Murder Among the Angels

by Stefanie Matteson

  Just north of Tarrytown, Charlotte exited the Saw Mill River Parkway in order to join up with the old Albany Post Road, the colonial-era continuation of Broadway that followed the east bank of the Hudson north to the capital city. She had always loved this stretch of road, which was lined with the walls of the great estates that dotted the shores of the Hudson, and which in early spring offered peekaboo vistas of the river through the leafless trees. At this time of year, the barren woods were studded with the billowy blooms of the shadbush, which was the first of the woodland trees to flower, and was named after the fish whose annual migration upriver to its spawning grounds in shallow water coincided with its flowering time. The shadbush was Charlotte’s favorite among the spring-flowering trees because of the lovely contrast between its pale pink, almost white blossoms and its copper-tinted leaves, and she took great pleasure in seeing the flowers sparkling in the morning sun along the roadside. Besides, the flowering of the shadbush meant that spring had officially arrived. Though she didn’t usually mind winter, this last winter had been a hard one, and she was glad spring was finally on the way.

  As she drew near the Hudson River Valley town where Dr. Louria’s office was located, she started feeling the familiar sensations—a fluttering in the pit of her stomach, a scratchiness at the back of her throat, a weakness in her knees—that she recognized as stage fright. Common perceptions to the contrary, it was a fact of the performing arts that many experienced actors—herself among them—never got over this fear, no matter how long or distinguished their careers. In Charlotte’s case, this condition never afflicted her in front of the camera; it was only on stage, and in certain other instances, such as a visit to a cosmetic surgeon (or, for that matter, any other variety of doctor). The only remedy that had ever worked for her had been suggested by her late friend, the actor Larry Olivier. It was to “think of your feet.” This worked like a charm. By some mysterious process, the simple act of shifting one’s attention to the feet served to root one to the earth, with the result that negative energy was conducted downward, much the way a lightning rod conducts lightning downward through a cable. Charlotte tried this technique now, but found it awkward with one foot resting on the gas pedal and the other on the floorboard. Instead, she resorted to the diversion trick, and turned on the radio. The weatherman was reporting that the unseasonably cool and windy weather that had prevailed for the last couple of weeks would at last give way to more mild conditions.

  Being the provident Yankee that she was, Charlotte had developed a fallback strategy in the event that she should decide to up and bolt from Dr. Louria’s office. She didn’t want to have wasted a day by driving all the way to Westchester for nothing. She had made a lunch appointment with an old friend named Jerry D’Angelo. A lunch would salvage the day. In fact, a lunch could even be viewed as an accomplishment—was, in fact, often the only accomplishment of the day for the phalanxes of ladies in her neighborhood who appeared to do little else. It was to Jerry that her thoughts now turned as she drove through the busy little downtown of Tarrytown.

  She had met Jerry D’Angelo nearly ten years ago when she was a guest at the posh upstate mineral water spa run by her old friend, Paulina Langenberg. Like a face-lift, a visit to a spa was a luxury that Charlotte wouldn’t ordinarily have indulged in, but Paulina, having heard about Charlotte’s success in discovering the identity of the murderer of her costar in a play at Broadway’s Morosco Theatre, had invited her to the spa to investigate what she thought was an attempt to sabotage her business. Jerry was then working at the spa as a trainer after being forced to retire on a disability pension from his position as a detective with Manhattan Homicide after losing half an inch from the tip of his trigger finger in a shoot-out. When guests at the spa started mysteriously dying off in the mineral water baths, Jerry had sought Charlotte’s assistance in figuring out who the culprit was. Although they saw one another infrequently, Charlotte and Jerry had stayed in touch via telephone. Having tired a number of years ago of serving as majordomo to a bunch of overweight middle-aged women, Jerry had traded in his spa job for a brief stint as a private investigator before getting back into police work, and was now the chief of police in Zion Hill, which also happened to be the town in which Dr. Louria’s home and office were located.

  Jerry, whose degree of reverence for good food approximated Charlotte’s own (his excuse was being Italian; she had none), had promised her a fine meal at a local bistro that had been awarded three stars from a New York Times reviewer, and it was on the prospect of a good meal rather than her visit with Dr. Louria that she concentrated her attentions as she passed a sign welcoming her to Zion Hill. A short distance past the sign, she turned left onto the Zion Hill Road and followed it down toward the river through a residential neighborhood of gracious old homes. At the foot of the Zion Hill Road, she turned left onto River Road, which was lined with enormous houses with magnificent views of the river, over which a luminous morning mist still hung. Dr. Louria lived at number 300, a stone mansion in the medieval style, with a massive tower overlooking the river. After parking in a small parking area, she passed through a door in a stone wall that bore a brass plaque with Dr. Louria’s name, and walked along a stone-paved path through a shade garden to a smaller building, also in the medieval style. Opening an arched door with a beautiful hand-tooled metal handle, she found herself in a waiting room that was painted off-white and decorated with paintings by well-known abstract expressionists that she recognized, as the result of having once been married to a collector of modern art, as being extremely valuable.

