Pie A La Murder (10 page)

“Don’t use that tone with me. I came to stop you from doing something you’d regret.”

Glancing back toward the Reddings’ front door, I saw that the housekeeper was watching us curiously. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she retreated inside and closed the door.

I took Nicholas’s hand. “Come on,” I said. “He’s not here. Do you want something to eat? Or coffee? How about a glass or two of your favorite Sicilian red wine? I still have an unopened bottle.”

He removed his hand from mine. “Not now,” he said, but at least he sounded calmer. “I’ve got to go.”

“Where?”

“To talk to Tanis.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I only had one good idea, but Redding’s not here.”

He took my arm, walked with me to my Jeep, and opened the door for me. “Go home,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”

“All right. But take a dozen deep breaths before you talk to either Tanis or Celeste. Acting like a maddened bull isn’t going to solve anything.”

His response was a grunt.

I climbed into the Jeep and watched Nicholas get behind the wheel of his car. We turned our respective vehicles around and headed south to Sunset Boulevard.

At the corner, I turned west toward Santa Monica.

Nicholas turned east, toward the Olympia Grand Hotel. And Tanis.

Nicholas didn’t call me later.

He didn’t call me all day Thursday, either. I had gone from being worried about him to becoming angry at being shut out. If our relationship was as serious as I had thought it was—as he had declared it was—then I deserved at least a one-minute phone call from him.

But anger wasn’t a useful emotion in this situation, so I decided to concentrate on my responsibilities.

This night’s show was called “Microwave Meals from Scratch,” so I didn’t need to prepare the finished products here at home. The three dishes I’d planned to demonstrate—Stuffed Acorn Squash, Zucchini Canoes, and Brown Rice with Raw Vegetables—could be made within the show’s live hour. I didn’t even need to buy the ingredients, because for the past several months a production assistant had been assigned to do that. The items would be waiting for me at the studio.

To keep from listening for the phone to ring, I busied myself baking seventy-two muffins from a homemade batter that was almost as easy to whip up as it would be to open a box mix, and it tasted a lot better. The chocolate, vanilla, and coconut muffins would be passed out to the audience tonight, with plenty left over for the Better Living Channel’s staff.

It was time to drive to the studio.

No longer able to stand the suspense, I dialed Nicholas’s cell phone, but after four rings, my call went to his voice mail.

“Hi. It’s me,” I said. “What’s going on? I’m worried about you. Call me. I’ll keep my cell on until the show and turn it back on again as soon as we go off the air at eight.”

Disconnecting, I wished I could talk to Liddy about the trouble the racy photo Alec Redding took of Celeste had caused, my visit from Tanis, my concern about Nicholas. But I knew I shouldn’t tell anyone else—even a friend as close as Liddy was—about something that was the private business of Celeste and her parents. To take my mind off worrying about Nicholas, I wanted to talk to Liddy about silly things. She’d tell me the latest Hollywood gossip, and I’d tell her about the new supplier at Della’s Sweet Dreams who misread our address and mistakenly delivered our order of superfine sugar to the muffler repair shop down the street. But Liddy was working on a movie set all this week, playing a bank robber’s hostage tied up next to Bruce Willis in
Die Hard 9: Overdrawn
.

Six fifty-five PM. Five minutes to air. Still no call from Nicholas. My emotions had gone from worry to anger, but now that so many hours had passed with no word from him, my anger had been replaced by a concern so deep the feeling was almost ominous.

Instead of turning the phone off entirely, as I was supposed to while in front of the cameras, I compromised by shutting off the ringer and slipped it into the pocket of my slacks. I adjusted the earpiece concealed under my hair to make it more comfortable, and prepared to teach the studio audience and the viewers at home how to prepare delicious meals with fresh, healthy ingredients, and do it quickly by using a microwave.

I was in the middle of the broadcast’s second segment, slicing zucchinis lengthwise to show the audience how to make what I called “Zucchini Canoes,” when I felt my cell phone vibrate. It was frustrating, but I had to continue talking to the camera and to the studio audience while I chopped the veggie mixture that would fill the canoes.

As soon as the red light over the camera lens went off and we were into another commercial break, I hurried behind the set to pull the phone of my pocket.

I was sure it had been Nicholas who tried to reach me, and the number on the incoming call record confirmed that. But he hadn’t left a message.

“Ten seconds, Della,” the director’s voice said in my ear.

Back behind the preparation counter, I was smiling at the audience when the red light over Camera One came on and I began to talk and demonstrate again.

The show continued without a problem, and without another call. The Stuffed Acorn Squash, Zucchini Canoes, and Brown Rice with Chopped Raw Vegetables—a dish I could, and
have
, I told them, made a meal of all by itself—came out of the microwave on time, and perfectly cooked. After wrapping up the show with another announcement about our national bake sale for charity, I displayed the muffins and summoned interns Cliff and Jerry to distribute them.

The studio audience applauded as the trays of muffins were passed around, and again when I told them that tonight’s microwave recipes, and also those easy-to-make-from-scratch muffins, were on my Web site. When we went off the air, even my TV director, a woman hardly ever given to compliments, said that this show had been one of our best.

Ironic, considering the drama that was going on in my private life.

As soon as the audience filed out, I untied my chef’s apron—an object I had a hard time looking at without thinking of that deliberately salacious seminude photo of Celeste—said quick good-byes to the crew, and hurried outside to my Jeep.

