Devil's Food

by Janice Weber

  Dagmar took a few sips and replaced her cup with a delicate chink. “I believe Ward threw Ardith off the balcony.”

  “Good Christ Almighty! What for?” Ross listened, awed, as Dagmar told him about the conversation she had overheard years ago, forty floors above the pavement, and the conversation she had had at Diavolina two days ago. When she had finished, he didn’t move for a long time. “Why did you do it?” he asked finally.

  “To protect you,” Dagmar answered simply. “Ward’s now murdered twice. Her credibility is hopelessly compromised, should any questions about you ever arise. Secondly, I’ve avenged that poor girl. Ardith’s words drove her off the balcony as certainly as if she had physically pushed her. Lastly, Ward owes me her life. She’ll do anything I tell her to do now.”

  Ross went to the mantelpiece and fondled a tiny soapstone figure, an exquisite elf crouched with her hands about her knees. Emily often curled up like that when they sat together in the atrium after a long day. “Don’t stop there, Dagmar. I think there’s more to this story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Slavomir Dubrinsky was Rita’s teacher at the Academy of Art. He sculpted a statue just like the one in Joe’s bedroom for someone named Leo. You didn’t go to Diavolina just to procure Ward, did you. You went to find Leo.” When Dagmar didn’t answer, Ross continued, “He was in a fight with Joe years ago. Over a woman, I understand. Perhaps you were there.”

  Dagmar’s eyes flashed. “Where did you learn this?”

  “Secondhand. Then there’s a Brother Augustine wanting to see me as soon as possible. It might be about a chapel that Dana and Joe built in the wilderness. Might not.” Ross put the figurine down and sat next to Dagmar on the couch. “We’re in this together,” he whispered. “I need to know everything. From the beginning.”

  Dagmar’s pearls rose and fell with her short breaths. Ross locked eyes with her until he knew he had won. When he took her hand, she began to talk. “Joseph was the most riveting man I had ever seen. I fell hopelessly in love with him. You would understand that fate, I think.” Ross nodded; all too well. “Joseph was ambitious and smart, but penniless. I persuaded him to marry me and my money, sure that a love as strong as mine, proven with children, would conquer all. A common blunder, I’m afraid. My cause was hopeless; Joseph had already met the love of his life. An actress of some sort. He even saw her the morning of our wedding day, as I later found out. He didn’t even have the decency to get me pregnant first.”

  “You didn’t know about this other woman?”

  “About a half year after we were married, Joseph and I had just left a nightclub downtown when an ugly little man accosted him and said, ‘I hear Susannah’s pregnant.’ They had an awful fight. I made the mistake of intervening and got tossed aside.”

  “By whom?”

  “Joseph. Whether from my own injuries or from dragging my husband out of an alley, I had a miscarriage. I never became pregnant again.” Her eyes clouded with that dull resignation acquired only years after the battle, when both enemies and burning causes were dust. “Joseph stayed married to me. But every night, as the clock struck six, I wondered whether he would be coming home for dinner or whether he had finally run away with that woman. I knew there had to be an illegitimate child somewhere. I spent years trying to track them down. It became the obsession of my life.”

  “What would you have done had you found them?” Ross whispered.

  “Something appropriately drastic.”

  “Go on,” Ross said after a silence.

  “When Joseph was quite ill with cancer, he asked Leo to find his child for him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “A few weeks before he died, I found the key to his desk and began going through his papers. There I found a picture of a woman with a note from a monastery in the middle of Massachusetts. Since my husband had never been a religious man, and never gave something for nothing, I drove out and saw Brother Augustine, who showed me the chapel that Joseph had built. I asked Augustine what he had done for my husband in return. He didn’t answer me, of course. But when I showed him the picture, he knew that I knew.”

  “Do you have the picture with you?”

  Ross followed Dagmar to Joe’s bedroom, where she opened a night-table drawer. “It’s the daughter, wouldn’t you say?” she asked.

  It was Emily at the cabin. She was on the deck looking across the lake, half smiling, holding her hat so the breeze wouldn’t blow it away. Ross had taken the snapshot himself a few years ago. How had that damn monk gotten it? “There’s a faint resemblance,” he said.

