Murder Can Ruin Your Looks (42 page)

But on Sunday I wound up sleeping until after ten, and Ellen was already out of the apartment when I tried reach

ing her.

I wasn’t able to get her that entire afternoon, and in the evening there was something else I had to give some thought to: Tomorrow was March 23.

Now, all along, I’d planned to check and see if Bromley came home on Sunday night—
tonight
—instead of on Mon

day the twenty-third, when she was actually scheduled to return. But suddenly I was having second thoughts. If I
did
find her in, there was a good chance—make that a nearcertainty—Fielding would not take too kindly to it, particu

larly in view of last Sunday night’s disaster. I could just picture his reaction if he and Corcoran showed up at the

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woman’s apartment tomorrow and she said, ‘‘Oh, I just gave that information to this private detective, Desiree somebody-or-other.’’ So, after making every effort to con

tact her this week, I was going to back off. Anyway, there really wasn’t any need for me to talk to Bromley person

ally; I had no doubt Tim would relay whatever it was she had to say. Besides, I could always follow up myself if for some reason I felt I needed to.

Less than fifteen minutes after I’d become convinced of the wisdom of this decision, I picked up the phone and called her anyway. But her machine was still spewing out the same lie it had been repeating for more than a month now.

Well, I was getting a little hungry by then, so I whipped up one of my refrigerator omelets—this one with salami, scallions, mushrooms, green beans, and tomato. And after I’d finished eating, I gave Bromley another try.

‘‘Hello,’’ said the breathy, little-girl voice that had be

come so familiar to me by now. I couldn’t believe it! Was this really Charlotte Bromley herself—in the flesh?

‘‘Hello?’’ the voice said again.

‘‘Ms. Bromley?’’ I finally got out.

‘‘That’s right; who’s this?’’

I proceeded carefully. It was possible that Charlotte Bromley, having been abroad for so long, might not even be aware of the tragedy. ‘‘My name is Desiree Shapiro,’’ I told her. ‘‘I’m a private investigator, and I’d like to talk to you about the Foster twins. It would only take a few minutes.’’

‘‘Mary Ann and Meredith? Why? Is something wrong?’’

she asked, uneasily.

‘‘If I can just come over for a little while, I’ll explain everything.’’

‘‘Can’t you tell me what it’s about on the phone?’’

‘‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea. Look, I wouldn’t trouble you the day you got back from vacation if it wasn’t important.’’

‘‘All right,’’ she agreed. ‘‘How soon can you get here?’’

‘‘In about an hour. Is that all right?’’

‘‘Okay, but please try to make it earlier if you can. I’ve had a long trip, and I haven’t been feeling too well.’’

I promised to be there as quickly as I could.

I threw on my clothes, grabbed my wig, my hair spray,

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and my cosmetic bag, and in fifteen minutes I was sitting in a taxi headed downtown.

Now, normally I would probably have been a basket case

trying to anticipate what lay ahead in my meeting with Bromley. But not then. I was too busy struggling to put myself together under the kind of conditions you can’t imagine—unless you’ve been in a New York City cab, that is.

Anyway, I had quite a ride that night. I don’t think we missed one pothole between East Eighty-second and West Twentieth streets—and we were going at a clip worthy of the Indy 500. But even with my wig bouncing up and down

in my lap, I somehow managed to make it look semipre

sentable. And then I cemented the results with the manda

tory megadose of hair spray, which prompted the driver to turn almost completely around in his seat, narrowly missing a passing bus. ‘‘Hey, take it easy, lady,’’ Moe Bittner ad

monished. ‘‘You trying to asphyxiate me? Didn’t you ever hear of those aerosol pump things?’’

I apologized meekly (in Bittner’s hands, that taxi was an extremely dangerous weapon) and carefully adjusted the hairpiece to my head. Then I was ready to apply my makeup.

As soon as I started, Bittner took a corner on two wheels, and half a bottle of foundation spilled over into my lap. For my next trick, I managed to mascara my chin. (And to remove the stuff, I practically had to rub myself raw, too.) What’s more, I never
did
get my lipstick on straight. I settled when some of it, at least, wound up below my nose.

On the positive side, though, we made good time—
unbe

lievably
good time, in fact.

When we stopped in front of Bromley’s building, Moe Bittner swiveled around again, this time to critique my la

bors. ‘‘You need a little practice with that lipstick, lady. You should do like my wife does: Use a lip pencil for the outline, then take a brush and fill in the rest. You’ll get a much neater result that way; you’ll see.’’

A couple of minutes later, I was standing at the curb in a cloud of gas fumes. And that’s when reality hit. It came to me in a rush that I might finally have the answer I’d been so anxious for.

And I was scared stiff.

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*

*

*

Going up in the elevator, I finally acknowledged the one

contingency I’d been banishing from my mind since I first heard about that amethyst ring:
Suppose
the
twin
in
the
hospital
had
borrowed
her
sister’s
ring
that
day?

Sisters did that sort of thing all the time, didn’t they?

What’s more, if that was common practice with the twins, it would account for no one’s being quite sure who the ring belonged to.

Stop
it,
I commanded myself. After all, it was highly un

likely Mary Ann would have put on her sister’s ring when all she was doing was having dinner with a friend after work that night. Or that Meredith wore Mary Ann’s ring just to go to rehearsal. And besides, the girls’ tastes were really totally different.

