Beauty Dies

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  She moved back to the chair and sat down. “Paul would tell me about Jackie, tell me how he liked to watch her, how he liked taking her to different hotels. He enjoyed telling me about her.”

  She leaped up quickly, as if somebody had called her name, and began to move restlessly around the room. With the pink cardigan pulled around her shoulders, she looked like a teenager waiting for the phone to ring. She looked like any mother would want her daughter to look.

  “My mother’s pain, her hurt didn’t allow for anyone else’s. I’d cry, she’d cry. Her tears would overpower mine. One day I just stopped crying. I stopped feeling. I started following Jackie and Paul. I began to feel again. I felt anger.”

  “Did you plan to kill Jackie before or after you killed Cybella?”

  Her head jerked back as if I had slapped her. Even now she couldn’t think of herself as a murderer. She was just a daughter trying to work out her problems with her mother.

  “After.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Killing Cybella made it easier to kill Jackie, didn’t it?”

  She couldn’t answer; instead she said, “Maggie, I did tell Cybella about studying her pictures in the library. She put her arms around me, and I couldn’t remember my mother ever embracing me like that. I got all confused. I said terrible things to her and ran out onto the landing. She followed me.” She picked up a silver-framed picture from her dresser and handed it to me.

  “My first really good photograph.”

  A young, almost-pretty Elizabeth Reynolds stood next to a young, handsome Sheridan Reynolds. Her smile was wary, her eyes riveted on her husband. He was looking away as if something beautiful had caught his eye.

  “How old were you when you took this?” I asked.

  “Ten.”

  She returned the picture. “I like the composition of it. Even then I could understand the importance of space and distance between objects.” Her eyes searched my face for some kind of recognition. “You liked my pictures, didn’t you, Maggie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know my work needs refinement. But the more I do it the better my pictures will …” She stopped.

  We stared at one another. “Your work isn’t going to get any better. You’re never going to have the refinement that comes with years of practice.” Anger filled my voice.

  “I know, Maggie. I tried to tell you that.”

  The door opened and Sheridan Reynolds stood there with a gun in his hand. It almost pointed at me.

  “Claire Conrad will be looking for her, Alison. We don’t have much time.” His body leaned heavily against the door jamb. His eyes were two small cavities in his face.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “There’s a letter on my desk explaining our deaths.”

  I struggled to my feet. “Don’t do this.” I started toward them. “You can’t.” He pointed the gun at me. I stopped.

  “Killing you won’t matter to me now.” He looked like a man who meant it. “It’s best this way.”

  “Alison, don’t let him do this.”

  She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were no longer bright. Sheridan looked at her with a mixture of love and regret. I had a chilling feeling that his wife and mistress had received the same look.

  “Good-bye, Maggie,” she said.

  “Wait! Please, don’t.”

  He guided her out of the door, his fatherly hand pressed tenderly on the back of her pink sweater. I heard the door being locked, then the sound of something heavy being pushed against it.

  Still woozy, I moved toward the large draped window. I pulled the curtains open and peered out. The moon aimed a coldhearted glare across the tops of black trees. The window was either stuck or bolted. I tugged at it again. Nothing; I grabbed a heavy brass lamp off the nightstand and swung its base at the glass. It cracked. I swung again. The window glass shattered. I knocked away at the jagged edges, then leaned out. The cold air hit me. I was on the second story about fifteen feet from the ground. There was no latticework on the side of the house, no convenient tree limbs, nothing but a drop that might break only one leg and an elbow. If I was lucky.

  One of the closed doors opened into a closet. The other opened into the bathroom. I found the light switch. No windows, only my reflection in the mirror.

