Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (18 page)

Joe grew somber. “Remember the big plane crash at Dallas in ’85? Jack and Cynthia O’Doul were aboard.”

132 / Mary Daheim

He paused, as if offering a moment of silence for the deceased couple. “If Wanda thought the surgeon and the amnesiac were one and the same, she was working strictly on supposition. Nobody else in L.A. knows anything about it.”

“Nobody?” Judith’s voice was unusually sharp. “Who’d your people talk to? The chicken farmer? Or did he fly the coop, too?”

“No,” snapped Joe, “they talked to members of the local amnesia association. They couldn’t remember a thing.”

Judith made an ominous rumbling noise in her throat. To be fair, the events chronicled in Wanda’s newspaper clippings had happened some time ago. Nor was there any reason to believe they had the slightest connection to her murder. Yet Judith’s logic told her otherwise: A woman whose sole purpose for coming north was to seek out her estranged father was unlikely to have brought along excess baggage.

“I’m going to question Dash again, too,” said Joe, deliberately changing the subject. “If nothing else, I’ll find out who he met in the back yard last night.”

“Probably Mother,” said Judith, staring into the empty popcorn bowl and wondering, as she always did, how Renie could eat so much and stay so aggravatingly slim. “Why don’t I talk to Dash? Or to Otto, for that matter?”

Joe grimaced. “Are you after my job? I thought you got your degree in librarianship, not police science.”

“I have more than one degree,” Judith said with dignity.

“You’re omitting Milton’s School of Mixology. Know how to make a Purple Weasel?” She saw Joe’s exasperation, and for once, took heed. “I just thought that I might get them to open up more. People talk to me. Lord, do they talk!”

“I know.” Joe sighed. “‘Judith Grover has never met a stranger.’ That’s how you were introduced to me, remember?”

Judith avoided his gaze, staring down at Sweetums, who was sprawled inelegantly next to her chair, making occa-JUST DESSERTS / 133

sional twitches in his sleep. “Sure, I remember. It was the parish roller derby.”

An awkward silence followed. Joe came over to Judith and put a hand on her shoulder. “Leave the investigating to me.

Go take a nap. You’re beat.”

Slowly, Judith raised her eyes. Joe’s face hovered over her, concerned and…what? She didn’t know; suddenly she was too tired to think. But she refused to give in, to let him have the satisfaction of looking after her. Salve to his guilt, she decided, then wondered if he’d ever had any. Guilt had never loomed large in Joe Flynn’s repertoire.

“I’m okay.” She ran a hand through the holiday perm that was beginning to wilt. “Go interrogate your suspects. As long as you won’t let these wackos go yet, I have to think about what I’m going to feed them. The Brodies are getting to be a very expensive proposition. It’s a good thing I wasn’t booked for tonight or any new arrivals would have had to sleep at the Ericsons. Who do I bill, Oriana or the chief of police?”

“KINE-TV. If Mavis tells all, their ratings will soar.” Joe winked, then slipped out of the front parlor. Judith glanced at her watch, saw that it was after three p.m., and got up from the table. Sweetums twitched on. “I’ve got steaks in the freezer,” she said to Renie. “Let’s go get them and have another look at those opera magazines.”

But Renie waved a hand at her cousin. “That’s fine, but wouldn’t it be easier just to ask Oriana when she sung in Europe? I expect she’d be flattered by our interest.”

Judith considered briefly. “True. Okay, let’s find her.” She started for the door, then stopped, hand on knob. “I don’t buy that hit-and-run story. Oh, I believe Joe when he says the case was closed and nobody knows anything. But Wanda brought those clippings for a purpose and I’m convinced it had something to do with Otto. Or at least with the Brodie family.”

“Okay.” Renie was willing to be convinced. “But what can you do that the local police and their L.A. counter-parts can’t?”

134 / Mary Daheim

Judith walked across the room and banked up the fire. It was growing quite dark outside. Sweetums stretched, yawned, and spit up another hairball.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she said, bending down to mop up after her miserable cat. “Beat it, Sweetums, the meter’s running overtime on your attempt at being a serious pet.” Sweetums did not oblige, but instead curled up in front of the hearth, offering a passable imitation of a domesticated animal. “Dash might know some of the people Wanda worked with, especially further back. Lester might have some names, too. Maybe we could call some of them and ask why Wanda was so interested in Drs. Edelstein and O’Doul.”

