Authors: Annette Meyers
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Financial, #Contemporary Fiction, #Crime Fiction
Tender Death (29 page)
W
ETZON WANDERED THROUGH
the designer boutiques on the second floor of Saks, unable to focus on the clothes. She had left a message with Hazel’s home attendant that she would call again; so taken aback was she by the home attendant that she hadn’t even left her name.
“Is there something in particular you’re looking for?” The sleek young saleswoman with the Caribbean tan and sun-streaked hair was an unwitting intruder. Chunky gold bracelets clunked as the woman straightened the clothes on the sale rack. “We don’t have too much left in your size.”
Wetzon stared blankly at her. “Thank you. I was just thinking—I’m sorry—looking.”
But she
was
just thinking. Was this home attendant part of Hazel’s mysterious plan or was Hazel now so sick she couldn’t fend for herself anymore?
“No,” she said under her breath. It couldn’t have happened that fast. Worried now, she went down the crowded escalator to the street floor and waited impatiently for a man in a shearling coat, a notepad and a beeper resting on the ledge, to relinquish the phone.
She called Hazel’s number.
“Hello.” Good. It was Hazel. Wetzon was so relieved she swallowed a lump in her throat which kept her from responding immediately. “Hello?”
“Oh, Hazel, it’s you.” She sat down on the tiny corner seat in the phone booth, shaky.
“Hello, dear, how are you?” Was Hazel’s voice a little strange, a little more formal than usual?
“It’s you I’m worried about. I’m fine.”
“I’m really doing quite well. Basha is just wonderful. She is taking such good care of me, aren’t you, Basha? I would really love a cup of hot tea, Basha, please.”
“I take it she’s standing right there?”
“Of course, I would just love it if you and your nice young man want to come by tonight.”
Wetzon heard a faint click as if someone had picked up the phone and was listening. Wetzon responded, “We thought we’d stop by for a bit after dinner. How’s that?”
“Lovely, dear.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No, no. I am being wonderfully cared for.” There was another click now as if someone had hung up. Then Hazel whispered, excitement like a fever in her voice, “Call me later.” The connection was broken.
Wetzon put another quarter in the phone, ignoring the growing line of impatient people. She called the Seventeenth Precinct for Silvestri. She got Metzger.
“He’s still downtown,” Metzger droned.
“Ask him, when he calls in, or gets uptown, if he can meet me at Hazel Osborn’s about seven o’clock. It’s important. I’ll call back later.” Wetzon yielded the booth to an effete man in an ankle-length black mink coat and a pale blue Tiffany’s shopping bag. She buttoned her coat, turned up the collar, and walked up Madison Avenue to the Burger Heaven on Fifty-fourth Street. There was time to stop for a burger before she met Smith.
The restaurant was crowded. She ordered her favorite, a Roquefort burger, rare, and brewed decaf, then slipped her coat off and draped it over the back of the chair. Dishes clattered, voices—loud and modulated—with Asian, Indian, Brooklyn, and New York accents, blended.
Why did Hazel want to see Silvestri? Did that mean she was onto something? All the same, when she called her again, Wetzon was determined to ask Hazel the name of the home care service she was using. The one Teddy had mentioned had the unforgettable, creepy name Tender Care.
The burger oozed meat juices and melted Roquefort cheese. She stared at the bloody mess on her fingers and her plate and gagged, setting the half-eaten remnants down. She put her napkin over the plate so she wouldn’t have to look at it, covering the body. It was like a flashback. She found a Wash ‘n Dri in her carryall and wiped her hands and mouth.
“Here’s your coffee, dearie.” The waitress set the cup down in front of her. “Are you finished with that burger?”
Wetzon nodded. Efficiently, the woman cleared the plates from the next table as well, stacking them on her arm as she worked, wiping down the table for the next customers. She was a pleasure to watch—a real professional—well over fifty, Wetzon guessed, lined, heavily made-up face, yellow-pink-dyed hair, strong, very pronounced muscles in her arms and shoulders. This was her career and it was obvious; she was not just another performer waiting for a big break as so many waiters and waitresses in Manhattan were.
Smith was getting out of a cab in front of the Galleria on Fifty-seventh Street as Wetzon approached the building, and they went up in the elevator together.
“Any calls for me?” An unshaven man in a soiled trench coat stared at them openly. Wetzon studied him out of the corner of her eye. He was wearing corduroys that hung too far over his worn blue Adidas with knotted laces.
“Nothing important. Laura Lee Day. Howie Minton. The usual psychic vampires.” Smith stuffed her gloves into the inside pocket of her mink coat.
“Smith, you are so uncharitable.”