  “I have no doubt about it. I’ve spent hours here looking from one to the other. As it turned out, half my worries were in vain. The woman had died in childbirth. Augustine at least had the charity to tell me that.” Dagmar dropped the picture back into the drawer. She pushed it sharply shut and walked out of the bedroom. Ross caught up with her in the den, where she was standing over the mantelpiece, shakily lighting a cigarette. “I could discover nothing about the girl,” Dagmar continued. “Someone was clever enough to have hidden her birth records completely. After Joseph died, I learned about this apartment. That statue in the bedroom nearly drove me mad. I found the sculptor Dubrinsky, who had become a filthy, drunken degenerate. Yet when I put ten thousand dollars under his nose, he would tell me nothing. So I pursued the only clue I had left. Major and Forbes, architects.” She looked at Ross. “Where I met you. And there the story becomes somewhat more complicated.”

  She seemed fragile as a sparrow, but Ross knew that was a total delusion. “How so?”

  “I was in to see you one day when Dana came out of his office with that woman in the photograph. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew it was the daughter I had been searching for all my life. Most likely Dana had met her through Joseph, who would have told him all about her when they had been building that chapel together. Dana very proudly revealed the girl’s name. She was an actress. Philippa Banks. I had never heard of her, but I haven’t been to the movies in years. Are you familiar with her?”

  The couch began to float, buoyed by massive, inflating lies. “I think she makes beach movies and other trash,” Ross said. Would Dagmar buy that? He waited a long time for her to resume speaking.

  “I tried three times to kill her.”

  His heart lurched so violently he thought he would vomit it onto Dagmar’s silk couch. “How?” he whispered.

  “The first time at a movie opening in New York. She was supposed to swallow a lethal dose of heroin in a drink. Someone else swallowed it instead. The second time she received a manuscript saturated with odorless poison, the fumes of which are quite fatal for about fifteen seconds after exposure to the air. That attempt failed as well. The third time, she was shot. I’m afraid she’s going to live.”

  “You shot her?” Ross whispered.

  “Good God, no! Ardith did.”

  Ross became very afraid, asphyxiated. “Ardith was in this with you?!”

  “Not voluntarily. She owed me a few favors in exchange for my silence regarding her involvement in the death of Rita Ward. I simply called them in. Ardith delivered the drink in New York. She delivered the manuscript in Los Angeles. She shot Philippa Banks a few days ago.”

  “She never went to Europe?”

  “Of course not. But she proved to be a most unreliable messenger. Botched absolutely everything. Imagine standing three feet away, shooting that woman twice, and missing! Tonight she was nearly hysterical. The situation was becoming dangerous and uncontrollable.”

  “So you had Ward toss her off the balcony,” Ross said. Fright almost gave way to awe: He was in the presence of a darker intelligence. “What makes you think Ward’s going to keep her mouth shut? Or even get away with this?”

  “Because there’s no connection between Ardith and Ward except that silly lawsuit, which was dropped. At my suggestion, I might add. Ardith had every reason to commit suicide. No one saw her and Ward out on the balco
ny. We’re home free, dear.”

  Free? “What about the actress? Now that your hit man’s gone, you’re going to leave her alone, aren’t you? It wasn’t her fault that she was born, was it? What harm could she possibly do?”

  “Plenty. I have reason to believe that Joseph changed his will,” Dagmar said. “Leaving everything to what is so quaintly called his issue.”

  “So tear up the will!”

  “You’re forgetting Leo,” Dagmar said. “He’s looking for her. I suspect the new will is in his pocket.”

  “Why hasn’t he found her yet, then? Wouldn’t she have been in every newspaper in the country after the shooting?”

  “I don’t know why he hasn’t found her. He must be incredibly inept.”

  “What are you going to do about the actress?” Ross persisted.

  “I’m not sure. But I’m determined to see her before Leo does.”

