Chapter 41
A
s Bernie looked at Bebe dancing around Susan's feet, she thought,
I should have realized the dog had stopped barking.
But maybe that wouldn't have made a difference. Whenever she was really intent on something, everything else dropped away and she developed tunnel vision.
“You're making a mistake,” she said to Susan.
“I heard what you asked your sister.”
“Then you know that Libby knows too.”
Susan snorted.
“I doubt that very much.”
“She'll figure it out.”
“No, she wouldn't. She's too busy making scones and running her shop.”
Bernie didn't want to admit that this was probably true.
“What about the party?” she said instead.
“What about it?”
“Well, how are you going to get rid of me before everyone comes?”
“I'm going to duct-tape your mouth closed and put you in the trunk of my car and dispose of you after the memorial service.”
“That would work,” Bernie reluctantly conceded. “Except what are you going to tell Libby?”
“That you went out for soda and never came back.”
“Without a car?”
“Shut up,” Susan snapped.
“You don't improvise well, do you?”
“Bree is right. You do talk too much.” As Susan gestured with the torch, Bernie decided she really was crazy. “It's your fault you're in the situation you're in.”
“My fault?” Bernie cried. “Where do you come up with that little bit of twisted thinking?”
“Well, if you hadn't known that bamboo shoots contain cyanide, you'd be happily filling cherry tomatoes right now.”
“So being ignorant is a good thing.”
“In this case, yes. Now move. I have to do my hair before my guests come.”
Bernie took a step towards the door that led to the garage.
“Yes. You wouldn't want to greet them with messy hair.”
“That's right. I wouldn't.”
As Bernie took another step, she pondered whether she could get close enough to Susan to kick her before she pressed the trigger on that damned butane torch. Maybe she could if she were fast enough.
“Geoff was blackmailing you, wasn't he?” she asked Susan.
“You know why sex is bad for women?” Susan asked in return.
“Is this a punch line to a bad joke?”
“It makes them talk too much.”
“You were sleeping with Geoff?” Bernie asked.
“Me and everyone else,” Susan said grimly.
“What did he have that was so irresistible?”
“He was available,” Susan said. “Now let's move.”
“You know,” Bernie started to say when all of a sudden there was a loud pop, and a glass by the sink shattered.
As she turned to the noise, she heard Libby say, “Drop the torch,” to Susan. “Don't even think of it,” Libby said as Susan's finger tightened on the torch trigger.
Bernie gave Libby the thumbs-up sign.
“Better listen to her,” she advised Susan. “She's a crack shot.”
“She can't shoot,” Susan said.
“What do you think I just did?” Libby asked her.
“You missed me.”
“That was a warning shot,” lied Libby.
“You wouldn't shoot me if you could,” Susan sneered.
“She will if you hurt me,” Bernie said.
Susan thought for a few seconds, then lowered her torch and began backing towards the door that led to the garage. Bebe went with her. It was the moment Bernie had been waiting for. Before Susan realized what was happening, Bernie took a couple of steps towards her and kicked the torch out of her hands. Then she tackled her. She and Susan went down in a heap.
“Kill, Bebe,” Susan commanded as Bernie tried to pin her arms to the floor.
Bebe moved in and nipped at Bernie's leg.
“Goddamn it,” she cried and shook the dog off as Susan kicked at her and tried to wiggle free.
“Help me!” Bernie yelled to Libby as Susan tried to scratch her face.
The next thing she knew Libby was on the floor too and everything was a thrashing mess of arms and legs, elbows and knees, and fur and teeth.
Then Bernie heard, “What's going on here?”
Dead silence.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up.
Bree Nottingham, Griselda Plotkin, and Fred, her photographer, all dressed in their party clothes, were peering down at them.
Libby removed Susan's elbow from her mouth.
“Susan killed Lionel,” Libby said.
“You mean you've caught Laird's real killer?” Griselda trilled.
“Yes,” Bernie said as she grabbed Susan's wrists and pinned them to the floor. “Could you call the police?”
“Wow. What a story.” Griselda opened her bag as Libby picked a snarling, snapping Bebe up by the scruff of her neck. “Let me get my pad out.” As she groped around for it, she turned to Fred. “What are you waiting for?” she asked him. “Take the shot, for God's sake.”
“No pictures,” Bree, Susan, Libby, and Bernie cried together.
Bree snatched Fred's camera out of his hands as he was raising it.
“Hey!” he cried. “Give it back.”
“No, I will not,” Bree replied. “Thank you very much, but Longely's had enough bad publicity for the time being.”
And for once Bernie and Libby had to agree with her.
Chapter 42
L
ibby went over and turned the fan in her father's window to high and sat back down. With Clyde Schiller, Rob, Bernie, and herself crammed in there, the place hadn't cooled down even though it was nine o'clock at nightânot that the heat seemed to affect anyone's appetite for the strawberry-rhubarb crisp Bernie had made. It had been two days since “the incident,” as Bree had taken to calling it and Libby was still having trouble wrapping her mind around it.
