The Proof is in the Pudding (36 page)

While the men at All Tires were replacing my four, I sat on a folding chair one of them had brought outdoors from the office for me. I was replaying in my head the story Eugene Long had told me about what he and Keith Ingram had plotted to do to Roland Gray, in retaliation for Gray embarrassing Tina Long four years earlier. It was an outrageous tale that I found very hard to believe.

Sitting in the hot sun was making it hard for me to think. I moved the chair into the shade and felt better. Even though there was a stale taste in my mouth and my stomach was empty and felt hollow, my head was clear.

I decided to do what I would have done more than an hour ago, if I hadn’t gotten sick and then discovered the vandalism to my Jeep. I dialed John O’Hara’s cell phone.

He answered on the first ring.

“Hi, it’s Della. I have a question. When Keith Ingram’s clothing and belongings were inventoried and bagged, was anything unusual found in one of his pockets?”

“Unusual—like what?”

“A dry, ground substance, brown in color. Probably in a little packet of plastic wrap.”

“How did you know that?” I heard surprise in his voice.

“So they found it. Tell me if it was tested to find out what it was.”

“Yes, sure. But it wasn’t a drug of any kind. Forensics said it was a spice.”

“Nutmeg?”

His voice hardened into his detective-on-the-job tone. “What’s going on, Del?”

“Was it nutmeg?” I asked.

“Yes, but it isn’t relevant to Ingram’s murder.”

“Not directly. Or maybe not at all. I don’t know yet.”

“What have you been up to?”

“This morning I went out drinking,” I said.

John laughed. “I wouldn’t believe that if you said it with your hand on a Bible. Tell me the truth.”

“Okay, but I want you to listen without yelling. Deal?”

Momentary pause. “Deal.”

I told John what Long had told me about the plot he and Keith Ingram had devised.

“That’s the most idiotic scheme I ever heard of,” John said.

“I found it hard to believe, too, until you told me that Ingram had a packet of nutmeg in his pocket.”

“Even if I was back on the force, I can’t arrest someone for what they
intended
to do.” He was silent for a moment. “If Gray had found out what they planned, then he’d be my number one suspect in Ingram’s murder, but then somebody tried to kill Gray.”

“None of the pieces of the puzzle we have make a picture yet,” I said.

Behind me, I heard a car horn honking. Turning my head I saw a familiar ivory Range Rover pulling into the driveway of the tire store.

“Liddy’s here,” I said. “Talk to you later. Bye.”

I disconnected before it occurred to John to ask me how I managed to get that story out of Eugene Long.

Hurrying over to meet Liddy, I saw that she wasn’t alone; sitting in the front passenger seat beside her was Tuffy.

“This is a nice surprise,” I said.

“Get in and sit with me. I couldn’t wait to hear what happened this morning.”

As soon as I opened the passenger door and greeted Tuffy, he moved into the back.

“You certainly have Tuff well trained,” Liddy said admiringly.

I had to laugh at that. “Not me. He pretty much trained himself. Sometimes I think he reads my mind.”

Liddy looked at me and frowned. “You’re pale. No lipstick or mascara, and there’s a yellowish stain on your blouse. What happened to you? Are you all right?”

I assured her that I was fine. As we waited for the last of my tires to be replaced and balanced, I repeated to Liddy what I’d told John about Long and Ingram’s bizarre plot to frame Roland Gray for attempted murder by sabotaging Gray’s lemon pudding with a lethal dose of nutmeg. I also told her the things I’d left out of my report to John: getting Long drunk, my increasing stomach distress, Tina Long’s unexpected kindness in the women’s bathroom, and then returning to my Jeep to find the tires slashed.

“Your idea of getting Long drunk so he’d tell you what he knew about Ingram’s murder—that was as weird as the nutmeg story he gave you. Do you believe him?”

“It was hard to. I wasn’t sure, so I called John just before you got here. John confirmed that one of the things they found in Ingram’s clothes was a packet of ground nutmeg.”

