Tender Death (31 page)
Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Contemporary Fiction, #Crime Fiction
W
ETZON HAD HOPED
to find the ubiquitous Michael Stewart downstairs waiting for her, but she was disappointed. She stood under the canopy in front of Smith’s building, looking up the street for a cab, holding the collar of her coat closed at the throat.
“Cab, miss?” Smith’s doorman came out and stood beside her. “Cold night, isn’t it?”
“Yes, a cab, please, and, yes, it’s a cold night.”
“There’ll be one along soon, I’m sure.” He turned a switch that lit a cab light on the front of the awning. “There always is at this time.” He slapped his hands together in his leather gloves and turned up his coat collar.
But he was wrong. She waited impatiently, hunching her shoulders against the cold, then gave up. “I’m going out on Third Avenue. Thanks anyway.” She moved off in almost a trot, veering around a fur-wrapped woman in dark glasses carrying a heavy briefcase in one hand and a Chinese take-out bag from Pig Heaven in the other.
At the curb on Third Avenue an old woman was being helped out of a cab by an old man, and from the corner of her eye, Wetzon saw a well-dressed young couple across the avenue dart in front of traffic toward the cab, weaving and screaming. Wetzon put on a burst of speed and got there first in a flurry of raccoon. The old man, dignified in a cloth overcoat and English tweed cap, smiled at Wetzon and held the door open for her after depositing his wife on the sidewalk.
She settled into the cab and he slammed the door closed. The disappointed couple shouted at her angrily and cursed out the driver, who shrugged. “Where to?”
“Ninety-second, between Park and Madison, as fast as you can.”
She sat back. Smith was the owner of Tender Care, and Arleen Grossman was running it for her. What a mess. How could Leon have possibly let Smith get into it? What kind of lawyer...? No ... wait ... how could she blame Leon? It was, after all, a profitable company. Oh my, was it ever profitable. She wondered how the money from the sale of the stock certificates was fed into the company. Or was it? Maybe it just went into Arleen’s and her partners’ pockets. Arleen had certainly manipulated both Smith and Leon.
But now what? Arleen had said she might have to take an extended trip. She would try to leave the country to avoid being arrested.
Why had she worked so hard to befriend Wetzon? Because Smith had probably told her about Peepsie Cunningham’s death. Arleen had wanted to confuse Wetzon, make her doubt Smith, perhaps even make Smith look guilty.
Damn, what was taking so long? The red light seemed endless. “Please, please hurry.”
Smith had bought a company whose purpose was to defraud. Did that make Smith responsible, liable? What were the legal ramifications of all this? Poor Smith.
For once, Wetzon’s caution had worked to her benefit. How much money had Smith paid for the company? The cab stopped and didn’t continue. “What’s holding us up?” She crossed and uncrossed her legs.
“There’s some problem up ahead,” the driver said. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “Traffic’s backed up on Ninety-second Street. Street’s blocked.”
“Problem?” She rolled down her window and peered out. What was happening up ahead? She saw rolling red-and-blue lights of police cars. It was Hazel’s block. What if it was Hazel? Her hands began to tremble. “I have to get out here.” She paid the driver and got out.
As all the residential streets in upper Manhattan were, Ninety-second Street was narrow. There were frozen banks of snow, cars parked on both sides of the street, and also police cars, an emergency van, lights, people. Curious bystanders clustered on the street or leaned out of apartment house and brownstone windows. Tragedy, even in New York, was an event.
The activity was concentrated in front of Hazel’s building. A fat woman in a purple all-weather coat, with a child in a stroller, blocked the sidewalk. What the hell was she doing out in this cold at this time of the evening? The child was bundled in a bright red-and-blue snowsuit and hat, its face pale in the streetlights, its eyes round and frightened. The woman, whose mittened hands rested on the curved handle of the stroller, was dark-skinned and appeared too old to be the mother. She was probably a nursemaid or baby-sitter, drawn outside by the noise.
Wetzon pushed by the woman, angry that she had to run an obstacle course to get to Hazel’s building. She dodged two boys in torn jeans and Jets jackets, one holding a skateboard, and was stopped by a policewoman. “You can’t go any farther,” the woman said, blocking her.
