Too Many Cooks (21 page)

Flashing his badge, Paavo
bypassed the usual mountain of paperwork at Emergency Hospital and took Angie straight to a doctor. When the doctor finished his examination, he told Paavo she had a few bad bumps and bruises but she'd be okay. He saw she was pretty shaken and gave her a sedative to help her sleep.

“I'm taking you to my house,” Paavo said when they were back in her car.

“I'll be all right,” she whispered.

“I don't like the idea of you being alone after the doctor gave you that sedative.”

“Maybe so,” she said. “Paavo, Klaw knows my address. He saw it on my check. You don't think he'd…” She bit her bottom lip.

Paavo placed his hand over hers. “He won't bother you. He thinks you were someone who was too curious and too foolish for her own good, that's all.”

“Thank God.”

The fear in her voice hurt Paavo more than any physical blow could. He understood what was happening to her. Even though she'd gotten safely away from Klaw, her mind was assailing her with thoughts and images of what might have happened had she been trapped there. Men like Klaw and his henchmen were common in the ugly world Paavo knew, but Angie had never before had to deal with people who made a mockery of the values and regard for others that shaped her life. With them, it hadn't mattered who or what she was. They operated on base animal instinct, where the scent of fear was as powerful an incentive as power and money. She knew they would have liked nothing more than to scare her into surrendering to them, and the knowledge of that, even though it hadn't happened, was terrifying.

Paavo drove straight to his house. As he opened his front door, he was greeted by the thudding feet of Hercules, who then hurled himself against Paavo.

“This cat is so damned spoiled,” Paavo muttered.

“Feed Hercules, Paavo,” she said.

She refused to lie down on the bed. Despite the medicine the doctor gave her, the thought of closing her eyes and trying to sleep made her uneasy. The giddiness and euphoria she'd felt earlier over her clever escape from Klaw had evaporated, and now the memories of Klaw's lurid face and Freddie's strong hands were sharp and frightening.

Paavo settled her on his sofa, gave her a pillow, and covered her with an afghan and then hovered near to pat her shoulder or brush back a wayward curl from her forehead. He wondered what had led her to go back to Axel Klaw's studio but knew she'd tell him when she was
ready. For now, he was content just to have her here.

He thought she'd fallen asleep when she said softly, almost calmly, “I looked through Karl Wielund's notebook.”

“Notebook?”

“He used to keep notes of his recipes: what he cooked, when and why he changed the ingredients, the temperatures, all that. Mark took Karl's notes and brought them to LaTour's with him. In Karl's notebook, I found a number like the ones on the films of Sheila Danning you had.”

“You remembered the numbers?”

“It wasn't too hard.” Drowsily, she rubbed her eyes. “Anyway, I sort of gave the fellow at the counter, Dwayne, the impression I wanted to act in a film, and then I gave him the impression we ought to watch a movie together. He let me go into the storage room to find a film to watch. I found the outtakes for the film reel listed in Karl's notebook. The film was an old one, nearly twenty years old, but I still recognized the woman in it. It was Lacy LaTour.”

“You're saying Henry's wife made porno flicks?”

“I saw more of Lacy in those photos than I ever want to see of her. They were sickening.”

Hard though it was to imagine, he believed what Angie was telling him. Suddenly, it all tied together—Henry, Karl Wielund, and Henry's wife, connected through the photos found in Wielund's place. Paavo rubbed his chin. “So if Henry and Lacy are the link between Wielund, Wielund's landlord, Chick, Sheila Danning, and Axel Klaw, we only need to figure out who wanted to kill four of them and why.”

Angie nodded wearily.

Paavo kissed her forehead. “Get some sleep, Angel.”

“Don't leave me.” She scooted downward so she was lying prone on the sofa, her head on the pillow. “How's that?” she asked, patting the edge of the sofa.

“It's fine.” He gave a halfhearted smile at the small space and then stretched out beside her on top of the blanket. After a moment, he raised himself up on his elbow and looked at her. “Are you comfortable?”

