Pie A La Murder (7 page)

“You will.”

My quiet statement seemed to surprise her, then I saw the proverbial lightbulb go off in her head.

“Oh, so
you’re
the one Daddy’s sleeping with. I thought it was Liddy,” she said.

I heard Liddy gasp. “Celeste, you know I’m married.”

Celeste shrugged. “In Europe married people sleep with other people all the time. I’m sure they do in America, too. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a very big deal!” Liddy said. “If I ever caught Bill cheating, I wouldn’t divorce him, I’d kill him. And if the situation were reversed, and I did such a thing, I’d expect him to kill me, because we love each other.”

She thought Nicholas was seeing Liddy because Liddy’s a stunning blonde, probably like Celeste’s mother
.

“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I said lightly.

Celeste stared at me so intently I wondered if she was trying to read my thoughts.

I stared back at her. “What is it?”

Before she could reply, we heard the cell phone in her little pouch ring. When she pulled it out and saw the caller ID she pushed “Answer.”

“Hi, Daddy . . . I’m at Liddy’s, why?” Celeste screwed up her perfect features in a scowl. “No, I didn’t know Mummy was coming. Why did she call
you
? . . . Oh. I just said Disneyland because it was the first thing that came into my head. . . . Okay . . . I’ll leave now. Bye.” She disconnected and looked at Liddy expectantly. “Daddy’s on his way home. Can we go?”

Nicholas lived in the bottom half of a town house in the Larchmont section of Los Angeles. With its sidewalks dotted with slender trees planted in dirt that was surrounded protectively by concrete, his street was more like a little slice of New York City than a neighborhood in Southern California.

During most of the ten-minute drive from Beverly Hills, it was silent inside Liddy’s Rover.

Leaving Maple Drive, Celeste told Liddy that she appreciated being taken to the luncheon. Liddy replied that she was sorry it was cut short before she could introduce Celeste to more people.

“That’s all right. I found out I need to prove I’m photogenic before I can go to auditions.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, and Celeste didn’t say anything to me.

When we arrived, I saw that Nicholas’s car wasn’t in the carport beside the town house. “Would you like us to wait with you until your father comes home?” I asked Celeste.

“No, thank you. I have my key. Good-bye, Liddy. Della.”

She climbed down onto the sidewalk and hurried up to Nicholas’s front door. We watched until she was safely inside.

“She must take after her mother.” Liddy started the car and pulled out into traffic. “I don’t envy you, Del.”

“There’s hardly anything good in life that comes free, without some price tag.”

I was thinking about Nicholas, but I was also thinking about Mack, who had been a police detective. There hadn’t been a day that he left the house when I wasn’t afraid something terrible would happen to him. When the phone call I dreaded finally came, it hadn’t been what I’d feared; instead of being shot by some criminal, he’d had a fatal heart attack while jogging. After losing Mack, I was sure I’d never fall in love again. Then two years later I met Nicholas.

“I was in labor with the twins for twenty-one hours,” Liddy said. “You remember—you were there. I was cursing at Bill, and swearing I’d never go through that again. But after a few weeks, loving those babies so much, I forgot about the pain and hoped I’d get pregnant again. Some things are just worth what you have to go through to get them.”

When we arrived at my place, I saw Eileen O’Hara’s little red VW in the driveway. I said good-bye to Liddy and let myself into the house. Tuffy was waiting for me, his pompom of a tail and his whole back end wagging an enthusiastic greeting.

“Hi, Tuff. I’m glad to see you, too. Let me put my things down and check messages and then we’ll go for a long walk.”

Tuffy followed me into the back of the house, where I found Eileen at the kitchen table, making notes on one of the white legal pads I use to plan the TV shows and cooking classes. Last year, shortly before she graduated from UCLA, my twenty-two-year-old honorary daughter had come up with the idea for our retail and mail-order dessert business, Della’s Sweet Dreams. She had earned her partnership in the company by persuading my channel-owner boss Mickey Jordan to put up the money to launch it as a cross-promotion with the TV show. She’d since proved to be an excellent partner, handling the day-to-day business with our store manager, which left me free to create new items for us to sell.

Tall, pretty, naturally blonde of a shade between Liddy’s dark honey and Celeste’s pale corn silk, Eileen was athletically slim, but curvier than ultrathin Celeste. I knew she’d come from our shop this afternoon because she was wearing business clothes: a light blue cotton shirt tucked into a black A-line skirt, with her favorite navy blue blazer hung over the back of a kitchen chair.

I looked over her shoulder. “How are we doing?”

“Really well. If sales keep up, we’ll be able to pay Mickey back sooner than expected. The new sugar-free line for diabetics is selling beyond projections.”

