Bride and Doom

by Deborah Donnelly

  The widow Duvall was not what I expected.

  Extrapolating backward from Digger’s arm candy at the engagement party, and with his son JD’s appearance in mind, I’d pictured a dowdy older lady with darkly graying hair and a mousy personality. So I grabbed myself some lunch and drove to the upscale suburb of Lake Forest Park with that picture in mind.

  But when I knocked on the door of the three-car-garage mini-mansion, I found a handsome fiftyish blonde in a cashmere twinset and impressive pearls. She looked me up and down with something like amusement.

  “You’re not his usual type, are you? More height and less chest. Want a drink?”

  Startled but curious, I followed her inside. The interior was big and bland and in the midst of a makeover. The living room furniture was clustered together like sheep being herded by aluminum painters’ ladders, and the beige walls were bare and patched with spackle. A row of uncurtained windows looked onto a big swimming pool, covered up for the season, and beyond that to a flat expanse of grass being worked over by a crew of landscapers.

  “I’m having roses and a grape arbor put in,” said the lady of the house over her shoulder, as she progressed around a curving granite counter and into the beige-walled kitchen. “Donald called it a putting green out there, but that was a joke. He never used it. And he had no sense of color, none at all, so now I’m getting my burgundy living room after all. And maybe a textured sort of terra cotta color in the kitchen, I haven’t decided. Do you want ice? It’s not very cold.”

  She held up an open bottle of chardonnay. Her own glass was on the counter, a deep crystal goblet garlanded with lipstick marks.

  “Nothing for me, Mrs. Duvall. I just—”

  “Judy, for God’s sake. Let’s not stand on ceremony.” She recharged her glass. “So what are you looking for, money or forgiveness? The last one wanted both.”

  “I don’t understand. The last one of what?”

  “Donald’s whores.” She tossed back a healthy slug and gestured us both to a couple of stools at the counter. “You girls have been coming out of the woodwork. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about each other.”

  “But I’m not—Look, I barely knew your husband. I just wanted to express my condolences.”

  “Why, if you didn’t know him?”

  Good question. “Well, because I found his, um, I found him, and I was thinking about you, so…”

  She drank again, staring at me over the rim of the glass. Her hazel eyes were shrewd and held no trace of weeping.

  “You don’t seem too upset,” I blurted.

  She shrugged. “That’s because I’m not. Donald went his way, I went mine. What can I say?”

  But I was more concerned with what I could say, now that I knew she wasn’t grieving.

  “Can I be honest with you?” I asked.

  “Were you planning on lying?”

  Not at all what I expected. “Candid, then.”

  “Ah.” She swirled the wine in her glass. “By all means.”

  I plunged in. “Judy, a very dear friend of mine was arrested for your husband’s murder. His name is—”

  “Nevsky, I know. The police say he was blind drunk, so that should lighten his sentence, don’t you think?”

  “But he didn’t do it! And whoever did do it has been shadowing me. You see, I’m a wedding planner…”

  I explained about my role at the engagement party, and my friendship with Boris, and then described the break-in. When I got to the mugging, her eyes widened.

  “But that’s terrible!” Maybe it was the wine, or my lack of chest, but I could feel her coming over to my side. “And you have no idea who’s been doing this?”

  “I was hoping you’d help me figure that out. Was your husband working on a story that might have harmed someone in the baseball world? Some kind of scandal?”

  Judy laughed scornfully. “Donald was always searching for a scandal. Or creating one, if he could swing it. He was a player himself, did you know that?”

  “Really? Who for?”

  “Oh, some minor league team in some podunk town.” She took another swallow. “He never made it to the majors, even though he kept at it till he was almost thirty-five. The man adored baseball, and baseball spat in his face.”

  “Surely not,” I protested. “He was terrifically successful as a baseball writer.”

  “I suppose so. But watching all those spoiled young men getting millions of dollars must have been galling to him.”

  “Did he talk about that?”

  “He didn’t talk to me about anything. But…”

  “But?”

