Mercy explains. “Try being a woman living in a society that judges you for your weight and see if you start to notice when a skinny woman like Dana uses sugar.”
“Seriously?” Joseph looks at Francesca for confirmation. She nods and says, “Yup. She speaks the truth. I can tell you that Dana definitely would be the target if the poison was in the sugar bowl. She eats the stuff every day and never gains an ounce. She’s still got the metabolism of a horse … wait, I’m only a little jealous of her metabolism. Not enough to kill her over it…”
Joseph smiles at Francesca’s snarking about her best friend’s metabolic good fortune. It always surprises him when a beautiful woman expresses the least bit of self-consciousness.
“I guess that makes sense, and if it were common knowledge among the suspects, it certainly would provide the means to focus in on how the warfarin could have been distributed.”
He stares at the possibilities he has written on a notepad.
“Let’s try out a few of these motives on some folks,” says Joseph. “Jealousy is always a good motive. Beth used to be Mark’s girlfriend before Susana came along. Maybe Beth tried to bump off Susana?”
“I saw everyone sitting at Dana’s table, plus Sal, Wesley and Beth all handling the food and drinks at various times during the evening,” says Francesca. “So, they all technically had opportunity.”
Mercy says, “Whoever the intended victim was, the murderer probably counted on the delayed reaction of warfarin to cast suspicion on someone else.”
Mercy grabs another piece of pizza and stares at the video shot at Dana’s house on the day after the party. “With so many ‘persons of interest,’ the judge didn’t deny bail for Dana. There are too many suspects for Ethan to put the case in front of a jury without reasonable doubt … unless he finds some more concrete evidence on Dana.”
Joseph, Mercy and Francesca pass around Joseph’s notepad and examine the video frame-by-frame as they eat. Mercy hands the notepad back to Joseph, discouraged.
Mercy says, “The thing that I can’t get past is that there are so many suspects on that list who hate each other, but none of them seem to have hated Sal.”
“Assume it wasn’t Dana,” Joseph says, “since she’s our client and we need to clear her.”
“Do you think that Mark or Blaine would want to sleep with Beth badly enough that one of them might want Sal dead to open up an opportunity?”
“Doubtful. Beth is such a social climber that I’m sure she would leave Sal at the altar for either Blaine or Mark,” says Francesca.
She continues, “Blaine could have been angry with Sal and Dana. I’ve heard a couple of Dana’s maids talking about Dana and Sal flirting before. Maybe Blaine felt like his marriage or his meal ticket was threatened, whichever it is. I never know if he loves Dana or her money.”
Joseph writes the potential suspects on his notepad and labels different columns WHO, WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN and WHY. Then he reaches over and sneaks a bite of dessert from Mercy’s plate.
Mercy smacks his hand lightly, teasing “Hey, no stealing dessert from me or tuna from the cats! We’ll sue! I know a great attorney!”
At the word “tuna,” Mack and Mabel appear suddenly in the living room, then lie down when they realize they are not being fed again.
Francesca says, “Judging from the way we’re all passing food around without paying attention, I’d say that’s a definite vehicle for passing poison at Dana’s.”
Joseph agrees. “The food is certainly one angle to check, plus I think I have another that we might want to examine.”
Francesca looks surprised. “Was there another way for Sal to have ingested poison without putting it into the food or drinks?”
Joseph says, “Sal had three types of pill casings in his system that indicated he had been taking capsules throughout the day.”
He continues, “Sal told Dana that Mark gave him some of Dana’s tranquilizers, and we saw Susana give him some of Mark’s pain pills. Maybe someone doctored those.”
“How would anyone know that Sal would ask for the pain pills?” Mercy asks.
Joseph thinks back to his conversation with Dana. “Maybe Sal wasn’t supposed to take them. What if Mark were the intended victim?”
Mercy asks, “So Blaine poisoned Mark’s pain pills and Susana gave them to Sal by mistake?”
Francesca says, “I assume you’ve heard Dana’s Hamlet theory? Blaine kills Mark for Mark’s money because Dana would overdose soon enough, and Blaine will get it all?”
