The Chameleon (47 page)

As the frenzy built, the fact that she wouldn't deny or confirm or even confess to the obvious reduced the press to repeating rapidly spreading rumors and writing sensational fiction. If she had just said he'd beaten her, or that it was a terrible accident, they could have turned her into a tragic martyr and sold millions more papers in the continuing weeks. Even Grant Publications’ American newspapers had a hefty rise in sales whenever they put that photograph of Claire Harrison Duccio, the one of her curiously smiling under her veil, on their front page. His news editors salivated at the thought of increased circulation once the lady started talking. But Ophelia didn't want Claire to talk. She only needed her to sign on the dotted line. She dispatched Tom Brewster and his briefcase to put an end to the story.

The windowless cell stank of hundreds of years of criminals, its chipped green paint thinly disguising limestone walls damp for the last century. Only the faintest trace of Claire's own vanilla-tinged scent kept Tom from putting his handkerchief over his nose as he entered the place where Claire had been held for five anguished days.

She momentarily brightened, straining her eyes in the dimness to make sure it was he, relieved to see any face from home. As she shakily stood to embrace him, he noticed how thin she'd grown since even the latest pictures he'd seen of her, her arms swinging like taut sticks from her sagging shoulders.

Claire managed a wan smile as she spoke. “At last. A face from home. Harrison's emissary, I presume.” Finally he had rallied to unmire the mess.

She looked startled when he backed off from her embrace and shyly retreated to the splintering cot, the only piece of furniture in the dank room. He didn't have the heart to hold her or lie to her. He was Ophelia's emissary, not Harrison's. And he'd been given specific instructions.

“Are you here to help?” She was a little taken aback by Tom's correct coolness and the rigid way he kept his hands on his briefcase, refusing even to shake her hand.

“It's so damn hot in here. Must be a hundred degrees!”

“I haven't been paying much attention to the weather.”

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and saw that her dress was stained with perspiration. The dress. It was the same funeral suit, without the jacket, that he had seen in all the papers for the last three days.

Claire suddenly felt very afraid. She lowered her eyes and focused on the black flies that swarmed around the opposite wall of the cell. She had been rushed from the scene of the crime straight to tins room with only Italian interrogators for company; she had a thousand questions to ask Tom.

“Have you seen Sara?”

“Yes.” He would try to be kind. “We had her removed from that house immediately after you were jailed.”

A sign of life sparkled in her dead eyes. “Where did you take her?” Her voice was suddenly stronger.

“To her grandparents. Back to her father. There's not much you can do for her from here.” He waved his hand around the grimy little cell with the lawyerly gesture he used to grandstand a jury. “She's in pretty bad shape. Even Violet has agreed it was for the best.” He felt like a traitor, but Ophelia's instructions had been as clear as they were brutal. Claire was to be sufficiently maligned so that any court would find her an unfit mother, but she was not to be actually charged with anything more than bad manners. Ophelia wouldn't allow her granddaughter to be known as the child of a convicted felon; then Sara would be ineligible for New York's debutante presentation ball or a listing in the Social Register. It would be like the time society swain Harry Thaw had murdered the noted architect Stanford White and all the young Thaw ladies had to flee New York's cold, snubbing shoulders for distant European outposts to find husbands, none of their own set wanting anything to do with the scandal-tainted family. Ophelia would have none of that.

Instead, she would take advantage of Harrison's illness and the multiple tragedies of the past week to secure her heart's desire: her granddaughter's custody. As Tom's bread was lavishly buttered by the Harrison holdings, all he could do was follow orders.

“I have papers for you to sign.”

“What kind of papers?” She cocked her head to one side. Tom thought that without any makeup she looked like a very tired little girl. “Papers drawn up by whom? Who are you representing here, Tom? I thought it might be
me.
” It suddenly occurred to her that he was the same family friend and lawyer who had encouraged her to sign the divorce papers over lunch at the 21 Club. The deal that had forced her out of the country—to this place—in order to keep her children.

“Where's Harrison?”

“Claire…” He tried to soften the blow. Their love affair had never been a secret to him. “Harrison is still recovering. He's suffered a stroke.”

“A stroke?’ She was confused. How could he have had a stroke? She had made love to him barely a week ago. She looked down at her watch, but it wasn't on her wrist. Then she remembered that she had traded it for a stale cup of coffee from one of her dead-eyed jailers.

