Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

“So you want me to talk to this Victor Raynoso. What do you expect that to accomplish? You think he’ll have a TV moment and suddenly confess all his sins because I’ve cornered him with just the right question?”

Her sarcasm was irritating, but I wanted her to do this for me, so I ignored it and applied a speck of butter.

“You’re a skilled attorney, Olivia. What I want is your professional opinion, after you’ve talked to Raynoso, as to whether or not he was the Caffeine an’ Stuff sniper.”

“I’ve crossed swords with Manny Hatch-he’s an ambitious SOB. And stubborn,” she said. “I don’t think he’d deliberately frame anyone for murder, but I wouldn’t put it past him to try to sweep aside something that doesn’t fit his theory of a case.”

“Will you go see Raynoso and let me know what you think?”

“All right. I’ll polish up my crystal ball to take with me.”

“Thank you, Olivia.”

“It’s not a favor. I’m going to bill you-and it’ll include this phone call and my travel time.” She hung up.

It was getting late; the library would close in just a little more than half an hour, but that should give me the time I needed.

Before I got out of the Jeep, I took a cautious glance around. All I saw was the usual cast of characters that strolled along Montana Avenue in good weather: young couples holding hands, older people by themselves or in small groups, dog walkers, window-shoppers studying displays in Santa Monica ’s tempting boutiques. There was no one who seemed to be taking an interest in me, or even looking in my direction.

I stepped down to the pavement, locked the Jeep, and went into the library.

Because I used my card regularly at the Santa Monica Library, I didn’t need to ask the librarian where the fiction section was. I just gave her a friendly wave, headed toward my destination, and went directly to the G shelf. Eight of Roland Gray’s nine spy novels were there; the only one not present-probably checked out-was his current best seller, The Terror Master . I didn’t need that one because at home I had the copy Roland gave me.

I carried the stack of eight novels to the nearest reading table and started my research. By referring to the copyright dates, I was able to lay them out in their order of publication. Beginning with the first of Secret Agent Roger Wilde’s adventures, I opened the book to the Acknowledgments page.

Roland Gray had created MI 9, a fictional department of the British Security Service from which Roger Wilde took his assignments, but it appeared that he had done research, because he thanked “the real-life agents in MI 5 and MI 6, who understandably wish to remain anonymous, for their generosity in sharing their expertise and guidance through the dark and dangerous world of security and espionage.”

Because I was a fan of this kind of thriller, I knew that MI 5 stood for Military Intelligence, Section 5, and is the United Kingdom ’s counterintelligence and security agency. The Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS-also known as MI 6-was the country’s external intelligence agency. Roland’s fictional MI 9 went back and forth across those lines.

It was in the first book’s final authorial “thank you” that I found a name I recognized. The acknowledgement read: “I am grateful to British commando Willis H. Parker for helping me extract Roger Wilde from an impossible situation.”

According to the copyright date, that meant Gray and Parker had known each other for at least nine years.

No familiar names, not even Parker’s, were in Gray’s expressions of gratitude in the second book, but there was an intriguing reference to “the lovely lady who inspired the character of ‘French Toast.’ ”

I remembered that character in the book. “French Toast” was the playful nickname Roger Wilde gave to a woman who was in love with Wilde, but who went to bed with a vicious arms dealer in order to discover information that saved Wilde’s life. She paid for that act with her own life.

Thinking back over the novels in the series, all of which I’d read up until his most recent one, Secret Agent Roger Wilde had proved to be very bad luck for women. Every time he fell in love, the object of his affections died some kind of violent death near the end of the book, just when it seemed as though Wilde would be able to retire from fighting international master criminals and settle down in his beautiful seaside cottage on the Costa del Sol in Malaga, Spain.

Was French Toast a tribute to Yvette Dupree?

Books three and four yielded no familiar names, but in Wilde’s fifth adventure I found this acknowledgement: “My heartfelt appreciation to Eugene Long for his kind hospitality to Roger Wilde and company.”

Flipping again to the copyright date, I saw that book number five had been published four years ago, which indicated that Roland Gray and Eugene Long had known each other for at least that amount of time.

But neither of them had given any indication of it the night of the gala. Are-or were-they friends?

They both knew Yvette Dupree-and quite well, judging from what I’d learned so far. She had cooked for Roland and was an affectionate mother figure to Long’s daughter, Tina.

Thinking about Long and Tina, I remembered something that Phil Logan had told me the afternoon he announced that I was going to be a cook-off judge. While he was warning me that Eileen was going to be hurt by Keith Ingram because Ingram intended to marry superrich Tina Long, he gave me an example of what a doting father she had. Phil said that when Tina was struggling to graduate from a private high school, Long actually bought the school. Then Long had hired “a novelist” to write Tina’s co-valedictorian speech, but that the novelist hadn’t told Tina how to pronounce some of the words. The result was public embarrassment for Tina. I shuddered in sympathy, imagining how painful that must have been for the young girl.

And then I imagined how furious Long must have been at that novelist.

Was the novelist Roland Gray? If so, what had happened between that time and what must have been the previous year, when Gray thanked Long for his hospitality? Did Yvette have something to do with it?

Looking into people’s private lives made me feel uncomfortably like one of those sleuths who uncovered stories for the tabloids, but at least I wasn’t going to make anything I found out public-unless it had to do with Keith Ingram’s murder. I made a note to call Phil Logan as soon as I left the library. If anyone could find out the name of the novelist who had humiliated Tina Long, it was Phil.

There were no other familiar names in the Acknowledgments of books six, seven, and eight. So my next act was to see to whom Gray had dedicated these eight books. The first was to his mother, and the second “to the memory of my beloved mother.”

The next four books were dedicated to his agent, Alan Berger.

Book number seven broke Berger’s streak of dedications, although the agent was thanked warmly on the Acknowledgments page.

The dedication in the seventh Roger Wilde novel was: “To Frank R. Stockton, who understood both Ladies and Tigers.”

That one was easy to decode; it was a reference to the classic short story, written by Frank Stockton, called “The Lady, or the Tiger?” It was one of the most chilling tales I’d ever read. I taught it every year in my old high school English classes because the ending always provoked lively debate among the students. Their answers to my questions “What would you do if you were the hero?” and “What would you do if you were the princess?” revealed important clues about their personalities. From time to time what I learned from that exercise enabled me to motivate them to think about their own futures, and inspire them to get the most they could from their years in school. Sometimes; unfortunately, not often enough.