One Fifth Avenue (52 page)

Putting on a pair of velvet slippers and a heavy silk robe, she opened her bedroom door. “There’s a lady downstairs,” Maria said, looking over her shoulder nervously.

“Who?” Annalisa said.

“That lady. From the building.”

“Enid Merle?”

“The other one. The mean one.”

“Ah, Mindy Gooch.” What did Mindy want now? She probably had some fresh complaint about Paul. Which was nervy of her, considering Paul believed Sam had cut the wires. Annalisa herself was skeptical. “A thirteen-year-old boy getting the better of you, Paul?” she’d scoffed. “I don’t think so.” Now she said to Maria, “Make some coffee, please. And put out a few of those nice croissants.”

“Yes, missus,” Maria said.

Annalisa took her time brushing her teeth and carefully cleansing her face. She put on a flowing white blouse and a pair of navy blue slacks and slipped the yellow diamond ring from Paul onto her middle right finger.

She went downstairs and was irritated to find Mindy sitting comfortably in the living room, examining a Victorian silver card case. “Hello,” Annalisa said formally. “Maria is serving coffee in the breakfast room. Come with me, please.”

Mindy stood up, replacing the object on the side table. Well!, she thought, following Annalisa through the apartment. Annalisa had certainly O N E F I F T H AV E N U E

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become grand, but that was typical of people with money—eventually, they always believed they were better than everyone else. Motioning for Mindy to sit, Annalisa poured coffee into two china cups with enameled rims. “Sugar?” she asked. “Or are you a sugar-substitute girl?”

“Sugar,” Mindy muttered, frowning. She picked up the tiny silver spoon and shoveled several spoonfuls into her coffee. “You’ve done a lot of work in here. The apartment is beautiful,” she said reluctantly.

“Thank you,” Annalisa said. “It’s going to be photographed for the cover of
Architectural Digest
. They’ll need to use the service elevator. I’ll let the super know the date beforehand.” She looked Mindy in the eye.

“I’m assuming I can count on you not to make any trouble.”

“I guess it’s fine,” Mindy said, unable to come up with a reasonable objection.

Annalisa nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “Now, what can I do for you?” she asked.

“So you haven’t heard,” Mindy said. She narrowed her eyes in anticipation of delivering her blow. “Billy Litchfield is dead.”

Annalisa’s hand froze, but then she calmly took another sip of coffee.

She dabbed her lips with a small linen napkin. “I’m sorry to hear that,”

she said. “What happened?”

“No one knows. Schiffer Diamond found him dead in his apartment last night.” Mindy glanced at Annalisa, surprised by her lack of reaction.

There were bluish shadows under her eyes, but the slate-gray irises were staring back coldly, almost challengingly, Mindy thought. “There are photographers outside,” she said. “It’s common knowledge that you and Billy were good friends. And you’re always in the society columns. So you might want to lie low for a few days.”

“Thank you,” Annalisa said. She put her cup back onto the saucer.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“I guess not,” Mindy said, suddenly not having the nerve to bring up Paul’s attack on her that morning, or the fact that Mindy wanted them out of the building.

“Well, then,” Annalisa said, standing up. The interview was clearly over, and Mindy was forced to stand as well. At the door, she turned back, once again wanting to bring up Paul and his behavior, but Annalisa’s face was impassive.

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“About Paul,” Mindy began.

“Not today,” Annalisa said. “Nor any other day as well. Thank you for coming by.” And she firmly closed the door. Outside in the small hallway, Mindy heard her turn the lock.

When Mindy had gone, Annalisa rushed upstairs and grabbed her BlackBerry. She was about to call Paul when she saw his text. So he knew already. Going back downstairs, she went into the living room and sank into an armchair. She had an urgent desire to call someone—anyone—

to lament Billy’s death, but she realized there was no one to whom she might speak. All the people she knew in this world were Billy and Connie’s friends and were relative strangers. Billy had been more than a best friend, though. He’d been her guide and adviser; he’d made this world entertaining and fun. Without him, she didn’t know what she was going to do. What was the point of all this now? She slumped forward, putting her head in her hands.

Maria came into the room. “Mrs. Rice?” she asked.

