Murder Can Ruin Your Looks (18 page)

‘‘Please. Go ahead.’’

‘‘I was just wondering if you ever checked out your cli

ent’s alibi.’’

Peter’s?
If Stuart had spent just two minutes talking to Peter, he couldn’t possibly have even
thought
of anything like that! And I was about to say as much, but just then an acquaintance of Stuart’s walked in and came over to the table to say hello. And right after that, we got busy with a couple of very generous portions of tartuffo.

When we’d done justice to the desserts, I suggested we stop off somewhere for a drink. We found a quiet little bar a couple of blocks from the restaurant, where I had a B&B and I could not dissuade Stuart—birthday or no birthday—from reverting back to his designer water. We spent almost an hour in the place, doing a lot more talking than drinking. But the subject of Peter’s alibi didn’t come up again. Before too much time would pass, however,

I’d remember my friend’s words. And wish I’d taken them seriously.

Going home, Stuart and I shared a cab uptown. And all the way over to my apartment, I kept wondering if I should invite him in, what I’d say if he turned me down, and whether it would even be wise to try to get things back to the way they used to be. . . .

Suddenly we were in front of my building, and Stuart was telling me he’d see me upstairs. Then, with his hand on the door handle, he turned back to the driver. ‘‘Wait for me,’’ he instructed. ‘‘I’ll be right down.’’

And
that
was the end of that.

Chapter 14

Claire Josephs’s two-bedroom condo was on the sixth floor, two floors above the twins’. The apartment had very little furniture—not much more, in fact, than Lucille Collins’s loft. But the few items that were here looked attractive and appeared—to me, anyway—to be of really good quality. Claire, a pretty, obviously harried blonde in her twenties, had been anxious to explain the austere surroundings. ‘‘We spent so much on the place—it was much more than we could afford, actually—that we had practically nothing left for furniture. So we’re filling in one or two pieces at a time.’’

We were sitting at the kitchen table, and Claire had just poured us some coffee when she warned me that her nap

ping son might wake up at any moment. ‘‘He usually sleeps for an hour at least, but these last couple of days . . .’’

Looking a lot like someone condemned to purgatory, she shrugged her shoulders.

‘‘Still that infection?’’ I asked, trying to sound sympa

thetic but cringing inwardly at the remembrance of the last earful I’d had of little whatever-his-name-was.

‘‘I don’t think so,’’ Claire replied, looking anxious never

theless. ‘‘At least I hope not. I had him to the doctor’s this morning, and the doctor tells me the infection’s pretty much cleared up.’’ She made a try for optimism. ‘‘Well, let’s wait and see. Maybe he’ll sleep right through until three today.’’

Then, without any prompting from me—probably be

cause she figured she might be on borrowed time—the young mother started to talk about her long friendship with the victims. She spoke quietly, often nervously licking her lips and occasionally fighting back tears.

‘‘I met them when I was only ten years old,’’ she said.

‘‘My father had just been transferred to the American Em

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bassy over there, and we went to the same school, the twins and I. We got to be really close; we were best friends prac

tically from the first day we met. Maybe because we had a common bond, you know, being American.’’

‘‘How long did you live in London?’’

‘‘Until I was fourteen. But we still kept in touch after I moved back here. We wrote each other regularly, and once

in a while, like on a special occasion, we’d even spring for a phone call. And then, when I was seventeen, my parents gave me a trip to London as a graduation present. I stayed with some friends of the family’s for a month, and I saw Mary Ann and Merry practically every day. It’s funny. Ev

eryone’s always saying you can never pick up where you left off, but we didn’t have any trouble at all.’’

‘‘I’ve been told the twins were very different. I mean, as far as personality.’’

‘‘Oh, yes. Mary Ann was very warm and, well, gentle, I guess you’d say. She had a great sense of humor, too. And she was friendly to everyone. Merry was more reserved. Not that she was standoffish,’’ Claire hastily clarified. ‘‘It’s just that she wasn’t quite as outgoing. Merry was the one with the guts and the backbone, though; she’s the one you’d go to if you needed someone on your side. And she was very goal-oriented, too.’’ Claire paused then and smiled sadly, remembering. ‘‘Even as a little girl, Merry wanted to be an actress. And she was really caught up in it. More than caught up,
dedicated
. Like when she played the lead in
Annie
at school. I suppose you know the play.’’ She looked at me questioningly.

‘‘Oh, sure.’’

‘‘Then you know that Annie had a headful of these little

red curls. Well, at the school, they expected Merry to wear this wig. She tried it on without saying a word. But the next day she went out and got one of those home perm kits and some hair dye, and Mary Ann and I did her hair for her.’’ Claire had a smile now that seemed to cover her entire face. ‘‘The things you do when you’re kids,’’ she remarked, shaking her head wonderingly from side to side.

‘‘Anyway, we—Mary Ann and I—cut off all of Merry’s beautiful long hair, and then we gave her this perm—the worst perm you ever saw! It looked like she’d stuck her finger into an electric socket! And that was our
best
work. The
color
was what was really not to be believed. It came

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out bright orange! I got so scared when I took a look that I was out of their house like a shot. I was terrified for days that Mrs. Foster would call and tell my mother what we’d done.’’

‘‘And did she?’’ I asked, laughing.

‘‘No. But do you want to hear the funniest part? Merry couldn’t have been happier. That’s what I mean about her being dedicated. She never cared one bit about how she looked—as long as she looked right for the part. She still doesn’t. Just a couple of years ago, she was playing Joan of Arc, and off went the hair again. She wrote me that a lot of people even mistook her for a boy that time. But that didn’t bother Merry! Anyway,’’ Claire informed me,

‘‘one good thing came out of the
Annie
business.’’

