Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (26 page)

“I am only here one year,” said the lilting voice. “Let me ask.”

On hold, Judith reclined on the bed. The nurse was off the line for what seemed like quite a while. Judith’s teeth still hurt, and now her shoulder was beginning to ache. She watched the snow falling steadily at the dormer window, and her eyelids began to droop. She was actually
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asleep when the exotic accents of the Far East again reached her ear.

“…retired last June. That’s Edna Stover in Santa Monica.

The number is…”

Judith scrambled for the pencil she’d dropped. “Repeat that, please.”

The nurse obliged. Judith thanked her in a faintly foggy manner, rang off, and shook herself. She’d have to keep alert if she intended to solve the murder case, she lectured herself sternly. At the very least, she’d have to remain conscious.

Judith sat up, both feet flat on the floor, and prayed that Edna Stover, retired R.N., wasn’t given to carousing on Saturday nights.

Ten minutes later, Judith was dancing down the stairs.

The pieces of the puzzle had finally come together. If Sweetums had been anywhere in sight, she would have kissed him.

SEVENTEEN

“WHERE’S JOE?” JUDITH asked as she all but flew into the kitchen.

Renie looked up from where she was kicking the cupboard door beneath the kitchen sink. “I’m sick of answering that question. He and Woody went to the Dooleys’ with the other policemen. Joe wanted to check things out there. Hey,”

she exclaimed, staring at her cousin, “what’s wrong? Who have you been talking to?”

Judith started to explain, heard a roar from the dining room, and held up a hand. “Wait until Joe gets back. I don’t want to go through everything twice. And why are you beating up my woodwork?”

The roar, presumably from Otto, died down. Renie turned on both taps, which sputtered, trickled, and then gushed.

“Aha! Now they’re okay. Did you remember to wrap your pipes?”

Judith’s excited expression turned to chagrin. “Damn! Mike must have forgotten the one on this side 194

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of the house. I’ll go do it. I should start the car up, too.”

But before Judith could get her jacket, Otto and Mr.

Muggins came through the kitchen door. “Where’s that cop?”

Otto demanded. “Muggins here says he has no right to keep us. If we’re not out of here in ten minutes, he’s filing a complaint. Or a writ. Or something.”

“He can file his nails, as far as I’m concerned,” Judith retorted, seeing Muggins bristle. “See here, Mr. Brodie, don’t blame me. Lieutenant Flynn will be back any minute. How do you plan to get off the Hill anyway? Did your lawyer bring eight more pairs of skis?”

“Folderol,” said Muggins. “The police have snow tires and chains. They’re quite capable of transporting Mr. Brodie and his family to their homes. How, young woman, do you think they chase criminals in this kind of weather?”

“I’d like to think any criminal with an ounce of sense wouldn’t be outdoors,” said Judith, then realized that she had one under her very roof. It also occurred to her that it was imperative to keep all of the Brodies and their ilk locked inside Hillside Manor. But it wouldn’t do to say so. “Excuse me, I’m a bit on edge,” she said with a self-deprecating smile.

“While you wait for Lieutenant Flynn, could you eat more dessert?”

“More?”
Otto’s nose twitched like a pig snout. “Let’s start with
some
. We haven’t had any yet. Got any cream puffs left over?”

“No,” said Judith, shooting Renie a caustic glance. “My cousin has made a lovely apple crisp. But she has this fatal flaw in her personality where she likes to make things but keep them a secret.”

“I forgot,” Renie admitted. “I got to eating my dinner…”

“
My
dinner,” breathed Judith, removing the tea towel from the baking dish. “Get the whipped cream, stupid. And coffee.”

Renie snapped to attention, then turned into a whirl of activity. Momentarily mollified, Otto and Muggins with-196 / Mary Daheim

drew. An abject Renie apologized profusely, explaining that she’d been in the act of making coffee and tea when she’d discovered the pipes were acting up.

“When in doubt, blame it on my plumbing,” muttered Judith, loaded down with the first servings of dessert. “Why not? Dan always did,” she added cryptically.

Five minutes later, the Brodies were stuffing their faces with apple crisp and speaking to each other in almost civil tones. Joe and Woody had not yet returned. Judith was about to head outside when Dash sauntered in from the back stairs, a legal-sized document in his hands.

