The Proof is in the Pudding

by Melinda Wells

  Lights. Camera. Action. I had the urge to throw up.

  A shelf below the camera contained at least a dozen DVDs. Homemade.

  I shuffled through them, looking for labels. No labels, but at the bottom of each case were small initials inscribed neatly in silver paint.

  Did all of those cases contain video recordings of women with whom he had sex, taped with or without their knowledge? Thinking about that made me feel sickened to be standing in Keith Ingram’s bedroom.

  I found a DVD marked with the initials EO’H. After making sure there was only one that had Eileen’s initials on it, I grabbed it and closed the armoire.

  For a brief moment, I was tempted to open the armoire again and take all of the DVDs, to spare the other women. But I knew I couldn’t do that. They were properly police evidence; one of the women in that collection could be his killer. I felt justified in taking Eileen’s because I knew that she hadn’t stabbed Ingram. Still, whether they were tricked, as Eileen had been, or if they were willing exhibitionists, I felt sorry for the women who would soon be exposed. If any of those women were married-

  The piercing ring of Ingram’s bedside phone nearly gave me a heart attack!

  Instinctively, one hand went to the pocket holding my cell phone. I clutched at it, but it wasn’t vibrating. The ringing phone that had startled me really was Keith Ingram’s. Either the person on the other end of the line was someone who didn’t know he was dead, or it was the police calling to see if there was anyone else in Ingram’s house.

  I doubted that Detective Hatch-Hatchet, I was calling him to myself-could obtain a search warrant before midmorning, but he might send a patrol car to guard the outside to prevent anyone from entering until the police searched Ingram’s residence.

  I knew I had to get out fast. My luck had been good so far, but good luck could turn bad in an instant. I didn’t dare stay in this house I’d broken into even a few minutes longer. I shoved Eileen’s DVD into my bag and hurried down the stairs and climbed out through the broken window.

  On the patio, I took a few deep breaths of the cold night air to calm my racing heart as I listened for any sounds that might mean trouble for me.

  But the houses on either side of Ingram’s place were as dark and silent as when I’d arrived.

  Liddy was still crouched in the shrubbery in front of the house when I let myself out through the back. As soon as I whispered her name, she emerged and grabbed my arm.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right! You were gone so long I was getting worried.”

  I pressed my index finger against my lips. She nodded, and we scurried down Rothdell Terrace as quickly and quietly as we could.

  Liddy’s ivory Land Rover was exactly where we’d left it, and I was relieved to see that there were no other vehicles nearby. We scrambled inside and made our escape from the scene of my crime.

  By the time we reached Sunset Boulevard we began to relax.

  “Whew. We made it,” Liddy said. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  I paused to think before I spoke. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  Liddy was smart enough to realize what my silence meant. “Forget the question. If I don’t know anything, I can’t slip up, right?”

  I gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you. You are the best.”

  In the headlights of cars coming toward us, I saw her smile. “Yeah, yeah-that’s what all the burglars say to their getaway drivers.”

  ***

  Tuffy must have heard Liddy’s Land Rover pull up outside because as soon as I unlocked my front door, he was there to greet me, wagging his entire back end with excitement. I gave him some loving strokes, and hurried toward the kitchen at the back of the house. He followed me.

  In the kitchen, I opened the plastic case and took out the DVD Ingram had made of himself and Eileen. Then I realized that I had a problem. It would bend, but it wouldn’t break.

  Oh, for the good old days of videotape that I could have ripped out of its cassette and burned in the sink.

  I glanced around the kitchen, searching for something that could destroy the disk beyond repair.

  Poultry shears?

  Opening my tool drawer, I spotted something even better: the heavy-duty clippers I used on my rose bushes. I went to work on the disk and in a matter of seconds I had cut it into little pieces.

  I took the key to the rear gate from its hook on the kitchen wall, and let Tuffy and myself out into my backyard. While Tuffy relieved himself against his favorite tree near the rear fence, I unlocked the gate and slipped out into the alleyway. Thursday was garbage pickup day, and it was already three hours into Thursday morning. Up and down the alleyway I saw that the big plastic garbage cans had been set out for collection. Starting at the far end of the alley, and moving farther and farther from my own block, I deposited bits of the DVD beneath the trash in a dozen garbage receptacles until the last little piece was thrown away.

  Four blocks from home, I inched my arms up into the sleeves of my jacket so that my hands were covered, and wiped the DVD case clean of finger prints, then broke it in half at its spine. Without leaving prints, I shoved each of the halves beneath smelly bags of trash in two different receptacles.

  Now that I was sure no trace of the DVD tormenting Eileen could ever be found, I went home to stand under a hot shower and scrub away any trace of tonight’s activities.

  Later, with Tuffy lying at the foot of the bed and Emma curled up on the pillow beside me, I tried to sleep, but wasn’t having much luck. A line from Macbeth-a play I taught in my old high school English classes-kept running through my head:

  Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care…

  But my “sleave” stayed raveled. For me, sleep was fitful, and full of cares.

