The Da Vinci Cook (29 page)

Cat pursed her lips. “All I know is, I see no reason to ask his opinion when I know he’s going to tell me to do whatever I want.”

“So you don’t ask because you know what he’ll answer?” Angie regarded her sister incredulously. “Have you ever considered that if you don’t ask, he might take that to mean you don’t care? And if you don’t care, how could he give a thoughtful reply? You two are in a rut.”

“It’s not my fault!” Cat began, but suddenly stopped, eyes wide, listening.

She and Angie stared at each other. Had they heard something?

The steps to the second floor were wooden, and some squeaked.

They heard the sound again.

“How could anyone get in here?” Cat whispered. “I barricaded the doors.”

“And the windows, right?”

“Me?” Cat said. “No. You checked the windows. Besides, you said lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place—that we’d be safe here.”

“And you agreed.”

“It did seem logical,” Cat intoned.

Barely moving so the bedsprings didn’t squeal, they eased themselves to the floor. Angie clutched her rolling pin and went to one side of the doorway. Cat took the frying pan in both hands, lifted it like a baseball bat, and flattened herself against the opposite side.

All was quiet. Suddenly, without warning, a dark figure entered the room.

Angie whacked him hard across the back with her rolling pin. He grunted, and as he arched in reflex, she hit him in the stomach. He doubled over and Cat clobbered him neatly on the head with the frying pan.

The man fell to the ground, out cold.

They were about to congratulate themselves when a second man ran into the bedroom with a shout, his arms swinging. This one was about twice the size of the first. The women had the advantage of darkness and a room unfamiliar to the stranger. Angie smashed the solid wood cylinder across the man’s face. He howled and covered his nose, hunched over.

Cat hit him on the back of his head. The frying pan vibrated so badly she almost dropped it.

While the first man was out cold after that, the second one staggered, but that was it. With one hand on his nose, he lifted his other hand to his head to protect it. Cat came down hard on his fingers with the frying pan, and got a satisfying shriek of pain and anger.

Still, he didn’t fall.

Cursing, he grasped the pan and pulled it away from her.

Angie whacked him with the rolling pin, hitting his neck, ear, and shoulders, but he wouldn’t go down. Each blow only seemed to make him angrier and more ready to fight back. He smacked the rolling pin with the frying pan, and it flew from Angie’s hands as if it were a toothpick. She was defenseless, backed against the wall. In the shadows, the assailant looked beyond enormous. King Kong’s double.

Suddenly there was the clinking of chains, and then a loud
thwack
as heavy iron chains smacked the man across the nose and eyes. This time he clutched his face, and as he staggered, Angie kicked the back of his knee, hard. His leg buckled, and it was like felling a redwood as he went over backward onto the floor.

Angie and Cat fled the restaurant as fast as their legs could carry them.

They could think of nowhere to go but to Father Daniel’s.

The rooming house manager’s eyes spun when he opened the door to them. He hurried them up the stairs to the priest, his face a combination of concern, shock, and abject disapproval.

Father Daniel was equally stunned at the sight of two frightened, barefoot women in loose, half-buttoned pajamas standing in his doorway. He put on his glasses as if hoping his near-sightedness had caused his vision to go wildly haywire. It hadn’t.

In Cat’s hand, clutched like a weapon, was the chain of St. Peter. Daniel swallowed hard, trying to ignore the manager’s severe frown as he opened the door to his room wide and bade them enter.

Chapter 34

Charles refused to go to a hospital. Once they determined he wasn’t physically hurt or in pain, Paavo drove him to his Tiburon home, where he could shower, change clothes, and eat before the inevitable trip to the Hall of Justice to answer questions.

On the way there, Paavo stopped at a McDonald’s and ordered burgers and coffee with extra sugars and half-and-half. The burgers could wait until they got to the Swenson home, but Charles, shaking from cold and shock, needed the warmth and sugar. He wore no jacket or sweater, and Paavo had given him his jacket and turned the Corvette heater to high.

Once in the house, Charles scarcely looked the place over, but headed off to take a hot shower. Minutes later he returned to the kitchen wrapped in a heavy robe with thick socks and slippers. His face, once again, had some color to it.

Paavo watched him practically inhale the two double cheeseburgers and a large fries. Charles was starting on his second coffee and third burger when he gave a loud sigh. Hands trembling, he put the food down and sat back looking dazed.

Paavo poured him a straight shot of brandy. “Are you ready to talk about it?”

Charles gulped down the brandy. He choked and gasped, but pushed the empty glass out for another shot. He rubbed his forehead, his expression crumbling. Awareness and delayed shock were overwhelming him once more, and he made a visible effort to compose himself. “I wondered if I’d ever see my home or family again.” He tried to force a smile or even a laugh, but soon gave up the ruse as his eyes filled with tears.

“Start at the beginning,” Paavo said.

Charles seemed to take strength from Paavo’s calm. “I had just arrived home when the doorbell rang. I opened it and two people with stockings over their faces pushed their way in. They asked where Cat was—a man and a woman, from the sound of their voices—and I said she wasn’t here, that she’d gone to Italy. They didn’t believe me at first, and threatened me. I swore it was true.”

“You knew about the chain?” Paavo asked.

“Very little. Cat had mentioned that if I knew a potential buyer, to let her know.” With a shaking hand, Charles downed another brandy.

Paavo waited patiently.

“They tied me up, blindfolded me. I could tell that they searched the house. I was terrified. All I could think about was Cat and our son. They tried calling Cat’s cell phone—they found the number in the house—but it was turned off. The two argued. I overheard some of it. They thought she’d stolen the chain. It made no sense. Cat would never steal anything. They figured Cat would call me, and they’d force her to turn over the chain or they’d kill me.” He shuddered, his voice plaintive. “We waited all night. She never phoned!”

