Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (27 page)

But the figure that moved stealthily, yet relentlessly, toward the garage was not friendly. Within a scant yard of the car’s trunk, Judith recognized that same chilling face she had seen through the dining room window only minutes earlier. Her mind raced; she swallowed hard. What if she was wrong?

What if the murderer was someone else? But there was no mistaking the open animosity on the face that loomed above her as she shut off the engine.

“Hi,” she said with a weak smile that barely reached her nose. “What are you doing out here?”

“How did you figure it out?” growled Harvey Carver, his bare fists clenched tightly at his sides. He wore no coat, only a thick cable-knit sweater over dark slacks.

“Figure what out?” Judith asked innocently. “Harvey, what do you know about cars?”

His left hand shot out and grabbed the tea towel around Judith’s neck. “Don’t toy with me! I hate it when people laugh at me! How dare you put on that nurse’s rig to taunt me! You’re like all the rest, especially my rotten relatives!”

Judith felt him jerk on the towel, making her head bob forward. “I’m not taunting you!” she insisted, and only then realized the significance of his accusation. The white angora cap, the white tea-towel masking the lower part of her face, the impression evoking Wanda as surgical nurse, Wanda as Madame Gushenka, Wanda as the symbol of all that had gone wrong in Harvey’s life…No wonder he must have thought she had dressed in such a way to mock him. Judith felt her limbs tremble. “I just came out here to fix the pipes and start my car. You didn’t happen to look at the thermometer on your way…”

Harvey gave another sharp yank on the towel. The square knot Judith had so carefully tied not only didn’t
202 / Mary Daheim

yield, but grew even tighter. “Shut up! You might be better-looking, or wittier, or more likeable than I am, but you’re not smarter! See this?” He thrust his other hand through the open window, revealing a curious-looking little implement that reminded Judith of a turkey timer. “Do you know what that is?” The black eyes glinted with what Judith at first took to be malice, and then realized with increasing horror, was actually pleasure. “It’s a kind of syringe, like they use for TB

tests. Only this one is loaded with sodium pentothal.” He leaned into the window, a crooked grin making his sallow face look particularly ghastly in the yellow light of the garage.

Judith tried not to give in to the terror that had overtaken her. Yet she dimly recognized that she was fighting a losing battle, not just against Harvey, but herself. All the reserves of strength she’d stored up over the years seemed to have deserted her. Why, a small, weak voice in the back of her brain asked, did I ever think I was so damned tough?

Harvey was rattling on, the grin still plastered on his distorted face. “They’ll find you at the wheel of your stupid car, overcome by carbon monoxide fumes. They won’t even bother with an autopsy, not under the circumstances.
Poor
Judith McMonigle
, they’ll say,
the grieving widow couldn’t
stand seeing her beloved bed-and-breakfast go down the drain!

Maybe she killed the fortune-teller herself. Who knows? Or
did that imbecile of an Irish cop turn her down?
”

“Now wait a minute!” shrieked Judith. Harvey had gone too far. Goaded into fury, she jerked away with an explosive sideways lunge. The tea towel was ripped from Harvey’s grasp. He reached inside the car to grab Judith, but she was already pounding on the horn with one hand and pressing the levers to the power locks for the automatic doors and windows with the other. As the deep wail of the horn cut through the quiet night and the windows began to roll up, Harvey let out a terrible stream of curses. Just as he started to pull his hands out of the way, Judith snatched at his right thumb. Bracing her feet on the floor
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of the car, she gave a mighty yank, pulling Harvey’s arm back inside. The automatic window pinned him just below the elbow. It was hard to tell which noise was louder—the car horn which Judith continued to press, or Harvey’s painful screams.

The pastoral peace of the winter night had come apart, not only with sound, but light. People were shouting in the back yard and driveway, running feet, impeded by snow, tramped up from the house, flashlights wavered from what seemed like a dozen hands, and out of the chaos, Judith saw Joe Flynn, assuming a shoot-to-kill stance at the rear of the car.

“Freeze! It’s the police!” he shouted to Harvey, who was still shrieking in agony. “Spread ’em!”

As she craned her neck, Judith’s shoulders slumped in relief. “Gosh,” she whispered to herself, “I wish Joe’d said that to me.”

EIGHTEEN

GERTRUDE REFUSED TO come home until Joe Flynn was gone. “It’s bad enough to have a homicidal maniac loose in my own house, but that Irish pervert is too much. Either he goes, or I stay at the Rankers’s,” she rasped over the phone.

