Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (25 page)

Judith frowned into the receiver. In a way, she was surprised that there hadn’t been other inquiring calls about the Brodies. But perhaps Arlene’s Broadcasting System had been more efficient than its chief oracle would admit. “I’d have to ask them, Norma,” said Judith. “They’re having dinner right now. Offhand, I’d say that if they needed anything, they’d have called you or one of the other neighbors. All the same, I’ll ask Mrs. Brodie.”

An odd little sound that was half cough, half snort came through the line. “Oriana Brodie isn’t the domestic type. I don’t think she’s ever cooked a meal, let alone cleaned house or done the laundry. They have help, you know,” Norma Paine declared as if it were a disease. “Of course it’s not for me to say, but I’d like to know how any woman can spend so much time taking care of herself and yet come home looking worse than when she left.”

“She should ask for her money back,” Judith remarked with half an ear. Her attention was as much on her companions as on Norma Paine: Renie had taken over the steaks, Woody was opening more beans, and, amazingly, Joe was making béarnaise sauce in the blender.

“Some people think she’s getting more than her mon-186 / Mary Daheim

ey’s worth already,” Norma Paine said in her caustic voice.

“Only Oriana Brodie could go off for a facial and come back with a hickey.”

Judith’s attention swerved fully around to Norma Paine.

“Really?” She signaled for Joe to shut off the blender.

“Goodness, Norma, you’re not implying that—”

“Certainly not!” burst out Norma Paine. “She probably doesn’t go to a licensed cosmetologist, that’s all. I’d be the last one to tell tales. All I’m trying to do is be neighborly.

Do you think the Brodies will be home soon? The fumigators are gone.”

Thinking that the fumigators worked faster than the police, Judith cast a gimlet eye at Joe, who was happily sprinkling tabasco sauce into the blender. “I’ll give them your message,”

Judith said noncommittally. “Thanks for calling. See you in church.” She turned to the others, just as Joe was sampling his béarnaise from the tip of his finger. “Gather for gossip.

Plus, we’ve got an interesting theory, all of which star Oriana Bustamanti Brodie.”

The four of them sat at the dinette table, listening to Judith’s theory on Oriana’s La Scala debut. Joe was skeptical; Woody was flummoxed.

“That’s an outrageous piece of deceit,” declared Woody, looking personally offended, “especially for a performance at La Scala.” He spoke the opera house’s name in a reveren-tial voice.

“It’s not impossible, I suppose,” allowed Joe, with visible reluctance. “No one at the magazine would link Arturo Allegro with Oriana, given his various AKAS. The problem is trying to tie it in with Wanda.”

“That could be solved with the Dash connection,” Judith pointed out. “He was obviously trying to get money out of Oriana. But if Oriana knew who Wanda was, she might have tried to silence her to keep from being exposed as a musical fraud and all-around laughingstock. Either she would have come up with the money to keep Dash quiet—or, having murdered one person already, done Dash out of his cash and done him in instead.”

JUST DESSERTS / 187

“But how did she do it?” asked Joe. “She was at the other end of the table. The only time she got up after Wanda arrived was to retrieve her earring. I’m assuming she didn’t crawl all the way under the table to get it.”

Woody was still looking stupefied. “I can’t believe that critics at La Scala could be bribed. It’s an outrageous concept!” His voice conveyed more emotion than the cousins had yet heard him express.

“Let’s just say that part is open to speculation,” said Joe.

“We could find out, but it’d take some digging to get those old reviews out of the papers from Milan. As for Dash getting his hands on the money, he had two other options,” he went on, rearranging the everyday silverware at his place. “He could sponge off Gwen and hope she got more money from her books, or plead with her to put the arm on old Dad.”

“He had a third option,” Judith observed. “If he knew Wanda was Otto’s daughter, he could have tried to win her back. Maybe that’s why he was seeing her again.”

Joe’s eyes slid in Judith’s direction. “And she turned him down the second time around?”

Judith thought she heard an innuendo in Joe’s voice, and spoke too sharply: “Why shouldn’t she? He’d been a cad the first time.” She saw the muscle in his jawline tighten and recanted: “I mean, he
probably
was, knowing Dash.”

Joe said nothing. The foursome was silent for a few mo-ments. The snow swirled in a white fury at the kitchen window above the sink. The wind moaned; the old house creaked. Except for the now-muted buzz of the Brodies in the dining room, the mortal world had grown very quiet.

