Cooking Most Deadly (19 page)

No murder investigation going
on here, Angie thought as she reached the circular parking area in front of Coit Tower. Just a couple of parked cars, and they stood empty. The thick fog made it hard to see into the bushes beyond the blacktop. Angie drove slowly along the edge of the parking area, trying to peer into the shrubs as she went by.

Near the road that led away from the tower and back down Telegraph Hill, she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man standing under a lamppost. The lights hit his jacket, a gray tweed—Paavo's favorite—but his face was in the shadow. She told herself it was Paavo, wanted to believe it was him, yet his stance, the angle of his shoulders, wasn't quite right. Was it someone else…or was something seriously wrong?

She rolled down the window. “Paavo?” He gestured for her to follow, then he turned and disappeared into the fog.

“Paavo!”

She agonized over what to do. Perhaps it was him, and it was just the fog refracting light from the lamp that made him appear different.

It had to be him. She'd heard him on the answering
machine, telling her to meet him here. And he'd just waved for her to follow.

The fog seemed thicker, making it more difficult to see. She rolled her car closer to the place where Paavo, or whoever it was, had stood, and tried to see where he'd gone. What exactly was back there in the trees. A thick mist covered her windshield, and the wipers only streaked it. She hesitated, then slowly lowered the window a bit so she could see better.

Suddenly, an arm reached in and pulled up the button to unlock her door. Startled, she turned, and in the instant it took for her to grasp what had happened, her door was yanked open. She stomped on the gas pedal, but felt the back of her jacket grabbed, felt herself being pulled from the car as it lurched forward. She landed hard on the pavement, and when she opened her mouth to scream, something smashed against the back of her head.

The world shattered, then went black.

 

Paavo hammered out Angie's phone number. The line was busy.

He slammed down the receiver and phoned the hospital. Expecting a nurse to answer, he was surprised when Stan picked up the phone.

“This is Inspector Smith. I didn't think you'd still be awake.”

“The damn painkillers are wearing off,” Stan complained. “I ache, but at least my head's not in a fog anymore.”

“I'm trying to find Angie. Have you seen her or talked to her tonight?”

“She came by this afternoon. That was it, though.”

“Did she say what she had planned for this evening?”

“No.”

“Okay. Sorry to have disturbed your rest.”

“Wait, Inspector. Didn't you ask earlier about some roses?”

“Yes.”

“They weren't connected to the attack on me, were they?” Paavo heard a slight tremor in Stan's voice.

“I'm pretty sure they were. Why? Do you remember who sent them?”

“I thought
you
sent them.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

“I ran into the deliveryman down in the lobby and—stupidly—I diverted them. My God, man, you've got to do something!” Paavo's hand tightened on the receiver as he listened to the anguish in Stan's voice. “You see, the flowers weren't meant for me, Inspector. They were meant for Angie.”

 

Angie felt her head being stroked and petted. She kept her eyes shut. Slowly, she began to sort out her perceptions. Her mouth was gagged and she was breathing deeply through her nose, the fear of her air being cut off causing her near panic. Her arms had been pulled back and her hands tied behind her back. And her whole head pounded mercilessly.

The gag cut cruelly into her flesh, preventing her from screaming. She trembled, terrified.

“Awake, my love?”

Carter!

“I didn't want to hurt you,” he whispered, still stroking her hair. “You trusted me. You trusted my love. You should always trust me, Heather, and be true to me.”

She realized her head lay in his lap, and that she was stretched across a short, upholstered bench of some kind. It smelled of stale tobacco, rotting food, a rancid, musty, dust-filled odor. He ran his thumb over her eyebrow, tracing it, gently at first, then harder and harder, as if he were trying to rub it from her face.

He was mad! Her heart beat so hard, she was sure her entire body was pulsating from it, but he didn't seem to notice. She ached to open her eyes, to try to get away from him. But as scared as she was, she was even more afraid of letting him know she was awake.

