Devil's Food

by Janice Weber

  O’Keefe didn’t even try to grin back. Ross and Marjorie walked him to the door; only as he was taking a last look at Marjorie’s legs did the detective notice the tiny rim of mud on Ross’s shoes.

  After a morning at the police station describing how Joe Pola’s statue could have slipped from her hands onto Dagmar’s cranium, Ward emerged into the sunshine and took a few deep breaths. Fabulous day, great for walking. She went briskly to the Longfellow Bridge and leaned for quite a while over the rough cement balustrade, watching birds and boats. Then she returned to Diavolina and took a nap Ward was on the floor of her office, lifting weights, when Klepp knocked. “Ma’am? Chef Major’s here. She’d like to see you. Says it’s not about Leo. I already told her not to apply for her old job back.”

  “Send her in.” Ward rolled to the couch. “Major! Just in time for cocktails!” Emily looked as if she had just driven nonstop from California, in a convertible. “You need one, I’d say.”

  “No thanks.” Emily sat on a tiny, vacant corner of Ward’s desk. “After I saw you and Ross talking this morning, I went to the cabin in New Hampshire. In the door frame, I noticed a little hole.” She rummaged through Ward’s pencil holder and took out a broadhead arrow. “About this size.”

  Ward sighed: Denial had never suited her. “This is between your old man and me, Emily. Stay out of it.”

  “Did he tell you to kill Guy?”

  Acrid laughter burst out of her like pus from a boil. “Hell, no! He just told me where I might find him one night. I got a little carried away with business of my own. The wimp was horrified.”

  “What business?”

  “I thought Witten had caused my sister’s suicide. It was all a mistake. Sorry.”

  “Sorry? You think that wipes the slate clean? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  A slow smile stole over Ward’s face. “You were screwing him, weren’t you? That explains everything.”

  That explained nothing! “Oh, so it’s all my fault? Did I fire the fucking crossbow?”

  “You started the chain reaction, baby. Without you and your horny sister, none of this would ever have happened.”

  “Leave Philippa out of this.”

  “Can’t. She was in it up to her neck. She was sitting with Witten at Presto when I drove that truck through the window. When he went up to New Hampshire, he thought he was visiting you. ’I’m here, Em! Open up!’” Ward guffawed. “Poor schmuck.”

  Emily’s eyes got very hot. “I’m telling the police.”

  “Sure, go right ahead. Ross could use another two or three life sentences,” Ward poured herself a glass of brandy, “By the way, we dropped a statue on Dagmar Pola this morning. A terrible accident. She’s dead.”

  Emily slumped into Ward’s chair. “You and Ross killed Dagmar?”

  “Hell, no. Your hubby doesn’t have the balls to kill a flea. He made the suggestion and I carried it out. It’s our routine now.” Ward swallowed neatly. “Preventâtive maintenance, my shrink would call it. Seems Dagmar was trying to kill you. It would only have been a matter of time before she succeeded.”

  “Why? What did I ever do to her?”

  “You emerged live and kicking from your mother’s twat, Major. Dagmar seemed to think you and your sister are her husband’s bastard daughters. She didn’t like that idea very much. Screws up her retirement plans. So I took care of her for you.”

  Joe Pola the pretzel man? Her father? Emily gripped the sides of her chair, which seemed to be undulating beneath her. “But Ardith shot Philippa.”

  “Yes but no. She was obeying Dagmar’s orders. Owed her a few favors. Poor woman. Suicide was her only option.” Ward licked a few drops of brandy meandering down the neck of the bottle. “Think about it, Emily. I lost you a lover and gained you a fortune. We’re even now. I’d say your poor devil of a husband has paid off his debt to you as well. Saving your life cost him an art museum. Not to mention his self-respect forever. You really put him through the wringer.”

  How? By pursuing a furtive wisp of happiness? “None of this is true.”

  “No? Ask Ross. He took it in the neck. Better yet, ask Leo when he comes back. Whenever the hell that might be. Oh, by the way.” Ward tossed an orange tassel onto the desk. “Guess where that came from.”

  Emily stared at it. “The morgue?”

  “A little pillow on Dagmar’s couch. She drowned my dishwasher.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he recognized her the night she came here to poison your sister. Nailed Dana Forbes by mistake.”

