Death Takes the Cake Read online

  I turned Tuffy over to Liddy and asked her, “How’s Bill doing?”

  “He’s afraid that at any moment they’re going to charge him with murder, but he’s putting up a good front. Oh, Del, I’m so afraid they won’t find that Davis woman’s real killer and Bill will go to trial and everything will come out.”

  “The police think Reggie’s and Taggart’s killings are linked, and they know Bill didn’t kill Taggart, so he’s in no immediate danger.”

  “Yes, but what if they decide he hired someone to kill Taggart?”

  “Don’t speculate,” I said. “No ‘what if.’ Stay with what is—that Bill is free.” At least, for now. I didn’t want to remind Liddy that the LAPD is the smallest police force in any major city, and yet it has to function in one of the most violent places in the country. Some years ago, during a shoot-out in the San Fernando Valley—on a street not far from the TV studio where I did my show—the police had to go to a gun shop to borrow weapons that were as powerful as the ones being used against them by the bad guys.

  But this wasn’t the time to remind Liddy of LAPD under-staffing and lack of funding. Instead, I gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “John and his partner are working hard on the case. So is Nicholas. You’ve got to have faith.” I was working on solving the puzzle, too, but I didn’t expect that fact to inspire confidence in her, so I left it out.

  Liddy forced a smile. “We went back to church yesterday morning and prayed. Afterward, I told Bill I’m ashamed that we haven’t been going regularly since the boys went off to college. We shouldn’t pray just when we need something. Would you like to start coming with us again? Maybe next Sunday?”

  “Yes, I will,” I said.

  I was about to leave when Liddy grabbed my hand. “Oh, I have one happy thing to tell you. Bill and I had our first ballroom dance lesson last night.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “As I think you can imagine, Bill wasn’t exactly born to dance, but by the end of two hours we were both loving it. We were pretty stiff this morning, but we’re going for another lesson Wednesday evening.”

  “That’s great. I have to get going now or I’ll be late. Thanks again for taking care of Tuffy.”

  “The only hard part is that I hate to see him leave. I wish we could have a dog of our own, but with Bill going to the office every day, and my studio extra work, I wouldn’t want to leave it home all day when I get a call.”

  “You’re right. That wouldn’t be fair to the dog.”

  “Maybe when Bill retires, or I get tired of being on movie sets.” She gave me a peck on the cheek “Good luck today. Or, is there something special you’re supposed to wish bakers? Like they say ‘break a leg’ to actors, or ‘break a pencil’ to writers. How about ‘break an egg’?”

  I laughed. “Thanks for the good wishes. I’m going to need them.”

  Cameras had been set up in the parking lot behind Davis Foods to film the arrival of the contestants, to record each of us parking, getting out of our vehicles, and assembling in the reception area.

  Inside the building, more cameras whirred. Hedda Klein collected the women’s handbags and put them into the reception room closet. Next, she checked the things that all five of us were carrying. We were allowed to bring to the contest only the cake plates or trays or dishes on which we were going to display our creations. No wrapped packages were allowed, nor were tote bags that Hedda hadn’t looked through.

  I didn’t know what was in Gordon Prescott’s large tote, but I heard pieces of metal clanging together as Hedda Klein pawed through the contents. Whatever he had passed inspection because she nodded, and moved on to look through Winnie King’s carryall.

  Viola Lee, standing next to me in the inspection line, whispered, “If she tries to do a body cavity search, I’ll treat her to a cake pan full of whoop-ass.”

  I chuckled. “I’ll help.”

  Being checked out like suspicious-looking airline passengers was a bit annoying, but we had been told it would be necessary to insure the honesty of the competition. Our entries were to be made only with Reggi-Mixx batters and grocery items supplied by Hedda Klein, the executive who was supervising the contest for Davis Foods.

