Cooking Most Deadly (18 page)

“And that's what drew you to the fake Fabergés?” Paavo asked.

“They're not fakes! I know they aren't worth much yet. But someday they might be. They are from Fabergé artisans, you see. No one thought, in the time of the tsars, that Fabergé pieces would become so valuable. These might be the same. It doesn't seem fair that I don't have any at all anymore. All I want is one good one—one to make up for that which love took away from me. Is that too much to ask?”

Paavo nodded to Officer McMahon to take the woman to City Jail and book her.

He had wanted to know why the thief had killed Nathan Ellis, why the eggs were so important that anyone would take a young man's life for one. It amazed him still, the foolish things people could do when caught up in the throes of newfound passion; and the even more foolish things they did afterward to make up for it.

He took a statement from the owner, then left the store and hurried to his car, which was still blocking traffic.

As he drove away, though, the thought of the foolish things we do for love reverberated in his mind. And suddenly he knew where he was heading.

 

“Smith! Who the hell do you think you are coming to my house? I told you already you're taking this thing too far,” Fletcher said. The district attorney stood in the black-and-white marble foyer of his mansion, holding the carved solid oak door only halfway open.

Paavo put his hand against the door and pushed. Fletcher backed off and let him enter. “Where do you want to talk?” Paavo asked. “In the living room? Or, would you rather someplace private…away from your wife, for instance.”

Fletcher's eyes narrowed. “I have nothing to hide. But I don't want to upset her by any crazy accusations. Let's go into the den.”

They entered a room that was paneled in rosewood, lined with library shelves. An oversize desk with a leather top stood in the center of the room, a straight-backed chair behind it and two matching leather wing chairs in front.

Paavo dropped his files and mug shots on Fletcher's desk, then sat in one of the wing chairs. “This isn't a game, Fletcher. I want some straight answers, and to hell with your political ambition.”

“I don't have to listen—”

“I've got a list of all the trials that involved you and Judge St. Clair. I'm going to go to the judge's house to see what he can remember. You can join us if you'd like, or we can go over the list right here.”

Fletcher glanced at the printout. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Paavo paced. “I've been looking at a connection between two women—one involved with a judge, the other with a DA. What does that sound like to you, Fletcher? It sounds like a trial case, doesn't it?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I'm trying to find out if I'm on the right track with this, or if I'm 180 degrees off base. I need the truth about you and Tiffany Rogers.”

“I've already answered that.”

“I need your help, Fletcher. I need to find out who's
behind the killings, especially if I'm right about the motive. Think of it, Fletcher. Who else worked on this case? What other women is this guy after? And then, when he's done with the women, will he stop there? What if he decides this revenge isn't enough and goes after you next? To kill you the same way he did Tiffany Rogers.”

Fletcher paled and sat down behind his desk. “You aren't making any sense.”

“Come on, man. I've got to know for sure if you were seeing Tiffany Rogers, because if you weren't—if you
really
weren't—I could be heading down a blind alley that could be fatal to someone. You've got to tell me, Fletcher. Is hiding a liaison with Rogers worth the life of another woman? Is it worth your own life?”

“This doesn't concern me.” His voice was unconvincing.

“It was your woman he got first. You might be the first man to get nailed by this guy,” Paavo said.

Fletcher rubbed his forehead. “I love my wife, Smith.”

“Then you'd better be telling the truth, because if you're not, and this psycho has something against you and those you love, your wife is in danger.”

He gazed up at Smith, his eyes hooded. “All right. I was involved with Tiffany, but I'd better not hear a word about this anywhere.”

“I can't guarantee that, Fletcher.”

“Damn it, Smith. This could ruin me, and you know it.”

“Is being mayor so important to you?”

“It's the only thing that's important”—he shut his eyes—“now that Tiffany's gone.” He looked up at Paavo. “I did love her, damn it. It doesn't mean I feel anything less for my wife—Sally and I have had thirty-two years, wonderful years, and three fine sons.” Tears filled his eyes. “But I also loved Tiffany. She made me feel young again. Important. She was the one who helped me decide to run for mayor, dammit!”