  Blood matted my hair near my left temple. A welt had formed under my right eye where he had got me with the towel. No woman should look this way. I ran the water and splashed it on my face. I leaned over the sink and let the water drip off me. My hands gripped the curve of the white porcelain bowl. I waited. No sound. No gunfire, only my breathing. I waited until a gunshot cracked the silence. That was one. It would take a few moments. Even minutes. He would have to look at her. Cry out for the loss, for what might have been. I ran more water and splashed it on my face. He had to be holding the gun to his head, or neck, or heart, and wondering about the pain. His hand would shake. He didn’t want to flinch, didn’t want to merely wound himself. I turned the water off and peered into the mirror. My eyes were dilated with fear. There was no second shot. He couldn’t do it. It was easier to kill someone else, even your daughter, than to kill yourself. He was a man who could handle it all, a man who had all his women tucked safely away. He was a man with a gun in his hand. And I was another woman.

  A door opened and closed somewhere in the house. I turned off the bathroom light. Heavy footsteps. On the stairs. I moved across the bedroom, grabbed the lamp I had used to break the window, switched off the overhead light. I waited by the bedroom door where the footsteps stopped. I held the lamp like a baseball bat. The heavy barrier was being pushed away from the door. I had one swing. One chance.

  The key turned. The door opened slowly. He took one step in. I swung. His arm shot up, blocking my swing. The lamp was knocked from my hand. The weight of his body crushed me against the wall. His free hand grabbed my throat. Fingers pressed. No air. I kicked. No breath. He shoved his leg between mine.

  “Maggie.” The fingers loosened their hold.

  “Jesus Christ, Boulton.”

  Twenty-eight

  CLAIRE SAT ON THE edge of Sheridan Reynolds’s desk going through his papers.

  “You look terrible, Miss Hill.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Reynolds has left a suicide note for himself and his daughter.”

  “There was only one shot. It came from outside the house.”

  Her sharp eyes held me for a moment, then she moved swiftly. Boulton and I followed her down some stairs and into a large colonial-style hallway. The walls were lined with pictures of mallards.

  The light from the porch spilled down brick steps and pooled onto the cobblestone drive. The Bentley was parked at an angle. The dark figure of a man inside.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Paul Quentin,” Boulton said. “Handcuffed to the steering wheel.”

  “He guided us to the house reluctantly,” Claire explained.

  I could see our breath curling in the cold night air. It was as if our souls were escaping, as if they couldn’t take any more. I stared at Quentin. He looked quite at home in the Bentley, in the perfect box at last.

  “Here, Maggie.” Boulton handed me my gun. “We found it in Cybella’s bedroom.”

  “Could you tell which way the shot came from?” Claire asked.

  “No. But not too far from the house.”

  The moon followed us like an aloof lover as we made our way around to the back. Boulton held a flashlight he’d taken out of the car. We came to a large terrace overlooking a tennis court and swimming pool. The flashlight shone on it. Looking like reclining old men, empty Adirondack chairs waited for summer. We moved toward the tennis court. The flashlight’s narrow beam traveled over the surface of the court. Leaves were piled in one corner. There was no net. Beyond the tennis court was a phalanx of trees. We headed for them.

  Just where the civilized garden ended and the woods began was Sheridan Reynolds. The moon seemed
even more remote, as if it were trying to put a great distance between itself and the man kneeling on the grass. The flashlight bore into his raised distraught face.

  “I couldn’t do it. Alison stood there waiting. I raised the gun and fired into the air. I couldn’t even turn it on myself.” The circle of light slipped from his face and moved on the ground near him.

  “Where’s the gun?” Claire asked.

  “She grabbed it and ran into the woods.”

  “Get Paul Quentin, Boulton. And call the Greenwich Police and have them come here.” He ran back toward the car.

  I stared at the thick bank of black trees. “Has there been another shot?”

  He shook his head and got to his feet.

  “What is she doing out there?” I wondered.

  “Shadow Hills is on the other side,” he answered.

  “Sometimes mother’s milk, even if it’s mostly tears, is better than nothing,” Claire observed, looking at Sheridan. “I want you to wait with Paul Quentin until the police arrive. Then bring them to Shadow Hills. Do you understand me, Mr. Reynolds?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do we get to the sanitarium from here?” Claire asked.

