But when Pippa put her face in her hands and I heard a strangled sob, I reached out to her once more. “We need to call the police,” I said quietly but firmly. “I’ll do it for you. I’ll call them right now. They’ll do their job and find out what happened. And if there’s a way I can help them and your mom, I’ll do whatever I can. I promise.”
* * *
Since I still had his cell phone number, I called Detective Maurice Dupart instead of emergency services. Probably it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be done, but the detective shouldn’t have given me his number if he didn’t want me to use it, right?
“Good evening, Ms. Lancaster,” he said, answering on the second ring, his deep voice coming through my car’s speakers loud and clear. Evidently, my name was also still in his phone, and by his dry tone, he remembered me all too well. “What can I do for you?”
“Good evening, Detective Dupart,” I said. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but…”
“Yes, Ms. Lancaster?” he said, a hint of wariness now creeping in.
“Well,” I said, “I’m afraid something has happened and, ah, it appears someone is dead.”
His voice sharpened. “Are you all right and somewhere safe?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m with Pippa Sutton of the Hotel Sutton and we’re driving to the house where her executive chef lives. He’s been missing most of the day, and Ms. Sutton went to go check on him. She saw him through the window and it seems he’s been stabbed in the ear with an ice pick. Down the ear canal, to be precise.”
There was a brief pause. “Did you call nine-one-one?”
“Er, no,” I said. “I called you. Ms. Sutton is traumatized and, well, she’s positive he’s been dead for a couple of hours at least.”
Dupart swore under his breath. “Give me the address,” he said. “And the two of you should stay parked on the street and not move out of your car until I get there. Is that understood?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. I nodded at Pippa and she gave Chef Rocky’s address, adding in the nearest cross street when he asked. She pointed out the last turn and we arrived at Chef Rocky’s house moments later. I parked, with every intention of following Detective Dupart’s orders.
Chef Rocky’s street turned out to be a little enclave not far from the dog park, where a series of old and dilapidated 1950s bungalows were in the process of being completely overhauled into chic and modern 1950s-inspired bungalows. Chef Rocky’s was near the end of the street, between one that was still being renovated and another that was for sale, making for three ominously dark houses all in a row.
But what if Pippa had been wrong? What if Chef Rocky was, by some miracle, still alive? Or what if it wasn’t Rocky with an ice pick in his ear at all?
I glanced at my client. She’d just sent another text to her mother and was staring forlornly at her phone, looking like she was willing a reply to come in. I unbuckled my seatbelt and said, “I’ll be right back.”
I was out of the car and dashing in the cold evening air toward the space between Chef Rocky’s house and the house that was for sale before Pippa could call out to me. Thankful I was in wedges instead of heels and it hadn’t rained recently, I used the light from my phone to pick my way carefully over the uneven ground.
While the house next door was still waiting for its final touches in the form of greenery, Chef Rocky’s bungalow looked to have been fairly recently landscaped in the uniquely Austin style that was a mixture of drought-tolerant grasses and succulents interspersed with Texas-loving greener plants like lantana, dwarf yaupon holly, and cast-iron plants for a lusher, less arid look.
Passing by the first set of windows, I noted young century plants beneath the sills. A member of the agave family, once grown, their long, spear-shaped leaves tipped with menacing thorns would add an extra layer of security to the house. For now, though, they were still small enough that I could easily slip between the plant and the house.
Shivering and wishing I had a jacket, I finally saw a pale shaft of light emanating from a spot midway up in the second set of windows. Sure enough, two louvers were missing. With the bungalows sitting on pier and beam, I was just barely tall enough to see through the space where the louvers should have been.
Peering through the top one, all I could see was the big, green leaves of a houseplant of which I could never remember the name. I bent lower and, bobbing around for a minute, found a small gap in the leaves allowing a decent enough view into Chef Rocky’s office.