“I still don't understand why you had to take the damned dog,” Bernie was saying to Rob as Libby was thinking about Susan.
“She'll look better when her hair's grown out,” Rob assured her.
“Her personality will still suck.”
“You were attacking her mistress,” Rob said. “The dog was just doing her job.”
Bernie sniffed. “You're way too soft-hearted, if you ask me.”
“Only when it comes to animals,” Rob told her.
Libby came to.
“It's hard to think of Susan as a murderer,” she said. “She's so . . . so . . .”
“Airy-fairy,” Bernie suggested.
“Airy-fairy?” Libby repeated.
“It's a twenties expression. Or maybe it comes from the thirties. I'm not sure. Anyway, it means inane, fatuous. Of course, now it connotes putting on airs.”
“How about plain nuts,” Clyde Schiller said as he leaned over and took another bite of crisp off his plate. “Lord, this is good.”
“Thanks,” Bernie said.
The phone rang. Libby looked at everyone. No one was making a move to get it. Given the number of calls they'd been getting from the hyenas, as her father liked to call the reporters, Libby was eternally grateful for answering machines.
“It's probably another booker,” she said.
Bernie made a face. “Yesterday I got a call from
Good Morning America.”
She took a bit of crisp and decided she'd been right to put a touch of cinnamon in it. “At least Fred didn't get that photograph. Can you imagine if he had?”
Libby closed her eyes and thought about what it would have looked like. “Thank God he didn't.”
“That's for sure,” Sean said. “We'd never get rid of the bastards then.”
He had a tray over his wheelchair, and Libby was glad to see he was slowly eating his crisp. She'd been scared that all the hoopla connected to Susan's capture would exhaust her father but it seemed to have energized him instead. Libby took a little of the whipped cream off the crisp and put it in her coffee as she watched Rob lean forward.
“Bernie, tell me again how you knew about the cyanide.”
Bernie licked a dab of whipped cream off her finger.
“It was in one of those books I read. You know, odd facts about food. Like that polar bears' livers are toxic.” Bernie ate another bite of her crisp. “Bamboo shoots have a small amount of cyanide in them, which is why when you boil them you're always supposed to leave the top of the pot off. That way the toxin evaporates. But Susan didn't do that. She left the top on so the cyanide went back in the water. Then she cooked more bamboo shoots in the same water so eventually she'd made herself something that was pretty potent.”
“And it tasted the same?” Clyde asked.
“It must have because Lionel drank it right down,” Libby said.
Sean shook his head.
“Maybe if Lionel had sipped instead of gulped, he'd be alive today.”
Libby tried to make herself comfortable on the edge of her father's bed and not think about what she had to do downstairs in the kitchen.
“Well, he did win the pie-eating contest when he was in high school,” she pointed out as Rob looked at her.
“But,” he said, “I still don't get why Susan Andrews killed him. Or Geoff Holder, for that matter. What motive did she have?”
Libby indicated her father with a flourish of her hand.
“Dad,” she said.
Sean cleared his throat.
“Did you ever read Lionel's book,
Damned to Death
?” he asked Rob.
“Can't say I have. Why?”
“Well, Lionel wrote itâwhat? A couple of years ago. Anyway, it starts out with this kid who shoots himself playing Russian roulette with his brother and a couple of his friends. Now when this kid shoots himself, everybody, including his brother, thinks he's dead, so they run away.
“Turns out, he wasn't. He was alive but bleeding. He could have been saved if anyone was around, but they weren't, so the kid dies and then comes back as a vampireâ don't ask me how that happensâand hunts everyone down to get back at them for what they did to him.”
“Okay,” Rob said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“It was based on something that really happened here. A kid called Josh Andrews shot himself on prom night.”
“That was so terrible,” Libby said.
Sean nodded.
“Yes, it was. The story went out that it was an accident, but it wasn't. He was playing Russian roulette and he shot himself and bled out.”
“Found him over in the park by the river,” Clyde said. “His brother . . .”
“Susan's husband,” Bernie interjected.
“Yup. He always denied that he was there, but I never believed him.”
“I never heard about that,” Libby objected.
“You wouldn't have,” Clyde said. “It was hushed up. After all, Bud and Josh's father was a Supreme Court judge. Besides that, I think people felt that losing one son and having the other prosecuted for reckless endangerment was more than a man should have to bear.”
“So Lionel wrote about that incident in his book
Damned to Death
?” Rob said.
“Exactly,” Clyde said. “And Bud went in the garage and shot himself a little while after
Damned to Death
came out. And he left a suicide note making it pretty clear why he killed himselfâwhich I never got to read because evidently Susan destroyed it before I got there.”
“And Susan blamed Lionel for her husband's death,” Rob said.
Clyde nodded.