  The waiting room was occupied by one other patient, a young woman with long, light brown hair who looked as if she’d been the victim of a beating. Her eyes were blackened and bloodshot, her nose was bandaged, and her lips were swollen and cracked. The color of her mottled skin covered most of the hues in the chartreuse and magenta ranges of the palette.

  “He’s not here yet,” the young woman said with an attempt at a smile in which only the corners of her eyes crinkled.

  “I’m early,” she said. Was this what she was in for? Charlotte wondered apprehensively as she took a seat next to the young woman in one of the chrome and leather chairs that were lined up against one wall.

  “So am I,” the young woman said. Turning toward Charlotte, she stared at her as if she were trying to figure out where it was that she had seen her before. Charlotte didn’t bother to assist her memory.

  The young woman extended her hand. “I’m Melinda Myer,” she said.

  Charlotte responded in kind. “Mrs. Lundstrom,” she said, using the name of her fourth and last husband, the art collector. She wondered if the young woman was also a celebrity, but doubted it.

  “Have you been here before?” the young woman asked.

  “No,” Charlotte replied.

  “You’ll like him,” the young woman assured her. “He’s very nice. And he does wonderful work. Don’t be put off by this,” she added, waving a hand at her face. “By next week the swelling and bruises will be gone.”

  Had this young woman been through this more than once? Charlotte wondered. Reserve being the one Yankee characteristic with which she hadn’t been endowed, Charlotte asked: “Then this isn’t your first operation?”

  Melinda shook her head. “My fifth. I have two more to go.”

  Charlotte wondered why she had been through five cosmetic surgery operations. Surely it couldn’t have been just to improve her looks: to put a patient through multiple operations for the sake of vanity struck her as dangerous, even unethical. Perhaps it was on account of an accident.

  The forthright young woman was obviously quite willing to confide in Charlotte (therefore obviating the necessity of her asking another prying question), but their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the doctor at the door to the inner office.

  He had a wide face and a thick head of black hair going gray at the temples, and wore wire-rimmed glasses. He wasn’t handsome, but he was pleasant-
looking. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, though he could have been older had he availed himself of the same surgical skills that he offered to others.

  He greeted his young patient, and then turned to Charlotte, who had risen to her feet. “Mrs. Lundstrom,” she said.

  “Ah, yes, Mrs. Lundstrom,” he said, shaking her hand warmly. He spoke with a trace of a Spanish accent. He was not a tall man, no taller than Charlotte’s own five foot eight, but he was very lean and fit, with warm brown eyes, and a dark complexion that was emphasized by his white coat.

  Charlotte liked him immediately.

  “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Lundstrom,” he said, “I’ll see Miss Myer first. She’s here for a postoperative checkup; it will only take a few minutes. Then we’ll have our consultation.”

  Charlotte nodded in assent, and the young woman disappeared into the office with the doctor. Charlotte passed her time browsing through a fascinating article in a medical journal about how botulinum toxin was used to control facial tics by paralyzing the muscle.

  After ten minutes, Melinda emerged, and the doctor invited Charlotte into the inner office, where he escorted her down a hallway into a large room with a vaulted ceiling and a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the mist-covered waters of the Hudson.

  “What a magnificent room!” Charlotte exclaimed.

  “Yes,” the doctor agreed. “It was once a music studio for the family that originally occupied the house. They were the Archibalds, who founded this community. There were eight children, and they were all musically talented; in fact, the family gave chamber music concerts together.”

  “Ah,” said Charlotte, noticing the frieze of angels playing musical instruments that ran along the upper part of the walls.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” the doctor asked.

  “Thank you,” said Charlotte.

  While the doctor fetched the coffee, Charlotte examined the contents of the display cases along one wall, which contained a collection of antique prostheses for the face. She gazed with fascination on a case filled with artificial noses made of leather, ivory, gold, and silver. A nose made of papier-mâché had a mustache attached. Another case contained only artificial ears; still another case displayed only eyes, these being exquisitely crafted from glass-enameled gold and silver.

  “Ah,” said Dr. Louria, returning with two mugs of coffee on a tray. “You’re looking at my collection. As you can imagine, my collection might be a bit off-putting to some of my cosmetic surgery patients, which is why I keep it here rather than at my offices in New York. I hope it doesn’t disturb you.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I’m fascinated.”

  “Making prostheses was once quite an art,” he said. “Not surprisingly, in light of the horrible mutilations that used to occur in warfare.”

  “How far back does the making of prostheses go?” Charlotte asked, removing her mug from the tray that the doctor held out.

  “At least to the Egyptians, probably before,” he replied. “The Egyptians were quite skilled at it. This is the oldest item in my collection.” He set down the tray and led her over to a nose displayed in its own individual case. “It dates back to the First Dynasty, which was before 3,000 B.C.”