‘‘What was that?’’

‘‘They used to play these tricks on me once in a while. I’d think I was with Merry, and it would turn out to be Mary Ann. Or the other way around. They thought that was hilarious, but after a while I didn’t find it so funny. But, of course, with Merry’s hair so different, they couldn’t pull that on me anymore. And by the time her hair grew out, they seemed to have forgotten all about that little game.’’

‘‘They were pretty much identical, I gather.’’

‘‘Pretty much, but not exactly. Mary Ann’s nose had this

tiny bump in it. And Merry had a stronger chin, I thought. And there was something different about their eyes, too. But I think the differences were more pronounced once they grew up. Or maybe I just got a little smarter—more perceptive—when I got older. But they were—’’ Suddenly, Claire broke off. ‘‘Oh,’’ she whispered, looking stricken.

‘‘What’s wrong?’’

‘‘Do you realize that all this time I’ve been talking in the past tense . . . about my two closest friends in the world?

And
one
of them, at least, is still alive.’’

‘‘It’s only natural under the circumstances,’’ I assured her. ‘‘Besides, mostly you’ve been telling me about what happened in your childhood, and that
is
the past tense.’’ I saw that the girl’s eyes were moist now.
Uh-oh,
I thought, bracing for a good, long cry. But she surprised me. ‘‘I prom

ised myself I’d control myself today,’’ she said with an obvi

ous effort. ‘‘So where were we?’’

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‘‘I was about to ask what you could tell me about their brother.’’

‘‘Eric? I hardly knew him. He was a lot older than we were; he was already out of the house by the time I moved to London. So I didn’t see very much of him while I was living over there. And I haven’t seen him at all since the twins came back to New York.’’

‘‘You do know that there was some trouble between him

and Meredith.’’

‘‘Oh, sure. They had this colossal fight because Merry’s future husband was on drugs.’’

‘‘Just what did Meredith say about the fight?’’

‘‘Only that Eric tried to break them up and that she was never going to speak to him again. I wasn’t around when it was all going on, of course, so that’s all I know.’’ Then Claire had a thought. ‘‘Listen, have you spoken to Helen Ward?’’

Now,
there
was a name I hadn’t even heard yet. ‘‘Who’s Helen Ward?’’

‘‘Another friend of Merry’s. An actress. They were in a play together when Merry first moved back here. The play didn’t last very long, but they hit it off right away and I know they kept in contact. Merry wasn’t much of a talker, though, so I wouldn’t count on anything. But it’s always
possible
she mentioned something to Helen.’’

‘‘Do you know how I can get in touch with Helen?’’

‘‘I’m pretty sure she lives on the Upper West Side some

where. In the nineties, I think.’’

‘‘Just one more thing,’’ I said—not altogether truthfully.

‘‘Have you ever met Larry Shields?’’

‘‘Only once, when Merry brought him up here for coffee.

He seemed like a really nice guy; Merry was pretty crazy about him, too.’’

‘‘So I’ve heard. Were you aware they split up for a while?’’

‘‘Yes. But I don’t think it lasted a week.’’

‘‘You wouldn’t happen to know the reason for the split?’’

Claire shook her head. ‘‘Merry said she couldn’t talk about it, so I didn’t ask any questions.’’

‘‘How about Roger Hyer? What can you tell me about him?’’

Our peaceful little talk was interrupted at that moment by the most ungodly, high-pitched shriek. Claire leaped up

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as if someone had just put a tack on her chair. ‘‘Excuse me,’’ she called over her shoulder as she ran from the room.

In a couple of minutes she was back, carrying this fat, pajama-clad Buddha who was maybe six months old (but then again, maybe not even—my experience with babies being what it is). As young as he was, though, this kid had the smuggest expression on his face.

‘‘I’m really not supposed to do this—pick him up when he cries,’’ Claire confessed. She sat down at the table again, wiping away the one or two tears she’d allowed to accumu

late on her son’s puffy little cheeks. ‘‘But all I can say,’’

she continued defiantly, ‘‘is let Dr. Fink see what Greggie’s lungs do to
his
nerves.’’ She scowled malevolently at her firstborn. ‘‘Now where were we?’’ she asked as she began to bounce him up and down on her lap while keeping up a dialogue of widely spaced little clucking sounds.

‘‘Roger Hyer,’’ I reminded her.

‘‘Right.’’ Then, between bounces and clucks, Claire pretty much restated what I’d already heard from the others.

‘‘Did you ever meet Hyer personally?’’

‘‘A couple of times. I thought he was a real slimeball, too, but, of course, I never said anything to Mary Ann. Do you think Roger might have had something to do with this?’’

‘‘I haven’t got the vaguest idea yet
who
was responsible. I was hoping that you might.’’

‘‘
Me?
Oh, no! I still keep expecting to wake up and find that it’s just some terrible nightmare!’’ Giving herself over to the horror of it all, for a brief moment Claire neglected to jiggle the Buddha, and he immediately made himself heard.

It seemed like a good time for an exit.

Chapter 15

Since she was an actress, there was a better than even chance that Helen Ward (the girl Claire Josephs had sug

gested I talk to) wasn’t working. Also, that I’d be able to reach her at home in the morning. So as soon as I got to the office on Friday, I looked up Ward’s phone number. Then I waited until ten-thirty to call, figuring it was a rea

sonable hour even for someone in the theater to be up. I figured wrong.

‘‘Yes? Hello?’’ said a sleepy female voice, following which there was this terrible racket in my ear signifying a monumental catastrophe at the other end of the receiver. In a moment the girl was back on the line. ‘‘I’m sorry. I dropped the phone,’’ she explained, yawning.