“You.” Jane Donaldson pushed herself through the excited crowd to address Randy. “What does it feel like to save a man’s life?”

  “All in a day’s work at Haggerman’s Catskills Resort,” Randy said modestly. He smiled at Velvet. Her face glowed as she looked at him.

  My aunt Tatiana was next to step forward, followed by one of her chambermaids, their arms laden with hotel towels. She plucked one off the top and threw it to Todd, then another to Randy, and finally one to me. “Dry off,” she ordered, “or you’ll catch your death, the lot of you.”

  A light bulb flashed and a camera shutter clicked.

  Chapter 24

  “Chief Dawson’s on his way,” Richard said.

  I had a towel thrown over my shoulders, my dress was soaked, the outline of my bra showed through the wet fabric, my girdle and stockings were sticking to my legs, my shoes sloshed when I walked, strands of water weeds were stuck in my hair, and my once-stylish poodle cut looked like a sheepdog emerging from a bath.

  I turned my head quickly away from the mirror behind the reception desk. I’d staggered up to the hotel with Velvet and Randy. A movie security guard walked with Todd. Gary yelled after us, telling Todd to hurry up and get into dry clothes, he was losing the morning light. Half the reporters rushed Matthew, asking if this would be the end of Catskill Dreams. The other half ran after Todd, shouting questions and demanding the actor make a statement.

  Todd said nothing; he kept his eyes on the ground and his lips pursed tightly together. Young Lacy fell into step beside him, and no one shooed her away. Her sister, Carol, along with several other teenage girls, ignored Todd and whispered excitedly as Randy passed.

  “Soooo heroic,” I heard one of them say.

  “Soooo handsome,” sighed another.

  We climbed the stairs to the veranda. The two couples playing bridge in a quiet corner paid us no attention, but they were the only ones. Everyone else stopped what they were doing to stare.

  “I want no reporters inside,” I said to the bellhop as we walked through the doors.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He planted himself in the entrance, feet apart, arms crossed over his chest, formidable expression on his face.

  Richard had slipped up to me and spoke quietly. “I got Chief Dawson. He’s on his way.”

  “Good.” I stopped in the center of the lobby, dripping lake water on the carpet. Receptionists watched me from behind the long mahogany counter, office clerks and cook’s assistants clustered around the stairs, bellhops filled the doorway, a press of guests behind them, and more guests peered over the second-floor railing or gaped at me from the depths of the comfortable chairs. The hairdresser stood in the hallway, still holding her scissors, and two of her clients had leapt up from under the dryers without bothering to cover the rollers in their hair. Breakfasters huddled in the dining room doorway, clutching slices of half-eaten toast or glasses of juice. Luke hadn’t bothered to put down his full tray before coming to see what was going on. No one said a word.

  “That was so cool,” Lacy shouted. “You should have seen it. Mrs. Grady saved Todd. She’s a hero.”

  I didn’t feel much like a hero. “Richard,” I said, “can you show Mr. Thompson to the men’s room? You”—I pointed at a hotel security guard, standing around uselessly—“see that Mr. Thompson is not disturbed. Randy, get yourself dried off and dressed. You’re about Todd’s size. Can you grab him some clothes when you come back?”

  “Sure,” Randy said.

  “I’ll go with him,” Gordon the bellhop said, “and get the clothes for the other guy. Save some time.”

  “Thank you,” I said. It was summer, and even though it was early in the day, it was hot. People walked around in wet bathing suits all the time, but Todd had had a shock and he needed to get dry and warm fast.

  Velvet walked with Randy and Gordon. She and Randy spoke softly, exchanged smiles, and then the two men slipped through the crowd and disappeared.

  “If you are an employee of Haggerman’s,” I said in a loud voice, “I am wondering why you have nothing to do. Has the hotel gone out of business? Luke Robinson, is breakfast service over?”

  “What? I mean, no. I mean, no, Mrs. Grady.”

  “Glad to hear it. Please return to your duties everyone.”