Mercy shakes her head. “Only an actor would steal a murder plan from Shakespeare.”
“You know what they say. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best,” says Francesca.
Joseph is writing furiously on his pad, putting the ideas in the appropriate columns. He stops for a moment and looks at a couple of blank lines.
“What about Beth? Maybe she poisoned Dana’s cannolo and Sal ate it when he took the pain pills.”
Mercy suddenly has a bright idea. She flips through one of her notebooks, reads a section of an interview with a witness who had been close to the bar on the night of the party, and looks up. “How about this? What if Sal poisoned one of Blaine’s margaritas and he lost track of it in the confusion when Beth grabbed the tray and took it to the table? Then, when Dana handed him one of those margaritas to take the pain pills with, he made a mistake.”
Joseph looks doubtful. “So, you’re wondering if Sal accidentally poisoned himself? I think he would take a little more care with the margaritas if that were the case. He wouldn’t be swilling one down on the off chance that it’s the safe one.”
“Maybe not,” Mercy says, tapping her notebook and thinking.
“What about Dana’s tranquilizers?” Francesca asks. “Maybe someone poisoned Dana’s tranquilizers before Mark gave them to Sal?”
Mercy says, “Or Mark poisoned them trying to kill Dana to get his inheritance before Blaine has a chance to spend it all.”
“Think you can manage to watch the video of Blaine’s classroom one more time? It’s the one that I’ve examined the least. Whatever we’re missing could be in that room.”
Mack and Mabel, deciding that the couch looks very comfortable, jump up and join their humans. They land by Francesca as Joseph starts the video from Blaine’s classroom.
Francesca gives the kittens a couple of head rubs and they circle around, looking for the best spots on the couch. “Hey there, my gorgeous grand-kitties. Did you enjoy the tuna that your mom brought you?”
Mabel purrs her appreciation and does a few turns to curl up next to her “grandma.”
Mack crawls into Joseph’s lap and yawns. Joseph makes a face. “Ugh! Tuna breath! You couldn’t have brought them turkey, Mercy?”
Mercy laughs and pats Mack on the head. “I could have, but they wouldn’t have liked it as much.”
Joseph, Francesca and Mercy scour the video again, making notes, and watching for anything that might give them an answer to their many questions. The clock on the living room wall ticks on from 7:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.
Every once in a while, one of the humans stands to clean up food, take a break, or stretch cramped limbs. The large cats gradually stretch out, “expanding” into larger cats as they sleep and pushing their humans into uncomfortable pretzel positions as they concentrate on the scenes playing and replaying on the TV.
After rechecking the video of the classroom, Joseph says, “Just one last pass. If we don’t see something new this time, we’ll call it a night.” Mercy and Francesca nod.
Joseph rubs his eyes, leans over and puts the remote on the coffee table. He stands to stretch out a cramp, and his notepad falls out of his lap and hits the floor with a resounding thud.
Jolted out of a deep sleep by the clatter, Mabel scrambles at the crash and jumps up to see what has happened.
The startled cat jumps onto the coffee table, hitting the “pause” button on the remote, stopping the picture to a still frame.
Mercy says, “Mabel! Don’t play with the remote! You know you’re only allowed to use the remote when your fish video is on!”
Francesca looks at Joseph and Mercy while the video of the classroom remains paused.
“Okay, I have to ask. What the heck is a fish video?” asks Francesca.
In a mock whisper, Joseph jokes, “Please, don’t ask about the fish video. If I show it to you, the cats will take over the TV and we won’t get to use it anymore tonight.”
Mercy stands up slowly, her body moving but her eyes never leaving the freeze-frame that has been paused since Mabel jumped on the remote.
A smile spreads across Mercy’s face as she comprehends the one thing that they have been missing every time they looked at Blaine’s classroom.
Overjoyed, Mercy picks up Mabel the cat and kisses her on top of the head while Joseph and Francesca check the TV screen to see what made her so ecstatic.
Mercy smothers Mabel with kisses.