  Another little laugh, almost flirtatious, and she tossed her head as if to fling aside the long hair that had vanished with her youth. Judy Duvall had once been arm candy herself, I was sure of it.

  “I did overhear some of his phone calls,” she admitted. “He’d forget I was even in the house.”

  “And you heard something recently? Something about the Seattle team?”

  She hesitated. I held my breath, watching her decide how far to take this. Come on, Judy, help me out here. I could hear the kitchen clock ticking, and the scrape and clang of shovels in the backyard. One of the workmen called to another, and she started slightly. Then she spoke.

  “Now that you ask, I think he was developing a story about the Navigators. A big one too. I could hear it in his voice when he called his editor the other day. He was practically cackling.” She blinked at her wine glass, surprised to find it empty already. “Are you sure you won’t join me?”

  “Well, why not?” Anything to prime the pump. I fetched myself a goblet and refilled hers. “What was Digger, I mean Donald, what was he cackling about, do you know? One of the players, or the management? Did he mention names?”

  “Oh, no names, not him. Donald never told anyone who his targets were until he turned a story in. He said he was afraid of being scooped, but I think he just liked to hug his little secrets to himself. Would you believe he kept those notebooks of his under lock and key? As if anyone would bother to read them!”

  And how would you know, I thought, unless you tried to yourself?

  “Did you get a sense of what this big story was about?” I took a modest sip of wine. “The Navs had a pretty good season, so—”

  “It wasn’t about anyone’s playing, I don’t think. It sounded like more of an exposé. About someone who was riding high, because Donald said something about ‘bringing him down’ or ‘taking him down.’”

  “‘Riding high?’” I echoed, thinking hard.

  Judy drained her glass and placed it next to mine. Her aim was off and the goblet wobbled, so I reached out to steady it. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “That could be anybody,” she said, starting to slur. “They’re all so full of themselves, these athletes. The money they make is obscene. Millions of dollars, for what? Hitting a ball with a stick.”

  We were veering off course, but I didn’t try to steer her back. Judy had already told me all she knew.

  Unless…“Tell me, do you have your husband’s notebooks?”

  “I have all of his trash!”

  She gestured sloppily toward a hallway that opened off the living room, knocking over both our glasses in the process. They struck the granite surface and shattered like eggs. Judy cried out in alarm, then stared dully at the puddled shards.

  “Oh. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. “No, don’t touch it.”

  I didn’t trust her not to cut herself. A pair of matching dish towels hung over the handle of the oven, so I tugged one off, picked up a plastic wastebasket, and cautiously swept the heap of razor-edged fragments into it.

  “Judy, where’s your garbage can? I’ll take this straight out.”

  She mumbled something about the garage, so I bore the wastebasket out there and dumped it safely into a bag-lined can. The can and a set of recycling crates, just like mine back at the houseboat, stood next to a silve
r Lexus whose license plate read JUDYD.

  When I came back, the kitchen was empty.

  “Judy?” I heard movement behind a closed door in the hallway that must be the powder room. “Judy, are you all right?”

  “Fine.” Her voice sounded woozy. “Won’t be long.”

  That seemed doubtful, but I waited a few minutes, and then a few more. And then I tiptoed down that same hallway to look for Digger’s office. His widow was being helpful so far, but drunks are fickle. So just in case she changed her mind…

  The office was beige like the rest of the house, but its walls were anything but bare. Framed photographs covered every surface, from the walls to the bookcases to the top of the oversize reproduction roll-top desk. Each picture featured a different celebrity, mostly sports figures but also the occasional actor or politician. And every single celebrity was shaking hands or trading grins with the late, great Digger Duvall.

  The photographs had one more thing in common, though. Someone had smashed the glass on every single one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “She claimed that JD smashed the pictures, but I don’t know, Eddie. That is one bitter woman.”

  “Bitter enough to kill the guy herself?”

  “What?” I almost choked on my beer. “Judy wasn’t even at the party!”