“Please, Officer—” Something caught in her throat. “Please. My friend is in that building.”
She saw O’Melvany first. You couldn’t miss him—he was that tall. Men in street clothes, probably detectives, were milling all over the area. Police in uniform were stopping foot traffic. An EMS van was parked on a slant near the front of the building, its lights flashing.
“Please, please, let me through. I have to get through.” She felt herself panicking. “Sergeant O’Melvany!”
Two blue-coated EMS men wheeled someone out of the building on a stretcher. A man in a red down jacket was with them, bent over, talking to the person on the stretcher. It took her several seconds to process Silvestri.
In the eerie-colored lights, the raised voices, police car radios squawking, it seemed a scene from
Walpurgisnacht.
Silvestri was scrunched down over the figure on the stretcher. A scream rose up from the cold pit of her stomach and filled her, spilling out, “Silvestri,” in a wail of pain. She was oblivious to the people around.
Detectives, police, onlookers, heads swiveled in her direction. Silvestri straightened, looking for the source, and she saw him as another pale face above the red down jacket. Round-eyed and pale like the child. He was holding someone’s hand. Someone on the stretcher. His eyes swept the crowd.
She saw the IV then and another EMS attendant. Silvestri spotted her, waved, and pointed, and they were escorting her through the throng, and she was rushing, stumbling toward them—toward Silvestri, toward the figure on the stretcher, about to be moved into the van.
Silvestri’s arm came around her shoulders like a vise, fiercely protective, holding her, but moving her forward. He was saying something but her heartbeat was exploding in her ears, drowning out every sound but its own thumping.
Hazel lay wrapped in gray blankets. The right side of her face was swollen and discolored, her head was covered by a gauze bandage.
Wetzon clutched the hard edge of the stretcher. “Hazel.” Her voice came out thin, trailing. Hazel’s good eye found her. “Leslie ... dear ...” The good side of her face tilted into a grotesque smile. “I did it ... didn’t I?” Hazel’s eye went to Silvestri, with a bit of the old sparkle. “Got the goods on them, didn’t I?”
Wetzon took off her glove and touched the lined cheek, lines like railroad tracks, deep creases. She felt Silvestri’s warm breath on her face, his arm tight around her. “You let her be a decoy, Silvestri.” She pulled away from him, accusing.
“Sergeant, we’ve got to get going,” one of the EMS men interrupted.
“She set herself up, Les.”
“I did.” Hazel’s voice was weak but sure.
They folded up the wheels and moved the stretcher into the van. Hazel’s body rolled helplessly from the action. “Where are you taking her? I’m going along.”
“Leslie ... dear ...”
“Yes?” She leaned into the van, bending to catch the failing voice.
“My purse ... it’s upstairs. Lock up for me, please.”
“But I want to go with you.”
“Please ... I’ll feel better if I know you’re doing it.”
“I’ll go with her,” Silvestri said. “I want to get a statement anyway.” He left them and went to speak to a policeman near the entrance to the building, returned quickly, and got into the van behind the first paramedic.
“Silvestri! Don’t let anything happen to her.” Wetzon stood there, letting the unspoken words hang between them. His turquoise eyes made her a promise they both knew he might not be able to keep. She watched as the second paramedic slammed the doors of the van and climbed into the front. The whining siren cut through the protective shell she’d put between her and the people on the street, leaving her alone. She saw faces staring at her from across police lines, curious faces, hungry for information.
The policeman on the door let her through into the lobby. O’Melvany and another detective were talking to a small, muscular woman in a white uniform. Reddish scratches covered one cheek, and her bleached platinum hair was in wild disarray. The woman’s hands were cuffed behind her. She looked terrified.
“Basha,” Wetzon said out loud as she pressed the elevator button. She would have thought the elevator and the elevator man would be in the lobby.
The woman jerked her head up. O’Melvany nodded to Wetzon, his hands resting on lean hips.
She was thinking that Basha would be sent back to Russia, or wherever she had come from, and this was good. The elevator door opened, and she got on.
