“No. I don’t think I did. I was in a hurry.”
“Tant pis. Though I don’t suppose it really matters now.” She studied him, a little warily. “Where were you, A.C.?”
He sighed, and sipped more of his drink.
“In Bermuda.”
“With that actress? Everyone’s talking about a cute little vixen named Bailey.”
“No, not her. I don’t know where she is. I was with Camilla Santee.”
“How marvelous for you. The big score.”
“It wasn’t a ‘score.’”
She leaned back, folding her arms.
“I’m your friend, A.C.. Nothing will change that. But you certainly make it very hard.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Look, darling. The Man Who Loved Women was a marvelous film. Truffaut’s best. But it was fantasy. May I remind you that the hero wasn’t married? May I remind you also that he got killed in the end?”
“I’m not living out any fantasy.”
“And I am Kathleen Turner.” She took his hand, patting it. “You’re going to have to make a choice, A.C. You have too many women in your life. It’s your curse.”
“I made my choice. I married Kitty.”
“Oh, really? Heavy action in Bermuda with someone like Camilla Santee is a million light-years out of line. You’ve no right to expect Kitty to tolerate it.”
“Kitty doesn’t know about Camilla. No one knows about her but you. Kitty’s mad on account of Bailey Hazeltine, and I haven’t seen her for days. She’s been drinking a lot, and doing drugs, I think. She showed up at the worst possible time last Sunday. If she hadn’t, I’d be back with Kitty right now. Bailey’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” Vanessa said. “But drop them both. Now. What’s the Spanish proverb? ‘Take what you want,’ said God, ‘but pay for it?’ Poor Belinda sure did.”
“Thank you for your advice.”
She patted his hand once more. “I’m only trying to help. Your adoring little pal, through thick and thin.”
“I appreciate it.”
“You may be in more trouble than you realize, A.C. The police are looking for you.”
“Detective Lanham?”
“Yes.” She pulled some pink telephone message slips from the big manila envelope and pushed them in front of him. “He’s been calling.”
He glanced quickly through them. Lanham was far from the only caller. There was a message from Bailey. He wondered if Vanessa had noticed.
“I can’t help the police,” he said.
“It’s probably occurred to them that you knew all those people, Philippe, Molly, Belinda. Everyone but Jimmy Woody. Or do you know him, too?”
A.C. said nothing. He looked through his mail. It was very ordinary—mostly invitations and press releases. One smaller envelope was addressed by hand in large, flowery script. There was an embossed gold drawing of a bee on the back—Honey Jerome’s private little emblem.
He stuffed the mail, including Honey’s letter, back into the envelope and summoned the waiter.
“Could you throw this away for me?” he asked when the man came up. Puzzled, the waiter nodded and carried away the envelope as though it contained soiled trash.
“Belinda wasn’t such a bad kid,” Vanessa said. “She was in over her head, is all. Philippe. Jimmy Woody …” She shook her head sadly. “I just don’t understand.”
He noticed that she looked very tired. Her makeup failed to obscure shadowy circles under her eyes.
A.C. drank, looking for the waiter. Vanessa took his glass from his hand, setting it down emphatically.
“All right, A.C. It’s time to get off your derriere. You’ve no choice but to call Beau Monde magazine now. I just hope they haven’t hired someone else. I heard they were trying to pirate some people from Vanity Fair.”
“I can’t go job-hunting now, Vanessa. Not yet.”
“A.C. I’ve talked with my husband. We’d like you to stay with us for a few days, longer, whatever you need. You have to get out of your apartment.”
“As soon as I can.”
“Please, A.C. Before something else happens to you.”
A.C. left Vanessa waiting in the cab. He was relieved that she didn’t ask to come up to the apartment with him. The telephone number Bailey had left with the Globe message desk was his own.
The aged doorman was seated wearily in an old wooden chair by the elevator. He waved weakly to A.C. in salute, but made no attempt to operate the elevator for him.
