Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (5 page)

“Dear Madame Gushenka, we are so thrilled to have you join us! Let me introduce everyone!”

“Pah!” sneered the fortune-teller, with a swish of veils. “I know them all! Secrets cannot be concealed from those who have the Power!” With vigor, she attacked her cream puff, forestalling further conversation.

Judith almost smacked Renie with the swinging door.

“Sorry. I didn’t know you were spying. Where did Otto go?”

“Otto?” Renie cocked her head to one side and made a haphazard effort to brush the flour from her sweatshirt. “The can, probably. Shoot, I got flour all over your floor. It’s even on my shoes.”

“Never mind, I’ll sprinkle some catnip on it and Sweetums can lick it off later. He’s much cheaper than a mop. In fact, he sort of looks like a mop.” She paused in the act of returning the cream carton to the refrigerator. “How much of a phony do you think Madame Gushenka really is?”

Renie shrugged. “They’re all phonies. Fortune-tellers, I mean. Though in this case, maybe the Brodies are, too. Still,”

she went on quite seriously, “Bill has a theory that some people are so sensitive to others and so perceptive that they can actually see—”

She stopped as Ellie came diffidently through the door.

30 / Mary Daheim

“This is so strange,” she said in a whisper. “Really, it’s given me a headache. Do you have any aspirin?”

Judith had, in a bottle on the windowsill along with her vitamins and assorted over-the-counter remedies. Ellie gratefully swallowed two tablets, then insisted on helping Renie take out the coffee. Judith hurriedly filled up the dishwasher, dumped in some detergent, and turned on the switch.

Renie came back for the tea, with Mavis at her heels.

“Excuse me, I have to take out my contacts. They’re new and they’re just killing me.” Mavis slipped a case out of the pocket of her Chanel suit and leaned over the sink.

“There’s a bathroom in the entry hall—” Judith began, but Mavis interrupted as if breaking in with a news bulletin.

“Harvey’s in there,” she said, standing storklike on one foot. “Throwing up, no doubt. This entire evening is such bilge. I think I’ll do a feature on charlatans when I get back to work.” She straightened up, turned around, and blinked several times. “Ah! Thank God! I can’t see, but at least I’m not in pain. Here,” she said in her crisp voice, “let me help with the tea.”

Renie started to demur, but juggling four cups was admittedly beyond her. At the cupboard, Judith was getting out liqueur glasses for after-dinner drinks.

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” she announced to the dining room, having at the start given up trying to ban tobacco at the B&B. If she couldn’t get her own mother to quit, she certainly wasn’t going to try to reform her guests.

Otto, who was now back in place, responded by lighting a long, dark cigar, while Dash extracted a gold cigarette case from his suit jacket and Mavis produced a package of un-filtered Camels. Ashtrays appeared and dessert plates disappeared. Otto brandished his own bottles of Courvoisier, Drambuie and Strega, pouring with his customary generous hand, while the guests waxed eloquent on the subject of cream puffs.

JUST DESSERTS / 31

“They are wonderful, aren’t they?” beamed Judith. “Gertrude of Grover Gourmet does them for us.”

Oriana pounced, requesting Gertrude’s phone number.

Judith put her off by promising to look it up in the morning.

Noting that everyone had turned expectant and somewhat wary eyes toward Madame Gushenka, Judith dimmed the light switch as far down as it would go without shutting off.

The guests seemed to tense. Madame Gushenka bent her head briefly, then, with a dramatic gesture, displayed a deck of cards and carefully cut it into three piles.

“Past,” she intoned, pointing to the thick stack on her left.

“Present,” she continued, indicating the middle batch. “And,”

she breathed, dropping her husky voice and tapping the top card on her right, “the future!”

Dash was leaning on his elbows studying not the cards, but the card reader. Gwen giggled and poked Harvey in the ribs. “How exciting! It’s just like the gypsy in my third book,
Passion’s Trumpet!
”

“The readers thought it was ‘strumpet,’” murmured Mavis, ignoring Gwen’s umbrage and Oriana’s glare.

“Pipe down,” commanded Otto. “The Madame here is starting the show.”

She was indeed. Judith withdrew discreetly, but was not surprised this time to find Renie up against the door. Judith joined her and switched off the kitchen light. “Atmosphere,”

she whispered. “I turned the living room lights off, too.”

“Then turn off the dishwasher,” said Renie. “I can’t hear a damned thing.”

