Pie A La Murder (23 page)

“Which body parts?” Liddy wanted to know.

“Not
those
parts,” Shannon said with a giggle. “There’s a picture of his naked leg, and his upper back, his wrist, and one hand. Very artsy stuff. His hand is resting on a wrinkled sheet. I swear, it just reeks of sex.”

“Any pictures of his face?”

“No. I just assumed it was Alec Redding,” Shannon said. “I never met the man. Anyway, the pictures of Roxanne are different.”

“How?” I asked.

“Full-length shots of her, starkers. Front, back, sideways, standing, leaning, curled up with her knees touching her forehead. I have to say she looks a lot better without clothes than you’d think to see her dressed. Oh, and she’s a secret eater. She’s got a Ziploc bag full of Oreo cookies hidden on the top shelf of her closet, behind her handbags.” Shannon sighed. “Up until I found the cookies, I thought of what we were doing as a mission to help your Nick, but I felt a little dirty when I found her stash. Strangers shouldn’t know something like that about a person.”

I reached across the table and squeezed Shannon’s hand with affection. “I’m sorry I put you in that position.”

Suddenly I heard the sound of Tuffy’s toenails on the kitchen floor and a low whine deep in his throat. I turned to see him standing up. Alert.

Then someone rang my doorbell.

Tuffy was staring toward the front door, but he wasn’t barking.

I was afraid that I did, too.

So did Shannon. “Oh, Lord. I bet it’s Johnny.”

“We can’t panic,” I said.

“Who can’t? Those orange prison jumpsuits make everyone look fat,” Liddy said.

The doorbell rang again.

I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and went to answer it. Tuffy trotted behind me.

I opened it and said with a pleasant smile, “Hello, John.”

John leaned forward and gave Tuffy a quick pat. “I saw all your cars outside,” he said.

John’s tone wasn’t warm, but at least he wasn’t wearing his designed-to-intimidate face.

“Come in,” I said. “I was about to make some fresh coffee.”

When I returned to the kitchen with John, Liddy and Shannon gave him cheerful greetings. If they were nervous, they hid it well.

John said quietly, “Hello. Again.”

Liddy stood. “Well, this has been fun, but I’ve got to go. Bill will be getting home from his golf game any minute.”

“Do you have your makeup case?” I asked.

“It’s in my car.”

“Thanks for getting me camera ready,” I said.

“Anytime.”

Shannon got up. “I should go, too, Del.” She smiled at her husband. “What time do you want dinner, hon? I’m going to make shepherd’s pie.”

“Sounds good,” John said. “Figure I’ll be home by eight.”

Shannon gave her husband a quick kiss on the cheek before she and Liddy made their hasty departure.

John and I looked at each other as we listened to the front door open and close.

To break the awkward silence, I said, “How about that coffee?”

“No.” He gestured toward the chairs just vacated by Liddy and Shannon.

That’s when I noticed the two spy cameras that had been on the table were gone.

“Della, sit. I’m too tired to have this conversation standing up.”

I sat, and he took the seat across the table. For a moment, he just gazed at me, which made me very uncomfortable. It was worse than if he’d started shouting. What was most disturbing was that he looked sad. John O’Hara was one of the dearest people in the world to me. I didn’t want my trying to help Nicholas to ruin my close friendship with John. I decided to face the problem head-on.

“Are you angry with me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I was before, but I’m not anymore. I’m seriously worried that you’re going to get hurt.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so convinced your . . . D’Martino . . . didn’t kill Redding. You won’t even consider that you’re backing the wrong horse. It’s going to be devastating if you find out you’re wrong about him.”

He’d hit a nerve, and it stung, but I didn’t want to admit it. “I believe Nicholas is innocent, but I want to know the truth. Whatever that is.”

“I guess you think you’re helping me investigate.”

“I know I am,” I said with heat. “Mack used to tell me that even simple investigations were a group effort.”

“He probably said ‘collective’ or ‘team,’ ” he said in a sardonic tone.

“Yes, you’re right; he did say ‘collective.’ So many times I heard you two talk about gathering information, collecting enough facts to make sense out of a case. You said that the tiniest bit, even if it didn’t look like anything much at first, sometimes turned out to be just what you needed to break the case.”

John’s smile was rueful. “I didn’t know you were paying attention.”

“Surprise,” I joked.

“Let’s get serious. You kept telling me how often a victim’s spouse is the killer, so you went to see Roxanne Redding. That’s interfering with a police investigation.”

“Not really. I didn’t ask her, ‘Where were you around nine o’clock Thursday night?’ That’s your job. What I did do was persuade her to take new publicity pictures for me—which I need—so I’d have an excuse to talk to her in a casual way. Woman to woman.”

“Fine, but why involve Shan and Liddy?”

“They wanted to help.” Now came the hardest part of this conversation, but I had to tell him. “And while I kept Roxanne busy, they looked around the house.”

“Damn it, Della!” He smacked his hand on the table so hard the salt and pepper shakers jumped.

“Don’t go ballistic on me, please. I only want to help,” I said sincerely. “Could you have gotten a warrant to search the Redding house?”

“We didn’t need one. Redding’s photo studio was the scene of the crime. The SID techs went through the rest of the place to check for blood, or signs of a struggle, but the only blood was in the studio. The widow said she didn’t think anything was missing. The expensive cameras were all there. We asked her to check her jewelry box, and his, and she said nothing had been taken. She was getting hysterical, so I asked the name of her doctor. It’s a woman. I called her and she came over to stay the night. She told me she and Mrs. Redding went to college together.”

