Tender Death (22 page)

W
ETZON WAS IN
a foul mood as she paced back and forth on the pearl-gray velvet carpet in the showroom of Fillis Furs, paying no attention whatsoever to the gray raccoon coat that covered her like a blanket from her neck to her ankles. Everyone around her was getting murdered, and over the last week Smith had gotten chummy again with Arleen, Hazel seemed to be avoiding her, she had not succeeded in finding a spot for Maurice Sanderson, and Kevin De Haven had not made up his mind about where he wanted to move. And worst of all, petty as it seemed, she had not heard from Silvestri.

Esther Fillis clapped her hands together, gold bracelets jangling. “Stunning! Absolutely stunning.” The tiny lady in the dark brown gabardine slacks and beige silk shirt nodded her honey-blonde head vigorously.

“Now if you would only remove that unpleasant frown from your normally sweet brow, darlin’ Wetzon,” Laura Lee said, giving Wetzon a probing look, “all will be well.”

“I can’t afford a coat like this, Laura Lee,” Wetzon protested halfheartedly.

“Of course you can, Wetzon. Don’t tell me you want to wait until some fool man comes along and presents one to you.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Well, didn’t you tell me just last week that business was wonderful? And look at yourself in the mirror. Look what it does for your eyes.” Hands on Wetzon’s back, Laura Lee pushed her closer to the three-way full-length mirrors. Wetzon’s clear gray eyes had taken over her face, highlighted by the silver gray of the coat.

“Oh dear,” Wetzon murmured, stroking the soft fur, captivated by her image in the mirror.

A plump dark-haired woman came into the room carrying a caramel brown fur coat on a hanger.

“Oooh, goodie, here’s my treat.” Letting Esther hold the coat, Laura Lee slipped her arms into the sleeves and drew the wide shawl collar up around her ears, wriggling in ecstasy. The sharp peaks of her blonde-streaked brown hair dipped and blended with the fur of the collar. “Mr. Stone Marten, darlin’, I do love you.”

“It’s divine,” Esther Fillis said, fussing with the hemline, straightening the shoulders. Laura Lee’s coat had a glamorous quality to it, rich shades of brown, but Wetzon, looking at herself again in the mirror, much preferred her puffy-sleeved raccoon.
Hold on there
, she thought,
it’s not yours. Take it off at once.

Laura Lee spun around. “What do you think, Wetzon? Look at the back. Isn’t it marvelous?”

“It’s beautiful, Laura Lee.”

“Okay, Esther, I’ll trade you. You can reline minkie here and send her to me.” She picked up her black mink coat from a chair and gave it to Esther, who put it on the hanger she was still holding.

“What about the raccoon, Miss Wetzon?” Esther asked.

“I don’t think—”

“She’ll take it, Esther. As a matter of fact, she’ll wear it. Didn’t you just finish telling me, Wetzon, that you had to buy a new coat?” Laura Lee pointed to Wetzon’s Burberry on another chair. “And put that boring old thing in a box and mail it to her.”

“But Laura Lee—”

“Treat yourself, y’hear, Wetzon!” Laura Lee studied herself with satisfaction in the mirror. “Don’t we look grand? Admit it.”

“Okay, yes, we do, but—”

“Where do you keep your money, darlin’? I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this anyway ... in a savings account, right? Collectin’ five percent interest, right?”

“Well yes.”

“We’ve got to sit down and talk about financial planning for you.” Laura Lee shook a finger at her. “I’m going to call you the minute I get back from Mobile next week and you will come and talk to me.”

“Do you think it needs to be shortened?” Wetzon squared her shoulders and turned to the mirror. Laura Lee was right. She could afford to treat herself and she would. She deserved this coat.

“Not on your life. Just pick it up when you step over doggy-do, darlin’.”

Wetzon was positive everyone was staring at them when she and Laura Lee stepped out of the building on Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street. Self-conscious, she adjusted the sleeves of the coat and drew her beret down over her ears. The day had ended with the abrupt finality of a winter day in New York. A magic wand passed over the city and it was suddenly night. Fur and garment workers were streaming out of the buildings, pouring onto the street, heading for the subways, the IRT on Seventh Avenue, the Independent line on Eighth, and the BMT on Broadway, and the PATH trains to New Jersey.

“Did you say you’re goin’ to Sardi’s?” Laura Lee waved her arm and one cab pulled over to the curb while another screeched to a stop in front of it, cutting off the first.

“Amazing,” Wetzon said. “Must be the coats.” It was usually impossible to get a cab during rush hour and now they had two.

“When you got it, flaunt it,” Laura Lee said.

Wetzon opened the door of the first cab and started to get in. A hand shot out from the depths of the cab and grasped her wrist. “What—” She felt herself being pulled into the cab. “Wait. No!” She grabbed the side of the cab with her free hand.

“Get her!”

“Hold it!”

“No, no!” She heard Laura Lee scream.

Someone grabbed Wetzon around the waist and tugged her the other way, toward the street, pulling her free, back to the sidewalk. The cab went into gear and drove away, back door swinging until it was closed from inside.