  He gave her directions. Boulton and Quentin hurried across the lawn. “Are they dead?” Quentin asked. “Are they?” He was unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. His arms were handcuffed behind his back. He stumbled to a stop when he saw Sheridan.

  “Oh, thank God, you’re all right,” he said, quickly adjusting. “Tell them to take these things off me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alison’s father mumbled. “He hasn’t done anything.”

  “He killed a man known as Goldie,” Claire offered.

  “Goldie?” Sheridan repeated the name.

  “I swear I didn’t. Alison’s photographs prove I didn’t do it,” Quentin blurted. “Alison killed him. She killed all of them.”

  “Mr. Quentin.” Claire spoke impatiently. “You’ve been with Jackie at the Duke. You had to know about the back door to the hotel, and more important, you had to know about the Woman Who Cries. If Alison were going to kill Goldie, she would not have had her camera ready to take a picture. But you would. Because you knew the woman would open the door.”

  “It was Alison!”

  “Boulton!”

  Boulton moved behind Quentin and jerked his elbows straight up, forcing him down to his knees. Quentin screamed.

  “Stop it,” Sheridan demanded weakly.

  “He’ll break your shoulders, Mr. Quentin,” Claire said.

  Quentin groaned. Boulton released him. “Goldie thought I killed Jackie. He was going to kill me. Alison hadn’t slept.” Quentin was breathing hard. “She came back to the apartment yesterday on the early morning train. She wanted to confess to you about killing Cybella and Jackie, but her parents wouldn’t allow it. She went to her room and slept. I took her camera and a knife from the kitchen, and went to the Duke Hotel.” He looked up at Sheridan. “She’d murdered two people, for God’s sake. What’s one more?” His lips quivered into a feeble line. I hoped he was permanently between smiles, the equivalent of purgatory for Paul Quentin.

  Alison’s father turned from him and moved hesitantly, like an old man, toward the house. Boulton jerked Quentin to his feet, and we made our way back around the house to the Bentley. Quentin and Sheridan walked up the steps to the house. They paused between two Jeffersonian columns.

  We sped down the drive and onto a dark road. The Bentley’s lights spread the blackness apart.

  “Tell me what Alison and her father said tonight, Miss Hill,” Claire said.

  As I spoke, I could hear her ring tapping against the handle of her walking stick. When I finished, the tapping stopped. “Miss Hill?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to let this come to its natural conclusion.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I want you to do as I say.”

  A few minutes later Boulton stopped the car in front of a gate across the sanitarium driveway. We got out and walked around the gate, which only blocked the drive. We followed a dirt path onto the grounds and up a slight ridge. Bungalows dotted the landscape beyond. A few glowed with light. We went down the other side of the ridge and stopped. A female figure kneeled in the path. All I could make out was long hair. I slipped my hand into my pocket and gripped my gun as we moved closer. Boulton’s flashlight found her. Frantically searching for something on the ground, she jumped up, transfixed by the light. I remembered her from our last visit to Shadow Hills. Thin as death, defiantly refusing her fattening pink drink.

  As we approached she hid her hands behind her back. I wondered if we looked as desperate as she did.

  “Could you tell us where Mrs. Reynolds’s cabin is?” Claire asked, as if we were all taking a Sunday afternoon stroll.

  “What are you people doing out here?” the girl whispered. “You’re supposed to be in your rooms.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Claire demanded.

  “Collecting rocks.” She brought her hands from behind her back. She held smooth flat pebbles. “I only need a couple more.”

  I leaned over and picked up a rock and handed it to her. “Where is Mrs. Reynolds’s cabin?”

  “That’s too big. It won’t stay.” She twisted her long blond hair up from her skeletonlike face till it formed a bun on her head. “I have to hide them in my hair. They’re going to weigh me tomorrow morning. I was supposed to gain three pounds,” she said anxiously.

