Devil's Food

by Janice Weber

  Ross and his two women, walking at a bride’s pace to accommodate Philippa’s war wounds, finally reached O’Keefe and Dagmar. The three of them looked as if they had been sticking leeches on each other all night.

  After a curt nod, Ross took over the introductions. “Dagmar, I’d like you to meet my wife, Emily, and her sister, Philippa.”

  Dagmar’s eyes finally left his. She studied the twins before extending a tiny, gloved hand. “I’ve heard so much about you both.”

  “I’ve seen you before,” Philippa replied. “Dana’s office. I’d remember that hat anywhere.”

  “Quite.” Dagmar turned to Emily. “I understand you’ve been in California.”

  “We got back last night.”

  Conversation, illusions, died. Ross suddenly said, “Philippa, you must be wanting to sit down. Why don’t you go inside with Emily. I’ll be right there.”

  When the twins were out of earshot, Ross said, “Philippa insisted on coming. I’m sure her agent’s got a photographer stashed in the trees somewhere. Anything new, O’Keefe?”

  “Not since last night.” The detective watched the two women edge away. “Looks like Philippa could use a little help getting up those stairs. Would you excuse me?”

  Ross walked with Dagmar into the garden. They sat on a stone bench near the birdbath, where people were supposed to think pure, or at least poetical, thoughts. “I never once guessed that there might be two of them,” Dagmar said finally.

  That was because she had been dealing with a cagey husband and an even cagier monk. “My wife is pregnant,” Ross said. “We’ve been trying for fifteen years. Don’t take this child away from me, Dagmar. I’m begging you.”

  “My God, you ask a lot.”

  “I’m asking you for everything.”

  “There’s no point in only getting rid of one of them, you realize.”

  “Think! Quit while you’re ahead! O’Keefe’s so suspicious already. Did anyone see you at Diavolina the night Dana died?”

  “I’m sure everyone did. But I was wearing a turban and rather heavy glasses. The same costume as I gave Ardith a week later. If he’s anything worth his salt, Detective O’Keefe has already found it at her home.”

  Always one step ahead of him. Ross shivered, but not in appreciation. “We should go. The service is about to start.”

  Halfway to the church she said, “Are you sorry you met me, Ross?”

  Was Prometheus sorry he stole fire? Pandora sorry she opened that box? If he hadn’t met Dagmar, Emily would have died a sudden death, and he never would have known why. Ross shut his eyes; if he didn’t find Leo, she might still die a sudden death. “It never entered my mind,” he replied. They went inside to bid Ardith good riddance.

  20

  Here I am, staring at that unfathomable hole in the ground again. Dana’s down there beneath my feet, inert as the deep, brown dirt. In fact I’m standing on him: sorry, friend. I wonder what he looks like now. Better than Ardith, that’s for sure; she was such a mess they had to keep the coffin bolted. At least she’s getting herself planted in the same color box she chose for Dana. Ardith was always big on matched sets. Agh, I don’t want to think about them both down there forever. I can’t look anymore.

  I’ll look at my wife instead. The poor girl’s crying. Aside from Ardith’s interior decorator, I bet she’s the only one here who feels any grief at all. Emily is so beautiful in the fog. She’s standing at the grave, head bowed, murmuring prayers with the preacher. Her hair is tumbling over her face. If we were in bed, I could push it to the side with one finger, study her eyes, lips, skin.... Has this woman really been sleeping beside me for fifteen years? They’ve gone so quickly by and it seems I’m just getting to know her. I’ll probably never know her completely; that’sbecause in the bottom of my heart, I know I’m not the love of her life. Oh, I’m her friend, her confidant, protector, provider, but I’m not the mirror of her soul. I fall short there, always will; the most I can hope for is that the next time she meets another Guy, I’ll have racked up enough Brownie points to retain possession. I’m the father of her child, after all. If nothing else, that should buy me a little breathing space: She’ll be so busy with the baby for the next few years that she’ll have no energy to get into mischief. And I’ll be such a good father, the best on the planet. Boy or girl? Twins? God, give me quintuplets! We’re going to be a family: unbelievable. Miraculous.

