Cooking Most Deadly (4 page)

With startling clarity, her conversation with Bianca came back to her. Was she to blame for Paavo's not being here? Was she too unwilling to compromise?

He was probably busy—and had been too busy all day to call. But he'd expressly told her that if he didn't call, he'd be here. He'd canceled out on her before, but he'd never stood her up. She didn't want to even consider him doing such a thing. Where was he?

If he'd gotten a new case, that meant someone else had been killed, another death in this city that had seen more than its share of violence. Right across Van Ness Avenue from her stood City Hall, its high, round dome lighting up the night sky, majestic and noble. That was appearance, though. Beneath the dome, battles for control of the city were legion, and not too many years before, a member of the Board of Supervisors had murdered the mayor and a fellow supervisor.

A shiver ran down her back. Maybe it was just some paperwork that was keeping him, and not a new murder at all.

She glanced up and down the street. Now that the ballet had started, the sidewalk was empty except for two street people who'd wandered over from Civic Center Plaza to ask the supposedly wealthy ballet-goers for handouts.

She raised the collar of her evening coat against her neck and backed up toward the tall glass doors, wanting to be inside, enjoying the warmth of the building instead of out here.

A taxi pulled ahead of a line of cars stopped at a red light, cut across two lanes, and screeched to a halt in front of the Opera House. Paavo jumped out and thrust some money at the cab driver. Angie folded her arms, lifted her nose in the air, and gazed past him. A small green car stopped behind the taxi. Something about it momentarily caught her attention.

Paavo raced up the stairs to her side. “Sorry,” he said.

“It's already started,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“I was afraid of that,” he said guiltily. “Do you want to go in, anyway? Or just forget it this time?”

“I'd like to go in. But I suppose you'll hate it, won't you?”

“Hate it? I've never seen—”

“That's why you weren't here on time.”

“No, I—”

“You could have told me. I'm able to compromise.”

“Angie, what are you talking about?”

“I had orchestra seats for us, too. I thought you'd enjoy seeing the ballet.”

“I hope to enjoy it,” he said very quickly.

She paused. “You do?”

“Yes. I do.”

Slowly, her face spread into a smile. “Oh, well, in that case, what are we waiting for?” Ignoring his puzzled expression, she took his arm and allowed him to escort her inside.

He eased a double set of
surgical gloves onto his hands, the latex like an extra layer of skin. He flexed his fingers. No more planning or preparation: it was payoff time.

After a quick glance over his surroundings—rows of apartment buildings done in postwar stark, boxlike architecture, the only thing making them at all attractive being the view of the city this Twin Peaks location provided—he scanned the name tags on the mailboxes.

There it was.

He pushed the buzzer beneath her name. His covered fingertips tingled as his tightly controlled excitement mounted.

No answer.

The silent intercom mocked his expectations. She had to be there. After all, he'd followed her all the way from City Hall earlier that evening. She couldn't have left already. What was the goddamn bitch doing?

He jabbed at the button.

More silence. He tasted the sweat that had formed on his upper lip.

“Yes?” came a hesitant voice from the intercom.

“Delivery.”

“This time of night? I'm not expecting anything.”

“It's a gift, ma'am. Roses. Nice, long-stemmed roses.” He spoke with steady deliberation, fighting a growing impatience.

“Roses?”

“These are beautiful, ma'am. Best bouquet we have. My boss said the tall, gray-haired guy who bought them insisted on delivery tonight. Said it was special or something. I guess it's all in the card. I'll read it to you if you'd like.”

“I'll read it myself. I'll buzz you in.” Her pleasure was evident.

The door's lock sang with an electric hum as he pushed it open.

Inside he paused, breathing deeply. The heavy glass door swung shut behind him. He cleared his mind of all thoughts other than those of the woman in Apartment 320. Then he began his ascent up the stairs, calmly and silently.

When he reached the third floor landing he carefully placed the box of roses on the floor. He didn't want her to recognize him as the
Chronicle
salesman from the other day. With practiced efficiency, he removed his glasses and slipped them into the breast pocket of his shirt, attached a fake brown mustache to his upper lip, and put on the John Deere baseball cap he carried under his jacket. Satisfied with his transformation, he picked up the flowers, walked to Tiffany Rogers's apartment door, and knocked.

She opened the door, clutching her thin, clinging robe to her chin. With her other hand, she touched the damp hair curling around her oval face. The closeness of her barely concealed body, full, soft, and reeking of pure, raw sex, both excited and troubled him.

