Pie A La Murder (28 page)

“I got away from him,” I said.

“How?”

Showing my bruised knuckles, I said, “A punch in the nose and a knee in the groin. I went to the police station to swear out a complaint. Now here’s the punch line, or as you writers might say, the twist to the story. Light is claiming that I attacked
him
. He’s threatening to sue me for assault.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nicholas said.

“So I thought, but Olivia’s taking it seriously. She’s going to handle it. Somehow.”

I saw fury in Nicholas’s eyes. “I’ll go have a talk with Light.”

“Absolutely not!” I snatched my hands away from his. “Don’t go all caveman on me and make the situation worse.”

“I should have been here to protect you.”

“Stop that right now. Don’t you know me
at all
? I’m not some delicate medieval maiden who needs protection from the Big Bad Wolf.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors,” he said.

“I’ll mix anything I damn well please!”

I glared at him.

He sat back in the chair and raised both hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender. “I’m beginning to feel sorry for Galen Light.”

In spite of the stress of what I’d gone through that day, I began to laugh. It was only a soft chuckle, but it released my tension and I felt better.

Mr. Coffee finished brewing, and the warm scent filled the kitchen. That aroma had the effect of a tranquilizer on me. I got up to fill our mugs; I would deal with tomorrow’s problems tomorrow.

As part of the comfortable-with-each-other pair we had become, or at least were before Celeste’s arrival, Nicholas went to the refrigerator and took out the container of half-and-half for me. He always drank his coffee black.

I put two steaming mugs on the table and added the cream and Sweet’N Low to mine. Careful to use the uninjured side of my mouth, I took a welcome swallow.

“Did Olivia know you went to Vienna?” I asked.

“Of course not. As an officer of the court she would have had to report the trip because I’d been ordered to stay in California. If she knew about it and didn’t report it, and if I’d been caught, we both could have gone to jail.” He drank some coffee. “I went to find out everything I could about Prince Freddie. It’s not the kind of research you can do on the phone.” Nicholas grinned. “And I learned a lot.”

“Can we make the case that he’s a viable suspect?”

“Possibly. He’s broke and desperate for money,” Nicholas said, “which seems to be the reason he’s marrying Tanis.”

“But why is she eager to marry him?”

“My guess is she wants to be a princess. When Tanis and I were together, she was obsessed with Princess Diana. Dressed like her. Copied the same hairstyles. But most fairy tales have a witch in them, and Freddie’s mother fills that role. From what I learned from my journalist contacts, Freddie’s momma seems to have a reasonable claim to the title of grand duchess, and she’s a maniac on the subject of scandal. She and Freddie are professional houseguests. That ski chateau in Switzerland isn’t his; he’s the respectable front for the real owner. Mother and son live on loans extended because of their ‘expectations’—that’s how it’s phrased—from commoners who want to be in their social circle. Freddie has to marry money, but he can’t without his momma’s approval. They were apparently about to make the big announcement when they came back from Rio and found that Celeste had gone to Los Angeles.”

“So Tanis and Freddie came to make sure she stayed out of trouble?”

“At least until after the ‘royal wedding.’ ” Nicholas’s lips curled with distaste. “By Hollywood standards, that photo of Celeste with the pie isn’t all that shocking. It upset the hell out of me for a while—I’m her father—but according to my sources in Vienna, salacious photographs of Freddie’s potential stepdaughter would make the grand duchess snatch her little boy out of Tanis’s reach. I think Freddie could have gone to Redding, tried to get the photos. Redding said no, and Freddie picked up the stool and killed him in a rage.”

“I hate to say this because she’s your daughter’s mother, but doesn’t that scenario fit Tanis, too? She could have tried to buy the photos, been refused, and killed him. Since the weapon was the stool that was already in the studio, that doesn’t sound like premeditated murder.”

Nicholas shook his head. “Celeste swore that she and her mother were driving around Los Angeles Thursday night.”

“So Celeste didn’t back up Freddie’s claim that they were all together, playing cards in the suite?”

“She doesn’t like Prince Charmless. With Celeste telling a different story, Freddie’s just left with the butler as an alibi. I know Celeste is telling the truth about being with Tanis because the hotel’s garage attendant confirms that the two of them left at seven o’clock and returned at ten thirty.”

“What if Celeste is lying about what she and her mother did during the three and a half hours they were away from the hotel?”

“My daughter didn’t kill Redding!”

“Oh, Nicholas—I’m not suggesting any such thing. But I am saying that perhaps she’s lying to protect her mother. Maybe they separated for a while that night. Or maybe they went to a club together and while Celeste was dancing, Tanis slipped out.”

“And took a taxi to Redding’s? No, Tanis is much too smart to do something that could so easily be exposed.”

“She could have taken Celeste’s new car. Celeste wouldn’t have known about it.”

He shook his head in vehement denial. “No. Tanis wouldn’t take such a risk. She’d think of all the ways she could be found out.”

