Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (23 page)

“So I was wrong. Mavis and Gwen are outside, looking like a couple of sorority sisters.”

Renie looked up from the cocktail napkins she’d been counting. “They probably are. The UCLA connection. I’m willing to believe anything about now.”

“Including the fact that Dash did see Wanda after their divorce.” Judith was feeling rather dazed, as well as stiff and sore from her tumble in the snow. “Never mind all that now, let’s get going. I can hear the animals rattling their cages.”

She could, in fact, for the Brodies were making angry noises out in the living room. The object of their ire almost toppled Renie—Sweetums was running for his life, seeking sanctuary in the basement. Judith ignored both the fleeing cat and the incensed Brodies, taking time to dig into her handbag for lipstick, blush and a touch-up to hide the dark circles under her eyes. After putting her black suede flats back on, she slipped out through the dining room and into the entry hall, then beat a hasty retreat into the front parlor. No one in the living room, including an embattled Renie, had noticed her. With a sigh of relief, she leaned against the door and shut her eyes. Her guests were barred, and Sweetums was outlawed. Judith wondered where Gertrude was training the telescope.

FIFTEEN

“WHERE ARE THE hors d’oeuvres?” asked Joe. He was sitting in the bay window which had once been an inglenook. His stockinged feet rested on an embroidered satin pillow; he held a pewter goblet in one hand and a Havana in the other.

Woody Price was stirring the punch bowl with a cinnamon stick and humming along to a recording of Beethoven’s
Eroica
symphony on the CD player Mike had given his mother for Christmas. The fire was burning merrily in the grate and the snow was inching up against the windows.

The room smelled of wood smoke, pungent spices, and good cigars. Judith felt warm and protected and ridiculously happy.

She laughed aloud at Joe’s request.

“Nothing seems real,” she said in wonder. Her dark eyes traveled around the cozy room, seeing the familiar surroundings through a mist of emotion. Somehow, it seemed right for Joe to be so casually ensconced in the window seat em-brasure. For one giddy moment, it occurred to Judith that he belonged there. But she thrust the thought aside, and spoke of something quite differ-170

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ent: “How can we be in here, snug as bugs, and out in that other room, a killer is complaining about my cat?”

Joe put his feet down and patted the vacant place next to him on the window seat. “Sit. We’ve made some progress.”

“And some wine,” put in Officer Price, handing Judith a goblet from the eighteenth-century set that had belonged to her grandmother. He smiled for the first time since Judith had met him, an engaging flash of white teeth set off by his dark skin and black moustache. The wine, she thought, or Renie’s erratic maternal instincts had drawn him out.

“Thanks.” Judith smiled back, then hesitated before joining Joe on the window seat. “Well?”

Joe exhaled a trio of smoke rings. “To begin with, Dash’s buddies were a pair of bookies. He’s up to his ascot in debt and needs money yesterday.”

“Can Gwen bail him out?” inquired Judith, making sure she was seated as far from Joe as space would permit.

“We gather she’s tried to help, but Gwen’s royalties aren’t exactly coming off of the
New York Times
bestseller list,” Joe explained. “In fact, she’s behind a payment on her condo overlooking the ship canal. Hence, a motive, or at least more of one, to eliminate Wanda. Assuming, of course, that Dash knew who Wanda’s dad was.”

“He might have,” said Judith, relating the overheard phone conversation between Mavis and her L.A. connection. Joe listened with rapt attention, his green eyes fixed on Judith’s face. She squirmed a little before adding the part about seeing Mavis and Gwen on the back porch. “Mavis must have come straight down from the phone in the upstairs hall. But I don’t see her rushing to alert Gwen about Dash’s continuing rela-tionship with Wanda. Are we missing something?”

“A lot, probably.” Joe drummed his fingers on his knees.

“Murder makes strange bedfellows. For all we know, Mavis and Gwen hired Dash as a hit man to eliminate Wanda.”

172 / Mary Daheim

“Eliminating Otto would make more sense,” said Judith, glancing out the window. At least three inches of snow already covered the ground. The planes and angles of the Ericson house looked like ski jumps. “Nobody gets any money as long as Otto’s alive.”