“Mabel, Mommy is going to buy you a whole case of tuna! If you ever want to stop being a kitty of leisure, Mommy will hire you at the detective agency. We can rename it Wilde and Wildecat! Or Wildecat and Wilde!”
She continues, “Joseph, put the fish video on for the ‘kids.’ They’ve earned it. Or rather, Mabel has earned it for them!”
Looking to see what Mercy sees, Joseph and Francesca look at the screen. Their eyes widen and so do their smiles.
Chapter 62
After a busy day of strategizing, evidence review, and timeline compilation at Luce and Wilde and at Wilde Investigations, Francesca, Mercy and Joseph have dinner with Mark, Blaine and Dana at Le Coeur Bel the next evening.
After the main course, the doorbell rings, and Wesley escorts in James, Ethan, Lucienne and Frank.
Dana looks surprised … and a bit terrified.
Joseph tells Dana, “I hope you don’t mind. Mercy wanted me to invite Dad, the chief and the detectives to join us for dessert.
Blaine is quite taken aback. “Surely you must be kidding! Haven’t we seen them enough?”
Mark bristles at the thought of throwing what is tantamount to another social gathering so close to Sal’s death. “Mom, don’t you think we’re doing a little too much entertaining when we should be mourning? You don’t even want to cancel Susana’s and my engagement dinner tomorrow night!”
Dana looks overwhelmed. “Mark, we planned your engagement dinner months ago. I was able to reach almost everyone and reschedule except for Susana’s family. They already had left Brazil and were coming by way of Miami. It seemed very rude to tell them to turn around in mid-trip. All we can do is keep it low-key and respectful of Sal.”
Joseph reassures Mark. “I encouraged your mother to hold the dinner, Mark. It’s better for her defense to make her life look as normal as possible.”
Mark growls at Ethan’s group. “I still don’t know why they have to be here.”
Dana tries to reassure her son. “Calm down, Mark. If Mercy and Joseph want the police and district attorney here tonight, I’m sure they have very good reasons.”
Mercy stands, picks up her drink, and heads toward the library.
“I can assure you that I have an excellent hunch that this will be a better evening than we thought. Would you all join me in the library?”
The guests rise from the dinner table, followed by Wesley, who brings coffee.
As the group settles into the library, Mercy begins setting up a demonstration and questions individuals about the night of the party.
“Okay, everyone. To help prove Dana’s innocence, we are going to reconstruct some of the events on the night of the party,” explains Mercy.
“To start with, Blaine, what happened here in the library during your fight with Dana?” Joseph asks.
Blaine looks embarrassed. “Oh, do we really have to do this?”
Dana looks at her husband and says, a little coldly, “Answer the question, darling.”
Blaine looks perturbed but finally gives in. “As usual, Dana was livid about Beth and Susana. They were exceptionally flirty that evening, and I was particularly inept at knowing how to stop them.”
Francesca hisses, “You would think that a man of your age would have had enough time to learn how to dissuade women without alienating them.”
She continues chastising Blaine. “You may be God’s gift to women, but I’ll do my best to convince Dana to dump your sorry backside if you don’t realize what a great wife you have and treat her as such.”
Blaine bristles at this show of aggression from Francesca. He replies, haughtily. “Please, don’t hold back, Francesca. Tell us how you really feel.”
Francesca’s irritation grows. “Are you sure you want that, Blaine? You can’t even handle your teenybopper groupies, so I sincerely doubt you could handle a woman of my caliber.”
Mark intervenes with a cooler head. “Guys, this is getting us nowhere.”
Dana prevails on Francesca with a soft voice. “Please don’t be hard on Blaine, Ches. I was too jealous to be reasonable that night in the library. I threw anything and everything I could get my hands on at Blaine.”
Blaine smiles a little and says, “It’s true. I had to duck a dozen or so martini glasses, several vases, a picture frame, and a few other assorted objects. My wife has a mean fastball, if anyone has MLB contacts.” He looks at Dana, who suppresses a tiny smile.
Mercy asks, “Blaine, did you throw anything at Dana in the library that night?”
