The Proof is in the Pudding (34 page)

When Roberto returned, having vetted me, he was smiling. “Sorry about that.” He didn’t specify what “that” was. “The private elevators are at the far end of the bank of public elevators.” He pointed. “Between the potted palms and the ladies’ lounge. You’ll want Elevator A. You don’t want B; that would take you to the corporate offices.”

I thanked him, and headed toward the palm trees.

The two elevators, “A” and “B,” were differentiated from the public lifts by a waist-high brass stand holding a large white card that said “Private.” Surveillance cameras above the doors covered all of the elevators, both public and private.

As I approached, I didn’t see a button one could press to summon the elevator and realized that access from the lobby required a key, inserted into a brass plate by the doors. But when I stepped in front of Elevator A, the doors opened with a soft
whoosh
.

The doors closed behind me the moment I was inside. This private elevator was half the size of what was usual in a hotel, and it had a small bench covered in burgundy velvet along the back wall. I supposed it was there in case one needed to sit during the arduous journey of twenty floors, up or down. Being of hardy Scottish stock, I roughed it and stood all the way. Above my head was another camera. It was tempting to wave at whoever might be watching, but I repressed the urge to be juvenile. After all, I was a mature woman, secretly investigating a murder. That called for dignity.

Elevator A’s doors opened at the penthouse floor with a barely audible whisper. I stepped out into a burgundy-carpeted corridor, which ran to my left, down past several closed doors. A breakfast cart with dirty dishes and a crumpled napkin stood outside one of them. Long’s offices, reached by Elevator B, must be located behind the wall on my right. Because I couldn’t imagine Long going down to the lobby in Elevator A to take Elevator B back up to the top floor, I was sure access to the office half of the penthouse layout must be through interior doors.

Directly in front of me, golden oak double doors with brass accents opened to reveal Eugene Long. His thick silver mane looked freshly tended; a few silver chest hairs peeked out from the V made by the open top button on his black silk shirt.

The only other time I’d seen the man was at the gala, when he was wearing a dinner jacket. Now, dressed informally in the black shirt and black slacks with no jacket, he exposed a paunchy middle. My brother Sean, a Navy doctor, had said that particular kind of protrusion was usually “a drinker’s belly.”

Long extended his hand in greeting. “Ms. Carmichael.
Della.
Please come in.”

He stepped aside and gestured for me to precede him into a living room that looked to be the size of a tennis court. A wall of windows looked out onto a magnificent view, mostly of the sky. A line from an old song ran through my head: “On a clear day, you can see forever . . .”

Soft lighting came from crystal wall sconces and a crystal and brass chandelier above us that was turned to dim. They weren’t needed; the natural light was strong enough even for reading.

Glancing around, I saw four deep club chairs and two sofas, all upholstered in warm earth tones and separated by sparkling glass and brass coffee tables and antique-looking mahogany end tables.

The walls were covered in a pale green fabric and formed the background for several large modern paintings. I’m only minimally familiar with twentieth-century artists, but I did recognize two David Hockney canvases because I’d seen them reproduced in a decorating magazine of Liddy’s.

If those were original Hockneys, and the other canvases were genuine and by celebrated artists, then the six paintings in Long’s living room were probably worth more than my house in Santa Monica. His chandelier had surely cost more than my Jeep.

“Please sit down,” Long said, indicting one of the club chairs. Next to it was a lovely arrangement of fresh tulips in a green crystal bowl.

I sat and he perched on the edge of the sofa positioned at an angle to me. On either side of the living room were golden oak doors. The one on the left side of the room, facing me but behind Long, was slightly ajar. Across the room, the door on the right was closed. Although that one must have led to the billionaire’s corporate offices, I couldn’t hear any activity. I realized this room must be soundproof.

“May I order you breakfast?” Long asked. “They can make anything you want down in the kitchen.”

“Actually,” I said, giving a nervous laugh and feigning shyness, “it’s Happy Hour in Australia, so do you suppose I could have a little drink?”

In anticipation of this meeting, just before I left the house I’d had a huge breakfast: three eggs scrambled in butter, three pieces of bacon, and four big slices of ciabatta bread that I dipped into a dish of olive oil. This wasn’t at all my usual morning meal, but I needed to line my stomach. And it wasn’t my idea—it was Benjamin Franklin’s. Somewhere I’d read that when he was asked why he thought he’d been such a great success as a diplomat, he’d replied that he owed it to his ability to drink every other diplomat under the table, and his secret was consuming olive oil before getting together with them. After what I’d forced down, I hoped Mr. Franklin had been serious and not joking.

Long aimed a huge smile at me. “Della, you are a woman after my own heart.” He stood and headed for a mahogany cabinet below one of the paintings. “Australia just became my favorite continent.” He opened the cabinet to display a bar with an impressive array of bottles. “What will you have?”

“I hate to drink alone,” I said. “I’ll have whatever you’re going to have.”

“Scotch. The nectar of the gods.”

“That’s perfect,” I said. “My ancestors came from Scotland. But I thought the nectar of the gods was nectar.”

“Depends on where you worship.” He took two glasses from a shelf and started to pour.

He returned with our drinks and handed one of them to me. This time he didn’t perch on the edge of the sofa; he settled back against the big, puffy cushions.

Long raised his glass and toasted: “To that rare woman who knows how to live. Cheers—and may we good people outlast all the bastards.”

I tipped my glass in his direction. He took a swallow and I took a sip. While he added a second sofa cushion to the one behind his back, I moved the bowl of flowers closer to me.

“When you called, you said you wanted to talk about my being a guest on your cooking show.”