“Dash and Gwen aren’t the only ones who need money,”

Joe went on. “Speaking of Mavis, she wasn’t headed for KINE-TV last night, but for that pair of so-called business associates Lance has gotten mixed up with. They’re putting the squeeze on him, and Club Stud could go belly-up at any minute. Mavis wouldn’t like that for a lot of reasons, least of all because she’d hate to have to read that story off her cue cards. I don’t think she took that .357 magnum along to protect her honor.”

“I wondered,” said Judith. “She wasn’t dressed for work.

I suppose Lance and Mavis blame the chain’s woes on Calvin Tweeks’s defection.”

“Not entirely,” replied Joe, going to the punch bowl for a refill. “Once Lance gets used to a routine, he functions almost like a normal human being.” Joe sat back down on the window seat, this time a few inches closer to Judith. “But Mavis admitted that Lance hasn’t been tending to business lately.

He’s been out of the office a lot, playing golf.”

The door from the living room flew open, revealing a rattled Renie, clinging to a half-empty bottle of bourbon.

“Holy cats! With any luck, that crew will all kill each other and you guys can arrest the sole survivor!”

Joe was unmoved by the news of the Brodies’ collective distemper. “It’s good for them. Gives them a taste of what jail is like.” He caught Judith’s glare and tried to make amends: “An elegant jail, of course, with superior food.”

“Speaking of food,” said Renie, pouring herself a stiff bourbon, “when shall I put the steaks on?”

Judith checked her watch. “Wait until six. Joe is filling us in.”

As Renie and Woody sat at the little table in front of the fire, Joe quickly went over the ground he’d already
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covered. Judith listened closely to the details of the M.E.’s report, but the technical terms were lost on her. However, both she and Renie pounced on the essentials:

“How was the sodium pentothal administered?” asked Judith.

“Which poison actually killed her?” queried Renie. “The sodium pentothal or the cyanide?”

Joe tapped ash into a shamrock-shaped dish. “I talked to Otto again, as well as Dash and Mavis. The amount of cyanide Otto put in the tea jibes with the amount Wanda ingested. In fact, she didn’t take as much as he gave her. And he’s right, it wasn’t anywhere near a lethal dose. But the sodium pentothal was.”

“Don’t tell me it was in the cream puffs!” Judith shrank back against the wall of the window seat.

But Joe shook his head. “It was administered directly into her bloodstream.” He saw the startled expressions on Judith and Renie’s faces. “That’s right, it was injected, no doubt courtesy of Harvey’s medical kit.”

“You mean Harvey did it?” Renie exclaimed, inadvertently spilling bourbon on her battered sweatshirt.

It was Woody Price who answered while Joe tried to relight his cigar. “Not necessarily. Harvey says his case was rifled.

If that’s true, anybody could have done it. We checked for fingerprints, but it was clean—except for Harvey’s and Ellie’s.”

“No,” countered Judith. “Not just anybody could have done it. Doesn’t sodium pentothal work very fast?”

“Usually,” said Joe, the cigar glowing again. “But it depends on the person. I sure as hell wish one of you had stayed in that dining room to see who got up and moved around.”

Judith made an effort to refill her goblet, but Woody Price rushed to the rescue. “What do the Brodies say?” asked Judith. “They must have noticed. At least Mavis would.”

“They all noticed,” replied Joe. “That’s the problem. Harvey went to the john, Ellie and Mavis came out to the
174 / Mary Daheim

kitchen, Lance got up to keep his knee from going stiff, Dash went to the sideboard to get some brandy, Oriana dropped an earring, Gwen had to examine something in the china cupboard. The only one who didn’t leave his place after the fortune-teller sat down was Otto—and he didn’t have to, because he was knee-to-knee with his little Wanda.”

Judith stared into her goblet, Renie was scratching her pug nose, Price was mulling over the mulled wine, Joe had resumed blowing smoke rings. Or maybe just smoke, thought Judith with a flash of anger.

“
This
is progress?” she burst out. Ignoring Joe’s offended reaction, she plunged ahead. “Come on, we may know how, but we don’t know who—or why. You want results? Here!”

She reached under her red sweater and pulled the missing evidence out from the waistband of her slacks.

“What the hell?” Joe stared at the creased clippings. “Where did you get these?
This
time.”

Judith deliberately lifted her chin to show off her strong profile. “I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

“I’ll tell you something,” asserted Renie, joining the fray.