  “How?”

  “Did O’Keefe ever describe iproniazid to you? Tell you it was a pretty little pink pill? Sort of like those peppercorns you were asking Zoltan about the other day?” Ward lay on the couch and closed her eyes. “Go home, Major. Take a bath. Bury this conversation and get on with your life.”

  Emily didn’t move for a long time. When she finally got to the door, she asked, “Why did you hire me?”

  “The pistachio buns. They were great.” Ward’s biceps swelled as she raised herself up on one elbow. “I’m sorry about Witten. Really. But you’ve got to admit it was a blessing in disguise. What if he had lived? You’d have ended up killing your sister.”

  Emily closed the door.

  The afternoon had chilled into evening by the time Emily got back to Beacon Hill. As soon as she stepped inside the foyer, she smelled Philippa’s heavy perfume and the specters of many cigarettes. “That you, Em?” her sister called. “Where have you been all day? I’ve been worried sick! I was just writing you a note. My taxi’s going to be here any second now.”

  Pen in hand, Philippa sat at the kitchen table. She was dressed in a black suit with a few dozen understated rhinestones around the collar. “Where are you going?” Emily asked.

  “Paris, darling. I simply cannot lie flat on my back here one day longer. I’m getting bedsores. Besides, I’m almost well. Feel like new.”

  She was obviously in pain. Emily took a chair and, seeing her sister’s pinched, pale face, almost let bygones be bygones. But there was something she had to know. “Tell me,” she said, voice as unsteady as Philippa’s hands, “what were Guy’s last words to you that night at the cabin?”

  Philippa’s lip began to quiver. Then suppressed tears and words slipped free. “I was just sitting at Diavolina minding my own business when this stranger came to the table and ran a finger over my cheek. I thought I would die, he was so beautiful. I had to know who he was.” Emily said nothing. “I came to Dana’s funeral to see him. He wasn’t there. I saw a flyer from Cafe Presto in the drawer over there and called him, pretending to be you. He agreed to see me—you—and then a truck smashed through the window. I ran away. What could I do, Em? Stick around and patch him up? I was pretty banged up myself.”

  Emily still said nothing. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard. “I had to see him again,” Philippa continued. “But to confess, not to—do other things. He could tell I wasn’t really you. So I invited him up to the cabin. It was a rainy night. He knocked on the door. When I answered it he twisted to the side and fell.”

  Philippa faltered to a standstill. Emily finally stirred to life. “Then what.”

  “I—I wanted to bring him inside and call an ambulance but he said no, he didn’t want to make a scene that might get you into trouble. He didn’t seem to be so badly hurt. He just got into his car and kissed me on the cheek and said he’d call in a few hours when he got back to Boston. His last words were ’I love you.’” Philippa actually choked on her own tears. “I don’t know why I did it, Em. He swept me off my feet. It’s been awful beyond belief since he died. I couldn’t tell anyone without getting you into trouble.” Philippa rushed to the other side of the table and bawled into her sister’s lap. “Please forgive me! I’ve been unable to live with myself. I never slept with him. I never stood a chance. The only time I even came within arm’s length, he said that I had changed perfume. It was a hopeless infatuation. I’m a desperate, worth
less old woman.”

  “Did you ever think about bringing the killer to justice?”

  “Court? Juries? I couldn’t bear it! Why didn’t you ever tell Guy you had a twin? Were you ashamed?”

  Outside, a horn tooted. Philippa tightened her clutch around her sister’s knees. “Say it’s all right, Emily! I won’t leave until you do!”

  Emily patted her sister’s sprawling blond hair. What had Philippa done but fall under Guy’s spell, same as she had? Ah, how love made solitary wanderers of them all. “It’s all right,” she said.

  The, horn blared. Emily helped Philippa to her feet. “I’ll bring down your things.”

  As the cab driver was heaving the last suitcase into the trunk, Philippa leaned out the window. “I feel so much better, Em. Maybe my nightmares will go away now.”

  Fat chance. “Make a good vampire movie,” Emily said, blowing a kiss.

