The Proof is in the Pudding

by Melinda Wells

  Ingram, Yvette, and I had worked our way through the crowd to stand beside Sector Four, on the left side of the ballroom, halfway between the stage at one end and Sector Five. Dozens of people swarmed about, which sometimes made it difficult for us judges to keep moving. I didn’t mind, because having a lot of people around made it easier for me to avoid looking at Keith Ingram.

  Wolf Wheeler, a comic movie actor in Sector One, was attracting attention to his workstation by tossing several eggs higher and higher and catching them to keep the airborne rotation going. At first his antics irritated me because I was sure he was going to drop the eggs and I hate to see food wasted, but then I realized he was a really skilled juggler performing an amazing routine. I watched him for a minute, and wished it could have been longer, but I was supposed to be concentrating on what the stars in Sector Four were creating. I pulled my attention away from him and went back to acting like a judge.

  The celebrities in this quartet of stoves were three actors and an author. Francine Ames, whose dark-haired beauty had been compared to young Elizabeth Taylor’s, had starred for nineteen years as an often-married vamp on TV’s longest running daytime soap opera.

  Oona Rogers and Vernon “Coupe” Deville were married-to-each-other action movie stars. As sinewy as gymnasts, approximately the same height, and with matching face-hugging caps of sleek bronze hair, they looked more like brother and sister than like a non-biological couple. According to the entertainment press, they had met a few years ago when they were cast as costars in an espionage thriller. They fell in love among the car chases and explosions. That first picture was such a box office success it had been followed by a series with the same two leading characters.

  The last member of this cooking quartet was British author Roland Gray, whose international espionage thrillers had earned him the distinction of having had the most novels to reach number one on the New York Times best seller list during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Gray, whose hair was more salt than pepper, wasn’t handsome by any conventional measurement, but with his easy smile and blue eyes that fastened like lasers onto the person to whom he was speaking, he was undeniably charismatic. I had started reading his novels during the months after Mack’s death, when I was trying to adjust to sleeping alone in our bed. Classic movies on television, mystery novels, and Gray’s breathtaking plots and his fascinating secret agent hero took my mind off my pain for hours at a time. I appreciated Gray having done that for me.

  Ingram, Yvette, and I surveyed the cooking activities, assessing the individual dishes and checking the skill level of the various celebrity chefs.

  Vernon “Coupe” Deville was sautéing onions for his Philly Cheese Steak. He had his burners on high, with the result that the combination of butter and olive oil he was using sent little dots of hot grease into the air.

  Ingram addressed Yvette. “Step back. You don’t want to get splattered.” Since I hadn’t been included in his warning, I guessed that he didn’t care if grease hit me.

  Oona Rogers, Deville’s wife, wasn’t endangering anyone. Her workspace was much neater than his, and she wasn’t splashing the marinara sauce as she stirred it into her Chicken Parmesan.

  Moving on, we watched Francine Ames take a partially baked strawberry-rhubarb pie from her oven and start to remove the aluminum collar she’d fastened around it to prevent the edges of the crust from becoming too brown. When a big hunk of piecrust came off with the collar of foil, her pretty face screwed up into a grimace.

  “The pie will taste just as good,” she told us as she put it back into the oven for its final fifteen minutes of baking.

  At the last stove in Sector Four, author Roland Gray was stirring a pot on the stovetop. “I’m making Lemon Pudding Surprise, from an old recipe of my mother’s. The ‘surprise’ will be little bits of candied fruit at the bottom.” His cultured British accent conjured images in my head of Number 10 Downing Street and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the audacious secret agent who was my favorite of his literary creations.

  “I was quite inspired by the show you did on comfort foods,” he said. “When I was growing up, this pudding was what my mother made to soften life’s little blows.”

  “I look forward to tasting it,” I said.

  Ingram scowled at me. “You’re not supposed to get chummy with the contestants. We can’t show favoritism.”

  It took all of my self-control not to snap back at the odious creature, but there had been enough confrontations here tonight. I forced my thoughts away from how much I detested Keith Ingram. Instead, I surveyed the room full of enthusiastic amateur cooks.

  The aromas that were coming at me from every corner of the Elysian Ballroom were making my mouth water. I was hungry. Knowing that I would have to taste twenty separate dishes this evening, I hadn’t eaten anything that day except one piece of seven-grain toast and a slice of cheese with my morning coffee.

  I was finding it easy to concentrate on what the celebrity cooks were doing, because the mobile audience was behaving respectfully. Even though they were drinking as they wandered through the room, they were as polite as spectators at a golf match. Their whispered comments to each other made a soft background rustle, like the sound of a breeze ruffling leaves.

  High-pitched laughter from across the rows of kitchens startled me. I looked up to see a woman emitting “Oh! Oh! Ohhhh!” noises of excitement as she and others stared in awe at new antics of Wolf Wheeler. Other voices called out, “Higher. Higher!” and “That’s impossible!” as Wheeler juggled wine glasses-tossing them high in the air, catching them in front of him and behind his back and then tossing them again.

  All over the ballroom, people were turning to focus on Wolf Wheeler’s amazing juggling act. The clamor level rose with shouted comments of encouragement, interspersed with sharp intakes of breath.