Paavo waited for Fletcher to gain control again.

The DA clenched his fist, his head bowed. “You're on
your own from here on out, Smith. Get the hell out of my life.”

Paavo stood. “You should have told me about you and Rogers days ago, Fletcher. For your sake, it had better not be too late.”

 

Despite the late hour, Julian Bosch agreed to meet Paavo at the Parole Office. Paavo had called several times that day, and every time was told Bosch was out or holding an interview and couldn't be disturbed. He'd never returned one call. Tonight, Paavo had reached him at home and insisted on a meeting.

Now, Bosch was waiting in his office when Paavo arrived. He was a small man with a florid complexion, heavy glasses, and a nervous tic at the corner of his eye. “I'm sorry I hadn't returned your calls, Inspector,” he said. “But if it concerns Wesley Carville, I knew it couldn't be anything urgent.”

Paavo went into the small, sterile office and sat in a high-backed government-issue chair. “Why do you say that?”

“Because Mr. Carville is one of my easiest cases. He's a well-educated man, Inspector. He'll do fine on the outside. I've already got a number of job interviews lined up. Just waiting for him to give me the word.”

“Why hasn't he?”

“He's still got the money he earned while he was in prison. He's not ready to be tied down to a nine-to-five job yet. We see this all the time. Free at last, you know. But he'll come around. Why are you interested in him?”

“I'm investigating a murder.”

“And you think Carville might be a witness?”

“I think he might be a suspect.”

“Impossible.”

“That's what I need to determine. May I see his file?”

“Of course. Here are his records. You'll see he was a model prisoner. No trouble at all. And he's the same with me. A joy to work with—and that's really rare, let me tell
you.” Bosch shuffled his papers and smiled proudly, as if to take credit for Carville's spotless record.

Paavo started at the back of the file. The write-ups were from wardens, for the most part, from the time Carville entered prison for second-degree murder. A twenty-year sentence—ten with good behavior. Paavo read through them. The man had worked hard, rarely spoke to anyone. Spent all his time in the electronics shop. No doubt about it. He was a model prisoner.

“What's this?” Paavo asked. At the bottom of a page, penciled in small letters, was the annotation, C53794.

“Another case number,” Bosch said. “Probably somebody Carville knew in prison.”

“Did you check it out?”

“Why should I? The page it's written on is dated eight years ago. I have enough trouble with the here and now.”

Paavo nodded and kept going. He copied down Carville's current address—a cheap Tenderloin rooming house. “Is there anything at all strange or different, or in any way troubling, about this man?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Bosch stated emphatically. “I wish all my people were like him.”

 

With a sweep of his arm he cleared the table in his Tenderloin hotel room of cockroaches and set up his tape recorder. Whistling softly to himself, he picked up his phone and tapped into Angie's answering machine. He hit the code for the machine to play its messages.

The first message was from her mother, asking how her baby daughter was doing. The second was from her sister, Bianca. Bossy bitch. Next came one from some producer, wondering if she'd like to try her audition again.

He shrugged. She wouldn't be around for it. Too bad.

Then he heard one from the cop. He sat forward in his chair, flipped on the record button of the tape recorder, and hit the replay code for the answering machine. This was even better than he'd hoped for.

Next, he dialed Homicide.

“Inspector Calderon here,” came a gruff voice.

“Inspector Paavo Smith, please,” he said.

“Just a minute.” Calderon must have put his hand over the mouthpiece, but Wesley could hear the muffled conversation. “Paavo around? He's got a call…Be back soon? No? Not 'til late? Yeah, okay. I got it.”

He didn't need to hear anything more. He hung up the phone.

“Seth and I used to fight all the time,”
Frannie said as she put an egg and some skim milk in a blender. Angie's fourth sister looked almost radiant as she awaited the birth of her first child.

“I remember your fights,” Angie shouted over the loud whirring sound. “I think the whole neighborhood remembers. You two weren't exactly quiet about it.”