“I am not a charity.” She played with the diamond-and-emerald ring, rolling it around and around on her finger.
“Anything with De Haven?”
“Yes.”
“Well, tell, for godsakes.” Wetzon edged away from the man in the trench coat. Was he FBI? No, he couldn’t be. He was too messy. The belt of the trench coat had slipped from one loop and dragged on the floor.
Smith’s laugh bubbled. “It’s a done deal. He signed a contract!”
The elevator stopped at the eighteenth floor, and the man in the trench coat picked up his canvas briefcase and got off. Wetzon’s relief was extreme; she was getting decidedly obsessive.
“How long were you going to let me wait?” she grumbled at Smith.
“Oh come on, Wetzon.” Smith shook her arm. “Lighten up. Count the gorgeous dollars, you dummy. Money, God, how I love it.” She hugged herself and closed her eyes.
Jesus, Smith was having a goddam orgasm about the fee. “When does he start?”
“Monday!”
“That’s quick. Why is he going so fast? Do you think he has a problem?”
“Oh, Wetzon, you are so suspicious. The only problem is they want to cap the fee.”
“What? How much?”
“At fifty thou.”
“Oh no! They want to cheat us out of thirty thousand dollars. What did you say?”
The elevator opened on the fortieth floor. “Here we are,” Smith said.
The women stepped into a large white-and-silver salon with pale gray upholstered sofas and chairs in the waiting area. A dark-haired woman wearing an open pale gray lab coat sat at a clear Lucite desk. She wore gray hose on her long slim legs, and high-heeled, open-toed gray shoes. On the desk in front of her were a phone and an appointment book. A Lucite nameplate said Lois-Jane Lane. Two women, perhaps in their late thirties or midforties, in expensively tailored sports clothes, sat on the sofa, chatting. A plate of carrot sticks on ice slivers was on a small Lucite cart near them. They looked up, appraising Smith and Wetzon.
“I said,” Smith drawled slowly, “‘Joe, I’m afraid we have to kill the deal, then.’”
“You did? You really did? What did Joe say?” Wetzon loved how Smith played hardball with the boys.
“Listen, sugar, I knew how much he was drooling for De Whoozis. I knew he wouldn’t kill it. I settled it with a cap at seventy-five.”
“The dirtbag took us for five.”
“Yeah, well I figured after-tax dollars for us—I could afford to be generous.” She fluffed her hair and grinned at Wetzon. “You have to let them win
something
in a negotiation.”
“You did great, Smith.”
“Ladies?” Lois-Jane Lane smiled at them. She wore just enough makeup to highlight her smooth, translucent skin. The two women on the sofa went back to their conversation but kept their eyes on Smith and Wetzon.
Smith said imperiously, “I’m Xenia Smith and this is Ms. Wetzon. We have two-thirty appointments.”
“Yes, uhum.” Lois-Jane checked off their names with an immaculately cared-for hand. Her nails shone with a pale matte gold. She pressed a small white button on the desk and moments later a svelte woman with a long thick fringe of straight blonde hair appeared. She, too, wore a long crisp pale gray lab coat over a charcoal-gray cashmere sweater and skirt and had clear, beautiful skin.
“Ms. Smith, Ms. Wetzon. Please come with me,” the blonde said. She had a slight accent and a Lucite name tag on her lab coat that said Margot.
They were led up a broad curved staircase, carpeted in pale gray plush; the walls were papered in gray-and-pink peppermint stripes.
“Katerina and Saskia will be with you shortly,” Margot said, opening the doors to two side-by-side rooms. “There are hangers for your clothes. You may put on the robes and sit comfortably. Enjoy your facials, please.” She smiled a cool, reserved smile without opening her lips.
Wetzon waved to Smith and entered a white-on-white room, empty except for a large white Naugahyde extension chair that was made to tilt back and become a massage table. A pink-and-gray quilted throw lay over the footrest part of the chair. On one wall were glass-enclosed shelves containing row upon row of jars and bottles. A small pink-tinted globe hung from the ceiling.
Stripping down to her camisole and half-slip, Wetzon hung her coat and clothes neatly on the hangers and wrapped herself in the pink-and-gray robe. The room was cool. She pulled off her boots and sat back in the Naugahyde chair, covering herself with the pink-and-gray quilted throw.
“Hello, hello!” The door opened. “I see you make comfortable. Good. Good. I am Saskia. I take good care of you.” Saskia, a woman of indeterminate age, small, with curls of unnatural auburn pinned back under a gaudy floral and rhinestone hair clip, spoke with a Slavic accent. She smiled at Wetzon through glossy pink lips, showing crooked, yellow teeth. “Sit back. Rest.” She pressed her hands solidly on Wetzon’s shoulders, then covered Wetzon’s hair in a tight paper turban. “First I clean face.” She wet a wad of Kleenex and twisted it expertly into a cool cover for Wetzon’s eyes, tilting the chair back into a reclining position.