  Staff scurried away.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “it looks as though it’s going to be another fabulous Catskills day. Please don’t let us keep you from getting out there and enjoying it.”

  No one actually left, but they pretended to be returning to whatever they’d been doing.

  “You need dry clothes too, Elizabeth,” Velvet said.

  “I’ve got a sweater in my office. That’ll do.”

  Behind me, a herd of stampeding elephants hit the planks of the veranda and burst through the hotel doors. Not elephants as I’d first assumed, but stampeding newspaper reporters. They swarmed around the bellhop trying vainly to keep them out and ran through the lobby, almost shoving our guests out of the way in their rush for the writing room to be first to hit the phones.

  “Elizabeth!” Jim Westenham shouted from the middle of the pack. “Can I use the phone in the office?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re on your own from now on.”

  Jim shoved aside the reporter from the Chicago Tribune.

  I led the way to the staff hallway and the business offices. The clerks scattered as I approached and settled themselves behind their desks, pretending to be fully occupied. “Tell the switchboard, I want no calls,” I shouted.

  My own office door was shut. I gave Velvet a look, she nodded, and I threw open the door.

  “There you are,” Mary-Alice said cheerfully. “Oh, it’s you, Elizabeth. I asked one of your clerks to get us some tea. It seems to be taking a long time.”

  “I’ll see to that.” Velvet stuck her head out the door and bellowed. “Where’s that tea!”

  When she pulled her head back into my office, Dave Dawson and Richard Kennelwood came with her. “Todd’s drying himself off, and two security guards are on the men’s room door,” Richard said.

  Gloria Grant sat behind my desk. Her face was composed, her hands folded in her lap. She’d tucked her hair neatly into its pins. She got slowly, almost regally, to her feet. “Good morning, Chief Dawson. I assume you are here for me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I hear there’s been some trouble. You can tell me about it at the Summervale police station.”

  To my considerable surprise Gloria turned to me with a smile. “You’re very clever, Elizabeth. I shouldn’t be surprised. You take after your mother, although you conceal the steel beneath that smiling womanly exterior better than she does. Perhaps that’s because you’re not in show business. All the better for you.” She looked at Velvet. “And you. You’re not a good actress, not at all, but you managed to fool me for long enough. Todd never asked you to run away with him. No matter. If not you, and not now, another sweet young thing will come along soon enough once he starts feeling his power.” She smiled. “I hope I’ve put a stop to that. Make him think twice before he strays from his marriage vows.”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was angry. All the gracious charm and flattery in the world couldn’t cover up the fact that this woman had killed a man and almost killed my mother. My mother, who’d done nothing to her but offer friendship and hospitality. “Olivia was your friend,” I spat. “Does friendship count for nothing to you?”

  “It counts for a great deal,” Gloria said. “Oftentimes the friendship of women is all we have in our later years. I had no intention of killing her. It was the middle of the day, plenty of people around. I judged the dose carefully, knowing Olivia would be sick almost immediately and help would arrive.”

  “Rubbish. You couldn’t have known I’d come home when I did. She might not have been found until it was”—I swallowed—“too late.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, dear, I planned to excuse myself from dinner with Gary and the others, and come back to check on her.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  She shrugged, not much caring. “I considered that a chance worth taking. You were getting close to discovering the truth, and I had to try to put a stop to that. I wanted to add a little something to your food, but you have a highly irregular mealtime schedule and people are around you all the time. I simply couldn’t see how to manage that.”

  Dave Dawson hadn’t said a word since he suggested going to the police station. He stood still and quiet, not shifting his feet or adjusting his shoulders, his hat in his hands, his beige uniform blending into the office walls. He was letting Gloria talk it all out, to confess.

  A light tap sounded at the door, and Velvet opened it to accept the tea tray. They’d gone to the trouble to serve the tea properly in the china we use for afternoon tea on the veranda—a pretty green-and-pink teapot with two delicate cups and saucers in the same pattern, and small white containers of milk and sugar. Velvet put the tray on top of my stack of budget papers. Mary-Alice glanced at Dave Dawson. He gave her a nod, and she poured and handed a cup to Gloria.

