Devil's Food

by Janice Weber

  “That cheap schmuck! You’ll be pleased to know he ended up in the hospital. Passed out in his limo just as he was beginning to read the script. Then as he was being hauled into the emergency room, someone stole it out of the backseat. Simon’s now ranting about poison ink and paper that smelled like turnips.” Philippa sighed. “A brilliant day at the races.”

  The sisters, mired in their separate catastrophes, did not speak for several moments. “What are you going to do now?” Emily asked.

  “I’m not sure. Lie low for another day or two, see if this script turns up again. I get bad vibes about the whole episode. What about you?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t know at all.” Emily blew her nose again. “I visited Aidan and got your fan-club list. Do people always send you things like trivets made out of bobby pins?”

  “Gifts from the heart,” Philippa replied. “Very touching.”

  “Does the name Charles Moody mean anything to you?”

  “No. Who’s that?”

  “Just a fan who’s got the same post-office box as the dead dishwasher at Diavolina.”

  “Dead dishwasher? What are you talking about?”

  “Dana was not the only casualty that night. The dishwasher drowned in the Fenway a few hours later.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I have no idea, Emily replied. “Probably nothing. He was a wasted old alcoholic.”

  “Why would a loser like that share a postbox with a fan of mine? It makes no sense.”

  Emily yawned, tired of love and vanity. “Where can I reach you, Phil?”

  “I think I’ll stay at this hotel for one more night. You’ve got me a little afraid to go home alone now. Say! Why don’t you come out here for a few days? We can go to a spa.”

  “That might be a good idea.”

  After hanging up, Philippa went to the bathroom and vomited. Guy dead? Then she was an accessory to murder! If only she had dragged him into the cabin and called an ambulance, he might be alive now. But that would have been inconvenient! Damn, she was in trouble, with the law, with the Furies, with her sister. Emily must never, ever find out. If Philippa wanted to save her skin, she’d have to pretend Guy had never been to the cabin. She had never seen him in her life. Never! She drooped over the toilet, remembering the night Guy had swept into Dana’s chair at Diavolina and touched her cheek: instant possession. She remembered Guy’s wooing voice, his mouth on her neck at Cafe Presto. He had had such beautiful eyes, sensual hands ... and he had wanted her. Now he was dead? No! More likely Emily had found out about her little intrigue and was playing a practical joke in retaliation. After an hour’s deliberation in the bathtub, Philippa called Cafe Presto. “I would like to speak with Guy Witten,” she commanded.

  “You would, eh? Well, that’s tough shit! He’s dead! Don’t call again!” shouted that same insolent twerp, hanging up on her.

  Philippa collapsed in tears on her bed.

  Precisely at noon, Dagmar Pola’s maroon Lincoln rolled onto State Street, slowing to a halt in front of Ross’s office building. To his surprise, she was driving. Today Dagmar wore pale green linen with her pearls. Her small feet just about reached the gas pedal. “Good afternoon, Ross. You’re looking well.”

  Why not? He had just regained his wife’s undivided attention. “Likewise.”

  “Any suggestions for lunch?”

  “Out of town,” Ross said. “It’s a great day for a ride.”

  “How much time do you have?”

  “I’m free until two. That’s good enough for a hot dog in Providence.” He looked over. “Would you like me to drive?”

  “Please.” She slid over to the passenger seat as he walked around the front of the car. “I must confess to having called you completely on the spur of the moment.”

  Smiling, Ross headed toward the expressway. “What spurred the moment?”

  “Oh—a pilgrim’s progress. What have you been doing with yourself lately?”

  Oh—inciting weightlifters to homicide, investigating the origin of purple bikinis, spying on pathetic old actresses, lusting after a secretary’s perfect legs, wondering how to reclaim a lost wife ... “Working,” Ross said. “It’s been a circus at the office since Dana died.”

  Dagmar didn’t say anything for a long while. “It must have been terribly hard for you.”