  Ross began pacing agitatedly around the room. “Dagmar, you’ve been very, very lucky with Ardith. She’s out of the picture. This two-bit actress can’t harm you. I would advise you to find Leo instead. Head him off. Buy him off.”

  “Are you joking? If I couldn’t buy off a degenerate sculptor forty years after his model dies, what makes you think I’ll have any better luck with this Leo? And who’s to stop Augustine from contacting the woman? No, it’s much better to get rid of her.”

  “Give her a couple million bucks! Buy her off! Don’t try to kill her, though. It’s too dangerous. She’s not worth it,” he concluded feebly.

  “I don’t think you understand, Ross. You’ve gotten rid of Guy Witten. Ward’s gotten rid of Ardith. I’ve taken care of you both, yet I’m the only one who hasn’t been satisfied. What makes you think my need to even the score is any less than yours?”

  He dropped into a chair across the room. “But the girl didn’t do anything except be born. Isn’t that different?”

  “Not really. The mother stole my husband. Now the daughter is in a position to steal everything I own. There will be scandalous publicity. What little consolation I’ve had in my social position and my possessions will be taken from me forever. I can’t allow that.”

  “But she’ll be surrounded by police and bodyguards, won’t she? How would you ever get to her?”

  “I’ll find a way, believe me.”

  Dagmar looked imperturbably at Ross; for a horrifying moment, he thought she would ask him to kill Philippa for her. He owed her a favor, after all. “Have you got any aspirin in the house, Dagmar?”

  Was that disgust flickering across her face? Or just that insidious, maternal tolerance that neutered all women in the end? “In the bathroom.”

  Ross escaped into the hallway, pressing two hands to his hammering forehead the moment he was out of her sight. He went to the master bathroom and opened Joe’s medicine cabinet. There was nothing inside but a can of shaving cream and a bottle of tiny pink pills. Were that strychnine, he’d swallow it all: Ross read the label. The prescription was for Dagmar. The pharmacy was in Paris. The pills were iproniazid.

  Hands shaking, he grabbed the bottle. He would fling it in Dagmar’s face. Then he would fling her off the balcony after Ardith; she had just as many reasons to commit suicide as Ardith, didn’t she? He’d be doing everyone a favor: Dagmar, Philippa ... Emily. Emily: She called him back from the smoking rim of insanity, telling him he’d never get away with it. Kill Dagmar, kill himself. He’d go to prison. He’d never play with his child on a July afternoon. He’d never sleep with Emily again. Ross took the iproniazid and walked calmly back to the den.

  “Did you find it?“Dagmar asked.

  He sat next to her and put the little bottle next to her saucer. Ross waited several moments then, addressing the bottle rather than Dagmar, said, “You killed Dana, didn’t you.”

  The pearls on her chest came to an utter standstill. When she spoke, her voice was hesitant and very soft; if he didn’t know her better, he’d think she sounded contrite. “I was beside myself when I saw Dana with that woman at your office. When he announced to your secretary that they would be eating at Diavolina that evening, I knew that I had to get to the restaurant. I stood near the bar, which was very crowded and noisy, and watched Dana and that woman begin their meal. When they were about to eat the main course, I called over a waitress and gave her five hundred dollars to get Banks to autograph a pepper mill that I had brought. I suggested she apply a liberal sprinkling to the lady’s steak. It wasn’t pepper in the mill, of course.”

  “Wait a moment. Iproniazid isn’t fatal unless ingested with cheese or red wine.”

  “I had sent over a bottle of chianti beforehand,” Dagmar said patiently. “Everything went perfectly until Banks took a bite of her steak and stopped eating for some reason. Then she switched plates with Dana.”

  “And you just watched this happen?”

  “There was always the hope that he’d switch plates back again.”

  “Where’s the pepper mill?” Ross asked dully. “In your trophy case?”

  “I’ve burned it.”

  “The waitress never told the police?”

  “Why should she? She must have earned a thousand dollars that evening getting artifacts and autographs for Banks’s depraved fans. My request was not unusual, believe me. And Dana Forbes was a notorious substance abuser. He left a long trail of pill bottles behind.”

