Death in a Funhouse Mirror (19 page)

He stopped abruptly as though recognizing that he'd gone too far.

In spite of my reluctance to be drawn in, I found myself asking, "What do you mean?"

But Dr. Ansel, after a barrage of frankness, had decided to be secretive. He tilted his head coyly to one side. "I just know," he said. "But I don't want to talk about her. I was telling you about Cliff... about how we have a right to be happy."

I'd heard enough. More than enough. Mother Kozak did not hear confessions on Wednesdays. "Dr. Ansel," I said, "I have to leave. I have another appointment."

He stared at me blankly for a moment as his focus returned to the present. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kozak," he said, "I didn't mean to impose on you like that. It was unfair and unprofessional. It must be the strain... this situation... it's been so confusing. I don't know what came over me. And here I was, supposed to be making sure you relaxed. I hope..." He rubbed his forehead in a gesture almost identical to the one Cliff had made earlier. "I hope you won't think too badly of me."

I'd sort of liked his gentle, caring quality. Too bad he'd had to show me his self-centered, too-intimate confessional side; too bad I'd seen the unpleasant glimpses of a greedy, selfish side. Now he was being gently and apologetic again but it was a little too Jekyll-and-Hyde for me. If his purpose had been to get me on his side, he'd failed. My sympathies were all with Eve and Helene. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a husband or father involved in an affair with anyone, let alone a man like Rowan Ansel. Even for an open-minded and generous woman like Helene, it must have been terribly difficult. I stood up, slipped my feet into my shoes, and picked up my briefcase. "Thanks for looking after me," I said, carefully refraining from answering his question. I didn't say anything else, and neither did he, he just stared at me, a peculiar, brooding stare that I could feel even after the door closed behind me.

The campus of Bartlett Hill, and campus was the only appropriate word, despite its being a mental hospital, was rolling and lovely and bursting with spring, but I wasn't at all tempted to savor it. I was eager to leave it, and the peculiarities of Dr. Rowan Ansel, behind as quickly as possible. I sped through the soft spring evening oblivious to my surroundings, wondering whether I'd be able to work for Cliff if it also meant working with Ansel.

As soon as I got off the campus, the traffic claimed all my attention, and I filed my reservations under "later." Spring weather has a way of making people inattentive to their driving, and the famed "Boston drivers" seemed particularly inattentive today. I pressed my hand lightly against my bruised cheek, thought of everything I still had to do—and wished the day was over.

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

I'd planned to sleep a little later in the morning, since I didn't have any appointments until eleven, but that hope was shattered when the phone rang at seven. A ringing phone has an intrusive, imperative quality that makes it hard to ignore, and I finally gave up, took the pillow off my head, and answered it with a very grouchy "Hello?"

"This is Lenora Stern," a voice said, "and I was just so pleased to hear from Eve that you're going to try and help her nail that bastard."

"Excuse me? I think you must have a wrong..."

"This is Theadora Kozak, isn't it?" the imperious voice demanded.

"It is," I said, trying to rearrange the phone so it didn't hurt my face. This was Lenora Stern, the wacky speaker from Helene's funeral. "But I'm afraid I don't understand what you're talking about."

"About him," she said impatiently, "Clifford Paris. The bastard who killed his wife. Who killed my friend Helene. I've been trying to reach you, but I guess you're one of those people who don't return phone calls."

Not more than twenty or thirty a day, I thought. "I don't know what Eve told you," I said, "but it was wrong. I am not involved in this. If you have information which you think is relevant, tell it to the police. I can give you the investigating detective's number if you'd like."

There was a silence. I hoped she'd hang up, but this wasn't my lucky day. "The police. Hah! As if they'd look beyond the ends of their noses. I'm very disappointed in you. That poor girl has just lost her mother and she's sitting there believing that you're her friend—and just about her only friend, I might add—and that you're going to help her. If you aren't going to help, you should at least do the decent thing and tell her that, so she doesn't go around with false hopes. It's cruel to string her along."

I felt like a schoolgirl summoned to the principal's office and I didn't like it any more now than I had when I was in school. "Ms. Stern, before you waste any more time lecturing me, you should know that I never told Eve I would help her—"

She cut me off in a way that made it eminently clear that she'd only called me to deal with matters on her own agenda and wasn't going to listen to a word I said. "She thinks you did. Now I have just one more thing to say and then I'll stop bothering you. You can do whatever you want to with this information, I don't care. I'm just doing this for Helene. That little worm Ansel isn't the first, you know. There's been at least one other. Maybe more. Before Ansel it was that toadlike creature that works for him. Robby or Rowdy or whatever it is. Helene couldn't bring herself to say his name. And he gave her a sexually transmitted disease, too. Cliff, I mean. When she finally put her foot down and said she'd had enough, he killed her to keep her from spoiling his fun."

She hung up before I could say anything, which was okay. I was speechless anyway. I have a pretty good imagination but no way could it stretch to encompass Cliff and Roddy Stokes. I was beginning to wish I'd listened to Andre and Suzanne and stayed away from the whole business. But that's what I had done, really. All I'd done was visit Eve once and go to the funeral. Nothing more than any friend would have done. So why did I feel like I'd lifted the lid on a beautiful enameled box and found it was filled with cockroaches?

I pulled the pillow back over my head and tried to sleep again. I'd gotten as far as that warm, drifting state just before you doze off when the phone rang again. This time I let the machine answer it. I didn't care who was interested in a piece of my time. I stayed under the pillow, kept my eyes closed, and ignored the thing, letting my mind drift. When I'd lingered as long as I could, which meant it was closer to eight than to seven, I got up, ran a hot bath, poured in a generous measure of bath oil, and climbed in. There was a nasty bruise on my shoulder, but my face looked pretty good. Nothing that a little makeup couldn't cure.