  Before I went to bed the night before, I’d e-mailed the list of ingredients I would need for my cake to Hedda. Also, as we contestants had been instructed, I included a detailed description of the cake I was going to make. This disclosure was required of us because during times when our cakes were in the ovens, or cooling, we would be free to walk around and see what our competitors were creating. By stating our own plans in advance, we could not “be inspired by”—meaning we couldn’t steal—ideas from what the other contestants were doing.

  When the inspection was over, she distributed our smocks, and Gordon Prescott’s chef’s coat. They’d all been cleaned and pressed. As soon as we put them on over our clothes, Hedda Klein picked up a large stopwatch from the desk, faced the wall clock, and said, “In thirty seconds it will be eleven Am. At that moment you will have exactly seven hours to prepare your cakes for judging.”

  The countdown began. As Hedda Klein’s flat voice droned through the seconds, we five tensed like track runners at the starting line.

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . .” Hedda Klein opened the door to the test kitchens. More TV cameras and lights were aiming at us from inside.

  “Two . . . one—begin!” Hedda stepped aside and allowed us to enter.

  Gordon Prescott gestured for the women to precede him, but Clay Sutton rushed past all of us and sprinted to his kitchen, which was still covered by the heavy green fabric of the privacy drape he’d put up.

  Viola, whose kitchen was closest to the reception room entrance, made the “thumbs-up” sign and said, “Good luck, everybody.”

  “Why, you sweet thing,” Winnie King said. “But no matter what happens at six o’clock tonight, because we’re here, we’re really winners already—just like every woman who uses Mary Kay cosmetics.” Even though I wasn’t thrilled with her continual attempts to sell, I had to admit that Winnie King’s delicate skin was an effective advertisement for her products.

  Clay Sutton had already vanished behind his curtain.

  Gordon Prescott nodded curtly, and entered his cubicle without a gracious word.

  I thanked Viola, wished her good luck in return, and continued to my station at the far end of the line. Stepping inside, I told myself that until my cake was made, I had to focus single-mindedly on that task. I could not allow myself to think about Iva, or where she had gone, or if she had committed murder.

  As Hedda Klein had promised, the items I’d requested were waiting for me on the preparation counter. Two sets. She had said she would give each of us a duplicate set, to allow for any mistakes we might make due to the nervousness of competing. It had been made clear to us that only one “do-over” was allowed, and that had to be accomplished within the allotted time. Our cakes had to be baked, cooled, frosted, and ready to cut by six pm, when the judges would taste each of the competing entries and decide on the winner. Anyone who missed the six pm deadline would be disqualified.

  We would know who had captured the $25,000 prize by seven o’clock tonight. Our reaction interviews would be filmed then: words from the happy winner and from the disappointed losers. Even though we and others there knew the contest’s outcome, we all were legally compelled to secrecy until the show was broadcast on February fourteenth, at which time the triumphant cake would be displayed, and the check, or a two-by-six-foot poster board replica of it, would be presented to the winner. Immediately afterward, the winning recipe would be posted on the BLC’s Web site. It would also be available to people without Web access who wrote to the channel requesting a copy.

  The first thing I did in my kitchen was check the oven to be sure it was working properly. It was. One of my requests was a separate oven thermometer, and Hedda had provided it. I turned on the oven to preheat it to 350 degrees. Next, I opened the small refrigerator
beneath the counter. Encouraged by the cool air inside, I double-checked by peering at the temperature gauge. I was relieved to find it was working perfectly. A vital part of creating my cake was that it had to chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour before I could add the topping.

  My own tote bag contained two nine-by-thirteen baking pans, my sterling silver cake server—which had been a wedding present from John and Shannon—and three presentation plates on which slices of the cake would be provided to the judges.

  I organized the equipment and the ingredients that had been supplied, buttered one of the baking dishes, and opened a box of “Sun-drenched Orange Reggi-Mixx.” Ignoring the directions on the package, I used the recipe I’d written at home, and proceeded to blend the ingredients in the proportions that I had worked out in my experiments. After measuring, stirring, blending, and adding a touch more of pure orange extract, I beat the mixture to incorporate the elements into a smooth sheen. Then came the moment of truth: I dipped a small spoon into the batter.

