He glanced at Ted. “With or without Teddy’s help.”
* * *
When Craig and Henry finally left him at quarter of five, Ted felt drained. Restlessly he switched on the television set and in a reflex gesture switched it off. He certainly wouldn’t clear his mind by watching soap operas. A walk would feel good, a long, long walk where he could breathe in the salty spray of the ocean and maybe wander past his grandparents’ house where he’d spent so much time as a kid.
Instead, he elected to shower. He went into the bathroom and for a moment stared at his reflection in the paneled mirror that covered half the wall around the oversize marble sink. Flecks of gray around his temples. Signs of strain around his eyes. A tautness around his mouth. Stress manifests itself both mentally and physically. He’d heard a pop psychologist deliver that line on a morning news program. No kidding, he thought.
Craig had suggested that they might share a two-bedroom unit. Ted hadn’t answered, and obviously Craig got the message; he hadn’t pursued the idea.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody understood without being told that you needed a certain amount of space? He stripped and tossed his discarded clothes into the bathroom hamper. With a half-smile he remembered how Kathy, his wife, had gotten him out of the habit of dropping clothes as he stepped out of them. “I don’t care how rich your family is,” she would chide. “I think it’s disgusting to expect another human being to pick your laundry off the floor.”
“But it’s distinguished laundry.”
His face in her hair. The scent she always used, a twenty-dollar cologne. “Save your money. I can’t wear expensive perfume. It overwhelms me.”
The icy shower helped to relieve the dull, throbbing headache. Feeling somewhat better, Ted wrapped the terry-cloth robe around him, rang for the maid and requested iced tea. It would have been enjoyable to sit on the deck, but too much of a risk. He didn’t want to get into a conversation with someone walking by. Cheryl. It would be just like her to “accidentally” pass. Good God, would she never get over their casual affair? She was beautiful, she had been amusing and she did have a certain hardheaded ability to cut through the bull—but even if he didn’t have the trial hanging over his head, there was no way he would get involved with her again.
He settled on the couch, where he could look out on the ocean and watch the sea gulls arcing over the foaming surf, beyond the threat of the undertow, beyond the power of the waves to crash them against the rocks.
He felt himself begin to perspire as the prospect of the trial loomed in his mind. Impatiently, he got up and pushed open the door to the side deck. Late August usually carried this welcome tang of chill. He put his hands on the railing.
When had he begun to realize that he and Leila wouldn’t make it, in the long run? The mistrust for men so ingrained in her head had become intolerable. Was that the reason he’d overruled Craig’s advice and put the millions in her play? Subconsciously had he hoped that she would get so caught up in a smash hit that she would decide she didn’t want to accept the social demands of his life, or his desire for a family? Leila was an actress—first, last, always. She talked about wanting a child, but it wasn’t true. She had satisfied her maternal instincts by raising Elizabeth.
The sun was beginning to lower over the Pacific. The air was filled with the humming of the crickets and the katydids. Evening. Dinner. He could already see the expressions on the faces around the table. Min and Helmut, phony smiles, worried eyes. Craig trying to read his mind. Syd, a certain defiant nervousness about him. How much did Syd owe the wrong people for the money he’d put into the play? How much was Syd hoping to borrow? How much was his testimony worth? Cheryl, all seductive enticement. Alvirah Meehan, fiddling with that damn sunburst pin, her eyes snapping with curiosity. Henry watching Elizabeth through the glass partition. Elizabeth, her face cold and scornful, studying them all.
Ted glanced down. The bungalow was set on sloping ground, and the side veranda jutted out over a ten-foot drop. He stared at the red-flowered bushes below. Images formed in his mind, and he rushed back inside.
He was still trembling when the maid came with the iced tea. Heedless of the delicate satin puff, he threw himself down on the massive king-size bed. He wished that dinner were over, that the night, with all it entailed, were over.
His mouth curved in a grim attempt at a smile. Why was he wishing the evening away? What kind of dinners do they serve in prison? he wondered.
He would have plenty of evenings to find out.
