Pie A La Murder Page 5

  I was thinking about Nicholas, but I was also thinking about Mack, who had been a police detective. There hadn’t been a day that he left the house when I wasn’t afraid something terrible would happen to him. When the phone call I dreaded finally came, it hadn’t been what I’d feared; instead of being shot by some criminal, he’d had a fatal heart attack while jogging. After losing Mack, I was sure I’d never fall in love again. Then two years later I met Nicholas.

  “I was in labor with the twins for twenty-one hours,” Liddy said. “You remember—you were there. I was cursing at Bill, and swearing I’d never go through that again. But after a few weeks, loving those babies so much, I forgot about the pain and hoped I’d get pregnant again. Some things are just worth what you have to go through to get them.”

  When we arrived at my place, I saw Eileen O’Hara’s little red VW in the driveway. I said good-bye to Liddy and let myself into the house. Tuffy was waiting for me, his pompom of a tail and his whole back end wagging an enthusiastic greeting.

  “Hi, Tuff. I’m glad to see you, too. Let me put my things down and check messages and then we’ll go for a long walk.”

  Tuffy followed me into the back of the house, where I found Eileen at the kitchen table, making notes on one of the white legal pads I use to plan the TV shows and cooking classes. Last year, shortly before she graduated from UCLA, my twenty-two-year-old honorary daughter had come up with the idea for our retail and mail-order dessert business, Della’s Sweet Dreams. She had earned her partnership in the company by persuading my channel-owner boss Mickey Jordan to put up the money to launch it as a cross-promotion with the TV show. She’d since proved to be an excellent partner, handling the day-to-day business with our store manager, which left me free to create new items for us to sell.

  Tall, pretty, naturally blonde of a shade between Liddy’s dark honey and Celeste’s pale corn silk, Eileen was athletically slim, but curvier than ultrathin Celeste. I knew she’d come from our shop this afternoon because she was wearing business clothes: a light blue cotton shirt tucked into a black A-line skirt, with her favorite navy blue blazer hung over the back of a kitchen chair.

  I looked over her shoulder. “How are we doing?”

  “Really well. If sales keep up, we’ll be able to pay Mickey back sooner than expected. The new sugar-free line for diabetics is selling beyond projections.”

  “You’ve just given me an idea. I think I’ll do a show on that subject. And a Mommy and Me class teaching that sugar-free can be delicious.”

  Eileen sat up straighter. Her shoulders stiffened and the smile on her face disappeared. “Speaking of ‘Mommies and Mes’—what’s she like?”

  “Who?”

  “Your future stepdaughter. We haven’t had a chance to talk since you met her at your show last night.” I was surprised to hear a slight edge in Eileen’s voice.

  Maybe it was my imagination.

  She said, “If you and Nick get married, and he moves in here, I suppose she’ll have my room.”

  It wasn’t my imagination.

  I sat down opposite her and put my hand over hers. “Honey, if you want to, you can live here until you have to start dyeing your hair to cover the gray. Or until we’re both old ladies with poodles and cats. Regardless of what Nicholas and I decide to do, this will be your home as long as you want it to be.”

  That un-stiffened her. She smiled at me and gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Thanks, Aunt Del. I’m so busy with the Sweet Dreams business that I don’t have time to even think about moving into a place of my own right now. And I’m banking every dollar I don’t have to spend so one day whether I’m alone or married I can buy a house, like you and Uncle Mack did.”

  I stood. “I’m going to change and take Tuffy for a walk, then I’m going to think about sugar-free recipes.”

  “Do you like her? Nick’s daughter?”

  “I don’t know her very well yet. She’s a bit prickly—but it’s probably been difficult for her to grow up without a father.”

  “Teenage girls can be the worst!” Eileen said.

  “It wasn’t so long ago that you were a teenager, and you weren’t any trouble at all.”

  “Ha!” Eileen gave me a wicked little smile. “You just think that because you don’t know everything I did.”

