Tender Death (17 page)

L
E
R
EFUGE IS
an upscale East Side Manhattan version of a Normandy inn, deep in the heart of yuppie country.

Wetzon had opted to walk the ten blocks from Hazel’s apartment because she wanted time to think. Her breath came in little smoky puffs as she walked briskly on the glazed sidewalks, framed by frozen snowbanks. Her thoughts danced around in her head like the little Ping-Pong balls with the lottery numbers on them: #1 Peepsie, #2 Teddy, #3 Ida, #4 Peter Tormenkov, #5 the Tsminskys, #6 Misha and Ilena, #7 Hazel, #8 Arleen Grossman ... all bounced around her.

Kevin De Haven popped uninvited into her mind. Was it a waste of time to work with him? Probably. But she always played each situation out with the realization that she worked just as hard to place a low-end producer, maybe harder, as she did a high-end producer. Something about Kevin told her he might be trouble. He was too sharp, too glib, too good to be true.

True ... blue ... free-associated her right back to Judy Blue. Wetzon had not seen any slow-moving, unlit cars—or cabs—en route to Le Refuge, but somehow she had the feeling that she’d not seen the last of Judy Blue.

“Dum, da, dum, dum,” she hummed ominously as she opened the door of the restaurant, with its blue-checked bistro curtains, and entered a long, narrow room with tables to the right and a high walnut bar to the left. It was not a bar for drinkers or even leaners; it was really just a sideboard from which the waiters poured wine or drinks were mixed. A woman in a red silk dress, a black cashmere sweater draped over her shoulders, large tortoiseshell combs in her medium-length curly brown hair, came around from behind the bar.

Wetzon shrugged out of her coat and deposited it and her scarf on the woman’s waiting arm. “Thank you. My name is Leslie Wetzon. I’m meeting Arleen Grossman.”

“Oh yes, Ms. Wesson. If you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll hang up your coat and come right back.”

Wetzon smiled as the woman went past the bar and down the flight of stairs to the coatroom. Whitman, Wilson. Now she was salad oil.

The woman returned and handed her a plastic tag with a number on it. “Ms. Grossman called a short time ago to say she was delayed.”

Blast. This was really annoying. “Did she say how long she’ll be?”

“No, I’m sorry. Why don’t I show you to your table? Perhaps you would like to have a drink while you’re waiting.”

“Yes, please.” All she really wanted to do was to go home, shower, and put her feet up before she had to meet Teddy. This was such a waste of time and energy. Damn Smith.

The woman led her past a large French country hutch which displayed bright jars of jams and preserves, mustards and vinegars, in pretty bottles and jars. On every flat surface there were vases and crocks filled with fresh flowers, lilies, and wildflowers. They walked through a small almost private room of little character and into a larger, square setting with exposed brick walls and an enormous old stone fireplace.

The wood tabletops had an aged look created by stain, usage, and varnish, and each table had its own folksy pot filled with fresh flowers. Large blue-and-white homespun dish towels were folded as napkins at each place setting beside long-stemmed wine glasses and water goblets. Simple fluted-glass shades covered light bulbs which gave off muted light. There was something festive and cheery about the setting. And otherworldly. Cultured voices rose and fell in a discreet hum.

She was shown to a table in the rear of the room, near the fireplace. The four country-style wood chairs had cushioned seats, and Wetzon chose the chair facing the entrance to the room and looked around while a waiter cleared the table for two diners.

To her left were an older couple and a younger couple. The women looked like mother and daughter, same beaky nose, same receding chin. The two men were in business suits and were probably lawyers since they were discussing the acrimonious dissolution of yet another of the major national law firms.

At the table in front of her was a young couple who were holding hands across the wood top. They broke their hold, it seemed reluctantly, only when their first course was served.

Silvestri materialized in her mind’s eye. It would be nice to be meeting him, not Arleen. He raised his eyebrow at her. On the other hand, if she were here with him, he wouldn’t let her go off half-cocked, he would say, getting involved in something that was none of her business. She made him disappear.