As he pushed his floor button, he wondered what he would take with him. He’d heard of people fleeing fires or floods madly throwing odd shoes and useless junk into their suitcases. He had only a few minutes. He decided he’d carry away only some working clothes. Two or three of his best summer suits, his best dinner jacket. Enough shirts and other necessities to last him a week.
And if Bailey was there? He’d take her with him, too. She was in far greater need of rescue than he was. He’d find Bailey’s brother and have him take her up to his house in Westchester.
The elevator car rattled to a halt. Stepping out into the musty darkness of the hall, A.C. hesitated a moment, wondering if he should just leave. He really didn’t want to go to Vanessa’s. He wanted to find Camilla Santee.
As he pushed open the door, he immediately saw Bailey’s legs and a dark stain. He thought she might have passed out, spilling her drink. Then, as he stepped inside, it became obvious that the stain was not from liquor. Leaving the door open behind him, he stood over her, feeling as numb and helpless as he had when Molly Wickham had died.
He knelt and touched her leg. The flesh was cold, the muscle hard. Her staring eyes ignored him.
“Bailey?” He said her name pointlessly, then repeated it, over and over.
He took her hand. It was cold as well. Dried blood covered her chest. It was so dark and thick he couldn’t find any wound. Then he did, a round hole in the cloth near her breast.
She had been shot. But the door had been locked. Had she committed suicide? That possibility had been worrying him. It had worried him and her family for years. She had tried it before, during a very bad year in Los Angeles.
“Bailey?”
He was losing his senses. Where was the gun? He had a gun in the apartment—a .45 automatic he had kept from the army. Had she taken it? If she had, where was it?
Searching over the floor, noting that the blood had seeped into Kitty’s expensive Persian rug, he stood up again, puzzled, a little frantic. Before doing anything, he had to understand what had happened. He couldn’t think or act logically until this made sense.
The pistol was where he always kept it—in the night table on his side of the bed, wrapped in a chamois. It still smelled freshly cleaned and oiled. It was fully loaded, just as he had left it.
With the pistol dangling in his hand, he returned to the living room. There was no other weapon in the place. No suicide note.
He went into the kitchen. Everything seemed the same, except there were torn pieces of a picture of Camilla on the floor. Had Bailey done that? She couldn’t have. She was lying dead by the front door. She must have just come in.
Back in the living room, he found a cup on the table by his favorite chair. He picked it up, smelling whiskey. Bailey didn’t drink whiskey. She hated having the smell on her. Her drink was vodka or gin.
There was no gun. If she had killed herself, there’d be a gun. A.C. noticed the door to the terrace. It was open slightly, and a pane was broken out near the handle.
His mind still blurry, he sat down in his chair, holding the cup and pistol before him. He had to do something. What to do? What had happened?
“My God, A.C., what’s going on here?”
Vanessa was in the apartment, standing over Bailey. She looked at A.C., bewildered. Then she saw his gun.
“What have you done?”
“It’s all right, Vanessa.” What a stupid t
hing to say. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong.
She was one of his dearest friends, but now she was frightened of him. He could see it in her eyes. She backed away. He rose and came toward her. Vanessa started toward the apartment’s front door, but stepped on Bailey’s leg. She gave a little shriek and flattened herself against the wall. She put her hands in front of her face.
“Someone killed her, Vanessa. I don’t know who. I don’t know how. I …”
Time suddenly began to move in a big rush. The killer had fled, was getting away. The police would be coming. Vanessa was terrified of him.
He hadn’t killed Bailey. He’d wished her no harm. He’d tried to protect her—had used the last of his savings to get her out of jail. His gun hadn’t even been fired. His apartment had been broken into. Surely they’d believe him.
But not even Vanessa believed him.
A.C. knew who had shot Bailey. He’d seen the man in the picture on Camilla’s mantel. He’d seen him on the motorcycle outside the Plaza.