“Oh, Ms. Wilson,” the elevator man said. “Awful about Ms. Osborn, isn’t it? It’s a terrible world we’re living in now. You just can’t trust anyone anymore.” He took her up to the fifth floor without saying anything else.
Hazel’s door was wide open and all the lights were on in the apartment. A strange man in a white jogging suit stood in the middle of Hazel’s living room holding one of her large Staffordshire dogs upside down, looking at the markings on the base.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The man looked up without embarrassment. He had a salt-and-pepper, close-cropped beard. He set the Staffordshire piece down on an end table. “I’m just a concerned neighbor,” he said with a slight German or Austrian accent. “I thought I’d see if there was something I could do for the poor lady, but I see there is nothing, so I will be going now.”
“You bet you’ll be going now.” Wetzon followed him to the door and closed it behind him firmly.
“Is nothing sacred?” She went back into the living room and righted the rocking chair, which was on its side. Books were out of the bookcase, on the floor, open, every which way. Someone had been looking for something. The bedroom was a real mess, drawers emptied, bedclothes on the floor, the mattress turned. A perfume bottle had broken and L’Air du Temps, though a light scent, cloyed. The bedside lamp lay on its side on the floor, still lit, its shade bent out of shape. She replaced the lamp on the night table, leaving the shade where it was on the floor.
Hot tears began to slide down her face. What if Hazel had died? Damn Arleen! Damn her. And she was going to get away with it, because she had surely left the country by now.
Hazel’s large black leather purse was on the floor, its contents beside it. Saul Bellow’s
More Die of Heartbreak
was lying next to it, half open. The receiver of the telephone dangled loose, off the hook, down the side of the night table. She put the receiver back on the phone and, kneeling, gathered up the scattered contents of Hazel’s purse, putting everything back as neatly as she could, holding onto the house keys in their little leather pouch.
On the floor, almost hidden under the night table, was a small notepad. She picked it up to place it back on the table near the telephone. There were some numbers on the pad. She stood up and put the Bellow book into Hazel’s purse. Hazel could read it while she was getting better.
Enough of this. She would come back later and straighten out the apartment. She turned out the lights in the doorway and started down the short hall to the door, stopped, came back, and turned the lights on in the bedroom again. She went over to the night table and picked up the pad. It was definitely a phone number but the handwriting was not Hazel’s.
Puzzled, she sat down on the tilted mattress, picked up the phone, and punched out the numbers.
One ring ... two ... three ... four ...
“Hello? Hello?”
Wetzon hung up the phone quietly.
The voice was Arleen Grossman’s.
“S
ILVESTRI
.” HIS VOICE, crisp no-nonsense professionalism, shocked her out of the mental maze she’d slipped into. “Silvestri—listen—I mean, how’s Hazel?” Her words popped out confused and erratic.
“The doctor’s with her. Where are you?” He sounded impatient, as if he’d been expecting another call.
“At Hazel’s—this is important, Silvestri—” She was gasping for breath. “This woman, Arleen Grossman—”
“Slow down, Les—”
“Please Silvestri, time means everything. She’ll get away.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Now he seemed angry.
“This woman, Arleen Grossman, I guess you know all about her. She runs Tender Care—”
“Does she indeed?” She could almost hear the iron gate clang shut between them. His tone was frigid.
“What kind of thing is that to say, Silvestri? Are you being sarcastic? What do you mean, ‘Does she indeed?’ ” A large moth flew in her face suddenly, flapping its powdery wings, and she cried out, brushing it away.
“What’s going on there?” Silvestri was alert now and listening.
“I’m okay. It’s nothing, it’s stupid. A moth flew at me. Please tell me what you mean.”
“Look, Les, we both know your partner is the owner of record on Tender Care, so you can stop all this—”
“No, Silvestri. No, it’s a frame.” The moth made sweeping runs around the bare bulb of the lamp, bouncing off the warm surface. “This Arleen Grossman is the one. She sold it to Smith. Smith is a dupe. You’ve got to believe me.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Les.” She had his full attention now, but she didn’t like what he was saying to her or how he was saying it. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you about confidential information in an investigation. Get your ass over here and stay out of this.”