  “Dana was my best friend. We had known each other since we were little boys. He was more than a brother to me.” Ross began to tell Dagmar about Dana, beginning with Cub Scouts, working through the football team, college, their first building projects, their last commission; someone besides Emily had to hear this, had to appreciate the size of the hole in Ross’s life. Dagmar listened with patience and, evidently, perception, judging from her occasional questions. They were almost in Providence before she asked, “What was Dana s wife like?”

  Ross was temporarily speechless: Ardith unfailingly wrecked a good story. “She was his childhood sweetheart.”

  “Dana married only once?”

  “Yes. But you probably have some idea of what Ardith’s life was like.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t,” Dagmar replied icily. “Joseph never made an ass of himself in public the way Dana did.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” Ross touched Dagmar’s hand. “You were married for a long time, weren’t you?”

  “Thirty-five years.”

  Cold fact chilled the air for a mile. “How did you meet?” Ross finally asked.

  “At the Athenaeum. A lecture on American poetry. He swept me off my feet. We were married six months later.”

  “That’s quite romantic.”

  “Not really. I was quite pregnant.”

  Cripes! “Ah, so you have children?”

  “No.” Dagmar did not elaborate. “Do you?”

  Ross slowly veered around the Providence exit. “Not yet.”

  “What does your wife do?”

  “She’s a chef. Between jobs at the moment.” Between lovers, between husbands ...

  He took Dagmar to a restaurant that Dana had used for high-risk liaisons: The wine list was long, the service quick, and across the street was a motel. Ross discovered that Dagmar had grown up in the town next to his on the North Shore. Just like him, she was an only child. They had both played the cello, gone to Ivy League colleges, and studied in Europe. On Friday afternoons for the last thirteen years, Dagmar had been sitting in Symphony Hall just a dozen rows away from Ross; perhaps that was why they felt they knew each other from somewhere.

  Speaking with her was so easy; the more Ross spoke, the more he wanted to tell her, the more she seemed to know already. She was soothing as a mother, invigorating as a sister: the age gap between them came and went, like a desert mirage. On the return trip to Boston, breezing past trees that were just beginning to redden, they talked about everything but their marriages: Why corrode a sweet afternoon with reality? Ross was back on State Street just a little after two. “Thank you, Dagmar,” he said as she slid to the driver’s seat. “That was really marvelous.”

  “Yes, it was.” She drove away.

  Ross went upstairs. His sunny afterglow did not escape Marjorie, who had been shoveling garbage on his behalf since noon-time. “And how is Dagmar?” she asked, glancing up from the word processor. “Ready for her ground-breaking ceremony?”

  Not once over the course of lunch had Dagmar and he talked about Joe’s art collection. “I think so,” Ross said, shuffling through his message slips. “Anything critical here?”

  “Not particularly. Emily called. Said she’d be back from New York late tonight.”

  What the hell was she doing in New York? “Right,” he said noncommittally, as if he and his wife had thoroughly discussed the topic at breakfast. Almost at once, a little headache sprouted just behind his eyes, driving out concentration. Marjorie had to explain a few messages twice.

  She was reminding him of a dentist appointment tomorrow when Detective O’Keefe
entered. His raincoat, hanging raggedly open, looked more like a canvas tent with a half dozen unnecessary buttons. He needed a haircut. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d follow up on a few things,” he explained, scanning Marjorie’s desk. “Got a minute?”

  Ross wondered if O’Keefe had seen him leaving Dagmar’s car downstairs. The thought displeased him immensely. “Sure. Let’s go to my office. This way.”

  O’Keefe glanced into Dana’s office as they walked by. It looked barren and stale. Refusing an invitation to sit in the chair opposite Ross’s desk, the detective said, “I have just one brief question, actually. I was wondering if any more of Dana Forbes’s pill bottles had turned up.”

  “No, we haven’t seen anything,” Ross answered. “Marjorie and I cleaned out his office quite thoroughly. Dana’s wife came by last week to pick up his personal belongings. Still haven’t found that fancy antidepressant you think he was taking, eh?”