“Oh, yes.” She reached up to guide his head down to her chest. He gently placed a kiss in the hollow between her breasts and rested his head. She gently stroked his hair, and he felt himself relax. As much as she needed him now, so he too needed her. She was his peace, his refuge.

“Good,” he murmured. “So am I. Now.”

 

The sound of her breathing had deepened into sleep when Paavo heard a car stop in front of his house. He stepped to the side of the front window and looked out.

“Who is it?” she asked, suddenly awake, fearful.

“Your father,” he said wryly.

“It can't be!” He could hear the dismay in her voice.

“It is. And he's got one of the police commissioners, Pat O'Reilly, with him.”

“Police commissioner?” Bewildered, she pushed aside the blanket and stood up. The sedative had made her drowsy and foggy-headed. “Don't tell him about any of this, Paavo, please! Promise me.”

Paavo gave her a sharp look and opened the front door. “Hello, Mr. Amalfi. Commissioner O'Reilly.”

“Where is she?” Sal's look was withering. He
pushed the door wide, but halted abruptly as he stared at Angie's pale face, her disheveled state, the blanket on the sofa. “Angelina, what's happening to you?”

Angie looked at Paavo, her gaze imploring him to help.

“Everything's fine,” said Paavo. He went to her side and touched her elbow, his gaze pointed.

She shook her head, refusing to tell her father the truth. His heart was bad, and he'd be too upset.

Sal's gaze fixed on his daughter. “I heard that today you went to a porno theater, or worse. Someplace where they make the films. Those people are the worst kind: drugs, diseases, guns. I can't believe you'd go somewhere like that. It's not like you, not my Angelina. I can only imagine you did it because you've been seeing this man. His influence is no good for you, no good at all.”

She stepped closer to Paavo, her weight heavy against his supporting hand. “No,” she said.

Sal glared at her. “No? Then why were you there?”

“It was nothing, Papà,” she whispered, slowly shaking her head as she took a step toward Sal. Paavo released his hold on her.

Sal stepped closer to her, his hands twisting. “When the Commissioner heard where you were, he called me. I couldn't believe it. My baby, in such a place. I want you to come home with me this minute.”

Stricken, Angie turned to O'Reilly.

“You're the daughter of one of my best friends,” he said. “And you're going out with someone in the department. I feel a certain responsibility.” O'Reilly glanced quickly at Paavo. “We'll discuss this tomorrow, Smith.”

But Paavo had already figured it out. “You were checking me out, weren't you?” he asked Sal. “Because I was seeing Angie.”

“What do I know about you, about your family? What does she know?”

Paavo ran his fingers through his hair, trying not to speak the harsh words that came to mind. Instead, he only muttered, “I can't believe this!”

“Paavo.” Angie turned to him, her hand tentatively reaching for him.

“
Non importante
, Angelina.” Sal picked her coat and handbag up off the chair. His face was florid. “
Andiamo!
”

Her father's flushed looks scared her. It was too soon after his surgery for him to become so upset. Did she have any choice but to go with him, to try to calm him? She glanced at Paavo.

Paavo saw the hesitancy in her eyes. He'd always told himself that if she had to choose between her family and him, she'd choose her family. He'd been right. The best thing for him to do would be to make it easy for her. He took her coat from Sal and put it on her, fastening the topmost button so she wouldn't get cold. “Go home with your father, little one,” he said. “It's where you belong.” His hand lingeringly, lovingly, tucked a curl behind her ear.

She seemed stunned and confused.

“Go ahead.”

Sal took her arm and led her from Paavo's house. Obviously, Paavo had guessed right about what Angie wanted to do. She'd never listened to him so willingly before.

He shut the door behind them.

 

Paavo's frustration with the case, with not yet being granted a search warrant for Klaw's place, and with the whole business with Angie and her father went right over the top the next morning as he told Hollins how O'Reilly had been checking up on him. “Where does he get off?” he asked coldly.

“I don't know,” Hollins replied. The lieutenant looked equally irate. No one, not even a police commissioner, could nose around about one of his best men without his okay.

Paavo paced back and forth in Hollins's office. “Doesn't O'Reilly have the brains to figure out that I was trying to get Angie
out
of that place?”