“This has got to be a joke, right?”

“What is it?” Judith asked, looking up from the drawer where she’d been rummaging for her ski mask.

“Old Otto’s will. Here.” He cavalierly handed the document to Judith, who was joined by Renie at the cupboard.

The last will and testament of Otto Ernst Brodie was short, but not so sweet. It was duly signed, witnessed, and dated two weeks earlier, and left his entire estate to his dog, Booger.

“Where did you get this?” Judith asked, aghast.

“In Muggins’s inside overcoat pocket,” Dash replied, shameless over his theft. “He couldn’t carry documents around in a briefcase on skis, could he?”

Judith and Renie were huddling over the will. “It may be a joke, all right,” said Judith, “but if Otto had died instead of Wanda, Booger would have had the last laugh. Or bark, as the case may be.” She refolded the single sheet, but didn’t give it back. “By the way, Mr. Subarosa, why did you lie about not having seen Wanda since the divorce?”

For the first time since Dash had come under Judith’s roof, he lost his aplomb. The debonair manner evaporated, the handsome if dissipated face crumpled, and his shoulders slumped under the Italian jacket. But he struggled for a shred of dignity and met Judith’s probing gaze head-on. “Why do you think? For Ellie’s sake, what else?”

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“Ellie?” Judith was faintly incredulous, but deep down, she felt it was an unfair reaction.

“Sure.” His composure was returning. “I didn’t want her to think I had any part in Wanda’s death. It was bad enough that I had to chase after Gwen, but admitting that I did it for my ex-wife would have made me look like a real creep.”

“You knew who Gwen was before you met her?” Renie asked as, in the background, Otto bellowed for tea.

Dash was unperturbed by the question. “Yeah, I knew.

Once Wanda found out who her old man was, she did her homework on the whole family. She had a notebook full of stuff. But nothing firsthand, except for her run-in with Otto.

I already knew Lance—and Mavis”—he winked a bit lewdly—“and since Gwen was the only single one of the bunch, we zeroed in on her.”

“Why not Ellie?” asked Judith.

Dash gave an odd little shake of his head. “I didn’t know she was
my
Ellie. Wanda wasn’t interested in the in-laws.

She just wanted to shake up the family and expose Otto as a lousy husband and a rotten father. Then she could get him to acknowledge her, and maybe come up with some cash for her troubles. And Gloria’s. It wasn’t Wanda I was surprised to see here, but Ellie.” He looked bemused. “Wanda and I had what they call an amicable divorce. She was, as Lester said, a good egg. I was glad to help her.”

“For a cut, no doubt,” said Judith with a touch of asperity.

Dash didn’t take umbrage at Judith’s comment, but waved his hand around the kitchen. “You work for free, dark eyes?

We all have to eat.”

“True,” Judith agreed, feeling just a little bleak over her own prospects of putting food on the table. “Did you know that Wanda’s parents weren’t divorced?”

“Sure.” Dash was once again his chipper self. “But I couldn’t tell anybody, could I? How could Oriana reimburse me if she wasn’t married to Otto?”

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Suppressing the urge to retort that Oriana could sing for her supper, Judith uttered a sigh of resignation and handed the will back to Dash. “You’d better return this to Muggins’s overcoat before he finds out it’s missing. I wonder if Otto was going to tell the family about it last night.”

“They’d have all wished they’d brought along an extra set of underwear if he had,” said Dash, taking the will and strolling back out of the kitchen.

Judith and Renie stared at each other. “So Wanda knew about a lot of things,” said Renie.

Otto was bellowing for tea again from the dining room.

“She knew too much, I can tell you that,” replied Judith, putting on her down jacket and boots. “Get that tea out there before Otto busts a gusset. And let’s hope it’s not laced with something nasty this time.” She made one last effort at searching for her hooded ski mask, then swore aloud. “Mike must have taken mine along with his, blast his hide. What’s he doing, wearing them both at once over at Priest Lake?”

She pulled on a white angora cap and grabbed the tea towel from the counter, tying it around the lower half of her face.

“What are you doing?” asked a startled Renie. “You look like a burglar. Want me to get you a sack marked ‘Swag’?”

