The Proof is in the Pudding (10 page)

Roland Gray interrupted my thoughts. He had been trying to dry his shirt and jacket with another roll of paper towels, and offered a fat wad of the sheets to me.

I looked at him, puzzled.

“Your dress,” he said.

Dress?
I looked down and gasped. “Oh, Lord!” The front of my peach chiffon gown—my
borrowed
designer creation—was soaked with Ingram’s blood.

Did I have enough money to pay for destroying an original Jorge Allesandro? If Phil Logan didn’t kill me, that designer might.

Eugene Long claimed my attention by appearing with a portable microphone in his hand and taking control of the room.

“All right, everyone. Please, stay calm.” The babble of whispering voices quieted as everyone focused on Long.

“Mike, call the police,” Long said to the nearest security officer, who obeyed his boss. At Long’s raised hand signal, the security man at the entrance to the ballroom moved swiftly to close the doors and stand in front of them.

Long said to his captive audience, “I’m afraid that we’ll all have to remain here until the police arrive, but please move back toward the walls to keep this area around the . . . around this tragic
situation
clear. For those of you who are uncomfortable standing for some length of time, I’ll have the waitstaff bring in chairs.”

Before I could move away, Tina Long pushed her way through the crowd with such force that she almost fell over Ingram’s body. Looking down at him, she started to shriek.

Shoving his microphone under one arm, Long embraced his daughter. With her face pressed against his chest, she stopped screaming, but I could see her shoulders shaking.

“Baby doll, calm down,” Long said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

How is everything going to be all right?
I wondered where Long kept his crystal ball.

Tina babbled something unintelligible and started sobbing and gulping for air.

Yvette Dupree stepped forward, stretched her arms out, and said to the girl. “
Ma cherie
, come.”

With a nod of assent, Eugene Long guided his hysterical daughter into Yvette’s arms.

“Go through the kitchen and take her to my suite,” he said. “Give her some brandy and make her lie down.”

When Long had introduced Yvette, he’d referred to her as his “dear friend.” Apparently, that wasn’t just show business- speak. It was clear to me from the scene I was witnessing that Eugene Long and Yvette Dupree were, at the least, close friends. Tina must know her, too, because she allowed herself to be transferred from her father to the French woman without complaint. And I noticed Yvette didn’t ask the location of Long’s suite as she hurried Tina toward the kitchen doors.

Someone in the crowd yelled, “Hey! How come they can leave and we’re stuck in here?” The voice came from a portly man whose red-veined face suggested that he drank too much port.

Long glared at him. “My daughter is ill.” His tone, colder than a bucket full of ice, discouraged further protest. As though a personality switch had been flipped, he flashed a bright smile. “Hey, waiters—bring everybody here fresh drinks. Including me.”

Seconds after Yvette and Tina disappeared, the ballroom doors opened and six uniformed LAPD officers streamed in.

Roland Gray moved up to stand next to me. “When the owner of the Olympia Grand reports a crime, the police respond more quickly and in greater numbers than they would to the cry of an ordinary citizen,” he said in his clipped English accent.

I was torn between my automatic defense of the police and the realization that Gray was probably correct. In many circumstances, wealth and celebrity bought at least some degree of preferential treatment.

Eugene Long, who had remained next to Ingram’s body like a sentry, waved the police over toward him. Two officers double-timed it in his direction and the other four fanned out around the perimeter of the room.

Long showed them Ingram’s body. The two officers were careful not to go too close to it, and immediately positioned themselves so as to keep anyone else away.

New movement at the ballroom’s entrance caught my eye and I saw another member of the law enforcement fraternity rush into the ballroom, but this one was dressed in black tie: John O’Hara.

John spotted Shannon, Eileen, Liddy, and Bill standing together near the entrance and joined them. Shannon’s expression was stony, but I could see Eileen weeping. John hugged his wife and daughter and murmured a few words. He lifted his head, surveyed the room, and spotted me. He said something to the Marshalls, left Eileen and Shannon with them, and headed toward Long, and where Keith Ingram lay dead.

I stepped forward, preventing John from going closer to the body, and to the police. “I thought you’d gone home,” I whispered.

He shook his head. Noticing the blood on my dress, he said, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. But—”

“That’s the man, Officers!” Eugene Long’s voice boomed. I turned to see him pointing at John O’Hara.

“That’s the man who assaulted Mr. Ingram tonight. Arrest him,” Long demanded.

I could see that the officers recognized John. Puzzled, one of them said, “But this is Lieutenant O’Hara.”

“John?” It was a new voice, but I recognized it. I turned to face John’s partner, LAPD detective Hugh Weaver.

The two partners were striking in their physical contrast: At the age of fifty, John O’Hara was six inches taller than Hugh Weaver, and two years older, but John looked younger. John still had the hardened physique of the football player he’d been in college. Weaver’s body had probably been hard once, but too many burgers with fries, and much too many beers, had turned his beef to lard. I’d never seen Weaver without his clothes—and any circumstance in which that could happen was unimaginable to me—but I was pretty sure that his body would look like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s.

Weaver said, “Hey, John—you didn’t answer your phone. How’d you get here before me?”

“I was here already. And I took tonight off, remember?”

Weaver, careful not to step in Ingram’s blood, leaned over, gave the body a cursory look, straightened again. Indicating the victim, he asked John, “Who’s that?”

“Keith Ingram.”

Long inserted himself between the partners and addressed Weaver. “Are you the detective in charge?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

Long appeared startled, as though he couldn’t believe Weaver hadn’t recognized him. “I’m Eugene Long, owner of this hotel.” I half expected Long to add that his taxes paid Weaver’s salary, but he didn’t.

