To avoid being recognized, Charlotte sat with her back to the dining room. Her face had also been one of the most photographed of her day and she still looked much as she had then. Even to young people, her face was familiar from her recent string of movies. But she would have attracted attention in any case. Her exquisitely tailored suit and dignified bearing stamped her with a distinction that was not often to be found among the blue jean-clad clientele of an upstate tavern.
But although she was the object of a few curious stares, she was not approached. Taking her seat, she found herself facing a portrait of Lillian, the amplitude of whose figure was a testimony to changing styles. Her bosom overflowed her dress, her upper arms bulged over the tops of her long kid gloves, a succession of delicate chins festooned her lovely face. It was as if the flesh that had been displaced by her tightly strung corset had been forced upward like toothpaste from the bottom of the tube.
Noticing her glance, Jerry turned around to look at the portrait. “Those were the days when men liked an armful.”
“Times have changed,” Charlotte replied. She found it ironic that so-called liberated women should despise the womanly curves that distinguished them from the opposite sex. She was reminded of what Hilda had said, that to starve yourself to thinness was to deny your womanhood.
“Not for me, they haven’t,” said Jerry with a wide smile. “Italian men still like a little extra flesh to keep them warm at night.”
“Thank God for Italian men.”
He smiled. The dimples were back.
The waitress brought their drink order—a foamy pitcher of cold draught beer accompanied by a bowl of pretzels. It was a sultry night, the kind of night for drinking beer in the air-conditioned, yeasty-smelling interior of a local gin mill. And beer and pretzels certainly beat what was being offered at the spa: a weak white wine punch and a trayful of crudités. Charlotte took a long draught and settled in. She liked the company too.
“I have a toast to propose,” she said. She hoisted her mug and smiled. “To the new acting spa director.”
Jerry stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Who?”
“You. The One with the Muscles.”
“The boss lady is making me acting spa director?”
Charlotte nodded.
He leaned back, silent. “Jesus,” he said finally. “That’s a surprise. I was wondering who she was going to get to replace Elliot, but I thought she’d move Sperry back up—for the time being anyway.”
“Sperry’s out too. Now that Anne-Marie’s fallen from grace, she’s decided there’s no reason to keep him around anymore. Jack’s supposed to be giving him his pink slip on Monday.”
“Aha, the chief executioner,” said Jerry. He shifted his attention from Charlotte to the room behind her. “Speak of the devil.”
Turning around, Charlotte saw Leon sitting in a booth, engaged in earnest conversation. Sitting opposite him, recognizable only by the back of his head and by the hand-sewn loafer with the worn sole that protruded from the side of the booth, was Jack.
Jerry returned his attention to Charlotte. “I’m impressed by your intelligence,” he said. “Now that I’m going to be a big executive, I’ll need some spies. If I ever want to find out what’s going on in the front office, I’ll remember to give you a call.”
“Anytime.”
“Acting director,” he repeated. “Translation: not for long. I’ll bet thirty to one that Elliot’s reinstated within six months. But at least I’ll get a break from the toilet repair routine for a while. What does she call me, ‘The One with the Muscles’?”
Charlotte nodded and smiled. “It’s better than ‘My Mistake,’ which is what she calls Sperry.”
“I guess,” said Jerry.
The menu arrived. Charlotte decided on steak—after all those vegetables, she was raving for red meat—and corn on the cob, which was Lillian’s specialty. Lillian Leonard was reputed to have been able to put away a dozen ears at a sitting. Neither was exactly Cuisine Minceur.
The waitress took their order and left.
“Do the police have any leads yet?” asked Charlotte, returning to the subject uppermost in her mind. As she had foreseen, the police had been pressured by the press to upgrade the case to a homicide investigation on the basis of the similarity in the positions of the bodies.
Jerry replied that they had completed all the routine tasks: checked the registers at High Rock Hotel and at the other hotels, combed the buildings and grounds, interviewed the guests and employees who’d been at the scene, checked the license plates of the cars in the parking lot. “Nada,” he said.
