Cooking Most Deadly (3 page)

“Is she still eatin'?”
Butch asked, stirring the spaghetti sauce so that chunks of the canned tomato he'd used wouldn't stick to the bottom of the aluminum kettle.

“Looks like she likes it,” Earl said.

“You think so?” Butch's eyes lit up. “Maybe I oughta cook up a couple more things?” He walked to the kitchen door and took a peek at their only customer. Wearing a self-satisfied grin, he turned to Earl. “Tell Vinnie to pipe down in the cellar. What kinda joint will she think this is?”

“You tell him.” Earl was no fool.

“Nobody's gotta tell me,” Vinnie announced, just emerging from the cellar steps. He stomped to the middle of the kitchen floor and glared from Butch to Earl and back again. Despite the slump age had put in his back, his black eyes were still piercing under thick eyebrows.

“What the hell you two bozos doin' feedin' people?” he asked. “What do you think this is? A goddamn restaurant? We got work to do. We gotta be fast. In and out, before anyone asks questions. Or maybe you two think everybody's as dumb as you are?”

“Look, Vinnie, we can't go throwin' out customers,”
Butch said, going back to stir his sauce. “What if she complains to somebody? We gotta look legitimate.”

Vinnie's face turned fiery red. “You ain't looked legitimate since the day you was born.”

“Hey! You don't talk like that about my mother, hear?”

“What mother? You was hatched.”

Butch crossed the room and stuck his face close to Vinnie's. “Just remember, I was a contender for boxing champion of the world.”

Vinnie didn't look impressed. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Besides”—Butch folded his arms and lifted his chin—“if I quit, you wouldn't have nobody to cook. Then what would you do?”

“Ever hear of TV dinners? They probably taste better than your slop anyway.”

“Okay, I
will
quit!”

“You can't.” Vinnie turned his back on Butch. “Earl, hurry her up. Get her out. Give her the bill or somethin'.”

“She ain't done eatin' yet,” Earl said meekly.

“So? What do you think this is, the Ritz? Give her the bill and make sure she takes the hint.”

Earl swallowed hard. “I don't t'ink she takes no hints, Vinnie.”

 

“Oh, waiter,” Angie called out gaily. She waited a second. No answer. “Waiter?” Nothing but muffled voices from the kitchen. What dreadful service.

Finally the waiter stuck his head through the swinging kitchen doors. “Whadya want dis time?”

“This spaghetti sauce and these meatballs are absolutely wonderful,” she said, ignoring his bad manners. “I really would like to talk to your cook. I'm sort of in the business myself, you see.”

“He don't wanna see you,” Earl shouted.

“Why not?” The restaurant was still empty. “It can't be because he's too busy. I'm not asking that he come out here. In fact,” she said as she stood, “I'll go into the
kitchen to talk to him. Believe me, if he uses this sauce on just two or three more dishes, this restaurant will do wonderfully.”

Earl hurried toward her, holding his arms outright the way he'd learned to do in Vegas when someone lunged for a blackjack dealer. “There ain't no way you can talk to him.”

“Won't you ask him?”

“He's shy,” Earl said.

“Shy?”

“Look, it's gettin' late. You want some dessert?”

Somehow, she couldn't imagine a restaurant with only one entree offering anything decent in desserts. “I've given up desserts for Lent.”

“Yeah? I t'ink dis place has, too.”

The waiter spoke with such a deadpan style, Angie had to laugh. She sat back down, unsure if he was serious or not. Even if she couldn't see the cook this time, she would eventually. She wasn't about to give up finding out what made the meatballs and sauce so special. If only the restaurant had a bit more to offer, it might have been a find for her—an interesting place to write about for her magazine article. Right now, though, it didn't make the grade.

The lack of a presentable menu was irritating. After all, any fool could stumble across a good high-priced restaurant in this city. It took someone clever to discover a cheap place worth going to. Someone like her, in fact.