  “The police never found the iproniazid.”

  “So what? Forbes could have swallowed the last of his prescription and tossed the bottle away.”

  Ross wondered why Dagmar, who had taken such exquisite care to obliterate all evidence of her crimes, should leave that bottle of pills in her cabinet. Maybe for the same reasons Ward had gone to Witten’s funeral: to jeer at the gods, dare them to accelerate the havoc ... to be discovered and executed, and perversely admired by those few honest souls who had identical urges but inferior courage. But women always preferred clean endings, neatly burned bridges; men were much more able to digest the shreds of a putrefied conscience. Ross would take no chances with Dagmar’s suicidal craving for judgment: She would take him down with her. “Come with me,” he said, pulling her off the couch, leading her to the kitchen. He turned on the garbage disposal, flushed it with water, and poured the few remaining iproniazid pills down the drain. He held the plastic bottle under the water and peeled off the label. Then he wadded the label into a ball and swallowed it.

  “You must be tired,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll drive you home.”

  He got his car. On the way to Weston, where the Charles River ran quietly beneath a bridge, he pulled over. They both got out and leaned over the rough cement ledge. After Ross dropped the empty bottle into the water, near a wavering reflection of the moon, he said, “Leave the actress alone.”

  Dagmar did not answer. He put her back in the car and drove into the blustery night.

  19

  Once Philippa awoke, her recovery was swift. She told Franco to go to hell since he had not only failed to take two bullets in her stead, but he had not slept at the hospital, as Emily had. Philippa caused gridlock in the corridor when she went strolling in her extravagant peignoirs. Fans outside kept trying to scale the walls to her room. Finally, two days after Ross left for Boston, Philippa was told that if she was well enough to hurl vases at her business manager, she was well enough to go home. The hospital lawn was wrecked and the surgeons were tired of pickup trucks from Arkansas in their reserved parking spaces. Only the orderlies, who were making a fortune selling what they claimed to be Philippa s used hospital gowns, were sorry to see her go. They arranged a confetti parade in the front hall for her departure that afternoon.

  Emily was manicuring her sister s nails in preparation for her first Incredible Survivor interview when Detective Hobson came to the room and announced that two boys, playing in a ravine near the accident, had discovered a .40-caliber gun. A trace of the serial numbers would identify the owner within the hour.

  “Fine,” Philippa huffed.
“Just arrest her, please. Don’t interrupt my interview. Em, what time’s the plane?”

  “Four-thirty.”

  “Crap, I’m going to have to talk fast.” That afternoon the sisters would be flying to an undisclosed destination for two weeks, after which Philippa would begin work on her vampire film in Paris. That nameless destination was, of course, Boston; Ross had called yesterday with the shocking news that Ardith had committed suicide. Knowing that she must return home at once, Emily had entreated Philippa to come with her. Boston was not only loaded with doctors but it was halfway to Paris. It would be much better to recuperate there than at that flimflam holistic farm near the San Andreas Fault. Philippa finally agreed, on condition that they stay in Beacon Hill and not that horrible little cabin in the woods.

  Philippa’s interview ran late due to her eloquence upon the impact of bullet holes on her sex drive. Then Hobson knocked on the door. “Miss Banks,” he interrupted, “may I speak with you, please?”

  The journalist was reluctantly sent away and Emily summoned from her hotel across the street. “Well, what’s the good word?”

  “Does the name Dana Forbes mean anything to you?”

  After a second’s hesitation, Philippa clamped the back of her hand over her mouth. She had learned the gesture from old Joan Crawford films. “My God! Don’t tell me that gun belonged to Dana!”

  “It was registered in his name. You know the man?”

  “I did at one time.”

  “Where might Mr. Forbes be presently?”

  “In Massachusetts. Now and forever.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s dead, darling. Six feet under.”

  “Since when?”

  “You’ll have to ask my sister. I’m terrible with dates. Sometime around Labor Day.”

  “Was he a good friend of yours?”

  “Absolutely not. He was a lover,” Philippa said. “There’s a huge difference.”

  “Was he a lover at the time of his death?”