  I was watching, too, when a drop of something very hot struck the back of my hand. I yelped in pain, but before I could find out what it was, suddenly my side of the room was enveloped in thick, acrid smoke.

  A man’s voice yelled, “Fire!” In that instant, the scene in the ballroom changed from convivial to chaos. People screamed and coughed, and shouted.

  Someone’s elbow struck a sharp blow to my diaphragm. It sent me reeling backward and against a stove. Suddenly feeling heat, the self-preservation instinct kicked in. I wrenched myself away from a stovetop flame just in time to avoid being burned. Turned around, disoriented, I had no idea which way to go toward safety.

  Ceiling smoke detectors began to shriek.

  Blinded by the smoke, I collided with a man. He grunted, then grabbed my arm and pulled us both down to our knees. I was too surprised to struggle as he pushed me under a preparation counter.

  With my face forced close to the floor, I could breathe a little better because the smoke began to rise. The shelter of the counter kept us from being hit or trampled by the terrified crowd.

  Heavy footsteps pounded into the ballroom. I recognized shouted orders from firemen, and heard the sound of powerful blowers being activated.

  It didn’t take more than two or three minutes for the smoke to dissipate. The smarting in my eyes eased. With a few blinks, my vision began to clear and I looked up. One mystery-how firemen had arrived on the scene so quickly-was solved when I saw that the men who’d come to our rescue weren’t regular city firemen. Yellow patches on their green jackets identified them as the hotel’s private fire safety officers.

  I heard one of the officers swear. “Jesus H. P. Christ-it was just a smoke bomb!”

  The man who had been sheltering me helped me to stand. It was Roland Gray.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “As I rule, I don’t pounce on a woman until a month of dinners have been shared,” he said in his charming British accent. “Ah, well. Ms. Carmichael, when you’re calculating your decision about tonight’s prize, I do hope you will take into consideration the fact that I thought I was trying to save your life.” />
  Smiling, I indicated my clipboard. “Sorry, but saving my life isn’t one of the judging criteria.”

  Suddenly, his nose wrinkled with distaste. “Oh, no!” He hurried toward his stove. I followed, and saw immediately what had happened. During the excitement the burner under his lemon pudding had been left on. The pudding had boiled over, sending a thick, yellow river erupting over the pot and flowing down the side of the stove.

  Gray shook his head. “My delectable dessert is DOA.”

  Behind us, a woman screamed.

  I whirled to see Yvette Dupree, eyes bulging, her arms crossed against the clipboard she pressed tight against her chest.

  She was staring at the crumpled body of Keith Ingram, who lay facedown in a widening circle of blood.

  10

  Roland Gray was first to recover from the shock that had momentarily frozen the rest of us. He bounded forward, grabbed Ingram’s shoulder to turn him over onto his back-and was hit in the chest by spurting blood.

  The stench hit my nostrils and I nearly gagged. I hadn’t known that fresh blood had such a sickeningly sweet, metallic smell.

  Then I realized that blood pumping meant a heart still beating. I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the counter beside Roland Gray’s stove and dropped to my knees, hoping to stem the bleeding, but rough hands wrenched me away. I dropped the roll as two of the safety officers took over, trying to save Ingram.

  It was a hopeless task. I’d known it was, even as I’d tried to stop his bleeding. Keith Ingram had been stabbed in the throat, and the wound was a gaping well of flesh and muscle.

  Ingram wasn’t going to be able to blackmail Eileen, but I couldn’t forget that the video he’d made was an unexploded bomb that would go off if the wrong person found it.

  Roland Gray interrupted my thoughts. He had been trying to dry his shirt and jacket with another roll of paper towels, and offered a fat wad of the sheets to me.

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  “Your dress,” he said.

  Dress? I looked down and gasped. “Oh, Lord!” The front of my peach chiffon gown-my borrowed designer creation-was soaked with Ingram’s blood.

  Did I have enough money to pay for destroying an original Jorge Allesandro? If Phil Logan didn’t kill me, that designer might.

  Eugene Long claimed my attention by appearing with a portable microphone in his hand and taking control of the room.

  “All right, everyone. Please, stay calm.” The babble of whispering voices quieted as everyone focused on Long.

  “Mike, call the police,” Long said to the nearest security officer, who obeyed his boss. At Long’s raised hand signal, the security man at the entrance to the ballroom moved swiftly to close the doors and stand in front of them.

  Long said to his captive audience, “I’m afraid that we’ll all have to remain here until the police arrive, but please move back toward the walls to keep this area around the… around this tragic situation clear. For those of you who are uncomfortable standing for some length of time, I’ll have the waitstaff bring in chairs.”

  Before I could move away, Tina Long pushed her way through the crowd with such force that she almost fell over Ingram’s body. Looking down at him, she started to shriek.

  Shoving his microphone under one arm, Long embraced his daughter. With her face pressed against his chest, she stopped screaming, but I could see her shoulders shaking.

  “Baby doll, calm down,” Long said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  How is everything going to be all right? I wondered where Long kept his crystal ball.

  Tina babbled something unintelligible and started sobbing and gulping for air.