  Roaring and rattling, the cab crested Joy Street. Emily was about to go back inside when O’Keefe’s car pulled up. “Hi,” he called. “Got a minute?”

  She took him upstairs to the den. “Sorry about the mess,” she said, clearing a space for him on the sofa. “Philippa always leaves in a whirlwind.”

  “She’s gone?”

  “To Paris. Her new movie starts shooting in a couple days. May I get you something?” The detective looked as if he had been cruising through a cyclone in a hot-air balloon.

  “No thanks. Did your sister tell you I had dropped by this morning?”

  Emily chuckled. “No, the little stinker.”

  “She mentioned that you had been receiving pornography and keys in the mail.”

  “That was a while ago. It was pretty harmless so I threw it out.”

  Damn! “She also mentioned threatening notes to the president of her fan club.”

  Emily frowned. “I think he gets about a dozen a day. Why did she bring it up?”

  “I’m not sure. She seemed to be speaking off the top of her head. She said you had been looking into reports of being born in a monastery.” As Emily blanched, O’Keefe took her hand. “I don’t mean to upset you with this. I’m trying to see if there’s any connection with recent events.”

  Emily went to the window and admired the Boston skyline. Her good husband was the force behind so many of those proud, shimmering lights. She couldn’t allow O’Keefe to put him in prison for a crime she had instigated. “Our mother died in childbirth. I spend a lot of time trying to find my father. It’s a little fantasy of mine that one day I’ll find him and we’ll be one happy family again.” She shrugged. “I hit a lot of dead ends.”

  “Like that monastery?”

  Emily nodded. “It’s pretty rough on Philippa. All her life, she’s compensated by acting and fibbing. She doesn’t mean to. She just does.”

  O’Keefe swallowed that: It was solid, like beef stew. He passed on to a murkier matter. “Did your husband know Ward?”

  “From Diavolina? I never introduced them. Why?”

  Oh, just a little mud on two pairs of shoes and a statue through a dowager’s brains. “I thought they may have seen each other this morning.”

  He was lying: He was fishing. He had seen them. Emily had to choose, immediately, and parry. Guy! Help! “I don’t see how,” she said. “Ross had a meeting with Dagmar Pola at nine. I took him there and waited outside. Then we went to the obstetrician’s. I dropped him off at work afterward.” Emily smiled with a shy radiance, part woman, part atom bomb. “We’re pregnant. It’s a secret. I know I’m old enough to be a grandmother.”

  O’Keefe knew that he must let this case go, let it sail away from him and sink in the deep, cold sea of suspicion and jealousy and unrequited lust. He knew everything and nothing: The murderers had been murdered and the witnesses would remain forever dumb because somehow, beneath the pile of bodies, scores had been settled, justice had been served. Family affairs, domestic disputes: Cops had no jurisdiction here. “That’s wonderful,” O’Keefe said. “Congratulations.” He and Emily exchanged a few sentences about blessed events and ecstatic fathers-to-be. He saw no point mentioning that Dagmar Pola lay in the morgue near a dead dishwasher, nor that Lola had perked up a steak with iproniazid: People were evil and nuts and no one was ever sorry for anything. They’d do it all over again the next moment temptation drifted within a mile of opportunity. Sometimes he caught them, sometimes they caught themselves, and eventually death caught them all. Tonight Emily looked, for the first time, happy. Who was he to deprive her of a husband, a child’s father? She’d never look at him again. Saying good night, O’Keefe went home and watched a long baseball game.

  22

  It was another bright morning, but a little too cool to breakfast outside. Ross was reading the sports pages as Emily padded into the kitchen in her flannel pajamas. She kissed the top of his head, poured a cup of coffee, and watched from the other side of the table as he came upon the obituaries. “My God,” he said, straightening his eyeglasses. “Dagmar Pola died.”

  “From what?”

  He read a moment. “She had an accident at her apartment. Whatever that means.”

  “What a drag! There goes your art museum.”

  “What can you do.”

  “When’s the funeral? You should probably make an appearance.”

  “What for? She never paid me a cent. All right, I’ll send flowers.”

  Emily peered over the page, trying to read upside down. “Any family?”

  “It doesn’t say.”

  The doorbell rang. Husband and wife stared dully at each other: Now what? “I’ll get it,” he said. “Stay here.”