“Well, I swear!” Laura Lee panted, still holding her around the waist. “If that wasn’t the damnedest thing. What did he think he was going to do, steal your coat right off your back even before your check cleared?”

Wetzon was shaken. “God, do you think it was that?”

“Are you ladies okay?” The driver of the second cab shouted. He was on the street next to his cab, his short coat open, his hand inside the coat.

Wetzon, taking it all in like a camera, knew he was a cop. Silvestri was having her watched, damn him. Bless him, she reversed herself.

“Someone tried to get her into the cab to steal her coat,” Laura Lee sputtered. “What the hell kind of world are we livin’ in?”

“Close call.” The driver was young, with dark shaggy hair, deceptively bohemian. But his body language said
alert.
“Where can I take you?” He got back into his yellow cab, which had a dented right fender.

“Come on, Wetzon darlin’.” Holding the front of her coat as if it were an evening gown, Laura Lee got into the cab. Wetzon picked up her beret, which had fallen off in the tussle, and followed her. “He didn’t get your coat and to hell with it. Driver, we’re goin’ to Sardi’s on Forty-fourth Street and then you-all can drop me on Fiftieth and Sixth.”

Wetzon’s heart was still hammering as she checked the driver’s identification card on the dashboard. “Michael Stewart.” She had once known a Michael Stewart, a playwright of unusual talent and wit, who had written
Hello, Dolly!
among other hits. Dead now.

“Wetzon, are you all right?” Laura Lee stared at her sympathetically. “Come on, you want to tell me about this new murder you’re in the middle of, or would you prefer to tell me nice things about this new man in your life?”

“What new man?” She looked at Laura Lee, surprised, and caught the eye of the driver, Michael Stewart, watching them in his rearview mirror. He was listening, too.

“Oh come on now, it’s all over your face. And that face is turning bright red.”

Wetzon touched her fingers to her hot cheeks. “Not right now, Laura Lee. And about Teddy Lanzman, let’s just leave it that he was an investigative reporter who may have made somebody mad and I walked in on it.” She ran her hands down the silvery fur. It was a lovely present to herself. “Tell me something. If I came to you with stock certificates— say, five thousand shares of IBM that I inherited from my rich Aunt Jane, what would you do?”

“Whose name are they registered in?”

“Oh. Okay. My Aunt Jane’s name.”

“You would have to get me a copy of the will and probate and it would have to be legally transferred. There are forms to be signed.”

“Would a brokerage firm cut corners and do it without getting legal proof?”

“Darlin’.” Laura Lee batted her eyes at Wetzon. “What are you-all asking?”

“You heard me.”

“Okay. Serious stuff here. The answer is, no way. This is all very thoroughly covered by the Exchange. And I might add, the SEC.”

“What about an individual broker? Could he do it and bypass regulations?”

“Impossible. Compliance would pick it up immediately. What are you up to, darlin’?” Laura Lee looked stern. Her Southern drawl had all but disappeared. “Not considering stock fraud to pay for your new coat?”

“Pish tush, Laura Lee. Help me out here.” She caught their driver’s eye again. He’d stopped for the light at Times Square and Forty-second Street. “I’m trying to figure out what Teddy might have stumbled onto—” She closed her eyes. Horns honked. Rush hour traffic leaving the City clogged every cross section.

“Seriously, only your Aunt Jane could cash in those stock certificates, Wetzon, and she’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Know what? That she can cash in the stock certificate or that she’s dead?”

“That she’s dead.”

“Well, darlin’, you just told me.”

“Okay, what if she were alive?”

“Then she can cash in the stock certificate herself.”

A faint buzz went off in Wetzon’s head, like the beginning of her alarm in the morning. She flashed back to the man with the nosebleed ... Mitosky ... the one with the thick accent, who pretended to need a cane. He’d been waiting to see the cashier at Bradley, Elsworth. “Even if you didn’t know her?”

“No. Of course, she would have to bring proof of who she is. You know, birth certificate or passport, driver’s license. Usual stuff.”

“Really? That’s it?”

“Sure.”

“Then what?”

“She signs the back of the certificate and we issue her a check for the amount at market price.”

“What if she was not really Aunt Jane? What if Aunt Jane really had died and I was pretending to be Aunt Jane?” The obituary for Mitosky had said he had been born in England and—

“Why, Wetzon.
Age,
darlin’. It wouldn’t fit. You’re not the same age as the birth certificate. I don’t believe you would do any such thing, anyway. Besides, we would eventually discover she had died.”

The buzz in Wetzon’s head became a loud alarm.

“Laura Lee, listen carefully. What if poor old Aunt Jane was not dead, but was not well and perhaps a little forgetful? What if I, or someone closer to the right age, took her stock certificates and all the necessary proof material and pretended to be Aunt Jane—and walked into a brokerage firm—?”

“Wetzon, my God, that is the most terrible thing I have heard.” Laura Lee’s kohl-rimmed eyes went round with disgust.

“Could it happen, Laura Lee? Just tell me, yes or no,” Wetzon pressed her urgently. “Could it happen?”

Laura Lee pursed her glossy crimson lips. She stared at Wetzon for what seemed like a long time. “Yes,” she said.