No cars attempted to climb the Hill, no airplanes braved the storm, no whistle of ferries heading into the slip disturbed the winter night. Perched on the side of Heraldsgate, Hillside Manor and its neighbors closed their doors against the storm.

It was Renie who broke the silence. “Gee, those steaks smell good! I’m starved! What did that big Paine, Norma, want?”

188 / Mary Daheim

Judith told them. “Obviously, an affair is suspected. But even if it’s true, I doubt it would have any bearing on this case. Unless Oriana was having it with Wanda.”

Joe grinned. “So that’s where Oriana spent all her time instead of getting toned and tuned. I wonder who the poor dope is?”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Judith. “It couldn’t be!”

“What?” asked Renie.

“Never mind.” Judith shook her head, then got up to turn the steaks. “It was just a nutty idea that went through my mind.”

“I’m open to nutty ideas,” insisted Joe. “We don’t seem to have any other kind in this case.”

Judith closed the broiler oven door. “Lance. That’s my nutty idea.”

“He’s that, all right,” agreed Joe. “Golf dates. Gone from the office too much. Not tending to business. Who else but Lance would be dumb enough to play games with his father’s wife?”

“Except that it turns out she isn’t,” objected Woody.

“But Lance wouldn’t have known that,” Renie noted, with a glance of longing at the stove.

“It might explain the inhaler,” said Joe. He saw blank expressions on the others’ faces. “The Nembutal. Oriana has always been the most likely culprit there. The sleeping capsules belonged to her, she had ample opportunity to dump the stuff in the inhaler before they got here. Even if it hadn’t been for that mangy cat of yours, Jude-girl, Oriana probably could have convinced Otto he was having some kind of allergy attack by bedtime. So Otto sleeps like a log and Oriana trots off with Lance to horse around.”

“Where?” demanded Renie. “And what about Mavis?”

Joe shrugged. “The logistics I leave to Oriana and Lance.

Or at least to Oriana, Lance being on the two-digit end of the I.Q. scale.”

“We’re speculating,” Judith admitted. “And even if
JUST DESSERTS / 189

we’re right, what does it have to do with Wanda? We keep coming back to that. It drives me crazy, because I have the feeling we’re missing something really important.” With her hand still encased in her oven mitt, she pointed at Joe. “What are you doing, besides drinking and eating and making béarnaise sauce? Isn’t it time to come up with hair follicles and fingernail parings?”

“I told you,” responded Joe, a bit defensively, “I’m off duty.

At least for a couple of hours. The truth is, we’ve reached a dead end. If it hadn’t been for this storm, I’d have had to let all these people go after the M.E.’s report came in. But as long as they’re here, so am I. And Woody. All we can hope for is that the murderer makes some slip—or tries to kill again.”

“Oh!” Judith paled. “Don’t say things like that! Do you want me to sleep standing up with Dooley’s bow and arrow?”

Joe made a face. “Don’t be a goose. You and Renie are safe. If anybody is in danger, it’s one of those loonies in the dining room. Besides, I’ve still got two men on duty outside.”

Judith was aghast. “Freezing to death?”

“They’re going to stay at the Dooleys’. That paper boy is all agog. I think he’s a recruit for our young people’s police auxiliary program.”

To Judith, it seemed as if the entire neighborhood had gone into the hostelry business. She had visions of marquees popping up all over the Hill: Rankers’s Restful Rooms, Gossip As You Like It. Dooleys’ Drop-Inn, Have We Got a View for You! And then Hillside Manor, its tastefully carved sign worn away by the weather, drooping on rusted chains, the walkway overgrown with nettles and weeds.

Her reverie was broken by the doorbell. “Get the steaks out and dish up,” she told Renie. “It must be Arlene or Carl.”

But the newcomer was a short, stout, bespectacled man of about sixty, dressed in a camel’s hair coat, a black fe-190 / Mary Daheim

dora, and a tan cashmere muffler. He was carrying a pair of skis, and there was frost on his thick eyebrows.

“Oliver Wendell Muggins,” he said as his breath came out in little white puffs. “I’m here to see Mr. Otto Brodie.”

“On skis?” asked an astonished Judith.

“Certainly on skis,” retorted Mr. Muggins. “How else could I get here? Where is my client?”

Otto’s bellow from the dining room saved Judith from giving an answer. “Is that you, Muggins? Get in here, you pompous old coot! I’m practically on death row!”

