Authors: Janice Weber
“You must have been the straw that snapped the camel’s back,” Emily replied.
“Come on, I was just an innocent bystander. She should have been ecstatic that Dana got knocked off and left her swimming
in money! Why blow that by going after me? The woman was out of her mind.”
“Obviously,” Ross said, pulling into the driveway. “That’s why she jumped off Dagmar’s balcony.”
“Even that makes no sense,” Philippa continued. “Why didn’t she just jump off Dana’s boat? Take a few dozen sleeping pills?
Such a fucking mess, throwing herself off a balcony. What about her poor kids, knowing that their mother was hamburger? Didn’t
she even think of them? There’s something odd here. I’m going to bring this to O’Keefe’s attention. What’s his first name,
anyway?”
“I don’t know. Phil, your imagination’s running away with you,” Emily said, hoisting her sister from the backseat. “Let’s
leave this one to the professionals, all right?”
Philippa hobbled inside. “And who’s this Dagmar broad, Ross?”
“One of my clients.”
“She’s got the eyes of a Gila monster.”
“Actually, she’s very sweet,” Ross lied. “Very cultured.”
“Believe me, the only thing cultured about her was her jewelry. What does hubby do?”
“Hubby’s dead. He made pretzels.”
“Pretzels! That’s just a step above making suppositories! Ross, I think I could handle a glass of wine today. Just a little
one.” Stretching out on the couch in the atrium, Philippa invigorated herself with mounds of pasta, prattling nonstop. Finally
she pushed her plate away. “That was great, Em. It’s a real shame you won’t be working anymore, now that you’re pregnant.”
“Says who?”
Ross looked at his wife. “You’re not considering anything until after the baby is born, are you?”
“It’s not as if you were seventeen with good elastic,” Philippa agreed. “You can’t go knocking around a hot kitchen with a
gut the size of a beer keg. Besides, you’ve had rotten karma at your last two jobs. People dropping dead like flies. Your
boss, Dana, that guy Byron ...”
“Don’t forget Dubrinsky,” Emily replied sarcastically.
“Who’s that?”
“The dishwasher at Diavolina. He was the one who sent me the note of warning and two sketches of Mother.”
“What sketches? You never told me.”
“Phil, I told you everything. You were preoccupied with that buffoon Franco.”
“Oy, now I remember. That idiotic story with the priest named Leo.”
“Augustine.” Emily brought a large yellow envelope from the library. “Here are the sketches. See for yourself.”
Philippa studied them distastefully for a few seconds. “A dish-washer drew these?”
“He was a sculptor before he worked at Diavolina.”
“The man just gave these to you? Who’s to say he didn’t just draw them at home one night? Why tell you they’re your mother?”
“Slavomir didn’t say anything about a mother. He didn’t have a chance to. He drowned in the Fenway the night Dana died.”
“What, trying to take a swim?”
“He was drunk. But before leaving the restaurant, he went into my office and slipped me a key and a picture. It was in an
envelope pinned to my T-shirt.”
“Come on, Em! A drunken dishwasher doing all that?”
Emily went to the library and returned with a second, smaller envelope. “There you are.”
“Who’s this?” Philippa asked, looking at the faded brown photograph. “Looks like he was carrying it in his underwear for fifty
years.”
“Maybe it’s his mother.”
Philippa studied the old picture again. “You sentimental fool,
Em, that’s the old bag Dagmar, fifty years ago. Look at that little pearl pin. She was wearing it today.”
Ross’s eyes lifted slowly from the newspaper he was reading. “That’s quite a stretch, Philippa.”
“The hell it is. Faces I can forget. Jewelry never.”
“Was Dagmar related to Dubrinsky?” Emily asked Ross.
“No idea. I can ask her,” he said, casually taking the picture. Dagmar, all right: Those eyes had never changed. He knew that
he was staring at the inchoate shoots of his deliverance.
Grow! Fast!
“Has anyone else seen this, Emily?”
“No.”
As Philippa launched a diatribe against priests, dishwashers, and illegitimate births in filthy monasteries, Ross left the
atrium. He returned shortly with his briefcase. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I think I’ll try to get a little work done today.”
He kissed Emily’s cheek. “Get some sleep, darling. I’ll be back early. You two aren’t planning to go out, are you?”
“Are you kidding? With half my insides in shreds?” Philippa cried.
“Keep the doors locked, then. Don’t open them for anybody.” Ross left.