  “The skin tones are created using enamel?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Strictly speaking, though, it shouldn’t be in my collection because it’s the product of the mortician, rather than the prosthetist. The Egyptians believed that only those with intact physical appearances would be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Osiris.”

  After picking up his own mug of coffee, he led her over to another of the cases. “This is the prize of my collection,” he said. “The iron mask.”

  “From Dumas!” she said, staring at the heavy metal contraption that the text in the case said had once concealed the face of the man in the famous story of The Man in the Iron Mask. “It was a true story, then?”

  He nodded. “I bought it at auction in London last year. I’d hate to tell you what I paid for it.”

  “How did you come by your interest in facial prostheses?” she asked, as she took a sip of the coffee, which was dark and rich.

  “It’s my specialty. Auricular, or ear, prostheses, to be precise. My practice is divided between prostheses and cosmetic surgery. If it were up to me, I’d do more prosthesis work. It’s very rewarding [unlike doing face-lifts on vain women was the unspoken gist of his remark], but there’s a limited market.”

  “But wouldn’t a plastic surgeon be more likely to reconstruct an ear than make a prosthesis?” she asked, reminded of the surgically reconstructed ears of a burn victim she had once met.

  “I also do ear reconstructions. But they aren’t always aesthetically satisfactory. Nor were prostheses, until recently. There was no good way to attach them, as you can see from these examples.” Turning back to the display cases, he pointed out an antique ear prosthesis that was attached to a headphone-like wire, and another that was attached to an eyeglass frame.

  “In more recent years,” he went on, “auricular prostheses have been attached with a liquid adhesive, but they tended to fall off when the adhesive dried out, which could be very embarrassing for the patient. My area is retention. I don’t make the prosthesis; I leave that up to the prosthetist. But I have developed a technique for attaching the ear to the skull.”

  “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “I use a titanium fixture that’s implanted directly into the mastoid bone.” He tapped the bone of the skull at the back of his ear. “The prosthesis simply clips onto the fixture. The technique is called craniofacial osseointegration, and it’s the most significant advance in the field in the last twenty-five years.”

  “If you don’t mind saying so yourself,” she teased.

  He smiled, his teeth white against his dark skin. “I don’t mind saying so myself in the least. Of course, the surgeons who do ear reconstructions hate my guts. My technique puts them out of business.”

  Charlotte looked at him with a new measure of respect, and, as she did so, noticed that the shade of the skin of the ear under the gray-tinged hair of his left temple was almost imperceptibly lighter and pinker than that of the rest of his face, and that it shone with an unnatural gloss.

  “Yes,” he said, noticing the direction of her glance. “I have an auricular prosthesis. That’s how I came by my interest in the subject.” He went on to explain: “I was born with no ear, or, to be precise, two small vestigial remnants of the auricular cartilage. It’s a congenital condition called microtia; it affects about one in twenty thousand.”

  “You’re very special,” she said.

  He smiled. “That’s what the ancients would have thought. They viewed a facial deformity as a sign of a special liaison with the gods.” He smiled ruefully. “But I can assure you that I didn’t view it that way as a child. Nor did my family. My father viewed my”—he groped for the right word—“imperfection as a personal failure.”

  “A personal failure?” she repeated, not understanding. “Why?”

  “Shame, embarrassment, loss of prestige. I don’t know. I never could understand his attitude. Until I was eight, my parents kept my ear a secret. I had to wear my hair long to cover it up. I was rarely allowed to leave the house, or to play with other children.” He paused for a moment, and then said: “It was a miserable childhood.”

  Charlotte was surprised at the emotion in the voice of a man who had had many years to come to terms with the deficiencies in his upbringing, and who must have told this story many times. It was a measure of how deep the wounds must have cut.

  “My father called it my ‘orejita mala.’ Bad little ear.”

  “What happened when you were eight?”

  “My parents brought me here to have my ear surgically corrected.”

  “From?” Charlotte asked.

  “Rio de Janeiro,” he replied.

  So the accent was Portuguese. The doctor’s Brazilian origins also expla
ined the coffee, which was of the type that one of her former husbands used to dismiss as “road tar,” but that she liked the best.

  Dr. Louria continued: “With my new ear, I was finally able to lead a normal life; it was like being let out of jail. That’s when I resolved to become a plastic surgeon when I grew up. But when I eventually did, I became conscious of how unsatisfactory my reconstructed ear was. In fact, I have yet to see a decent ear reconstruction.”

  “I imagine it’s hard to make something out of nothing,” Charlotte said.

  “Exactly,” he replied. “So I started searching for an alternative. After I developed the osseointegration technique, I replaced my reconstructed ear with a prosthesis. Having a prosthesis comes in very handy when I’m talking with prospective patients. All I have to do is show them my ear.”