Devil's Food

by Janice Weber

  O’Keefe wrote a few words in his pad. “Well, that’s been very helpful. Thank you both.”

  As he stood up to leave, Emily suddenly said, “I’ve been thinking about Guy Witten.” Again; always. “Is it possible the same person who drove through the window of Cafe Presto shot him with the crossbow?”

  O’Keefe needed a moment to flip from one frustrating, deadend file to another. He tried to keep his voice even. “Quite. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to locate either the truck or the crossbow. Not to mention a suitable perpetrator.”

  “What do you mean, ’truck’? I thought a car drove through his window.”

  “No, it was a much heavier vehicle. Left some white paint behind. The lab tells me it comes from an old farm truck. What with all the bodies piling up around you girls, I haven’t really had the time to check out every dented pickup in New England. Wouldn’t happen to know of any farmers with crossbows, would you?”

  Emily almost replied, then thought better of it: This morning, between imaginary dentists and pink peppercorns, Philippa had sent O’Keefe on two false leads. Emily hesitated to send him to Peace Power Farm on a third. “No. But I’ll think about it some more.” She showed him out, them stomped back to the atrium. “What a fiasco! You’re a terrible liar, Philippa! Did you notice what a bad temper he was in all of a sudden? He obviously got fed up with your tall tales.”

  “You fool, he was angry because you were asking about Guy Witten.”

  “Why should that irritate him?”

  Because jealous suitors never liked to be reminded of their more successful predecessors. “Because the case isn’t solved! You put him on the spot!” Philippa staggered toward the liquor cabinet. “That beast has destroyed my nerves. His insinuations make me feel like a criminal.”

  As she was guzzling an inch of Ross’s best scotch, Emily said, “Why do you keep crying in your sleep about a white truck? You shout Took out, look out’ as if it’s going to hit you.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that getting run over is a common nightmare of actresses?” Philippa thought her head would explode. For an insane second, she almost confessed everything to Emily. Her sister would forgive her attraction to Guy Witten, her desperate meeting with him at Cafe Presto ... but Emily would never forgive her for leaving him out on that porch to die. Never. Philippa reeled back to the couch. “Stop asking me about the truck, Emily. Please. I can’t explain my dreams. If I ever figure it out, I’ll tell you.”

  She looked feverish. Emily went to the bathroom and brought back a cool, wet towel for her sister’s forehead. “Forget about the detective. You should rest.”

  Philippa nodded weakly. “Bring my mail, would you, sweetie?” A large package from California had arrived that morning. “Hearing from my fans always cheers me up.”

  Announcing that she would return by dinnertime, Emily left her sister with the phone, the soaps, and a stack of letters bearing Love and Elvis stamps. She got into her car and headed west, into the exhaust of sooty intuition, arriving at Peace Power Farm as the sun was just kissing the violet hills. The WE LOVE VISITORS sign had been removed for the season, if not forever; Emily drove in anyway. No dog came yipping and snapping as she left the car. Unswept leaves had settled around the old farmhouse, there to mulch until spring. Water and worms had finally vanquished the far end of the porch railing. The white pickup truck was nowhere in sight. Emily rang the doorbell and waited. Someone was home; she smelled a cabbagey soup.

  After a long while Bruna answered, looking huge and mean as a Cape buffalo. “Hi,” Emily said. “Remember me? I was wondering if you had any goat cheese for sale.”

  “Stand’s closed for the winter. I’m only delivering to restaurants now.”

  “In that big white truck?”

  “Nope. I lost the differential on the turnpike and sold it for scrap. I have a van now.”

  Emily glanced toward the side yard. “Looks like you’re closing down for the winter. Even the archery range is gone.” Bruna did not reply. “Still delivering to Diavolina?”

  “Look, what do you want?” Bruna said suddenly. “You didn’t come out here for cheese.”

  Two more seconds and the door would slam: Emily grabbed at a passing straw floating down the Panic River. “I—I was wondering if I could go to your school for battered women,” she cried, surprised at how much she sounded like Philippa in Choke Hold. “I’ve been having trouble at home lately. You told me last time I was here that you taught women how to fight back.”