She glanced at her wristwatch. It was eight-thirty, not late at all. If she went home now, she'd probably sit around watching TV or trying to figure out if she was ready for marriage—or both. Paavo was most likely busy as ever with his cases and would see her when he could. He was pretty good at dropping by unexpectedly for a visit—and then some—but she didn't want to get into a rut of going home to wait for him. It wasn't as if they were married. She had freedom, choice, opportunity. She just had to figure out what to do with it.

“I'll have a caffe latte,” she said suddenly.

“A caffe latte?” Earl repeated.

“That's right.”

“Okay.”

Earl ran into the kitchen. “Now she wants a caffe latte. What's dat?”

Butch glanced toward heaven. “Didn't you learn nothin' before you went to the big house? It's half strong coffee and half milk.”

“So why don't you just make da coffee weaker?”

Butch shook his head. “There's a pot of coffee all made. It's Chase and Sanborn, but I made it around noon, so it's probably strong enough to take the wax off the floor. Plug in that espresso machine, and the gizmo on the end there will make the milk all foamy. It's easy. You understand?”

Earl looked at the machine. He'd never seen anything like it before. “'Course I understand. It's easy.”

“Okay. So do it. Oh, one more thing. You got to serve it in a tall glass.” Butch went back down into the cellar to help Vinnie.

“Yeah. I can do it.”

Earl turned on the machine before he took a half gallon of milk from the refrigerator. He poured it into a wide-mouthed pitcher and held the pitcher below the espresso machine's steam arm. He twisted the valve and a jet of steam shot some of the milk out of the pitcher onto his shirt. But it didn't look any more foamy than when he started.

He cursed and tried again. This time the milk sprayed his slacks. He gave it another try. Milk rained onto his hair.

He twisted the knob faster this time. A jet of milk shot straight into his eye, nearly blinding him as more foul language erupted.

He shoved the pitcher as high as it would go onto the steam arm and turned the valve with all his might. Milk hit the ceiling. Still no foam.

The milk that had landed on his toupee earlier seeped through it and began to trickle down onto his forehead. He wiped it away.

Rage turned to cold determination.

He moved the milk into a bowl, put it under the beaters of a big, industrial-sized mixer and turned it on.

The milk spun around in the bowl at a fantastic speed, but it still didn't get foamy. He added an egg.

That helped a little.

A bottle of blue Dawn sat on the counter by the sink. Just a splash. Who'd ever know? Like magic, bubbles appeared.

Now we're in business, he thought. Leaving the machine running, he began to search for the type of glass Butch had described. There were short, fat glasses, and tall, thin glasses, but nothing tall, yet thick enough to hold hot coffee. He didn't want the customer to burn her fingers.

Pulling up a chair, he stood on it so that he could reach into the back of the upper shelves of the cabinet where restaurant owners past had left behind mismatched cups, plates, and glasses that they didn't want to cart away with them. After several minutes searching, he found a tall, thick glass with a handle.

Perfect. He grabbed the glass, got off the chair, turned around, and to his horror saw that the milk had foamed up and out of the bowl, across the counter, and down onto the floor. It was heading for the dining room.

He carefully tiptoed through the slippery foam to turn off the mixer, then continued on to the pot of coffee. He poured the coffee into the glass. Despite the handle, it still felt hot, so he found a small, flat plate to put it on. Nice.

He then plopped a spoonful of sudsy milk on top. He'd only used a small amount, but still, a slight detergent scent wafted out of the cup, mixed with the smell of bitter coffee. Maybe she'd think they used really clean glasses.

He was headed toward the dining room when Butch came up from the basement where he'd been helping Vinnie. “What the hell! What'd you do to my kitchen?” He lunged toward Earl.

Earl tried to run, but the soles of his shoes were slick.
His feet scrambled wildly. He held the plate tightly, watching the glass as it slid from one side of the plate to the other. With each slip of the glass, he angled the plate in the opposite direction, so that, like a juggler, he managed to keep the glass upright and filled with coffee while his feet, legs, and body gyrated.