“I'll fill him in on the case. I doubt if he knows anything about what's going on. He's not a cop, he's a politician.”

“Don't I know it!”

“Look, if you can get her to talk to O'Reilly, the heat'll be off for you.”

“It's between him and me. I don't want her involved.”

Hollins shook his head. “You got it bad, don't you? Why don't you just marry the girl?”

That stopped Paavo in his restless pacing. For a long silent moment he stared down at the floor. Considering how Angie left last night, there wasn't much chance of his seeing her again, let alone anything more, but he wasn't about to go into all that with Hollins. When he lifted his head, his expression was almost savage. “She'd be in danger every time I got a case she was interested in.”

“Just keep her out of them.”

Amusement eased some of the grimness from Paavo's face. “You don't know her very well, do you?”

Hollins chuckled. “Can't say I do.”

“The trouble is,” Paavo continued, “her poking her nose in my cases works. She's found the connection between the porn studios, Sheila Danning, Karl Wielund, and, now, Lacy LaTour.”

“Who's Lacy?” Hollins asked.

“She's the wife of the restaurant owner, Henry LaTour.”

“And?”

“She used to work in porno films. Axel Klaw has one of her films, and Karl Wielund knew about it.”

 

From Vice, Paavo learned that Axel Klaw was associated with drug dealers and gamblers as well as porno operations, but Klaw was the Teflon King of Porn; nothing stuck to him, no matter how big the charge.

Klaw's record went back twenty years. At age twenty-five, he was already a drug pusher, too smart and ambitious to use his own product.

As Paavo turned the pages in Klaw's file, suddenly, there in front of him, was the story he'd wanted, yet dreaded, to see.

The record showed that a man named Alexander Clausen had been investigated in connection with the death by overdose of a nineteen-year-old woman named Jessica Smith. Some witnesses said they'd seen Jessie go into Clausen's apartment with him, but a number of others swore Clausen had been seen in other places throughout the night. The woman was dead, and no one ever proved who was or was not with her.

But the woman's little brother knew. Paavo had seen his sister go with the man. And he remembered how the man's hard, mean look had frightened him. But Jessie had said he was fun.

Fun. God damn the man, Paavo thought. He stared at a mug shot taken years ago of the young Axel Klaw. I've spent a lot of years looking for you, Clausen. Now you've fallen into my lap, I won't let you go again.

The sun was just peeking
over the hills of the East Bay when Angie forced herself to get into her car, alone, and go for a drive around the city. She'd spent over a week at her parents' house. It was time to go back to living: back to her job at the radio, her history class, even her so-called apprenticeship at LaTour's.

A week ago, when she'd awakened in her old bedroom at her parents' home in Hillsborough, her father told her Paavo felt she was in his way and didn't want to have to deal with her as he tried to find Chick's murderer.

She'd been stunned. She remembered that Paavo had found her at Klaw's and had taken her to the hospital, where she'd been given a sedative. She rarely took medicine, and it hit her hard. After that, nothing but a faint memory of Paavo's warmth lingered before it all blurred together. Somewhere in the back
of her mind, though, a vague memory of Paavo telling her to leave made her father's words ring true.

As the days passed, though, the memory of those last hours with Paavo came back to her, filling her more and more with the sense that she'd been safe. Yet her father told her Paavo didn't want her there, and Sal wouldn't lie to her. Still, he might have misinterpreted.

But if Paavo cared about her, wouldn't he have at least phoned to ask how she was? How could he not? She missed him so much she could hardly bear it.

Even though Paavo didn't call, didn't try to see her, she knew there was a reason, a very good Paavo-like reason. No matter what her father told her, Paavo wouldn't toss her aside. The warming realization came to her that she trusted him. She trusted that when he was ready he'd see her again.

She drove through Chinatown, around Union Square, and over to the burgeoning theater district on Mason. On Bush, she turned and made a stop at an alley called Burritt Street. A plaque there never failed to tickle her.

The Maltese Falcon
lives. She smiled, but then frowned and read it once more.