  It took a moment to process that statement, but then I gave her a hug. “Since you turned out so well, I thank you for keeping some things from me.”

  By midnight, twelve hours after he had dropped Celeste off so Liddy and I could take her to the luncheon, I hadn’t heard from Nicholas. With both his daughter and now his ex-wife in town, I was beginning to think that I was never going to hear from him again. I’d gone from being annoyed at dinnertime to downright angry by the time Tuffy and I came back from our bedtime walk and there had been neither a cell phone call nor a message on my landline.

  I was in bed reading Fiddlers, the last of Ed McBain’s fifty-five 87th Precinct novels. I’d bought it several years ago, but put off reading it because the author died and there would be no more. Settled against a backrest of pillows, with Emma curled up next to my waist and Tuffy reclining at the foot of the bed, I was on chapter two when Nicholas called.

  “I hoped I’d get back to the apartment in time to see you at least for a minute, when you and Liddy dropped Celeste off, but I got held up at the paper, having to add new information to my story on the Crawford murder.”

  “We offered to wait with Celeste until you returned, but she didn’t want us to.” I paused, then asked, “How are things going?”

  “Good. Better than I dared hope.” I heard happiness in his voice. “Honey, she’s sweet and smart. Surprisingly levelheaded in her approach to wanting to become an actress. But she’s not self-centered. She wants to know about me, my life here. She asked to read copies of my articles. I told her where to find them on the Internet. She has a pink laptop.”

  I wasn’t interested in the color of her computer. Sounding carefully neutral, I asked, “Have you seen her mother yet?”

  The warm tone of his voice dropped a good twenty degrees. “No, but we’ve talked on the phone.”

  “Did she tell you why she’s here?”

  “It seems that Celeste left Vienna while Tanis was vacationing in Rio. Vacationing from what, don’t ask me. Tanis didn’t know she was gone until she returned and found Celeste’s note.”

  “I hope she’s not going to yank her away from you again.”

  “No, she’s not taking her back to Europe. I have a suspicion that Tanis doesn’t really want her back, but she’s playing the mother card.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She said she’s come here to be sure that Celeste will be in a ‘positive environment.’ She actually said she wants to be sure I’ll look after Celeste, keep her out of trouble.”

  I remembered what Eileen had said about having kept things from me when she was Celeste’s age. “Teenage girls are as slippery as a ball of mercury, but if anyone can do it, you can.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I wish Celeste’s mother had your high opinion of me.”

  “I have a very high opinion of you in all areas,” I said softly.

  I heard his throaty chuckle, and the sound of it vibrated through my body.

  “Tomorrow you’re teaching your class and I’m taking Celeste out to get her a car—something safe and reliable. But tomorrow night she’s having dinner with her mother. Are you free to have dinner with me? I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “Come here,” I said. “I’ll make something for us. Name your favorite dish.”

  “You.” That was what I’d hoped he’d say, and as he proceeded to elaborate on that theme, I felt a flush creeping up my cheeks.

  8

  Saturday evening, Tuffy and I greeted Nicholas at the front door. He arrived with a bouquet of red roses, a box of chocolate-covered strawberries, and a kiss that left me breathless. When he let me go, I took the roses and he rea
ched down to give Tuffy a scratch on the head.

  “Beautiful flowers,” I said. “I’ll put these in water.”

  “Just in the sink. I don’t want you to take time arranging them.”

  He and Tuffy followed me into the kitchen. Tuffy trotted over to his dog bed and settled down while I filled the sink with an inch of water and propped up the roses so that their stems could drink.

  Nicholas sniffed the aroma coming from the Dutch oven on the stove. “Beef Bourguignon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. The longer it sits, the better it tastes.”

  He took me in his arms, kissed me again, and whispered, “Can we go to the bedroom?”

  I liked the fact he didn’t take my agreement for granted.

  “Unless you’d rather make love here on the kitchen floor,” I said mock-seriously.

  In the bedroom, Nicholas gently slipped his hands up underneath my sweater. “I like it that you wear bras that hook in front,” he whispered.