  Eddie and I were out on my deck in the surprising warmth of late afternoon, conferring over a couple of bottles of Moose Drool Ale. He rarely entered my private quarters, but once I got back from Lake Forest Park, he’d insisted on helping me buy a new cell phone. His offer sprang less from generosity than from distrust of my technological know-how, but afterward I’d insisted that he come in for a drink.

  “I don’t mean Judy Duvall personally,” he said now, squinting against the glare off the lake. Eddie’s been squinting into the sun his whole life, but he thinks sunglasses are for sissies. “You can always hire some thug for a job like that, though. And it sounds like she’s a lot better off without her husband.”

  I shook my head. “A hired thug couldn’t have gotten inside the stadium. The doors were locked.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I just wish I’d found Digger’s notebook. Who knows what it might have told us?”

  Judy Duvall, once she emerged from the powder room, had willingly shown me the contents of Digger’s desk. One drawer was filled with small reporters’ notebooks, rubber-banded together by year—but the most recent one was missing.

  “Maybe the cops found it and kept it,” Eddie ventured.

  “No, Judy said they gave her back his keys and wallet. If they’d found something they wanted to keep as evidence, they would have told her.”

  Eddie made his hmphing noise, then we sat in silence for a while. A squadron of Canada geese came paddling by, leaving overlapping wakes on the still water, their white chinstraps bright and tidy against their tall black necks. Good-looking birds, but they pooped on my deck.

  The goslings sure are cute, though, I thought, letting my mind slip out of gear and coast for a while. Little yellow fluff balls with tiny beaks that—I sat bolt upright in my deck chair.

  “Oh, no.” I’d just remembered something. “Oh, no.”

  “What?” Eddie looked at me sharply. “Come on, spit it out.”

  “When Walter and I put Rose in a cab,” I said reluctantly, “and then went back inside, I meant to check that the door locked behind me. But I was in a hurry to catch up with Walter, and I didn’t. What if the killer came in from the street?”

  “Did you tell the cops about this?”

  “No! It just came back to me now. I suppose I should tell Starkey, but—”

  “But he’d just say that no one else could have known that the door would be unlocked. And he’d be right.”

  “I suppose.” I recalled Starkey’s crack about my watching too much television. “But he’s not right about Boris, and I’m not telling him a damn thing. Want another beer?”

  “No, time for me to shove off. How are the McKinney flowers coming along, with Nevsky locked up?”

  “I’ll find out tomorrow when I go to the studio. The basic designs weren’t too complicated, so the Sergeis should be able to handle it.” I smiled at him. “It’s Beau’s wedding anyway, not ours. How come you care?”

  “I don’t!” He planted his fists on his hips. “But if this wedding doesn’t go right, the Frenchman’s going to make sure the blame lands on Made in Heaven. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know, Eddie,” I said, my shoulders sagging. “I know.”

  “All right then. You going to be OK tonight?”

  Coming from Eddie, this was an outpouring of tender concern.

  “I’ll be fine. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  He shrugged. “No reason. Just with Gold out of town—”

  “For heaven’s sake, I lived without Aaron for years. I think I can manage a few nights here and there.”

  Brave words, but once Eddie was gone and my microwave lasagna was eaten, I contemplated my evening rather glumly. I washed the dishes and then checked the time. Aaron was supposed to call tonight, but it was already getting late in Miami, so he probably wouldn’t. Maybe it was just as well, since I’d have to skate over most of what I’d done since we spoke yesterday morning.

  And what had been done to me. Aaron would be home soon enough, and there was no point getting him worried about purse-snatchers before then. I wandered into the living room and closed the drapes against the darkness, then turned on the TV. I should have been reviewing my notes about Rose’s wedding—there was something I was supposed to check on, though I couldn’t think what it was—but first I wanted to zone out for a while.

  Meanwhile there were the good old Chicago Cubs again, trying their hardest to make hell freeze over and win the World Series. Hell was looking pretty warm, though. The Minnesota Twins were playing at home, and with their fans cheering them on, they were shutting down the visitors with a vengeance. Third inning, and the score was already 5–0 against the Cubbies.