She ordered a Perrier with lime. Arleen was already fifteen minutes late. She reached into her carryall to get her Filofax to look at tomorrow’s schedule and her fingers touched the minicassette recorder. Damn. She had forgotten all about it. Smith would kill her. She pulled the bag to her lap and arranged the little machine so that she could press the button easily. When she looked up she saw Arleen Grossman in the doorway, bearing down on her. She felt herself flush, as if she’d gotten caught doing something unprincipled. Which she was. Damn that Smith. She pressed the button, unobtrusively she hoped, and put the bag on the floor at her feet.

Arleen swept into the room, more imposing than Wetzon had remembered, in a full-length silver fox coat with a wide shawl collar, which she obviously had no intention of consigning to the checkroom. She was wearing high-heeled boots, and tiny bits of fur floated in the air around her. Her jet-black hair was in the same tight coronet with the little spit curls, and her amber eyes behind the large round tinted lenses were enormous. Everyone in the room turned to stare.

“Wetzon dear.” Arleen dropped her coat on one of the extra chairs. She was literally poured into a black metallic outfit, a tight-fitting, long-sleeved sweater showing every bulge where her bra cut into thick flesh and a long tight skirt emphasizing the great expanse of hip and thigh. In her large earlobes were gigantic teardrop diamonds; on her bosom floated a glittering necklace of diamonds in the shape of a soaring bird.

Wetzon pressed her back against the chair slats, instinctively trying to put more space between herself and Arleen Grossman.
A predator,
she thought.
What the hell was Arleen all dolled up for? And what an exhibition.

Arleen settled into a chair with a small flounce and fluttered her bejeweled fingers at their waiter. “A Bellini, please,” she said in her incongruous baby doll voice.

The waiter, a slim and muscular young man, wearing a small white apron over black pants and white shirt, looked startled and caught Wetzon’s eye accidentally. She smiled. He nodded. He was a dancer. It was a sixth sense dancers had: they recognized each other. She knew it. He knew it. Maybe they’d even worked together once. He was about her age, perhaps a little older.

He handed them the menus and a small slate on which the specials were chalked. Wetzon ordered the warm chicory salad and the grilled trout.
Let’s get this goddam show on the road
, she thought impatiently.

Arleen ordered the sorrel soup and a steak with
pommes frites, naturelement.
Fat for fat.
My, you are bitchy, Wetzon,
she thought.

“Wine, dear?”

“Not for me. I’ll have another Perrier, though.”

The waiter placed a narrow wooden board of sliced French bread and a small pottery crock of butter in the center of the table. At once Arleen reached fleshy fingers for the bread and butter. She was wearing a gargantuan ring made up of baguettes of diamonds and what looked like emeralds arranged in a circle, coming to a raised peak in the center where a diamond rested. On her left wrist she wore a wide gold-banded watch whose face was framed with small diamonds.

“Now then.” Arleen patted her hair and favored Wetzon with a toothy smile, her face not changing one iota except around her enormous pink mouth. Where had Wetzon read that a real smile produced laugh lines around the eyes? “Isn’t this just lovely?”

Wetzon knew she was sinking in her chair, trying to hide under the table. Quickly she switched her mental motor to computer automatic as she did when she interviewed a broker who was outrageous in appearance or more likely, attitude.

“I feel such a warmth about you,” Arleen was saying, “that I know I can tell you absolutely anything and you will be my friend.”

“Thank you, Arleen,” Wetzon said politely, but she wanted to shriek and run from the table. Why did she have such good manners?

“Dear Xenia told me you are an orphan, and I just want to tell you I understand. I am an orphan, too.”

“What?” Wetzon was incredulous. She felt a fire begin to smolder in her breast. How dare Smith tell anyone anything personal about her? “Really, Arleen, I tend to think of children as being orphans, not adults. I was no longer living at home when my parents died.” And it’s none of your goddamn business, she longed to add.

Arleen’s eyes filled with tears, and suddenly Wetzon felt ashamed. Oh dear, maybe she had gone too far.

“That’s all right, dear.” Arleen patted her hand. “I do understand how you feel. It’s easier not to talk about it. You see, I never do. But I feel so close to you, that you are so empathetic, I can tell you that my mother was murdered.”

“My God!” Wetzon exclamation was involuntary.