  Nicholas never got to taste the Beef Bourguignon.

  We made love twice—first with urgency to satisfy our hunger for each other, and then in our usual, more leisurely manner. We were lying content in each other’s arms when he raised his wrist above the back of my head and looked at his watch.

  “It’s late.” He removed his other arm from where it lay across my rib cage and sat up in bed.

  I checked the red numerals on my bedside clock. “It’s only nine fifteen.”

  He was already out of bed and reaching for his clothes. “I want to get home before Tanis brings Celeste back from their dinner together. She shouldn’t be alone in an empty apartment.”

  “I understand,” I said. And I did. I remembered all the nights I’d waited up to be sure that teenage Eileen got home safely. I joked, “Do you want some Beef Bourguignon to go?”

  He looked at me, as though trying to gauge my real feelings about his hasty departure. “I’m sorry about this, honey. May I have a rain check?”

  “Perhaps. The chef at this establishment is rather fond of you.”

  “You’re wonderful,” he said. “And I love you.” Then he gave me a light kiss and was gone.

  In the kitchen, I stuck a fork into the Beef Bourguignon to taste it. Delicious. It should have been, with all the work it took, but the multiple steps were worth it for the result. I scooped out a bowl full, gave Tuffy one of his favorite dog chew bones, and sat down to enjoy my dinner at the table I’d set for two.

  Children have to come first, I told myself. In the year or so of my romance with Nicholas, I’d never stayed away overnight at his place, nor had I let him stay here all night if Eileen was home. Maybe that seemed silly—old-fashioned, even, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, but I thought it was the right way to behave. Of course Eileen assumed that I was sleeping with Nicholas, but I wasn’t going to parade the fact in front of her.

  The ringing of the phone on my kitchen wall interrupted my thoughts.

  “Del—now don’t get mad,” Liddy said.

  Uh-oh. “What have you done?”

  “Something to help you with this Nicholas situation.”

  Oh, Lord.

  “Maybe I should have asked you first—I mean, now I realize that I probably should have—but when the idea hit me, and Bill said it was fine with him, I was so excited I just plunged right ahead with the plans!”

  “What plans?”

  She took a deep breath and told me all in a rush: “Bill and I are going to give a dinner party next Friday night for Celeste and her mother and Prince Freddie. And you and Nicholas, of course—so we can all get to know each other!”

  I felt the food begin to congeal in my stomach. But there was one tiny ray of hope and I clutched at it: The impression I got from Celeste’s conversation at the luncheon was that Tanis—the prince catcher—was a snob and the Marshalls weren’t famous. “What makes you think they’ll want to come to your party?”

  “Oh, she already accepted,” Liddy said. “I called her at the hotel a little while ago and reached her in the dining room. She said Celeste had told her about me, and that she was looking forward to meeting her daughter’s new friends. She said yes to my invitation without even asking the prince if he wanted to go.” Liddy chuckled. “I suspect that it’s Tanis who wears the crown in that relationship.”

  “Well, so I guess that’s all settled. Is there anything I can bring?”

  “Nope. I’m going to have dinner catered. You have absolutely nothing to do.”

  Except figure out how to lose ten pounds before Friday night.

  Nicholas called Sunday morning. Furious.

  “Is Liddy out of her mind!”

  “Calm down,” I said. “I was shocked, too, but you know Liddy means well. No one could have a more loyal friend, so if you want to say anything negative about her you can hang up now.”

  He expelled a breath. When he spoke again, he was composed. “Sorry I flew off the handle. I wasn’t prepared when Tanis told me about it last night.”

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “Tanis told you?” I resisted the temptation to ask how she looked.

  “She told me about it when she brought Celeste home. I would have called you after she left, but Celeste and I stayed up until nearly three o’clock, talking.” I heard warmth return to his voice.

  “I’m very happy you two found each other. Girls need a father.”

  “It feels good,” he said.

