Weep No More My Lady by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

time she smiled she gave off just the warmest glow. She’s pretty tall—about five foot nine, I guess. I bet she sings. Her speaking voice is so pleasant, but not that exaggerated actress voice you hear from so many of these young starlets. I guess you don’t call them starlets anymore. Maybe if I get friendly with her, she’ll tell me some interesting things about her sister and Ted Winters. I wonder if the Globe will want me to cover the trial.”
    Alvirah paused, pushed the rewind button and then the replay. It was all right. The machine was working. She thought she ought to say something about her surroundings.
    â€œMrs. von Schreiber escorted me to my bungalow. I almost laughed out loud when she called it a bungalow. We used to rent a bungalow in Rockaway Beach on Ninety-ninth Street right near the amusement park. The place used to shake every time the roller coaster went down the last steep drop, which was every five minutes during the summer.
    â€œThis bungalow has a sitting room all done in light blue chintz and Oriental scatter rugs . . . they’re handmade—I checked . . . a bedroom with a canopy bed, a small desk, a slipper chair, a bureau, a vanity table filled with cosmetics and lotions, and two huge bathrooms, each with its own Jacuzzi. There’s also a room with built-in bookshelves, a real leather couch and chairs and an oval table. Upstairs there are two more bedrooms and baths, which of course I really don’t need. Luxury! I keep pinching myself.
    â€œBaroness von Schreiber told me that the day starts at seven A.M. with a brisk walk, which everyone in the Spa is requested to take. After that I will be served a low-calorie breakfast in my own dining room. The maid will also bring my personal daily schedule, which will include things like a facial, a massage, a herbal wrap, a sloofing treatment—whateverthat is—the steam cabinet, a pedicure and a manicure and a hair treatment. Imagine! After I have been checked out by the doctor, they will add my exercise classes.
    â€œNow I’m going to take a little rest, and then it will be time to dress for dinner. I’m going to wear my rainbow caftan, which I bought at Martha’s on Park Avenue. I showed it to the Baroness and she said it would be perfect, but not to wear the crystal beads I won at the shooting gallery in Coney Island.”
    Alvirah turned off the recorder and beamed in satisfaction. Who ever said writing was hard? With a recorder it was a cinch. Recorder! Quickly, she got up and reached for her pocketbook. From inside a zippered compartment she took out a small box containing a sunburst pin.
    But not just any sunburst pin, she thought proudly. This one had a microphone, and the editor had told her to wear it to record conversations. “That way,” he had explained, “no one can claim you misquoted them later on.”

7
    â€œSORRY TO DO THIS TO YOU, TED, BUT WE SIMPLY DON’T have the luxury of time.” Henry Bartlett leaned back in the upholstered armchair at the end of the library table.
    Ted was aware that his left temple was throbbing, and shafts of pain were finding a target behind and above his left eye. Deliberately he moved his head to avoid the streams of late-afternoon sun that were coming through the window opposite him.
    They were in the study of Ted’s bungalow in the Meadowcluster area, one of the two most expensive accommodations at Cypress Point Spa. Craig was sitting diagonally across from him, his face grave, his hazel eyes cloudy with worry.
    Henry had wanted a conference before dinner. “Time is running out,” he had said, “and until we decide on our final strategy, we can’t make any progress.”
    Twenty years in prison, Ted thought incredulously. That was the sentence he was facing. He’d be fifty-four years old when he got out. Incongruously, all the old gangster movies he’d used to watch late at