“What was that all about?” Philippa asked, pouring herself a huge slug of wine now that Ross was gone. “I think he gets off
on the idea of you locked up in the house. He’ll be chaining you to the bed next.”
“He’s just being protective. No one knows what this Leo fellow’s like, remember.”
Philippa scowled at yet another reference to her tawdry birth. “Ross is an insanely jealous man, Em. Don’t ever let him catch
you fooling around. He’d kill the guy.” Philippa finished her wine, yawned, and shut her eyes. “I suppose that’s a compliment.
Not many people would kill for love nowadays. Not even in the movies.”
“What do you think Ardith just did?”
“That wasn’t love. That was stupidity.” In a few moments, Philippa had dozed off.
Emily gathered her sketches and pictures and returned them
to their drawer, there to await the return of Leo, who might explain everything. Where had he been these last four weeks?
Maybe he was dead, like everyone else. As she cleaned up the lunch dishes, Emily wondered if Ward had heard anything from
him. Emboldened and incisive, as people usually are for a short time after funerals, she picked up the phone. It was ringing
at Diavolina when Philippa cried from the couch, “No pepper, I told you! Think of my hemorrhoids! And don’t call me Plum!
I’m not your damn plum!”
Emily hung up and went to the atrium. “Phil,” she whispered, shaking her sister awake. “You’re having a bad dream.”
Philippa slowly focused. “What did I say?”
“You were crying about pepper and hemorrhoids again. One of your favorite nightmares.” Philippa scowled; surely she dreamed
about loftier topics. “It must have something to do with Terrence,” she said. That was her second husband. “He was a nut on
anal sex.”
“Does pepper really give you hemorrhoids?” Emily asked.
“Of course not! Nothing does but steak tartare,” Philippa fumed. “That stupid waiter at your restaurant tried to feed me raw
steak, you know.”
“I know, dear. You’ve told me many times now.”
“And it was covered with pink pepper. Pink! No wonder I’m having bad dreams. That color has always made me violently ill.”
“Guess what, Phil. We never used pink peppercorns at Diavolina.”
“You certainly did. Ask the waitress who gave my steak a half-inch dusting. What a hopeless restaurant. You should never have
taken a job there. Such a low class of people involved.”
“Oh, but Simon’s high class? Give me a break,” Emily snapped. “And what’s this about plums all the time? Why do you keep dreaming
about plums?”
Philippa tried to look very, very blank. “I have no idea. I really must have a session with my analyst soon. All this obsessing
with fruit and assholes! Bizarre! Where are you going now?”
“Food shopping,” Emily replied, needing to get out of the house. “Go back to sleep.”
She drove to Cafe Presto. The lunch rush was piddling out and Lois was gloomily closing her cash register. Seeing Emily, she
brightened. “Hi! Hope you didn’t come to eat!”
“Just some lemonade. If you’ve got a minute, could I talk with you?” Emily waited for Lois at a table by the new front window.
Perhaps Guy had been sitting here when that car had come crashing through. Had she really worked here for seven years? What
a long, sweet dream; like Guy, over now—on to other dreams.
Soon Lois came over with a mug of coffee. “How’s everything, Em? You look great.”
“Fine, thanks. Still holding up the fort?”
“Of course. Bert’s leaving tomorrow. It was either him or Lina. Guy’s sister, Ursula, is trying to keep the place running
now. She’s looking for a buyer. Wouldn’t be interested in coming back, would you?”
“I’ll think about it.” Without Guy? No way. Emily sipped some lemonade. Lina had changed the recipe; it tasted rather weak
now. “Detective O’Keefe told me that Guy was probably murdered.”
“It’s unthinkable. They’ll never find out who did it, you know. That policeman’s gotten nothing but dead ends. He can’t tell
where it happened, who did it, or why. Personally, I think some wacko was just having a little target practice and Guy happened
to be in the line of fire. Bert’s theory is that Guy was shot by a boyfriend or husband. One of those jealous-triangle things.”
“Guy had a girlfriend?”
“One bossy bitch. She called him here all the time. Irritated the hell out of Bert. Guy generally took off after she called.
We figured she was married and was telling him when the coast was clear. We also figured that that night the window got smashed,
he was sitting here waiting for her. He was really not himself those last few weeks. And you know something? That night
Guy was killed, he got one of those phone calls and took off. We never saw him alive again.”
“Does Detective O’Keefe know about this?”
“Sure. But what can he do? That woman doesn’t call anymore. No one even knew who she was. She never left a name. The first
couple of times, Bert mistook her for you. He said your voices were alike.”
