Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (9 page)

Renie reflected. “The living room fireplace? Where else could you burn anything? You didn’t start a fire in the parlor.” Her eyes grew very wide, and she slapped both hands on the table. “That’s it! Somebody put more logs on the fire!

Or was it you?”

“Not me.” Judith pulled on her upper lip. “When, I wonder?”

“I noticed it when Wanda’s brother called. Otto was the only one left in the living room.” Renie frowned, trying to be more specific. “You and I were in the parlor with Joe.

Your mother had just called. When was that? Around eleven?”

“Yes. I looked at the grandfather clock and hoped Mavis had missed the news deadline. The trouble is, we don’t know if Otto was in the living room the whole time.”

“The way he was drinking, he probably wasn’t,” said Renie.

“He must have had to go to the can at some point or other.”

Judith’s shoulders slumped. “So that doesn’t help. But I’m willing to bet that whoever started up that fire also burned what was in the satchel. Somehow, I don’t see the Brodies as being domestically inclined.”

“True.” Renie cast about in her mind for some helpful
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scrap to buoy her cousin’s spirits. “The police may have found something at Wanda’s apartment.”

“I wonder if Joe would tell us,” mused Judith.

Renie wondered, too. For some time, the two women sat in silence, sipping their coffee, the ticking of the old school-house clock in the background, the sound of feet overhead and out in the direction of the entry hall. Renie was about to suggest that they ask the police if it would be all right if they went to bed for a while, when tense voices floated down from the back stairs.

“Who?” mouthed Renie, practically falling off her chair in an effort to catch the words.

Judith listened intently and was rewarded with a few well-projected syllables. “Oriana.” She got up as quietly as possible from the chair and tiptoed to the hallway that separated the pantry from the back stairs. Plastering herself against the wall between a stack of old newspapers and a carton of soda pop, she tried to make out the other voice.

It was Oriana whose words Judith first caught. “…tan-tamount to blackmail! Where’s your sense of family?”

The reply was definitely masculine, but as inaudible as it was unidentifiable. Judith judged that the pair was right by the first landing, a scant ten feet away. Oriana was speaking again, but this time she had lowered her voice. All Judith could hear was something about “once in a lifetime” and

“stabbed to the heart.” The latter phrase sent a shiver down her spine. Judith considered dashing back to the relative safety of the kitchen, but felt compelled to try to hear more.

The other half of the duo wasn’t cooperating, however.

Again, the male voice was too muffled. Judith heard the shuffling of feet. Oriana’s high heels had started up the stairs.

Judith darted a glance around the corner. She saw just a glimpse of a man’s black shoe, gray trousers—and no socks.

The grandfather clock had just chimed two-thirty when a bleary-eyed Joe Flynn returned to the kitchen with Of-64 / Mary Daheim

ficer Price in his wake. “Personally,” said Joe, collapsing onto the chair vacated by Renie, “I’d like to arrest all eight of them for impersonating human beings. The only possible real person among them is Lance, and he’s so dumb that when I asked him for his address, he said it was an expensive one.”

“Maybe it’s an act,” offered Judith, pouring out the last of the coffee for Joe and Officer Price. “Dare we ask what you found out?”

Joe drank the coffee with the compulsion of an addict.

“Sure. Nothing.” He sat back, stretched out his legs, and kicked off his loafers. “Well, almost nothing. Dash admits he knew Wanda. In fact, he was married to her for a couple of years. But he swears he didn’t even recognize her in that getup and hasn’t seen her in twenty years.”

“Do you believe that?” Judith didn’t. It was just the quick, easy solution she wanted so badly.

Joe shrugged and looked at Price. “What do you think, Woody?”

A seemingly careful man, Woody Price tipped his head to one side and fingered his moustache. “I think it’s too much of a coincidence that Wanda Rakesh should show up under the same roof as Dash Subarosa. But that doesn’t make him a murderer. If I were going to guess—but that’s not my job.”

“Try it,” urged Joe. “Just for once. Anything goes at two-thirty a.m.”

Price shrugged his compact shoulders. “Okay. I think it’s more likely that Dash and Wanda were in this together and somehow the wrong person got killed.” He raised his heavy, dark eyebrows at his superior, waiting for an opinion.

After draining the mug, Joe set it down and rested his chin in his hand. “That’s possible. But who was the real victim?

And why? Who sat next to Wanda?”