6
DORA ARRIVED BACK AT THE SPA AT TWO O’CLOCK, dropped her bag in her room and went directly to her desk in the reception office.
Min had allowed her to keep the sacks of unanswered fan mail in a closet in the file room. Dora usually took out a handful at a time and kept them in the bottom drawer of her desk. She knew the sight of Leila’s mail was an irritant to Min. Now she didn’t care if Min was annoyed. She had the rest of the day off, and she intended to search for any further letters.
For the tenth time since she had found it, Dora reexamined the poison-pen letter. With each reading, her conviction grew that there might have been at least an element of truth in it. Happy as Leila had been with Ted, her distress over the last three or four films had often made her temperamental and moody. Dora had noticed Ted’s increasing impatience with the outbursts. Had he become involved with another woman?
That was exactly the way Leila would have been thinking if she opened this kind of letter or a series of these letters. It would explain the anxiety, the drinking, the despondency of those last months. Leila often said, “There are just two people I know I can trust in this world: Sparrow and Falcon. Now you, Sammy, are getting there.” Dora had felt honored. “And the Q.E. Two”—Leila’s name for Min—”is a do-or-die friend, provided there’s a buck in it for her and it doesn’t conflict with anything the Toy Soldier wants.”
Dora reached the office and was glad to see that Min and Helmut weren’t there. Outside, the day was sunny, the breeze from the Pacific gentle. Far down on the rocky embankments over the ocean, she could see the traces of ice plants, the henna-and-green-and-rust-shaded leaves that lived on water and air. Elizabeth and Ted had been water and air to Leila.
Quickly she went into the file room. With Min’s passion for beautiful surroundings, even this small storage area was extravagantly designed. The custom-made files were a sunny yellow, the ceramic-tile floor was in shades of gold and umber, a Jacobean sideboard had been converted into a supply cupboard.
There were still two full sacks of letters to Leila.
They ranged from lined paper torn from a child’s notebook to expensive, perfumed stationery. Dora scooped a batch of them into her arms and brought them to her desk.
It was a slow process. She could not assume that another anonymous letter would necessarily come addressed with snipped and pasted words and numbers like the one she had found. She began with the letters already opened, the ones Leila had seen. But after forty minutes she’d gotten nowhere. Most of the mail was the usual. You’re my favorite actress . . . I named my daughter after you . . . I saw you on Johnny Carson. You looked beautiful, and you were so funny . . . But there were also several surprisingly harsh critical notes. That’s the last time I spend five dollars to see you. What a lousy movie . . . Do you read your scripts, Leila, or just take what roles you can get?
Her rapt concentration caused her to be unaware of Min and Helmut’s four-o’clock arrival. One minute she was alone; the next they were approaching her desk. She looked up, tried to summon a natural smile and with a casual movement of her hand slid the anonymous letter into the pile.
It was clear that Min was upset. She did not seem to notice that Dora was early. “Sammy, get me the file on the bathhouse.”
Min waited while she went for it. When she returned, Helmut reached out his hand to take the manila folder, but Min literally grabbed it first. Min was ghastly pale. Helmut patted her arm. “Minna, please, yo
u are hyperventilating.”
Min ignored him. “Come inside,” she ordered Dora.
“I’ll just tidy up first.” Dora indicated her desk.
“Forget it. It’s not going to make any difference.”
There was nothing she could do. If she made any attempt to put the anonymous letter into her drawer, Min would demand to see it. Dora patted her hair and followed Min and Helmut into their private office. Something was dreadfully wrong, and it had to do with that blasted Roman bath.
Min went to her own desk, opened the file and began to race through the papers in it. Most of the correspondence was in the form of bills from the contractor. “Five hundred thousand down, three hundred thousand, twenty-five thousand . . .” She kept reading, her voice going higher and higher. “And now another four hundred thousand dollars before he can continue working on the interior rooms.” She slapped the papers down and slammed her fist on them.
Dora hurried to get a glass of ice water from the office refrigerator. Helmut rushed around the desk, put his hands on Min’s temples and made soft, shushing sounds. “Minna, Minna, you must relax. Think about something pleasant. You’ll bring on high blood pressure.”