  I found some smaller ones for her.

  “Thanks. You won’t tell anybody, will you?”

  “Not if you tell us where Mrs. Reynolds stays,” I said.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because,” Claire said testily, “I’m a private detective.”

  “You mean like Sherlock Holmes?”

  “The comparison has been made.”

  “Her cabin’s over there.”

  We looked in the direction she was pointing. A small structure stood apart from the group of low buildings.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Do you think you’re Sherlock Holmes, too?” she asked me.

  “Worse,” I said. “I think I’m Dr. Watson.”

  She gave me a sympathetic nod. We left her searching for more pebbles and headed toward the bungalow. I took my gun out of my pocket.

  We curved around and came up alongside the cabin. It was dark. We edged toward the front of the small building. Boulton pointed to the door, meaning he would go in first. I grabbed his wrist.

  “Don’t kill her,” I whispered.

  His eyes bored into mine. “That will depend on Alison, will it not?”

  He moved toward the door. I was right behind him. Claire was behind me. He turned the handle and it opened.

  Mother and daughter sat on the side of the bed. The dregs of a fire burned in a flagstone fireplace, dimly lighting the small square room. Alison held a gun. Elizabeth Reynolds stared at it as if her daughter had picked up the wrong fork.

  “Drop it,” Boulton said.

  “She won’t,” Elizabeth Reynolds said. “You’ve caused this! Don’t hurt her.”

  Claire stepped into the room. “Hello, Miss Reynolds.”

  Alison watched her. Claire stood by the fireplace, warming her hands while we all pointed our guns at each other.

  “I’m chilled to the bone.” Turning and warming her backside, she faced Alison. “You had me fooled for a while.”

  “I don’t think I meant to fool anybody,” she said simply.

  “I could understand why you killed Jackie. But I could never figure out how you knew she was going to be at our hotel that morning.”

  “She didn’t kill anybody!” Mrs. Reynolds said.

  Claire ignored her. “That is, I didn’t understand it until Paul Quentin told us he had met Jackie at different hotels.”

  “I followed her sometimes.”

  “And you followed he
r the morning you killed her.”

  “Paul was away all night.”

  “And in the early morning you went to the Duke Hotel.”

  “Yes, I thought Jackie and Paul had spent the night there. I wanted to confront him. When I arrived I saw Jackie walking away from the hotel. She caught a bus. I got on too. She didn’t know me so I wasn’t worried if she saw me. We got off on Madison near the Parkfaire. I watched her talking to Maggie. I followed them to the hotel.”

  “And you waited across the street in the basement stairwell. Why didn’t you kill Jackie before Maggie returned to get her?”

  “I thought Jackie was waiting for Paul. I wanted to see them together. Then Maggie came back out. I thought she was a contact. I thought she was taking Jackie up to Paul.”

  “It was an accident!” her mother cried. “She only wanted to talk to her.”

  “With a kitchen knife in her tote bag?” Claire demanded angrily.

  “When Jackie came out of the hotel, she crossed the street and came by the stairs.” Alison spoke quietly. “I walked up a few steps and told her I wanted to talk to her about Paul. I just backed down the stairs and she followed me.”

  “And after you stabbed her, you took the money from her purse to make the murder look like a mugging, and in doing so found the newspaper clipping of me.”

  “Yes. That’s when I told my parents.”

  I looked at Mrs. Reynolds. “You knew all this?”

  “I tried to be a good mother. I tried.” She rocked back and forth, a new set of tears beginning to form.

  “Please, don’t cry,” Alison said in a tired voice, stroking her cheek. “I just wanted to say good-bye.” She stood.

  “And now I want to go outside,” she said. “Let me go outside.”

  Whimpering, Elizabeth crawled back into a corner of her bed.

  “No, Alison,” I said.

  “I won’t run away. It’s best.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I’ll fire the gun at Miss Conrad.” She looked at Boulton. “You’ll shoot me, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” he answered calmly.