Two years ago, Frannie had married Seth Levine, a young architect. One month after the wedding day, she was back home seeking special dispensation to divorce. Seth came seeking
her
two days later, and she went with him. Their truce lasted three weeks before they were at it again. Serefina threatened to put a revolving door in Francesca's bedroom.

“Ever since he found out about the baby, though,” Frannie said, “he's been different. It's as if he finally realized that marriage means family and responsibility.” She switched off the blender, dipped her finger in the mixture, and licked it experimentally. “It's as if he figured out what it's all about.”

“Doesn't it worry him?” Angie asked, glad she could stop hollering. “You know, the commitment?”

Frannie poured the milk into a ten-ounce glass, then used it to force down a giant vitamin pill. “It does. There are times I think he gets scared by what's happening. I know I do.”

“You do?”

“Look at me. I'm big as a house. I feel ugly, awkward, and sexy as an orange peel. I'm quite sure Seth's going to run off with the first halfway-decent-looking woman that smiles at him. But you know what?”

“What?”

“He says I look more beautiful to him now than ever. I guess it's not really beauty he's talking about, but something deeper, something that comes from the heart. Seth and I are closer than ever before. I guess that sounds weird.”

“No, I understand.”

“What about you and Paavo?”

“I don't know, Frannie. The more I learn, the more confused I am. He's no marrying man, that's for sure. I'm lousy at compromise, impatient, and sometimes a little too emotional. We have nothing in common, spend too much time apart, and rarely see eye to eye. Is that a recipe for a happy marriage?”

“Does it matter?”

Angie thought about Frannie's question a moment. Then, with a big smile, she jumped to her feet and gave her astonished sister a hug. “Obviously, not in the slightest.”

Paavo finally tracked down
file C53794 in Oakland. At first, on being told by Criminal Records that the mysterious number found in Wesley Carville's file wasn't in San Francisco's numbering system, he thought he'd hit a dead end. But then he remembered reading that Carville had lived in the East Bay.

The file was waiting for him when he reached Oakland's Homicide Department. He sat down in an empty interview room and began to read the reports. Carville's parole officer was right about one thing—the case was old. But he was dead wrong about something else. It wasn't about Carville's fellow prisoners.

The case had begun twelve years before with a missing person report in Berkeley. A young woman named Heather Rose Fredrickson, a senior at the University of California, had disappeared.

Hundreds of people were questioned—everyone who had ever known the attractive, friendly coed. Wesley Carville, a graduate student in electrical engineering, was among them. Heather's friends had said she'd complained of someone following her, showing up wherever she went,
but she never told them who he was. Or whether, in fact, she even knew. Wesley Carville never became a suspect in the disappearance.

Two years after Heather's disappearance, Carville was found guilty of electrocuting his landlord and sent to prison on second-degree murder. Two years after that, the widow sold the property—a badly run-down one-bedroom house in West Oakland—to some developers, who promptly tore it down. The wrecking crew found a human skeleton bricked into a wall. Dental records proved it to be the remains of Heather Rose Fredrickson.

No cause of death could be determined, and no evidence was found to prove that Carville had murdered her—except the obvious. The house had stood unoccupied over two years since he'd lived there, and, theoretically, anyone could have hidden Heather's remains there. But that was just legalistic maneuvering. It was clear from the way the reports were written, the homicide investigators knew who had killed Heather. Since the man was already locked up for murder, they didn't pursue another trial. But now, he was out.

Paavo shut the file. The coed had disappeared two years before Carville was imprisoned. If he murdered her, he had lived with a corpse buried in the wall of his house that entire time. Presumably, he'd become intrigued with her, stalked her, then killed her and kept her near him. It was a sick perversion of love.

A sudden chill gripped Paavo. Carville…an electrical engineering student at U.C. Berkeley. Something in that fact seemed to resonate for him. Something…from long ago.

 

Holding the door to the telephone closet open a tiny crack, he watched the white Ferrari pull into the parking space in the garage.