As Butch hit the slippery floor, he hydroplaned across it and smacked right into Earl's back, knocking Earl farther forward.

Earl's legs flew out from under him. He went down into the frothy muck and slid away from Butch, right through the swinging doors into the dining room.

Angie turned around to see man, foam, and caffe latte shooting toward her.

He came to a halt and somehow, miraculously, still held the coffee upright in its tall glass on its flat plate.

Angie stood as the waiter picked himself up and carried her the coffee.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah. It's nothin'.” With a deep sigh he placed the coffee on the table, but right on top of her fork. The plate made a little rocking motion, then tilted. The glass slid off the plate, hit the tabletop, tipped over, and the caffe latte rushed out of the glass, across the table, and dripped right onto Earl's shoes.

“Oh, that's too bad,” Angie said. “Well, I wasn't really in the mood for coffee anyway. I think I'll take in a movie.”

She opened her purse, took out two dollars, plus fifty cents for the tip, and placed them on the table. “Ciao,” she said, and sauntered out of the restaurant.

“Angie, you should be talking
with Paavo about marriage, not me.” Bianca, the oldest of Angie's four sisters, emptied the morning's first load of wash from the dryer into a basket. She quickly refilled the dryer with another load, then picked up the basket and came back into the family room to join Angie.

“I'm not ready to yet. First, I need to understand what it would mean to us. After all, I don't want to turn into another broken marriage statistic. The problem is, though, I think about it day and night.” Angie sat on the sofa, her chin in her hands. “I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't even think about my article for
Haute Cuisine
. You've got to help me!”

“Have you talked to Mamma or Papà?” Bianca was fourteen years older than Angie and at least fourteen pounds heavier, with straight, dark brown, chin-length hair. She began to sort out underwear between husband, older, and younger sons—a chore Angie couldn't imagine herself emulating anytime soon.

“Are you kidding?” Angie said miserably.

“You're right. Mamma would have you walking down
the aisle before you're ready, and Papà would have you shipped off to a nunnery until you came to your senses—or were too old to care anymore. I've noticed that Paavo's not exactly his favorite.”

“Don't remind me. That's why I've come to you. I've got to know if I'm ready for this. It's a big step. Enormous, in fact! I need you, Bianca. To tell me everything.”

“The real picture?”

“The hard truth.”

“The cold facts?”

“The ugly details.”

“Of marriage.”

“Exactly!” Angie cried. “I want the better and worse. Actually, the worse. I can handle the better.”

Bianca held up a pair of jockey shorts and studied them. “Hmm, the tag with their size fell off.” With a shrug, she tossed them in with her older son's clothes. “It's a tall order, Angie. Marriage, more than anything else I can think of, is in the eye of the beholder. I can give you one person's opinion, but I think you need to talk to a few other people as well.”

“I will!” Angie started folding bath towels. “I mean, this is my life we're talking about. ‘Look before you leap,' that's my motto. God, you've got a lot of towels here. What are you doing? Starting a bathhouse?”

“Teenage boys—when they discover girls, they discover soap and water. And since when is that your motto? I thought it was ‘No time like the present.'” Bianca gave Angie a pointed, big-sisterly look.

“That aside, I need your help.”

“What's marriage like…” Bianca said thoughtfully, matching pairs of white socks and folding them together. “Well, let's say you like opera.”

“You know I love it.”

“And let's suppose Paavo doesn't care for it.”

“He doesn't.”

“He likes, what?”

“Jazz, mostly.”

“Okay, a good marriage is when you don't take him to an opera, where he'd be miserable, and he doesn't take you to a jazz concert, which you wouldn't care for.”

“So what do you do?”

“You compromise. You go hear Barry Manilow.”

“Oh, dear.”