“Reasonable.” Renie nodded approval. “I wish I’d seen those clippings. Who took them, do you think?”

“In theory, no one but Ellie could have seen them. In fact, the field’s wide open. How do we know who saw that officer deliver the envelope, and how do we know that Wanda wasn’t known to all of these people before she ever set foot in this house?”

Renie reflected, then inclined her head in assent. “You’re sure the dates of the amnesia case and the gossip column coincided? What were they?”

“They didn’t coincide, exactly—that’s the point.” Judith began picking up mugs and crumpled napkins while Renie gathered the empty popcorn bowl to her bosom. “The amnesia report was early in the week. Cynthia O’Doul, poor soul, returned from Europe a few days later. And her husband forgot to meet her plane. It was—I’m concentrating, I want to get this right—the third week of October, 1979.”

“Okay,” said Renie, “that makes sense. The link, I mean.

Let me think,” she continued as they emerged from the parlor, ignored whichever of the guests was haranguing the others in the living room, and went into the kitchen, “what significance could those two incidents have other than that Jack O’Doul suffered from a bout of amnesia?”

“I’m trying to remember the year itself. Our Christmas
JUST DESSERTS / 135

turkey weighed twenty-eight pounds and my late husband three hundred and fifteen. We’d just been evicted from the bungalow at Five Corners, and Dan was trying to put together another restaurant venture. Mother bought a green eye-shade for her poker club. I remember that because it was the same year Uncle Al broke his arm on Halloween when he fell off the top of his toilet and had to—”

“October 1979!” cried Renie, losing her grip on the popcorn bowl, but catching it between her hip and the sink.

“That’s when Lance got hurt!” She set the bowl down and all but hopped around the kitchen. “Let’s get Lance! We’ve got to find out if O’Doul was his surgeon!”

Judith stood stock still, looking not unlike a Maypole to her cousin’s jubilant footwork. “Wait—what is it we want to know? We’re dealing with Lance, not a real person. We’ve got to put our questions very clearly.”

“Right.” Renie stopped dancing. “How do we handle him?

True of false? Multiple choice?”

Judith’s reply was forestalled by the swing of the kitchen door. Oriana, clutching her white silk blouse around her neck, came shivering into the room. “Mrs. McMonigle, I must insist that you turn up the heat! Have you looked at your outside thermometer? It’s dropped below freezing. I’m about to take a chill. I could get laryngitis!”

Suppressing the urge to say that they should be so lucky, Judith merely smiled politely. “Of course. It may snow any minute.” From behind Oriana’s back, Judith made urgent gestures at Renie. But when she came back from revving up the thermostat in the entry hall, she found Oriana railing at Renie, rather than Renie finessing Oriana.

“…held like criminals, and worst of all, our privacy has been invaded!” Oriana whirled on Judith, pointing a well-manicured finger. “I must insist upon knowing why the police have been permitted to rampage through our belongings!”

Judith decided to let Joe and his crew take their lumps, deserved or not. “They probably have a warrant,” she replied calmly. “I imagine they’ve searched our things,
136 / Mary Daheim

too. In fact,” she went on pointedly, “a few items have disappeared from my bedroom.”

Oriana was unmoved as well as unruffled. She did, however, quiet down a bit. “I wouldn’t doubt it. Really, these policemen are like the KGB! I wouldn’t be surprised if that Irish thug didn’t resort to physical force! Though,” she added, with a faint note of longing, “he does have nice eyes.”

Judith pressed her lips together. It was Renie at the stove manning the tea kettle who launched the current inquiry:

“What you need right now, Mrs. Brodie, is a nice hot cup of tea. It’ll soothe your throat and calm your nerves. Tell me,”

she went on, almost as chatty as her cousin but not quite so genuine, “what is your favorite operatic role?”

Oriana finally stopped clutching at the neck of her blouse and sat down at the dinette table. She preened a bit, then smoothed back her coils of auburn hair. “Carmen, I suppose, though Princess Eboli is a great challenge. The eyepatch, you know. So seductive.”

Talking about herself seemed to have a tranquilizing effect on Oriana. “Oh, very,” said Renie as the cousins joined their guest. “Eboli has some beautiful music. In fact, I’ve always felt the Veil Song in
Don Carlo
and the Seguidilla in
Carmen
had a lot in common. Of course,” she noted modestly, “I don’t know much about opera except that I enjoy it.”