  Yvette Dupree stepped forward, stretched her arms out, and said to the girl. “Ma cherie, come.”

  With a nod of assent, Eugene Long guided his hysterical daughter into Yvette’s arms.

  “Go through the kitchen and take her to my suite,” he said. “Give her some brandy and make her lie down.”

  When Long had introduced Yvette, he’d referred to her as his “dear friend.” Apparently, that wasn’t just show business- speak. It was clear to me from the scene I was witnessing that Eugene Long and Yvette Dupree were, at the least, close friends. Tina must know her, too, because she allowed herself to be transferred from her father to the French woman without complaint. And I noticed Yvette didn’t ask the location of Long’s suite as she hurried Tina toward the kitchen doors.

  Someone in the crowd yelled, “Hey! How come they can leave and we’re stuck in here?” The voice came from a portly man whose red-veined face suggested that he drank too much port.

  Long glared at him. “My daughter is ill.” His tone, colder than a bucket full of ice, discouraged further protest. As though a personality switch had been flipped, he flashed a bright smile. “Hey, waiters-bring everybody here fresh drinks. Including me.”

  Seconds after Yvette and Tina disappeared, the ballroom doors opened and six uniformed LAPD officers streamed in.

  Roland Gray moved up to stand next to me. “When the owner of the Olympia Grand reports a crime, the police respond more quickly and in greater numbers than they would to the cry of an ordinary citizen,” he said in his clipped English accent.

  I was torn between my automatic defense of the police and the realization that Gray was probably correct. In many circumstances, wealth and celebrity bought at least some degree of preferential treatment.

  Eugene Long, who had remained next to Ingram’s body like a sentry, waved the police over toward him. Two double-timed it in his direction and the other four fanned out around the perimeter of the room.

  Long showed them Ingram’s body. The two officers were careful not to go too close to it, and immediately positioned themselves so as to keep anyone else away.

  New movement at the ballroom’s entrance caught my eye and I saw another member of the law enforcement fraternity rush into the ballroom, but this one was dressed in black tie: John O’Hara.

  John spotted Shannon, Eileen, Liddy, and Bill standing together near the entrance and joined them. Shannon ’s expression was stony, but I could see Eileen weeping. John hugged his wife and daughter and murmured a few words. He lifted his head, surveyed the room, and spotted me. He said something to the Marshalls, left Eileen and Shannon with them, and headed toward Long, and where Keith Ingram lay dead.

  I stepped forward, preventing John from going closer to the body, and to the police. “I thought you’d gone home,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. Noticing the blood on my dress, he said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. But-”

  “That’s the man, Officers!” Eugene Long’s voice boomed. I turned to see him pointing at John O’Hara.

  11

  “That’s the man who assaulted Mr. Ingram tonight. Arrest him,” Long demanded.

  I could see that the officers recognized John. Puzzled, one of them said, “But this is Lieutenant O’Hara.”

  “John?” It was a new voice, but I recognized it. I turned to face John’s partner, LAPD detective Hugh Weaver.

  The two partners were striking in their physical contrast: At the age of fifty, John O’Hara was six inches taller than Hugh Weaver, and two years older, but John looked younger. John still had the hardened physique of the football player he’d been in college. Weaver’s body had probably been hard once, but too many burgers with fries, and much too many beers, had turned his beef to lard. I’d never seen Weaver without his clothes-and any circumstance in which that could happen was unimaginable to me-but I was pretty sure that his body would look like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s.

  Weaver said, “Hey, John-you didn’t answer your phone. How’d you get here before me?”

  “I was here already. And I took tonight off, remember?”

  Weaver, careful not to step in Ingram’s blood, leaned over, gave the body a cursory look, straightened again. Indicating the victim, he asked John, “Who’s that?”

  “Ke
ith Ingram.”

  Long inserted himself between the partners and addressed Weaver. “Are you the detective in charge?”

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  Long appeared startled, as though he couldn’t believe Weaver hadn’t recognized him. “I’m Eugene Long, owner of this hotel.” I half expected Long to add that his taxes paid Weaver’s salary, but he didn’t.

  “The dead man is Keith Ingram, a nationally syndicated food critic and one of the judges at our Celebrity Cook-Off.” Long jabbed his forefinger toward John. “Earlier tonight this man physically attacked Mr. Ingram. I had him removed from the premises, but I think it’s likely that he slipped back into the crowd and committed the murder.”

  “You do, huh?” Weaver lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug and curved his lips into a false smile. “Well, since you solved the case, I guess we can all go home.”

  Long’s posture stiffened. “I do not appreciate that brand of sarcasm.”

  “No? I got some others I can use.”

  A flush reddened Long’s cheeks.

  I wasn’t fond of Hugh Weaver, but at that moment I could have hugged him for putting the arrogant billionaire in his place.

  Weaver ignored Long and focused on John. “Did you ‘assault’ this Ingram guy?”

  “I hit him. It was close to an hour ago.”

  “Was he injured? Did you knock him down?”

  “Ingram got back up pretty quickly,” I said. “And he carried right on with the judging, so I don’t think John hurt him.”

  Weaver asked John, “What did you do after the altercation?”