  “Nothing would help you but a forty-five Magnum, lady.”

  “What about piano wire? Electric-frying-pan cords? I’m desperate.”

  “Why don’t you just call the police? Throw the stinker into jail.”

  “He’d kill me! You’ve got to help! I need to learn about self-defense. Wrestling. Crossbows.”

  Bruna laughed. “You with a crossbow? You hardly have the brawn to pick the thing up, much less load it.”

  Emily tried to look very, very hopeless, the way Philippa had in the more emotive scenes of her greatest movie hit. “How long did Ward stay here?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “Did she look like me when she started out?”

  “Worse. She was a total wreck. I brought her to where she is now. No one would dare step on her toes now. Go ask.”

  “I can’t,” Emily wailed. “She fired me.”

  Bruna scowled. “So what did your old man do to you?”

  “Hit me! On my ribs so it doesn’t show.”

  “With what?”

  Emily desperately tried to think of something that Ross might hit her with. “The electric toothbrush. It really hurt. He’s—he’s”—a fervent line from Choke Hold came to her—“Satanic!”

  “No kidding,” Bruna said.

  Emily paused, confused: Bruna had said it so calmly, as if she knew the man. “I’m almost better now,” she stumbled on, “but if it happens again, I want to stay here.”

  “Start lifting weights, then,” Bruna said. She shut the door.

  Emily returned home. The soaps had ended and the talk shows were now contaminating the air waves. Philippa’s mail lay all over the floor; perhaps she had been disinfecting her wounds with the half-empty bottle of scotch on the coffee table. Emily turned off the television and gently prodded her sister. “Wake up, Phil I’m back.”

  “Uhhh. Get your errands done?”

  “Sort of. What have you been doing? The place is a mess.”

  “This is all the fan mail that Aidan sent this morning. I get this much every single day. It’s incredible.”

  Emily started picking up. “What’s this?” she asked, holding a thick envelope.

  “Feels like pictures. Be a dear and get a pair of scissors, Em. I didn’t want to ruin my fingernails getting through all that tape. Honestly, you’d think my fans were sending uncut diamonds, the way Aidan wraps these packages.”

  Emily went to the kitchen and cut the side of the envelope. A dozen snapshots and a yellow note fell to the counter. Just a reminder—still waiting for that personal thank you!! In memory of Byron. Always your devoted fan, Jimmy. Emily looked at the first photo and felt her heart stop: Diavolina again. There was grinning Dana. There was Philippa in that stupid wig.

  Emily headed back to the couch. “I forgot to give you something a while back,” she called, then stopped dead, staring at the photograph of Guy Witten and Philippa with the same incomprehension that Ross recently had. What was Guy doing at Diavolina? Why was he touching Philippa’s cheek like that? Why was she allowing it?

  “What’ve you got there, Em?” Philippa asked.

  Emily dropped the photo into her sister’s lap. “What’s this?”

  One look and Philippa realized that in the next sixty seconds, she had better deliver the performance of her life. Her face remained calm as she took a few extra seconds to compose herself. She didn’t blink as every brain cell in her head quietly ignited. “Looks like that great night in Bos
ton,” she said, casually handing it back.

  “Who’s the man?”

  “I have no idea, Emily. When Dana was in the men’s room, he just took over his chair and began talking to me in tones of rudest familiarity.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Pfffuiii, I hardly listened to him. He had the audacity to call me—what was it—a pear? The maître d’sent him away at once.” Philippa took another look at the photo. “Not a bad-looking man. His style left something to be desired, however. What else is in that pile? Ah, there’s Dana. That poor boy. There’s that lunkhead waiter. Check out that dress of mine. I really looked stunning that night, if I say so myself. Who sent these pictures? I don’t remember anyone with a camera.”

  “His name was Jimmy.” Emily walked quickly to the bedroom and began pulling open her drawers, searching for the prints that Byron had put in her pocket that last day at Diavolina. Where the hell had she put them? She scrambled through her underwear, all her pants, between the mattresses: finally, with a sinking heart, she found them in her night table, next to the pencils Ross always used for doing crossword puzzles. She went through the pile but found no photograph of Philippa and Guy Witten. Once more, just to make sure, she checked: nothing.

