Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (28 page)

“He’s pathetic, really,” remarked Renie. “Is that why he botched Lance’s operation?”

Judith rearranged the cushions at her back. “Of course. To make matters worse, Dr. O’Doul—who stood in Harvey’s way professionally—told him he couldn’t assist with the procedure because he was ‘family’. I doubt that Harvey gave a hoot about family, and his professional pride was probably wounded. So he got a double revenge by taking over for O’Doul and wrecking Lance’s knee. Who would recognize him in his surgical rig? At least that’s how he figured it, and it’s true that people see what they expect to see. Harvey and O’Doul were about the same size, even the same type.” She turned to Renie: “You

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actually mistook O’Doul for Harvey in that snapshot at the hospital. The leprechaun, as we called him, was O’Doul—Edna told me. She was in the picture, too.”

“Was the other doctor Stanley Edelstein?” asked Renie.

“No. He was an anesthesiologist named Polk. No connection that Edna knew of.” Judith paused, rearranging the sofa cushions at her back. “So the operation is a failure, but the patient lives—as a has-been—and O’Doul gets a blot on his escutcheon. As for not wanting to remember the surgery, we only have Harvey’s word that O’Doul said that. What’s more likely is that O’Doul didn’t remember the procedure because he couldn’t—he wasn’t there.”

Joe picked up the beer mug, noticed the ring it had left, and mopped away the moisture with a cocktail napkin. “It’s a great theory, but at this point, we could use more concrete proof. Where does Edelstein fit in?”

“I’m guessing that Edelstein and Wanda both realized something was amiss,” said Judith. “Somehow, Edelstein put a scare into Harvey. Maybe he threatened to expose him, maybe it was blackmail. Harvey cherished his professional reputation above all else, even love. In fact, I suspect he mistook respect
for
love. Harvey had to get rid of Edelstein.

Edna Stover told me that St. Peregrine’s surgeons operated at other hospitals under special circumstances. If the records still exist, I’ll bet Harvey was at Star of Jerusalem about the time Edelstein was run down.”

“You’re doing a lot of guessing and betting,” Joe noted with a dour expression. “Juries don’t buy that.”

Judith made a gesture of dismissal. “Of course not. Nobody will ever pin Edelstein’s death on Harvey. But he did it. And, you may recall, he left L.A. soon afterward. He was ambi-tious, yes, but I think he was also afraid.”

Renie was hoarding the dregs of her drink; Carl’s liquor loan had been exhausted. “He had several years of feeling safe up here. What a shock it must have been for him to see Wanda!”

“
Was
it a shock?” queried Woody. “Or did Harvey find out she’d be here?”

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Judith shook her head, which was beginning to feel very heavy. “I honestly don’t think any of the Brodies knew Madame Gushenka was Wanda Rakesh until she came through the door. Except for Dash, Oriana was the only one to have any contact with her. But Oriana knew nothing about Otto’s first marriage. Otto says he hadn’t seen Wanda since Palm Springs, and I believe him. I think Wanda was playing a waiting game. She’d already discovered that an appeal to Otto’s better nature was wasted, though she might have had better luck playing on his sentimental streak. But Wanda wouldn’t know that. She felt Otto owed both her and her mother a lot, probably more than mere money. Realistically, though, that was all she could try to get out of him. So she conspired with Dash to dig up some dirt on all of them and hatched her plot, using her old fortune-teller skills and playing on Oriana’s gullibility.”

“What about those so-called predictions she made to other locals?” asked Renie, refilling Woody’s glass with seltzer.

Judith gave her cousin a dry little smile. “I asked Arlene when she was here this evening if she knew anything about Madame Gushenka. She didn’t. If Arlene Rankers hasn’t heard of it, it never happened. Wanda was just padding her résumé.”

“And Oriana fell into her trap,” mused Joe, putting his feet on the coffee table despite Judith’s disapproving gaze. “Except that when it sprung, it caught Wanda.”

“I’m puzzled,” confessed Renie. “How did Harvey—who insists he never notices nurses—and I believe him, he’s too self-absorbed—recognize her? And how did he administer the poison? He was at the other end of the table, between Oriana and Gwen.”

