Weep No More My Lady by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

mounds of dirt or listen to hammering. And that place still isn’t finished. Will you tell me why they needed a Roman bath here?”
    Elizabeth thought of Leila’s remarks about the Roman bath. “That’s what Leila used to say.”
    â€œShe was right. l’ll need to have you turn over now.” Expertly the masseuse re-draped the sheet. “And listen, you brought up her name. Do you realize how much glamour Leila gave this place? People wanted to bearound her. They’d come here hoping to see her. She was a one-woman ad for the Spa. And she always talked about meeting Ted Winters here. Now—I don’t know. There’s something so different. The Baron spends money like a maniac—you saw the new Jacuzzis. The interior work on that bathhouse goes on and on. And Min is trying to cut corners. It’s a joke. He puts in a Roman bath, and she tells us not to waste towels!”
    The facialist was new, a Japanese woman. The unwinding that had begun with the massage was completed by the warm mask she applied after the cleansing and steaming. Elizabeth drifted off to sleep. She was awakened by the woman’s soft voice. “Have you had a nice nap? I left you an extra forty minutes. You looked so peaceful, and I had plenty of time.”

6
    WHILE THE MAID UNPACKED HER BAGS, ALVIRAH MEEHAN investigated her new quarters. She went from room to room, her eyes darting about, missing nothing. In her mind she was composing what she would dictate into her brand-new recording machine.
    â€œWill that be all, madame?”
    The maid was at the door of the sitting room. “Yes, thank you.” Alvirah tried to imitate the tone of her Tuesday job, Mrs. Stevens. A little hoity-toity, but still friendly.
    The minute the door closed behind the maid, she raced to get her recorder out of her voluminous pocketbook. The reporter from the New York Globe had taught her how to use it. She settled herself on the couch in the living room and began:
    â€œWell, here I am at Cypress Point Spa and buhlieve me it’s the cat’s meow. This is my first recording and I want to start by thanking Mr. Evans for his confidence in me. When he interviewed me and Willy about winning the lottery and I told him about my lifelong ambition to come to Cypress Point Spa, he said that I clearly have a sense of the dramatic and the Globe readers would love to know all about the goings-on in a classy spa from my point of view.
    â€œHe said that the kind of people I’ll be meeting would never think of me as a writer and so I might hear a lot of interesting stuff. Then when I explained I’d been a real fan of movie stars all my life, and know lots about the private lives of the stars, he said he had a hunch I could write a good series of articles and who knows, maybe even a book.”
    Alvirah smiled blissfully and smoothed the skirt of her purple-and-pink traveling dress. The skirt tended to hike up.
    â€œA book,” she continued, being careful to speak directly into the microphone. “Me, Alvirah Meehan. But when you think of all the celebrities who write books and how many of them really stink, I believe I just might be able to do that.
    â€œTo get to what’s happened so far, I rode in a limousine to the Spa with Elizabeth Lange. She is a lovely young woman and I feel so sorry for her. Her eyes are very sad, and you can tell she’s under a big strain. She slept practically the whole way from San Francisco. Elizabeth is Leila LaSalle’s sister, but very different in looks. Leila was a redhead with green eyes. She could look sexy and queenly at the same time—kind of like a cross between Dolly Parton and Greer Garson. I think a good way to describe Elizabeth is ‘wholesome.’
    â€œShe’s a little too thin; her shoulders are broad; she has wide blue eyes with dark lashes, and honey-colored hair that falls around her shoulders. She has strong, beautiful teeth, and the one