It wasn't until she was almost at the top of Russian Hill that she realized what it was about the plaque
that had bothered her. All this time she'd been thinking about a
man
as the murderer of Chick and Karl. But maybe she needed to find out more about the women involved, especially Lacy LaTour, now that she knew about the porn connection. Lacy just might be the key to the murderer, or even be the murderer herself.

When she returned to her apartment, she found that her jaunt around the city had lifted her mood considerably.

She was going to wait patiently for Paavo and, in the meantime, figure out who killed Chick and Karl. And somehow, some way, some day, she'd get even with Axel Klaw besides.

Just as she had forced herself to return to her own apartment, so she forced herself to go back to Henry's radio show. It was mercifully routine.

Afterward, it was time to check in on LaTour's. Henry had thought she'd been sick with the flu, on the verge of pneumonia, and insisted she stay away until she was one hundred percent better.

She was greeted warmly at LaTour's, and Mark Dustman immediately put her to work helping make a large pot of bouillabaisse.

Angie waited until Dustman and his assistants were busy and then went into the office. She picked up the telephone receiver, dialed the time, and held it to her ear by tucking it against the crook of her neck. This way, although she looked as if she was making a telephone call, she could go through the books.

To her surprise, the restaurant was doing worse than she ever imagined. Each month ended with a
negative balance. She ran her finger up and down the columns, looking at headings and amounts to see if anything looked out of line. Not that she could see. It was just a very expensive place to run.

She flipped back some pages to scan individual accounts of income and outgo. It was the beluga caviar that stopped her first. Three hundred pounds of it? Being sold at LaTour's? She didn't think so. Why on earth would Henry have bought so much of the stuff? Eighty-five pounds of saffron? Did Henry plan to season all the rice in Spain? Saffron was so costly it was sold by the quarter ounce! Lobsters. Henry didn't have lobsters on his menu. Périgord truffles. What was going on here?

When Henry came in, he peered into the pots and harrumphed that it all looked passable, while Lacy took a look at the amount of clams and mussels in the bouillabaisse and let Dustman have a barrage of her human calculator talk about the expense involved. The bottom line was, he needed to use one and a half cups of water to every cup he now used when making the soup, in order to nearly double their profit margin. He declared it would taste like watery swill. Lacy didn't care. She worked on the accounts, paying bills, posting income and outgo, and trying to squeeze a profit out of the business.

Angie stayed at the restaurant until the kitchen closed at 11
P.M
., then helped the staff clean up. Throughout this time, as she watched Henry and Lacy, she racked her brain to come up with any rational explanation for the large quantities of expensive foods she'd seen on their books.

There was something fishy here, besides the caviar.
She really ought to let Paavo know what she'd found out. Although earlier today she'd decided to wait patiently for him to contact her, sometimes patience, like virtue, was not its own reward. She went into the office and reached for the telephone, then drew back her hand. The hurt she felt whenever she recalled her father's words, about Paavo not wanting her to “bother” him, hit her once more, despite her resolve that there was more to the story. She pulled out a chair and sat.

She thought about Paavo holding her and making her feel safe and secure, peaceful. Suddenly she remembered Paavo and her father arguing; someone else was there. Who? God, why couldn't she remember! Her father and Paavo; then her father growing more upset; then her realization she had to get him away from there and calm him.

She stood. Of course. She should have known! Well could she imagine Paavo thinking she'd chosen her father over him, that she left for no good reason except that Sal asked her to. No wonder he hadn't phoned or tried to contact her in any way.

She ran from the restaurant to her car.

 

“I can't believe this,” Paavo said when he opened his front door and found her standing at the entry.

“Hi, there!” She hoped she sounded a lot more carefree and at ease than she felt.

“Hi, indeed.” He stuck his head out the door and looked up the street, then down. “Is your father nearby? Or maybe the mayor is lurking in the bushes this time. Thank God your father's not friends with the
president or I'd have Air Force One flying overhead.”

She brushed past him and went into the house. “Forget the president. If I wanted to be really safe, I'd call Frank Sinatra.”