“Ophelia says…”

“What stroke?” She rose weakly. “Tell me what happened!” Her high-pitched hysteria brought two alert guards armed with carbine guns to the bars.

Tom felt he could no longer suppress his impulse to protect the fragile figure before him. He took her in his arms and felt the light weight of her body collapse against his. She sobbed into his chest.

“He's not dead, too, is he? Oh, no, he's not gone, tell me! Oh, please!”

“No. No. He's had some speech impairment. That's all. His arm, his leg, some mild paralysis. But he's resting and in therapy. It'll all come back. Eventually. It was just a small stroke.”

“A stroke.” They had all had quite a stroke of bad luck. She wiped her tears away. She didn't want Tom Brewster's sympathy. She wanted to know what was in his briefcase.

He translated the document from legalese. In exchange for them dropping all charges against her, Duccio's brothers and sisters demanded that she relinquish all claims to his fortune, his houses, paintings, her jewels, even her own clothes. The stocks he held in her name and her own personal fortune, everything that Duccio had overseen, was to become part of his estate. On Italy's legal books the death would be classified as accidental—like her son's. She was to leave Italy at once with just her funeral suit and her handbag.

Tom did not reveal how he had arrived at Palazzo Duccio to find the plump sisters, sisters-in-law, and cousins from Calabria decked out in Claire's necklaces and fur stoles, using her dainty, custom-made underwear for handkerchiefs as they sat around in the stifling heat and mourned their loss, the women as well as the men puffing on Duccio's fat cigars. Pictures of Claire had been torn from the walls and spat upon, although some of the relatives hotly argued in a southern Italian dialect over who would be the one to get the picture of Claire hugging a radiant Princess Grace. A confused lot, they had loved Claire from afar for her dignified pulchritude—like a Venus de Milo in couture—while detesting their brother for his selfish arrogance and the tightfisted way he mistreated them. Now they glorified his memory and publicly booed Claire the villainess, although in reality they were grateful to the long-lashed American for bumping off their brother and leaving them flush. Besides, what good would it have done to have a trial in which some of Duccio's
real
deals might be exposed as well, not to mention some of his illegal business practices? The state could demand heavier taxes. At the very least, his former partners might file lawsuits that would erode their inherited fortune, perhaps tying up their money in the courts for years. And what, saints preserve them, if the lovely lady with the face of an angel and those lilac eyes was found innocent? All Duccio's fortunes would then be inherited by her. No, get her out of the country and quietly count their lira. The lawyer from New York was right. Run with the money. And let Claire go.

“Go where?”

“Paris.” He wiped the sweat from his face and neck with his starched handkerchief, the moisture staining the burgundy monogram. He pulled the one-way ticket from his inside pocket and handed it to her.

“Paris?” There was a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the ticket cover.

“It's the only place I could think of where you don't have enemies. But you have lots of friends, I'm told.” He spoke in a polite, careful voice, but his message was clear, just as it had been years ago.
You have no choice.

He pulled out a stack of documents from his bulging briefcase. As soon as Claire signed, the chief of police, the magistrate, everyone would follow like falling dominoes. He would personally escort her to the airport, he assured her. In Paris she could stay at Harrison's apartment at the Ritz. It had already been paid for in advance.

“Yes.” She had been planning to go there with Sara and Six to join Harrison and begin their life together. A lifetime ago. Two lifetimes.

“Three months. You'll have three months at the Ritz.” He smiled gently at her. “It isn't prison, you know?”

She wondered if it wasn't. “Sara. How soon can Sara join me? She needs me.”

“I'm afraid you've lost Sara, Claire. You're a murderess. You're front-page headlines everywhere. In the eyes of the world you're quite unfit to be a mother.”

“I was just protecting my children. My child. Oh Tom, you've got to help me. You don't know what's happened. Sara's going to need so much love. And not the Harrison kind.” She stood more erect as she grew stronger.

“It's out of my control.” The words were icy, but beneath them Tom was melting. Claire's sober responses were confirming his suspicions. Something about Six's death followed by Duccio's sudden murder was darker than it seemed. If he were Claire's lawyer, he would suspect that his client was protecting someone. But the bright attorney had made his pact with power a long time ago. His wagon was hitched to the Harrisons’ star, not to this young woman who had just fallen out of the sky.