Liddy gave a low whistle. Tuffy, who had been lounging in the back, sat up and stuck his nose between our seats.

Stroking his head, I said, “It’s okay, Tuff. That wasn’t for you. Liddy was expressing amazement at how crazy people are getting.”

“If we needed any more proof, all we have to do is watch the news a couple of nights a week,” Liddy said.

Tuffy lay down again, and Liddy asked me, “Did they test the pudding Gray made at the cook-off?”

I shook my head. “It burned up. In the confusion when the smoke bomb went off, Gray accidentally left his stove turned on. Anyway, Ingram couldn’t have stirred the nutmeg into the pudding until it was finished and dishes were given to the judges for tasting.”

“But that never happened,” Liddy said.

“No, it didn’t.”

“What’s next on the detecting agenda?”

“I’m having tea with Roland Gray this afternoon at four. Sometime between now and then, I’ve got to figure out a subtle way to learn if Roland knew what Ingram and Long were planning, and if he has any idea at all about who shot at him.”

“Let’s examine what we
do
know,” Liddy said. “Long hated Roland Gray and plotted with Ingram to frame him for attempted murder. But why would Ingram get involved? I mean, if their scheme was uncovered, it would mean a big embarrassment for Ingram, maybe even criminal charges, since he was actually committing the act of trying to frame Gray.”

“My guess is that Ingram agreed to do it to stay on the good side of his potential father-in-law.”

“That makes sense. He could have been afraid that if he didn’t help Long, Long might have managed to stop the marriage, and it would be bye-bye to the Daddy’s billions.”

“Let’s look at who had a motive to kill Ingram,” I said. “Any of the women he taped in bed with him who were afraid of exposure. But only two of the women were at the gala: Yvette and Tina. Tina’s acted pretty wild. She might have been taped willingly, or perhaps she didn’t know. She seemed genuinely distraught when Ingram was killed. Yvette was near Ingram when he was stabbed, but there wasn’t a drop of blood on her. Roland and I ducked under a table together just seconds after the smoke bomb went off. He couldn’t have lighted and tossed the smoke bomb mixture and stabbed Ingram in those few seconds.”

“So he didn’t do it.”

“No,” I said. “But there was one man unaccounted for at the gala—he paid for his ticket at the last minute with a phony check. My theory, or piece of a theory, is that he’s the one who brought the bomb mixture and murdered Ingram. Okay, that makes sense. But where I bump into a cement wall is on the question of why would he, or anyone else in this case, have wanted to kill Roland? No one has suggested yet that Roland and Ingram ever met. That’s one of the things I want to find out from Roland.”

“Two mysteries,” Liddy said. “There doesn’t seem to be any connection between them, but there
has
to be. What’s the link?”

“There are two, or at least two that we know about so far. Yvette Dupree is one link, and Tina Long is the other. Yvette, because Long told me he made a play for her years ago, but she was seeing someone. Judging from the way she acted when I told her that Roland had been shot, he’s probably the man in her life, but I don’t think Long knows that.”

Liddy nodded. “And Tina’s a link because the cruel embarrassment Roland put her through was Long’s motive for wanting to frame Roland. But I can’t picture either Yvette or Tina lying on her stomach and firing a sniper rifle into a café.”

“Yvette is tougher than she looks,” I said. “According to John’s contact at Interpol, in London a decade ago she killed her abusive husband.”

Liddy’s eyes lighted up with interest. “Did she shoot him?”

“No—she hit him on the head. The jury believed it was self-defense, but John’s contact said there were lingering suspicious because the man was so much bigger than Yvette. If Yvette is involved with Roland, she wouldn’t have a motive to shoot him. As for Tina . . . Tina is so thin I can’t picture her being able to lift the kind of weapon that almost killed Roland, let alone knowing how to fire it.”

“She could have hired a pro,” Liddy said. “Or her father could have, when his plan for framing Gray went awry. Did you ask him if he had any idea about who killed Ingram?”