“What happened next?” Paavo asked as gently as he could.

“The two started to get nervous. It was nearly dawn, and people in the area would be getting up soon for work and school. They decided to leave and take me with them.

“I was shut up in the back of a van, told to lie down and not move. I didn’t dare do anything but obey. We ended up somewhere in San Francisco—I knew that because we stopped to pay the bridge toll—and then I could feel the van going up and down the hills, and stopping for traffic lights. The guy complained incessantly about hitting every red light. The woman told him to shut up. Finally, they stopped. I don’t know where. They only untied me a couple of times to use a chamber pot. Said if I soiled the van they’d kill me for sure.”

He grimaced. Of all the terror and indignities of the past few days, nothing galled him as much as the lack of privacy and the ensuing humiliation. Coupled with his wife’s seeming lack of consideration, he was beginning to get angry now that he was out of danger. Anger was good, Paavo thought, as he observed the glint behind the eyeglasses. It was a step in recovering from the trauma of being helpless and frightened.

Charles stared morosely at his cold coffee before beginning again. “At some point, they realized I didn’t have my cell phone on me, and the reason their calls didn’t get answered was because Cat’s cell phone didn’t work in Italy. Since they couldn’t call her, they had no choice but to wait for her to call me. They went back to Tiburon and got my cell phone.” He mangled a french fry. “She never called. She never even cared enough to try to find me.”

“She did make phone calls,” Paavo said. “She phoned a few times. When you didn’t answer, she got worried. She asked me to see what I could do to find you.”

“At least she did that much.” Charles poured himself more brandy. “But it wasn’t quite enough, was it?” He stared at Paavo. “If the situation was reversed and Cat was the one missing, I’d do everything I could to find her. I’d fly home under my own power if need be. I wouldn’t care if she didn’t normally turn on her cell phone, I’d have tried it, and would have kept trying every number I knew until somebody answered. I thought . . . I thought she was becoming a little bored with”—he cleared his throat, trying to hide the crack in his voice—“with our lives, but I hadn’t realized it had gone this far. That she cared so very little. When did it all go so wrong?”

Paavo had no answer.

“When we first married, I was so crazy about her,” Charles said into his whiskey glass. “She was all the beautiful Italian actresses of my youth rolled into one, like Sophia Loren, or Gina Lollobrigida. Turns out she was more Anna Magnani than either of them.”

“Who?” Paavo asked.

Charles just smiled. “It’s not important. I was intrigued by her Italian heritage. I found it more interesting than she did, in fact. I even learned Italian. Cat laughs at my pronunciation, so I don’t speak it around her, but whenever I found myself alone in Italy, I was able to make myself understood. Italians aren’t like the French. They appreciate you trying to speak their language.”

“Charles, Cat had no idea things would go this far,” Paavo said. “No one did. We need to go to the Hall of Justice now.”

As Charles went off to get dressed, Paavo checked for messages. Angie should have called from the airport to tell him which flight she’d be taking home.

There were no new messages.

He phoned Da Vinci’s one more time to see if Angie and Cat were there.

Once again there was no answer.

“You know nothing about women’s clothes, Father.” Angie tried to be kind. He wanted to be helpful, after all. Still, she couldn’t hide how ludicrous she felt in her outfit.

“Fashion is my least concern. I wanted to be able to get you both out of here without being reported to my superiors for indecent behavior. It’s going to be hard enough explaining to the manager why you came here.”

“We told him we needed help,” Angie said.

“I know,” he said. “Still . . . ” The priest had to suppress a chuckle as he looked at them.

When the women arrived, they immediately decided several things. Daniel needed to get them clothes and a place to hide as soon as possible. When the restaurant opened for lunch, he’d get their passports from Bruno and immediately help them get to the airport.

In the middle of the night, he left them to go to a church-run homeless shelter, concocting a story about two women who had lost everything in a fire. The female night attendant was cajoled into picking out clothes, including shoes and undergarments.

When he was asked to describe the women’s size and height, he froze. If he described what the two really looked like, he could find himself in big trouble. They were two of the most attractive women he’d seen in his life. Just thinking about their somewhat revealing state of dress when they arrived at his place, he knew he was going to spend a lot of time on his knees in the confessional.

He only took comfort remembering the words of a much loved older priest who was once asked how long it took for a man to become used to being celibate. “About three days after he’s dead,” was the honest reply.

Daniel drew in a deep breath. The church never said the life he chose was easy.

He described the women as elderly, not too fat, and a little over five feet tall. He hoped that sounded innocent enough.

The clothes he was given proved how good an actor he was.

Angie wore metallic blue polyester slacks and a top with thick yellow and white horizontal stripes. The clothes were baggy, with the slacks not quite reaching her ankles. Cat’s outfit was brown slacks and a top with little orangey blossoms on a yellow background. Both women wore white sneakers and thick white socks. He didn’t want to think about the unmentionables he also bought for them.

“I’ve never been so humiliated in my life,” Cat said, looking down at herself.

Angie pointed and laughed. “You look so short and stubby.”

Daniel had to agree. For some reason, Cat reminded him of the way children drew mushrooms with dotted tops and boxy brown stems.

“Anyone who looks like a bumblebee on steroids has no right to point fingers,” Cat retorted. The two sisters beamed death stares at each other.

“Ladies,” Father Daniel said, holding up his hands, “we’ve got to get out of here before more people start milling around. You should put on the rest of your things so we can get going.”

He had also bought wool overcoats and head scarves. Cat studiously inspected the coat for lice, moths, or other bugs before putting it on. They covered their hair with the scarves, knotting them under their chins.