accepted you because Demos was pushing the sister idea. Yes, I think I will be their spokeswoman for the new perfume. Do you know they’re considering calling it
Lindsay’s knuckles showed white, she was clutching the phone so tightly. “Will you say anything about me? Do you plan to tell people I’m your half-sister and it’s such a pity and your husband, the prince, and—” Lindsay ran out of words. She was breathing fast and her hands were so clammy the phone was slipping from her grasp.
Sydney mused aloud. “Do you think it would even come up, Lindsay? That is your real name, isn’t it? How depressing for Father to learn that you’re ashamed of your name. Of course, on the other side of the coin, he’s relieved that you’re not connected with him in any way.”
Lindsay knew Sydney would remind everyone the moment the opportunity arose, simply because she would be recognized very soon as the wife who shot her husband in bed with her sister in Paris five years before. She’d never take that. She’d shift things and bring Lindsay into it and Lindsay would end up with the blame all over again. She very gently replaced the phone into its cradle. She drank another Diet Coke and went to bed.
At midnight she was still awake, lying in the dark, thinking, remembering, her breath hitching even as she thought of the man’s name.
His name was Edward Bensonhurst. He was a businessman in automotive parts, with two kids and an ex-wife in New Jersey, and now he lived in Manhattan. Lindsay had met him at a party and liked him. He, however, had wanted to have sex. When she told him no, he’d turned ugly. She told him off and got away from him. Then he’d called her two days later and laughed. He knew who she was. He told her he could play a prince if that’s what turned her on. He was the same age as the prince had been in Paris. Hell, maybe he could even get his ex-wife to come over in time and shoot blanks at him. He’d even wear leather if she wanted him to.
She never knew how he’d found out and he hadn’t said. She’d hung up on him and kept her answering machine on for the next three weeks. He’d called ten more times, cajoling, making threats, but finally he’d just stopped calling. She prayed he’d finally decided she wasn’t worth his effort. God, would it never end?
The phone rang and Lindsay grabbed for it. For an instant she thought it was Edward Bensonhurst again. Foolish, so foolish. She answered it and heard her father’s voice.
Vincent Rafael Demos sat in his office in the dark and in absolute silence for a long time. The air conditioning cut out all the noise from the street, eleven stories below. It was ten o’clock at night. Even Glen had left an hour earlier, in a huff, refusing to cook him any dinner. “Not even a microwave omelet,” Glen had shrieked at him.
Demos was sitting there in a very cold office and he was sweating. He’d memorized the brief newspaper account and it played and replayed endlessly in his head.
“. . . Unidentified man, approximate age sixty, found stabbed to death in East Orange, New Jersey. No identification was found on the body, just a note reading…”
That damned bloody note! God, and someone hoped a reader would recognize Gloria or a Demos and call the police? That was all he needed, to have the cops coming to call. He knew he had no choice, not anymore. If he didn’t respond now, there would be new clues released to the cops, and slowly, surely, the net would tighten around him. Just look how they’d set up this private investigator, this damned ex-cop, so Demos would see just how serious they were. Yeah, the guy, Taylor, was even following the victim and they’d killed him, thumbing their noses at the cops and him and this Taylor. He had to do something because if he didn’t there would just be another incident. The cops would come. Someone else would probably die and maybe the someone else would be someone Demos knew.
Finally he picked up his phone and dialed the number. There was an answering machine. When he heard the beep, Vinnie said only, “I’ll leave the money tomorrow at the usual place.”
He thought of the beautiful Stanislas original oil he would have to sell to get enough money together. He’d bought it in 1981 in the Village when it had been dirt cheap and he had been dirt poor. He’d hocked his hunting knife to buy it. He thought about the dead man, probably Ellery Custer. It sounded like poor Custer, killed to send Demos a message, probably stabbed by that bitch Susan with that gold-plated stiletto of hers, the one that was a gift from her ex-husband, the note doubtless planted by her on poor old Custer’s body, giving that phony name, Gloria, and the real one, Demos. Him.
Well, it was over now. He was safe.
Lindsay took a taxi from San Francisco airport to Presbyterian Hospital on Webster Street. It was midafternoon when she arrived. The first person she saw was her new stepmother, Holly, sitting in the small waiting room reading a magazine. She was swinging her leg, her shoes off. She looked up, saw Lindsay, and smiled.
“The dutiful granddaughter is here. Well, good. The old lady’s been asking for you nonstop. I didn’t want your father to call you—it’s such a horribly long trip for you—but he said his mother told him that if you didn’t come, she’d blame him and she’d fix him but good, and that, we all know, means money. You see, she knew you’d come, regardless of what you were doing. She’s an old witch, God knows, but tough. I have to admire her for that.”
“Yes, I’d come for her.”
“You think she’ll give you any of her fortune, Lindsay? Is that why you’re such a little sweetie?”
“No.”
“Good, don’t ever kid yourself, because she won’t. Everything will go to your father and to me. It’s only fair. He’s her only son. Too, she knows you’re making good money now with your modeling.”
“I’m going to see her now. Where is Father?”
“He’s in court, naturally. He works, you know. He told me to wait here until you arrived. Now that you have, I’m off. Have fun with the old witch. Oh, incidentally, you’re to stay at the mansion, Grandma’s orders.”
Lindsay didn’t want to go anywhere near the mansion, but she didn’t say anything. She walked to her grandmother’s room and quietly pushed the door open. It was a lovely private room, decorated in soft pastels— peach and pale green. Several French impressionist paintings, excellent copies, were on the walls. There was a small sofa and two chairs near the hospital bed and a large window.
She stood there quietly, looking at her grandmother. She looked small, that was Lindsay’s first thought. She was eighty-three years old but she didn’t look it. Her skin was smooth and soft-looking, supple, her silver-white hair still thick, her eyebrows well-defined, her cheeks pink. Lindsay had seen very old people before, and invariably they looked like fleshless mummies, all seams and bones, with their pink scalps showing through sparse hair. But Gates Foxe looked like she always had. She was wearing a soft yellow bed jacket with antique Carravannes lace around the collar. Lindsay walked quietly to the bed and stood there.
Gates opened her eyes.
“Hello, Grandmother.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Lindsay.”
Lindsay grinned at her. “Why is it you always look so wonderful and make me feel like a grub?”
“It’s my bones. Excellent bones, and you’ve got them too, my dear. Except for my blasted hip. I fell on the stairs, so clumsy of me really, and it snapped like a wishbone. But I’ll be up and about in no time at all. No more bed for me than is absolutely necessary. It reduces one, you know, to have to look up at people.”
“I believe you. Do you have much pain?”
“No. See this tube here? Whenever the pain is too bad, I simply press this little button and painkiller is released directly into my bloodstream. No waiting for the nurses to decide enough time has passed. Medical practices are improving. Now, my dear, tell me how long you can stay. Tell me how the modeling is going and when you’ll hit the cover of another big magazine.”
Lindsay had sent her a half-dozen copies of
“I canceled out three shoots. They weren’t all that important. I just have to be back in New York in a week and a half. That’s a biggie for
“Sit down, Lindsay. You’re looming, and it makes me uncomfortable. That’s it, pull that chair over. You’re so tall, just like your grandfather, and now that you’re a model, you stand much taller. I like that. I always disapproved of you slouching when you were younger. Dear me, to see you all grown-up. It makes me feel positively ancient.