Red-and-blue lights atop
three police cars spiraled and flashed. Businessmen and professional women, shoppers, tourists, and the city's usual wide and motley crowd of street people stood eerily silent in the wake of senseless, brutal death. Beyond them, all the noise and traffic of downtown city life on a weekday morning continued as usual, oblivious to the tragedy that had struck here.

Sans Souci Jewelers was a small, exclusive jewelry shop tucked between a women's boutique and a large stationer's on Post Street. At ten o'clock that morning, someone had walked into the jeweler's, shot and killed the clerk, and escaped. The motive, most likely, was robbery.

Paavo stopped his city-issued Chevrolet behind a black-and-white. He and Yosh trained their eyes on the crime scene, already cordoned off by the patrolmen who'd first answered the call. The paramedics leaned against their ambulance, waiting patiently for the homicide team to arrive. They were in shirtsleeves, enjoying the warm, sunny spring morning, and Paavo couldn't help but notice the irony of it.

As he and Yosh walked toward the shop, a patrolman filled them in on the few details he'd learned. Pulling out
their notebooks, the two inspectors began scribbling raw data. By unspoken prior agreement, Paavo would take the inside, Yosh the outside.

Yosh glanced inside the shop to get a feel for the situation, to see the victim and where he'd fallen. Then he began questioning the people who hovered around on the sidewalk—taking down their names, addresses, and initial reactions before they drifted away or said too much to each other, causing their own views and sightings to become confused or distorted by others' stories.

Inside the shop, Paavo didn't head directly toward the body, but edged along the perimeter of the store, jotting down and rough-sketching each detail noted, including the way the victim lay and the spatter from his body.

The victim, Nathan Ellis, was a white male, about age thirty, six feet tall, 180 pounds, with short blond hair and a pale complexion. He was tastefully dressed in a brown-and-gray tweed blazer, gray slacks, white shirt, and brown tie, and wore a gold watch and wedding band. He lay on his side, almost in a fetal position, in a pool of blood stemming from a gunshot wound to the chest.

None of the merchandise in the store seemed disturbed, yet the store owner, discovering Ellis's body, had called this in as a robbery. Why?

Minutes after Paavo and Yosh arrived, the coroner showed up with her team, and soon after, the photographer and Crime Scene Investigations unit. As Paavo wrote, questioned, and studied, the photographer videotaped and took stills of the inside and outside of the store, while the CSI unit began collecting trace evidence and fingerprinting. The coroner soon completed her exam, and her team waited for Paavo's okay to remove the body.

He was in no hurry. Until he was sure he'd learned everything the dead man could tell him about the way he died and by whom, he'd keep the body right where it was.

The removal team rolled their eyes at each other at the delay. Paavo saw their gesture and dismissed it. Same for the jewelry store owner, who was pacing back and forth in
front of the store, anxious to get in and figure out how much was left of his money and jewels. From what Paavo could see, he didn't have anything to worry about.

“Let me go!”

Paavo whirled around at the sound of a woman's cry. A young blonde, nicely dressed in a business suit and high heels, struggled with the uniformed officer guarding the crime scene. As Paavo approached her, she stopped struggling. Fear at what she might learn filled her eyes.

“I'm Inspector Smith,” he said.

Her tear-stained face would have been pretty were it not etched with worry. “I heard it on the radio,” she said, her voice trembling. “On the traffic report. A shooting at a jeweler's on Post Street. I called, but it wasn't Nathan who answered the phone. It was a police officer.” Her icy fingers grasped Paavo's hands. “He's going to be all right, isn't he? Tell me he'll be all right.”

“Are you his wife?” Paavo asked.

She nodded.

“I'm sorry,” he said gently. “He didn't make it.”

“No! You're wrong!” she screamed, her grip tightening. “Let me see him.”

“Mrs. Ellis—”

“He's all right!” she cried. “Please, God.”

Paavo gestured at the patrolman beside her. “This is Officer Crossen. He'll take care of you, Mrs. Ellis.”