  She lay down and stared at the ceiling. Ross knew! He had said, indicated, nothing, but he knew. Emily remembered the pain, the certainty, in his eyes the night he had asked her if she were having an affair with Dana. His suspicions had been correct; only his aim had been off. Had he said anything to Guy? No, Guy would have told her immediately. Besides, Ross was never one for confrontation. He preferred to study his enemies, know them, isolate them ... then knock them off the board for-ever. Had he done the same to Guy? He had been out so late, so many nights. She had thought he was fooling around with Marjorie. Perhaps Ross had been doing something quite different. His behavior had taken a remarkable turn for the better not once Emily had left Cafe Presto, but once Guy was dead. She thrashed to her side, fighting a rush of hysteria. Ross was incapable of murder, wasn’t he? And he had been in his office the night Guy was killed. Philippa had called him there from the cabin and he had gone to pick her up.

  The door banged downstairs. Emily shuddered: Her husband was home. She ran to the den. Philippa had guzzled another couple inches of scotch. She looked as if the white pickup truck of her dreams had finally mowed her down. Emily gathered the photographs that Jimmy had sent. “I don’t want Ross to see these. Hell be upset.”

  “Do us all a favor,” Philippa moaned. “Burn them.”

  Emily was stashing the pictures in the garbage as Ross walked into the kitchen. “Hi, honey,” he said. “Have a good day?”

  Would he even be here if he hadn’t forgiven her? Emily put her arms around his neck and held on tight.

  Sure that his wife was asleep, Ross slipped out of bed, poured himself some scotch from a very light bottle, and went to the atrium. He lay on the couch where he used to find Emily around this time of night. She hadn’t come out here since Guy died; no use wrestling with her conscience if the prize had been withdrawn forever. Sipping his drink, Ross looked up through the glass. No wonder she had crept out here so often: The deep sky nudged one into eonian thoughts. Clustered by a few shy stars, the moon glowed in a black infinity. Everything looked so tranquil up there. All a delusion, Ross knew: In reality, the moon was dead and the stars were violent, erupting suns. How appearances could deceive ... and how the deceived preferred their delusions.

  Emily had been uncommonly skittish tonight. Was that because of her first doctor’s appointment tomorrow? Maybe it was an absorption of excess radiation from Philippa, who was either inhaling laughing gas or losing her mind. Ross hadn’t seen her this manic since the night he picked her up from the cabin in New Hampshire. She and Emily had apparently had a disastrous interview with O’Keefe that afternoon. All night long, the two of them had clawed each other like a pair of cats. Then, in bed, turning out the light, Emily had said, “I wonder why Ward’s sister jumped off the Darnell Building.”

  “Whatever brings that up?” he had asked, trying to look bemused, not impaled.

  “I was just thinking of that clipping on her desk. Remember we talked about it once?”

  “It was a failed romance, if I recall.”

  “What was the sister’s name? Lisa or something?”

  “Rita,” Ross fussily returned to his book. He thought Emily had gone to sleep.

  A while later she murmured, “It must have done a real number on Ward.”

  “Didn’t you tell me she went to an analyst? She’s probably still working it out.”

  “I guess so. It’s too bad you two never met. I think you would have liked her.”

  Ross had patted his wife’s shoulder. “You can introduce us next time I need a bulldozer and can’t find one.”

  But the evening had already been ruined by a call from Dagmar, who had chatted a few horrendous moments with Emily before asking for Ross. “Hello, Dagmar,” he had said, swallowing terror and bile: How dare she invade his home, speak with his wife! “What can I do for you?”

  “I wonder if you could come to the apartment tomorrow morning.”

  “How’s nine o’clock?”

  “Fine. I look forward to seeing you.”

  He had hung up. Both Philippa and Emily were looking oddly at him. “Some clients are real pains in the ass,” he explained.

  “She sounded nice enough to me,” Emily had said.

  “She’s not nice! Don’t get taken in by that den-mother tone of voice!”

  Philippa had delicately bitten into a corn dumpling. “I told you Dagmar had the eyes of a Gila monster. Nobody listens to me around here.”