Suddenly, his tone changed. “Wake up, bitch! I don't have all night! I didn't hit you that—”

He broke off at the sound of an auto going past them. “Damn. We'll have to find someplace else. Someplace where we won't be interrupted. We need to have a long time together, don't we? It'll be like it used to be between us, Heather.” He traced his finger over her ear, her jaw, her chin, then wrapped his hand around her neck. “Just like it used to be.”

 

Paavo unlocked Angie's apartment door and went in. He could feel its emptiness surround him.

He'd phoned her immediately after his talk with Stan. When the line was still busy, he'd called the operator to break into the call, and was told the phone wasn't busy—it was out of order. He drove over here with his siren blaring, telling himself the whole way that she wasn't in any danger.

He'd prayed she'd be here. That when he knocked on her door she'd open it, her big, brown eyes widening in surprise. Then she'd smile and fling herself at him. He loved the way she did that. No one else had ever seemed half so happy to see him.

But her apartment was empty.

He saw a box on the coffee table and a strange metal device beside it. The box had the name Everyone's Fancy on it—Connie Rogers's shop. It was a Fabergé egg. Why would Angie have it? And the metal devices. What in the world were they?

What had she been up to?

He went through the kitchen, living room, bedroom, into the den, looking for a note or message that might give some clue to where she'd gone. Nothing.

Maybe she'd gone to her parents'? He picked up the phone to call. It was dead. Of course, what was he thinking? He put the receiver back on the hook.

He went back into the den, took Angie's appointment
calendar from her desk drawer, and opened it, flipping to today's date.

The page was empty. Where now?

He looked around her apartment again, feeling helpless, furious, and scared for her. It was eerie being here without her bubbling through the place, filling not only the rooms, but all the dark places of his soul. He had to find her.

 

Carter cranked the ignition switch.

Her eyes were open now. He had pushed her off his lap to the floor of the small, four-door car, and she lay on her side, wedged between the front and back seats, her legs bent. She was still gagged, her hands tied behind her back, and the throbbing of her head had grown worse.

Where did he plan to take her? The newspapers were full of stories about women driven to remote spots, raped, and murdered. Fear paralyzed her, tempting her to give in to whatever he planned in hopes of preventing more terror, more pain.

But something inside her wouldn't give up. Not yet.

As if some new thought had occurred to him, Carter suddenly reset the hand brake between the front bucket seats. She squeezed her eyes shut as she heard him shift in the seat.

“I'm making them pay, Heather. I'm making them all suffer like I did when they took me away from you. Separated us.

“You know what, Heather? Even our house is gone now, too. I know how unhappy you were, with the leaky roof, the heater that never worked. That goddamned landlord. I took care of him for you. I fixed him good.”

She felt him grope for her, then his hand touched her hair and he began stroking it. “At least you're here with me again. Just like before.” He shifted more, and the small car rocked. “Come here to me, Heather.”

His hand gripped her hair and pulled upward. She couldn't stop her cry of pain, and her eyes flew open to see his face looming over her. He pulled harder, making her eyes smart as she scrambled as best she could into a kneeling posi
tion. “You're not Heather.” He spit the words, letting go of her. “You're the one with the cop! Big shot, knew all about ground wires, electricity. No one would have investigated—they'd have accepted that it was an accident, except for him.”

She shook her head, needing to convince him she was Heather. She'd be safe if he thought she was Heather. He loved Heather.

He leaned closer, his face only inches from hers. He smiled. “After I kill you, my vengeance will be over, Angelina. The men who hurt me, who took me from Heather, will have lost their women, too. Isn't that sad?” He chuckled.

Again, she tried to shake her head, to persuade him he was wrong. Despite trying to be brave, though, a tear formed at the corner of her eye. He lifted it onto his finger then put the finger in his mouth. “Heather did that, too,” he murmured. “She cried when I told her she was going to die. But it was for her own good. She wanted to leave me. It wasn't safe out there, though. I found a place to keep her very, very safe.” He ran his hand over Angie's face, touching the planes and angles of it. “You're so much like her. Like my Heather come back to me again. You were all I ever wanted.”