  “Thank you.” Gloria sat down and accepted it.

  “You added a little something to Olivia’s food on the room service tray,” I said. “Something you stole from our gardening shed.”

  Gloria sipped her tea and nodded. “You should have your staff keep that door locked at all times. Plenty of children running around, you know. Who knows what things children get up to when they’re unsupervised. Some of your nannies don’t pay the attention to their charges that they should, never mind the mothers!”

  “I’ll get straight on that,” I said dryly. “You went into the shed, and you didn’t shut the door properly when you left. You were searching for something you could give to Elias. You knew what would work, didn’t you? I noticed you like plants. You’d admired our flowers, and you were seen in conversation with one of our gardeners. We’ve had an attack of moles this year.”

  “Moles are such a pest. They can totally destroy a lovely flower bed or patch of lawn. Is that what gave me away, dear? My gardening knowledge?”

  “Partly. That plus the fact that you kept telling people Elias didn’t want Todd to get the part in this movie, but everyone said that simply wasn’t true. You were trying to throw suspicion away from yourself, and you don’t like Todd anyway, so might as well put the suspicion on him. You stood up for Rebecca; you tried to protect her from Elias, but you knew you were failing. Same with Mary-Alice. You knew she was the force behind Elias’s success. I think you believed that if Elias was gone Mary-Alice would be able to openly influence Gary.”

  “I didn’t—” Mary-Alice protested.

  “I know you didn’t, dear,” Gloria said. “Unlike Elizabeth here, you don’t have the gumption to stick up for yourself.”

  Mary-Alice opened her mouth to protest. She closed it again.

  “Your father and I were great friends, did you know that? Probably not, but it’s of no consequence now. He would have betrayed me, eventually, when I started aging, as all the rest of them did. I will confess I wasn’t acting entirely altruistically. This movie would be better, much better, if it has a scene in which the character of the grandmother directly confronts the girlfriend. Two women on the opposite ends of the social spectrum, head to head. The contrast between the older woman—elegant, rich, powerful—and the young one with nothing but her beauty and her sweet innocence. That is the stuff Academy Award–winning movies are made of. But, as long as I was cast in the role of grandmother, Elias couldn’t see it. He wouldn’t see it. He wouldn’t give me a chance to once again prove my acting chops, not even if you, Mary-Alice, told him to.”

  Gloria put down her teacup and stood in one elegant wave. “What is done is done. Chief Dawson, my fate is in your hands.”

  He stepped forward.

  “For now,” Gloria added. She turned to me with a smile. “I am not without influence or means. No one is mourning Elias, and your mother is unharmed. I’ll look forward to returning to your lovely resort once my lawyers finish clearing up this little mess.”

  “You will not be welcome,” I said.

  Dave took Gloria’s arm. “I’ll be back later for a statement from you, Elizabeth,” he said.

  He threw open the door, and a cluster of shame-faced clerks fell back and rushed to their desks. Matthew Oswald and a deputy were waiting in the outer room.

  Dave and Gloria left; the deputy followed them. Matthew came into my office, shaking his head.

  “Goodness,” Mary-Alice said.

  “You could run the refrigerators in this place on that woman’s emotions,” Velvet said. “Do you really believe she killed Elias for Rebecca’s sake?”

  “I believe she believes she did. But she couldn’t keep herself from saying she wanted a bigger part in the movie.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” Mary-Alice said. “This is Todd’s character’s movie. Not his grandmother’s. I tried to tell Gloria that, but Gloria doesn’t listen to anything Gloria doesn’t want to hear.”

  We stood silently, all of us lost in our own thoughts and swirling emotions. We started at a voice.