  15

  Thursday morning I was returning with Tuffy from his morning walk when I saw John O’Hara’s black Lincoln parked in front of my house, and John sitting alone on my doorstep. Tuffy saw him, too, wagged his tail, and tugged at his leash. I released him and he raced toward his old friend.

  John stood when he saw us, said “Hi” to me, and greeted Tuffy with the gentle roughhousing Tuffy enjoyed with him.

  “Where’s Eileen?” I asked. I knew if she had come here with John, she would have let him into the house.

  “With her mother. Shannon ’s still pretty upset over what happened last night.”

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Sidelined. Not suspended, but that’s only because the squad’s undermanned. The fact that I slugged a civilian goes in my jacket with a reprimand.”

  “That’s not so bad.” I tried to sound cheerful, but a reprimand wasn’t good.

  “Maybe… Hey, can you spare a cup of coffee for a guy who doesn’t have a case at the moment?”

  “Of course. How about some breakfast, too?”

  “That would be great.”

  As soon as I opened the front door, Tuffy dashed into the house. After our vigorous walk I knew he was heading for his water bowl. John and I followed him into the kitchen.

  John sat down at the table, as he had hundreds of times over the years, but this was a different John, one who was less confident. He almost looked lost.

  “ Del, I need your help.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Obviously, that smoke bomb was set off to cover Ingram’s murder. Weaver told me he asked you about this last night, but I wondered if you might have had some new memory since then, or even a guess, about who could have set it off.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said. “Those things are so simple to make just about anyone in that room could have prepared it before the gala. All that person had to do was bring the cooked sugar and saltpeter mixture in a sheet of foil, set it on fire with a match or cigarette lighter, and toss it into the crowd.”

  Interest replaced the look of dejection in his eyes. “How do you know how to make a smoke bomb?”

  “
From the Internet. A few years ago, when Eileen was taking high school chemistry, she wanted to make one for a demonstration. No, John-I’m sure Eileen was across the room when-”

  “You haven’t told anyone she knows how to make a smoke bomb, have you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Thank you,” John said.

  “You’re thanking me for protecting Eileen? That’s insulting! I don’t care how worried you are, I deserve better than that.”

  John looked at me in amazement. He’d seldom seen me flare up in anger, and it had never before been directed at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I heard the sincerity in his voice, and saw that he was embarrassed. To let the awkward moment pass, I poured him a mug of coffee.

  After a few sips, his said, “You’ve got good powers of observation, Del. I know you probably told it all to Weaver, but Hatch confiscated his notes, so let’s start fresh. Think back to a few minutes before the smoke bomb went off. Who was standing in your area?”

  I closed my eyes, focused my mind on the ballroom, and began to visualize the scene. “This wasn’t a show with assigned seats. People were moving all around. The ones closest to me and to Ingram were watching the celebrities in Sector Four cook. But then the comic actor on the other side of the room started a spectacular juggling routine, and it caught everybody’s attention.”

  “Name?”

  “Wolf Wheeler. He stars in those raunchy comedies with food fights, explosions, and topless starlets.”

  John added Wheeler’s name to his notes. “Go on. Who were the celebrities in Sector Four?”

  “Francine Ames-the actress from Eileen’s favorite TV soap opera when she was growing up. Oona Rogers and Coupe Deville-they’re husband and wife movie stars, but they were cooking at separate stoves. The one nearest me was Roland Gray, the novelist.” I opened my eyes. “I’ll make a sketch for you.”

  As I had been visualizing, John had been writing in the notebook he carried in his jacket pocket. He flipped to a clean page and handed it to me.

  “I’ll be this little circle, here,” I said. “I’ll use initials for the others. Roland Gray was facing me, but when people started to watch the juggling he came out from behind the stove and stood near me. Deville was at the stove next to Gray’s, on Gray’s right. To Deville’s right was Oona Rogers, and on the other side of Oona was Francine Ames. Everyone was close together, and all were working at their stoves until the show started on the other side of the ballroom. While I was watching the juggling, I’m afraid I didn’t see what anyone else was doing.”

  “Let’s go over who was standing nearest to you and to Ingram.”

  “Roland Gray was somewhere on my right, but slightly behind me. Ingram was a few feet away-maybe two or three yards-on my left. Yvette Dupree was somewhere on Ingram’s right, but she had moved up closer to where Oona Rogers was cooking. I think Yvette had her back to Ingram. There was a couple in their fifties just behind Yvette. I don’t know their names, but I’d recognize their faces. I think that’s pretty much where people near Ingram were standing when we were watching the juggling act. There were other people behind us, but I couldn’t see who they were, or exactly where they were standing when the smoke suddenly started filling our area and people panicked, bumping into each other and screaming.”

  Remembering the brief sensation of pain on my skin, I said. “Just before the smoke erupted, a drop of something hot hit my hand. I think the lighted foil was tossed from behind me.”

  I had a momentary flash of excitement, but one glance at John’s sober expression quashed it.

  “That’s no help unless you know who was behind you,” he said.

  I studied the sketch I’d made: all those little marks around the circle that represented me. “This isn’t much help, is it?”

  “It might be. Some. It eliminates the crowd on three sides of the room, so that cuts down the list of suspects.”