Judith’s answer was swift: “Otto on one side, Ellie on the other. All three of them had tea. I think.”

“Are you sure?” But Joe didn’t wait for an answer to his own question. He stood up and yawned. “I’m calling
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it a night. I’ll check in downtown, then get a few hours’ sleep and be back here around nine.” He gave Judith a sleepy smile.

“You do breakfast, right?”

“Didn’t I always?” she said in a voice so low that only Joe heard.

He did not, however, react, except for the faintest flicker of the green eyes. “We might have the medical examiner’s report by then. Come on, Woody, let’s go.” He started away from the table, realized he wasn’t wearing his shoes, and slipped them on, reminding Judith of the confrontation between Dash and Oriana.

Joe showed only mild interest. “Come the dawn, it’ll probably turn out to be the crux of the whole case. Right now, the rest of that crew could kill each other and I’d put them on hold.”

“Oriana did mention someone being stabbed,” said Judith doggedly.

“Well, that isn’t my case,” noted Joe, hands in pockets as he half lurched for the door. “I’m leaving some men on duty, two out, two in. Everybody stays until I get back.” He paused, a hand raised in salute, and looked straight at Judith. “You two had better stick around. From an official point of view, you’re both suspects.”

Judith and Renie gaped at him. “That’s absurd,” retorted Renie. “You know damned well Judith didn’t bump the poor woman off—and I got hauled into this crapshoot at the last minute!”

Joe cocked his head to one side. “Maybe so. But let’s face it, ladies, from the chief’s standpoint, since this is a poisoning case, you two could be voted most likely to succeed. You did prepare all the food, right?”

“Mother made the cream puffs,” said Judith through tight lips. “Why don’t you haul her in? You could always handcuff her walker.”

With a rueful shake of his head, Joe raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “She’s not beyond suspicion, to be frank.

Hey, what I think doesn’t count. The homicide squad works with facts, not sentiment.” His expression
66 / Mary Daheim

turned faintly sheepish. “I’m just one cog in a big wheel, and I’ve got to do my job. After all, I have a wife and children to support.” On that note, Joe left the kitchen with Officer Price at his heels.

“Damn!” exclaimed Judith, clutching at the refrigerator. “I should have seen that coming! Damn, damn, damn!”

“Oh, it’s too stupid!” ranted Renie, gathering up the coffee mugs with a great clatter. “What did you do, shoot your face off to Joe about how you wanted to get a bumper sticker that said No Autopsies after Dan died?”

Judith shot Renie a contemptuous look. “Don’t be an ass.

I didn’t mean that, I meant the wife and children. Who,” she demanded bitterly, “was I trying to kid?”

One policeman was posted in the living room on the sofa, the other upstairs in a wicker chair in the hall. The outside men stayed in their patrol car, parked discreetly in the Ericsons’ empty driveway. Judith and Renie had turned out all the lights downstairs except for a Tiffany lamp on an end table near the fireplace. They were on their way to bed when the front doorbell buzzed.

Judith swore, then trudged wearily across the entry hall.

Yet another policeman stood under the front porch light with a big manilla envelope in his hand.

“Lieutenant Flynn?” he inquired.

Judith stared at the envelope, then at Renie. Joe and Price had been gone less than ten minutes. “I’ll give it to him,”

said Judith, dredging up a bright smile and putting out her hand. “Thank you very much.”

She closed the door firmly and threw the dead bolt. “Dumb cluck,” remarked Judith under her breath. Cautiously, she peeked into the living room. The officer on the sofa had nodded off. Judith slipped into the half bath off the entry hall and grabbed a towel, which she draped over the envelope. Without another word, Judith and Renie went upstairs.

The policeman on duty in the wicker chair
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glanced up from his copy of
Field and Stream
and nodded in a halfhearted manner.

The two women kept going down the hall, past the four guest rooms and two baths, where silence now reigned. They ascended the short flight of steps behind the door marked Private at the far end of the hall, and came out into a small foyer. The walls were lined with bookcases crammed with hardcovers and paperbacks alike. As a librarian, Judith had eclectic tastes: Classics, sci-fi, romance, biographies, mysteries, popular fiction, and serious works sat spine-to-spine under the eaves. The only other objects in the little foyer were a big Boston fern and Gertrude’s favorite painting of the Sacred Heart. Judith avoided Jesus’s probing gaze and opened the door to her bedroom.

“Will we get arrested for this?” asked Renie, flopping onto Judith’s goosedown comforter.