  “Yummmm,” I said to myself, pleased that I had managed to defeat the sawdustlike taste that resulted when one followed the directions on the box. I shook my head in silent wonder. Here I was, standing in one of the test kitchens at Davis Foods International. What were the employees doing during their work hours? Had any of them actually made cakes from their mixes? If so, I wondered if anyone had spoken up and said, in effect, “The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.”

  Maybe none of the employees had the courage to tell Reggie’s father, or Reggie, the truth about the product.

  Relieved that my version of the batter tasted good, as soon as the cake went into the oven, I decided to make a second cake, in case the oven temperature suddenly spiraled up or down. If they both came out well, I’d ask Hedda if the second cake could be served to the camera crew, which was what we did after the TV shows were taped.

  Thirty minutes after I put the first cake in the oven, it was ready to come out. I was removing it carefully when Cameraman Ben appeared at the entrance to my cubicle and aimed his lens at me.

  Explaining what I was doing for the camera, I tested the cake to see if it had finished baking. First, I checked to see if it was separating from the side of the pan. It was. Then I touched the surface lightly with the pad of my index finger to see if it sprang back. It did. The last test was the most important. I inserted a toothpick into the center of the cake. When I removed it, I saw that the toothpick had come out clean.

  “The cake’s done,” I said.

  I put the second pan of batter into the oven and picked up the wooden pastry brush from the counter. Using the tip of the round handle, I began poking holes in the baked cake, pushing it all the way down to the bottom of the pan.

  To the camera, I said, “People who’ve been baking a long time will probably recognize this as a ‘poke cake.’ I’m making the holes before I pour my hot orange Jell-O mixture over the top. When the cake is chilled, frosted, and finally cut into slices, you see all these little columns of orange Jell-O streaking the inside.”

  Ben shut off the camera and took the rig off his shoulder to rotate the muscles of that arm.

  “You should see what’s going on down the hall,” Ben said. “I’m not sure what it is, but it’s going to be pretty spectacular.”

  He looked at my orange sheet cake. I thought I heard sympathy in his voice when he said, “But I’m sure yours is going to taste good.”

  42

  Ben’s remark, which I was sure he had meant kindly, didn’t exactly fill me with hope for my chances in the contest. It made me recall a line Liddy had quoted to me about an actress who was trapped in a catastrophe. She was supposed to have said, “Who do I have to sleep with to get off this picture?”

  My situation was like being on a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to New York; it was impossible to deplane in the middle of the trip. So, while cake number one was chilling in the refrigerator, and cake number two needed twenty more minutes in the oven, I came out of my cubicle to stretch my legs and see what the others were doing.

  Next door, Clay Sutton’s curtain was still up, making viewing his activity impossible.

  On the other side of Clay’s kitchen, Winnie King was making pink spun sugar.

  I’d never tried to spin sugar, but I knew that it took a great deal of skill. I said with admiration, “That’s impressive.”

  “I’m making a strawberry dome-shaped cake with little pink spun sugar clouds around the top,” she said.

  “It’s going to be beautiful, Winnie.”

  Viola, who had just come out of her kitchen, was gazing, wide-eyed, into Gordon Prescott’s. When she noticed me in the corridor, she gestured for me to come and take a look.

  When I reached Prescott’s workspace and saw what he was doing, I felt my own eyes just about pop. Prescott was fitting little round cups into a metal structure nearly three feet high. Braced on four short legs, it was wide at the base and rose to a narrow point at the top. It looked like a big metal Lego contraption.

  As Viola and I watched, he took a pan of cupcakes out of his oven.

  Viola asked Prescott, “What’s that going to be?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m making a replica of the Eiffel Tower out of cupcakes.”

  I said, “Ahhhh.”

  Viola said, “Wow.” She turned to me. “Shall we kill ourselves now, or later?”

  I drew her away from Prescott’s kitchen and whispered, “Remember, what he’s making has to taste good, too.”