“Where did I put those magazines?” Her eyes darted around the room, coming to rest on the bottom shelf of the tea wagon. “When I went to the basement to get the steaks out of the freezer, I decided to have another go at the
Opera
Newses
. We had a much better idea of what to look for after we talked to Oriana.” She paused as she bent down to get the magazines. “First, I found a review of her La Scala debut, January 11, 1974. Listen to this: ‘Bustamanti’s electrifying Carmen not only assuaged the disappointment of Bumbry’s fans, but announced to the opera world that a new star is on the rise. The unerring pitch, the rich timbre, and the mature technique of her voice are astounding qualities in one so young. Under Maestro Sanzogno’s baton, the dazzling understudy’s lack of rehearsal time was hardly noticeable.

The audience was so emotionally drained by Bustamanti’s’

vocal prowess that

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it could barely summon up the energy to applaud after each of her arias. However, the house erupted into a wild ovation at the opera’s climactic scene when Don Jose dealt the fatal blow to his faithless Carmen. This auspicious debut has launched a career of international significance for the ravishing unknown from the Bronx, New York.’” Renie closed the magazine and regarded her listeners like a singer who has just finished an audition. “Sounds great, huh?”

“Too great,” remarked Judith, but wasn’t sure why.

“Then let me read on.” Renie opened the second copy of
Opera News
. “Here we have Oriana in Brussels, six months later. ‘The Azucena of Oriana Bustamanti was marred by troubles with pitch and breathing control. Her
Stride la
Vampa
was horrific rather than horrifying. The laudatory reviews she received last winter at La Scala did not seem justified as far as Belgian opera-goers are concerned.’”

“Maybe Verdi wasn’t the right repertoire for her,” suggested Woody Price.

Renie had the third and last magazine in hand. “So it seems. Here’s what they said about her Eboli in Vienna the following September. ‘
Don Carlo
is an operatic rarity in that Verdi wrote his best music for the mezzo-soprano rather than the soprano. But the composer’s efforts were wasted on Oriana Bustamanti, who produced a series of harsh, undis-ciplined sounds that made her listeners wish she’d put the patch over her mouth instead of her eye.’ Strong stuff, huh?”

“Savage,” said Price.

“Ugly,” said Joe.

“Suspicious,” said Judith.

“How so?” Joe asked as the windowpane behind him shuddered in the wind.

Judith turned to Renie. “You know more about opera than I do, coz. But isn’t La Scala a tough house?”

“Very,” replied Renie. “The Milan critics are viscious.” She looked at Woody for confirmation. “What’s
176 / Mary Daheim

that other one in Italy, where they bring rotten fruit and vegetables to throw at the singers?”

“Parma,” said Woody. “Or is it Palermo? I’ve never been to Europe, but I’d like to go some day. Especially to Bayreuth, for Wagner.”

“For Chrissakes,” exploded Joe, “two years I’ve worked with you, Woody, and you turn out to be Boris-Freaking-Godolfsky!”

“Sorry, sir,” murmured Woody with his usual stoic expression. “My mother is very musical. She’s a soloist with the Afro-American Free Methodist Church.”

“Never mind,” grumbled Joe, with the air of a man forgiv-ing the unforgivable. “Okay, so those reviews are peculiar.

So what? That was more than fifteen years ago.” He leaned forward to take the magazines from Renie. “How does any of this hook up with Wanda Rakesh?”

Judith was candid. “I don’t know. Except that Oriana and Dash are probably related, and Wanda used to be married to Dash. If you’d check his passport, I’ll bet you’d find he’d been in Milan when Oriana made her debut.”

“We did check.” Joe motioned at Woody. “Look up those dates in your notebook.”

Price complied. “She’s right, sir. He entered Italy January 3, 1974. He crossed the border into France on February 26, then went to Spain April 10, and on to England two weeks later. He was brought back to the States for parole violation on May 5.”

Judith had gotten up and was pacing the room. “That first review—there’s definitely something odd about it. No, not odd, it’s—oh, I can’t put my finger on it.” She picked up the issue and paged through until she found the article. The grandfather clock in the living room chimed six p.m. Judith closed the magazine and took a last drink from her goblet.

“Let’s get the steaks on. I’ll let whatever it is percolate in the back of my head.”

Out in the kitchen, Judith and Renie found Gwen refilling the ice bucket. “Daddy’s feeling much more relaxed,” she said. “He was so annoyed because his lawyer hadn’t
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shown up. But Mr. Muggins was in Denver and only just got in before the snow started. Now I suppose he can’t get up this hill.”