“Wanda outsmarted herself with that disguise,” answered Judith, resting her head on the back of the sofa and realizing that her teeth didn’t hurt anymore. “Those veils over her hair and face produced the same effect as a surgical mask and cap—exactly what happened to me tonight in my outdoor getup. When Harvey and Wanda worked
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together, he was used to seeing only the top half of her face anyway. That’s how he’d remember her. She might have been better off coming as herself.” She stopped for a moment as Joe got to his feet and leaned down to stoke up the fire.

The big living room was drafty; the front parlor would have been more cozy. But Judith had chosen to sit in the larger of the two rooms, as if to reclaim it from the Brodies. “I don’t know how much of her spiel came from Oriana and how much from Wanda,” she said in a flagging voice. “A little of both, I suspect. The dark sky and the crowd across the ocean was Lance and the Hollywood Stars, which could have been Wanda’s own contribution. The second princess, who was saved by the prince with the sharp sword, must have referred to Ellie marrying Harvey, sword being equated with scalpel or knife. That would be Oriana’s input, since Dash didn’t realize who Ellie really was. Maybe the pen and cord bit, too, which had to be Gwen and Mavis.”

“Huh?” It was Renie, looking blank.

“Pen—instrument used for writing. Cord—as in micro-phone, a device used for transmitting the voice in television.”

Judith gave her cousin a condescending glance. “Crank up the cranium, you’re falling behind. I don’t believe Oriana never read Gwen’s books. She’s the type who’d eat them up.

And while she’s not exactly the resident genius, Oriana’s not stupid. She may have guessed that Gwen had to be collabor-ating with somebody. As for Madame Gushenka’s other al-lusions, a lot of them had to do with Gloria and Wanda and Otto. And to avoid suspicion of collusion, Dash wasn’t spared either. Of course the dark and rainy night was Harvey and Stanley Edelstein. Those words alone would have spelled Wanda’s doom.”

“But Harvey wasn’t her target,” Joe pointed out.

“Right,” agreed Judith. “He was an afterthought. Once she was face-fo-face with him, she couldn’t resist trying out her theory. She wasn’t just a good egg, but a good nurse, and it must have outraged her to think what a rotten trick Harvey had pulled, not only on such a respected
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surgeon, but a patient who turned out be her half-brother.”

She frowned, thinking how foolish Wanda had been, how her arrogance had almost matched Harvey’s. Had she really believed that a man who had killed before wouldn’t try again? The stakes were the same. Wanda should have known that Harvey would stop at nothing to protect his precious reputation.

Wonderingly, Renie shook her head. “She didn’t take his cunning into account, I guess. Maybe she thought she was safe, surrounded by so many people. Dr. Edelstein had been alone and caught off-guard.”

“That’s true,” said Judith, sinking further down into the sofa. “As for
how
Harvey killed Wanda,” she went on with a glance of reproof for Joe, “it might have been easier to figure if you’d told us where the sodium pentothal had been administered.”

“You never asked,” replied Joe with his ingenuous expression.

“I shouldn’t have had to,” admitted Judith. “Harvey left the table during dessert, presumably to use the downstairs bathroom, but instead he went upstairs where he’d left his medical kit. He put the sodium pentothal in the little tinelike syringe. It’s very small.” She shuddered at the recollection of the lethal device in the palm of Harvey’s hand. “I imagine he planned on killing her later, when the session was over.

But Otto’s cyanide knocked her out, giving Harvey a perfect opportunity. I’m sure he thought he was so smart he could even manipulate fate. What was more natural than that he should rush to Wanda’s aid, feel for her pulse, and announce that she was dead? Except that she wasn’t. Yet.”

“Oh!” Renie’s eyes were wide. “He put the little prong thing on her neck! No wonder he didn’t try CPR!”

“That was a mistake on his part,” said Judith. “He should have gone through with the charade. I can’t say I was suspicious at the time, but it bothered me, which is why I asked him about it.”

“Harvey didn’t dare move Wanda,” said Joe, digging
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a fresh Havana from the pocket of his shirt. “She might have shown some signs of life. It was essential that everyone should think Wanda was dead before Harvey ever got to her.” He looked down his cigar at Judith on the opposite sofa. “Right, Jude-girl? How am I doing?”

“Not bad,” she murmured, and suppressed a yawn.

“I’m surprised that the medics didn’t see the marks from the tine,” remarked Woody. “Kinsella is especially sharp.”

“What kind of marks are they?” Renie asked with a grimace for Judith and her would-be fate.

