served, madam.”

  We ate dinner while hotel engineering boarded up the broken window and replaced the green vase with an equally ugly blue one. I tried to pry more information about their past out of Claire and Boulton but got nowhere. Instead, an aloof silence replaced my rapport with her and the intimacy I had experienced with him. I still was not one of them.

  When I got into bed that night I found myself waiting for Boulton. It was exactly what I did not want to do, did not want to feel. It was everything I had been avoiding since my divorce. And here I was waiting for my lover-to-be to tap, tap, tap on my door. I considered it a reactionary position. Waiting, always waiting. My mother waited for my father to come home. She waited for the nuns to visit her. She waited for the priest to bless her. She waited for me to return to her. Waiting was a sign of vulnerability, of weakness. Women didn’t have to wait anymore and yet …

  The phone rang. Someone answered it. Alison’s picture of me leaned against the mirror on the dresser. I stared at my dark windblown hair. The lines were deep around my lips. Lines I never used to have.

  I waited.

  I thought of the young woman with her camera. I thought of her father carrying around a hundred thousand dollars and a gun. I reached for the light and turned it off.

  I was acutely aware of my nakedness, my breasts, the curve of my hips. The sheet against my nipples. I wanted to run my hands down Boulton’s naked back and over the curve of his buttocks. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted to feel him inside of me. Of course, I could
put on my bathrobe and go knock on his door. Tap, tap, tap. He was only in the next room. Four steps away. It was just a kiss, Maggie. So why should I expect him? To tap, tap, tap.

  Tap, tap, tap. I raised up. Tap, tap, tap. There was someone knocking.

  “Come in?”

  The door slowly opened. Boulton filled the door frame. The top buttons of his shirt were open, his sleeves rolled up. The light from the hallway cast half of his face into shadow. He stepped into the room. “Maggie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Linda Hansen is in the bar. She wants to see you. Only you.”

  Claire appeared in the doorway. “Ask Miss Hansen what she has to do for the hundred thousand dollars, and thank her for the tip about Goldie.”

  “Don’t forget your gun.” Boulton’s fingers gently stroked the edge of the bed, then he moved back out of the room and closed the door.

  Oh, hell.

  Twenty-one

  ONCE AGAIN I THREW on my slacks and sweater and made my way down to the bar. Only this time I had a gun in my pocket and was wondering how Claire knew the money was for Linda Hansen. Desanto lurked near the entrance. He pounced.

  “Miss Hill, I told you we don’t allow those kinds of women in this hotel.”

  “She’s not here to do business, Desanto. She’s here about the case that Claire Conrad is working on.”

  “I don’t want any trouble. Mr. Orita is in there.” He peered nervously into the bar, then at me. “I heard she almost caused a fight the other night.”

  “There won’t be any trouble.”

  “On the other hand, if Mr. Orita should find her attractive …” His voice turned low and intimate, as if he were going to ask me for a date. “Well, of course, I could look the other way.” He nervously looked the other way.

  “That’s what I like about you, Desanto. You’re a man who not only stands on his principles but walks all over them.”

  His chin was doing its disappearing act as I entered the bar. Linda was at the table near the window in a short black leather skirt and black leather bomber jacket. The indolent way she crossed her long legs still conveyed easy sex. In the corner booth was a chubby middle-aged Japanese man impeccably dressed in blue jacket and gray slacks. His eyes and hair were as dark as a Sony CD player. He was surrounded by a harem of young American men in gray business suits with big pale eyes and big feet. None of them was looking at Linda; all were staring intently at Mr. Orita.