“Not directly, but from what he said, it didn’t seem as though he had any idea. He didn’t even appear to be interested in who did it, or to care, except for the fact that it ruined his plan. He must have liked Ingram, to some degree; he remarked that Ingram would have made a good ‘first husband’ for Tina. I’ve thought a lot about this, and I can’t picture Eugene Long putting himself in the power of a professional hit man who would then have had a conspiracy to murder charge to hang over Long’s head, and be able to blackmail him forever.”

One of the tire mechanics came out of the store and waved at me. I said to Liddy, “The Jeep’s ready. I’ll take Tuffy home with me. Thanks for looking after him.”

“Call me tonight, after your tea party with Gray.”

I promised that I would.

Driving home on my four new tires, a plan began to form in my mind.

As soon as I let Tuffy and myself into the house, my cell phone rang. The number on the faceplate was unfamiliar.

I answered and heard Olivia Wayne’s voice. She started talking without the preamble of a greeting.

“Victor Raynoso has a public defender, but I persuaded the PD to let me go with him into the interview with his client and ask questions about one of the charges against him. To give you a quick snapshot, Raynoso’s got tattoos up to his chin, over the top of his shaved head and across the knuckles of both hands. His rap sheet goes back to his first incarceration as a juvenile. He’s a total creep with a bad attitude, not worth the price of the air he’s breathing.”

“But do you like him for the café shooting?”

“No,” she said. “He denied it, adamantly, but everybody I’ve ever met in custody denies everything, so I paid no attention to that. The evidence—I should say, the
lack
of evidence—supports Raynoso’s denial. He was caught taking shots at cars on the freeway, and he was carrying drugs. No surprise there. What makes me think he’s telling the truth about being so drunk he wasn’t even awake at the time you and the writer were having coffee is that he’s stupid. And his whole criminal history is one of acting on impulse. I got a—shall we say an
informal
—look at the police report of the café shooting. Whoever did that had to plan it, had to know how to get to the roof across the street and set up for the shoot. I’d bet my year-end bonus that Raynoso has never even planned where to eat lunch.”

“Then Hatch is wrong about Raynoso being our sniper.”

“I’m sure he is. Look, Della, I told you I’d be billing you for my time visiting Raynoso, but because we have a mutual friend—a very nice guy, even if he’s as slippery as a greased eel—I gave you a fifteen-minute freebee.”

“What do you mean?”

“After chatting with Raynoso, I went to see Detective Hatch. I volunteered my opinion that he has no case against Raynoso for the Gray shooting, and that he’ll look like a fool if he tries to include that charge.”

“How did he take it?”

She chuckled. “Not very well, but he listened. You’ve never seen me in action, but I’m inclined to express myself in somewhat forceful language. Hatch wanted to know why I was interested in Raynoso. I told him it was because I get hot for lowlife scum with tattoos.”

I was beginning to like Olivia Wayne. “What do you think Hatch will do now?”

“My guess is he’ll realize he’s playing a bad hand in trying to tie Raynoso to the Gray shooting and he’ll fold,” she said. “But he’s embarrassed now, and that will make him mucho vindictive. If he really wants to get John O’Hara for the Ingram murder, he’ll have to find motive and opportunity for O’Hara to have tried to take down Gray.”

“He can’t possibly succeed, because John doesn’t have any motive to hurt Gray.”

“Meaning that he
did
have reason to want Ingram dead. Wait—don’t answer that.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I said, “except to repeat that John did not kill Keith Ingram.”

“Don’t let that belief, or loyalty, make you complacent,” Olivia Wayne said. “If Ingram’s real killer isn’t found quickly, who knows what piece of human excrement with a grudge against O’Hara, and who needs a favor from the cops, might suddenly materialize and tell Hatch some story he would be happy to believe. Good luck.”

Olivia Wayne disconnected, once again without saying good-bye. Apparently, she didn’t pad her billable hours with unnecessary chitchat.