Guy had always preferred women with low voices. And he had never paid much attention to husbands. Had he replaced her immediately,
then? Emily changed the subject to bingo, Lois’s hobby. After a while she finished the lemonade. “Give my regards to Ursula,
would you?”
“Sure. Think about buying the joint, would you, honey? We really miss those pistachio buns.”
Emily went to Diavolina, where the last of the lunch guests lingered over the last inch of their cheap wine as waiters glowered
at them from the sideboards. The place looked exactly the same, but smelled different: new chef here, too. Zoltan bowed from
his little podium. “How are you?”
“Fine. You left a message on my machine a while ago. I was in California until last night. This morning I had to go to a funeral.”
“Mrs. Ardith Forbes, yes? I saw the article in the newspaper. Terrible.”
“Did you have something to tell me?”
Zoltan’s orange face went quite still. “It was about an opportunity that is now past.”
Emily doubted it had to do with the restaurant business. “Have you heard from Leo?”
“Not at all. I am beginning to get worried. He has never been away this long before.”
“Hey Major! What are you doing here?” called Ward, stomping over from the bar. She looked great. Trim, neat... happy?
“I was just passing by. How’s Klepp holding up?”
“Super. He’s a fanatic about law and order. In the kitchen, anyway. What are you up to?”
“I was in California with my sister. You may have heard that she got shot.”
“I did. Serves her right. You must have come back for Ardith Forbes’s funeral.”
“It was not a happy occasion.”
Ward giggled. “To think I was just twenty feet away when she jumped! Unbelievable!”
“You were invited to Dagmar’s party?”
“Hell, no. We were catering it.” Noticing a thirsty customer at the bar, Ward headed back. “I haven’t seen Leo, in case you
were wondering,” she called over her shoulder.
Emily took a few steps toward the door, then stopped. “Zoltan, have you ever used pink peppercorns in the dining room?”
“Never,” he sniffed.
“You were an old friend of Slavomir’s, weren’t you?” Zoltan neither affirmed nor denied. “Did he know Dagmar Pola from way
back?”
The maître d’s eyes flickered toward Ward, who was aiming a stream of club soda into a large glass, laughing with a customer.
“Perhaps that would be another question to ask Leo when he returns.”
“If he returns.” Emily left, knowing that Zoltan would help her no more.
After Ardith’s funeral, fog had swollen into rain. Instead of going to the office, as he had announced to Emily and Philippa,
Ross drove to the Academy of Art downtown. Rivulets leaking from its gutters followed ancient stains down its façade before
finally becoming puddles on the stoop. The dean was thrilled to see Ross again. After the usual prolegomenous banter, Ross
said, “I’ve been thinking about the possibility of teaching here, as you suggested.”
“Excellent,” the dean responded, trying to appear calm. Had someone actually swallowed the line he had been throwing into
barren waters for so many years? “Naturally, we couldn’t offer you too much in the way of remuneration.”
“That was not my objective.”
They talked about courses and students and the joy of exposing eager young minds to higher education. Ross asked a few questions
about the faculty, living, before rounding to faculty, deceased. “I’ve just seen two sculptures by Slavomir Dubrinsky,” he
said. “Quite remarkable female nudes. The same model.”
“Where are they?”
“Private collections. One of the owners expressed an interest in knowing more about the artist. So little is known.”
“The less the better,” the dean said. “Dubrinsky went to prison for twenty years for statutory rape. You know what that means,
of course. The girl was willing but her parents weren’t. Poor Dubrinsky didn’t stand a chance. He lost his best years. And
the girl was married to someone else when he got out. No wonder he went to pieces.”
Ross dolefully shook his head. “Who was that girl?”
“I don’t remember the name. Dagmar something. A spoiled, scheming nymphomaniac, if I may be frank. She did everything simply
to annoy her parents. It was a tragedy for Dubrinsky.”
Ross stayed another ten minutes hearing about the misfortunes of other faculty members. When the dean started in on the tragedy
of Guy Witten, beloved model, Ross glanced at his watch; how time had flown. He had an appointment and must leave at once.
After a curt good-bye, he headed west, toward the monastery that Dana and Joe Pola had built. Befogged, traffic moved slowly
past the many dead animals lining the turnpike; or maybe Ross just noticed them more today. Driving conditions were even worse
in Hale, where the temperature hovered above freezing. Ross saw the sign for the monastery mere yards before having to swerve
into the driveway. Halfway down the rough hill, his Saab began to slide in the mud. It clunked twice in a pothole before reaching
level ground.