Judith complied. Madame Gushenka’s throaty voice vi-brated through the old oak:

“There is hatred at this table…deceit…fraud…terrible troubles…” Feet shuffled under the table. Outside, the wind blew over the Rankers’s garbage can with a startling crash.

Several of the guests jumped, but Madame Gushenka was unmoved. She played the pause like a harp, letting her self-imposed silence hang on the air

32 / Mary Daheim

with the portent of a dirge. “Sunshine. The distant surf. Palm trees.” The fortune-teller swayed in her chair as if moving with the tropical breeze. Her eyes were closed but her hand rested on the queen of clubs. “A woman, half crazed she is, abandoned…The pen is mightier than the cord—or is it?

She who tells all, knows too much…”

At the door, Judith and Renie raised their eyebrows at each other, then shrugged. Except for the wind and the occasional rattle of cups and glasses, the dining room was very quiet. Madame Gushenka resumed speaking, her voice coming more rapidly and slightly higher-pitched.

“A baby, crying for its mother…Like Snoozing Beauty, a spell is cast. The years go by…The baby is grown woman, betrayed and deprived…” Chairs creaked as their owners shifted about uneasily. “Another girl-child, born to comfort, yet accursed, too, she is, until saved by a prince with sword so sharp…She reigns first in the valley, then ascends to the mountains. All pay homage—will she pay the piper?”

“Weird,” breathed Renie.

“Wacko,” whispered Judith. But both cousins couldn’t help becoming enmeshed in Madame Gushenka’s web of words.

“The cock crows at dawn.” The fortune-teller’s voice was growing deeper, more ominous. “A great man does not wake…until too late.”

Someone snorted. Judith thought it was Otto. She was sure that a snicker of disbelief had come from Mavis. The stifled gasps could have emanated from either Gwen or Ellie—or both. From the kitchen, it was hard to tell.

“A dark and rainy night…a man alone…another man…desperation! All is darkness! Tragedy rules, villainy triumphs!” The throaty voice surged with feeling; the swinging door seemed to shudder. More gasps, a couple of curses, and the clatter of cutlery indicated that the audience was much affected. Renie’s brown eyes had grown very wide, while Judith pulled on her lower lip and frowned.

JUST DESSERTS / 33

“She’s pretty good at what she does,” remarked Judith in an undertone. “I wonder if Oriana thinks she’s getting her two grand worth?”

Over the flutter of unsettled noises, Madame Gushenka was speaking again: “Far off, bleak, isolated. A handsome bird in a concrete cage.” Her voice rumbled into the very depths of her chest, then suddenly brightened. “There is music, too. Such pretty notes! Or are they? Greed, deception creep onto the stage.” The tone had changed again, now overtly sinister. “Wrongs not righted, the past swept under cover, while over the ocean, a crowd roars, then goes silent.

Disaster strikes! The night goes black, the sky is empty, hush…hush…ssssh…”

The last utterances had slowed, then begun to fade away.

Judith and Renie almost banged heads trying to press closer against the door. They were steadying themselves when they heard the crash, the screams, and the sounds of chairs being overturned, crystal shattering and china breaking. Even as Judith fumbled for the kitchen light switch, the dining room sounded as if it had erupted into a stampede. Renie threw open the door.

The illumination from the kitchen showed a scene of utter confusion, with everyone clustered around the head of the table. Lance was struggling with something or someone, Ellie was whimpering and clutching at Harvey, Gwen was verging on hysterics, Oriana was deathly pale despite her makeup, Otto was swearing like a sailor, Dash was trying either to help or to hinder Lance, and Mavis was shrieking for order.

“The lights!” called Judith, and was amazed when Oriana immediately obeyed, bringing the chandelier up to full beam.

Gwen stared at the blaze of shimmering crystal as if hypnot-ized and Lance stepped back, revealing Madame Gushenka, sprawled face down on the table, one hand on the cards, the other clawing at the azalea’s vivid blooms. Her black hair spilled onto the Irish linen, and the brilliant veils seemed to have wilted like weary petals.

34 / Mary Daheim

“She’s out like a…light,” said Lance, peering up at the chandelier.

“It must be a trance,” Oriana said, but her usually confident voice was uncertain.

“Get back,” Harvey ordered, assuming his best operating-theater style. “Give the poor woman room to breathe.” As the others, including the distraught Ellie, moved away, Harvey felt for a pulse, first at the wrist, then at the neck. His sallow face sagged as his search for a vital sign grew more frantic. “My God,” he exclaimed. “She’s dead!”