“I was in the shower when you rang,” she said, taking a half step backward.

“Ma'am.” He crossed the threshold and touched the brim of his cap.

“Oh…come in.” Her voice was hesitant. “It is drafty out there, isn't it?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She was walking toward the purse on her living room table when he shut the door behind him. At the sound of the click she stopped, half turned, and looked at him.

“I want to tip you,” she said. “I'll only be a moment.”

His reply was a thin, awkward smile.

She rummaged in her purse, then turned around with the two dollars she'd taken from her wallet.

She gasped in surprise. He had silently followed her into the living room and stood close, too close. “Here,” she said, and thrust the dollar bills in his direction.

He wanted to put his glasses on, to see her better. Ignoring the extended hand with the money, his eyes explored her. The robe clung and accentuated her soft curves, its V neck all but exposed her pendulous breasts to his gaze. His breath caught, and he could feel beads of perspiration at his temples.

“Here…the money,” she said, her voice rising. “Give me the flowers.”

He pushed the flower box toward her with one hand as he snatched the dollar bills with the other. The woman, clutching the box to her body with both arms, moved back, away from him. A puzzled look crossed her face. She stared at him. He could see the distaste in her gaze as she took in his sweat-streaked face, his weak, myopic eyes.

“I just wanted my flowers,” she stammered with a false, fearful smile.

“And this, too,” he said. In his hand, a six-inch carbon steel combat knife gleamed.

 

She hadn't even screamed. It figured. She was the type who took whatever a man gave her. He smiled with contempt at the bloody, seminude heap on the crimson rug. With a quick slash of the knife, he opened the box of roses and tossed them around her, then picked up the largest,
fullest one. He walked to her bedroom and placed it on her bed.

Back in the living room, standing over her, he pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped off the knife with a slow, up-and-down motion. Then he slid it back into the sheath under his jacket.

This one was for Heather.

“Actually, Angie, Charles and I
never go to concerts anymore. Not rock or opera. Not even supper clubs,” said Caterina, Angie's second sister. Cat, who had been called Trina and had dark brown hair when she was growing up, had somehow metamorphosed into a platinum blond Supermom with her own interior design business. Franz Kafka had nothing on her.

Angie sat in the family room of Cat's Tiburon home and watched her sister make a diorama of the Pilgrims' landing.

“So coming up with dumb compromises isn't a problem for you anymore?” Angie asked hopefully.

“Not at all. Movies are our most common entertainment now—when we can find the time. I'm always so busy!”

“Reminds me of Paavo. He's always too busy for me, it seems,” Angie murmured. “Say, isn't Kenny supposed to make that diorama himself?”

“Really, Angie! Have you ever seen an eight-year-old's diorama? One of his classmate's father is in the Army Corps of Engineers. Kenny needs a fighting chance at a good grade.”

Angie didn't think that was the idea of the lesson, but
she held her tongue. “So now you and Charles go to the movies.”

“Not
go
to the movies. We rent them.” Cat placed a big rock that had PLYMOUTH written on it in the box, then stepped back and eyed it as if she were studying the placement of a Louis XV writing desk. “Married people don't go to the movies much.”

“They don't?”

“Heck, when you're newly married, who needs them?” Cat adjusted the rock about a centimeter to the left and contemplated its new position. “Then for a while, after the initial blush—so to speak—of wedded bliss, you do go to shows. But soon, quick as a wink, all that ends.”

“It does?”

“That's right.” Cat put some glue on the bottom of a cutout of the
Mayflower
and stuck it in the box. “Before you know it, you've got kids. Then you know what you do?”

Angie shook her head.

“You go to the video store and rent movies like
Ernest Goes to Jail
. By the time it's over and the kids are asleep, you are too. And so's your old man.”

“Oh, dear.”

The
Mayflower
was listing badly.

Paavo picked up the insistently
ringing phone on his desk. He was pulling together the last couple of bits of information before going to talk with Nathan Ellis's wife. Robbery might well have been the motive behind Ellis's murder, but he wanted to be sure that he wasn't jumping to an obvious conclusion and overlooking other possibilities. Talking to the grief-stricken Debbie Ellis about something her husband might have been involved in wasn't on his list of favorite things to do.

“Smith here.”

“Paavo! I'm so glad I reached you!” Angie's voice bubbled through the phone lines. He was relieved she'd called. She'd seemed more than a little unhappy with him last night when he'd dropped her off right after the ballet. But then he realized her call might have been because something bad had happened.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine.”