  Dagmar wouldn’t destroy that, would she? She’s standing on the opposite side of the chasm, staring at me. No prayers coming out of her mouth, and this whole damn funeral is her doing. At least I had the conscience to get good and drunk for Guy’s. She’s sober as a rattlesnake. I’m afraid of her: She’s a woman scorned. She’s murdered before and gotten away with it. What’s to stop her now? If Leo gets to Emily or Philippa before I get to him, Dagmar’s got nothing to lose. I can see her killing my wife as a matter of honor. She doesn’t make empty threats and she didn’t promise me anything. She doesn’t trust me anymore, I’m sure, not after that double whammy I laid on her an hour ago. And when there’s no trust, there are no longer any rules. I wonder how much time I have before Dagmar makes her move. Should I go to the police? I don’t dare: I tattle on Dagmar, she’ll tattle on me. Emily would pack up and leave. Should I find Leo? Christ, I’d have better luck locating a new planet with the naked eye! Agh, what a nightmare. I’m going to have to start praying for another favor, from God or the devil. At this point, I’ll bargain with either.

  After the funeral, Philippa was feeling faint, so Ross and Emily took her back to Beacon Hill. From the rear seat, Philippa discoursed upon the stupidity of recent events as she frowned at adipose tourists along Joy Street. “This whole thing makes no sense,” she kept repeating. “Why did Ardith have to shoot me? It’s not as if I were Dana’s first girlfriend.”

  “You must have been the straw that snapped the camel’s back,” Emily replied.

  “Come on, I was just an innocent bystander. She should have been ecstatic that Dana got knocked off and left her swimming in money! Why blow that by going after me? The woman was out of her mind.”

  “Obviously,” Ross said, pulling into the driveway. “That’s why she jumped off Dagmar’s balcony.”

  “Even that makes no sense,” Philippa continued. “Why didn’t she just jump off Dana’s boat? Take a few dozen sleeping pills? Such a fucking mess, throwing herself off a balcony. What about her poor kids, knowing that their mother was hamburger? Didn’t she even think of them? There’s something odd here. I’m going to bring this to O’Keefe’s attention. What’s his first name, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Phil, your imagination’s running away with you,” Emily said, hoisting her sister from the backseat. “Let’s leave this one to the professionals, all right?”

  Philippa hobbled inside. “And who’s this Dagmar broad, Ross?”

  “One of my clients.”

  “She’s got the eyes of a Gila monster.”

  “Actually, she’s very sweet,” Ross lied. “Very cultured.”

  “Believe me, the only thing cultured about her was her jewelry. What does hubby do?”

  “Hubby’s dead. He made pretzels.”

  “Pretzels! That’s just a step above making suppositories! Ross, I think I could handle a glass of wine today. Just a little one.” Stretching out on the couch in the atrium, Philippa invigorated herself with mounds of pasta, prattling nonstop. Finally she pushed her plate away. “That was great, Em. It’s a real shame you won’t be working anymore, now that you’re pregnant.”

  “Says who?”

  Ross looked at his wife. “You’re not considering anything until after the baby is born, are you?”

  “It’s not as if you were seventeen with good elastic,” Philippa agreed. “You can’t go knocking around a hot kitchen with a gut the size of a beer keg. Besides, you’ve had rotten karma at your last two jobs. People dropping dead like flies. Your boss, Dana, that guy Byron ...”

  “Don’
t forget Dubrinsky,” Emily replied sarcastically.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The dishwasher at Diavolina. He was the one who sent me the note of warning and two sketches of Mother.”

  “What sketches? You never told me.”

  “Phil, I told you everything. You were preoccupied with that buffoon Franco.”

  “Oy, now I remember. That idiotic story with the priest named Leo.”

  “Augustine.” Emily brought a large yellow envelope from the library. “Here are the sketches. See for yourself.”

  Philippa studied them distastefully for a few seconds. “A dish-washer drew these?”

  “He was a sculptor before he worked at Diavolina.”

  “The man just gave these to you? Who’s to say he didn’t just draw them at home one night? Why tell you they’re your mother?”

  “Slavomir didn’t say anything about a mother. He didn’t have a chance to. He drowned in the Fenway the night Dana died.”