She reached into a paper sack she carried. “Look. Coffee filters and a fresh pound of Italian roast from Graffeo's.” Without another word she went into the kitchen and put on the Melitta.

He followed her. “What's this about?”

She gave him an innocent look. “I wanted to see you. What else? Now go sit down. I'll be right out.”

His gaze held caution, but beyond that she saw, or hoped she saw, a flicker of pleasure that she was there.

While the coffee was dripping, she put chocolate-dipped
biscotti
on a plate on the coffee table. In a short while, she poured them each a mug of rich coffee, took it into the living room, and sat on one end of the sofa while Paavo sat on the other. She curled her legs under her and turned to face him, her elbow on the backrest.

Paavo studied her. “Is everything all right.”

“I'm back at my apartment. I'm doing fine.”

His sharp look told her he wasn't fooled.

“Anyway,” she said, “I did want to tell you about something that might affect your case. I saw something most peculiar today at LaTour's restaurant. It probably doesn't mean anything, but you mentioned looking at Wielund's and Italian Seasons accounts, and I know you had no reason to go over Henry's, so I thought I'd check them out for you.”

Blue eyes showed his interest in her words, even as his lips thinned until she was sure he wanted to scold
her like a wayward child for taking another risk. Instead, he said, “You found something peculiar, you said?”

“That's right.” She leaned conspiratorially closer and told him all about the strange food and spices she saw listed as purchases for LaTour's, and then she told him was so strange about them.

Before she was through, Paavo was on his feet and pacing.

“If the money wasn't going to buy those foods, and from what you say, it wasn't, where was it going?” Paavo asked. “And since we've found that each month Karl Wielund made a big deposit into his bank account, we also have the question of where
that
money came from. The obvious answer is it went from LaTour's to Wielund's. But if so, why?”

“You think Karl was getting money from LaTour's?”

“We can't rule out blackmail,” Paavo said.

Angie could scarcely believe it. “But what possible reason would Wielund have for blackmailing Henry, unless it had something to do with Lacy and the porno film. Was Henry paying Karl for help with his restaurant? After all, Henry has at least one recipe that I know was Karl's. Maybe there were others.”

Her lack of conviction in her own words was reflected by Paavo's shaking head. “I can't believe chefs would kill over recipes, despite their competition. But Lacy's films are a different story. It wouldn't be the first time photos and films like that turned up later in life in the hands of a blackmailer.”

“Remember how Lacy fainted when Karl's body
was found? Maybe she killed him and figured he'd be lost in the snow until the spring thaw, and she fainted from shock that he'd been found.”

“Could be,” Paavo said. “Then, too, the snow and the length of time from when Wielund was killed until the autopsy was performed might have thrown the estimate off. Maybe he wasn't killed while Henry was on the radio. Maybe it was after. Or even before. Henry could be our man.”

“I still can't see Henry hurting anyone,” Angie said. “But logically, it's got to be him.”

“It all points his way, or to Lacy. But remember, whoever is behind this may well have killed three people, and maybe Sheila Danning as well. A woman couldn't have killed Danning, except as a man's accomplice. Whatever this means, I don't want you taking any more chances. Until we catch whoever's behind it, keep away from Henry LaTour.”

“I never take chances.”

“Not much.” A chill went down his back at how much worse it could have been for her at Klaw's. His thoughts turned to the way he'd brought her to his home afterward, to hold her. Since his talk with Sal Amalfi at Chick's funeral, only once had he stayed with Angie through the night, and he was still haunted by the memory of how good it had been. He understood why alcoholics couldn't take even one drink. “Well, Angie, thanks for the coffee and cookies.”

“Thanks?”

He stood.

So did she.

He steered her toward the door. “It's late and I
don't want to keep you any longer than necessary. I appreciate all you found out about this case. You did just great.”

“Great?”

“I'll see you back to your apartment. I'll make sure you arrive safe and sound, then I'll be on my way.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“I want to.” He opened the door.

She stiffened her shoulders, sent him a glare that should have skewered him on the spot, and, head high, walked out of the house. “I don't need a police escort,” she said. “I'll be just fine. I know all about taking care of myself.”