“When you went through the house, you were only supposed to look for things out in plain sight. You didn’t have probable cause to search through their files, or their closets,” I said.

John carefully aligned the salt and pepper shakers against the rack of napkins. “Go on.”

“Shannon and Liddy left everything exactly as they found it. But we learned some things that might help you.”

He grunted. “Nancy Drew and her two girlfriends.”

“Why don’t you take out your notebook? In case you want to write anything down.”

John gave me a look that was somewhere between amused and surprised, but he did take out his investigator’s book and opened it to a fresh page. That was progress.

I recounted my conversations with Roxanne, before and during the photo session, relating her fear that she’d lose the house without Redding’s income, and that they had no life insurance policies on each other.

“But you can check that out, John. Maybe they didn’t have life, but it could be they had mortgage insurance.”

I added that according to the records Liddy found, they were living very high and in debt.

“Liddy discovered Redding has the same business manager that she and Bill have, a firm called Birnam Woods. And that they have two landlines and three cell phones. I don’t know what it means, but the bills for one of the cells go directly to the business manager and not to the house. You can get the phone dumps. It would be interesting to know who they called.”

“Weaver’s already on that,” John said.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you your job.”

He raised an eyebrow at me and said dryly, “Thanks.”

“Shannon discovered a box of nude photographs under their bed. Pictures of Roxanne, that he probably took, and shots of a naked man—or at least of his arms and legs and hands. Shannon described them as art studies. Roxanne probably took those. I told you she’s a talented photographer.”

“Any indication who the man is?”

“We guessed it must be Redding, but what if it isn’t? Can’t the medical examiner take measurements of Alec Redding’s limbs and hands and compare them to the photos?”

“I don’t know why I had to spend all that time in the academy, and then the years in uniform, before I got my gold shield.” In spite of his sarcasm, he made another note, then sat back in his chair and looked at me. “I’d like to have your impression of the widow.”

“Friends again?”

“We’ll always be friends,” he said. “No matter what.”

Until that moment, I hadn’t fully realized how worried I had been about that. “That’s a relief. Okay, Roxanne Redding . . . I think she really loved her husband. She said he was her ‘world.’ But people have killed the ones they love before. Does she have an alibi?”

“She said she was down in Little Tokyo, at a Japanese movie house showing
Seven Samurai
. She opened the purse she carried that night and found her ticket stub. I put it in an evidence bag to give to Forensics tomorrow. Not that I expect we’ll learn anything useful.”

“I saw
Seven Samurai
on TV a couple of years ago,” I said. “It’s a long movie, but it has magnificent black-and-white photography.”

“Speaking of photography, she showed me the picture Redding took of D’Martino’s daughter, the one with the smirk on her face and the pie in her hand. If a jury saw that photograph, they’d think it could have made D’Martino mad enough to kill Redding to get it.”

I said, “First of all, if it ever came to a trial, I’m sure Olivia Wayne would get that picture suppressed as prejudicial. Second, if Roxanne showed you the photo, then it’s still in the studio, so whoever killed Redding didn’t take it.”

“He couldn’t have. It’s on a digital smart card, stored with others in their temperature-controlled wine cellar.”

“Clever. I thought most people kept their valuables in safes concealed behind paintings.”

“Old school,” John said. “Movies and TV made that the first place a thief would check.” He gazed at me with concern. “According to the widow, the last picture that girl, Celeste, posed for was her idea. Celeste brought the apron and the pie to the photo shoot with her. Said she wanted Redding to take the picture as a joke. Mrs. Redding said Celeste didn’t tell them what the joke was, but I got it. She was making fun of
you
, wasn’t she, Del?”

“That was my guess,” I said.

“And my guess is she’s not happy about your . . . relationship . . . with her father.”

“Oh, John, she looks sophisticated and she has an arrogant manner, but she’s just a young girl who was kept away from her father for most of her life. Now that she’s finally getting to know him, it’s only natural that she would be possessive, and hostile to whatever woman he liked.”

“Must be pretty tough on you,” he said.

It was, but I didn’t want to admit it to John. “I’m the grown-up. I’ll try to be patient.”

“Have you seen D’Martino, or talked to him since we were all together at the station Thursday night?”

“No.” I wanted to get away from that subject, so I pointed to his notebook and asked, “Are you going to follow up on the information I gave you?”

“It isn’t much, but, yes, I will. And I’m developing some other avenues of exploration. In spite of what you seem to think, I’m investigating this murder with an open mind.”

I felt a surge of hope. “What have you found out?”

He tucked the little book into his jacket pocket and shook his head. “You should know I can’t share information with a civilian.”

“That’s ridiculous! I’m not some stranger.”

“You’re not on the job, either.” He stood. “I’m letting you off the hook for what you did today, but I don’t want any more interfering.”

“There’s one thing you can tell me,” I said.

John rolled his eyes and sighed loudly.

Grinning, I said, “Just one more thing. Promise.” “That is . . . ?”

“What Celeste said when you interviewed her. Did she claim she was with her mother and the prince in their suite all evening?”

“No comment.”

“Oh, John, don’t be so stubborn. Olivia will tell me. I’m still her client, too, from that situation we had a few months ago. You remember.”

“I remember,” he said grimly. “You almost got yourself killed.”

“Since she’s going to tell me anyway, why not just save me the time?”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Celeste said she and her mother were out driving in Celeste’s new car all evening, that her mother wanted a tour of the city she’d left a long time ago. They got back to the hotel at ten thirty. Garage attendant confirmed. That blows her father’s alibi right out of the water.”