“I might have a suspect.”
“Now that you’ve told me how it was done, you’re going to tell me who did it. Is that it?”
“Not quite.”
“Who?”
“Sperry.” She went on to tell him about Sperry’s illegal cell therapy business, and how a threat to his profits could have provided a motive for murder. She also told him that Adele and Art had been his patients, and that both had had appointments on the days they died.
When she finished, Jerry said, “I knew about the cell therapy business. It’s hard to keep secrets around here. But I had no idea he made that much money at it. Good work! You ought to go into the business. I can contribute another damning bit of evidence.”
“What’s that?”
“That Art Dykstra was an undercover investigator for the FDA.”
“He was!” exclaimed Charlotte. “I thought he was a chemist.”
“He was, but he was also an FDA investigator. He was here to investigate Sperry. Somebody had anonymously reported Sperry for the illegal practice of cell therapy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the boss lady herself.”
“Jerry, you’ve been holding out on me.”
“Not really. There didn’t seem to be any connection to the murders. Until you pointed it out.”
“Art didn’t have heart disease?”
“He did, but that wasn’t why he was here. Or it wasn’t the main reason anyway. I guess he figured he could kill two birds with one stone.” He grimaced at the unintended pun. “I mean, get some cardiac rehabilitation and find out what Sperry was up to at the same time.”
Charlotte sighed. Jerry’s news left her more confused than ever. “How did you find this out?”
“From Crowley. He’s doing a back history on Sperry now.”
“Good. I was going to ask you what you could find out about him.”
Dinner arrived—two juicy steaks, french fries, and corn on the cob dripping with butter. In her mind’s eye, Charlotte saw an invisible hand making a black mark against her name in the giant ledger in the sky. Whatever gains she, had made during her week of abstemious living would probably be wiped out by a single night of self-indulgence.
Over dinner they discussed the case. How would Sperry have gained by killing an FDA investigator? they wondered. Even if he’d gotten away with it, wouldn’t the FDA have sent someone else up to investigate? Unless Art had been on the take. Art might have offered to write a clean report in exchange for a kickback. He writes the report and Sperry kills him, not only to save the money, but also to make sure he doesn’t talk. But if Art had written a clean report, wouldn’t the FDA have said so? Besides, Art didn’t seem the type. And then there was the question of opportunity. Sperry had been nowhere near the Bath Pavilion at the time of Art’s death. Or if he had, no one had seen him.
In any case, they owed it to Crowley to fill him in. Jerry suggested they drop by the casino after dinner. Crowley was now living there, in a former high stakes gaming room that had been converted into a center for the murder investigation, which now took in both the sheriff’s department and the Food and Drug Administration. High Rock hadn’t seen so much action since the racketeering hearings in the fifties. According to Jerry, Sperry was now the chief suspect. Or rather, the only suspect. His background would be gone over with a fine-toothed comb; his movements would be scrutinized down to t
he fraction of a second; his colleagues and patients would be questioned for any information that might be pertinent to the case.
The waitress reappeared to clear away their plates.
“Do you miss police work?” Charlotte asked after the waitress had taken their dessert orders (two crepes suzette—another of Lillian’s specialties and the real Lillian’s favorites).
Jerry shrugged. “Sometimes,” he replied. “I always wanted to be a cop. I signed up right after high school. It sounds corny, but I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. It’s a good feeling—saving the world.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet and withdrew a laminated card that identified him as Jerry D’Angelo, detective, third grade. Across the mug shot was punched the word RETIRED. He passed the card across the table to Charlotte. “My souvenir. Fifteen years, nine hundred felony arrests.” He added, with a proud smile, “I liked catching crooks.”
“I would say so,” said Charlotte. She studied the picture. It showed a different Jerry from the one who now sat across from her: a tough, dour-faced man with the kind of pasty complexion that comes from too little sleep and too much fast food. She handed it back to him.