Dora handed the glass to Min and looked contemptuously at Helmut. That spendthrift, she thought, would put Min in her grave with his crazy projects! Min had been absolutely right when she’d suggested that they add a self-contained budget-price spa on the back half of the property. That would have worked. Secretaries as well as socialites were going to spas these days. Instead, this pompous fool had persuaded Min to build the bathhouse. “It will make a statement about us to the world” was his favorite phrase when he talked Min into plunging into debt. Dora knew the finances of this place as well as they did. It couldn’t go on. She cut through Helmut’s soothing “Minna, Minna—”
“Stop work on the bathhouse immediately,” she suggested crisply. “The outside is finished, so the place looks all right. Say the special marble you ordered for the interior has been held up. No one will know the difference. The contractor’s pretty much paid to date, isn’t he?”
“Very nearly,” Helmut agreed. He smiled brightly at Dora as though she had just solved an intricate puzzle. “Dora is right, Minna. We’ll put off finishing the bathhouse.”
Min ignored him. “I want to go over those figures again.” For the next half-hour they had their heads together comparing the contracts, the estimates and the actual figures. At one point Min and then Helmut left the room. Don’t let them go to my desk, Dora prayed. She knew the minute Min calmed down, she would be annoyed to see clutter in the reception area.
Finally Min tossed the original sketches across her desk. “I want to talk to that damn lawyer. It looks to me as if the contractor is entitled to price over-runs on every phase of the job.”
“This contractor has soul,” Helmut said. “He understands the concept of what we are doing. Minna, we stop building for the moment. Dora is right. We turn the problem into a virtue. We are awaiting shipment of Carrara marble. We still settle for nothing less, yes? So. We shall be admired as purists. Liebchen, don’t you know that to create a desire for something is every bit as important as fulfilling it?”
Dora was suddenly aware of another presence in the room. She looked up quickly. Cheryl was standing there, her shapely body curved against the doorframe, her eyes amused. “Have I come at a bad time?” she asked brightly. Without waiting for an answer, she strolled over and leaned past Dora. “Oh, I see you’re going over the sketches of the Roman bath.” She bent over to examine them.
“Four pools, steam rooms, saunas, more massage rooms, sleeping rooms? I love the idea of nap time after a strenuous romp through the mineral baths! Incidentally, won’t it cost a fortune to provide real mineral water for the baths? Do you intend to fake it or pipe it in from Baden-Baden?” She straightened up gracefully. “It looks as though you two could use a little investment capital. Ted respects my opinion, you know. In fact, he used to listen to me quite a bit before Leila got her fangs into him. See you people at dinner.”
At the door she turned back and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, by the way, Min, dear, I left my bill on Dora’s desk. I’m sure it was just an oversight that one was left in my bungalow. I know you planned to have me as your guest, dear.”
Cheryl had left the bill on her desk. Dora knew that meant she had gone through the mail. Cheryl was what she was. She had probably seen the letter to Leila.
Min looked at Helmut. Frustrated tears welled in her eyes. “She knows we’re in a bad financial bind, and it would be just like her to tip the columnists off! Now we have another freebie—and don’t think she won’t use this place as a second home!” Despairingly, Min jammed the scattered bills and sketches back into the file.
Dora took it from her and replaced it in the file room. Her heart fluttering rapidly, she went back to the reception room. The letters to Leila were scattered on her desk; the poison-pen one was missing.
Dismayed, Dora tried to assess what harm that letter might do. Could it be used to blackmail Ted? Or was whoever sent it anxious to have it back, just in case someone tried to trace it?
If only she hadn’t been reading it when Min and Helmut came in! Dora sat down at her desk; only then did she notice that propped against her calendar was Cheryl’s bill for her week at the Spa.
Scrawled across it Cheryl had written Paid in full.