FOUR

“DEAD? THAT’S RIDICULOUS!” screeched Oriana. “I paid her two thousand dollars! I want my money back!”

Mavis checked her watch. “Nine fifty-five, I can still make the eleven o’clock news.” She started for the phone in the living room.

“Hold it!” Judith shouted. “We’ve got to call 911 first!”

She whirled on Harvey Carver, who was still looking grim.

“Can you…Is there any possibility of…you know, what do you call it, not artificial respiration, but…”

“CPR?” Harvey sadly shook his head. “Not at this point.

It’s been—what, over five minutes since she collapsed? I’m only guessing it was a heart attack, though it could have been an aneurism. But you’re right, call 911 at once.”

“They’re on the way,” said Renie from the kitchen door.

She gave Judith an apologetic look. “I told them to turn off the sirens and not to use the flashing lights. I mean, there’s no hurry, and I didn’t see any point in, uh, calling attention to, er, um…”

35

36 / Mary Daheim

“To the fact that this guest house can be fatal to your health?” Judith retorted with bitterness, and was immediately embarrassed. Fortunately none of her guests was paying any attention. Harvey was now tending to Ellie, plying her with brandy. Dash had escorted Gwen into the living room. Otto was arguing with Mavis about her intention of informing KINE-TV.

“What’s the big deal, dollface? A heart attack, a stroke—that’s news? For all we know, she had a fatal disease.

Hell, it isn’t like any of us had ever met the woman before.”

He saw Oriana’s eyelashes droop and jabbed a stubby finger in his wife’s direction. “Except you, my little pizza! You met her, right?”

“No! We corresponded by letter and talked on the phone!

In fact, it was an accident that I got in touch with her in the first place. She dialed our number by mistake.” Dabbing at her mouth with a lace-edged handkerchief, Oriana slumped back into her chair, a remorseful Marguerite in the last act of
Faust
. “I feel terrible! Awful! Accursed!” She offered no resistance when Otto hauled her to her feet and led her along with the others into the living room.

Oriana in the throes of guilt held no appeal for Judith at the moment. Shaken as well as stirred, she took a deep breath and remembered Grandma Grover’s family motto:
Keep Your
Pecker Up
. Apparently Renie was dredging up those same late-Victorian words of wisdom, for she was holding the coffee carafe in one hand and Otto’s bottle of Drambuie in the other.

“Why I don’t I just mix them together?” she asked, more than half serious.

“Bring it out into the living room. I’ll get their cups and whatever’s left of…Jeez,” whispered Judith, “this is terrible!

I’m not used to having a dead body at the dining room table!”

“After twenty-odd years with Dan, you came close,” Renie replied.

Judith’s baleful glance was tinged with irony. That Dan-JUST DESSERTS / 37

iel Patrick McMonigle had been an ill-tempered, lazy, selfish, and generally impossible person was inarguable. Judith knew that the union remained a mystery to friends and family—with the exception of Renie. Yet Dan had been a good father, in his way, and he was no dummy. His death of heart failure at forty-nine hadn’t shocked anyone. A seriously overweight man with a half dozen chronic illnesses didn’t exactly shine on the actuarial tables.

In the living room, the Brodies were clustered on the twin beige sofas and matching armchairs arranged around the big hearth. The fire that Judith had set off just before her guests’

arrival was sputtering fitfully. Judith was about to put on another log and offer sustenance when the doorbell rang.

The room was suddenly full of men in blue and black, moving with practiced precision. At the makeshift bar, Renie was pointing to Madame Gushenka’s body and trying to answer a series of questions from one of the medics.

“The fact is,” explained Renie when she came a-cropper over how the fortune-teller had looked before her collapse,

“I was in the kitchen. With Mrs. McMonigle.”

Judith had joined her cousin and the emergency crew in the dining room, leaving a curious and edgy group behind her. “I’m Judith McMonigle,” she said, aware that her usual outgoing warmth was fraying around the fringes. “One of the guests is a doctor. Perhaps you should speak with him.”

A crewcut medic whose nametag read Kinsella nodded, then let Judith lead him into the living room. “This is a sad occasion for all of you,” he began, letting his pensive blue eyes roam from face to face. “I understand there’s a doctor on the premises.” Either by instinct or experience, Kinsella’s gaze rested on Harvey Carver.