Don’t you go looking for him, Camilla had said over the phone in Bermuda. You leave him alone.
But the man had gone looking for him. He’d sat here drinking whiskey, waiting for A.C. to come home—only Bailey had come home instead.
Pierre was probably in Washington, Camilla had said. She’d gone there herself. The man—her kinsman—would be going there, too, to find Pierre, to kill Pierre. Camilla had said she was going to be the cause of that.
A.C. had no real choice. He had to get to that man. He had to find Camilla.
He stuck the .45 into his belt beneath his coat, and, without another word to Vanessa, fled out the door.
CHAPTER 14
A.C. awoke in the night dark of his hotel room. For an instant he couldn’t recall where he was, and was frightened. He had the odd feeling that Bailey was with him, lying next to him in the bed—that if he were to turn over and look at her she would stare back at him, dead.
He sat up and turned on the lamp. He was alone. Throwing back his covers, he got up naked in the air-conditioned cold and went over to his window. Outside was the broad expanse of Pennsylvania Avenue, a grand boulevard in the European manner quite unlike the cramped, noisy thoroughfares of New York. Far to the left, he could see the great lighted dome of the Capitol. Around the corner to the right was the stately Greek edifice of the Treasury and behind that the White House. The traffic in front of the hotel was light, moving in desultory fashion. Even at this dead hour, it looked hot outside. If he opened the window, the heat would roll in like some poison gas.
He had had a marvelously happy life in Washington, and he and Kitty had had many happy hours in this very hotel. They’d celebrated their anniversary here every year they’d lived in the capital. He remembered her laughing and dancing at an impossibly crowded inaugural ball. He cursed her for making them return to New York.
He forced himself to think about his immediate problems. He’d accomplished nothing in the time since his arrival but to buy a few clothes and determine that Pierre Delasante had probably left town. He was letting time slip away—handing it to his adversaries, known and unknown. He was at the very center of authority in the United States. The District of Columbia’s police were undermanned and inefficient, but if they became interested in finding him, they would. He had registered in his own name, unable to concoct any kind of sensible alias or identity—or even to think—when he had checked in.
This waste of time was dangerous. He was known to a lot of people in Washington, and everyone in this city read newspapers. There had been no story yet—Bailey wasn’t that famous an actress—but there could be, as early as the next morning’s editions.
What time he did have had been bought for him by Theresa. He’d had to gamble on finding an unquestioning friend and, somewhat to his surprise, had chosen well. Theresa had taken him into her apartment even though he’d told her at the outset he was likely to be sought by the police. She’d listened calmly to everything he’d had to say—and he’d told her everything. Then she’d offered without hesitation to help him in any way she could. Ashamed, he’d asked for money. He hadn’t dared attempt to cash or deposit his check from the Globe. Theresa had gone to her bank, returning within forty minutes with $5,000. He had offered to sign his check over to her. She had taken the check to hold in safety for him, but refused to let him sign it. She’d driven him to New Jersey, putting him on an Amtrak train, leaving him with a hug and all the courage she could inspire.
He went to his phone. After several rings, Theresa’s husband answered. A.C. hesitated. Had she told him? Could he trust the man? He’d never had to trust friendship this way before.
“This is A.C. James, George. I need to speak to Theresa.”
“She’s sleeping, A.C. It’s very late.”
He heard her voice in the background. Then she came on the phone.
“A.C.! Are you all right? Where are you?”
“I’d better not say. I’m okay. Has anyone tried to reach you about me, Theresa? Is my name in the papers?”
It had always been so easy to put people’s names in the public print, for better or worse. Now he was beginning to realize what that could mean, how powerless and vulnerable that could make someone feel.
“It was on the news, that poor dead girl in your apartment. You’re wanted for questioning, darling. The police called me. Nothing specific. I think they’re calling all your friends. And your wife called. I didn’t say anything, but she wants to talk to you right away. She wants you to call her.”
Kitty and brother Bill were doubtless working with the police.