  That cheered her. “Then maybe we’re still in the game.”

  By four thirty that afternoon, I’d frosted both cakes and put them back into the refrigerator to set. They’d be ready for slicing at six o’clock.

  All of my muscles ached, partly from the work on the cakes and partly from the tension of the day. But now I had done everything I could, including preparing the presentation plates by garnishing them with sprigs of fresh green mint and slices of red blood oranges.

  Grateful to have some time to rest before I had to smile for the camera again, I made my way to the lounge area that Hedda Klein had set up for us in the reception room. Two couches and three overstuffed chairs with ottomans had been crowded into the space.

  I had hoped to be alone, but Clay Sutton was already there, curled up on one of the couches. He was sound asleep, so it was almost like being by myself.

  Choosing a spot as far away from him as I could manage, I settled into an overstuffed chair and put my legs up. How good it felt to get off my feet!

  I closed my eyes, but as soon as I started to relax I began to think about the problem of who killed Reggie Davis and her private detective. I’d read and reread Taggart’s reports on Mickey and Iva so many times I knew them by heart. And yet, I was sure that I was missing something significant.

  What was in those pages that I had overlooked?

  Nicholas had learned that Iva was hiding her arrests for prostitution, so I concentrated on recalling the information in the report on Mickey.

  For nearly half an hour, the words in Taggart’s pages had been running in my head like a scroll on a movie screen. Suddenly my attention zeroed in on one particular paragraph, something that I’d been passing without thinking about.

  It was the part about the troubled life of Addison’s mother, Francine Strayhorn Jordan. According to what Taggart had found out, she had been a beautiful, unstable socialite from a wealthy family, a family that disapproved of her marriage to rough-hewn Mickey. Francine’s drinking and wild behavior reminded me of what I’d read about the tragic life of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda. Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Francine Jordan had been confined to institutions at least twice. I thought about how terrible those years must have been for Francine’s young son. I thought about Addison’s polite coolness toward Mickey, made most obvious by the fact that Addison called his father by his first name . . .

  But suppose what I had thought was coolness really masked a deeper emotion in Addison. Someth
ing ugly.

  No longer able to relax, I sat up straight in the chair. Muscles in my stomach began to tighten as I tried to take the separate fragments I had and fit them together into a coherent picture.

  Pieces: Addison had picked up the phone at Mickey’s house the night Nicholas called to tell Mickey about Reggie’s murder. Might he also have picked up the phone on one of the occasions when Reggie called Iva and threatened to tell Mickey what her private detective had learned? Had Reggie mentioned that she’d had Mickey investigated, too? If Addison had heard one of those conversations, then Addison would have discovered what Taggart was doing.

  In spite of Eileen’s belief that Addison wanted to impress Mickey, what if Addison hated Mickey? Did he blame Mickey for Francine’s troubles? If Addison did hate Mickey, was it powerful enough to . . . ? Assuming that theory was true, and Addison didn’t want Mickey’s love, but wanted to avenge his mother, how would killing Reggie and Taggart accomplish that?

  Did Addison want to harm Mickey somehow? If so, letting Taggart’s reports become public knowledge would do that. Or . . . would Addison stop at nothing to protect his mother’s mental problems from media exposure?

  “When all other theories have been exhausted, the one that remains, however unlikely, is the solution.”

  Thank you, Sherlock Holmes, but all theories hadn’t yet been exhausted. There was still the mystery of Iva. Had she pulled a disappearing act out of fear of having her past exposed, or out of guilt because she’d committed murder?

  “Della?”

  I felt a hand touch my shoulder.

  “Della, did you go to sleep sitting up?”

  Shaken out of the trance I must have fallen into, I looked up to see Hedda Klein standing over me.

  “Sorry to disturb your rest,” she said, “but you have a telephone call from a woman who said her name is Eileen O’Hara. I wanted to take a message for you, but she insists that it’s urgent. You can take the call over there, on the reception desk.”