“The dead man is Keith Ingram, a nationally syndicated food critic and one of the judges at our Celebrity Cook-Off.” Long jabbed his forefinger toward John. “Earlier tonight this man physically attacked Mr. Ingram. I had him removed from the premises, but I think it’s likely that he slipped back into the crowd and committed the murder.”

“You do, huh?” Weaver lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug and curved his lips into a false smile. “Well, since you solved the case, I guess we can all go home.”

Long’s posture stiffened. “I do not appreciate that brand of sarcasm.”

“No? I got some others I can use.”

A flush reddened Long’s cheeks.

I wasn’t fond of Hugh Weaver, but at that moment I could have hugged him for putting the arrogant billionaire in his place.

Weaver ignored Long and focused on John. “Did you ‘assault’ this Ingram guy?”

“I hit him. It was close to an hour ago.”

“Was he injured? Did you knock him down?”

“Ingram got back up pretty quickly,” I said. “And he carried right on with the judging, so I don’t think John hurt him.”

Weaver asked John, “What did you do after the altercation?”

“I left,” John said.

“Where’d you go?”

“For a walk, to cool off. I stayed on the hotel grounds because my wife and daughter are here. I came back inside when I saw cops arriving.”

“You’re going to have to give a formal statement,” Weaver said.

John nodded. “Of course. You’ll have it in the morning.”

Long’s expression was set on
sneer
. “O’Hara said he went for a walk. That means he doesn’t have an alibi.”

Weaver sneered right back at Long. “You watch too many TV cop shows.” He glanced around and wrinkled his nose in distaste. “What’s that smell?”

“The last whiffs from the smoke bomb and burned food,” I said. “Most of the cooks abandoned their stoves when the chaos started.”

John’s partner had registered my presence with a brief nod when he arrived, but now he focused his attention on me. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m one of the cook-off judges.”

“Did you see who killed Ingram?”

“No. I was watching an actor who was juggling. Then somebody set off a smoke bomb—”

“Save it,” Weaver said. He was looking at the entrance to the ballroom. I followed his gaze and saw the arrival of a man and a woman wearing Windbreakers that identified them as members of the police Scientific Investigation Division. I’d never seen those two before, but I recognized the woman who came in with them: Dr. Sidney Carver, LA’s new medical examiner. Her nod at Weaver was perfunctory, but she smiled warmly at John.

In a wry tone, she said, “This better be worth my missing the
NCIS
marathon. So, what have you got for me, Big John?”

“He’s not on the job tonight,” Weaver said.

“John O’Hara is a suspect,” Long announced.

Dr. Carver cocked her head and lifted one eyebrow. “This promises to be an interesting case.”

I’d first met her a few months earlier, at the scene of another brutal murder, when I’d had the misfortune to be the person who discovered the victim. Dr. Carver’s pewter gray hair was cut short and shaggy, she wore glasses with outsized red frames, her clothes reeked of cigarette smoke, and her manner with everyone except John was as stinging as peroxide on a fresh cut. It was clear that she liked John, but I’d yet to see her smile at anyone else. I knew John liked her, too, because he told me it was a pleasure to work with a medical examiner that was so good at what she did.

Not long after she was hired, Nicholas had interviewed her for an article in the
Chronicle
. He told me he’d commented that her gray hair was an anomaly with her younger-looking face, and asked her age. She’d replied that it was none of his “f***ing business,” but if he insisted on printing something, then he could quote her as saying she was “somewhere between fifty and death.” He’d followed that question by asking if she was married, or had a significant other. Nicholas said she’d looked at him as though deciding where to cut and replied, “When I meet a man of the appropriate age, education, and income, it’s usually in my professional capacity.”

Dr. Carver drew on a pair of latex gloves and knelt to examine Ingram’s body as SID techs photographed the scene.

Weaver moved back a few steps. “John, go stand with Shannon and Eileen. Long, take a seat somewhere out of the way. I’ll talk to you in a few minutes.”

Without a word, John did as Weaver instructed.

Long grumbled. He, too, obeyed, but instead of finding a place in the crowd to await his turn for questioning, Long strode to the stage. He picked up the microphone and made that annoying
tap-tap-tap
noise to be sure it was live.

“Hello, everyone. I’m afraid that this hasn’t turned out to be the event we signed up for. It’s a very sad night with the loss of one of the titans of the world of food criticism, and now we must remain here for a while as the police do their work. To make your waiting time a little easier, I’m going to instruct our staff to bring you all anything you’d like to eat or drink—on the house. Anything our kitchen can make or pour.”

Scattered applause greeted that announcement. Long smiled, but held up his hand for quiet. “That’s not all. Tonight was supposed to bring the charity of our winning star’s choice a check for one hundred thousand dollars. Obviously, the contest can’t be completed, so I’m going to send to the charity chosen by each of our twenty competing celebrities a check for ten thousand dollars—”

Much louder applause interrupted him. Long smiled at that, but after a moment held up his hand to stop it.

“Thank you, but that’s not all. Each of you who came to watch the cook-off donated five hundred dollars to the Healthy Life Fund to be here. Well, to show our appreciation for your patience, we’re going to match every one of those five-hundred-dollar donations with my own personal check to that fund. We’ll work from the guest list, and be sure that each donation will be in your individual names, so remember to deduct the additional five hundred when tax time comes around.” Long’s face assumed a somber expression. “There’s been a tragic death in our midst tonight, but we’re going to make sure some good comes out of it.”

In a wry tone, Roland Gray said, “Did you notice that he’s using the ‘royal we’? ‘
We’re
going to match’ and ‘
we’re
going to make sure’ and so forth. My guess is that he’s intending to run for public office in the next few years. Probably for governor.”