“
Some
people put old folks first.”

“Not me,” breathed Judith away from the mouthpiece as she looked at Joe. But her voice evoked patience itself when she directed her attention back to her mother. “Renie and I are just filling the police in. It may take a while, and it’s already after ten o’clock. I’d hate to have you come out in this weather and break something.”

“Ha!” snorted Gertrude, as Arlene made soothing noises in the background and Carl told his wife to put a sock in it.

“You’d like to see me laid up in some ratty nursing home with a broken hip so you could cavort around like a floozy!”

“Broken
lip
,” mouthed Judith to Joe, Renie, and Woody.

204

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But her mother wasn’t done yet. “Well, don’t worry about me,” huffed Gertrude. “That nice Mr. Busbee is staying over, too, and we’re going to play four-handed pinochle.”

“What a coincidence,” said Judith. “That’s what Renie and I are going to do with the police.”

“I’ll bet my butt you are,” said Gertrude, and slammed down the phone.

Judith wasn’t fazed by her mother’s tart tongue. She was too exhilarated by the events of the past few hours to let anything impinge on her sense of self-vindication. The grandfather clock struck ten: It had taken Judith less than twenty-four hours to identify the killer of Wanda Rakesh—and of Dr. Stanley Edelstein.

Harvey had been placed under arrest, not for murder, but for aggravated assault. Arrogant to the end, he had gone off to police headquarters vowing that he’d be acquitted of any wrongdoing, let alone homicide. Ellie had fainted from the shock, but when she left with the rest of the Brodie party, she was leaning on a gallant Dash. Gwen was pouting, bringing up the rear with Mavis and a limping Lance.

“Cheer up,” Judith had heard Mavis say in what had been intended as a confidential voice, “there’s a book in it. I can write it in five days. You get a really good title with some class this time.”

Gwen had paused on the threshold, the snow drifting onto the porch. “I know!” she had exclaimed, transformed by her creative juices. “How about
Crime and Punishment?
”

Mavis had barely glanced at her dupe. “Try again,” she had said, and helped Lance down the steps. “Lean on me,”

she’d ordered her husband, then had grabbed him by the coat. “I mean that in two ways, literally and figuratively. You got it?”

Lance had stared blankly at first, then with dawning comprehension. “I guess I’d better start tending to business, huh, Mavis?”

206 / Mary Daheim

“Right,” she’d told him. “
Our
business.” Then her customarily hard features had softened, and to the surprise of Judith and Renie, she had kissed Lance. “It’s a good thing you’re beautiful, because you sure are dumb. And at least you wear socks.”

Otto and Oriana had been the last to leave, waiting for Muggins to ski off down the hill, his muffler flying and his fedora miraculously stuck to his head.

“Hey, hotcakes,” Otto had called to Judith from the front walk, “you want to make this an annual event? The entertainment stinks, but the grub’s pretty good!”

“Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” Judith had said cheerfully.

“You haven’t seen the bill yet.”

“Dio mio!”
Oriana had exclaimed, hugging her mink coat close and teetering dangerously on her high heels, “wait until he sees the bill from Muggins for the divorce!”

Otto had turned to Oriana with a stunned expression.

“Wait a minute, my vivacious vermicelli, you can’t divorce me! We’re not married!”

Oriana had giggled, slipped in the snow, and collapsed against Otto, a picture of the kittenish Zerlina hoodwinking her poor Masetto. “Of course we’re not! You’re going to divorce
Gloria
. Then we can have a huge wedding and we won’t have to invite Harvey. He always was a wet blanket.”

In Judith’s mind, Harvey Carver had been a lot more. He had, she reflected with sadness, been a brilliant surgeon who no doubt had saved many lives during his prestigious career.

But he was a twisted man, eaten up by envy and insecurity.

Lance, coming downstairs for the last time, had stopped to look Judith straight in the eye. “I’m sure glad they arrested him,” he had said. “I always knew he did it. I never forgot about Spot.”

Somehow, Lance’s insight had not amazed Judith as much as it should have. “Did Harvey trip you at breakfast this morning?” she had asked.

Lance had considered briefly. “I think so. He did mean
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stuff like that to me all the time. Funny, though, I kind of liked him. But he was sort of crazy, like a “—Lance had paused, then scratched at his side under his coat—“bed-bug,”

he’d concluded, causing Judith more alarm than amusement.