Since I don't have a maid, I also had to make the coffee. Before I got dressed, I took my coffee out onto the deck to sample the day. A soft warm breeze tugged at my robe and tried to get my hair to play. It was going to be a nice day. To my right, in the distance, I could see that people were already on the beach, jogging, walking their dogs, or just out getting some air. I was tempted to play hooky and go to the beach. It was a risk I'd weighed when I bought the condo. But I was too much of a Puritan. Why have fun when you can go to work? Besides, if I didn't do my work, and secure some of these contracts, I'd be spending all day every day at the beach, and going to the beach isn't any fun unless you feel slightly decadent and wicked because you're there.

I went inside and studied the stuff in my closet. What felt like spring? A lavender print shirtwaist in a Liberty cotton so soft it felt like silk, with an lavender linen blazer in case I had to go somewhere that already had the air-conditioning on. On my way to the door I passed the answering machine, still blinking sadly. Curiosity made me press the button. The message made me wish I hadn't.

"Hello, Thea Kozak," an unfamiliar voice said, "my name is Martha Coffey. I'm a neighbor of Cliff Paris. This is probably going to sound strange to you, but Eve Paris told me that you were some sort of a detective helping her investigate her mother's death, and she asked me if I could help you prove that her father is a murderer. I didn't want to upset her—Eve's a very high-strung girl and I can see she's having a hard time right now—but I don't believe Cliff would ever have done such a thing. Still, I thought if you were investigating, there were some things you ought to know. Please call me."

She'd left her number on the tape, and some times when I might reach her. I wrote them down and stuck them in my pocket. If I got any more of these damn phone calls I was going to kill Eve. And there would be no mystery about it, either. I'd go immediately to the police and turn myself in, claiming temporary insanity. I should have expected something like this. The remarks she'd made at dinner about Helene's perseverance and determination went double for Eve. Eve was exactly the opposite of a quitter. She had a hard time knowing when to quit. It meant she was a friend through thick and thin; it also made it hard for her to give up on anything, even lost causes. That was why I was so surprised when she was able to break up with Padraig and go to Arizona.

I got in the car and slammed the door unnecessarily hard, probably slamming it on Eve in absentia. I was really furious with her for going around giving my name and number to people. Driving calmed me, as it often does, while Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville provided some nice soothing backup. By the time I reached my first stop of the day, Eve had been cleaned right out of my mind.

I'd noticed from Valeria's resume that one of her former employers was right on my route to work, and I was going to pay him an unexpected visit. According to her resume and my notes, Advotech was a public relations firm that produced promotional materials for high-tech companies. Valeria had been a copywriter for them, and according to the glowing reference Robert Hillyer had given her, she'd been nothing short of a marvel and a genius.

When I came through the door, the Advotech receptionist was staring with the face of doom at a broken fingernail. She could barely tear herself away from it to bother to greet me. I gave her my best professional smile and handed her my card. "I'd like to see Mr. Hillyer, please. It's about some writing that he did which I found very interesting." I tried to make it sound like I was a business possibility without actually lying. She took my card and disappeared, still casting occasional sad glances at the broken nail.

A minute later she reappeared, followed by a pleasant looking middle-aged man in a pink shirt with an absolutely insane tie. He held out his hand. "Ms. Kozak? Why don't you come into my office and tell me what piece of writing it was that intrigued you." I shook his hand and followed him into his office. He waved me into a chair, sat down himself, and looked at me curiously. "You aren't trying to sell me something, are you?"

I shook my head. "I'm a consultant, Mr. Hillyer, not a saleswoman."

"But the two aren't mutually exclusive, are they?" he said.

I was beginning to like Mr. Hillyer and I decided not to string him along. I reached in my briefcase and took out his reference letter. I passed it across the desk. "This is the piece of writing I was curious about."

He took it and read it, a puzzled frown on his face, then handed it back to me. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I'm sorry to barge in here unannounced like this," I said, "but I wanted to talk to you directly, and I was afraid if I called, you wouldn't see me. You see, partially on the strength of your recommendation, my firm hired Valeria Davie to assist us with our educational consulting." I paused, watching his face. "She turned out to be an unqualified disaster. She was lazy and disorganized, foolishly competitive, and she certainly couldn't write." He winced as I described her shortcomings. "We had to fire her, and she was, to put it mildly, extremely difficult when we told her to leave. I'm trying to figure out how an employee who performed so well for you could work out so badly for us. For starters, Mr. Hillyer, I was hoping you could tell me why she left."

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he stared at his fingers. "I don't recall," he said finally. "Maybe she found the work too boring. Some people just don't like technology. I do, but it's not for everyone." He seemed uncomfortable with his answer. "I don't remember, really. Writers come and go." On the bookcase behind him was a large framed picture of Mr. Hillyer with a pretty woman and two little boys who looked just like him. He swung his chair so he could see the picture, as if he was hoping it might give him the answer.

I decided not to beat around the bush any longer. "Mr. Hillyer, I'm going to be blunt, and I hope you'll be honest. Wasn't it actually the case that you tried to fire Valeria and she threatened to charge you with sexual harassment unless you gave her a glowing reference?"

His face was a mix of astonishment and anger. "That's absurd. Who told you that?"

"You did," I said, "just now." I knew I'd scored a bingo. Hillyer's demeanor had gone from genial to unsettled to frigid in a matter of seconds.

"I didn't tell you anything," he said, "and I'd appreciate it if you would get out of my office. I have work to do."