Free Pie A La Murder by Melinda Wells Page B

home taking my normal route to Santa Monica via Beverly Glen Canyon, I passed the corner of Coldwater Canyon and Ventura Boulevard with barely a glance sideways.
    But not tonight.
    Without a previous conscious thought, instead of going straight ahead to Beverly Glen, I made a left turn onto Coldwater. I was a hundred yards into one of the three canyons that connected the San Fernando Valley to Los Angeles before I realized what I had done.
    What’s the matter with me?
    Going across “the hill” via Beverly Glen Canyon would take me closer to Santa Monica.
    Taking Coldwater Canyon into Beverly Hills meant that I would have to pass Brentwood on the way home.
    Once my Jeep was accelerating through the narrow, twisting canyon there was no turning back.
    By fifteen minutes after nine I’d reached Sunset Boulevard and turned west. Within a few more minutes I saw the corner of Sunset and Bella Vista up ahead. I knew I should have ignored that intersection. I should have turned south to Montana Avenue and gone straight to my home on Eleventh Street.
    But something made me rotate the steering wheel to the right, onto Bella Vista, at twenty minutes after nine.
    In the second block, I felt my heart lurch in my chest and my hands go damp and cold.
    A different car was in the carport: a big black SUV. The Lexus I’d seen yesterday was gone. So was the older model Buick that had been in the driveway behind the Lexus.
    In its place was Nicholas D’Martino’s silver Maserati.
    That black SUV must belong to Alec Redding. Either the housekeeper lied about how long he’d be gone, or he came back early.
    My heart pounding, I cut the motor and sprinted up the walk.
    The light in the carriage lamp above the front door was on. I reached out to press the bell, but my hand stopped inches short of the button because I saw that the front door was standing open a few inches.
    Automatically, perhaps a muscle-memory from my years as a police detective’s wife, I used my shoulder to push the door open far enough for me to step across the threshold.
    I called, “Hello?”
    Silence.
    Brass wall sconces provided dim illumination, but stronger light poured into the hall from an archway about twenty feet ahead of me on the left.
    I took a few steps toward it, when suddenly I realized that I was about to become one of those stupid women in novels or TV shows who go alone into strange houses and through doors that shouldn’t be open. Those scenes made me slam a book closed or turn off the TV. Instead of continuing that stupidity, I grabbed my cell phone and spun around to leave. I was a foot from the front door and two numerals into punching nine-one-one when behind me I heard, “Della!”
    I turned again and saw Nicholas emerging through the lighted archway.
    “Del, get out of here!”
    I couldn’t move. A fresh surge of fear momentarily paralyzed me.
    “Get out, now!”
    “No,” I said. The same instinct that had led me to this address dissolved my paralysis and compelled me toward the archway.
    Nicholas stepped into the middle of the hall, blocking my path. He half whispered, “Don’t go in there.”
    I pushed past him.
    And I was immediately sorry that I hadn’t turned and run.
    The archway led into a high-ceiled room that had been turned into an elaborate photo studio. Blackout drapes covered the windows. Three rolls of heavy background paper, each three feet wide, in white, in light blue, and in darker blue, hung from the ceiling. Lights on stands faced a roll of white paper that had been unfurled so that it covered not just the wall, but provided an unbroken line on the floor.
    Before I could have articulated what I saw, my mind took a flash picture of the scene.
    A man lay facedown on the white paper. Blood covered the back of his head and had pooled onto the paper. Vivid red against stark white. An overturned white wooden stool, an edge of the seat stained dark red, lay near the body.
    The wound in the man’s skull was so deep I