Annalisa immediately sat up and smoothed the skin under her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just need a moment to myself.”

One floor below, Enid Merle pushed through the little gate that separated her terrace from Philip’s, and knocked on his French door. Philip opened it looking, as he had ever since he’d returned from Los Angeles, miserable. Enid wasn’t sure if his relationship with Lola was making him depressed, or the fact that Schiffer Diamond had been seen all over town with Derek Brumminger.

“Have you heard?” Enid asked.

“What now?” Philip said.

“Billy Litchfield is dead.”

Philip put his hands in his hair.

Lola came out of the bedroom wearing a T-shirt and a pair of Philip’s boxer shorts. “Who’s dead?” she asked with interest.

“Billy Litchfield,” Philip muttered.

“Do I know him?” Lola asked.

“No,” Philip said sharply.

“Okay,” Lola grumbled. “You don’t need to yell.”

“Schiffer found the body,” Enid said, addressing Philip. “One can only imagine. You must give her a call.”

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“Schiffer Diamond found the body?” Lola exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Rushing past Enid and Philip, she went out to the terrace and looked over the edge. There was a throng of photographers and reporters outside the entrance, and she recognized the top of Thayer Core’s head. Damn, she thought. Thayer would probably be calling her any minute requesting information, and she would have to give it to him. If she didn’t, he would once again threaten to post Philip’s unfinished script, and Philip would be furious.

She went back inside. “Are you calling her?” she asked Philip.

“Yes,” Philip said. He went into his office and closed the door.

Enid looked at Lola and shook her head. “What’s wrong now?” Lola de -

manded. Enid only shook her head again and went back to her own apartment. Lola sat down on the couch in a huff. Philip had just gotten over having his things rearranged and no longer banged the cabinet doors every time he was in the kitchen. But now this Billy Litchfield person had died, and Philip would go back to being in a bad mood again. It was all somehow Schiffer Diamond’s fault. Philip would have to pay attention to her, and Lola would have to fight her off again. Lola lay back on the couch, absentmindedly rubbing her stomach. Aha, she thought. There was the answer: She would get pregnant.

Philip came out of his office, went into the bedroom, and began getting dressed. Lola followed him. “Did you talk to her?” she asked.

“Yes,” Philip said, taking a shirt out of the closet.

“And? How is she?”

“How do you think?” Philip said.

“Where are you going now?” Lola said.

“To see her.”

“Can I come?” Lola asked.

“No,” Philip said.

“Why not?”

“She’s working. On location. It’s not appropriate.”

“But what about me?” Lola said. “I’m upset, too. Look.” She held out her hands. “I’m shaking.”

“Not now, Lola, please.” He pushed past her and went out the door.

Sure enough, her phone began bleeping moments later, announcing a text from Thayer Core. “Just saw Oakland leave the building. What’s up?”

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Lola thought for a moment and, realizing she had an opportunity to cause trouble for Schiffer, wrote, “Going to see Schiffer Diamond. She’s on location somewhere in the city.”

Next door, Enid was also getting ready to go out. Her sources told her that Billy was suspected of selling Sandy Brewer the cross, although Billy Litchfield’s involvement wasn’t the only thing that perplexed her.

She went down to the lobby, passing by the Gooches’ apartment. Inside, Mindy was on the phone with her office. “I’m not coming in today,”

she said. “A very good friend of mine passed away unexpectedly, and I’m too upset to leave my house.” She hung up and opened a new file for her blog, already having decided to use Billy’s death as a topic. “Today, I officially became middle-aged,” she wrote. “I’m not going to hide from the truth. Instead, I’m going to scream it from the rooftops: I am a middle-aged woman. The recent and untimely death of one of my most beloved friends has pointed up the inevitable. I have finally reached the age when friends start dying. Not parents—we all expect that. But friends. Our peers. My generation. And it’s made me wonder how much time I have left myself, and what I’m going to do with that time.”