  She heard voices. Then Ross returned to the kitchen with a compact, swarthy man wearing an eye patch. Perhaps he had left his parrot and wooden leg at home. “This gentleman says he’s Leo,” Ross said.

  She stared, but not for long; Leo looked ferocious as Klepp, sullen as Zoltan, cunning as Dagmar. “Coffee?” she asked. No. “What brings you here?”

  Leo’s one eye strayed to the newspaper. “That,” he replied, tapping a finger on Dagmar’s obituary. “I don’t want there to be any trouble. Read this.” He tossed an envelope on the table.

  Emily opened it. “The last will and testament of Joseph Pola?” She read the short document. “Looks like he leaves everything to his two daughters, if they be found.” She slid a fork under Ross’s scrambled eggs. En route to her mouth, a pale yellow curd fell on Dagmar’s picture. “So? Are they found?”

  “Nope.” Leo laughed. It was a strange sound, midway between a bark and a sob. “Joe never had any daughters.”

  “Back up,” Ross snapped. “All the way.”

  Leo smiled, displaying a set of gray teeth. “Where should I begin this merry-go-round?” He nodded to the newspaper. “I guess that one started it. She couldn’t just tell Dubrinsky to get lost. She had to put him away for twenty years. Rape, my ass.”

  “Why’d she do that?” Emily asked.

  “Because he wouldn’t go away. She preferred Monsieur Joe Pola, a social-climbing gigolo who made pretzels. Dagmar was nothing to him but a cash cow. Joe was in love with your mother, of course.”

  Emily swallowed some eggs. “Did my mother love him?”

  “She played her part well. She was an actress, after all.”

  “But why should she act?”

  “Because Joe was her oil well and she was pregnant. Not by him, though.”

  “Let me guess,” Ross interrupted. “You’re my father-in-law.”

  Leo’s mouth twisted slightly upward. “One day Dagmar discovered a theater ticket in Joe’s pocket. It was an actor’s comp. She went to a show, took one look at your mother, and made the connection. Women have a sixth sense about these things. So she sent a bottle of cold cream backstage. Unfortunately, the co-star used it and lost most of his face. A chemical peel, to put it mildly.”

  “Zoltan,” Emily sighed.

  “Your mother put two and two together and ran away. She was terrified of Dagmar. So she
came to me.”

  “Why should she come to you?” Ross said. “How do you fit into all of this?”

  “I used to have a diner on Lincoln Street. It was one of the few places in town you could get a cup of chili after midnight. Your mother used to stop by on the way home from her shows. On my birthday, so did Joe.”

  “Isn’t that nice!” Ross exclaimed. “Was he helping you celebrate?”

  “You could say that. Joe was my twin brother.”

  Ross and Emily stared at him, filtering many causes and effects. Finally Emily said, “You must have really hated him.”

  “Always did. Always will. He was the favorite. We didn’t even look alike. I ran away when I was twelve.” Leo let that settle as he got himself a glass of water. “Joe found me in jail. Whenever he visited people would say You’re related to the pretzel man? Wow! I changed my name the minute I got out.” Leo drank heavily. “The rest you know. Your mother didn’t make it and Dagmar spent the rest of her life hunting for you.”

  For a while the only sound in the kitchen was an occasional drip from the faucet. “Why did you disappear?” Emily asked. “Were you looking for me and my sister?”

  “Hell, no. There was nothing to find.”

  “Didn’t Dagmar know who you were?”

  “Are you crazy? Joe never told her. An ex-con brother was a blot on his social agenda. He only saw me for ten minutes on our birthday. When he found out he was dying, I got a call. Joe had been obsessing over his missing children for forty years and wanted a deathbed reunion.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”

  “That would have been too cruel.”

  “Too merciful, you mean,” Ross guffawed. “You had all the tin soldiers. All you did was aim them at each other and evacuate the war zone until there were no more bullets and no more bodies. Now you get everything.”

  “So? At least I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Drip, drip, went the faucet. Ross twisted it shut. “Who’s the father?”

  “Slavomir, of course. Joe should never have commissioned him to sculpt his mistress in marble. You know how it is with artists and their naked models.”