It was small, with what looked to be a stainless-steel prep station against one wall acting as a desk. On it was his keyboard, along with a large monitor sitting atop a handful of cookbooks as a makeshift riser. I could just make out a slew of yellowed and spot-stained papers on the desk, which I guessed were well-loved and often-made recipes from his family and life as a chef.
There were no photos on the wall that I could see, and no rug on the floor. His office chair, an old wooden barstool, had fallen over. And next to it, splayed in a grotesque pose that made him almost look like he was trying to run away, was Chef Rocky’s inert form.
I hadn’t intended to touch the side of the house and add my fingerprints to the crime scene, but I had to in order to steady myself when my eyes focused on the details.
The burled-wood leopard with glittering topaz eyes was sticking out of Chef Rocky Zeppetelli’s ear all right, its sleek wood hiding a long, thin ice pick. It had been plunged deep into his ear canal, and blood had flowed out, seeping down his neck and onto the floor in rivulets that had long since dried.
There was no doubt about it. Chef Rocky was dead.
TWENTY-FOUR
In the back of my mind, I’d heard the sirens in the distance. What I hadn’t counted on was Detective Dupart being sneaky enough to arrive in an unmarked vehicle well before the rest of his APD posse did. Nor did I consider that he might be dressed in dark colors and hide himself in a particularly deep shadow that had me jumping back with a scream when he moved to block my path.
“Jesus, Mary-Louise, and Joseph!” I exclaimed, hand over my thundering heart. “Why on Earth did you do that, Detective?”
He snapped on a flashlight, holding it high so the beam angled down at me. “And why in the name of all that is holy did you disobey my request to not leave your car, Ms. Lancaster?” His dark Creole eyes were narrowed and glittered like ebony beads in the residual light. “Do you think you’re more experienced in law enforcement than the Austin Police Department?” he growled. “That since you helped in a minor way with one crime, you suddenly have the skills to handle a sensitive and potentially dangerous situation? What if there’d been someone still in the house willing to kill you so they could get away? What then?”
His words felt like I’d just been pushed onto a bed of century-plant thorns, and I winced with the pain of knowing I deserved every word.
“You’re absolutely right, and I’m sorry,” I said. I glanced at my car, where I could just make out Pippa’s worried face.
Then I had to shout to be heard above the multiple sirens sounding like they were just around the corner. “I was afraid Pippa—Ms. Sutton—might have misinterpreted what she saw. Or possibly not have seen it at all. I realized I called you without confirmation of it, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a false alarm.”
I was right about the sirens. Suddenly, the street was lit up with the flashing lights of an ambulance and a black-and-white APD patrol car. I shivered again with a sudden gust of cold wind.
“Well?” Dupart shouted. “Was it a false alarm?”
I shook my head, yelling, “He’s in his office, dead, with a leopard-handled ice pick in his ear,” just as the sirens cut and silence filled the street.
* * *
It was over two hours later before I was allowed to go back to the hotel. Pippa and I were interviewed individually and kept separate, with Pippa asked to sit in Dupart’s car while I was allowed to sit in mine.
Dupart had used a handheld steel ba
ttering ram to break down Chef Rocky’s front door so he and his men could confirm that Rocky was indeed dead and no one else was in the house. After that, Dupart had to secure a search warrant before his team could begin collecting evidence, but he managed to do so in record time. Chef Rocky’s porch lights were turned on once the police got into his house and portable lighting was set up to illuminate the yard. The added light also allowed me to see Pippa’s increasingly stressed-out expression every time she turned her head as she waited in Dupart’s cruiser.
The neighbor Pippa had spoken to earlier, an athletic-looking redhead in her twenties, came out of her bungalow, which was three houses down, and once she found out Chef Rocky was dead, she loudly told the police officers she had information to give. I thought about trying to slip out of my car and eavesdrop on her interview, but Dupart must have known such shenanigans might cross my mind because he sent me a stern look and then walked the redhead up to Chef Rocky’s porch to take her statement.