  Ah, what a charming evening in the bosom of his family. Weren’t people supposed to huddle together, comfort one another, after a funeral? Maybe that was only the case after burying someone they liked, in which case, Ardith’s funeral definitely didn’t qualify. Still, the ghost of Dana should have cowed Emily and her sister into civil behavior. Another night like this and Ross might have to move up to the cabin until Philippa left. He wasn’t used to a third body in his living space; it upset the equilibrium. Then again, he was a cranky old man, set in his ways. For the first time, Ross wondered how he’d fare with a baby in the house.

  He’d be lucky if he ever got one in the house, of course. He dreaded his meeting with Dagmar tomorrow: Whatever she wanted, he probably could not deliver. She had never disguised her overriding goal in this string of atrocities: to do away with her husband’s issue. Too bad if that involved doing away with Ross’s wife as well. Dagmar could get away with it! Wherever they might hide, she would eventually find them. Ross watched the moon, praying for black inspiration. Around six, when the moon sank and his brain had become purest lead, he showered and kissed his wife good-bye. “Don’t get up,” he whispered. “I’ll call you later.”

  He walked to the office and sketched as if this were a normal day. Marjorie arrived at seven in a knit dress that clung to all swells and slopes. “Ross! When did you get here?”

  “A little while ago. I couldn’t sleep.” His ragged voice confirmed that. “Dagmar called me at home last night. Wants me to come to her place at nine. I have to go.”

  Something was wrong. “Is there going to be trouble with her?”

  “I hope not.” He put down his pencil. “I expect so.”

  “Can’t you just drop the project? We haven’t billed her any-thing. She hasn’t offered to pay anything, either.”

  “This goes back to Joe and Dana’s chapel. There’s bad blood. It’s personal.”

  Marjorie put a hand on his shoulder. “What could she possibly do to you, Ross?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what scares me.” He rubbed his cheek against her hand. “This is just between us, Marjie. It should blow over in a few days.” Sure!

  “I’ll head off your appointments.” Marjorie returned to her desk. At eight-thirty, she found Ross staring out Dana’s window. “Don�
�t let the old bag get you down,” she said, accompanying him to the elevator. “Remember, you can always throw her off the balcony.” She winked as the doors closed.

  Ross walked through the financial district as a hostile wind whipped between the skyscrapers, knifing pedestrians. Sunshine singed his eyes. A hard frost crunched beneath his shoes as he cut across Boston Common. Promptly at nine, Ross nodded to Dagmar’s doorman and caged himself in her small elevator. Before today, it had seemed to take hours to reach the top floor. Now it rocketed upward. Dagmar stood behind the tenth door. She was wearing the pearls that so perfectly matched her hair. “Good morning.” She smiled.

  Ross smiled back. “How nice to see you again.”

  She brought him to the little nook where they had first sat together. “I hope you don’t mind eating inside. It’s a bit windy on the balcony.”

  As she poured coffee, Ross looked at her jewelry. When she turned to serve him, he saw the little pearl brooch on her lapel. “What a pretty pin, Dagmar,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “It’s an old family piece.” She settled back in her chair and got down to business. “I’m upset with you, Ross. You gave me a nasty surprise yesterday.”

  “What was nasty about it? The fact that you had no idea you were going to have to kill twins or that you only found out yesterday?”

  Dagmar’s slender lips curled. “You know, after your eloquence the other night, I actually considered quitting ’while I was ahead,’ as you put it. But now I see that your motivation was not concern for me, but concern for your wife.”

  “It was for both of you.”

  “I wish I could believe that. But I’m now a little worried that, in order to protect her, you might do something rash.”

  “Like what? Tell the police? I don’t think so, Dagmar. We each have enough dirt to bury the other ten times over.”

  “I was thinking of something a little more masculine than tattling to the police.”

  “Oh, you thought I’d come up here and shoot you?” Ross stood up. “Go ahead. Frisk me.”

  She did, slowly, lustfully. Ross thought he felt the floor rise when she dragged a hand between his legs. Finally Dagmar sat down. “I don’t think you’re strong enough to throw me off a balcony.”