“Your family?”

“Nothing's wrong, Paavo. I can call you about good news, can't I?”

He took a deep breath. “Sure. What is it?”

“I'll give you one guess. But I warn you, it's so unbelievable, so absolutely remarkably stupendous, you'll never guess it.”

“Angie, I've got a lot of—”

“Don't be such a fussbudget. Come on. One guess.”

Fussbudget?
“All right. You sold your article to
Haute Cuisine
.”

“That would scarcely be stupendous. Besides, I haven't even figured out what to write about yet.” She sounded down at that admission.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It's okay. Guess again.”

“Look, Yosh is waiting. I've got to—”

“All right, all right. Are you sitting?”

“I'm sitting.”

“Well, I went to visit my sister, Cat, this morning, and when I got back, I had a message waiting. I didn't recognize the name, so I called back and—you won't believe it—it was a director at KROW-TV!”

“KROW? I've never heard of it.”

“You haven't? It's Channel 73. They have the best Farsi shows in the Bay Area.”

Paavo did sit now. “How could I have missed it?”

“Don't be sarcastic! Anyway, they're expanding their repertoire, and they've decided to add a cooking show.”

“In Farsi?”

“No, not in Farsi. In English. And guess who they'd like to star in it?”

“Julia Child?”

“Paavo! Not Julia! Me!”

He laughed. “Angie, that's great news.”

“Isn't it? There's just one problem. They want me to do Italian cooking, and they've come up with a terrible name
—Angelina in the Cucina
. That's Italian for kitchen.”

“You're right. That
is
a terrible name.”

“Maybe I can talk them out of it. But anyway, this is it,
Paavo. My big break. My big start on the way to fame. Hollywood—or is it Burbank?—here I come!”

His fingers tightened on the phone. “I guess so,” he said softly, then louder, “That's great, Angie.”

“I have to do an audition, of course. I've never done one before, but how much of a problem can it be, right? They said I just have to go down to the studio and cook something in front of a camera. Sounds easy to me.”

“I'm sure you'll have no problem at all.”

“Aren't you happy for me, Paavo?”

Why did he feel as if someone had just kicked him in the chest?
“Of course, I am. It's good news, Angie. Really…good news.”

“Let's go out and celebrate, okay?”

“I've got this investigation.”

“I mean tonight.”

“I'm not sure.”

There was a long silence. “Right. I should have known.”

He heard the hurt in her voice. “Soon, Angie. Okay?”

“Sure, Paavo. Soon.”

The dial tone sounded in his ear. She hadn't even said good-bye.

 

Paavo put word out to all the pawnshops that if a replica of a Fabergé egg came in, he was to be contacted immediately. He silently congratulated himself on his good humor at the deluge of Easter egg and Easter bunny jokes he was hit with. It made him wonder if he was mellowing.

He went to the crime lab to see what they had learned about a couple of round, black stains the crime scene investigators had found on the jewelry store's light gray carpet. Since the cleaning crew had vacuumed and sponged off any dirt marks the night before, it was suspected that it might have come from something on the thief's shoe.

“I was just getting ready to call you, Paavo,” Inspector Howard said. “We've got a match, but it's not much.”

“What is it?”

“Bubblegum.”

“What?”

“Looks like the thief stepped onto a big wad of bubblegum, and it stuck to the bottom of his shoe. That's it, Paav.”

“You're right, Al. It's not much.”

 

The clock on the computer screen read 3:30
P.M.
After visiting her sister, Angie had spent the rest of the day trying to concentrate on her historical study of San Francisco. She figured that anyone with degrees in English and history, who'd attended some of the best universities in the world, should write at least one book. It wasn't moving far or fast, though. Maybe she wasn't cut out to be a historian. Either that, or she wasn't cut out to think about marriage. The two obviously were not compatible.

She leaned back in the new white leather ergonomic chair in her den and stretched, trying to get the kinks out of her back, neck, and shoulders. She'd never ached this way in her old, high-backed chair. It was generously padded with soft, down cushions.

Not so this one. The seat, footrests, elbow and wrist supports moved every which way but comfortable. The chair looked like something from the Starship
Enterprise
. She got up and tried adjusting it for the umpteenth time.

A shave-and-a-haircut beat rapped on her apartment door. She knew that knock. Why me, Lord?

