Pie A La Murder

by Melinda Wells

  My class for adults was composed mostly of widowed men who wanted to learn to cook for themselves, and three widows and a divorcée who said they’d enrolled to expand their food knowledge. I suspected that the women were more interested in meeting single men. There was also a young couple who planned to share kitchen duties, and wanted to learn how to make meals that tasted as good as what they’d order in restaurants but cost a lot less.

  The student who always arrived first and left last was a silver-haired man who dressed like a Broadway dandy from a 1940s movie musical: freshly barbered and shaved, with an ascot around his neck and a white carnation in his lapel. His name was Harmon Dubois, and he must have been close to eighty years old, but walked with the quick steps of a man half his age.

  Eileen jokingly referred to him as “the suck-up” because on the second week of class he brought me a bouquet of pink roses he said he’d handpicked from his garden, and on the third week presented me with his self-published book of poetry titled Dark-Haired Goddesses. When I opened the slim volume to the page where he’d placed a bookmark, I saw he had autographed it to me as his “muse.” He said he’d been inspired to write it when he saw my television show. He and his late wife—who, like me, had dark hair, he said—watched every episode during her final illness. Those months had compelled him to begin writing poetry, and to learn to cook.

  In class, Harmon made a habit of walking behind me, wiping off countertops, and generally helping to clean up. I usually found his extreme attentiveness a little much and tried to discourage it, but today I was thankful he was there because I needed to leave class as quickly as possible after three o’clock to meet Liddy and Shannon for our trip to Roxanne Redding’s home studio. His help with straightening up and taking out the trash would save me a precious fifteen minutes.

  The big hit of today’s session in my adults’ class was a new creation by my producer friend, Fred Caruso. Fred was a terrific Italian cook with a sense of humor. He had dubbed his new main dish “Don’t Be a Fool, Eat Fred’s Pasta Fazool.”

  As usual, when I asked for comments, Harmon spoke up first, declaring the pasta to be “worthy of the lovely lady who just taught us how to make it.”

  Our plan was that Shannon and I would meet at my house at three thirty and go together to Roxanne Redding’s home and studio in Brentwood. Liddy lived in Beverly Hills, which was on the other side of Brentwood, so she was going to catch up with us there.

  Thanks to Harmon Dubois’s after-class help, I got home at three twenty. I thought I’d be ten minutes ahead of Shannon, but she was already there, sitting on the front stoop with Tuffy, who started wagging his back end when he saw me.

  Shannon said, “I got here at three so I could take Tuffy for a walk in case you were late. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not, but how did you get in? Eileen’s at our store.”

  “I remembered where you hid your spare key.” She gestured toward the ceramic statue of a black poodle that stood next to a pot of red geraniums beside the stoop. “I put it back under your little replica of Big Tuff.”

  While greeting Tuffy with a vigorous two-handed petting, I said, “Remind me to give you a key for emergencies. Liddy has one. In fact”—I lifted up the poodle figure and removed the key Shannon had used—“take this one. I shouldn’t keep it here. It’s the first place a burglar is likely to look.”

  Shannon slipped the key into one of the pockets in her cargo pants.

  Cargo pants?

  I had been so surprised to see her outside with Tuffy when I came home that I hadn’t immediately noticed what she was wearing: olive green cargo pants and a matching safari jacket. It was an unusual look for Shannon, who had always chosen clothes that were closer-fitting, to make herself look slimmer. I asked, “Is that a new outfit?”

  “From this morning. I went shopping with Liddy because I wanted to get something so I could conceal . . . this.” She pulled an object out of her jacket pocket that fit into the palm of her hand. It took me a moment to realize it was a small camera.

