Devil's Food

by Janice Weber

  The wind blew, firs moved, shadows shifted: She saw a small dot in the door frame. Emily dropped to her knees and put her face close to the little hole in the wood. When she saw dried blood and one slender splinter, she began to cry.

  21

  While Ward was meeting Ross in the bulrushes, O’Keefe paid a visit to Diavolina. “Good morning. Is the boss in?” he asked Klepp, who was tamping unidentifiable animal parts into the meat grinder.

  “You mean Leo? Of course not.”

  “I meant Ward.”

  “She’s at the therapist,” Klepp replied. “How can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m looking for a waitress named Lola.”

  “She should be in any minute to pick up her paycheck. May I offer you something while you wait? Rib eye and swizzle fries? Frozen mocha deluxe bombe?”

  “Just coffee.” It was impossible to see Klepp as anything other than a convicted criminal in chef’s clothing. O’Keefe went to the empty dining room. That weirdo with the orange face was restocking the bar. What had he done? Beheaded his wife with pruning shears? “Good morning.” O’Keefe smiled, taking a seat. “You catered Dagmar Pola’s party a few nights ago. Who referred her to you?”

  “Her own good taste, I would say.”

  “Ah, you know her, then. Did she eat here the night Dana Forbes dropped dead?”

  “I did not see her. But it was very busy and I was tending bar.”

  A young, delicious woman walked into the dining room. She was dressed as simply as a shepherdess, as if she knew that men would never pay attention to her raiment. “I’m Lola,” she said, putting a mug of coffee in front of him.

  O’Keefe’s tongue was not obeying signals from the fore half of his brain. Finally, after scalding it with coffee, he got it under control. “Pink pepper,” he said. “You covered Philippa Banks’s steak with it that eventful night.”

  Lola tossed her hair. “Was it pink? I don’t remember.”

  “Try to remember here rather than at the police station,” O’Keefe said. “I really don’t have much time.”

  Lola flushed. “A lady asked me to get her pepper mill autographed. She gave me five hundred bucks.” The money had not gone into the waitrons ’pool.

  “Describe her.”

  “She wore glasses. She was alone. Sat there.” Lola pointed to a nearby table.

  “What color was her hair?”

  “I don’t remember. She was wearing a tight scarf. Like a turban.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Sixty.”

  Eh? After all that plastic surgery, Ardith had looked a specious thirty-five. “Are you sure?”

  “I can tell by the hands. Hers had age spots. My sister’s a manicurist so I know all about these things.”

  Damn! O’Keefe began stabbing in the dark. “Did she wear a lot of jewelry? Pearls?”

  “Nope. Just gold hoop earrings.”

  That sounded like Ardith again. “What did she tell you to do?”

  “Give the lady a load of pepper and get her autograph.”

  “Did you notice anything about the pepper?”

  “Are you kidding? Pepper’s pepper. I didn’t hang around counting the little specks.”

  O’Keefe realized that, once again, he was treading water a thousand miles from shore. Iproniazid had unmistakably killed Dana; that insidious woman in a turban had sent Lola over to smother Philippa’s steak with it; O’Keefe had found the turban and glasses at Ardith’s house; she had the motive for murdering not only Philippa, but Dana, and she had impeccable reasons for killing herself; now Lola claimed the woman was old as the hills. Who the hell could that be? Dagmar? She and Ardith had talked. But why should a dowager want to kill a B-movie star? It seemed, on the surface, nonsensical; then again, irrationality was the key to getting away with murder. This was almost as frustrating as the case of Guy Witten, which had no witnesses, no motive, no weapon, and a slew of perfect alibis. O’Keefe would have given up long ago if he hadn’t known, in his gut, that these two cases were somehow twins, offspring of the same diabolical parents. He’d just have to keep sniffing and hope that someone misstepped before his hope withered like a plucked rose. “Thanks for your help,” he said to Lola and Zoltan. “Give my regards to Ward.”

  He drove to Beacon Hill and found Philippa alone, breakfasting with her fan mail. She didn’t look pleased to see him, but that could have been due to a dearth of makeup. “Is Emily at home?” he asked.