  My hope was that at some point Celeste would be open to a friendship with me, or at least that she wouldn’t always be hostile, but I wanted Nicholas to have a good relationship with his daughter. After their having been separated for most of the girl’s life, I knew that was going to take time.

  As far as Nicholas and I were concerned, I would have to be patient. I loved him. If we were meant to be together, we would be.

  If not . . .

  I was thankful that I had good friends and a busy professional life.

  Eileen came in from her early morning run. Her face was dripping with sweat and perspiration had soaked through her tank top. She gave Tuffy a quick scratch. Taking a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, she said, “I’m so hungry I think I’d give my left kidney for a piece of your stuffed French toast.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Except the part about the kidney. Go shower and I’ll make us some.”

  As I took eggs and milk and blackberry preserves out of the refrigerator, I said, “Tuffy, I’ve decided it’s impossible to try to lose ten pounds by Friday.”

  For the next three days, before and after taping my TV shows, Phil Logan had me giving interviews to various national TV and radio broadcasts about Operation Pie.

  “The bake sale idea is really catching on,” Phil said. “Your Web site is hearing from people all over the country who are starting to form up in teams. In addition to the radio and TV segments, I’m setting you up with print interviews, too. Most of them you can do by phone—I’ll e-mail photos—but the Chronicle wants to do an in-person, and take pictures of you in your home kitchen. The reporter’s Gretchen Tully. When are you available next week?”

  “Today’s Wednesday. . . . How about Thursday next, a week from tomorrow, if she wants to see me prepare for the live show that night.”

  “Good idea,” Phil said. “I’ll let you know if it’s good for her, but I suspect it will be. That’ll really give her a look behind the scenes.”

  Later that afternoon, I was returning home from a long walk with Tuffy when I saw a black limousine pull up and park just ahead of the walkway leading up to my house. A uniformed chauffeur got out from behind the wheel, hurried around to open the rear door, and extended one hand to help his passenger alight.

  The passenger was a very attractive woman: blonde, slender, perhaps in her forties. She wore an elegant suit that was, I guessed, the work of a name designer, and probably not an American one.

  My breath caught in my throat and my mouth felt dry. I knew that this s
tranger had to be the former Mrs. Nicholas D’Martino. To my dismay, she was even better looking than I had imagined. Next to her, in my Tuffy-walking sweats and sneakers, I felt frumpy.

  “Della Carmichael?” she said. Her voice was well modulated, her enunciation clear, her tone cold as ice. Like Celeste, she spoke with that pretentious mid-Atlantic accent.

  “Yes,” I said. “You must be Celeste’s mother.”

  She turned to the chauffeur. “Leonard, wait for me in the car.”

  He complied.

  I said, “Won’t you come inside?”

  Tanis Fontaine D’Martino—the future princess of something-or-other—gave me a glare so fierce that I wondered if she was able to turn servants to stone. “I won’t be here long.” She nodded in Tuffy’s direction. “Please put that dog in the house.”

  Her imperious manner made me mad, but I bit back a retort and instead forced myself to say pleasantly, “I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot—”

  “There is no right foot after what you’ve done!” She indicated the thing she was carrying: a pink laptop computer.

  “What have I done?”

  She glanced back at the chauffeur, who was facing forward with such stiff posture that I was sure he was pretending not to listen to his employer’s conversation.

  Nicholas’s ex-wife turned and stalked up the brick walk toward my front door. Tuffy and I followed. I unlocked the door and put Tuffy inside. “Would you like some coffee, or tea?”

  “Not from you,” she said.

  I closed the door so Tuffy wouldn’t get out. “I’ve had just about enough of your attitude,” I said. “Because of Celeste, I was looking forward to having at least a civil meeting with you. Now, either tell me what you’re upset about, or leave.”

  I saw a flash of surprise in her eyes. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That Celeste’s life is about to be ruined, as well as my marriage plans!” She opened the laptop, balanced it on one forearm, and tapped a few keys. “The photographer you introduced her to e-mailed the proofs of the pictures he took.”