7
AT SIX THIRTY THE PHONE IN ELIZABETH’S BUNGALOW rang. It was Min. “Elizabeth, I want you to have dinner with Helmut and me tonight. Ted, his lawyer, Craig, Cheryl, Syd-they’re all going out.” For a moment she sounded like the familiar Min, imperious, brooking no refusal. Then, before Elizabeth could answer, her tone softened. “Please, Elizabeth. You’re going home in the morning. We have missed you.”
“Is this another one of your games, Min?”
“I was absolutely wrong to have forced that meeting last night. I can only ask you to forgive me.”
Min sounded weary, and Elizabeth felt reluctant sympathy. If Min chose to believe in Ted’s innocence, so be it. Her scheme to throw them together had been outrageous, but that was Min’s way.
“You’re certain none of them will be in the dining room . . . ?”
“I am certain. Do join us, Elizabeth. You’re leaving tomorrow. I’ve hardly seen you.”
It was totally out of character for Min to plead. This would be her only chance to visit with Min, and besides, Elizabeth was not sure she welcomed the prospect of a solitary dinner.
She had had a full afternoon at the Spa, including a loofah treatment, two stretch-exercise classes, a pedicure and manicure, and finally a yoga class. In the yoga class, she’d tried to free her mind, but no matter how much she concentrated, she could not obey the soothing suggestions of the instructor. Over and over, against her will, she kept hearing Ted’s question: If I did go back upstairs . . . Was I trying to save her?
“Elizabeth . . . ?”
Elizabeth gripped the phone and glanced around, drinking in the restful monochromatic color scheme of this expensive bungalow. “Leila green,” Min called it. Min had been sickeningly high-handed last night, but she had certainly loved Leila. Elizabeth heard herself accepting the invitation.
* * *
The large bathroom included a step-in tub, whirlpool, stall shower and personal steam-room facility. She chose Leila’s favorite way to wind down. Lying in the tub, she took advantage of both steam and whirlpool. Eyes closed, her head cushioned by a terry-cloth neck rest, she felt tension slip away under the soothing mist and churning water.
Again she marveled at the cost of this place. Min must be racing through the millions she’d inherited. She had noticed that that worry was shared by all the old-timers on the staff. Rita, the manicurist, had told her virtually the same story that she’d heard from the masseuse. “I tell you, Elizabeth,” she had complained, “Cypress Point just doesn’t have the same excitement since Leila died. The celebrity followers are going t
o La Costa now. Sure you see some pretty big names, but the word is half of them aren’t paying.”
After twenty minutes the steam automatically turned off. Reluctantly Elizabeth stood under a cold shower, then draped herself in a thick terry robe and twisted a towel around her hair. There was something else she had overlooked in her anger at finding Ted here. Min had genuinely loved Leila. Her anguish after Leila’s death had not been faked. But Helmut? The hostile way he had looked at Leila’s picture, his sly suggestion that Leila was losing her looks . . . What had provoked that venom? Surely not just the cracks about his being a “toy soldier” that Leila made at his expense? When he overheard them, he was always amused. She remembered the time he’d arrived for dinner at Leila’s apartment wearing the tall, old-fashioned cap of a toy soldier.
“I was passing a costume shop, saw it in the window and couldn’t resist,” he explained as they all applauded. Leila had laughed uproariously and kissed him. “You’re a good sport, Your Lordship,” she said. . . .
Then what had triggered his anger? Elizabeth toweled her hair dry, brushed it back and caught it in a Psyche knot. As she applied makeup and touched her lips and cheeks with gloss, she could hear Leila’s voice: “My God, Sparrow, you get better-looking all the time. I swear you were lucky Mama was having an affair with Senator Lange when you were conceived. You remember some of her other men. How would you like to have been Matt’s kid?”
Last year she’d been in summer stock. When the show got to Kentucky, she’d gone to the leading newspaper in Louisville and searched for references to Everett Lange. His obituary notice was four years old at that time. It gave details of his family background, his education, his marriage to a socialite, his achievements in Congress. In his photograph, she had seen a masculine version of her own features. . . . Would her life have been different if she had known her father? She suppressed the thought.
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