  “Iproniazid. No.” O’Keefe had searched Dana’s boat, Dana’s house: zilch. One of these days, he’d ask Philippa Banks about it again. “By the way, what were you doing last Wednesday night?”

  The night Guy had died: The question caught Ross so off guard that he could only stare.

  “We were working,” Marjorie answered for him.

  “You were both here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “How late?”

  O’Keefe saw Marjorie shoot a laser glance at Ross. “Ten or eleven o’clock,” she said. “Why?”

  “I was walking by and thought I saw your lights on.” O’Keefe smiled at Ross. “Just games we detectives play with ourselves. Thanks for your time.” He left.

  Marjorie stared at Ross. “He looked up forty-eight floors from the sidewalk and thought he saw our office lights on? That is bizarre.”

  Ross went to the window and watched a small airplane flit above the harbor. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew O’Keefe was after him. The detective had probably been snooping around Cafe Presto this morning. Perhaps Bert had told him of Ross’s late afternoon visit the other day and gotten a few suspicious wheels turning. Had someone at Presto dropped a few hints about Emily and Guy? Had O’Keefe actually gotten a confession out of Emily? Goddamn it! Why had she disappeared to New York just when Ross needed to ask a few critical questions? “Marj,” Ross said softly because his headache was killing him, “were you able to get that file on the Darnell Building?”

  “Yes. Just a minute.” When she returned and saw Ross sprawled on his couch in a five-aspirin pose, she quickly de-toured to the washroom. “Here you go,” she said, sitting beside him, handing him a glass of water and a pill bottle. Her rear end almost touched his side.

  “Thanks.” Ross studied a brochure of the Darnell Building, a glitzy commission they had received during the eighties boom. He and Dana had fought over those cute little balconies on the upper floors. Dana had won. “Do you remember anything about a girl jumping off?”

  “Sure. It happened during the dinner that Dana was awarded Architect of the Year.”

  “Where was I again?”

  “In Korea.”

  “You were at the dinner, weren’t you? Tell me about it.”

  “It was a typical blowout in the upstairs ballroom. About three hundred people came. The only indication that some-thing had happened was a few cops walking through the back of the room during Dana’s acceptance speech. Afterward, there was dancing. I left early.” That was because Ross had not been there to dance with her, of course. “There were lots of police cars and an ambulance outside. I heard that someone had jumped. The next day they came to the office with photographs of the girl. No one recognized her. Then the police thought that she had been a waitress. It turned out that she had talked her way past a guard, somehow gotten to one of the balconies, and jumped. She left a note behind blaming a failed love affair. I didn’t follow the case too closely. It was a hectic time here.”

  “How would she have gotten to a balcony?” Ross asked. “That’s not exactly public access.”

  “Maybe she sneaked past a cleaning lady. Or she was involved with someone in another office upstairs.” Marjorie fixed Ross with an even gaze. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  Ross was suddenly aware of her knees just inches from his chin. He could so easily reach over, slide a hand along her smooth thighs ... Christ! Why must she sit so close all the time? Ross raised his hand; by a supernal effort of will, he found a way to bypass Marjorie’s knees and cover his eyes instead. One more complication in his life and he might jump off a balcony himself.

  “Thanks, Marjie.”

  She left. He began to draw.

  13

  How many seconds elapsed between balcony and pavement? Three? What kind of thoughts would have gone through that girls head as she sailed through the air? Those of blazing, final triumph? Blind despair? I wonder if she was pretty; that would have made the final gore all the more horrific. Brains, guts, all over the sidewalk ... pity the poor pedestrian out for a nice evening walk when whap, a monster falls from the sky. How did the police ever identify her? Forget the face. Dental records? First they’d have to find her teeth. Jewelry? I doubt there was a wedding ring. Clothing, probably. Shoes. No, only one shoe, Ward said. It probably didn’t look much the worse for wear. Shoes survive falls, they survive getting run over, a week in the ocean.... Shoes always come back, the better to lead feet into mischief. I wonder what the suicide note said. Would the police have given it to Ward or do they keep that kind of thing in their files forever? Three seconds and no turning back: Where did she find the courage to jump? Was the love of a man worth her life? Yes, I can see that.