Wetzon could hear bottles opening and closing. Saskia’s hands flew over Wetzon’s face with a soft cream cover, a wipe-off, an astringent, another layer of cream, and finally a slow, gentle massage of the cream into the skin. With her eyes per force closed under the cool cover and the warm cream being massaged into her face with fairy fingertips, Wetzon felt her body releasing, ping, ping, ping into deep relaxation. “Enjoy, enjoy.” Saskia’s soft voice was soothing, hypnotic. “Now vee clean pores.” The voice came from a great distance. A door closed. A door opened. “I have hot, very hot herb pot. I put towel here.” She covered Wetzon’s head with a bath towel. The heat was wonderful. She smelled lavender and chamomile essences. “You rest now,” Saskia said. “I come back ten minutes. Sleep.”
Wetzon lay in the chair and the herbal heat, almost dozing under the towel. She could hear her own breathing magnified, and she could hear the faint murmur of Smith’s voice from the room next door. What did Smith have to talk about? Who wanted to talk during a facial?
A woman sobbed softly. “I beg you.”
A voice whispered, “No ... dangerous ...” and then lapsed into what sounded like Russian.
“They send me back.” Crying again.
“Shshsh. My clients ...” Russian in harsh whispers.
The voices, one voice in particular—the tone.... Wetzon forced herself out of the heavy stupor and pushed the hot pot of herbs away. She swung her feet to the gray carpet, displacing the small quilted throw to the floor. Listening, she could no longer hear the voices. She crept to the door, opened it, and looked out. The corridor was empty. She stepped out of the room. Smith’s room was on the left. She edged to the right. She came upon an open space, a small kitchen. On the stove, pots of hot herbs simmered, waiting to be put to work steaming open pores. No one was there.
A large, round woman in a gray lab coat and bleached blonde hair rounded the corner and saw Wetzon. “Oh, miss, you should not be here. Should be in room. Vhich room? Who is your—”
“Saskia.” Wetzon knew she looked a horror in her robe and turban, grease on her face. Well, everyone looked like that here.
The plump woman took her arm firmly and steered Wetzon back to the room, waiting until she sat back in the chair and then covered her with the quilted throw. “I send Saskia. Must be more patient.” The woman smiled a decidedly unfriendly smile and left, closing the door behind her.
Wetzon lay uneasy in the chair until she was sure the woman had gone. Could she have dreamed the fragment of conversation? Throwing off the quilt again, she rose and shook some change from her wallet. She was sure she had recognized the voice of one of the women who may have been in the kitchen area, the one who was crying. It was Ida.
W
ETZON STOOD AT
the end of the peppermint-striped hallway at a white pay phone mounted in the open on the wall and punched out Silvestri’s direct number at the Seventeenth Precinct. The phone rang about twenty times. A click finally intercepted the ring, and the ringing continued as a buzz. A woman’s voice answered, “Rodriguez.” The sound was garbled; Rodriguez was eating her lunch.
Wetzon could hear laughter in the background. “I’m looking for Sergeant Silvestri.”
“Not here.”
“How about Metzger?”
“Not here.”
Damn. “Did they say when they’d be back?”
“No,” Rodriguez said through swallowing noises. “Anything I can do?” She sounded bored.
“I don’t think so. Tell them Ms. Wetzon called.” She started to hang up and had a thought. “Hello?”
“Yeah?” Rodriguez’s voice was muffled again. She had gone back to eating.
“Can you give me the number of the Detective Squad at the Nineteenth Precinct?”
Wetzon hung up quickly, repeating the number over and over in her head, put a quarter in the slot, and punched out the numbers, jiggling from one foot to the other, listening to the ringing.
“Galvin.”
“Sergeant O’Melvany, please.” Over her shoulder, she saw Saskia round the corner down the hall and stop short when she caught sight of Wetzon on the telephone. “I’ll be right with you, Saskia,” she called hurriedly, putting her hand up to keep her away.
“O’Melvany.”
Bless him. “Sergeant, this is Leslie Wetzon. Do you remember me?”
“Oh yeah. Well, I don’t have anything to tell you on—it’s gone downtown.”
“I know. I have something to tell you.”
“Yeah?” He was polite but doubtful.
Probably a dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist,
she thought.