“But I’m glad to be out too. Actually, the greatest danger isn’t that you’ll get shot. It’s that you’ll get fat and die of a heart attack or that your nerves will go. The work can drive you nuts. You see only the worst side of life. You start thinking the whole world’s like that.”
“Was your wife happy when you got out?”
“Ecstatic. She’d been wanting me to quit for a long time. She was always worried.” He held up his trigger finger. “I got hurt twice before this. I’ll never forget the day I told her. It was on Christmas Eve. I gave her this big package. I told her it was a Christmas present. Inside were my disability papers from the Civil Service Review Board.”
Jerry went on to talk about his wife, Rosalie, who’d been his high school sweetheart back in Bensonhurst. They had four children—all girls, all athletes. His oldest was in college. Paulina was footing the bill.
“That’s another benefit of leaving police work,” he said. “The boss lady might be a bitch to work for sometimes, but so was the city, and the city didn’t pay for the kid’s college education. If you’re loyal to her, she’s loyal to you, which is more than you can say of most employers.”
“Well said,” said Charlotte.
Jerry pulled out a picture: his wife, the plump, dark-eyed beauty whom Charlotte had seen at the fete, and four pretty, dark-eyed girls.
“Jerry, they’re lovely,” said Charlotte. They all had wide smiles and perfect teeth. The two little ones had Jerry’s dimples.
“Thanks,” said Jerry, putting the picture away. “What about you?” he asked. “I mean, are you married?”
Either he didn’t keep up with Hollywood gossip or he was too polite to admit it. Charlotte replied that she had been—four times. Over her crêpes, which wasn’t exactly the dessert for a sweltering June evening, but which tasted wonderful anyway, Charlotte talked about her life. She’d never had any children. In the Hollywood of the forties, having children was considered bad for the box office (it was important for a star to keep her face in front of the public, and taking a year or two out at the peak of a career was thought to be a ticket to hasbeenville). By the time she was big enough to stand up to the bosses, it was too late, in the sense that her second husband was soon to die of a heart attack. She had married again, but that marriage had been a disaster. After that, she’d been single for almost twenty years before marrying again. But she wasn’t entirely alone. She had half a dozen nieces and nephews and she was close to the children of her fourth husband. Although they had been married for only two years—as M.J. had quite accurately put it, he couldn’t live in Charlotte’s limelight—they remained good friends and she’d become a surrogate mother to his two grown daughters, whose own mother had died.
By the time they finished dessert, the adjoining bar was becoming crowded with young singles and it was getting noisy and smoky. A band was setting up in a corner. It was time to leave.
When she returned to her room after their visit to the casino, her head was spinning, and not just from the beer. A haggard Crowley had been glad to hear what Charlotte had to say and had offered a tidbit of his own in return. It seemed that Sperry had abandoned his lucrative Harley Street practice under a cloud of scandal. One of his patients had died as the result of an allergic reaction to an injection of cells. The patient had been sensitized by the first shot and had gone into anaphylactic shock following the second. As a result, Sperry had been ostracized by the British medical establishment. The British, Crowley explained, were less stringent than the Americans when it came to regulating the practice of medicine. A layman such as Sperry (his medical credentials were spurious) could set himself up in practice as long as he didn’t perform certain acts, such as operating under anesthesia or prescribing certain drugs. But an Englishman who called himself a doctor, whether or not he was listed on the British medical register, was expected to maintain certain standards of behavior. For those who tarnished the honor of the medical establishment, the punishment was severe: no patient referrals, no club memberships, no chummy backslapping at medical convocations. Sperry’s answer had been to emigrate—first to the Bahamas, where he set up a cell therapy clinic that never got off the ground, and then to the United States, where his connections in the carriage trade, along with his good looks and smooth way with women, landed him a job at That Woman’s fat farm in Arizona. He had been induced to come to High Rock during one of Paulina’s raids on the competition, but in his case Paulina was duped: That Woman had shrewdly taken advantage of Paulina to dump a problem employee.