I wasn’t thrilled that he was so adamant about his ex-wife’s innocence, or how highly he seemed to regard her intelligence, but I wasn’t going to argue about it. At least not at the moment. I began to consider how Prince Freddie could have killed Alec Redding.

“Because you were out of touch, you may not know this, but there is a private back elevator from the Presidential Suite that goes to the underground garage. And there’s a pedestrian exit to the alley behind the hotel. Suppose, while Celeste and Tanis were out, Freddie left the hotel that way. No one would have seen him.”

“How did he get to Redding’s?”

“His butler, Mordue, lied about the four of them being together all evening in Freddie’s suite. Mordue could have met Freddie out in the alley with a car, driven him to Redding’s, waited while Freddie was talking to Redding, and then driven back to the hotel. He probably didn’t know what happened in the house, but he would have figured it out when he learned about the murder. Keeping quiet about his part—being an accessory, albeit unknowingly—could assure Mordue of a luxurious retirement after Freddie married Tanis.”

“Interesting idea,” Nicholas said.

“If that turns out to be the case, I can just see one of your
Chronicle
headlines: ‘The Butler
Almost
Did It.’”

“I’ll have to tell that to Herb Zaslow. He’s the one who writes our headlines.”

I said, “I still remember my favorite headline from years ago. It was over a story about the city of Malibu getting a sewer system: ‘Malibu Now an
Effluent
Community.’”

Nicholas laughed.

“I was teaching English in a public school then and brought that headline in. But nobody got the joke. For homework I had each of them use the word they didn’t understand in five different sentences. Half the class stayed home sick next day.”

“Teachers don’t get paid enough,” Nicholas said.

“Getting back to our problem, after my experience with Galen Light, he’s the one I’d most like to nail for the murder.”

“When I go to the paper tomorrow, I’ll see what I can find out about him. And I’ll tell Olivia that whatever she’s going to charge to fight the lawsuit, I’ll pay. Since you won’t let me beat him up, it’s the least I can do. You went there to help me.”

Nicholas finished his coffee, declined a refill, and told me he was going home to sleep.

“I haven’t been to bed for forty-eight hours,” he said.

Tuffy and I walked him to the door.

“Thanks for being down here in the foxhole with me,” Nicholas whispered. He gave me the lightest little kiss on the good corner of my mouth and said good night.

Monday morning the swelling on my cheek was down, but the bruise was more vivid than the day before.

I called Liddy and told her what happened with Galen Light.

“My God, Della! Are you all right?”

I assured her that I was, but that Light was now planning to sue me over
his
injuries.

“Oh, that’s horrible! He’s a pig. But he couldn’t possibly get away with that, could he? I mean, he couldn’t
win
, could he?”

“Stranger things have happened in courtrooms,” I said. “Somewhere in California a year or so ago a man attempting to burglarize a jewelry store got hurt breaking in. He won a settlement from the store’s owners. I’m trying not to think about it and leave that problem to Olivia Wayne.”

Liddy sighed. “You never expect a celebrity to try to rape a woman. I mean, Galen Light isn’t a rock star, but he’s been on television a lot.”

“Speaking of TV—I’ve got to tape two shows today,” I said. “With your makeup expertise, do you think you could hide the bruise well enough so it won’t show on camera?”

“I’ll be right over,” she said.

Liddy did such a good job that even when I leaned in close to the mirror, I couldn’t see a trace of skin discoloration.

“I’m going to the studio with you,” Liddy said. “Those lights are so strong you’ll need a fresh makeup job between shows.”

The two half hours went as smoothly as any I’d ever done. I got through the talking and the demonstrations without making any mistakes, or having to shoot anything over because of technical glitches. Even Tuffy, who always appeared on the taped shows, knew without anyone prompting him when he was supposed to get up from his dog bed and come over to the preparation counter to watch what I was doing. By the time we’d completed the second show, I was more exhilarated than fatigued. It was one of the easiest days I’d ever had.

“You’ve got two more shows to tape tomorrow,” Liddy said. “I’m coming with you to take care of the makeup.”

“But Car Guy’s using the studio to film a special on sports cars, so I can’t begin taping until five. You’d be away from Bill all evening.”

“Tuesday’s his poker night,” Liddy said. “If I don’t come to help you, I’d just be alone.”

The Tuesday half-hour shows should have gone as smoothly as did the Monday episodes, but that night every technical thing that could go wrong, did go wrong, from a power outage at the studio to camera operator Ernie Ramirez being hit with an attack of food poisoning. Our director had to call in a substitute cameraman who didn’t know our setups. It was close to eleven o’clock when Liddy, Tuffy, and I were finally able to leave.

On the way home in my Jeep, Liddy and I were talking about Galen Light, when the eleven o’clock news came on the radio. I was barely paying attention to a story about problems in the Los Angeles County Jail when the correspondent announced breaking news.