  Shannon beamed. “It’s digital. The latest thing from that spy shop we went to. Takes a hundred pictures before you have to put in a new whatchamacallit—the brain card. Liddy got one, too. We practiced for an hour and now we can work ’em just with our fingers, without even looking. Honey, we are set to investigate.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hugged her for her loyalty, and because I was so happy to see her well. She—not to mention John and Eileen—had suffered through her long, dark years of psychotic breakdowns and hospitalizations, until finally the right doctor and the right combination of medications had given her back her life.

  When I’d phoned Roxanne Redding the day before, I was prepared to have a difficult time getting her to agree to photograph me, considering that we’d last seen each other the night of her husband’s murder. But she hadn’t been as hard to persuade as I’d feared, even after she remembered who I was. Not that she was eager to do it, but she admitted that she could use the distraction of work. She quoted a price of eight hundred dollars for the session, for which I would receive two finished prints of my choosing. Additional prints could be purchased separately. There would be an extra charge for anything more than minimal retouching.

  “I hope I won’t need more than minimal. I want to look like myself—just a little bit better,” I’d said.

  “And I prefer to photograph people as they really are, but good lighting can disguise a multitude of sins.” She added that any use of her work for publicity purposes must carry her photo credit.

  I told her those terms were acceptable and we made the date.

  When I repeated Roxanne Redding’s fee to Liddy, she was amazed.

  “Alec charged three thousand dollars for a sitting. If she just shoots you in focus, you’re getting a bargain.”

  Bargain or not, eight hundred dollars was twice what I’d hoped she would charge, and more than I could really afford, but for Nicholas’s sake I needed to talk to her, and to give Liddy and Shannon the opportunity to search the house for clues to the identity of Alec Redding’s killer. I knew the risks we were taking, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get us into 190 Bella Vista Drive.

  At ten minutes before four Saturday afternoon, I brought my Jeep to a stop in front of the Reddings’ house. Before Shannon and I could climb out, Liddy pulled up behind us. She got out of her Range Rover carrying her makeup case. If our mission to find information helpful to Nicholas hadn’t been so acute, I would have laughed when I saw what Liddy was wearing. It was a new outfit almost identical to Shannon’s, except that Liddy’s cargo pants and safari jacket were tan.

  Shannon and I divided the six outfits I’d put together to keep Roxanne busy taking pictures. The three of us, carrying our assorted burdens, went up the walk to the entrance.

  The crime-scene tape was gone and the two-story red-brick house would have looked exactly as it had when I’d come here before, except for the black funeral wreath on the front door, stark and dramatic against the white paint.

  “I hope the housekeeper I told you about doesn’t work on weekends,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” Liddy said. “If she does, we’ll take turns keeping her occupied while the other looks for clues.”

  I shifted the outfits I carried onto my left arm, pressed the bell button, and waited.

  A minute passed. No response.

  “Maybe she’s not home,” Liddy said.

  “I’m sure she is. The tan Lexus she drove Thursday night is in the carport.”

  Beside it was the big black Mercedes SUV that must have belonged to Alec Redding. I was glad to see that the car I had guessed might belong to the housekeeper was not in the driveway today.

  I rang the bell again. This time I leaned close to the door and heard the faint ringing inside.

  Then I heard footsteps coming to the door.

  25

  Roxanne Redding opened the door. She was all in black: turtlene
ck sweater, jeans, running shoes. Her short black hair, which had been gelled into spikes the two times I had seen her before, wasn’t gelled today. It lay in a flat, boyish no-style cut around her narrow, pale face.

  When I met her at the Hollywood Film Society luncheon, I had thought of her frame as angular and athletic, but now she seemed thin and soft. Her eyes, without the dramatic eye makeup, showed dark rings of sleeplessness. And grief. I recognized the grief; I had seen it in my own eyes for months after Mack died, every time I caught a glimpse of my reflection.

  “Hello, Mrs. Redding. Thank you for letting me come for a sitting. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t have a serious time problem.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s better for me to keep busy.”

  “I think you know Liddy,” I said.

  “Yes. Hello.”