“Silvestri! Listen to me. Arleen Grossman is still around. She hasn’t left town. We can stop her. My theory is—”
“Cops don’t work with theories, Les, they work with facts.” Fatigue diffused his voice. “You stay out of this. I can’t keep protecting you. It’s an FBI case. Let the cards fall—”
“You’re wrong, Silvestri. I can’t stay out of it. I’m involved—and I don’t need you to protect me.”
“Les—” There was a warning in his voice.
She hung up on him. And to think, he called
her
a hardhead. He wouldn’t even hear her out. She slipped off the mattress and turned out the lamp. The moth was plastered against the bulb, burning to death.
As she moved around the apartment, turning off lights, the phone began to ring. She picked up her carryall and Hazel’s black leather bag. The phone continued to ring. She walked out into the hallway, jaw squared, closing the door firmly behind her, locking it.
“I can’t keep protecting you,” he’d said. It was a rotten thing for him to say.
Arleen Grossman had not left the country yet. Wetzon closed her eyes as she waited for the elevator. Where did Arleen live? East Seventy-second Street. She remembered Smith—or maybe it was Arleen—had told her that Arleen had a second-floor apartment in the old Wharton mansion between Fifth and Madison.
Wetzon was determined to stop her from leaving town and sticking Smith with the mess. She didn’t know how, but she would come up with something on the way. She had to.
The elevator man was blessedly silent. On the fourth floor an old man with thick glasses and gnarled hands got on, leading an ancient shelty on a worn brown leather leash. The old dog moved as slowly as the old man. The milky veil of cataracts covered its eyes, and its brown-and-white coat was thin and lank, with sharp bones showing through.
They left the elevator ahead of her at an arthritic pace. She shuffled with impatience behind them. The lobby was empty; everyone was gone. She bolted around the old man, almost brushing into him and his dog and then, ashamed, felt obligated to hold the door open for them.
The sidewalks were wet.
How was it possible Arleen did not know they were on to her?
A young Chinese man in a thin canvas jacket and jeans was locking a delivery bike to a No Parking sign in front of Hazel’s building. He opened an umbrella and came toward her carrying a large brown paper bag. She caught a strong whiff of fried rice as he passed her, and she realized that except for the bit of omelet at Smith’s, she had not had anything to eat since the half hamburger at lunch. She was hungry now, but food was not first priority.
Sleet and wet snow dribbled unevenly from the heavens, reflecting diamonds in the streetlights.
Hazel’s battered face materialized like a distorted balloon.
Hold on
she thought.
Hold on.
On Park Avenue a cab stopped to her wave, and she asked the driver to drop her off on the corner of Madison and Seventy-second. The fur on her coat was wetter than she’d thought possible from her brief walk.
The white stone mansion with the expansive entrance stood out even among the other elegant town house mansions on the block. It had the same kind of iron grillwork outside door that Diantha Anderson’s brownstone had, but this was more ornate, and interspersed with polished brass balls.
Sweat came then, cold and icy, on the back of her neck under her sweater, dripping under her arms, bathing her in dampness. She stood where the cab had left her, staring at the mansion across the street with its lights on behind iron and brass window gates, like a fortress. The snow fell wetly on her face, coat, and hat, forcing her to move.
A black limousine was parked just in front of the mansion. Wetzon could see the silhouette of a man’s head in the driver’s seat, leaning forward over the wheel. Arleen’s limousine? Waiting to take her to the airport?
Traffic was exceptionally light coming out of Central Park to her right. A car drove by toward the Park, window open, its radio playing rock, piercing the tranquility.
Down the block to the right of the mansion a cab was double-parked, its call light on, waiting for someone to come out of the apartment building on the corner.
Wetzon jaywalked across the street and strolled past the limousine. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Arleen’s brother sleeping, his head on the wheel. He must have gotten tired of waiting for her and was catching a few zzz’s before she came down. She passed the limousine and went on to the corner of Madison, turned casually and came back, faster. She hoped he wouldn’t wake up and see her. But there was something odd, which she hadn’t noticed earlier. The limousine window was down on his side. Snow was coming in and he was getting wet. He couldn’t be sleeping that deeply.