“You’ve just given me an idea. I think I’ll do a show on that subject. And a Mommy and Me class teaching that sugar-free can be delicious.”

Eileen sat up straighter. Her shoulders stiffened and the smile on her face disappeared. “Speaking of ‘Mommies and Mes’—what’s she like?”

“Who?”

“Your future stepdaughter. We haven’t had a chance to talk since you met her at your show last night.” I was surprised to hear a slight edge in Eileen’s voice.

She said, “If you and Nick get married, and he moves in here, I suppose she’ll have my room.”

I sat down opposite her and put my hand over hers. “Honey, if you want to, you can live here until you have to start dyeing your hair to cover the gray. Or until we’re both old ladies with poodles and cats. Regardless of what Nicholas and I decide to do, this will be your home as long as you want it to be.”

That un-stiffened her. She smiled at me and gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Thanks, Aunt Del. I’m so busy with the Sweet Dreams business that I don’t have time to even think about moving into a place of my own right now. And I’m banking every dollar I don’t have to spend so one day whether I’m alone or married I can buy a house, like you and Uncle Mack did.”

I stood. “I’m going to change and take Tuffy for a walk, then I’m going to think about sugar-free recipes.”

“Do you like her? Nick’s daughter?”

“I don’t know her very well yet. She’s a bit prickly—but it’s probably been difficult for her to grow up without a father.”

“Teenage girls can be the worst!” Eileen said.

“It wasn’t so long ago that you were a teenager, and you weren’t any trouble at all.”

“Ha!” Eileen gave me a wicked little smile. “You just think that because you don’t know everything I did.”

It took a moment to process that statement, but then I gave her a hug. “Since you turned out so well, I thank you for keeping some things from me.”

By midnight, twelve hours after he had dropped Celeste off so Liddy and I could take her to the luncheon, I hadn’t heard from Nicholas. With both his daughter and now his ex-wife in town, I was beginning to think that I was never going to hear from him again. I’d gone from being annoyed at dinnertime to downright angry by the time Tuffy and I came back from our bedtime walk and there had been neither a cell phone call nor a message on my landline.

I was in bed reading
Fiddlers
, the last of Ed McBain’s fifty-five 87th Precinct novels. I’d bought it several years ago, but put off reading it because the author died and there would be no more. Settled against a backrest of pillows, with Emma curled up next to my waist and Tuffy reclining at the foot of the bed, I was on chapter two when Nicholas called.

“I hoped I’d get back to the apartment in time to see you at least for a minute, when you and Liddy dropped Celeste off, but I got held up at the paper, having to add new information to my story on the Crawford murder.”

“We offered to wait with Celeste until you returned, but she didn’t want us to.” I paused, then asked, “How are things going?”

“Good. Better than I dared hope.” I heard happiness in his voice. “Honey, she’s sweet and smart. Surprisingly levelheaded in her approach to wanting to become an actress. But she’s not self-centered. She wants to know about me, my life here. She asked to read copies of my articles. I told her where to find them on the Internet. She has a pink laptop.”

I wasn’t interested in the color of her computer. Sounding carefully neutral, I asked, “Have you seen her mother yet?”

The warm tone of his voice dropped a good twenty degrees. “No, but we’ve talked on the phone.”

“Did she tell you why she’s here?”

“It seems that Celeste left Vienna while Tanis was vacationing in Rio. Vacationing from
what
, don’t ask me. Tanis didn’t know she was gone until she returned and found Celeste’s note.”

“I hope she’s not going to yank her away from you again.”

“No, she’s not taking her back to Europe. I have a suspicion that Tanis doesn’t really want her back, but she’s playing the mother card.”

“What do you mean?”

“She said she’s come here to be sure that Celeste will be in a ‘positive environment.’ She actually said she wants to be sure I’ll look after Celeste, keep her out of trouble.”

I remembered what Eileen had said about having kept things from me when she was Celeste’s age. “Teenage girls are as slippery as a ball of mercury, but if anyone can do it, you can.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I wish Celeste’s mother had your high opinion of me.”

“I have a very high opinion of you in all areas,” I said softly.

I heard his throaty chuckle, and the sound of it vibrated through my body.

“Tomorrow you’re teaching your class and I’m taking Celeste out to get her a car—something safe and reliable. But tomorrow night she’s having dinner with her mother. Are you free to have dinner with me? I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“Come here,” I said. “I’ll make something for us. Name your favorite dish.”

“You.” That was what I’d hoped he’d say, and as he proceeded to elaborate on that theme, I felt a flush creeping up my cheeks.