Resentfully, Blaine answers, “I most certainly did not. I don’t hit women or throw things at them. The reason I’m so bad at fending off passes from women is because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. If I can’t hurt their feelings, how could I throw things at them?”
Francesca looks surprised at the admission but says nothing.
Blaine continues, saying, “And even if I were the kind of person to throw something, I was too busy running for cover from a barrage of flying objects to think about doing it.”
Francesca turns her ire toward Mark. “What about you, Mark? Were you involved in the free-for-all, or did you just take off and leave your mother to fend for herself again?”
Annoyed, Mark shoots back at Francesca for pointing out his obvious ambivalence.
“Hey, Francesca, you try living here and see if the roller coaster in this house doesn’t cause you to lose interest in what’s going on. I’ve tried to keep Mom in line, but she gets too unmanageable. I think everyone saw that at the party,” he retorts.
Francesca explodes. “First of all, young man, your mother is a star. She doesn’t need a spoiled, entitled child to ‘keep her in line.’”
Francesca barely takes a breath before she continues her tirade. “What she needs, as your mother who has sacrificed more for you than you’ll ever know, is your love and respect.”
Mark drops his head in embarrassment. “You’re right, Francesca. I shouldn’t run away just because it gets crazy around here sometimes.”
“It gets crazy a lot of places a lot of times,” says Francesca.
Dana sees the regret on Mark’s face and hugs her son.
“I don’t blame you, Mark. I know how I can get. Please just tell them what they want to know,” says Dana.
Mark kisses Dana on the cheek, and she pats his hand while they sit there next to each other on the couch.
Mark relays more events. “I arrived in the library during Blaine and Mom’s argument. I couldn’t take another fight, so I grabbed my keys and took off.”
Blaine puts his hand out to Mark as an apology. Mark looks surprised but accepts the handshake. Blaine continues, “I’m sorry for my part in all of this. I’d had enough, too. My car was still running in the driveway, so I got in and took off for the Polo Lounge.”
Dana says, “After my behavior, I was too mortified to go back to the party, so I took off in the Maybach, but I really didn’t have a destination in mind. I just drove around for a while and found myself up at the Mulholland Turnout, lo
oking down at the lights of the city.”
Dana continues with a tinge of sadness in her voice. “It’s where I go when I want to remind myself that I need this town more than it needs me.”
Mercy looks at Dana and asks, “And at no time did you follow Sal to Blaine’s classroom?”
Dana bursts into her deep, throaty laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mercy daahhhhhling. I was already miserable. Why would I subject myself to possibly seeing Beth changing from her uniform to her street clothes, displaying her twenty-something body?”
Mercy paces in front of the fireplace in Dana’s library. Dana and her family sit on a white couch next to Joseph and Francesca, while James, Ethan, Lucienne and Frank perch on chairs and lean against Dana’s desk. Mercy looks around at the group.
“Okay, let’s review. We think that the reason that Sal was at school after he left the party was because he went to change his uniform.”
Joseph chimes in from the couch. “The police report says that every Bella Palermo caterer who worked the party left a uniform in the dressing room hamper.”
Lucienne adds, “Helen Sands said that when the caterers switched from serving to cleanup duty, they carpooled to school to change clothes to save wear-and-tear on their uniforms.”
“And nobody saw poor Sal there?” asks Dana.
“It appears that he had not arrived. Nobody saw anything unusual, including the fallen podium or the broken chalkboard,” replies Lucienne.
“There was a dirty uniform in the dressing room for each of the caterers, except for Sal. His was found in the classroom. Each uniform was bagged and tagged separately and sent to the forensics lab at our request,” says Frank.
“I don’t see where this is going,” says Mark.
“It means Sal was the last caterer to arrive. Police cordoned off the building while we were there. Nobody else could get in to change clothes,” says Mercy.
“It helps establish a timeline. But we’re missing a key piece of evidence,” says James.
“Dana, I hate to impose on your evening, but I still have a search warrant for your house. Mercy has a hunch. Do you mind if I check one quick thing?” James continues.
The Case of the Stained Stilettos Page 25