  I fetched what was left of my coffee ice cream and curled up on the couch to watch. But my conscience kept nagging at me. Was it something about the flowers? No, those are all set. The limos? They’re already scheduled. Oh, to hell with it.

  Whatever it was I needed to do for McKinney/Gutierrez, I’d think of it in the morning. The Twins’ pitcher was fearsome in his concentration, staring down each batter with eyes like lasers and showing not a twitch of emotion as he struck them out one after another.

  I wondered what it was like to have that kind of focus, to shut out the world and bend events to your will while thousands of people screamed at you. Next to that kind of aggressively relentless control, wedding planning was a walk in the park.

  I was scraping the bottom of the carton when I heard voices at the door, and a knocking that made my windows shiver. Not the Killer B’s again, I thought in dismay. I could pretend I’m not home, but they’ll have heard the TV. The knocking came again, and the sound of laughter. Well, maybe I can use a laugh. I pitched the carton in the trash on my way through the kitchen and pulled open the door, remembering at the last minute that I was supposed to use the peephole. Too late.

  “Boris!” I could hardly believe it was him. “Boris, you’re out! I mean, come in!”

  I couldn’t get another word out, smothered as I was in a classic Nevsky bear hug. This involved serious stress on the ribcage, and one’s feet leaving the floor. Only when Boris put me down in the kitchen did I realize that all three Buckmeisters had followed him inside. It was like playing host to a herd of buffalo, all of them talking and laughing at once.

  Boris’s voice rose above the din. “I am free man, my Kharnegie! I am outbailed by these good friends!”

  “Out on bail,” corrected Betty, gazing happily upward at all the oversize figures in the room. “Are you surprised, dear? We wanted to surprise you.”

  “I’m astonished,” I said, laughing with them, “and absolutel
y delighted.”

  “We thought you would be.” Bonnie’s round black eyes, so like her mother’s, twinkled merrily. “I said, Father, she is going to be just amazed. Didn’t I say that, Father?”

  “You surely did, honey.”

  The three of them went on congratulating one another at top volume, while I shut off the TV and took Boris aside. “Are you hungry? Should we go out and get you some dinner to celebrate?”

  “Nyet, I do not stay. I must sleep. A man cannot sleep in that terrible place.” Boris was indeed haggard-looking, even weaving on his feet a little. “But I had to see you first, my Kharnegie. Tomorrow you come to the studio and approve flowers for baseball wedding?”

  “I’ll be there with bells on.”

  “What bells?”

  “Never mind, I’ll just be there. Buck? Buck!” I had to tug on the Texan’s sleeve to get his attention. “Boris needs to go home now. Can you take him?”

  “Course we can, little lady,” he boomed. “We just stopped in to—say, is that your telephone? You go right ahead and answer, we’ll let ourselves out. C’mon now, Boris. Ladies, out we go!”

  I shut the door behind them, happily dazed, and picked up the phone.

  “What’s happening, Stretch?”

  “Aaron!” I said the first thing on my mind. “Guess what, Boris is out on bail.”

  “Oh?”

  At the chill in his voice, I rushed to add, “Buck Buckmeister put up the bail money. Isn’t that great? I didn’t even know it was happening until he showed up on my doorstep tonight.”

  “Sorry to interrupt the party.”

  “He’s not here now, idiot. The Killer B’s brought him by to surprise me, but they’ve left. What’s happening there? Has Frances come?”

  “Yeah, we’ve been watching the game in Izzy’s room. I’m glad she’s here—I’m pretty wiped out.” Aaron’s voice relaxed a bit, and I realized I could hear hospital noises in the background. “I just wanted to catch you before it got too late.”

  “I’m glad you did. Still coming home tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow night, late. I’ve got a layover in the Twin Cities. It was the best I could get on short notice, but I’m going to miss game four, so could you record it for me?”