  But what about Guy, the cause of it all? Did he feel bad? Christ, I wish he were here to ask! Maybe the girl was a psycho; look at her sister, Ward. What if she was some muscle-bound gorilla chasing him around, phoning at all hours of the night? Then he couldn’t possibly have felt bad. Maybe she was just a friend who never declared herself; then he might have felt a modest twinge. I wonder where they met. Ten years ago, was it? Guy was married then. The girl must have been a fling who had delusions of becoming more than a sideshow.

  They’re both dead now and I’m so curious. Ward’s the only one with some answers. But I’d better stay away from her for the moment; instead of regretting her crime, she feels cheated that she didn’t get to chuck Guy off the Tobin Bridge. And O’Keefe makes me uneasy as well. He’s got to be wondering who would hate Guy enough to kill him. He’ll never find Ward; the trail is too old and fuzzy. Unless she does something rash, of course. I worry about that. And there’s always Philippa ... but she’ll never confess a thing. Emily might have forgiven her for Dana, but she won’t forgive her for Guy, so chalk Philippa off the worry list. I suppose, if O’Keefe is any detective at all, I’ll become his number one suspect. He’s already tipped his hand by coming here this morning. Good luck, buddy. You’d like to solve a murder; I’d like to keep my wife. No contest.

  Poor Guy! What did he do to deserve this but love one woman, not love another!

  It was a brilliant autumn morning, invigorating and crisp, same as the morning after Dana had died, only twenty degrees cooler: lecherous winter panting after Boston. The sun burned from a pellucid sky. After her chat with Detective O’Keefe, Emily wandered from Cafe Presto to the North End. Her other senses having fled, or collapsed in shock, she was all nose today, cogently aware of aromas seeping to the street from the tiny Italian bakeries and groceries. She walked up a steep, narrow rise to a hilltop park overlooking the harbor: Guy and she had occasionally come here after a long day at Presto, when they were grimy and tired but somehow not quite ready to go home. As always, the sight of graceful, white sails on the water soothed her; how lovely it must be just to drift with the breeze and tide. She sat for an hour, throbbing numbly for Guy. Eventually a huge cloud devoured the sun. Emily left the park.

  She walked to South Station and Slavomir’s mailbox—hey, it was something to do with h
er legs besides watching the hair grow. The final wave of rush-hour commuters was whishing through the terminal as otiose benchwarmers observed them. Constant announcements of trains and platforms cut through the jostling. Emily walked past the food stalls to the post office behind the station.

  In Slavomir’s box was a large pink envelope, bent in half, addressed to Mr. Charles Moody. PHOTOGRAPHS DO NOT BEND, Emily read, then saw the return address: Philippa Banks International Fan Club. She laughed out loud, as if someone had sent her a hilarious card. Emily opened the envelope and removed a sheet of pink paper with an ornate silver letterhead.

  Dear Mr. Moody,

  On behalf of Miss Banks, I would like to thank you for your lovely note of 9/20. We are so happy that fans such as yourself take the time to express concern for Philippa’s safety. Sad but true, in this day and age no one, not even the President of the United States, can truly claim to be totally safe from fanatics and evildoers. However, please rest assured that Miss Banks takes all proper safety precautions in public and would never want to jeopardize the happiness of her loyal fans by exposing herself to dangerous situations.

  In appreciation of your concern, Miss Banks would like you to have her latest snapshot, which she sends with her love and gratitude.

  The letter was Very Sincerely signed by Aidan Jackson, President of the PBIFC. He had enclosed a picture that Emily had autographed just the other day. Aidan hadn’t been kidding when he told her that Philippa had an efficient sales force: Moody had received a reply to his letter within four days of sending it. Emily returned to the station and drank a slow cup of coffee. Then she phoned directory assistance in Los Angeles. It was around seven-thirty in California; were Aidan’s recent assertions about his workday true, he had been slaving in the office for half an hour already.