  “No, she’s at the doctor’s.” Philippa took off her glasses and tried to lead the detective into the den. En route, she realized that this was the second day in a row he had seen her in the same white peignoir. “So! What brings you here?” she asked in clipped tones.

  “I thought you’d like to know that I’ve talked to Agatha Street, the waitress who served you at the party in New York. A woman in a black turban indeed switched drinks with you there.”

  “Why, that’s wonderful. That little twit has a remarkable memory.”

  “Indeed. Miss Street also remembered that she had already spoken to you about this at length while your manager was in the hospital.”

  Philippa laughed lightly. “I think you’re right. I had forgotten. At the time I was so distraught over his illness.”

  “I also spoke to the waiter Franco,” O’Keefe continued. “He said you had been asking him questions about a woman in a turban shortly after your manager took ill.”

  “Franco’s hallucinating. How would I know such a thing?”

  “That’s exactly the question I had.”

  The detective’s staunch stare unnerved her. Philippa wished to God Emily were around to help out with these potholes in their alibi. “Franco is confusing me with my sister,” she sniffed. “When Emily came to California, she took it upon herself to run around asking silly questions. Naturally, people would get us mixed up.”

  A little bell chimed in the back of O’Keefe’s brain. “Would she try to mix people up on purpose?”

  “No! That would be outrageous! Emily knows she could never impersonate me!” Philippa sagged gingerly to the couch. “Ever since leaving her job to work at that awful restaurant, Emily has been consumed with all kinds of pish. She thinks that our father is a cook who had a fight with a priest and that we were born in a monastery.”

  “Where do you think you were born?”

  “In a fine hospital in New York City,” Philippa snapped. “As you know, we are orphans.”

  “Your father is deceased?”

  “Our father is nonexistent! Our mother was a liberated woman! Emily just doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. She’s been receiving pornographic sketches and keys from degenerates who send notes to the president of my international fan club.”

  O’Keefe wondered if Philippa had eaten a can of Sterno for breakfast. “I’m afraid I don’t follow any of this. Maybe I should come back when your sister’s here.”

  “Leave Emily out of this!” Philippa screeched. “She’s been incoherent ever since Guy Witten got shot in the back.”

  O’Keefe was stunned. “In the back, you said?”

  “Back, front, who knows?”

  Wild thought: Had Philippa shot her sister’s lover? Was there some kind of fatal triangle going on here? “Where were you the night Witten was murdered?”

  Philippa lit a cigarette. “In California.”

  O’Keefe pressed on. “Where was Emily?”

  After a small silence, Philippa whimpered, “With me. I was not feeling well.”

  She looked as if she had been shot all over again. O’Keefe felt bad for twisting the screws on her so tightly, but he was a desperate man. “Did you know Guy Witten?”

  “I never met him in my life.”

  O’Keefe’s beeper went off: fatality on Commonwealth Avenue. The address looked distressingly familiar. The detective dropped Philippa and sped to Dagmar’s apartment. The medical examiner’s car was parked outside. O’Keefe nodded to the doorman, who remembered him from
the other night and packed him quickly into the elevator. On the tenth floor, he nearly kicked open the door. Two gaga policemen stood in the hallway, studying the artwork. They took him right to Joe Pola’s bedroom.

  On the floor, with mush for a skull, lay Dagmar. A few feet away, near the telephone, sat Ward with her face between her knees. Mud caked her sneakers. As a detective took pictures of the still life, the coroner padded over to O’Keefe. “Cause of death fairly obvious,” he remarked. “Can I pack her up?”

  “No.” Sidestepping the wide red stain on Joe’s carpet, O’Keefe went to Ward. “What happened?”

  When she raised her head, he could smell the scotch. She looked completely wasted again. “She wanted to see the initials on the bottom of that thing. I began tilting it and it got away from me.” Ward buried her face in her knees. “Oh, shit.”

  At least she didn’t have the gall to ask if Dagmar were hurt. “What were you doing here?”

