Pie A La Murder (20 page)

Nicholas wasn’t home. His car wasn’t in the carport. Nevertheless, I climbed the few steps to his front door and rang the bell. Rang it repeatedly. His doorbell sounded in chimes. I could hear them inside, but, as in that famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

“You looking for Nick?”

It was a male voice, coming from the sidewalk below me. I turned to see a man with a shock of white hair, clearly well north of seventy, a little stooped, with a small dog on a leash. It looked like a terrier mix.

“Yes, I was.”

“He drove out ’bout ten o’clock.” He gestured toward his dog. “Ruby an’ I were just coming back from our bedtime walk. Doesn’t look like Nick’s been home all night.”

“Did he mention where he was going?”

“Oh, we didn’t talk. I waved at him, but I don’t think he saw me. If you want to leave him a note, he’s got a mail slot in the door.”

I came back down the steps. “Maybe I’ll call him later.”

The man was peering though the Jeep’s window at Tuffy. “That’s a fine-looking dog you’ve got there.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Man’s best friend,” he said.

“Woman’s, too,” I said, climbing into the Jeep.

As I drove away, my confusion at not having heard from Nicholas fought with my concern for him. Where was he? What was he doing? If we were meant to have a future together, he would have to understand I would not accept being shut out.

My impulsive trip didn’t accomplish what I’d hoped, but at least Tuffy enjoyed the ride.

Home again, I washed my hands and went into the kitchen to make the low-calorie Strawberry Cloud Pie that I planned to demonstrate at the Mommy and Me class at ten o’clock. We would have time to prepare it, and other dishes, during this session featuring low-calorie meals, but the Strawberry Cloud Pie had to be chilled for at least two hours before the moms and children could eat it, so I would bring the finished product with me for them to taste.

As I was packing the items I’d need to teach both the Mommy and Me class, and the cooking class for adults from one to three PM, Eileen came into the kitchen. Grinning.

“I just got an e-mail from your friend Carole Adams.”

I looked up from packing the Strawberry Cloud Pie in a cooler lined with plastic bags full of ice cubes.

Carole, a friend I’d known since high school, who now lived in Delaware with her husband and two beautiful Korat cats, had created the best fudge—Chocolate Nut Butter—I’d ever eaten. She had given me the recipe. It was the first item that Eileen and I began to sell in our little mail-order and retail dessert business. A few months later, Carole turned her fudge recipe into Chocolate Nut Butter pudding. It’s so delicious we’re selling pots of that, too, along with our line of cakes, cookies, and brownies.

“You’ll never guess what she’s done now,” Eileen said.

“I can’t imagine.”

“First thing, she wants me to tell you she’s formed a team to compete in the bake sales for charity contest. She said she looked up the rules on the channel’s Web site and it’s okay that you two are friends because you don’t have anything to do with choosing the winner. It’s all a matter of which team donates the most money to their cause.”

“Carole has so much energy she might raise enough to win the trip to Hollywood. I’d love to see her again.”

“But that’s not what I’m so excited about,” Eileen said. “She’s been experimenting, testing versions on her husband and neighbors, and now she’s turned her fudge and pudding recipes into a three-layer pie version. She’s come up with a chocolate nut butter cookie crust on the bottom, then a layer of the fudge, then a layer of pudding on top. She calls it ‘Carole’s Deadly Chocolate Nut Butter Pie à la Mode.’ I think I gained five pounds just reading the recipe she sent us. She warned that it’s addicting.”

“Sounds as though it should come with a surgeon general’s warning on the plate,” I said.

“I’m going to the shop to make one this afternoon. While I’m doing it, I’ll cost out the ingredients to see if we can sell it for an affordable price without cutting quality.”

“Great idea.”

“Come over after class to taste test.”

“Can’t,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment this afternoon for some new professional photos.”

That surprised her. “You hate having still pictures taken.”

“Unfortunately, I need them. My hair is longer now than when I started on the show. Bring a piece of Carole’s ‘Deadly’ pie home for me.”

“If there’s any left. Our employees are all sugar junkies.”

Gesturing to the cooler and my tote bag, she asked, “Do you want help loading up for class?”

“No, thanks. I put the rest of what I’ll need in the Jeep earlier, along with my outfits for the photos.”

“If you’ve got it covered, I’m going to make myself a quick breakfast and get to the shop.” Her tone was full of affection as she added, “Aunt Del, I know you’d rather have a tooth filled than sit for publicity shots, but don’t freeze up in front of the camera. Just be yourself, like on TV.”

“All right. I promise.”

Saying that I was going to be photographed this afternoon was true as far as it went, but my lie of omission made me remember the discussion we’d had a few days ago. What I had just told Eileen was another example of “truth with an asterisk.”

After securing all the food items I’d need in the back of the Jeep, I climbed into the driver’s seat. Before I turned on the ignition, I dialed Nicholas’s numbers.

No answer on his home phone. No answer on his cell.

I didn’t leave a message on either of his numbers.

My little cooking school, The Happy Table, is located in the rear of a home appliance store on Montana Avenue and Seventeenth Street in Santa Monica. A very nice, elderly Vietnamese couple, Mr. and Mrs. Luc Tran, own the store and allow me to rent what had formerly been a large storage room, where they had lived when they first went into business. As the enterprise became successful, they moved into the apartment upstairs. My good luck was finding that a bathroom and running water were already in the space when I was looking for a location for the school.