“Yes, it’s painfully true. And by my father, I might add.” Arleen’s full face was almost obscenely solemn. “I was delivered shortly thereafter, in a caul. It was what saved me, of course. No one knows the extent of the trauma on the child of that kind of birth.” She smiled modestly. “I have made it my cause in life. I received my undergraduate degree in psychology from Duke, on scholarship. Actually, I finished in three years, and my Ph.D. from Boston University two years later. For years I have treated people, children especially, who were deprived of mother love at an early age.”

Wetzon was flummoxed. She already knew more about Arleen Grossman than she ever wanted to know.

The waiter delivered Arleen’s soup and Wetzon’s salad, which was studded with small lardons of bacon. Wetzon used the food to break the spell Arleen had created. “This is delicious,” she said.

“So is this. Would you like a taste?”

“No, thank you. I know it’s very good. I’ve had it before.”

“Of course, your thought must be,” Arleen said, continuing her intimate monologue as if there had been no break, “why did my father murder my mother?”

Wetzon stared at her. She seemed to be waiting for an answer. “Was your father arrested for the murder?” she asked finally.

“Oh no. They could never prove he did it, but I knew. That’s why he left me with a black wet nurse and took my sister, who was six at the time, and came to New York, where he and my mother were from originally.”

“Left you where?”

“In Baltimore.”

“How awful.”

“I was given a lot of love and care by this wonderful black lady until my father came back and tore me from her arms and took me to New York and placed me in an orphanage.”

“Where was your sister?”

“She was living with him and my stepmother.”

“He married again?”

“Oh yes, very quickly.”

“And left you in an orphanage? How horribly cruel.” Somehow cruelty by a parent was overwhelming. But this parent had been a murderer. Or was he?

“Yes, until I was seven. My dear sister used to visit me and bring me little presents she bought for me with the few pennies they allowed her to keep from her labor. They made her go to work, you see, to help support them.”

“Finished?” The waiter cleared their plates from the table.

“They removed me from the orphanage and took me home to Washington Heights. I was so thrilled. I thought everything would be all right from then on. But my stepmother had had a child with my father. She was sexually abusive with my half brother. You have met my brother. You see the damage that was done to him. She made my sister and me do all the work around the house and fed us from scraps from the garbage.”

“How awful, Arleen. What about your father?”

Tears sprang into Arleen’s already damp eyes. “He was a weak man. He did nothing. Turned his back. He was an evil man, manipulative.” Her mouth twisted and her eyes hardened. “I do not forgive him. I forgive no one for evil toward me.”

Suddenly the restaurant seemed cold and drafty. “But look what you’ve made of your life, Arleen. You’re a respected psychologist. You own your own successful business. You have accomplished so much.”

“Yes, this is true.” Arleen nodded, preening. “That is absolutely true, my dear Wetzon.”

“I always wondered how children can grow up in poverty and despair and how some can rise above it and others are crushed by it. Is it in the genes?”

“You are so intuitive, my dear, that is why I like you so much. I wrote a paper on just this subject for
Psychology Today
a few years ago, and of course I have lectured extensively on the subject. Perhaps you saw me interviewed by Phil Donahue?”

“Ms. Wesson.?” The woman in the red silk dress looked inquiringly at Wetzon.

“Yes?”

“There’s a telephone call for you.”

“For me?” Only Hazel and Smith knew she was here. “Excuse me, Arleen. Where can I take it?”

“Follow me, please.” The woman in the red dress led her back through the restaurant, past a hanging wooden wine rack filled with wine bottles, to the staircase beyond the bar. “There’s an extension in the coatroom.”

Wetzon went down the short flight of stairs. Straight ahead were the bathrooms; to her right were the coatroom and the phone, off the hook. She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Did she say anything yet?” It was Smith, sounding frantic.

“Smith, for godsakes, no she hasn’t.”

“Did you remember to put on the tape?” Her breath came in short pants.

“Yes, but really, Smith, this is ridiculous. Arleen’s a nutcase. She just told me this off-the-wall-story—”

“I can’t talk to you now, Wetzon. Just call me when you’re ready to leave. Don’t forget, I’m going with you.” There was a click, leaving Wetzon with the dead receiver in her hand, nonplussed. She was convinced Smith was having a nervous breakdown.

But the real question in Wetzon’s mind was, what does Arleen want of me?