“Thank you, Theresa. Thank you for everything. I hope I haven’t gotten you in any trouble.”
“Don’t worry about me. And don’t worry about George. You’re our friend, A.C.”
“I’ll call you when I can.”
He set the receiver back gently. Sleep was beyond him now. Going to the minibar in his room, he made himself a drink. The little bottles of whiskey reminded him of the cup in his apartment, making him shudder. He poured vodka and some tonic—Bailey’s kind of drink. Pulling a chair up to the window, he sat there sipping, gazing sadly at the Washington night.
Memories of Bailey danced by him like spirits. He clung to a special one of Bailey in a white summery dress, on a night of hazy moonlight along the shore of the Cross River Reservoir in Westchester. Warm Bailey. Cool sand at the water’s edge.
There were more tears in his eyes than he could wipe away. He had wanted desperately to marry Bailey in those years when he had all but become a member of the Hazeltine family. But she was so very young, still in college, and he was so very poor, with nothing more in mind for his life than to become a newspaper reporter.
If he had married her, she might not have become what she had become. But he had married Kitty. He’d loved them both. And now he loved Camilla. Vanessa once told him that his problem was that he was still in love with all the women he had ever loved.
“‘And cozy women dead, who by my side once lay.’”
It was a line from a poem by Stanley Kunitz called “I Dreamed That I Was Old.”
In the morning, showered and in clean clothes, he went downstairs for newspapers and read through them in the lobby. As much as he had expected it, seeing his name in print was a shock. The story in the Washington Post lumped all the New York murders together, including Bailey’s. He was mentioned as owner of the apartment where she was found and as a witness in the Molly Wickham case, which the news account cautiously linked to the others.
“James is being sought for questioning,” it said, just as Theresa had told him.
He could not stay in Washington long.
A.C. had located Pierre Delasante’s town house in Georgetown late the previous afternoon. As a White House official, Pierre had been listed in the Washington Green Book, a local version of the Social Register, but with much lower standards. A.C. had gone to the public library and looked through a copy, noting the exclusive
address and phone number—which was not listed in the regular telephone directory.
But no one answered Delasante’s phone—despite several calls and many rings. A.C. had gone to the place after dinner, finding it locked and dark with newspapers gathering on the front steps. No one answered the doorbell. He’d tried looking through the front windows, then noticed a man in a parked car across the street, a man watching him. A.C. had quickly walked away, then, turning the corner, had fled.
Camilla had come here. She hadn’t gone to New York or the Carolinas or Florida or Atlanta or any other place you could reach by air from Bermuda. She’d flown to Baltimore–Washington International, just twenty minutes from the District of Columbia line. Did she know people in Washington, people like Honey Jerome? Hadn’t Honey said something about her having worked in Washington?
A.C. suspected Camilla was by now long gone, fled to the deeper South like a rabbit into a thicket. Perhaps she had even fled the country. But she could have flown to all manner of foreign places from Bermuda. She’d come here, where she said Pierre had come after leaving New York.
He had to start somewhere. This was the place.
After a small breakfast, A.C. began making phone calls, mostly to women he had known when he lived here. None of them was of any help—had ever heard of a model named Camilla Santee. One woman he reached had read the story in the Post, and became very nervous, asking where he was. He decided to stop calling after that.
Then an idea struck him, and he went back to his phone. There was a woman in Washington who might very well have heard of Camilla, might have known her, as she knew so many women of great beauty. This woman seldom read newspapers, at least those in English.
Her name was Zoé, proprietor of the exclusive and painfully expensive Salon de Zoé in Georgetown. A tall, slender, blond and consumately chic Parisienne, Zoé had come to Washington a dozen years before and almost immediately established herself as the chief local rival to Elizabeth Arden. Zoé did not simply do hair. She and her European assistants specialized in skin care, massage, cleansing, relaxation, and total contentment. Her clients included some of the wealthiest and most sophisticated women in the capital.
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