Brazen, she passed the limousine and ducked around the back of the car, hugging the rear and side. She came up slowly behind the open window. Suitcases were piled up on the backseat. John Grossman didn’t move and wasn’t going to. Blood was seeping from a small hole in the side of his head. Arleen would have to find another way to get to the airport.
Wetzon came back on the sidewalk and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Wet snow and cold filled her nostrils. Don’t get distracted, she told herself. She should have been terrified by the danger around her, but she wasn’t. Her adrenaline was pumping, and she felt warm, slightly high, but very calm.
The iron door opened easily, as did the etched glass and wood double doors. She was in a narrow marble-floored vestibule. On the right wall was an opening, fluted like a shell, cut out of marble. Its purpose was decorative, but someone had recently put a cigarette out in it. According to the mailbox, which was inset on the left wall, A. Grossman was in 2F. She pressed the buzzer for R. Argentuille in 3R and waited with her hand on the brass doorknob of the large, leaded glass and iron door. Sure enough, the fool in 3R buzzed her in without even checking whether she was legitimate.
She entered a sweeping lobby, the floor inlaid with stars and circles in black-and-cream marble. A curved staircase on the left was marble as far as she could see. On the right, a carved Gothic refectory table stood between two tall Gothic armchairs. A brass pot filled with white-and-yellow mums was on the table.
In front of her was an elevator. Scratch that. She would go for the stairs and not chance announcing her presence. Holding the front of her wet coat, her carryall, Hazel’s handbag, and trying to make as little noise as possible on the carpetless marble, she heard the sound of someone in the small vestibule, the rattle of keys. She’d made it to the second floor hallway when she heard the downstairs door open. Except for that, the building was strangely quiet.
The second-floor walls were papered in an Oriental design with a lot of standing cranes and palms. The woodwork was cream. The door of 2F had black enamel on it, particularly striking because the layers of paint were few, unlike many in New York where a door might have up to eighty years’ worth of coats of paint. This door had been efficiently stripped before being repainted.
Ear to the door of 2F, she listened. The wood was so thick it was impossible to hear anything going on in there. She put her hand on the knob, then pulled back. What the hell was she doing here? She could get killed, couldn’t she? But surely Arleen had not shot her own brother. Perhaps she, Wetzon, could persuade Arleen that she couldn’t get away with it. That Wetzon was her friend and had come to warn her that— Without conference with her head, her hand turned the knob and the door opened.
A black-and-brown Fendi overnight bag was right in the doorway next to a leather makeup case. She stepped into a small foyer. A straight chair with an upholstered seat, a Regency side table, an oil painting of a bowl of flowers; overhead, a small brass chandelier. A small Oriental carpet on the dark parquet floor. The foyer led straight into a large living room, which was dimly lit by porcelain lamps scattered about the room.
No sound came from the living room. Behind her Wetzon heard the elevator drone downward. She closed the door behind her and moved farther into the apartment. The decoration in the living room was antique. An Aubusson carpet, plush sofas, draperies, the works. Very expensive stuff. A marble table held an array of liquor bottles and a large crystal ice bucket. The ceilings were at least fifteen feet high, maybe more, and had sculpted plasterwork that had to have been commissioned by the original Wharton, because no one did that kind of work anymore, and if someone did, no one could afford to pay for it, except maybe a Japanese businessman living in the United States and getting paid with yen.
On the floor near a French ormolu table desk was a heap of fur—it looked like Arleen’s coat—just dropped there. Where was Arleen?
“Arleen?” She set the carryall and Hazel’s purse down on the overstuffed sofa and walked around the room with more assurance than she felt. To the right was another room, perhaps the bedroom, but it was dark.
When she turned back to the living room, she was closer to Arleen’s fallen coat. She moved a chair out of the way, came close, bent over, and lifted the coat off the floor.
Arleen lay on her side, a swollen, grotesque fetus in a coral silk dress. Her bosom was deeper coral, growing deeper yet as Wetzon stared. In her right hand, almost hidden, was a gun.