  “Collecting my check and a few pans from the party the other night,”

  O’Keefe studied the small, still body beneath the marble. Dagmar looked flattened, as if the statue had been flung, not dropped. On the other hand, she was a calcium-deficient old woman. The statue must weigh a ton. And Ward was stinking drunk. O’Keefe walked to the kitchen. Yep, there were the pans. Small copper salad molds: Ward could have concealed them under her coat and the doorman never would have noticed her bringing them in. He returned to the bedroom. “How’d those pans get left behind at the party?”

  “Easy,” Ward replied. “My crew was in shock after you grilled them.”

  O’Keefe felt like kicking her. “When did the accident happen?”

  “About a minute before I called nine-one-one.”

  “Why did Mrs. Pola have to see those initials?”

  “I have no idea. When a customer hands you a check for two thousand bucks and requests a little favor, you don’t ask questions.”

  “Let me see the check.”

  Ward reached in her pocket and handed it over. Today’s date; O’Keefe sighed, defeated again. If he tried really hard, he might nail her for manslaughter. And he might not: no motive, no witnesses, mitigating circumstances. He’d spend a week in court hearing all about Ward’s hard life and drinking problems and abuse and victimization, and at the end of it all he’d look like a schmuck for trying to escalate an accident into a prison term. O’Keefe gave back the check. “Did you like her?”

  “Sure, I liked her. She ate and she paid.”

  O’Keefe wondered if, had Dagmar survived, she would ever have told him why Ward had flattened her. Probably not. “If you liked her so much, why didn’t you roll the statue off?”

  Ward laughed oddly. “Because I heard her skull crack like a coconut.”

  He stood up and told the medical examiner to test Ward’s blood alcohol level. While she was getting her elbow swabbed, O’Keefe peered at the base of the statue. It was perfectly smooth. “Wrap the lady up,” he told the policemen waiting at the door. Straining and grunting, they raised the sculpture to its feet. Rather than contemplate the mess remaining on the floor, O’Keefe stared at the statue’s face. That blood-glistening mouth, those imperturbable eyes ... Emily? O’Keefe shook his head, loosening the hallucination. While Dagmar was getting zipped into a bag, he studied the pedestal, finally locating letters and numbers delicately inscribed in the foot: S.D. 1950. Hard to spot; no wonder Dagmar couldn’t see them.

  “Take her statement,” he muttered, leaving.

  He dropped ten floors and flashed his badge at the doorman. Then he lit a cigarette. “Did Mrs. Pola have any other visitors this morning?”

  “Only Mr. Major.”

  “At the same time as the woman who’s up there now?”

  “No, he left an hour before she arrived.”

  “Had you ever seen that woman here before?”

  “Only the day of Mrs. Pola’s party.”

  “Did Mrs. Pola have a lot of visitors in general?”

  “No. Only two people came here to see her. Mr. Major and Mrs. Forbes.”

  O’Keefe nearly pinched his cigarette in half. “How often did she come around?”

  “Three or four times. Is everything all right up there?” the doorman asked anxiously.

  “Not quite. Mrs. Pola’s going to come through the lobby in a body bag in about five minutes.” O’Keefe inhaled enough smoke to kill an iron lung. “Answer any questions the officers might have, would you?”

  He drove roughly to State Street. “Major in?”

  Marjorie smiled nervously from her desk. “He’s with a client. It might be a while.”

  “I’ll wait.” O’Keefe plopped into a chair and stared vacantly at the ceiling, as if he were on a raft, drifting toward oblivion. All these bodies and no explanations: This case was worse than an Italian opera, and now Dagmar had taken the first two acts down with her, leaving him with only a few disjointed arias to extrapolate into a full libretto. Maybe that wasn’t possible anymore.

  “Ross, Detective O’Keefe’s here,” he heard Marjorie say at last. She listened then looked over. “Follow me, please.”

  O’Keefe trailed her beautiful legs into Ross’s office. “Stay,” he said. “You should both hear this. You were at Dagmar Pola’s this morning, Ross?”

  “Yes. We had a nine-o’clock appointment.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “The usual. Her new art gallery. I was only there about ten minutes.”

  “Why so short?”

  “She was simply giving me the go-ahead.”

  O’Keefe went to Ross’s window and watched an airplane lance the clouds. “There’s a statue in the bedroom. A standing woman. Know anything about it?”

