Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

“Whew. We made it,” Liddy said. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

I paused to think before I spoke. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth.

Liddy was smart enough to realize what my silence meant. “Forget the question. If I don’t know anything, I can’t slip up, right?”

I gave her hand an affectionate squeeze. “Thank you. You are the best.”

In the headlights of cars coming toward us, I saw her smile. “Yeah, yeah-that’s what all the burglars say to their getaway drivers.”

Tuffy must have heard Liddy’s Land Rover pull up outside because as soon as I unlocked my front door, he was there to greet me, wagging his entire back end with excitement. I gave him some loving strokes, and hurried toward the kitchen at the back of the house. He followed me.

In the kitchen, I opened the plastic case and took out the DVD Ingram had made of himself and Eileen. Then I realized that I had a problem. It would bend, but it wouldn’t break.

Oh, for the good old days of videotape that I could have ripped out of its cassette and burned in the sink.

I glanced around the kitchen, searching for something that could destroy the disk beyond repair.

Poultry shears?

Opening my tool drawer, I spotted something even better: the heavy-duty clippers I used on my rose bushes. I went to work on the disk and in a matter of seconds I had cut it into little pieces.

I took the key to the rear gate from its hook on the kitchen wall, and let Tuffy and myself out into my backyard. While Tuffy relieved himself against his favorite tree near the rear fence, I unlocked the gate and slipped out into the alleyway. Thursday was garbage pickup day, and it was already three hours into Thursday morning. Up and down the alleyway I saw that the big plastic garbage cans had been set out for collection. Starting at the far end of the alley, and moving farther and farther from my own block, I deposited bits of the DVD beneath the trash in a dozen garbage receptacles until the last little piece was thrown away.

Four blocks from home, I inched my arms up into the sleeves of my jacket so that my hands were covered, and wiped the DVD case clean of finger prints, then broke it in half at its spine. Without leaving prints, I shoved each of the halves beneath smelly bags of trash in two different receptacles.

Now that I was sure no trace of the DVD tormenting Eileen could ever be found, I went home to stand under a hot shower and scrub away any trace of tonight’s activities.

Later, with Tuffy lying at the foot of the bed and Emma curled up on the pillow beside me, I tried to sleep, but wasn’t having much luck. A line from Macbeth-a play I taught in my old high school English classes-kept running through my head:

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care…

But my “sleave” stayed raveled. For me, sleep was fitful, and full of cares.

Thursday morning I was returning with Tuffy from his morning walk when I saw John O’Hara’s black Lincoln parked in front of my house, and John sitting alone on my doorstep. Tuffy saw him, too, wagged his tail, and tugged at his leash. I released him and he raced toward his old friend.

John stood when he saw us, said “Hi” to me, and greeted Tuffy with the gentle roughhousing Tuffy enjoyed with him.

“Where’s Eileen?” I asked. I knew if she had come here with John, she would have let him into the house.

“With her mother. Shannon ’s still pretty upset over what happened last night.”

“How are you?” I asked.

“Sidelined. Not suspended, but that’s only because the squad’s undermanned. The fact that I slugged a civilian goes in my jacket with a reprimand.”

“That’s not so bad.” I tried to sound cheerful, but a reprimand wasn’t good.

“Maybe… Hey, can you spare a cup of coffee for a guy who doesn’t have a case at the moment?”

“Of course. How about some breakfast, too?”

“That would be great.”

As soon as I opened the front door, Tuffy dashed into the house. After our vigorous walk I knew he was heading for his water bowl. John and I followed him into the kitchen.

John sat down at the table, as he had hundreds of times over the years, but this was a different John, one who was less confident. He almost looked lost.

“ Del, I need your help.”

“What can I do?”

“Obviously, that smoke bomb was set off to cover Ingram’s murder. Weaver told me he asked you about this last night, but I wondered if you might have had some new memory since then, or even a guess, about who could have set it off.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “Those things are so simple to make just about anyone in that room could have prepared it before the gala. All that person had to do was bring the cooked sugar and saltpeter mixture in a sheet of foil, set it on fire with a match or cigarette lighter, and toss it into the crowd.”

Interest replaced the look of dejection in his eyes. “How do you know how to make a smoke bomb?”

“From the Internet. A few years ago, when Eileen was taking high school chemistry, she wanted to make one for a demonstration. No, John-I’m sure Eileen was across the room when-”

“You haven’t told anyone she knows how to make a smoke bomb, have you?”

“Of course not.”

“Thank you,” John said.

“You’re thanking me for protecting Eileen? That’s insulting! I don’t care how worried you are, I deserve better than that.”

John looked at me in amazement. He’d seldom seen me flare up in anger, and it had never before been directed at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I heard the sincerity in his voice, and saw that he was embarrassed. To let the awkward moment pass, I poured him a mug of coffee.

After a few sips, his said, “You’ve got good powers of observation, Del. I know you probably told it all to Weaver, but Hatch confiscated his notes, so let’s start fresh. Think back to a few minutes before the smoke bomb went off. Who was standing in your area?”

I closed my eyes, focused my mind on the ballroom, and began to visualize the scene. “This wasn’t a show with assigned seats. People were moving all around. The ones closest to me and to Ingram were watching the celebrities in Sector Four cook. But then the comic actor on the other side of the room started a spectacular juggling routine, and it caught everybody’s attention.”

“Name?”

“Wolf Wheeler. He stars in those raunchy comedies with food fights, explosions, and topless starlets.”

John added Wheeler’s name to his notes. “Go on. Who were the celebrities in Sector Four?”

“Francine Ames-the actress from Eileen’s favorite TV soap opera when she was growing up. Oona Rogers and Coupe Deville-they’re husband and wife movie stars, but they were cooking at separate stoves. The one nearest me was Roland Gray, the novelist.” I opened my eyes. “I’ll make a sketch for you.”

As I had been visualizing, John had been writing in the notebook he carried in his jacket pocket. He flipped to a clean page and handed it to me.

“I’ll be this little circle, here,” I said. “I’ll use initials for the others. Roland Gray was facing me, but when people started to watch the juggling he came out from behind the stove and stood near me. Deville was at the stove next to Gray’s, on Gray’s right. To Deville’s right was Oona Rogers, and on the other side of Oona was Francine Ames. Everyone was close together, and all were working at their stoves until the show started on the other side of the ballroom. While I was watching the juggling, I’m afraid I didn’t see what anyone else was doing.”