But although Crowley had learned a lot about Sperry, his efforts had been less successful when it came to actually pinning anything on him. As Jerry had said, none of the dozens of spa guests and employees who had been interviewed had seen him at the time of the murders. He had no alibi—he hadn’t actually been seeing patients. Charlotte’s interview with him had lasted only twenty minutes—just enough time for Adele to get over to the Bath Pavilion and into the tub. His next appointment wasn’t for thirty minutes, during which time he could have committed the murder. It was the same in Art’s case: there was an interval of about thirty minutes when he could have committed the murder. But he would have to have been lightning-footed and invisible to boot to make it from the Health Pavilion to the Bath Pavilion and back in that time.
Charlotte restively circled her room, hanging up her clothes, putting away her shoes, straightening the jars and bottles on the bathroom counter, as if by restoring order to her surroundings, she would bring order to the greater chaos. She was by nature a nester. It was a defense against spending so much time in hotels and rented rooms. Her brownstone in Turtle Bay, where she had lived on and off for the last thirty years, was her sanctuary, her retreat. When she wasn’t there, she took bits of it with her: a small flower vase of blue and white Canton ware; a picture of her second husband in a Victorian silver frame; an antique rosewood sculpture of the grave and gentle Kwan-yen, the Chinese goddess of mercy and protector of women; a small malachite clock with ormolu mounts; a volume of Edna St. Vincent Millay bound in Moroccan calf. These were the totems of her private life. She paid homage to them now, arranging them on the marble surface of her dresser. Picking up the volume of poetry, she read the poem on the page to which it opened: “The solid sprite who stand alone,/And walks the world with equal stride,/Grieve though he may, is not undone/Because a friend has died.” With a pang, she thought of Adele and Art. She was not undone, but nor could she call herself a solid sprite.
Setting the book aside, she walked over to the sliding glass doors, which stood open. She preferred natural ventilation to the artificial chill of air-conditioning. The moon hung low, casting an argent shadow over the lake. To the south, heat lightning shimmered through the clouds. Below her, a broad lawn stretched down to the lake shore. It was dotted with empt
y Adirondack chairs that seemed to have become animate by virtue of their contact with their former occupants. Some sat alone, staunchly independent of their chair fellows; others were gathered in gregarious clusters of three or four; still others were ranged in a line in mute appreciation of the spectacle before them, the geyser from which the lake took its name. In the moonlight, its fountain shone like a column of quicksilver, creating a host of ripples that slid across the calm, black water. To the west, the lawn was bounded by a path leading down to the gazebo at the water’s edge. Behind the path rose a backdrop of trees. The globes of the Victorian lampposts lighting the path made it appear as if the trees were hung with a necklace of giant glowing pearls. As she watched, the globes dimmed to a dull yellow and then went out. She checked the face of her clock with its garland of hand-painted roses: it was midnight.
After changing into her nightgown, she climbed into bed. She had just fallen asleep when she was awakened by the ring of the telephone. It was Tom. He apologized for calling so late, explaining that he’d been trying to reach her all evening. Her brain still muddled by steep, she had at first wondered why he was calling. In the confusion, she’d forgotten all about the radium. He was calling to tell her that he’d found out the name of the investment banker who’d hired the PR firm to plant the radium story. It was Raymond Innis. Apart from the fact that he was known as an up-and-coming, young M & A man (“mergers and acquisitions”), Tom knew nothing about him. Nor did the name mean anything to Charlotte, although the fact that he was an M & A man would point to a connection with High Rock Waters’s takeover of Paulina Langenberg. After hanging up, she lay in bed, the light of consciousness gradually stealing into her brain. Raymond Innis: maybe the name did mean something to her after all. She slid the hotel directory out of the base of the telephone and looked up the number for the front desk. Then she dialed.
Murder at the Spa Page 17