“I’m protecting my teeth. This cold is killing them.” Judith checked the square knot in the tea towel to make sure it wouldn’t slip. Her voice was faintly muffled as she dug in her purse for her car keys. “If Joe gets back before I do, don’t let him budge an inch. And by all means, don’t let Muggins smuggle any of these people out of the house.”

“I’ll get Sweetums to stand guard,” promised Renie. “Be careful out there. I’ll bet it’s icy underfoot.”

After her earlier outing, Judith needed no further words of caution. Stopping first to get some heavy rags from a drawer in the pantry, she descended the back porch stairs with care, blinking against the relentless snow. At least another inch had fallen in the last hour. Her footprints
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between Hillside Manor and the Rankers’s house were already virtually obscured. But the wind had gone down, even as the temperature fell further below the freezing mark.

Judith rubbed her gloved hands together and tucked the tea towel inside the collar of her jacket.

At the side of the house by the kitchen, she peered between the viburnum and rhododendron bushes in an attempt to locate the exposed pipes. The snow-covered surroundings disoriented her, but the light from inside revealed the object of her search almost in a direct line from the window.

Working as quickly as her numb hands would permit, she wrapped the pipes in the rags she’d brought, then saved one for the garden hose faucet by the dining room. She was frankly annoyed with herself: In all the years she’d been married to Dan, she’d always remembered to wrap the pipes and faucets before Thanksgiving. But this year, caught up in her new business venture, she’d asked Mike to do it on his long Armistice Day weekend.

“Half-assed,” she muttered against the tea towel. “When do they grow up?”

Twisting around the new white camellia bush she’d planted the previous spring, Judith glanced up at the dining room window. The Brodies were polishing off their apple crisp and Oriana was actually laughing. It occurred to Judith that the reason for Oriana’s smudged makeup might have less to do with anxiety and more to do with Lance. Trying to keep out of sight, she watched her guests with a newly-enlightened pair of eyes. Otto had his back to her, the pudgy creases of his bare neck showing above his collar. Judith’s gaze moved slowly around the table. So, she thought with a shiver, that’s what a murderer looks like…

Not that any of it seemed real. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Wanda Rakesh had died, just a few feet away, with her hand outstretched toward the azalea blos-soms. Since that moment, Judith’s whole world had been turned upside down. Her livelihood had been threatened, her home had become an armed camp, her mother
200 / Mary Daheim

had been sent into temporary exile, and Joe Flynn had waltzed back into her life, acting as if he’d never missed a beat in the first place, let alone almost a quarter of a century.

Judith’s meager dinner jumped up and down in her stomach.

It was no wonder, she told herself: Between the emotional upheaval and the physical exhaustion, even a choice cut T-bone would revolt.

Feeling the snow caking on her gloves and her feet turning numb in her boots, Judith started to move away. For a fleeting, frightening split second, she thought she saw the murderer turn to look straight at her. The chill that went through her body had nothing to do with the cold weather.

Judith dove away from the window, catching herself on the drainpipe that ran between the dining room and the kitchen.

Breathing much too hard under the tightly-secured tea towel, she fought for composure. Only the carrying sound of Renie’s voice, inquiring about coffee refills, restored Judith’s nerve.

Shaking off the unexpected sense of panic, she proceeded back along the side of the house, down the snow-covered walk, and into the garage.

Her steel-blue Japanese compact sedan looked reassuring under the yellow glow of the garage lights. As she slipped into the driver’s seat, her gloved hands clumsily sought the ignition key in her pocket. The engine didn’t respond on the first try. It only sputtered the second time around. Judith waited, checking out the instruments on the dashboard which stared blankly back at her. On the third attempt, the motor responded, kicking out a plume of blue smoke from the exhaust. She rolled down the window and kept her foot lightly on the accelerator, wondering if she dared try to put the car in reverse and ease it out of the garage just enough to feel what kind of traction existed under the snow.

It was, she decided, probably not a good idea, even with winter tires. Instead, Judith sat behind the wheel, fiddling with the gauges. She had just put a tape into the stereo when a shadow in the rearview mirror caught her eye. Wrestling the tea towel down to her chin, she leaned out
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the window, peering through the snow in an effort to see who had come out into the back yard. Renie, maybe, making sure she was all right. Or Arlene, on the prowl for her neighborhood news report. Even Dooley, playing detective.