“You're right,” Tom continued. “Sara does need help, expensive professional treatments. The kind the Harrisons can provide.” He had seen the girl and found her strangely damaged. And without saying it, he guessed she'd had her child's hand in all this.

“Frankly, Claire, you don't have two nickels to rub together. Not anymore. You couldn't even provide food or clothes for her, let alone battle Ophelia in court. But at least when you sign these papers Sara won't be the daughter of a murderer.”

A murderer. She looked around her filthy cell. This was how the world treated a killer. She would never be sorry she had saved her daughter from spending even one night in a place like this.

Even in her anguish she knew just how much help Sara needed. More help than she could now afford. And what was her alternative? Stay in jail and lose Sara anyway? The irony was inescapable. By protecting her daughter she had lost her.

“Where have they taken Six?” Claire spoke in whispery surrender.

“The family plot at Charlotte Hall. Someday”—Claire caught a glimpse of compassion in his eyes—”someday you'll be able to visit him. It's my other grim duty to bring him home.” He delivered the line that would guarantee her signature. “The Duccios will release his body after these documents are official.”

The idea that her son hadn't been laid to rest yet caused Claire's hands to tremble. She would sign any piece of paper. She struggled to hang on to any rational thoughts.

“Then take Violet with you. I want her to go along.” She shakily took his hands in both of hers and fought back the tears. Only after he promised that Violet would accompany Six on his journey back home did she sign the stack of documents that set her free—free from the physical walls of her jail cell but not from the limitless expanse of grief that lay before her, a far more bitter sentence than any prison term.

The concierge tried not to stare as he handed her a dog-eared copy of the
Herald Tribune
along with the brass room key. The newspaper ran Anita Lace's column on page one along with the same photograph that had stared back at her from every kiosk in both airports. Damn Duccio. He had garbed her in the sheer veil that concealed nothing, that only highlighted the grief in her eyes and the otherworldly smile on her full lips. She had been thinking about Six on his cloud to heaven at the time, but in the grainy black-and-white photo that was cropped just below the huge jeweled cross around her neck, she looked guilty of everything from murder to bad taste.

She tried to read the paper again, her vision clouded. Her tragedy was being covered as thoroughly as the war. Anita Lace, the official megaphone of international gossip, was keeping Claire on the front burner:

Suicide by speargun seems to be the verdict of the Roman Magistrate. Claire Harrison Duccio was set free today after a week of interrogation in a Rome jailhouse. The stylish lady was charged with nothing worse than you and I have done: a speeding ticket for leaving Italy in record time. But you and I have never left a husband lying on the floor with a spear in his chest. Turns out the fabulously rich Fulco Duccio evidently had his own domestic suspicions. He left the big zero to the black widow. Most of that vast booty of his went to his understated brothers and sisters, who live quietly in Calabria, and a charitable chunk of it to the Roman Catholic Church. Meanwhile, my sources hear the lady in question has gone to that Holy Mecca of the famous and infamous: the Ritz in Paris.
Arrivedérci,
Claire.

At the manager's suggestion, she was discreetly whisked up the back elevator along with a Pomeranian and his walker. Claire wasn't certain whether this was to protect her or the hotel's reputation. It was also suggested to her that she might feel more comfortable dining in the privacy of her suite. And where last week she might have tipped Jean-Luc or Monsieur Gireau, now she just whispered
“Merci,”
knowing all she had in the world was the five hundred dollars Tom had slipped into her Hermes handbag. She wasn't going to waste it.

She was sitting in the dark on the silken bedspread, clutching her bag to her chest and rocking, trying to clear her head. The insistently ringing buzzer wasn't helping. Finally the determined banging on the door roused her from her trance. She tried to focus her mind. Who could it be? Sara run away from Ophelia so they could grieve together and share their secret truth? Harrison, once again robust and strong enough for both of them? Perhaps it could be Six, all apple-cheeked and sun bronzed, back to awaken her from a very bad dream. Just the thought brought a smile. Or was it just the dinner she had no appetite for? But the room service cart would offer her a choice of knives and crystal goblets sharp enough to sever a vein. She stared at her thin white wrist, a blue artery pumping blood to her broken heart. If only she were a priceless piece of cracked porcelain, or shattered Baccarat glass, she could be sent to the third-floor fix-it shop at Marshall Field's, where the man with special glue could put her back together.