Finally, just when Pippa looked close to tears and was minutes away from being taken to the APD for more formal questioning, I heard her phone ring. The window of Dupart’s cruiser had been cracked and when I opened my own door, I could hear her answer with a strangled, “Mom! Where are you? Where have you been? I’ve been calling and texting you. Chef Rocky is dead!”
After that, Detective Dupart asked to speak with Roselyn, and there appeared to be a very civil conversation, with Dupart nodding every so often. I could just make out him giving Roselyn the address for the police department, saying, “I will see you there in twenty minutes, Mrs. Sutton.”
Dupart walked up to me, and I got out of my car, wrapping my arms about my chest in the cold air. He didn’t look any happier than he had earlier.
“Ms. Lancaster, I just have a couple more questions for you, then you’re free to go home.” He rubbed his brow, and I noticed belatedly that he’d changed the shape of his goatee so that it was thinner, better defining the strong lines of his face.
“I understand Roselyn Sutton and Mr. Zeppetelli were in an on-again, off-again relationship,” he said. “Did you know of any tension or issues between them?”
Though relieved Pippa had been up front with the detective about her mother’s relationship with Chef Rocky, I hated to add my thoughts—but, annoyingly, the urge to tell the truth was strong inside me.
Really, I would have made a terrible spy, despite Grandpa’s faith in me …
“I know Roselyn and Chef Rocky had a minor argument this morning,” I said. “Something about her wanting to come here, to Chef Rocky’s house, and he wanting to go to her place.” I lifted my chin. “For what purpose, I don’t know, but I can tell you the argument ended without any hint of violence whatsoever.”
Dupart’s face remained impassive, but I knew what he was thinking: the violence had waited until Roselyn got Chef Rocky back to his place.
He shifted and I could see Pippa looking wiped out, like she couldn’t take too much more. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Ms. Sutton asks that you go back to the hotel and ask a Mrs.”—Dupart checked his notes—“a Mrs. Pollingham to contact a Chef Cardo, who apparently used to work for the Suttons at another location and is now retired. Ms. Sutton would like Chef Cardo to oversee the hotel’s kitchen until a suitable replacement can be hired. Two of our deputies have already been dispatched to the hotel to talk to Mrs. Pollingham, as well as the rest of the kitchen staff who are still on duty this evening. I’ll be sending two more deputies over to interview the other members of the staff tomorrow.”
“I’ll give Mrs. P. the message.”
He nodded and was about to walk away when another officer walked up, doing a double-take as he saw me.
“Hello, Officer Carr,” I said, dread stealing over me.
“Well, well,” he said, “if it isn’t Ms. Lancaster. Is your grandfather here, too? Planning on pilfering evidence from this crime scene as well?”
“Is something the matter, Officer Carr?” Dupart asked, arching one eyebrow.
“Yes,” he said, a note of venom coming into his voice. “Ms. Lancaster here and her grandfather came in this morning, supposedly to hand over evidence on the guy who died at the Hotel Sutton. Instead, they put on a pity show to get a look at the vic’s personal possessions. Her grandfather acted like some dementia-addled old fool and got an evidence bag stuck in his coat zipper so he could open it.”
Officer Carr turned to me. “We saw on the footage that your grandfather took something off the theater ticket. I’ve been told to stand down about it, but if you ever play me like that again, Ms. Lancaster, I’ll make sure you or your granddad are charged with tampering with evidence.” He bared his teeth. “Or better yet, both of you.”
“I think that’s enough,” Dupart said, but Officer Carr wasn’t quite done.
“One other thing, Ms. Lancaster. The victim who died at your feet? It seems he had some underlying health issues, but that wasn’t what killed him. He was poisoned, and it’s unlikely it was accidental.”
I stared at both men.
“Poisoned?” I said. “I mean, the hotel’s front desk manager saw symptoms that made her think he’d been sick, but…” I trailed off, my shock all too real.
Officer Carr seemed unmoved. “He was poisoned all right, Ms. Lancaster, and with radium chloride. Do you know what that is?”
I’d heard about radium chloride somewhere … The history geek in me also had a science-nerd side and both were working together, opening mental filing cabinet after mental filing cabinet. Then I snapped my fingers.