  “She’s going to do my makeup. And this is my friend, Shannon, who’s going to help with the clothes. I brought a selection for you to look over and choose the ones you’d like me to wear.”

  “Fine.” She acknowledged Shannon with a nod and stepped back to allow us to enter.

  When I was inside Thursday night I was too worried about Nicholas, and then shocked at the sight of Redding’s body lying in his photo studio, to notice anything else about the house. Now, as we followed Roxanne down the hallway, I saw that the floor was dark wood, protected by a wool runner in a burgundy and black floral pattern. The stark white walls were an effective background for a dozen black-framed Picasso drawings that I recognized as replicas from the artist’s erotic one-hundred-print Vollard Suite. To anyone who had seen the entire collection, as Mack and I had ten years earlier during one of the rare occasions when it had been on public exhibition, the work was unforgettable. The prints in the Reddings’ hallway were part of the sequence that showed “life” in Picasso’s studio, featuring idealized portraits of the artist reclining with nude models and various pieces of his art. I wondered what this choice said about Alec Redding. I didn’t have to know his wife to feel that those prints weren’t what a woman would have selected.

  I’ve always been fascinated by what kind of art people choose in decorating their homes. Except for an oil portrait of Liddy and Bill and their then five-year-old twin boys above the living room fireplace, the Marshalls’ home is otherwise filled with paintings and prints of flowers, reflecting their sunny personalities.

  John and Shannon O’Hara have pictures of Eileen at every stage of her life all over the house, along with Shannon’s needlepoint pillows and John’s collection of old magnifying glasses. Mack wasn’t into collecting anything except books by Joe Wambaugh, but I loved finding beautiful crystal bowls and interesting dishes at yard sales for bargain prices. Nicholas has the most unusual collection I’ve ever seen: license plates. Each one is connected in some way to the crime stories he’s been covering for twenty years.

  Roxanne Redding paused for perhaps a second at the archway leading to the photo studio. It was no more than a hitch in her step, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t known that we were going to the site of her husband’s murder. After that fleeting moment, Roxanne proceeded into the studio with a determined stride.

  “There’s a dressing room on the other side of that curtain,” she said, gesturing to a partitioned-off space on the far left side of the studio. “There’s a makeup table and chair, too. Also a rack for the clothes.”

  “I’ll go hang them up so they don’t get wrinkled,” Shannon said, taking my load and adding it to hers.

  As Shannon hurried to the dressing area, I noticed for the first time the wall opposite the lights. It was a gallery of eleven-by-fourteen-inch dry-mounted portraits of famous faces. “What marvelous photos. Were they taken by your husband?”

  Previously, the only examples I had seen of Alec Redding’s work were a quick glance at the modeling shots of Celeste, and then a much closer look at that pie photo. Even as I was shocked by the obvious intent of her props and the pose, another part of my brain was registering the high quality of the photographer’s work.

  Roxanne nodded, and swallowed. I saw a glint of moisture in her eyes, but she was apparently strong-willed enough to keep back tears. “He was an absolute genius,” she said softly. “It was my incredible luck to have worked with him.” Then she added, almost shyly, “Would you like to see some of my photos?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. Liddy and Shannon, who had returned from the dressing room, concurred with enthusiasm.

  Roxanne led us past the living room and a formal dining room across the hall from the studio to a small den next to a swinging door that I guessed led into the kitchen. Like the other rooms on this ground floor, except for the kitchen, it was entered through an archway instead of a door.

  She turned on the overhead light. “Those are mine.”

  There were six photographs, also eleven-by-fourteen inches and dry-mounted on the wall behind the couch. Portraits, too, but not of the famous. An elderly couple holding hands; a boy in a field of flowers; a little girl peeking out at the camera from behind a tree trunk, her smooth face in contrast to the rough bark; a red tree kangaroo sitting on a limb with a kangaroo baby peering out of her pouch; a chimpanzee washing his hands in a basin of water; a father holding his son close against his chest.