The Trans, refugees from South Vietnam, had spent years either trapped in war or waiting in camps for their turn to emigrate to the US. In spite of the horrors they must have endured, Mrs. Tran’s demeanor was always sunny. Mr. Tran, frail from what she had told me were his several years of imprisonment in North Vietnam, spoke little, but his eyes were warm and kind. I liked them, and admired them. Over the years, when I faced some inconvenience, rather than let it upset me, I reminded myself of the Trans and what they had gone through. It snapped me right out of any trace of self-pity.

My arrangement with the Trans was that they supplied the six freestanding working stoves on which my students would cook and bake. In addition to the rent I paid, having my school in the rear of the store was to their advantage because it meant that anyone coming to The Happy Table had to reach it by walking a winding path through artful displays of their wares. My students not only bought their merchandise, but often returned with friends to shop for more items for their homes.

That Saturday, I managed to put worry about Nicholas out of my mind during the classes I taught, and found pleasure in the people who enjoyed learning new things about cooking. It was special fun to watch the children, who were excited to be creating good things to eat with their mothers. Part of the Mommy and Me class was encouraging the “mes” to help their “mommies” neaten up after the cooking and the subsequent eating.

My class for adults was composed mostly of widowed men who wanted to learn to cook for themselves, and three widows and a divorcée who said they’d enrolled to expand their food knowledge. I suspected that the women were more interested in meeting single men. There was also a young couple who planned to share kitchen duties, and wanted to learn how to make meals that tasted as good as what they’d order in restaurants but cost a lot less.

The student who always arrived first and left last was a silver-haired man who dressed like a Broadway dandy from a 1940s movie musical: freshly barbered and shaved, with an ascot around his neck and a white carnation in his lapel. His name was Harmon Dubois, and he must have been close to eighty years old, but walked with the quick steps of a man half his age.

Eileen jokingly referred to him as “the suck-up” because on the second week of class he brought me a bouquet of pink roses he said he’d handpicked from his garden, and on the third week presented me with his self-published book of poetry titled
Dark-Haired Goddesses
. When I opened the slim volume to the page where he’d placed a bookmark, I saw he had autographed it to me as his “muse.” He said he’d been inspired to write it when he saw my television show. He and his late wife—who, like me, had dark hair, he said—watched every episode during her final illness. Those months had compelled him to begin writing poetry, and to learn to cook.

In class, Harmon made a habit of walking behind me, wiping off countertops, and generally helping to clean up. I usually found his extreme attentiveness a little much and tried to discourage it, but today I was thankful he was there because I needed to leave class as quickly as possible after three o’clock to meet Liddy and Shannon for our trip to Roxanne Redding’s home studio. His help with straightening up and taking out the trash would save me a precious fifteen minutes.

The big hit of today’s session in my adults’ class was a new creation by my producer friend, Fred Caruso. Fred was a terrific Italian cook with a sense of humor. He had dubbed his new main dish “Don’t Be a Fool, Eat Fred’s Pasta Fazool.”

As usual, when I asked for comments, Harmon spoke up first, declaring the pasta to be “worthy of the lovely lady who just taught us how to make it.”

Our plan was that Shannon and I would meet at my house at three thirty and go together to Roxanne Redding’s home and studio in Brentwood. Liddy lived in Beverly Hills, which was on the other side of Brentwood, so she was going to catch up with us there.

Thanks to Harmon Dubois’s after-class help, I got home at three twenty. I thought I’d be ten minutes ahead of Shannon, but she was already there, sitting on the front stoop with Tuffy, who started wagging his back end when he saw me.

Shannon said, “I got here at three so I could take Tuffy for a walk in case you were late. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, but how did you get in? Eileen’s at our store.”

“I remembered where you hid your spare key.” She gestured toward the ceramic statue of a black poodle that stood next to a pot of red geraniums beside the stoop. “I put it back under your little replica of Big Tuff.”

While greeting Tuffy with a vigorous two-handed petting, I said, “Remind me to give you a key for emergencies. Liddy has one. In fact”—I lifted up the poodle figure and removed the key Shannon had used—“take this one. I shouldn’t keep it here. It’s the first place a burglar is likely to look.”

Shannon slipped the key into one of the pockets in her cargo pants.

I had been so surprised to see her outside with Tuffy when I came home that I hadn’t immediately noticed what she was wearing: olive green cargo pants and a matching safari jacket. It was an unusual look for Shannon, who had always chosen clothes that were closer-fitting, to make herself look slimmer. I asked, “Is that a new outfit?”

“From this morning. I went shopping with Liddy because I wanted to get something so I could conceal . . . this.” She pulled an object out of her jacket pocket that fit into the palm of her hand. It took me a moment to realize it was a small camera.

Shannon beamed. “It’s digital. The latest thing from that spy shop we went to. Takes a hundred pictures before you have to put in a new
whatchamacallit
—the brain card. Liddy got one, too. We practiced for an hour and now we can work ’em just with our fingers, without even looking. Honey, we are
set
to investigate.”

“Thank you.”

I hugged her for her loyalty, and because I was so happy to see her well. She—not to mention John and Eileen—had suffered through her long, dark years of psychotic breakdowns and hospitalizations, until finally the right doctor and the right combination of medications had given her back her life.

When I’d phoned Roxanne Redding the day before, I was prepared to have a difficult time getting her to agree to photograph me, considering that we’d last seen each other the night of her husband’s murder. But she hadn’t been as hard to persuade as I’d feared, even after she remembered who I was. Not that she was eager to do it, but she admitted that she could use the distraction of work. She quoted a price of eight hundred dollars for the session, for which I would receive two finished prints of my choosing. Additional prints could be purchased separately. There would be an extra charge for anything more than minimal retouching.