  “That must leave at least a couple dozen people in my area who were in the right spot to set off the smoke and kill Ingram.”

  “They’ll be scrutinized for any connection they had to Ingram,” John said. “Unless someone is shooting at us, most police work is the process of elimination, putting the shoe leather on the concrete, asking questions and checking answers until somebody slips up, or we find enough evidence for an arrest.

  “You weren’t watching the four celebrities in your section, or the French woman. Any one of them, or someone else you didn’t see, could have tossed the smoke bomb and stabbed Ingram. Based on my slugging the vic earlier, Hatch thinks I could have sneaked in behind the crowd, set off the bomb, and killed him.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “If you were going to kill a man, why would you have hit him earlier and called attention to yourself? Besides, where could you have cooked up a smoke bomb? You said you were walking around the hotel grounds. You wouldn’t have had time to go somewhere, concoct that thing, and come back in after your… fight.”

  “It wasn’t a fight. I punched him and he went down. That’s assault and battery, and you know it. As for the bomb, I could have made it before we got to the hotel and just lighted it when people’s attention was on something else.”

  “You didn’t know that Wolf Wheeler would start performing,” I protested.

  “I didn’t,” John said, “but someone might have.”

  “He wasn’t scheduled entertainment. Apparently, he saw an opportunity to start showing off and be the center of attention. That’s hardly unheard of for an actor.”

  “Wheeler could be an accessory. He might have a history with Ingram, or ties to someone on your side of the room. Those possibilities have to be checked out.”

  My wall phone rang. John clenched his jaw, signaling his irritation at the interruption.

  “I’ll make it quick,” I said.

  In response to my hello, I heard the voice of one of the Better Living Channel’s telephone operators. “A man named Roland Gray is trying to reach you,” she said. “Of course I wouldn’t give him your number, but if you like I can transfer him to your line now.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” I said.

  “Hello? Della Carmichael? This is Roland Gray. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “No,” I said, “but I don’t have much time to talk at the moment.”

  “I’ll be brief. According to my private investigator, Sherlock Google, you teach cooking classes in Santa Monica. Correct?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I was wondering if you would like me to come there some time, to demonstrate one of my puddings. I don’t mean to be self-aggrandizing, but I am something of an expert on the subject of pudding. It’s the forgotten pleasure.”

  I was about to put him off when I had an idea. “How about being the guest on my live show tonight? I can cut the dessert I was going to make and we can substitute pudding. Your thrillers are so popular, I’m sure the viewers would enjoy the surprise of watching you cook. Are you available?”

  “I can be… Yes, definitely,” he said. “I’ll bring all the ingredients and my favorite utensils.”

  “That’s wonderful. Would you bring a finished pudding, too, so we can display the end product? And also a copy of your latest book. I’ll show it to the audience and to the viewers at home.”

  “How delightful of you. Where is your studio, and what time shall I be there?”

  I gave him the address. “We go on the air at seven PM, but you should arrive by six so the director can walk you through your segment.”

  “I’ll see you this evening,” he said.

  After replacing the receiver, I turned to John. He was looking at me with curiosity.

  “That was the British author from the contest. Roland Gray.”

  I picked up the receiver again, dialed the studio, and left a message for director Quinn Tanner, telling her that the famous novelist Roland Gray was going to be a guest on the show tonight.

  “He’ll be ma
king his special pudding for the audience, so I’m cutting the dessert I’d planned to make,” I told Quinn’s voice mail. After letting her know what time Gray would arrive, I said that I’d see her later, and disconnected.

  “It appears you’ve made another conquest,” John said. “Roland Gray’s a bad writer, but I have to admire how fast he works.”

  I ignored John’s sarcasm. “He’s a good writer, or at least a good storyteller, or he wouldn’t sell so many millions of copies. I like his books-but I invited him to be on the show so that I can talk to him about last night. We can talk to him, if you want to come this evening.”

  “You can bet I’ll be there. You shouldn’t be alone with someone who could be a murderer.”

  “After the smoke bomb went off, Roland Gray kept me from getting hurt by the stampeding crowd. We were both crouched under his preparation counter. Before that, he was facing me. When the juggling started, he moved around to stand on my side of his stove to get a better view of Wolf Wheeler’s act. I’m hoping that he saw something or someone in the crowd behind me and has not realized that it’s significant.”

  John looked skeptical. “It’s a long shot.”

  “Practically everything in life is a long shot. If he knows something that helps the investigation, and you solve the murder, that should get you reinstated.”

  “Instead of arrested,” John said glumly.

  “Arrested?” I felt a jolt of fear for him. “You’re not serious?”

  “Manny Hatch is going to try to hang Ingram’s killing around my neck.”

  Tuffy, who had been relaxing while we talked, lifted his head to stare toward the front of the house. He got to his feet. I heard a growl low in his throat-and a second later the doorbell rang.

  16

  I started at the sound of the doorbell. John’s posture stiffened. I guessed John had the same concern as I did: that the visitor was Detective Manny Hatch, clutching hand-cuffs and a warrant for John’s arrest.