Read Online Death Wears a Beauty Mask and Other Stories by Mary Higgins Clark - Free Book Online

chair and buried his face in his hands. “Not Alexandra,” he said, his tone unbelieving.
    For the next hour, step by step, Twaddle and Ben Lyons heard from Grant Wilson the same story they had heard from Michael Broad. Alexandra had not been seen since Monday night when their chartered plane had landed at Kennedy Airport. Wilson had been in constant touch with both Larry Thompson, the photographer, and Marcus Ambrose, the owner of the charter airline, as to where Alexandra might have gone.
    â€œWhere were you last night from seven o’clock on?” Twaddle asked.
    â€œI was at a black-tie dinner at the Lotos Club. It’s on 66th Street just off Fifth Avenue.”
    â€œWere you there all evening?”
    â€œYes, of course. It began at six-thirty.”
    â€œWhat time did you leave?”
    â€œWhen the dinner was over, about ten o’clock. I went directly home from there.”
    Ben knew what his partner was thinking. If Wilson had left the Lotos Club around 10 P.M. , he had plenty of time to go to Alexandra’s apartment around the time of the murder.
    â€œDo Thompson and Ambrose know about Alexandra’s death?” Wilson asked dully.
    â€œI do not know if they have heard it on the news,” Twaddle answered. “If they haven’t, they will hear it from me very soon.”
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Larry Thompson had a late breakfast meeting with an account director of Lehman Advertising Agency and his two assistants. Over eggs Benedict, coffee and cigarettes they informed him that he had been chosen to be the producer of a series of commercials for the most popular breakfast cereal in their client’s array of products. It would be a lucrative engagement for Larry except for the fact that all the commercials would involve having young child actors in them. Thinking of the chaos of yesterday’s shoot, he knew it would be a difficult assignment but career enhancing.
    He also knew that for the money he would be getting it would be worth it. Even so, Larry was barely able to contain himself as the account director and his assistants decided to again refill their coffee cups.
    Had they found Alexandra? he kept wondering. When would they find her? It was a question that haunted him as he said a final good-bye to the agency men and took a cab to his townhouse on East 48th Street. At the front door, he found a note taped to the doorknob. Detective Hubert Twaddle requested that he phone him immediately.
    It was a warm morning, but even so, as Grant Wilson had earlier, Larry found himself breaking into a cold sweat. Impatiently heturned the key in the lock and, not waiting until he went up to his apartment, grabbed the phone in the studio and dialed the number on the card.
    Unable to reach either Thompson or Marcus Ambrose at home, Hubert Twaddle and Ben Lyons had returned to their desks in the detective section of the District Attorney’s Office. Ben studied Twaddle’s face as he told Thompson that Alexandra Saunders was dead. But, as usual, neither by voice nor demeanor did he give Ben the slightest hint of what kind of reaction he was getting from Thompson. It was the kind of inscrutable expression that Ben wanted to develop for himself.
    â€œWe will be at your studio in twenty minutes,” Twaddle concluded, and hung up the phone. He turned to Ben.
    â€œA second grief-stricken and shocked associate of Miss Saunders. This one claims he was home all evening,” he said dryly. “Now, since Mr. Ambrose’s secretary has just left word that he will be in his office at one o’clock, we will go directly to Kennedy Airport after we see Mr. Thompson. The Medical Examiner’s Office said that the autopsy will be completed and the body ready for formal identification by three o’clock. We will pick up Miss Saunders’s sister and brother-in-law at two-thirty. And now let’s pay Mr. Thompson a