“Yes. You’re such an enormous success in so many fields I thought it would be interesting for the public to see a more
relatable
side to you,” I said. “My thought was that you and I would prepare a dish together—any dish you chose—and as we did that, you could talk about what you like to do when you’re not out conquering the world.”

He chuckled at that; I suspected he liked the image of himself conquering the world.

“The viewers already know Eugene Long, the titan,” I said. “I’d like to show them Gene Long, the man.”

“What gave you that idea?”

I made a show of looking uncomfortable. “I hate to say this, because it might sound as though I’m taking advantage of a tragedy, but it occurred to me last week at your gala. After the—after the terrible thing that happened to Keith, the way you took charge of the people there and kept everyone calm. I was tremendously impressed with how you handled things in a crisis.”

He took another swallow while I touched the rim of my glass to my lips.

“And, too,” I said, “it moved me how sensitive you were to your daughter’s feelings.”

“My baby doll . . . the love of my life.” He finished his drink and got up. “Can I get you another?”

“Not quite yet,” I said, taking another tiny sip.

He refilled his glass and came back to the sofa. “My Tina’s the one you should have on your show. She can cook. I don’t know a toaster from a toilet.”

“I think you’d learn pretty quickly if you ever tried to make toast.”

He either ignored my attempt at humor or he didn’t hear me, because he went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “Yvette taught her to cook. Now she’s a wonder in the kitchen.”

“Having Tina as my guest. That’s a fascinating idea.” I smiled at him over the rim of my glass. “How is she doing? What happened must be especially hard on her. I heard she and Keith were engaged.”

“She’s okay. Cried for three days, but it’s winding down.”

“Tina and Keith would have made a handsome couple. Did you like him?”

Long nodded as he swallowed. “I could talk to him—not like some of those male model types she used to bring around. He’d have made a good first husband.”

Looking thoughtful, and a little sad, he swallowed more scotch.

I pretended to take another sip before I said, “Tina’s such a beautiful girl. Do you think she’d be willing to cook with me on camera?”

“My baby doll never met a camera she didn’t like. She—”

He was interrupted by the ringing of the cordless phone on the end table between us, on the other side of the bowl of flowers.

Scowling, he snatched it up. “Georgie, I told you to hold my calls.” He took another swallow as he listened briefly. “That’s not my idea of a crisis. Tell him to go—” Long glanced at me. “Tell him to go do something anatomically impossible to himself. And don’t ring this line again until I say so.” He disconnected and tried to put the phone back in its charger, fumbled, but managed to get it set correctly on the second try.

Eugene Long was getting drunk. A couple more glasses of scotch, and I’d have him in the right state to answer my
real
questions.

An hour later, Long had refilled his glass a few more times and was clearly inebriated. He returned to the sofa with his whichever drink and my third. I’d continued to take only sips, and to pour most of my scotch into the bowl of flowers when he turned his head away from me, but I was getting a bit of a buzz.

Drinking had never been a part of my social life. Enjoying a glass of red wine at dinner in a restaurant or if I had guests at home was the extent of my alcohol intake. In spite of my attempt to cushion the hard liquor with a Benjamin Franklin breakfast, my stomach was reacting with mild displeasure. I realized that I had to get the information I needed before it surged into violent rebellion.

As we drank, I kept him talking about what interested him, mostly himself and his daughter. The one possibly relevant tidbit he’d revealed so far was that he and Yvette Dupree had never had a romantic relationship.

“Not that I didn’t want to at first, years ago, but she was seeing somebody an’ wouldn’t play naked with ole Gene.” He sighed and drank. “Better this way. If we’da done the nasty an’ then broke up, that would have hurt my baby doll. Angel loves Yvette like a mamma. My wife died, ya know.”

I didn’t know that, but I murmured words of sympathy.

He stared down into his drink for a moment.

“Life’s a bitch,” he said.

This was my chance. “It sure is. A few months ago I had to deal with a woman who tried to destroy me.”

Long grunted. “You shoulda come to me—I know how to handle problems like that.” Long swallowed the rest of the scotch in his glass and got up for a refill. He wasn’t entirely steady on his feet, but he wasn’t stumbling. I was astonished at how much that man could drink and still walk and talk.

He came back with his fresh glass and one for me. As I still held one in my right hand, I reached for the other with my left.

Laughing, he called me a two-fisted drinker.

Long flopped down on the couch and rested his head against the back of it. I put the new drink down on the coffee table and leaned closer to him.

“What did you mean, about knowing how to handle an enemy?”

He chuckled, winked at me, and then stared into space.

“Won’t you tell me, Gene? I went through a really terrible time with her.”

“Couldn’ta been worse than what that rotten snake-bastard-writer did to my baby doll. But I was gonna get him back—an’ get him back good, good, good.” He scowled again. “Then somebody killed Keith an’ we couldn’t go through with it. Damn!”

At last I was getting somewhere—or at the edge of somewhere. I knew I had to dig before the distress in my stomach got worse, so I took a chance and pushed a bit.

Faking awe in my voice, I leaned close to him again and asked, “So Keith was going to help you get back at Roland Gray? That’s wonderful.”

“Woulda been . . . Jeez, we had a perfect plan . . .”

I widened my eyes to signal fascination. “What was it?”

“Our plan was why I put together the big charity deal. All that work blew up in my face ’cause some scumbag hadda kill Keith
that
night. He couldn’ta waited.” Long muttered a curse.

“To organize that spectacular evening as a cover for your plan—Oh! It must have been brilliant,” I said breathlessly.

Long nodded agreement. And swallowed more scotch.