“I’m at a salon called Katerina of Hungary in the Galleria on East Fifty-seventh. I think Ida Tormenkov is here, or may have just been here. I heard her. Can you come and meet me here now?”
“I’m busy now, Miss Wetzon.” She could hear in his voice that he thought she was a pain in the ass.
“Please, Sergeant. Just check it out.”
“Lady, you want me to stop everything and come there because you
think?
”
“Humor me. I’m not a crank. Silvestri—”
“How long will you be there?” He was grudging.
“I’m in the middle of a facial, so at least another forty-five minutes.”
Saskia was smiling with surface concern, but tapping her foot nervously as Wetzon retied the belt of her robe, which had come loose, and trundled down the hall toward her. “Tch, tch, tch, all good vork of heat vasted.” She helped Wetzon back into the chair. “But I see vhat I can do.” She wet and reapplied the eye compress and went to work on Wetzon’s skin. “Beautiful skin. So lucky. No blackheads. Very sensitive, no?” She smeared Wetzon’s face with a thick sticky mixture and then swathed her with an ice-cold mask of wet Kleenex. “Rest now.” Saskia turned off the lights and left the room.
Wetzon was impatient, turning back and forth, trying to find a comfortable place on the chair. She could not lie still. Her back complained. Her thoughts roiled.
There was a knock on the door. “Wetzon?” The door opened.
“Smith?”
“I’m finished. I’m going to be made up. Meet me there.” Smith closed the door without waiting for Wetzon to respond.
Wetzon had no intention of having someone else do her makeup and certainly not with mascara and materials that had been used on other people’s eyes. She wondered how long it would take O’Melvany to get there, how much time had passed since she had spoken to him.
Saskia entered, switching on the light, and Wetzon lay back while Saskia removed the final mask and cleansed her face again. After the final step, the moisturizer, Saskia untied and discarded the turban and handed Wetzon a large mirror. “Beautiful, no?”
“Yes, thank you.” Beautiful, yes. She always felt beautiful after a facial. It was the pampering.
“I leave this.” Saskia handed Wetzon a bill and left the room, closing the door discreetly.
Wetzon threw her clothes on, took her hair down, combed it, and rolled it back up into its neat knot. She looked at herself closely in the mirror and reddened her mouth with lipstick. Gathering up her coat and carryall, she stepped out into the corridor, passing an elderly woman in one of the pink robes, her hands held out in front of her, fingers stiffly separated to keep a manicure from smearing, being led to Smith’s vacated room. Wetzon strolled casually, eyes and ears alert, in the opposite direction of the pay phone, looking for Smith.
Smith’s laugh rang out and Wetzon followed it until she came to another open space similar to the kitchen. This one had half a dozen high stools in front of a broad expanse of makeup mirrors and tables. The light was soft and diffused. A slim young man, his left earlobe sporting a ruby stud and a tiny hoop, was highlighting Smith’s eyes. She seemed to be enjoying herself. Could this be a new, less judgmental Smith?
“You look absolutely stunning, Ms. Smith,” he gushed, giving Wetzon a flirtatious wink.
Smith smiled at herself seductively in the mirror. “I do, don’t I, Jeffrey?”
“Not that you didn’t before, but you should really use emerald-gold on your lids. What an impact. With those fabulous eyes—”
Oh yuk
, Wetzon thought. All this self-love was more than she could tolerate right now, and she certainly was not going to hang around and listen to all that. “I’ll meet you in front, Smith.” She saw Smith’s eyes meet Jeffrey’s in the mirror. Some private joke, a shared secret, a didn’t-I-tell-you look?
A gaunt Chinese woman in a red Adolfo suit trimmed with black braid sat at the cashier’s desk. “Is this your first visit, Ms. Wetzon?”
“Yes.” Wetzon put the bill and her American Express Card on the pink counter.
“Well, we do hope you are pleased and will be back to see us again soon.” A dark line outlined the crease in her eyelids. She handed Wetzon a small pink-and-gray shopping bag and gave her the charge slip to sign. “Some complimentary samples of our treatment products.”
Wetzon returned to the reception room and sat down on the gray sofa next to a small round-faced woman with short white hair who looked somewhat familiar. She was thumbing through a copy of
Town & Country.
In the little shopping bag were tissue-wrapped small tubes and jars, a lipstick, and an eyeshadow. Wetzon was delighted. She loved samples of cosmetics. She rolled the bag of samples up and slipped it into her carryall. Lois-Jane Lane was on the telephone switching someone’s appointment.
“Did you buy those here?” The woman next to Wetzon asked in a warm, scratchy voice. She looked a little like Maureen Stapleton.
“They were complimentary samples.”