“Bizet and Verdi were very different sorts of composers,”

Oriana pontificated. “The commonality you hear is Verdi’s attempt to utilize a type of Moorish music in
Don Carlo
, while Bizet was working with the gypsy tradition. Though both operas are set in Spain,
Carmen
was not originally intended to be a grand opera, but was written instead for the Opera Comique in Paris. It was my debut role at La Scala in Milan.” She gave a toss of her head, implying that the sole purpose of Bizet’s masterpiece had been to serve as a springboard for her career.

Judith looked duly impressed. “How exciting! When did you sing at La Scala? Renie and I were in Italy in 1964.”

JUST DESSERTS / 137

Oriana was not so impressed. But at least, Judith noted with satisfaction, she seemed to be settling in for a cozy biographical interlude. “Oh, it was years after that! In fact, I was a mere girl at the time—it must have been 1974. It was the classic theater debut, just like the movies, with the understudy taking over for the ailing star. Grace Bumbry came down with bronchitis”—she paused, a hand at her bosom, as if to ward off the possibility of contagion even at so late a date—“and I was thrust onto the stage with very little rehearsal. I’d sung the larger roles in some of the pro-vincial houses, but never in as prestigious a place as La Scala!

Naturally, I was terrified!” Oriana’s eyes grew very wide, summoning up the hallowed opera house filled with demand-ing music cognoscenti. “But fate was kind—I gave the performance of my life, and the audience went wild. Even the critics raved about the Ravishing Unknown from the Bronx..”

Oriana seemed to be quoting from some long-ago review.

The kettle on the stove sang its own little aria, and Renie got up to make tea.

“You’re a New Yorker, then,” said Judith, aware that Oriana had cultivated her speaking, as well as her singing, voice.

No trace of accent had so far surfaced.

“Yes,” said Oriana. “My father played the violin in a neighborhood symphony orchestra. We had very little money, but my parents scrimped and saved to give me singing lessons. Eventually, I went abroad to study.”

Her story sounded plausible, though Judith knew that vocal studies in Europe usually weren’t financed by a piggy bank.

But where was the connection with Dash? Presumably, they’d been raised three thousand miles apart. As Renie poured tea, Judith juggled dates in her head. “Was your mother musical, too?” she asked, stalling until she could come up with a better question.

Oriana’s laugh came from deep in her throat. “My, no!

Contrary to popular myth, not all Italians can sing. Mama was tone-deaf. She was one of twelve children, and not one of them was allowed in the school choir. ‘God will
138 / Mary Daheim

be glad to let the Frascattis pray only once,’ their parish priest used to tell them.” Seeing the sudden shift of both Judith’s and Renie’s expressions, Oriana hastened to explain: “There’s an old saying, ‘He who sings prays twice.’ Perhaps you’ve never heard it.”

“I have, somewhere,” said Judith, a trifle vaguely. To cover her surprise at Oriana’s mention of Dash’s real name, she lifted the lid on the sheep-shaped cookie jar. “Drat, it’s empty.

I should do some baking after all this…disruption is over.”

Oriana was arranging herself into another graceful pose in the dinette chair. “Yes, it’s all too, too upsetting. I shall be very glad to get home. Assuming, of course, the fumigators are finished.”

“Is that stuff really poisonous?” Renie asked guilelessly.

Oriana drew back in her chair. “Noxious! How do you think we get rid of the pests?”

Judith had been asking herself the same question, but about the human variety. Renie, however, continued to play the game, still in her guise of aging round-eyed ingenue. “What sort of pests?”

“Earwigs. They come in on the cut flowers.” Oriana turned grim. “And carpenter ants. The Brodie house is very old.”

She cast her eyes up at Judith’s high-ceilinged kitchen, a memento of the Edwardian era. “It’s almost as old as this place. Our home in Palm Springs was quite new, very high-tech.” She sighed with regret just as Otto stumbled into the kitchen.

“I’m doomed! It’s the gallows for me! I can see the hang-man now!” He leaned with each hand on either side of the doorway, the picture of a bent, if not broken, man. “They know all about Wanda. They even know about the cyanide!”

“
What
cyanide?” shrieked Oriana, hands raised in horror.

Otto shambled to the table where he flopped onto the vacant chair. His bruised chin sagged on his chest. He seemed oblivious to Judith and Renie, who were both riv-JUST DESSERTS / 139

eted to their seats. “Do you remember about a year and a half ago when you went to the fat farm for a week?” he asked his wife in a gloomy voice.