“Nathan!” She sobbed hysterically as Paavo pulled his hands free of hers and backed away. The young patrolman led her slowly toward his police car. He'd take her home and find someone to stay with her.

Paavo shut his eyes a moment, running his fingers through his hair as her cries echoed in his mind. He faced the body, checking, double-checking, and all the while pondering the man who had been Nathan Ellis and all he'd lost this day.

Finally, he took a deep breath and scanned the crowd until he found a small, white-haired man. “I understand you're the owner,” he said.

“Yes,” the man said, his voice quivering.

Paavo drew him away from the crowd and gave the coroner's men the okay to remove the body.

“Your full name?” he asked.

“Philip Justin Pierpont.”

“You're the one who discovered that Mr. Ellis had been shot?”

“Yes. I was coming back from the bank, and I heard a loud noise. I thought a car had backfired, but then I saw people running away from the shop, screaming. I hid in a doorway, I'm sorry to say. When it was quiet again, I came here and found Nathan.”

“You called the police and reported a robbery.”

“Yes.”

In the jewelry shop, diamond rings and necklaces on black velvet had sparkled under the lights. Paavo had seen nothing broken into, nothing disturbed. The cash register was still filled with cash. “What made you think it was a robbery?”

The man's cheeks turned red, his hands moved spasmodically, as if out of control. “What reason other than robbery could anyone have been here? Why else would anyone shoot Nathan Ellis?”

 

At five o'clock, Paavo finally arrived at his desk to enter into his computer the lengthy notes he'd taken at the jewelry store that morning and throughout the day as he'd spoken with friends, relatives, and coworkers of the victim, as well as potential witnesses up and down the block where the jeweler's was located. It had been a frustrating day. So far, they'd found no witnesses to the crime, and no one had seen anyone go into or come out of the jeweler's that morning. The robber had to have gone out the back door into an alley, which meant he had cased the place before robbing it.

It was, in fact, a robbery. A couple of hours after he'd left the store, Philip Pierpont had phoned to tell him that
three inexpensive reproductions of Russia's priceless Fabergé eggs were missing—blown crystal eggs, encrusted with gold, worth no more than a few hundred dollars apiece. The originals were in museums, but here, someone had killed a man over a set of copies. It didn't make sense.

Paavo stared grimly at the words he'd placed on his computer screen. The downtown area around Post and Grant Streets was one of San Francisco's busiest. That no one saw anything was hard to believe. He couldn't help but suspect he was dealing with the big-city problem of people not wanting to get involved in any problems that didn't affect them personally. The fact that a twenty-nine-year-old was gunned down senselessly seemed to mean little to anyone except his family and friends.

Sometimes Paavo wondered why it meant anything to him.

His phone rang. It was MasterCard's security division, giving him the home telephone numbers that matched the cards of two customers who were in Carole Anne's Dress Shoppe, next door to Sans Souci Jewelers, just minutes before the shooting occurred. There was a slight chance one or both of the women had been on the street in front of the jeweler's when the gunman entered. If so, he had to get to them fast.

Generally, eyewitnesses to murders didn't provide much help. Their memories were too easily influenced. The bigger the case, the more they tended to “remember” what was shown on TV the night before. But he wanted to find out why they'd left so quickly. Why they weren't among the people Yosh had interviewed.

He dialed the first number. No one answered. He called the second number. No answer there either. Where were they?

The unanswered telephone calls brought an eerie déjà vu from last night. Up until eleven o'clock he'd kept trying to reach Angie. He'd even checked to see if there'd been any auto accidents involving a Ferrari Testarossa. There hadn't.

After eleven, he gave up. He hadn't left a message, not wanting her to think he'd been checking up on her. She'd probably gone to visit one of her sisters. Maybe a girlfriend. It wasn't as if the words Stan had spoken about her no longer telling him where she was going or what she was doing had bothered him. He had scarcely thought about them at all except for one or two or ten times.

