Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

“Did the tapes have names on them?” Nicholas asked.

I shook my head. “Only initials. As soon as I found Eileen’s-and I made sure there was only the one tape of her-I grabbed it and left the house.”

“Can you remember any of the other initials?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to recall what I’d seen in the collection of DVDs, but no images came into my head. I opened my eyes. “Nothing. I was so nervous about being in his house the only label that registered with me was Eileen’s. The police have those other DVDs. They’ve probably figured out who at least some of the women are.” I made a note. “I’ll ask John to find out from Hugh Weaver.”

“What makes me doubt that one of those women killed Ingram is that the attempted murder of Roland Gray was done by a sniper.”

“There have been female snipers.” I said it a touch defensively, as though I was trying to stand up for the equality of female killers.

“But a female sniper in Beverly Hills? I think we’ll find that all of Ingram’s sex conquests were wealthy, either married to or divorced with a big settlement from rich men.”

“Eileen isn’t wealthy.”

“She’s young and beautiful. That’s its own kind of wealth. I’m sure Ingram went after her out of lust. She must have been a nice change from targeting women whose most attractive qualities were their fat checkbooks. You told me that when he connected with Tina Long, the only child of a billionaire, he dropped Eileen, but was still trying to force her to be available for booty calls.”

“If Ingram had married Tina Long, her father would have been smart to hire a food taster.” I felt my eyes widen. “Hey, I thought I was making a joke, but I just realized that if Eugene Long figured out exactly what kind of an unscrupulous opportunist had captivated his daughter…”

“It could be a powerful motive for murder,” Nicholas said. “He wouldn’t have had to do it himself. He can afford to hire a thousand hit men.”

That was an exciting thought, until I fell back down to earth with a thud.

“But then why would he, or his hit man, try to kill Roland?” I said. “I have to find out what the connection is between Long and Roland.”

“We have to find out a lot of things,” Nicholas said. “I’ll use my sources to see what I can dig up.”

“Most of us were watching Wolf Wheeler’s juggling act when the smoke bomb went off. It might have been coincidence, or-”

“Or part of a plan.” Nicholas nodded and made a note of Wolf Wheeler’s name.

“Next: I want to get the guest list for the gala. Maybe one of the people attending had something against either Ingram or Roland, or both.”

“I can get the list from the Chronicle ’s entertainment editor. And I’ll get copies of the pictures our photographer took.”

“Perfect. I’ll ask our publicity man, Phil Logan, to get a guest list, too. Double-check of who was there.” I made another note. “Yvette Dupree. I want to talk to her. She seems to know Long, very well, and she’s close to daughter Tina. About Tina: I’ll have to figure out how to do it without Hatch going crazy, but I want to talk to Tina.”

“I’ll check our files to see what we have on Dupree and the Longs.”

“Ah!” I stood up. “I’ve got an idea. Don’t move.”

I hurried to the bookcase in my bedroom and found the copy of Roland Gray’s new thriller, Terror Master.

Back in the kitchen, I showed it to Nicholas. “Roland gave this to me when he came to the studio Thursday night.”

“So?”

I opened the book to the Acknowledgments and scooted my chair around so that Nicholas could see it, too.

“There’s a lot of information in these author ‘thank you’ pages.”

We studied the names, but I let out a sigh of disappointment when we didn’t find any we recognized.

“Most of these people gave him information about nuclear weapons,” I said. “It’s not likely we’ll find any of them on the gala list.”

“Let’s see who he dedicated the book to.” Nicholas turned a page. “Hey. What do you make of this?”

I read the dedication aloud: “ ‘To the one who got away…’ ”

“Jeez-novelists! They think they’re so clever. Do you have any idea who that ‘who’ is?”

“No, but I’ll see him tomorrow. Right now I’ll call Phil Logan and ask him for the list of people who attended the charity cook-off.”

Nicholas got up from the table. “I’m going to the paper to get our entertainment editor’s list, and copies of the file pictures. I’ll e-mail them to you. Then I’m going home to sleep.”

“You’re welcome to stay here.”

“That’s not called ‘sleeping.’ ”

Inside the front door, we kissed. For quite a while. Finally, Nicholas stepped back. “I want us to make a rule.”

“What rule?”

“We don’t have sex every time we’re alone together,” he said.

“All right. Do you play gin? Poker? Scrabble? Do cross-word puzzles?”

He smiled, but his tone was serious. “What I’m saying is that I want to live to be a very old man, and have you there to wipe the drool from my chin.”

That declaration veered too close to a subject I wasn’t anywhere near ready to think about: the future. More specifically, our future.

I kept my tone playful. “What woman could resist such an appealing prospect?”

And then I kissed him lightly on the chin. “Good night.”

By the time Eileen came home that evening, Phil Logan’s messenger had delivered the gala’s guest list, and Nicholas had e-mailed the Chronicle ’s list, as well as copies of thirty-six pictures taken by the paper’s photographer.

I was at the kitchen table again, with the two lists and the photos spread out in front of me. Tuffy must have been alerted by the sound of Eileen’s car, because he stood up and began to wag his hindquarters before I heard her open the front door.

“Hi, I’m home,” she called.

Tuffy loped off to greet her.

“I’m in the kitchen, honey.”

Eileen came in with Tuffy close at her heels.

“I’ve got interesting news-actually, delicious news-from the shop,” she said. “We’re going to have a new line to sell.”

Her excited smile gave my heart a lift. It was the first time I’d seen Eileen smile since the night she told me about Keith Ingram’s repulsive threat.

“What’s happened?”

“That school friend of yours, Carole Adams, e-mailed from where she lives in Delaware. She saw Roland Gray making pudding on the show and started experimenting. After a bunch of tries she came up with a pudding version of our nut butter fudge.”

“That’s Carole,” I said. “She’s always loved a challenge, and if someone didn’t give her one, she challenged herself. I never thought of trying to alter the fudge ingredients to create a pudding. How does her recipe sound?”

“I didn’t just read it. The cooks were busy filling the orders for brownies and fudge, so Walter and I bought a hotplate and a pot at the hardware store down the street. We tried out the recipe in his office.”

Walter was so knowledgeable about the equipment left from our building’s days as a bakery that we asked him to stay on with us. An extra plus was that his many stories about Old Hollywood were very entertaining. He’d developed a personal following among many of our regular walk-in customers. It was at his suggestion that we’d added a small coffee bar in the front area where he could regale people who stayed to drink coffee and eat our brownies.

“Walter made the pudding. I just read out loud Carole Adams’s recipe and handed him what he needed. It’s so easy, and it’s really good. Now I’ve got to figure out the cost of packaging and what we need to do to ship it. If we’re able to add the nut butter fudge pudding to our line, I’m convinced we’ll have a winner.”