  “What on earth is going on here? Has everyone lost their minds? Guests are huddled in corners whispering, no one is doing a lick of work, and newspapermen are crawling out of the woodwork.” Olivia stood in the doorway, dressed in yesterday’s stained and badly wrinkled clothes. She wore no makeup, and her hair was stuffed into a lopsided lump at the back of her head. “Elizabeth, I tried to get someone to call you, but the hotel switchboard told the nurse they wouldn’t put her call through. I never! I had to get a taxi to bring me home from the hospital. As soon as I stepped out of the cab, I was waylaid by reporters shouting for a statement. I had absolutely no idea what nonsense they were on about.” She patted her hair. “I must look a dreadful mess. You could have warned me they’d be taking my picture.”

  “For once, Olivia,” I said, “I don’t think you need to worry about it being your picture in the papers.”

  Chapter 25

  Once everyone had left my office, I’d gone to the house to change into dry clothes and tuck Olivia—shocked into silence at the news that her longtime friend had been arrested for trying to murder her—into bed for the remainder of the day. She didn’t need to rest, she told me, but Aunt Tatiana and I insisted.

  With Olivia settled and me changed, I returned to the hotel to try to get some work done. The movie crew had packed up all their stuff and cleared out without finishing the scene between Todd and Roger. The last of the journalists had been evicted from the property, and they stampeded into town to try to get a statement out of Dave. Good luck with that, I thought.

  Francis Monahan nodded politely to me as he weeded flower beds. I spent a few moments watching Velvet giving a tennis lesson and saw Randy sitting high over the pool in his lifeguard’s chair, while giggling teenage girls paraded and preened under his ever-watchful eye. Despite Lacy telling everyone who’d listen, and many who didn’t want to, that I’d saved Todd, it seemed as though the role of hero-of-the-hour had been assigned to Randy.

  I was fine with that. About all I’d done was thrash around in the water.

  I went into the hotel through the rear entrance. In the kitchen Chef Leonardo and Saladman Nick were screaming at each other. I kept on walking.

  “I can take you for a ride after work, if you like,” Luke was saying to a young and pretty cook’s helper as I passed the room where we stored dishes, cutlery, and linens.

  As I walked through the business office, I told the clerks, “I’ll be in for the rest of the day if anyone needs to speak to me.” I went through to my small, cramped, dark office. I left the door open, dropped into the chair behind my desk, picked up my pencil, plucked the first message slip off the top of the stack, and picked up the phone.

  I worked straight through, only looking up when a kitchen helper brought me coffee and cookies and later my lunch. I was highly relieved to see I hadn’t been given a tuna fish sandwich today.

  Dave Dawson phoned to say Gloria had been formally charged with the murder of Elias T. Theropodous and the attempted murder of Olga Petrovia Montgomery. (My mother, I feared, would not be happy at having her real name in the official paperwork.)

  Late in the afternoon, Mary-Alice called to fill me in on what was happening with the movie. “Matthew and the studio have agreed to continue with the picture. Gloria’s scenes are finished, but they’re going to be scrubbed entirely and we’re rushing a younger actress up from the city to play Todd’s mother instead. She’ll mostly stand in the background and wring her hands while Todd and Roger argue. Matthew has asked me to check if we can use your property to reshoot the scenes without Gloria. Shouldn’t need more than a couple of days at most.”

  I sighed heavily and spun my pencil on my desk. “I don’t know, Mary-Alice. We’ve gone to a heck of a lot of trouble and inconvenience having you lot here.” Not to mention my mother almost being murdered and me almost drowning trying to save their star. I waited.

  “I understand,” Mary-Alice said at last. “I’m authorized to double your fee.”

  “That’ll do it.”

  She chucked. “I figured it would. Before I let you get back to work, I have some news of my own. Matthew has asked me to direct the new scenes.”

  “That’s great!”

  “He seems to think I have a better understanding of the dynamics between Todd and his family and between Todd and Rebecca than Gary does. Gary is, needless to say, not happy, but he’s been promised he can still direct the scenes when Todd supposedly goes off to the war, so that’s mollified him. Somewhat.”

  “Perhaps that’ll be the start of something for you,” I said. “And you’ll get the recognition you deserve.”