“It was used to make things glow in the dark, right?” I said.
“Good for you,” he said, though he hardly sounded proud. “Early in the last century, it was used for luminous watch dials and some quack health remedies. People who regularly handled it had all sorts of nasty things happen to them.”
I sucked in a breath. “Holy cow, is that what his symptoms were? The hair loss? The broken tooth? It was radium chloride poisoning?”
Officer Carr was nodding, but I was remembering Grandpa’s reaction when I’d told him of Hugo’s symptoms. He’d recognized them as being the effects of radium chloride.
“Oh, how horrible,” I said, pity filling me for poor, harmless Hugo. “How would someone even get radium chloride these days?”
Dupart took this one. “It’s highly regulated now, so generally only scientists and medical research companies have access to it.”
Companies. The word made me think of Hugo’s job and how he enjoyed taking down white-collar criminals.
“As I understand it,” I began, “Mr. Markman was a forensic accountant. Are you checking to see if he investigated any medical research facilities? Maybe someone had it in for him at one of the companies he took down.”
“Don’t tell us how to do our job, Ms. Lancaster,” Officer Carr snapped.
Dupart shot his officer a look and said, “I’ll take it from here, thank you.”
Officer Carr stalked off, still looking huffy, and Detective Dupart turned to me with a look of resolute calm.
“Ms. Lancaster, it’s worth asking. Do you have any reason to suspect the death of Mr. Markman and this death tonight of Mr. Zeppetelli have something in common?”
Hugo’s partially decoded list with Chef Rocky’s name on it practically swam before my eyes. But the two men had been killed in such different ways, and both could have had people who wished them harm.
Hugo most definitely could’ve had enemies that had everything to do with his job and nothing to do with a spy operation from 1944. And I already knew Chef Rocky had made more than one person upset. I thought of Roselyn and their argument, of the jealous prep cook named Lacey, and of the fact that the handsome, bad-boy chef never did much to discourage his coworkers from crushing on him.
Plus, Grandpa and I were still trying to make sense of what we’d found earlier today, and I didn’t even know all the details about the joint OSS–SOE missi
on to begin with. If I could barely explain what I did know thus far to myself, how would I explain it to Detective Dupart?
“Ms. Lancaster?”
Time to tell the truth. Or at least part of it.
“I’m afraid I’m at square one just like you, Detective. But if I do suspect anything, I’ll let you know.”
TWENTY-FIVE
When I arrived back at the hotel, I was met by one of Dupart’s officers. Explaining who I was, I asked to speak with Mrs. P., telling him I had a message to deliver about contacting a replacement chef. The officer explained Mrs. P. was on her way back into the hotel to be interviewed, as she had already gone home for the evening when the deputies arrived.
“Oh, of course,” I said, finally noticing it was after eight o’clock. Though Mrs. P. often stayed late, she technically got off work at six p.m. She seemed such a ubiquitous part of the hotel, I’d forgotten she actually had a home life.
By this time, I was exhausted and starving, so I wrote a quick note to Mrs. P. asking her to call Chef Cardo. The moment I handed it off to the deputy, I was sending a group text to Josephine and Serena, asking if either of them were up to meeting me at Flaco’s. I told them I’d been involved in some high drama and needed to vent.
Their replies were almost instant. Serena’s said, High drama? I’m SO in. Josephine’s was a series of emojis that included a girl raising her hand high in the air, a smiley face with its mind being blown, and, of course, several tacos.
I ran upstairs, changed into jeans and a pair of booties, grabbed a jacket, and flew back out the front doors of the hotel, relieved to not run into anyone as I did so. I needed food and my friends to help me think clearly again, and I needed a drink to take my mind off the image of Chef Rocky with an ice pick jammed down his ear.
“A top-shelf margarita, please,” I told Ana when I slid into the corner booth beside Serena. “On the rocks, with salt.” Internally shuddering at the thought of ice, I said, “Make that frozen instead.”
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