“Four tiny red pinpoints,” replied Joe, taking his first puff on the cigar. “I’m excusing Kinsella’s oversight because Wanda was wearing all those damned bangles. Either he didn’t see the marks in his preliminary examination, or he thought she’d scratched herself on her jewelry.”

“So,” Renie mused, pouring the last of her ice into the potted cyclamen on the coffee table, “Harvey tried a diversion by claiming his medical kit had been rifled. Obviously, he wiped it clean on purpose so only his and Ellie’s fingerprints showed. But why was he rolling around on Judith’s rug?”

Joe grinned from behind a cloud of gray smoke. “He could have been there all day if you two hadn’t gone upstairs. I figure he realized that was the one place where he’d be noticed. Oh, he told my men about the case being plundered, but I think he wanted a neutral audience to see him in action, making the big search. If you’d found him poking around the kitchen, it wouldn’t have made an impression, right?”

“Maybe not.” Judith took a deep breath. “Hey, I think he overdid that bit.”

Woody cleared his throat in a self-deprecating manner.

“I’d like to know, Mrs. McMonigle, if you have a theory on who took the satchel and put it in the oven?” He avoided Joe’s glance, lest his superior demonstrate displeasure at the deference to Judith.

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“I don’t know,” she replied candidly. “It could have been any of the people who knew Wanda way back when. Except Dash. I think that photo of him with Wanda was left on purpose to implicate him. So it would come down to Harvey, Otto, or even Lance, though I don’t really think he remembered her at all. If I had to put money on it, I’d go with Otto. He was in the kitchen before dessert, he might have noticed she had no purse with her then, and figured it had to have been stashed in the kitchen or the pantry.” She turned to Renie. “You had flour all over yourself, not to mention the trail you left on the floor. It wouldn’t take Einstein to figure out that the hiding place was the flour bin. And somehow, putting the satchel in the oven sounds like something Otto would do.”

The gold flecks in Joe’s eyes glinted. “You’re right on all counts. Otto admitted it. Sorry, Woody,” he apologized to his subordinate, “I forgot to tell you that bit. It seems Wanda had a notebook chock full of background on all of the Brodies. Otto didn’t have time to read it, so he burned it in the fireplace. He could put the notebook in his pocket, but he couldn’t be seen with the satchel, so he shoved it in the oven.”

Renie clapped her hands once in remembrance. “Of course!

He was the only one sitting by the fire after it had started burning again. I remember that, because I was talking to Lester on the phone, and when I repeated Wanda’s name, Otto—” She stopped and put a hand over her mouth. “That’s right, he seemed to be charging at me, like a small boar. That must have been the first time he realized somebody besides him knew who Madame Gushenka really was.”

“He couldn’t do much about it, though,” remarked Joe,

“which is why he backed off.”

“Do you really think he’ll leave his money to, ah, Booger?”

Woody asked, trying to conceal his disgust at Otto’s revolting nomenclature.

Judith rolled her eyes. “If he doesn’t change that will, I’ll expect to read about a poisoned Doberman in the
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neighborhood weekly. Cyanide, no doubt. But don’t think Oriana will go through with the wedding until Booger gets disinherited.”

“What about the telephone eavesdropper?” asked Renie.

Seeing Judith’s blank expression, she amplified. “You know, when Dash went to pick up the phone and somebody else was listening in upstairs?”

“I forgot about that,” said Judith. She thought for a moment, fighting the weariness that was taking over her entire body. “Gwen and Oriana were gone from the table.” She turned her hands palms up. “Either of them might have wanted to know who was calling Dash—for very different reasons, of course. Take your pick.” Judith slumped back on the sofa again. “I’ve got a question of my own,” she said, looking at Joe from under drooping lashes. “Does Harvey really suffer from muscle spasms?”

Joe reclined among the cushions, cradling his beer in one hand and the Havana in the other. “Who knows? Who cares? All I want now is enough real evidence to convict him. Face it, Jude-girl, your testimony is going to be crucial.

It’ll be your word against his. He’ll deny everything he ever said to you out in the garage. Harvey’s a prominent citizen, with a lot of fancy letters and titles after his name. You are only a…” He faltered, having the grace to look not at Judith, but the glowing end of his cigar.

“I’m a blameless widow, supporting my young son and aged mother.” Though it was an effort to keep her eyes open, she forced herself to stare at Joe until he stared back. “Don’t worry about it,” she said in a faintly fuzzy voice. “I don’t mind if Harvey speaks for himself.” She fumbled at the pocket of her slacks.