  “These are beautiful,” I said.

  Roxanne Redding was a different kind of photographer than her husband had been. His work was bold and dynamic, celebrating his famous subjects in flattering shafts of light and softening shadows. Her photographs showed a gentleness and sensitivity that were at odds with the image she’d presented of herself, with the spiked hair and heavy eye makeup.

  “Alec taught me photography.” Her smile was wistful. “I’ve been nursing this fantasy that one day we would be hailed as the twenty-first century’s Edward Weston and Tina Modotti.”

  “Who were they?” Shannon asked.

  “He was one of the most famous photographers of the early twentieth century,” Roxanne said. “She was a pretty Italian immigrant who’d acted in a couple of silent films. They met at a party. She became his lover, his model, and then his protégée. He was the famous artist; she was the heart.” Roxanne sighed. “Their story didn’t end very happily, either. I never thought about that until now.”

  “Was he killed?” Liddy asked.

  “No. She was. She went to Spain and died in the revolution. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  To lighten the mood in the room, I said, “I’m delighted that you’re going to photograph me.”

  “You need pictures. I need the work.” She switched off the overhead light and her tone became all business. “We’d better get to it. Let me see what you brought to wear.”

  Roxanne Redding examined my six outfits and immediately eliminated two of them. “In a photo, this one will add twenty pounds, and this one positively screams this year.”

  “It’s my newest dress,” I admitted.

  “Which would be fine if we were selling the dress, but we’re supposed to be selling you.” She shoved it down the rack next to the first one she had purged from consideration. She came to my red skirt suit. “Definitely not.”

  “That’s my favorite outfit.”

  “Della looks really good in it,” Shannon said.

  Roxanne Redding shook her head. “Wear it out in the world as much as you like, but the color’s too strong for your purposes. If you wore that in a photo, people would see the color first, and then maybe look at your face.”

  Liddy nodded agreement. “That’s the difference between a modeling shot and publicity pictures.”

  Roxanne held up my black pantsuit with the sapphire blue sweater. “Lose the jacket. This sweater’s perfect.”

  “I think my hips will look too big without the jacket,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be shooting you from the waist up. This blue is a great shade for you, with your dark hair and blue eyes.”

  The next garment sh
e approved was my long-sleeved beige silk shirt. And, finally, my pale gray wool dress. “Perfect,” she said. “Jewel neckline to show off your face, long sleeves to hide the arms.”

  That hurt. For a moment I forgot why I was really in the studio. “There’s nothing wrong with my arms.”

  “Not to the naked eye,” she said. “Cameras have X-ray vision. The skin on your arms isn’t loose yet, but if you don’t start exercising them—like by dawn tomorrow—you’ll start flapping in a few months.”

  Silently vowing that I was not going to let myself “flap,” I asked, “What do you want me to put on first?”

  She took the gray dress off the rack and handed it to me. “Do you have a piece of signature jewelry?”

  “Just this.” I fingered my silver pendant watch. It had been Mack’s last Christmas present to me. “I can only wear a pendant watch because I do so much cooking and washing my hands I’d ruin one on my wrist.”

  “Then that’s your signature accessory. Get dressed and I’ll set up.”

  When I emerged from the dressing area, wearing the gray dress and after receiving Liddy’s makeup expertise, I saw Roxanne positioning a white enamel two-step kitchen stool in front of a roll of sky blue background paper. The white background paper on which Alec Redding had lain was gone, as was the painted white stool that appeared to have been the murder weapon. Both, I thought, must be at the police forensics lab.

  Gesturing to the kitchen stool, Roxanne said, “Sit.”

  I sat.

  “Put both hands flat on the seat of the stool, then turn your face and torso toward me.”

  I did.

  While she was positioning me, I saw Liddy and Shannon slip out of the studio.

  Roxanne raised one of the several cameras that rested on a small worktable next to her, looked through the lens, adjusted the focus, and fired off a few shots.