When he arrived at work that morning he'd skimmed the accident reports again and felt like a jerk doing it. If he didn't watch himself, he'd start calling hospital emergency rooms next.

He had no reason to expect her to tell him every time she went out in the evening. She could go where she pleased, with whomever. After all, they'd never spoken of an exclusive commitment.

He'd made some assumptions, though. Some big assumptions. Maybe even some foolish ones.

He forced himself to shove aside thoughts of where she might have gone last night. It was her business, not his. What he needed to do was to type up his notes while his scribbles still made sense. Later, he'd call. Tonight, though, with a fresh murder case to investigate, he wasn't going anywhere.

Before long, he became lost in speculation about the case and in deciphering the day's findings. Looking up from his computer, he glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven-forty. Then at his desk calendar.

His desk calendar had somehow gotten stuck on Friday. But today was Tuesday…Tuesday night. That seemed to mean something. He'd been too busy the last couple of days to flip the pages. Now he did.

And discovered he was in big trouble.

Angie had bought ballet tickets for the two of them for tonight. He rubbed his forehead. He'd never been to the ballet before. Had never wanted to go. Still didn't.

But she had been looking forward to it, and he'd promised to join her. He'd even told her that if he didn't call her beforehand, he'd meet her in front of the Opera
House in time for the eight o'clock performance. She was probably already there waiting.

He glanced down at his clothes. Dark gray jacket and pants, white shirt, navy tie. A day of rooting around a crime scene and hunting down witnesses hadn't done wonders for them, not to mention his way-past-five o'clock shadow, or the fact that he'd forgotten about lunch and hadn't had time for dinner.

Yosh walked into the squad room. “Here's that encyclopedia article you wanted.”

Paavo took the photocopied pages.

“So, what do you think, Paav? The killer have a hen fetish or something?” Yosh asked, then chuckled.

Although black humor was a big part of the way homicide inspectors dealt with the ugliness they saw every day, there were times Paavo couldn't join in. Some cases wheedled their way under even the thickest skins. Usually, they were the ones that involved kids. But today, Debbie Ellis's grief-chilled hands had made him see Nathan Ellis as a person, not just another statistic added to the city's murder rate.

“I got it!” called Inspector Bo Benson from the other side of the quiet room. Calderon's partner, he was spending most of his time lately trying to crack a gang-related teen party shooting. He walked toward them, a big smile on his face. “The guy was trying to figure out which
came first, the chicken or the egg, and the clerk must have—”

Yosh grabbed Benson's arm and swung him around. “Coffee time, Bo,” Yosh said, leading Benson away from Paavo's glare.

Paavo threw down the pages in disgust. Three modern Fabergé eggs. Why were they taken? Anyone would be lucky to get a fence to give a sawbuck for the lot of them. The kind of people who would be interested in that kind of decoration weren't the kind who frequented pawnshops or ran with fences.

And most puzzling, why steal eggs when there were diamonds to grab? Even a junkie desperate for a fix doesn't grab playthings when faced with diamonds.

Did Nathan Ellis spook the gunman? Maybe the killer fired in a sudden panic, snatched the nearest thing at hand, and fled.

Then again, could the gunman have come to kill Ellis and lifted the eggs to confuse everyone? But if so, wouldn't taking diamonds have been a better ploy?

Too many possibilities, too many questions only the gunman could answer—when he was caught.

Paavo glanced at the clock again. Seven-fifty-three. The ballet would last a couple of hours, he'd see Angie home, and hopefully be back here by eleven. He grabbed his jacket, and prayed a taxi would be near.

 

Angie stood in front of the Opera House. She should have known Paavo would be late. If she'd been thinking, she'd have left his ticket at the box office. That way she, at least, could have seen the beginning of
Romeo and Juliet
. She had so looked forward to having him see it with her, though—the beautiful dancing, Prokofiev's luscious music, and, most of all, the tragic love story—the beauty of love and commitment more important than life itself. And she couldn't even get her man to the theater on time. Where had she gone wrong?