“Alicia?” Madame called in a soft singsong, as if addressing a nervous child (or excitable lunatic).
Draped in a loosely tied terry robe, Alicia’s petite form was perched on the edge of the bed, facing a limited view (in more ways than one). The window was large, but only ten floors above Manhattan concrete it didn’t frame much beyond the reflective glass of a modern office building.
“Clare is here,” Madame crooned.
“Clare?” Alicia burbled. She turned, dabbed her eyes. “Thank g-goodness you’ve arrived. Come, my friend, sit down . . .”
My friend? I stiffened.
Over the past six weeks, this woman had been civil to me but far from warm—and she’d never, ever addressed me as friend. Before this moment, her treatment of me, a lowly shop manager (in her eyes), could best be described as mild condescension.
“Sit beside me, Clare, right here . . .”
Alicia patted the mattress. I ignored her direction and instead pulled over an armchair and positioned the seat opposite her—the better to see (and read) her face.
Although Madame claimed this woman was an old friend, even she wasn’t sure of Alicia’s age. (Fifties? Early sixties? I wasn’t sure, either.) “Tasteful” plastic surgery was apparently involved, but whatever the contributing factors, Alicia Bower cultivated the sort of highly polished “urban executive” look that Esther, my most acerbic barista, referred to as severely attractive.
Favoring dark pin-striped suits, she typically wore her cocoa-colored hair in an angular flapper cut. Her flawless skin, pale enough for the undead to covet, appeared all the more milky with fresh-blood lipstick (vampiric overkill, if you asked me, but then I seldom wore any lipstick, so who was I to judge?).
A world traveler, Alicia lately resided in London, but I’d seen her type countless times in Manhattan. Her hyperpolish came off as intimidating, and she very well meant it to be.
On this particular morning, however, the soufflé had fallen.
Dried tears mottled sunken cheeks; her Dresden doll complexion had gone from cappuccino cream to sickbed blanched; and her usually perfect-as-plastic coiffure looked like a tangled crow’s nest. What shocked me the most was her mental condition. Shaken and fragile, she had all the composure of a trapped chinchilla.
“Tell me, Clare . . .” She leaned closer, markedly widened her glistening eyes (to appear innocent?). “Madame mentioned you have close friends on the police force?”
I glanced at Madame. You’re kidding, right?
Anyone who ran a business in Manhattan knew the entire town ran on favors. But no amount of tucking in an NYPD lieutenant (even a decorated leader of a task force) was going to get a suspect off a murder rap—and my former mother-in-law should have known that.
“Clare can advise us,” Madame quickly interjected. “That’s what I meant, dear.”
“Well, before I can do any advising,” I said, “I need to know exactly what we’re dealing with. What in the world happened?”
“Tell Clare,” Madame prompted.
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it!” Alicia blurted then her lower lip began to quiver. “I don’t know what happened! That’s the reason I need Clare’s help!” With a mournful wail, she ripped a succession of tissues out of the box by her side and buried her face in the paper pillow.
I turned to Madame. Okay, Ms. Interpreter—interpret!
“The pertinent events began last night,” Madame explained. “After our little brainstorming dinner . . .”
I remembered the meal well enough. Three of us, downstairs, enjoying coq au vin and pot-au-feu in a little brasserie attached to the hotel. After my tarte tatin, I took off, leaving the two old friends chatting over French pressed Sumatra.
“Earlier in the day, Alicia had mentioned the brasserie’s breakfasts were heavenly,” Madame said. “Fresh-baked croissants, ginger-peach marmalade—”
“Strawberry-lavender jam and p-persimmon preserves,” Alicia added. “J-just divine.”
Madame nodded. “So I brought along a few things for an overnight stay and checked in. We hugged good night and Alicia went back to her room. Then she checked her messages and found a business acquaintance had left her a request for a meeting . . .”
“A business acquaintance,” I repeated into the lengthening silence. “A man? A woman?”
Alicia lifted her head. She burbled something. I looked to Madame.
“A man,” she said flatly.
I turned back to Alicia. “So this man . . . he tried to murder you?”
“No!” She shook her head, began to sob. “He came up to my room and . . . well, he was quite attractive, you know? And we’d been flirting for a few weeks. Naturally, two adults, you know . . . we started to fool around . . . but I had s-so much wine at dinner, I m-must have j-just . . . burble, burble . . .”
I looked to Madame. “She must have?”
“Passed out.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And then what happened?”
Alicia threw up her hands. “That’s just it! I don’t know what happened! Something must have happened. But I slept through it!” She wailed again and buried her face back into the Kleenex cloud.
Madame patted Alicia’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, dear, really . . . you must try. Your hotel room was dark when you woke, isn’t that right?”
Alicia nodded, composing herself. “Dark, yes. The sun was up, but the curtains were drawn. I turned in the bed. Dennis was beside me. I reached out for him, and his skin felt so cold. And then I felt something sticky. I turned on the bedside lamp and then I saw . . .”
Her voice trailed off and Niagara Falls turned on.
Okay, that’s it. Between Alicia’s unremitting tears and this room’s aquatic color scheme, I was beginning to get that drowning feeling.
Standing up, I faced Madame. “What’s her room number?”
She handed me a key card. “Five doors down.” She lowered her voice. “I saw the corpse myself. The situation appears quite serious for my friend here. You let me know what you think.”
Three
Playing people was easy, so astoundingly easy. Just tell them a story—the right kind of story, a story they want to hear. They’ll swallow it whole and ask for seconds . . .
Five years ago, her suicide had been a rebirth—a new life with new people, new work, and a new identity. But she’d become more than a newborn marionette. Now she was the puppeteer, carefully pulling their strings, ultimately controlling the stage.
She glanced out the window, welcomed the strengthening light of the morning sun. Giggles bubbled up, as they often did, and she bit her cheek to quell them. Five years ago, on that railroad bridge, she’d anticipated sacrifice, challenge, pain. What she hadn’t expected was the giddiness. Or the satisfaction.
Such sweet satisfaction!
She had never guessed what astonishing powers this new life would bring: the power to lie and manipulate; the power to be invisible and invincible; the power to dream, to plan, and finally to execute . . .
I stepped out of Madame’s room, into the carpeted corridor. Far down the hall I noticed a housekeeping cart, caught a glimpse of a slender woman with a dirty blond ponytail. Clad in the powder blue uniform of a hotel maid, she used a key card around her neck to slip into one of the guest rooms.
Other than her, the floor was deserted and deadly quiet. I moved along, passing complimentary newspapers, a half-eaten breakfast tray.