  “What, trying to take a swim?”

  “He was drunk. But before leaving the restaurant, he went into my office and slipped me a key and a picture. It was in an envelope pinned to my T-shirt.”

  “Come on, Em! A drunken dishwasher doing all that?”

  Emily went to the library and returned with a second, smaller envelope. “There you are.”

  “Who’s this?” Philippa asked, looking at the faded brown photograph. “Looks like he was carrying it in his underwear for fifty years.”

  “Maybe it’s his mother.”

  Philippa studied the old picture again. “You sentimental fool, Em, that’s the old bag Dagmar, fifty years ago. Look at that little pearl pin. She was wearing it today.”

  Ross’s eyes lifted slowly from the newspaper he was reading. “That’s quite a stretch, Philippa.”

  “The hell it is. Faces I can forget. Jewelry never.”

  “Was Dagmar related to Dubrinsky?” Emily asked Ross.

  “No idea. I can ask her,” he said, casually taking the picture. Dagmar, all right: Those eyes had never changed. He knew that he was staring at the inchoate shoots of his deliverance. Grow! Fast! “Has anyone else seen this, Emily?”

  “No.”

  As Philippa launched a diatribe against priests, dishwashers, and illegitimate births in filthy monasteries, Ross left the atrium. He returned shortly with his briefcase. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I think I’ll try to get a little work done today.” He kissed Emily’s cheek. “Get some sleep, darling. I’ll be back early. You two aren’t planning to go out, are you?”

  “Are you kidding? With half my insides in shreds?” Philippa cried.

  “Keep the doors locked, then. Don’t open them for anybody.” Ross left.

  “What was that all about?” Philippa asked, pouring herself a huge slug of wine now that Ross was gone. “I think he gets off on the idea of you locked up in the house. He’ll be chaining you to the bed next.”

  “He’s just being protective. No one knows what this Leo fellow’s like, remember.”

  Philippa scowled at yet another reference to her tawdry birth. “Ross is an insanely jealous man, Em. Don’t ever let him catch you fooling around. He’d kill the guy.” Philippa finished her wine, yawned, and shut her eyes. “I suppose that’s a compliment. Not many people would kill for love nowadays. Not even in the movies.”

  “What do you think Ardith just did?”

  “That wasn’t love. That was stupidity.” In a few moments, Philippa had dozed off.

  Emily gathered her sketches and pictures and returned them to their drawer, there to await the return of Leo, who might explain everything. Where had he been these last four weeks? Maybe he was dead, like everyone else. As she cleaned up the lunch dishes, Emily wondered if Ward had heard anything from him. Emboldened and incisive, as people usually are for a short time after funerals, she picked up the phone. It was ringing at Diavolina when Philippa cried from the couch, “No pepper, I told you! Think of my hemorrhoids! And don’t call me Plum! I’m not your damn plum!”

  Emily hung up and went to the atrium. “Phil,” she whispered, shaking her sister awake. “You’re having a bad dream.”

  Philippa slowly focused. “What did I say?”

  “You were crying about pepper and hemorrhoids again. One of your favorite nightmares.” Philippa scowled; surely she dreamed about loftier topics. “It must have something to do with Terrence,” she said. That was her second husband. “He was a nut on anal sex.”

  “Does pepper really give you hemorrhoids?” Emily asked.

  “Of course not! Nothing does but steak tartare,” Philippa fumed. “That stupid waiter at your restaurant tried to feed me raw steak, you know.”

  “I know, dear. You’ve told me many times now.”

  “And it was covered with pink pepper. Pink! No wonder I’m having bad dreams. That color has always made me violently ill.”

  “Guess what, Phil. We never used pink peppercorns at Diavolina.”

  “You certainly did. Ask the waitress who gave my steak a half-inch dusting. What a hopeless restaurant. You should never have taken a job there. Such a low class of people involved.”

  “Oh, but Simon’s high class? Give me a break,” Emily snapped. “And what’s this about plums all the time? Why do you keep dreaming about plums?”

  Philippa tried to look very, very blank. “I have no idea. I really must have a session with my analyst soon. All this obsessing with fruit and assholes! Bizarre! Where are you going now?”