By the time I rang Charlotte Bromley’s doorbell, I’d managed, once again, to bury that extremely troublesome thought.

I estimated Bromley to be in her late thirties. Short and chunky, with long brown hair and a face like a full moon, she was dressed in a peasant-style blouse and a voluminous three-tiered cotton skirt that emphasized her far-from

svelte proportions. But the most noticeable thing about her was her accessories. I mean, the woman was a walking showcase of her handiwork. Decorating her person were a huge pair of triangular, shoulder-length earrings set with semiprecious stones, one very large silver pin, more than a half dozen rings, two armfuls of bangle bracelets in varying widths and styles, and three good-sized necklaces—one with a handsome bronze pendant that nestled between her ample breasts.

Bromley’s artistic bent, however, did not extend to her living room, which was carelessly furnished with what looked like Salvation Army rejects. As soon as I’d settled myself into the almost springless sofa, she looked at me apprehensively. ‘‘You wanted to talk to me about Mary Ann and Meredith,’’ she said in that breathy way of hers.

‘‘Uh, yes. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible tragedy, Ms. Bromley.’’ She immediately sat up straighter, seeming to steel herself, as I proceeded to narrate, as delicately as I could, the events connected with the shootings that left one of her friends dead and the other critically wounded. By

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the time I was through, Charlotte Bromley’s face was ashen and she was clutching at her chest. She opened her mouth as if struggling to say something, but no words came out. My first thought was that she was in the throes of a heart attack. But in a moment her hand was back in her lap and she was speaking normally—as normally as possible under the circumstances, that is.

‘‘I was going to call Mary Ann in the morning and see if

the three of us could have dinner one night next week,’’ she told me in a hushed tone. ‘‘Oh, God, their own brother . . .’’

Her voice trailed off. ‘‘What kind of an animal
is
he?’’ she demanded softly an instant later, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘‘Mary Ann was always talking about him, too. And she wrote to him all the time. She even wrote to him about me—although what there was to tell, I have no idea. She said she wanted us to meet.’’ Taking a tissue from the pocket of her skirt at this point, Bromley hastily dried her eyes. Then she seemed to remember something, and she looked at me, perplexed. ‘‘But just why did you want to see me?’’

‘‘There’s a question I have to ask you. You were friendly with both sisters?’’

‘‘That’s right. Although I met Mary Ann first, and I saw her a lot more often. She buys from me—for her shop; I design jewelry.’’

‘‘That’s why I’m here. I think you may be able to help us sort out their identities.’’

‘‘Me? But how?’’

‘‘Did you ever notice either of them wearing a ring of any kind?’’

‘‘Oh, sure,’’ Bromley answered promptly. ‘‘There’s no way I could have
missed
it! Mary Ann had me design a ring for her a few months ago, and she used to wear it quite often.’’

At
last!
I was thrilled,
elated
! But, unfortunately, Bromley continued. ‘‘And Meredith liked the ring so much she had me make one up for her, too.’’

‘‘Are you talking about
the
same
ring
?’’ There was now a definite possibility I might slash my wrists.

‘‘That’s right. Which was kind of unusual, I guess, be

cause their tastes weren’t at all alike. I suppose it was be

cause the basic design was so simple that it worked for both of them.’’

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God!
Another
dead
end!
I had never known such com

plete and utter frustration. No, it was more than frustra

tion—
despair
!

And then Charlotte Bromley added one thing more:

‘‘It was only the
stones
that were different. One had an amethyst and the other was set with a garnet.’’

‘‘Which—’’

But before I could put the question to her, the phone rang, and an apologetic Bromley jumped up and ran to the

adjacent kitchen to answer it, assuring me she’d only be a minute. She was still talking many minutes later.

I was too edgy to just sit there. I got up and began pacing back and forth in front of the sofa. The kitchen was only a few yards away, so I could hear that little-girl voice quite clearly. And it was saying things like ‘‘I’ve got company, Ma; I’ll call you back.’’ And ‘‘We’ll talk about it later.’’

And about three times: ‘‘I’ve really gotta go now, Ma.’’

And then suddenly I didn’t mind waiting for the call to end. In fact, the two of them could stay on that phone all year, for all I cared.

Because now I knew what Charlotte Bromley would be telling me.

Chapter 44

I was sitting on the sofa again by the time Bromley came back into the room. But by then I was no longer as confi

dent as I’d been a few minutes earlier. I needed to hear her confirm my thoughts.

‘‘I’m sorry, that was my mother,’’ she murmured sheep

ishly, taking a seat. ‘‘And I haven’t learned
yet
how to get her off the phone. You were just about to ask me which ring was which, weren’t you?’’

‘‘I was, but I think I’ve already answered my own ques

tion. The garnet was Meredith’s, wasn’t it?’’

‘‘Why, yes, it was. How did you know?’’

‘‘I remember someone telling me that Meredith was actu

ally born on January thirty-first—right before midnight. So, technically, the garnet would be her birthstone. While Mary Ann didn’t come along until a few minutes later—on Feb

ruary first. And the birthstone for February is an amethyst.’’

(The more trivial the fact, the more likely I am to know it.)

‘‘That’s
right,
’’ Bromley said, impressed. ‘‘Meredith didn’t care for amethysts. And since she once mentioned that she was really born in January, I suggested the garnet.’’

And then the jeweler added poignantly, ‘‘Garnets are dark red, you know. And Meredith loved red.’’