As she crossed her living room, she gazed with renewed affection at the nonergonomic antiques collected over the past few years. If chairs like that were good enough for Chippendale…

Before opening the door, she looked through the peephole—a precaution Paavo had convinced her she needed to take. As expected, her neighbor, Stanfield Bonnette, stood
in the hall, a dopey smile spread across his otherwise handsome face.

She opened the door a crack. “I'm busy, Stan.”

He straight-armed the door, preventing her from closing it. “I haven't seen you for a while, Angie!” he said with a quiver to his lower lip. “I came by to make sure you were all right.”

He was playing her for a sucker. She knew it. But how could she shut the door on someone who could make his lower lip tremble? “All right, come in. But I've only got a minute.”

“Thanks!” He walked into the living room, then turned to face her with an expectant smile. “Do I smell coffee?”

She guessed Stan could seem disarmingly charming if she didn't know him so well. He was twenty-nine, tall, thin, with silky light brown hair and brown eyes, and considered himself an up-and-coming bank executive. No one else seemed to think of him as such, however. Especially not his bosses.

“The coffee's been sitting since lunchtime.”

“I'm not fussy.” He walked into the kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator. “Let's see what we can find here.”

There was no stopping Stan in pursuit of food. “There's not much of interest except in the freezer,” Angie said.

He opened the freezer door. “Oh! Looky there. Whatever it is, it looks great.”

“It's called
tortoni
.” As she'd suspected all along, hunger, not sympathy, was the true cause of his angst in the doorway.

“Should we split it?” he asked, lifting out the custard cup filled with Italian-style ice cream. “Though it is awfully small.”

“I've given up desserts for Lent,” she said. “I made that last night for Paavo, but things didn't work out I'm afraid.”

Stan fished a teaspoon out of the drawer and shoved a heaping spoonful of
tortoni
into his mouth. “Delicious. That Smith is more of a fool than I thought he was.”

“Sometimes I have to agree,” she murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” She poured him a cup of coffee and carried it into the living room. Quickly finishing off the
tortoni
, Stan grabbed a couple of
biscotti
from the cookie jar and followed her.

“So tell me what's up,” he said as he took a seat in the center of the sofa.

“Not much.” Suddenly she smiled, and, with barely contained excitement, said, “I'm only going to audition for a TV show.”

“Angie, that's wonderful news! What kind of show?”

Laughing, Angie sat on the Hepplewhite chair next to the sofa. “Cooking. What else?”

“Wow!” Stan jumped to his feet, pulled her from the chair, and waltzed her around in circles. “Let's go celebrate.”

“What?”

“Me and you.”

The thought of going out with Stan was appalling. He was a friend—and a rather annoying one at that.

“We should go dancing.” He grinned roguishly. “Hot salsa, Western line, slam. Name your poison.”

Stepping away from him, she sat again. “Are you joking?”

“Not at all.” He also sat. “When was the last time you went to the Sound Works?”

“God…the Sound Works.” Thoughts of the huge, raucous dance club brought a smile to her lips. “Let's see. It was before I met Paavo, that's for sure. Ah, I remember. I went with Dmitri, so it had to have been sometime last summer.”

“Dmitri?”

“You met him. He was the Russian violinist. Absolutely mad. Fun, though.”

“Oh, him.” Stan grimaced. “Sometimes I wonder about your taste in men, Angie. Anyway, Doctor Bonnette says you need to go club dancing tonight. With him.”

She stared at him. The man was actually serious. “Thanks, Stan, but I don't think so.”

“What are you going to do instead? Mope around here and hope the detective gets tired of looking at corpses and decides to give you the time of day?”

“He'll come by when he can.”

“Stop kidding yourself, Angie. He's not right for you. Ditch him!”

“Stan!”

“All right, don't ditch him, then. But how often does someone get asked to audition for a TV show? You deserve a celebration. And the best part is, you don't even have to dance with me if you don't want to.”

She smiled, but shook her head.

“Don't say no. If he doesn't call or show up by nine tonight, that means he'll be working late, right? Then you and I can go celebrate your good fortune. Okay?”

“Well…” It might be interesting to take her marriage survey to the Sound Works, at that. She'd never bothered to notice how many—if any—of the couples there were married. And, if they weren't, what did that say about married life? She gazed at Stan. What did
he
think of marriage? She did want a man's opinion, and he was a friend.

He jumped to his feet. “Angie, come back! You were
way
out there. I'll see you at nine-oh-five.”

“Just one thing, Stan. I want to drive by Paavo's house on the way. I don't want to call. I just want to see if he's there or not.”

“Sure, Angie, whatever you say.”