“Oh goodie, I love all those things.”
Wetzon didn’t notice Margot until she stood in front of them. “Ms. Stapleton?”
“Oh yes. Thank you. It was so nice meeting you.”
The white-haired woman followed Margot up the stairs as the elevator doors opened and O’Melvany stepped out. He flipped a lighted cigarette out of the palm of his hand and put it in his lips, inhaling. He was wearing the same dark brown suit and sweater he’d had on the first time Wetzon had seen him. And he was not wearing an overcoat.
Wetzon got to her feet and went to meet him. “How is your back?”
“Better.” He rubbed his back and then his orange-yellow mustache. He added grudgingly, “Your friend has been effective.” He strode across the entrance room to the Lucite desk and showed Lois-Jane Lane his ID. “I’d like to see the owner, please.”
The woman stared at O’Melvany’s ID; her face turned pasty. She rose. “Please wait here.” She disappeared up the stairs, in a big hurry.
“This better not be a waste of my time, Miss Wetzon. I’m sticking my neck out here,” O’Melvany said, glowering at her. He looked at the nameplate on the desk. “Do you believe it? Lois Lane.” He walked around the desk and looked through the appointment book, unconcerned, humming faintly, “Doo, doo, da, doo, doo.” Ashes from his cigarette fell on the gray carpet.
A woman in her forties with beautiful, clear skin and shoulder length chestnut hair, wearing a pink lab coat over a wool challis print skirt, came down the stairs, followed by an agitated Lois Lane.
“I am Katerina Sakar. I own this salon. You want to see me?”
“Sergeant O’Melvany. Nineteenth Precinct.” He showed his ID, then put it back in his inside pocket.
“I would appreciate your not smoking here.” Katerina took a paper cup from the rolling Lucite table, partially filled it with water, and held it out to him. O’Melvany dropped the stub of his cigarette into the cup, and she delivered it to Lois-Jane, who took the offensive cup up the stairs and returned moments later empty-handed. “Now, what can I do for you, Sergeant?” Katerina’s smile infused her face with tiny lines. She was older than she had initially appeared.
“We’re looking for a woman. Ida Tormenkov. She was seen here a short time ago.”
Katerina’s smile froze. Her voice, however, did not change. “I do not know an Ida Tormenkov,” she said flatly.
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But if you do, and she’s here, I suggest you ask her to give herself up.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She is wanted for questioning in a murder—” Inadvertently, Wetzon gasped. Katerina’s eyes followed her gasp and they locked into hers for a brief instant. So they were finally calling Peepsie’s death murder.
Smith chose that moment to come flamboyantly down the stairs, mink coat flying. “Dear Katerina,” she cooed, barging right in. She batted her eyelids at O’Melvany. “And who is this lovely man?”
O’Melvany looked confused, then beamed, and Wetzon groaned inwardly. No one was safe from Smith’s seductive charm.
“I do not know an Ida Tormenkov, Sergeant,” Katerina repeated, ignoring Smith.
“Sergeant what? Ida who?” Smith looked puzzled.
“I can get a search warrant, Miss Sakar,” O’Melvany said, turning his attention back to Katerina.
“What’s going on here?” Smith whispered loudly, sidling over to Wetzon.
“You must do what you have to do, but you will not find the woman here.”
O’Melvany nodded at Wetzon. “This lady says otherwise.” Katerina’s cold and furious eyes found Wetzon, as did Smith’s.
“Wetzon,” Smith snapped, “why do you always humiliate me? After this, how can I ever come back here?”
Wetzon felt her face flush. Had she been wrong? Had she simply fallen asleep and dreamed it? Had the Russian accents just triggered a memory?
“I cannot help you, Officer.” Katerina did not move.
“I suggest you tell Ms. Tormenkov to come forward. If she’s innocent, her life is in danger.” O’Melvany thrust his card at Katerina, who refused to take it. He shrugged and dropped it on the Lucite desk in front of Lois-Jane Lane. “She can call me in confidence at that number.”
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Wetzon said when she and Smith and O’Melvany stepped out of the elevator and into the street lobby of the Galleria. Smith was fuming. Wetzon could almost imagine steam coming out of her ears.
O’Melvany touched his forehead to each of them and strode out to the curb. Wetzon followed him to where a police car was parked at a fire hydrant, a uniformed cop at the wheel. O’Melvany bent awkwardly and spoke to the cop through the rolled-down window. The cop picked up his transmitter and talked into it, then he nodded to O’Melvany.
“I guess Katerina stopped us cold, didn’t she?” Wetzon said.
O’Melvany turned to her with his hand on the door. “We’ll see about that.”