She got out of the car. His little one. His love. He longed to smother her with roses. She always liked roses.

He almost snatched her then and there, it was that tempting, that hard to watch her walk away from him once again after he'd waited so long. That painful to watch the elevator doors open and swallow her up inside them.

But too much could go wrong. Too many people down here. His original plan was a better one. Much better. In fact, brilliant.

She'd ultimately come to him—if not one way, then the other. He could be patient. After all, the longer the anticipation, the sweeter the fulfillment. Still, his heart pounded and he felt a sheen of perspiration on his forehead.

He waited until the elevator had time to reach the twelfth floor, then he dialed her number. He was a patient man.

 

Angie unlocked her door to the steady ringing of her telephone. This time of night it could be only one of two things—Paavo or a family emergency. She ran to catch it before the answering machine clicked on.

“Hello?”

“Angie.”

It was a man's voice. Familiar. “Yes?”

“It's me. Carter.”

She nearly hung up. “What are you doing calling me this time of night?”

“I hope I didn't wake you.”

“No. What do you want?”

“I left out a part that belongs in the pager. It's an important part. The device won't work without it. I need to give it to you now. Tonight.”

“No. I don't need it. My plans have changed. I have the egg here.”

“There? That's even better. I'll come to your place. I charged you a hundred dollars for something that doesn't work.”

He was making her nervous. “Forget it, Carter. You can give it to me at Wings. Or give it to Earl. He'll see that I get it.”

“But I have to install it. It won't take long. Five minutes.”

“I'm sorry. I'm going to bed.”

There was a pause, and he spoke again. Very, very slowly. “I know where you live.”

“No, stay away!” She slammed down the phone as hard as she could. Shaking, she stared at it, daring him to phone back. In her mind's eye she saw a face. But not
his
face. Not Carter's. It was the face of the man at the dance. Lee, his name was.

They were the same man.

No. She rubbed her forehead. Impossible. And yet…

A man sitting on the fender of a BMW at the college. A student, watching her…

He had the same broad-shouldered, muscular build. It had been hard to see his face, though, because of his dark glasses and baseball cap.

A baseball cap…glasses…

There was someone else…

Stop this nonsense, Angie! Stop it! She sat down, her knees suddenly too weak to hold her. Was she going mad, or was there really someone stalking her?

She had to call Paavo.

She was reaching for the phone when she noticed the blinking “1” on her answering machine. One message. She pressed Play.

“Angie. It's me.” Warm relief eased over her and she felt better, safer, just hearing Paavo's voice. “I can't come by. Something came up.” Static crackled over the connection making it difficult to hear his words as he continued speaking. “Another murder. I have”—the static suddenly cleared—“to see you. I can meet you”—static—“at Coit Tower.” The static cleared once more. “I'll be here all night.”

Coit Tower? At midnight? Why would he want her to come there, of all places? An image of the tower flashed across her mind. The beautiful shaft of white standing in lonely splendor at the top of Telegraph Hill. Sure, the area
teemed with tourists by day and on summer evenings, but on cold, foggy nights like this one? There'd be no one there.

Why would Paavo want her to meet him at an investigation? He never had before. In fact, he'd tried to keep her away from his work. But he said he had to see her, that he'd be out all night. It didn't make sense.

She decided to call Homicide and see if anyone there knew what was going on. If not, maybe a dispatcher could locate Paavo for her.

She picked up the receiver and put it to her ear. There was no dial tone. She pushed the button several times and listened again. Nothing. A shiver went down her spine. Had Carter done this to her phone? He said he knew where she lived. And he knew electronics…

Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to get out of her apartment. She should be safe. She had a dead bolt…

But with Stan in the hospital, she was alone on this floor of the building. Unable to call for help, unable to telephone the police.

That did it. There was no way she was staying here like a sitting duck, waiting to be scared to death by that man. She wasn't even going to take the time to change to something nicer than her Armani jeans and Cole Haan loafers, but grabbed her purse, a warm leather jacket, and ran out the door.