Judith helped Mr. Muggins put his skis and poles next to the hat rack, then winced as big clumps of snow fell from his boots onto the entry hall floor. The lawyer handed her his hat, muffler, overcoat, and gloves as if she were the parlor maid.

“Finally!” cried Otto, with his knife and fork poised over the last of his dinner. “What do you mean, running off to the Rockies when I’m in such a terrible fix?”

Having put away Mr. Muggins’s outer apparel, Judith hurried to get an extra chair from the front parlor. “Have you eaten?” she whispered as the attorney sat down with great dignity.

“I haven’t had time,” he said with a look of mild reproach for his client. “I came as quickly as I could.”

“I’ll get you some dinner,” Judith offered, and was rewarded with a curt nod.

In the kitchen, Joe and Woody were already digging into their steaks. Without ceremony, Judith grabbed the plate that Renie was carrying to the table. “It’s for Muggins,” she said, rushing back into the dining room.

Otto was already in full spate, but at least he seemed to have sobered up a bit. Judith deposited Mr. Muggins’s plate on the table, received a grunt in exchange, and hurried out of the room.

“You twit!” shrieked Renie. “That was my dinner!”

“Eat mine,” said a frazzled Judith.

JUST DESSERTS / 191

“I can’t. Yours is too well-done. I’d just as soon eat a pair of old boots.”

“Go get Muggins’s. He’s already ruined my parquet floor with them. Here,” insisted Judith, dividing the food on her plate in half, “force yourself.”

Appeased, Renie sat down. “Who is Muggins anyway?”

“Otto’s attorney.” Judith glanced at Joe. “Are we in for trouble?”

“Could be,” sighed Joe. “How’d he get here? A four-wheel drive?”

“Skis,” said Judith. “Last February, the city barricaded Heraldsgate Avenue and turned it into a ski run.”

“I know,” Woody said gloomily. “My wife sprained her ankle when she crashed into Dino’s Deli at the bottom of the Hill.”

“It was a nightmare for the traffic patrol,” recalled Joe, adding more sour cream to his baked potato. “The city had lent its snow removal equipment to one of the suburbs and they didn’t find it until May.”

“The ’burb or the snow removal equipment?” inquired Renie. “Frankly, the fewer ’burbs, the better. They’re all full of transplanted Californians anyway. As for our winter weather equipment, it consists of one beat-up truck, two shovels, and a bucket of sand,” she went on with some heat.

“Bill says that the trouble with this town is that its collective mentality is predisposed to…”

Judith’s attention wandered off from civic attitudes and Bill’s opinions. So many strange incidents plagued the murder investigation: Oriana’s phony debut; Gwen’s ghost-written novels; Dash’s gambling debts; Lance’s failing business venture; Otto’s first marriage; Dash’s links with Gwen, Ellie, Mavis, and Wanda; Oriana’s alleged affair; Harvey’s resid-ency at St. Peregrine’s…Time was running out. Judith knew it; Joe had admitted as much.

Judith pushed her half-eaten dinner at Renie. “Go ahead, finish it. I’ve got to go upstairs and make a phone call.”

192 / Mary Daheim

Three pairs of suspicious eyes followed her out of the kitchen. Fueled by determination rather than food, Judith ascended the back stairs with a quick step. Inside her bedroom, she locked the door and went to the phone beside her bed.

It was a separate line from the phones on the first and second floors, with an extension in Mike’s room. Gertrude de-nounced the telephone as a nuisance and had refused to allow one in her own inner sanctum. Instead, she used Judith’s.

The 213 area code operator gave Judith the number for St. Peregrine’s in Los Angeles. Hoping for a slow Saturday evening in the hospital’s operating room, she was put through to a nurse with a musical Oriental accent.

“This is Lieutenant Grover, Homicide Division,” Judith announced in her most businesslike voice. “We’re investigating the death of one of your nurses, Wanda Rakesh.”

An intake of breath reached Judith’s ear from thirteen hundred miles away. “We heard of that this afternoon. It is very sad. Ms. Rakesh was fine nurse.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll be glad to learn we’re making progress in apprehending her killer,” Judith said, deciding that one big lie deserved another. “We’d like to talk to someone who worked with her earlier in her career, say from 1975

or so.”

There was a slight pause. In the background, Judith could hear a doctor being paged over St. Peregrine’s intercom. For a moment, she visualized the scene as Wanda must have known it, with the nurses’ station, the operating theater, the recovery room, the ebb and flow of patients, orderlies, interns, and anxious friends and relations.