I hadn’t lingered back at the studio, but still it was nearly eight forty-five by the time I’d turned off Lankershim Boulevard and onto Ventura Boulevard. The night was clear and cool and traffic was light. There were about a quarter of the number of vehicles that would be on the roads in twelve hours, during the morning rush. Most of those who worked days were at home by now, and people on night shifts were at their jobs.

Usually when I’m on my way home taking my normal route to Santa Monica via Beverly Glen Canyon, I passed the corner of Coldwater Canyon and Ventura Boulevard with barely a glance sideways.

But not tonight.

Without a previous conscious thought, instead of going straight ahead to Beverly Glen, I made a left turn onto Coldwater. I was a hundred yards into one of the three canyons that connected the San Fernando Valley to Los Angeles before I realized what I had done.

Going across “the hill” via Beverly Glen Canyon would take me closer to Santa Monica.

Taking Coldwater Canyon into Beverly Hills meant that I would have to pass Brentwood on the way home.

Once my Jeep was accelerating through the narrow, twisting canyon there was no turning back.

By fifteen minutes after nine I’d reached Sunset Boulevard and turned west. Within a few more minutes I saw the corner of Sunset and Bella Vista up ahead. I knew I should have ignored that intersection. I should have turned south to Montana Avenue and gone straight to my home on Eleventh Street.

But something made me rotate the steering wheel to the right, onto Bella Vista, at twenty minutes after nine.

In the second block, I felt my heart lurch in my chest and my hands go damp and cold.

A different car was in the carport: a big black SUV. The Lexus I’d seen yesterday was gone. So was the older model Buick that had been in the driveway behind the Lexus.

In its place was Nicholas D’Martino’s silver Maserati.

My heart pounding, I cut the motor and sprinted up the walk.

The light in the carriage lamp above the front door was on. I reached out to press the bell, but my hand stopped inches short of the button because I saw that the front door was standing open a few inches.

Automatically, perhaps a muscle-memory from my years as a police detective’s wife, I used my shoulder to push the door open far enough for me to step across the threshold.

I called, “Hello?”

Silence.

Brass wall sconces provided dim illumination, but stronger light poured into the hall from an archway about twenty feet ahead of me on the left.

I took a few steps toward it, when suddenly I realized that I was about to become one of those stupid women in novels or TV shows who go alone into strange houses and through doors that shouldn’t be open. Those scenes made me slam a book closed or turn off the TV. Instead of continuing that stupidity, I grabbed my cell phone and spun around to leave. I was a foot from the front door and two numerals into punching nine-one-one when behind me I heard, “Della!”

I turned again and saw Nicholas emerging through the lighted archway.

“Del, get out of here!”

I couldn’t move. A fresh surge of fear momentarily paralyzed me.

“Get out, now!”

“No,” I said. The same instinct that had led me to this address dissolved my paralysis and compelled me toward the archway.

Nicholas stepped into the middle of the hall, blocking my path. He half whispered, “Don’t go in there.”

I pushed past him.

And I was immediately sorry that I hadn’t turned and run.

The archway led into a high-ceiled room that had been turned into an elaborate photo studio. Blackout drapes covered the windows. Three rolls of heavy background paper, each three feet wide, in white, in light blue, and in darker blue, hung from the ceiling. Lights on stands faced a roll of white paper that had been unfurled so that it covered not just the wall, but provided an unbroken line on the floor.

Before I could have articulated what I saw, my mind took a flash picture of the scene.

A man lay facedown on the white paper. Blood covered the back of his head and had pooled onto the paper. Vivid red against stark white. An overturned white wooden stool, an edge of the seat stained dark red, lay near the body.

The wound in the man’s skull was so deep I didn’t need the expertise of a medical examiner to know that Alec Redding was dead.

I was transfixed by the sight in front of me. Then I felt Nicholas’s hand on my arm.

“What happened?” I whispered.

“I don’t know. I just got here and—” He turned me around to face him. “You don’t think
I
did this!”

I wanted to say “No, of course not,” but my mouth had gone so dry the words wouldn’t come out.

Nicholas let me go and looked at me with pain in his eyes. “Jesus H. Christ. You don’t believe me.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, recovering my senses. “Who else is here in the house?”

“I don’t know. This room is the only place I’ve been.”

“How did you get in?” I asked.

“The front door was open.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet. I was about to when you came in.”

“We’ve got to call them now.”

“I will,” he said. “You get out of here.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” I said emphatically, handing him my cell phone.

But it seemed that someone had already phoned for the police. In the distance, we heard the unmistakable siren of a patrol car.

I knew what was going to happen within the next hour.

A pair of uniformed officers would be first to arrive on the scene. They would see the body. One would secure the area, while the other asked for our identifications, questioned us briefly, and contacted their headquarters—the West Bureau office which had been Mack’s base—to request that a medical examiner, SID techs, and homicide detectives be sent to this crime scene.

I hoped that when the detectives in plain clothes arrived, one of them would
not
be Eileen’s father, John O’Hara.

The first responders were patrol car officers Downey and Willis. Downey, in his twenties, blond, blue-eyed, and stocky, looked more like a corn-fed Iowa farm boy than he did an urban cop. Willis was black, a few years older than Downey, with a body taut as wire. The expression in his dark eyes suggested automatic skepticism. While Downey, with his easygoing lope of a walk, seemed like a big kid in an LAPD costume, Willis inhabited his uniform as though it were a suit of armor. His default expression appeared to be skepticism. The two went through their routine, and asked the predictable questions.