Coit Tower wasn't very far away. If Paavo wasn't there, she'd go straight to his house and track him down using his phone. That way, if Carter came to her place, he wouldn't find her. She'd tell Paavo about him. One meeting with an angry Paavo, and Carter wouldn't dare to frighten her again. He wouldn't dare to even
think
about her again.

Damn Carter for making her afraid to be alone in her own apartment. She wished she'd listened to Earl.

 

Back at the San Francisco Hall of Justice, Paavo decided to go down to the archives himself. The secretaries and file
clerks had gone home long ago. But he was curious, and didn't want to wait until morning.

First he tracked down the report on Wesley Carville's arrest for the murder of his landlord ten years ago. Although the small, run-down house Carville rented in was in Oakland, the landlord lived in a mansion in San Francisco's Sea Cliff area.

Paavo opened the file and turned to the first incident report. The name of the reporting officer leaped out at him—Matt Kowalski. He knew that ragged scrawl well, almost as well as he knew his own handwriting. He stared at it a moment, then shut the folder. He rubbed his forehead, and then searched for a place to sit. He'd found more than he'd bargained for.

Matt and he had been rookies together, and then partners for a short while as patrol officers at the Richmond Station, which encompassed the Sea Cliff. Paavo was promoted first, and went to Northern, but Matt was right behind him. Eventually, they both wound up in Homicide and became partners again. More than partners, they were best friends. Last October, Matt had been killed in the line of duty.

As Paavo carefully read through the pages of the Carville arrest, he remembered a call he and Matt had taken about an accident at a house in Sea Cliff. The caller had said a man had been electrocuted while working on his house's wiring.

When he and Matt went out to the house, he noticed that the ground wire had been disconnected. They contacted Homicide. The next day, Paavo received word of his promotion, and in no time, he was at the new station. He hadn't learned, until now, what had come of the loose ground wire case.

Paavo put down the file. Fletcher, St. Clair, Matt. Fletcher's and St. Clair's women had received roses, and…Angie had received roses from an unnamed student. He felt his blood drumming in his ears, his breath quickening.

Stan, too, had received roses, but didn't know who they were from, or why. Apartments 1201 and 1202. Easy to confuse. Stan had told Angie something about a peculiar deliveryman.

He rubbed his temples. What he was thinking was impossible. Outlandish.

Hurrying back to his desk, he picked up the phone and called Matt's widow, Katie.

He apologized for the late hour. But she'd been a policeman's wife for eleven years. She understood. “Forget the apologies, honey,” she said in the saucy, brusque manner she had. “What can I do for you?”

“By any chance did anyone send you roses recently?”

“Roses? Me?” She laughed, a rich, hearty laugh. Matt used to say he fell so hard for Katie because of her laugh. “I'm not ready to be courted yet, sweetheart. And everyone knows it. Why?”

“Just wondering if anyone strange has shown up at your door lately. That's all. It was a long shot on a case I'm working on. I don't even know why I called. I shouldn't have bothered you.”

“It's no bother.” Her voice turned serious. “But since you mention it, there was someone strange. He gave me the creeps, in fact.”

“Tell me.”

“It's nothing, I'm sure, but he was a
Chronicle
salesman. He had some sort of two-for-one offer. I told him I wasn't interested, but he insisted my
husband
would want the paper. Finally, I got so angry I told him my husband was dead, and I shut the door. He really upset me, though.”

“What did he look like?”

“It was hard to tell because of his baseball cap and sunglasses. He had a mustache, dark brown hair, about six feet tall, muscular build. Like someone who worked out.”

“If you see him again, keep away from him. Call for help. He's dangerous.”

“Okay. I got it.”

“Take care of yourself, Katie.”

“You, too, Paavo. Love you, honey.”

He hung up the phone. A
Chronicle
salesman asking about Matt.

The salesman that the judge had complained about.

The single, days-old copy of a
Chronicle
at Tiffany's.

And the copy of the
Chronicle
Angie left at his house one night.

“Good Christ,” he whispered.