  “Food shopping,” Emily replied, needing to get out of the house. “Go back to sleep.”

  She drove to Cafe Presto. The lunch rush was piddling out and Lois was gloomily closing her cash register. Seeing Emily, she brightened. “Hi! Hope you didn’t come to eat!”

  “Just some lemonade. If you’ve got a minute, could I talk with you?” Emily waited for Lois at a table by the new front window. Perhaps Guy had been sitting here when that car had come crashing through. Had she really worked here for seven years? What a long, sweet dream; like Guy, over now—on to other dreams.

  Soon Lois came over with a mug of coffee. “How’s everything, Em? You look great.”

  “Fine, thanks. Still holding up the fort?”

  “Of course. Bert’s leaving tomorrow. It was either him or Lina. Guy’s sister, Ursula, is trying to keep the place running now. She’s looking for a buyer. Wouldn’t be interested in coming back, would you?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Without Guy? No way. Emily sipped some lemonade. Lina had changed the recipe; it tasted rather weak now. “Detective O’Keefe told me that Guy was probably murdered.”

  “It’s unthinkable. They’ll never find out who did it, you know. That policeman’s gotten nothing but dead ends. He can’t tell where it happened, who did it, or why. Personally, I think some wacko was just having a little target practice and Guy happened to be in the line of fire. Bert’s theory is that Guy was shot by a boyfriend or husband. One of those jealous-triangle things.”

  “Guy had a girlfriend?”

  “One bossy bitch. She called him here all the time. Irritated the hell out of Bert. Guy generally took off after she called. We figured she was married and was telling him when the coast was clear. We also figured that that night the window got smashed, he was sitting here waiting for her. He was really not himself those last few weeks. And you know something? That night Guy was killed, he got one of those phone calls and took off. We never saw him alive again.”

  “Does Detective O’Keefe know about this?”

  “Sure. But what can he do? That woman doesn’t call anymore. No one even knew who she was. She never left a name. The first couple of times, Bert mistook her for you. He said your voices were alike.”

  Guy had always preferred women with low voices. And he had never paid much attention to husbands. Had he replaced her immediately, then? Emily changed the subject to bingo, Lois’s hobby. After a while she finished the lemonade. “Give my regards to Ursula, would you?
”

  “Sure. Think about buying the joint, would you, honey? We really miss those pistachio buns.”

  Emily went to Diavolina, where the last of the lunch guests lingered over the last inch of their cheap wine as waiters glowered at them from the sideboards. The place looked exactly the same, but smelled different: new chef here, too. Zoltan bowed from his little podium. “How are you?”

  “Fine. You left a message on my machine a while ago. I was in California until last night. This morning I had to go to a funeral.”

  “Mrs. Ardith Forbes, yes? I saw the article in the newspaper. Terrible.”

  “Did you have something to tell me?”

  Zoltan’s orange face went quite still. “It was about an opportunity that is now past.”

  Emily doubted it had to do with the restaurant business. “Have you heard from Leo?”

  “Not at all. I am beginning to get worried. He has never been away this long before.”

  “Hey Major! What are you doing here?” called Ward, stomping over from the bar. She looked great. Trim, neat... happy?

  “I was just passing by. How’s Klepp holding up?”

  “Super. He’s a fanatic about law and order. In the kitchen, anyway. What are you up to?”

  “I was in California with my sister. You may have heard that she got shot.”

  “I did. Serves her right. You must have come back for Ardith Forbes’s funeral.”

  “It was not a happy occasion.”

  Ward giggled. “To think I was just twenty feet away when she jumped! Unbelievable!”

  “You were invited to Dagmar’s party?”

  “Hell, no. We were catering it.” Noticing a thirsty customer at the bar, Ward headed back. “I haven’t seen Leo, in case you were wondering,” she called over her shoulder.

  Emily took a few steps toward the door, then stopped. “Zoltan, have you ever used pink peppercorns in the dining room?”

  “Never,” he sniffed.

  “You were an old friend of Slavomir’s, weren’t you?” Zoltan neither affirmed nor denied. “Did he know Dagmar Pola from way back?”