  “Not much. Dagmar didn’t like it. It was the one piece she wanted to get rid of.”

  “Seems the feeling was mutual. The statue fell on her. Dagmar’s dead.”

  Ross rocketed out of his chair. “What? How?”

  O’Keefe chuckled. “You remember that rather large woman from Diavolina named Ward? Said she was tilting the statue so Dagmar could read the initials on the pedestal and it got away from her. Dagmar’s skull was crushed flat as a cow pie.”

  Ross covered his face. The tears were genuine. “How awful.”

  “Did she have any children? Any family?”

  “Not that I know of. Excuse me a moment.” Ross wandered into the washroom.

  While the plumbing gushed, O’Keefe asked Marjorie, “Was there something between the two of them?”

  Marjorie swallowed heavily, wondering how to steer O’Keefe as far afield as possible from the man she loved. “He was very kind to Mrs. Pola without encouraging her fantasies.”

  O’Keefe had to agree, remembering how gently Ross had introduced Dagmar to his wife and sister-in-law at Ardith’s funeral. When Ross emerged from the washroom, he said, “Why do you think Dagmar wanted to see the initials on that statue?”

  Ross blew his nose repeatedly before answering. “She was probably trying to track its provenance. She was in the process of cataloguing the art in the apartment.”

  “Wouldn’t she have done that when she bought the art?”

  “Her husband bought it. She knew nothing about that apartment until after he died.” Ross plummeted into his chair. “Poor old girl. What a way to go.”

  O’Keefe’s breath stopped: Beneath the grief, had he detected a spark of glee? Or was that just more wishful thinking, another pathetic attempt to demonize Ross Major for having it all? How many hours of sleep had he lost already trying to figure out how Major could have killed Guy Witten? How many more would he lose trying to figure out what Major had to do with the death of Dagmar Pola? Bah! He was no detective, content with facts. He was an outclassed Romeo with a vindictive imagination. Thoroughly oppressed, exhausted with losing all his games, O’Keefe shuffled to the window. “Bear with me while I run the last few weeks by, would you? Dana dies of barbiturate poisoning. He’s offed by his enraged wife, but by
mistake. She was going for Philippa, whose steak got peppered with iproniazid. But then the steaks got switched and Ardith becomes a widow. Make sense?”

  “The pills got ground into the steak?”

  O’Keefe ignored the interruption. “There’s only one problem. The waitress tells me that the woman sending over the pepper was old. Sixty or seventy, she’s sure of it. So I don’t think Ardith did this. But let me continue. Not content with what she’s done to her husband, Ardith follows Philippa to New York and California and fails both times to kill her. Causes enough mayhem to land in jail for a long time, however. The police are closing in. So she goes to her friend Dagmar’s party and jumps off the balcony. Make sense?”

  “Ah—sure. I guess. If you knew Ardith.”

  “Well, I didn’t, and now I won’t. Let’s back up a little. Let’s say that Ardith and Dagmar were closer friends than we think. Let’s say that it’s not Ardith, but Dagmar, at Diavolina the night Dana’s killed.”

  Ross’s eyes went round as quarters. “Why would Dagmar want to kill Dana?”

  “She didn’t. She wanted to kill Philippa.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “That’s where I draw a blank. But I saw your sister-in-law this morning. While not what I would call totally coherent, she did mention that Emily and she had been upset lately by threatening letters and news concerning their births. I have a hunch this is somehow connected to Dagmar. The timing is too coincidental.” O’Keefe inspected his fingernails as if deciding which one to nibble first. “Any thoughts?”

  Ross sat with his mouth open. “I—no. Nothing.”

  “Would it upset Emily to ask her about it?”

  “Possibly. But I suppose you must.”

  “Is she home today?”

  “I think so.” Ross picked up the phone. “Phil? Is Em in? No problem. Have her call when she gets back, all right?” He hung up. “She’s out. Philippa has no idea when she’ll return.”

  “I’ll keep trying. Did Emily talk to you about any of this business?”

  Ross grinned sheepishly. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay much attention to it. She does carry on at times.”