The Proof is in the Pudding

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.

41

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.

“What was it? The plan. I’m dying to know.”

He stared off into the distance and smiled. “We were gonna frame that Limey f***er for attempted murder.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah, a big wow. A wow an’ a half. We were gonna make it seem like Gray tried to murder Keith. Gray was gonna be arrested. I’d make sure he was smeared in the papers an’ on TV. All over the world. I was gonna leak all kinds of bad things to friends in the media-like how he plag’d-plazer-size…” He couldn’t get the word out and shook his head in frustration.

Helpfully, I said, “Plagiarized?”

“Yep. I was gonna plant the rumor that he plaguered-stole his first book, from a poor dead guy. Maybe a minority.”

“Roland Gray must be a terrible man,” I said. “What were you and Keith going to do?”

Long chortled. “I had the idea an’ Keith came up with the way. Ya know the three dishes the contestants were gonna serve the judges? For judging?”

“Yes?”

“Keith crushed up nutmegs to slip into the pudding Gray was gonna give him. Keith was gonna taste it-then he’d recognize what was in the stuff, an’ accuse that slimy Limey of tryin’ to kill him. An’ I was gonna call the cops.”

“Keith was going to use nutmegs?”

“He said it was a poison.”

I knew that three whole nutmegs shaved or ground up made a lethal dose for a human being, but I never imagined that information would be useful to me. As a nationally syndicated food critic I wasn’t surprised that Keith Ingram knew that morsel of trivia. I grated fresh nutmeg into a lot of dishes, but only a few grains at a time. One whole nutmeg would last me for at least half a year. Was Long telling the truth? Had Keith Ingram really ground up whole nutmegs with the intention of stirring them into Roland Gray’s pudding? If he had…

Movement behind the door across from me, the one that was slightly ajar, caught my attention. I saw a flash of red hair and pale skin. I was sure it was Yvette Dupree. Had she been eavesdropping on us?

Long expelled air with an unhappy groan. “Beautiful plan… But we never got to do it ’cause somebody killed Keith before it was time to taste the dishes.”

No more movement in the crack of the open door. She was gone.

I forced myself to concentrate on Long. “That’s a wild story,” I said.

“You don’ believe me?”

“Well…”