And then they were all gone, even Joe and Woody. Arlene had rushed in, having observed the last act of the tragedy through Dooley’s telescope. As for Dooley, he’d raced over to Hillside Manor just in time to see Harvey being handcuffed and read his rights. Other neighbors had gathered, but to Judith’s relief, the media had kept away. Deterred by the steep hill, they had headed instead for police headquarters downtown.

In the lull that had followed, Judith and Renie had fixed themselves stout drinks and collapsed in the blessed quiet of the living room. They barely had time to put their feet up when Joe and Woody returned, their official duties complete with the booking of Harvey. No sooner had they arrived than Gertrude had called, expressing her aversion to Joe.

Now the fire was blazing merrily in the grate, Judith had hung up the telephone, and Renie was pouring beer for Joe and peach seltzer for Woody. Sweetums was asleep on the mantel, looking not unlike a stuffed trophy. Idly, Judith wondered why Harvey hadn’t done something worthwhile, like giving her cat the same treatment he’d reserved for Spot.

“I’m surprised you came back,” said Judith, then became aware that she hadn’t intended the double entendre.

Apparently, he didn’t notice. “The paperwork can wait,”

he said, loosening his tie and taking off his shoulder holster with the snub-nosed .38 special. “Despite the lesser charge, bail has been posted at five hundred thousand dollars. Ellie can probably raise that much by Monday—if she wants to.”

“Is there any doubt?” asked Renie from her place on the sofa by Judith.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “Are you kidding? The way she and Dash were looking at each other, I don’t think either
208 / Mary Daheim

of them will be wearing socks for at least a week. I wonder,”

he mused, tasting his beer, “if Ellie can reform him.”

“Men don’t change,” said Judith. “They just adapt. They’re like little kids testing parents. Dash will get away with whatever Ellie allows. It all depends on how much they care for each other. Harvey almost got away with murder.”

Joe and Woody exchanged knowing masculine glances, but offered no critique of Judith’s philosophy. Instead, Joe spoke specifically of Harvey: “He would probably never have even been arrested if he hadn’t been rash enough to try the same method on you that he used on Wanda.” The green eyes twinkled. “I’m willing to be a good sport, though, Jude-girl. I suppose you figured all this out beforehand.”

“Of course I did,” Judith replied, sitting back on the sofa with her arms folded across her chest. “If you hadn’t been lollygagging around with your subordinates at the Dooleys’, I would have told you everything before Harvey tried to put out my lights.”

The twinkle faded. “You’re a sharp cookie,” Joe said, setting the beer mug down on the coffee table, “but I don’t see how you managed to pin the murder on Harvey so fast.”

Judith made a tapping gesture in the air. “As simple as 213, that being the area code for Los Angeles. I called one Edna Stover, a retired nurse from St. Peregrine’s Hospital.

She helped put all the pieces in place.”

Joe was still dubious. “How?”

Judith allowed herself to bask a bit in her own glory. “Edna worked with Wanda in the surgery unit. She wasn’t on the team that operated on Lance, but Wanda was, and so was Stanley Edelstein. Afterward, Wanda told Edna that
Jack
O’Doul hadn’t been himself in more ways than one
. She said it in such a way that Edna not only remembered her exact words, but was puzzled as to what Wanda meant.” Judith’s dark eyes rested in turn on each of her
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listeners. “All along, it seemed obvious that O’Doul and the amnesiac were one and the same, which was why Wanda had kept those clippings. What was the explanation? Edna said Dr. O’Doul had never suffered from amnesia before or after that time, and she’d known him for over twenty years.

But there are drugs—usually anesthetics used in surgery—which produce temporary amnesia. The question was, who gave Dr. O’Doul that drug? The only logical answer was Harvey Carver.”

As Judith paused for breath, Woody shook his head. “I see how Harvey might have done it, but
why?
”

“Because he hated Lance, especially his perfect body and athletic prowess,” replied Judith. “He always had, I think, ever since Lance came along and uprooted Harvey as the child of the house. His parents were dead, and I’ll bet Minnie, if not Otto, doted on Harvey. Then Lance was born and Harvey took second place, then third by the time Gwen arrived. There must have been all sorts of slights along the way, like the one about Harvey’s playhouse being torn down to make a basketball court for Lance. But Harvey was always smarter than his cousins, and he went off to medical school at UCLA and excelled at his studies. But who comes on his heels and grabs the glory? Lance, whose only skill is catching a football. Harvey must have been galled all over again.”