“But there was nothing she could do about it legally. What he'd done wasn't criminal, at least not from the judicial point of view. So when she heard he was coming to townâwell, it was a perfect opportunity to even the score. And then with the cooking lesson dealing with the bamboo shoots, knowing Susan, I bet she thought it was a message from the gods to get on with the job.”
Clyde reached over and helped himself to another serving of crisp out of the pan. “At least that's what she said in her statement. You know,” he said as he took another mouthful of crisp, “I think the walnuts combined with the oats give the whole thing just the right amount of crunch.”
Bernie thanked him and got up and started pacing.
“You know what I don't get,” she said.
“What?” Clyde said.
“How did Lionel know about Josh's death? Was he there?”
Clyde shook his head.
“I think for Susan that's the worst part of the whole thing. She told Lionel.”
“She told him?” Bernie echoed. “Why?”
“Why do people tell other people things after sex? Who knows?”
“She was sleeping with him?” Libby squeaked.
“And Geoff,” Clyde said.
Bernie sat back down.
“Boy, for a mousy little thing she certainly got around, didn't she?”
“You know what they say,” Sean began, “about . . .”
“. . . Still waters running deep,” both Libby and Bernie chorused with him.
Sean laughed.
“And Geoff,” Rob continued. “What about him?”
“According to Susan's statement, he tried to blackmail her,” Clyde told him. “He saw the recipe in the kitchen just like Bernie did, only Susan didn't overhear him talking on the phone. I guess he thought Susan was an easy way to get some money, which as you recall, thanks to Lionel, he was in desperate need of.”
“Why did she try to blame everything on Tiffany?” Libby asked.
“She didn't set out to do that,” Clyde said. “It just sort of evolved what with people talking the way they were. And she never liked her much. I think she figured better her than me.”
Libby shook her head. “I guess we all should be grateful to Bree Nottingham for coming in when she did.”
“I'll eat to that,” Rob said.
Libby stood up. “Speaking of which, I have a couple of things to take care of downstairs.”
Bernie started to rise, but Libby waved her back down. The truth was, she'd rather be by herself. She needed the time alone. When she walked into the kitchen, she breathed deeply and took in the odors of cinnamon and basil and butter and garlic. She felt better already. This was where she belonged. This was where she felt comfortable.
Libby grabbed a sponge and began wiping off the kitchen counters and putting the things Googie and Amber had forgotten away. She was planning next week's specials as she washed the floor out in front when she heard someone knocking on the door. She looked up. Tiffany was standing there. Libby took a deep breath. Her emotions were so jumbled up that she didn't know what she was going to say.
Tiffany motioned to the doorknob and Libby went and unlocked the door and opened it. Tiffany stayed outside.
“You're out,” Libby said.
“Since yesterday.”
Libby didn't say anything.
Tiffany shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“I just wanted to come by and thank you before I leave, for everything you've done for me,” she told Libby. “And to explain about Orion . . .”
Libby didn't want to hear it.
“There's nothing to explain.”
“Yes, there is. I was stupid. I wanted to tell you, but every time I looked at you . . . I mean, you loved him so much. It made me feel so bad.”
“Then why did you?”
“It just happened. I was drinking . . . I was dumb . . . I was . . . young.”
“That was the first time.”
“I guess I was a little bit jealous.”
“Of what? You were thin. You went out all the time.”
“You just had this nice relationship with your family. Your mother was always teaching you things. I . . . just wished . . .” Tiffany's voice trailed off. She swallowed. “Not that it matters now. Anyway, Orion called and told me about the pie in the face. I just came by to congratulate you and tell you how sorry I am for everything.”
“So where are you going?” Libby asked.
“Down to Miami. I think I need to start over.” Tiffany cleared her throat. “Will you call me?”
“I . . .”
“Not right away. But maybe in a couple of months when everything has died down.”
“I'll think about it.”
“Thanks.” Tiffany stood there for a moment. “He was never right for you anyway. I always thought you could do better.” Then she turned, walked to her car, got in, and drove away.
As Libby watched her go, she could see Bernie and Rob coming up out of the corner of her eye.
“I'm glad you said what you did,” Bernie told her.
“You heard?”
“Yup. I've got big ears,” her sister said. “And Tiffany's right. You can do better than Orion.”
“Perhaps.” Libby closed the door and relocked it.
“So where are you guys going?” she asked.
“We came to get you,” Bernie told her.
“Yeah,” Rob said. “We're going to R.J.'s and we thought you'd like to come along.”
Libby shook her head and pulled at her T-shirt.
“I'm a mess.”
“So go change,” Bernie told her.
“I really don't . . .”
“You're coming,” Bernie said in a voice that Libby knew from years of experience brooked no argument. “Now go upstairs and change. Unless you want me to do it for you. And put some lipstick on because Marvin is going to be meeting us there.”
“Marvin?”
“Marvin,” Bernie repeated. “I just called him.”
“You shouldn't have done that,” Libby said.
“Well, you weren't going to, were you?”