Nod.
Charles came back into the kitchen, carrying a scrap of paper. He looked at his wife accusingly. "You been shooting off your mouth again?" he demanded.
"She hasn't said a word," Dora told him. "I've been doing all the talking, about what a great chef my husband is."
"She talks too much," he grumbled, and handed over the slip of paper. "That's Mrs. Eleanor's phone number and address. West Side," he added snifiily.
"Thank you, Charles," Dora said. "Now would you get my hat and coat, please; I'm leaving. Nice to see you again, Clara."
"Likewise," Clara said.
Dora hurried back to her hotel, anxious to get to her notebook and record all the details of that surprising conversation with Olivia. Plus what she had learned from Clara's dumb show.
She filled two pages with notes that included all her recollections of what Mrs. Starrett had said and implied about the Clayton-Eleanor-Helene triangle and the Felicia-Turner relationship. If this entire case was a soap opera, Dora reflected grimly, it had a deadly plot. Too many corpses for laughing.
She went down to the dining room for dinner and ordered a tuna salad, trying to recall if this was her fourth or fifth diet since being assigned to the Starrett claim. Brooding on her futile attempts to lose poundage, she remembered what John Wenden had said about her increasing girth: "More of you to love." What a nice man!
She returned to her suite and called him. He wasn't in but she left a message, hoping he might get back to her before midnight. He didn't, so she called Mario. He wasn't home. There was nothing left to do but brush her teeth and go to bed in a grumpy mood, wondering what the hell her men were doing and imagining direful possibilities.
Chapter 31
It was easy to fake it, with Clayton or any other man, and Helene Pierce had learned to deliver a great performance. She considered herself a "method" actress and her motivation was that growing hoard of unset diamonds.
The dialogue came easily:
"Oh, Clay, you're too much… you drive me wild… I can't get enough of you… Where did you learn these things?"
She left him hyperventilating on the rumpled sheets and went into the kitchen to pour fresh drinks from the bottle of Perrier-Jouet he had brought. The guy had good taste, no doubt about it, and there were no moths in his wallet. Helene wanted to play this one very, very carefully and, for once in her life, sacrifice today's pleasure for tomorrow's treasure.
He was sitting up when she returned to the bedroom with the champagne. He was lighting a cigar, but she was even willing to endure that.
"Here you are, hon," she said, handing him the glass.
She lay beside him, leaning to kiss his hairy shoulder. "You are something," she said. "One of these days you'll have to call 911 and have me taken to Intensive Care."
He laughed delightedly, sipped his champagne, puffed his cigar, and owned the world. "I can never get enough of you," he told her. "It's like I've been born again. Oh God, the time I wasted on that bag of bones."
"Eleanor?" she said casually. "What's happening there?"
"Like I told you, she's moved out. My attorney, Arthur Rushkin, doesn't handle divorces but he's put me in touch with a good man, a real pirate who's willing to go to the mat for the last nickel. That's the way things stand now: My guy is talking to her guy. Listen, sweetheart, this is going to take time. Are you willing to wait?"
"After what we just did," she said, looking at him with swimming eyes, "I'll wait forever."
"That's my girl," he said, patting her knee. "Everything will come up roses, you'll see."
He started talking about the way they'd live once they were married. A duplex on the East Side. Cars for each; maybe a Corniche and a Porsche. Live-in servants.
"Younger and more attractive than Charles and Clara," he said.
They'd probably dine out most evenings. Then the theatre, ballet, opera, a few carefully selected charity benefits. A cruise in the winter, of course, and occasional shopping trips to Paris, London, Milan, via the Concorde. They might consider buying a second home, or even a third. Vermont and St. Croix would be nice. World-class interior decorators, naturally. Architectural Digest stuff.
As he spun this vision of their future together, Helene listened intently, realizing that everything he described was possible; he wasn't just blowing smoke. Turner had told her how much Clay was drawing from Starrett Fine Jewelry as salary, annual bonus, dividends, and his share of that deal with Ramon Schnabl.
And Clayton had a million coming in when that claim on his father's insurance was approved. And when his mother shuffled off, he'd be a multi multi. So all his plans for the good life were doable, and she'd be a fool, she decided, to reject it for a more limited tomorrow with Turner.
"How does it sound to you?" Clayton asked, grinning like a little kid who's just inherited a candy store.
"It sounds like paradise," Helene said.
"It will be," he assured her. "You know that old chestnut: 'Stick with me, kid, and you'll be wearing diamonds.' In this case it's true. Which reminds me, I have another chunk of ice for your collection."
"You can give it to me later," she said, taking the cigar from his fingers and putting it aside. "Let's have an encore first. You just lay back and let me do all the work."
When he left her apartment, finally, she had a lovely four-carat trilliant, a D-rated stone that was totally flawless. But before he handed it over, he subjected her to a ten-minute lecture on the four Cs of judging diamonds: color, clarity, cut, and carat weight.
After he was gone, she sprayed the entire apartment with deodorant, trying to get rid of the rancid stink of his cigar. Then she sat down with her fund of diamonds, just playing with them while she pondered her smartest course of action.
Turner was the problem, of course. She had a commitment there, and since the Sid Loftus thing, Turner had an edge that could prove troublesome. But she thought she knew how that could be finessed. She worked out a rough game plan, and as her first move, she phoned Felicia Starrett.
Chapter 32
He insisted on taking her to a steak joint on West 46th Street.
"It's not a fancy place," he said. "Mostly cops and actors go there. But the food is good, and the prices are right. We'll have a rare sirloin with garlic butter, baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, a salad with blue cheese dressing, and maybe some Bass ale to wash it all down. How does that sound?"
"Oh God," Dora moaned, "there goes my diet."
"Start another one tomorrow," Wenden advised.
It was a smoky tunnel, all stained wood, tarnished brass lamps, and mottled mirrors behind the long bar. The walls were plastered with photos of dead boxers and racehorses, and posters of Broadway shows that had closed decades ago. Even the aproned waiters looked left over from a lost age.
"What have you been up to?" John asked, buttering a heel of pumpernickel.
"Nothing much," Dora said. "I went to see Mrs. Olivia Starrett to tell her how sorry I was about Callaway's death."
"How's she taking it?"
"She was sitting up in bed and looked a little puffy around the gills, but she's coping. She's a tough old lady."
She told the detective some of what she had learned. Some, but not all. Clayton and Eleanor were getting a divorce, and he wanted to marry Helene Pierce. And Felicia Starrett was playing footsie with Turner Pierce.
"Interesting," John said, "but I don't know what it all means-if anything. Do you?"
"Not really. Sounds to me like a game of Musical Chairs."
"Yeah," he said. "You want to hear about the Sid Loftus homicide now or will it spoil your dinner?"
"Nothing's going to spoil my dinner," she said. "I'm famished. If I never see another tuna salad as long as I live, it'll be too soon."
They finished their martinis hastily when the waiter brought big wooden bowls of salad and poured their ales.