“I hope so,” said Judith, unwinding the string that held the envelope closed. Fingering the contents, she frowned. “I thought this must be the coroner’s report, but it’s something else.” Carefully, she dumped the contents on the bed next to Renie.

On the surface, the items seemed innocuous enough: three smaller envelopes, several newspaper clippings, a couple of snapshots, and an eight-by-ten glossy of what looked like a Word War II glamour girl.

“Who’s this?” queried Renie, trying to decipher the inscription without her glasses. “She looks familiar. Is it Barbara Stanwyck?”

Judith shook her head. “No. This stuff must have come from Wanda’s apartment. The name on the back is Gloria St. Cloud.” She studied the photograph closely, taking in the dark, shoulder-length hair; the wide, sensuous mouth; the big, dark eyes; and the thin straps of what probably was an evening gown. “Gloria St. Cloud looks familiar because she’s Wanda’s mother. Listen to this. ‘To Baby Wanda, my rising star. Love, Mommy.’” She shoved the photograph under Renie’s nose. “What you recognize is a resemblance to Wanda, especially the eyes.”

68 / Mary Daheim

Renie was pensive. “She must have been an actress. I never heard of her. Is there a date?”

“No. But the photographer was located on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A.” Judith picked up the two snapshots.

“Here’s Mom looking not nearly so hot.” She tapped the photograph with her forefinger. “Is that Wanda? The kid must be about ten or twelve.”

“Shoot,” said Renie, “they’re a blur to me. There’s a boy who looks a little older, I can see that much, and another couple. What kind of building is that they’re standing in front of?”

Judith looked at the back of the photo. “No writing on this one. That car on the right looks like the one my dad bought after the war. A ’49 Chev, remember?”

“Black, four-door, no running boards. My dad bought a blue Nash. He ran over a cow with it.”

“He always drove kind of fast,” Judith commented, still staring at the snapshot. “It’s Southern California. Spanish architecture and palm trees in the background.”

Renie dug into her purse, which was about the size of a ten-pound potato sack. After a great deal of shuffling and rustling, she produced a pair of bent red-rimmed glasses.

“Gloria must be in her thirties here, but her glitz is gone. I wonder if the teenaged boy is Lester Busbee.”

“Who?” Judith plumped up a pillow behind her back. “Oh, the brother. Could be. Do you think the building is a hotel?”

Renie considered. “It looks too…formal for a hotel. See any resemblance between Wanda and the other couple?”

“I don’t know how you see anything, those glasses are so scratched and gummed up. How do you work in them?”

Renie glared at Judith through the maligned spectacles. “I get some of my most innovative graphic designs right off the lenses,” she declared, then sat bolt upright. “Palm trees!

Madame Gushenka—Wanda—mentioned palm trees! What did she say?”

Judith put a hand to her head. “Oh, hell’s bells, she
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said so much! Abandoned women and children and fraud and deceit and jails and snails and puppy dogs’ tails! I’m too tired to think.”

“Right.” Renie’s spurt of enthusiasm flickered out, though she forged ahead and picked up the third photograph. “This one’s in color, if faded. Doctors, nurses, including Wanda at about—thirty-five? I’d guess the building behind them here is a hospital.”

Judith concurred. “A Catholic hospital. There’s a statue in that niche above them. Which saint?”

“Vitus. He looks like he’s dancing,” said Renie.

“Can it, coz. He’s levitating. Didn’t Joe mention St. Peregrine’s?”

“I think so. Hey, look.” Renie held the photo up close, then at arm’s length, and pointed to one of the doctors. “Is that Harvey with a moustache?”

Judith looked closely at the white-coated man who stood in the back row, not quite behind Wanda. “Clean your glasses, goofy. This guy’s a leprechaun, not a weasel. The one next to him looks like Uncle Al.” She flipped the picture on top of the other two. “Let’s see what’s in these envelopes.”

None of them was sealed. Two were legal-sized; the third was mauve stationery with Oriana Brodie’s name and address printed on the back. The letter carried the same imprint.

“Boring,” said Judith. “It’s just gush, confirming the date for tonight. Whatever ammunition Oriana gave Wanda to use in needling the rest of the family isn’t in here. She must have done that by phone. Unless Oriana’s lying and she did in fact meet Wanda before tonight.” She tossed the single sheet to Renie, who was perusing it when they both heard someone shouting from the street below.