His words devastated her. Even pretending to be Heather wouldn't save her.

Another car drove by, and he abruptly turned from her, released the brake, and sped down the twisting turns of Telegraph Hill.

She had to do something to stop him from going to that remote spot, wherever it was. She had to stay where there were people to help her. In the city. Her city—and Paavo's.

She moved so that she sat on the hump on the floorboard, her back to the console between the front seats.

She waited until he was past the twisting part of Telegraph Hill, where he couldn't drive very fast. Suddenly, the car tilted downward and she realized they were on one of the city's steepest hills. He stepped on the gas and all but flew down the first few yards.

This was her chance. She jutted out her bound hands behind her, grabbed hold of the hand brake, and pulled up
on it as hard as she could. The back wheels locked and the car went into a tailspin. Carter screamed with rage.

 

Paavo noticed that her answering machine showed “zero” messages. He'd left one for her, so she must have played it. Maybe someone else had left a message, and that would explain where she'd gone?

He pressed the replay button.

“Angie. It's me.”

He groaned at the thought of listening to his own awkward speech and looked for the fast forward button. He found it just as his words were nearly obliterated by static. A mercy, he thought.

“…another murder….”

A what? Had he said that? He pulled back his hand. Static erupted again at the words “Coit Tower.”

Good Christ, he thought. It was
him
, his voice—except for those few, damnable words covered with static. Another murder. Coit Tower. Someone had tampered with his message, added words, someone who knew how to break into her answering machine, knew recordings, electronics…Carville.

How long ago had she played that message?

He ran out to the car and radioed Central Station to order an immediate all-points bulletin for Angie and Wesley Carville, giving the license number for a white Ferrari. They already had a bulletin out on a green Honda Civic. Fighting a sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach, he knew with an awful certainty that the Honda reported at Judge St. Clair's was, in fact, Carville's.

He gripped the dash, shouting into the radio at the dispatcher, who seemed too slow to act, too slow to comprehend, saying to start the search at Coit Tower and consider Wesley Carville armed and dangerous.

 

A lamppost stopped the Honda's mad spin. The car's front grille wrapped around it. The padded seats she had hurled
herself between had protected Angie from being hurt, but crawling to her knees now, she saw the crack in the windshield where Carter's head had hit it. Blood streamed down his forehead and his eyes were shut. She wondered if he was dead.

She worked herself over to the door. With her back to it, she groped until she felt the door handle. She lifted it, then had to lean against it, pushing backwards, to get the door to open. As it opened, she had no way to keep her balance and tumbled onto the street.

Bruised and aching, without being able to use her hands to help her, she had to use the car for support to get back up onto her feet. She hobbled over to the driver's door and looked in the car. Carter certainly looked dead. His face was white and bloody. His knee must have hit the dash hard because his trousers were torn and the knee ripped open so deeply it looked like some bone was showing. Her stomach flipped over at the sight, and the world went a little tipsy.

She was surprised no one was out here yet to help. She'd wait. Someone would come soon.

Then she saw one of Carter's fingers twitch. She jerked back, terrified, and began to run up the steep hill, her only thought being that going uphill would be harder for him in his condition.

By the top of the hill, she was gasping hard for breath. The gag made it nearly impossible to pull in the deep lungfuls of air she needed. She rubbed her face against her shoulder in a vain attempt to ease the gag downward toward her chin. Running the way she'd just done had been silly, she told herself. No need. Carter wasn't coming after her. He wasn't going to be able to move in the condition he was in.

Somewhere, soon, she'd find a house light on, see someone out walking or a car go by. She'd find help and everything would be all right.

Through the fog, she saw the door on the driver's side of the Honda spring open.