Crossing the street, Enid knocked on Flossie Davis’s door, then let herself in with the key. She was surprised to find Flossie out of bed and sitting in the living room, looking out the window at the commotion in front of One Fifth. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get here,” Flossie said. “You see? I was right all along. The cross was in Louise Houghton’s apartment. And no one believed me. You don’t know what it’s been like all these years, knowing the truth, and no one listened. You don’t know—”

“Stop,” Enid said, cutting her off. “We both know you took the cross.

And Louise found out and made you give it to her. Why didn’t she turn you in? What did you have on her?”

“And you call yourself a gossip columnist,” Flossie said, clicking her tongue. “It sure took you long enough to figure it out.”

“Why did you take it?”

Flossie snorted. “Because I wanted it. It was so pretty. And it was right there. And it was only going to be locked up in that stupid museum along with every other dead thing. And Louise saw me take it. I didn’t know she saw me until I went to the Pauline Trigère fashion show. Louise sat next O N E F I F T H AV E N U E

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to me, and she’d never done that before. ‘I know what you have in your bag,’ she whispered. Louise was scary even then. She had those strange blue eyes—almost gray. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

The next morning, Louise came down to my apartment. I was living in Philip’s apartment then. Philip wasn’t born yet. And you were working at the newspaper and not paying attention to anyone except yourself.”

Enid nodded, remembering. How different life had been in those days.

Entire families often lived in a two-bedroom apartment, sharing one bathroom, but they’d been lucky. Her father had bought the two apartments side by side and was going to turn them into one large apartment when he’d suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving Enid with one apartment and Flossie and her little daughter with the other. “Louise accused me of taking the cross,” Flossie said, continuing her story. “She threatened to turn me in to the authorities. She said I would go to jail. She knew I was a widow, trying to take care of my child. She said she would take pity on me if I gave her the cross. Then she was going to slip it back into the museum and no one would be the wiser.”

“But she didn’t give it back,” Enid said.

“That’s right,” Flossie said. “Because she wanted it for herself. She wanted it all along. She was greedy. And besides, if she’d given it back to the museum, she wouldn’t have been able to hold it over my head.”

“You had something on her,” Enid said. “But what?”

Flossie looked around the room as if to make sure no one could overhear them. She shrugged, then leaned forward in her chair. “Now that she’s dead, she can’t do anything to me. So why not? Why not let the world know? Louise was a murderer.”

“Oh, Flossie.” Enid shook her head mournfully.

“You don’t believe me?” Flossie said. “Well, it’s true. She killed her husband.”

“Everyone knows he died from a staph infection.”

“That’s what Louise made people think. And no one ever questioned her. Because she was Louise Houghton.” Flossie began to wheeze with excitement. “And everyone forgot—all that time she spent in China before she came to New York? She knew all about diseases. How to cure them and how to make them worse. Did anyone ever think about what she was growing on that terrace? About what was in her greenhouse? I 364

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did. And one day, I found out. ‘Belladonna,’ I said. ‘If you turn me in, I’ll turn you in,’ I said. She didn’t dare return the cross then. Without it, she would have had nothing on me.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Enid said.

“Who said it had to make sense?” Flossie said. “You know perfectly well what it was about. Louise didn’t want to leave that apartment. It was her pride and joy. And then, after she’d spent a million dollars to do it all up the way she liked, and everyone was calling her the queen of society, her husband wanted to sell it. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. He had all the money, and the apartment was in his name.

He was always smart that way. He probably guessed what Louise was really like. And sure enough, she sent him on that trip, and two weeks later, he was dead.”

“You know you’re still not safe,” Enid said. “Now that the cross has been discovered, they’ll reopen the case. Someone may have seen you take it. A guard, perhaps, who’s still alive. You could go to jail.”

“You never had any common sense!” Flossie snapped. “Louise paid off the guards. So who’s going to tell them—you? You would turn in your own stepmother? If you do, you’ll have to tell the whole story. About how Louise was a murderer. You’ll never do it. You wouldn’t dare. You’ll do anything to preserve the reputation of that building. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d commit murder yourself.” Flossie took a deep breath, gearing up for another attack. “I’ve never understood you or people like you. It’s only a stupid building. There are millions of them in New York City. Now get out.” Flossie started wheezing. After Enid fetched a glass of water and made sure the attack had passed, she left.