A Clean Kill awm-9

by Leslie Glass

  April didn't respond to that. She knew chefs were notorious for saying anything that came to their heads. Her father and his cronies could lie like rugs. "Mike, I don't want to start anything I can't finish," she said slowly.

  "Look, just help me out for an hour or so. Talk to the nanny and check back with me, okay. I won't embroil you, I promise."

  April shook her head. They both knew that wasn't the way it worked. "Okay, I'll talk with the nanny," she said.

  Six

  Remy Banks was still shaking. She'd seen plenty of dead people and dead animals in her time, especially in her childhood in Wyoming. Gruesome things. Cattle and dogs that had their intestines ripped out by wolves. Once she'd seen a video of a grizzly bear mauling a human being. The whole thing had been caught on tape. A stupid tourist had thought he could chase a huge bear away from his campsite with some pot-banging, and then a few potshots from his rifle. The bear retaliated by trying to eat him. It seemed there was always someone around to photograph a freak thing like that. She'd seen the video back home, but the bear mauling could now be found on the Internet. A cautionary tale.

  Remy had also seen kids who'd frozen to death. When she was a teenager, two ten-year-olds had broken through thin ice on the river in late winter and gotten stuck. A freak thing. She went through her list of accidental deaths. In summer people used to die by drowning even in the shallows, on raft trips, probably still did. Queer things happened. Out West there were a lot of unnatural ways to meet one's maker. Everybody had guns. Remy was used to guns. Every year there'd be shootings, accidental and otherwise. And then, there were the kitchen accidents. When she'd worked as a line cook in a steak house in Salt Lake City, she'd seen really bad cuts, bad burns. Bleeding into the hamburgers on the grill, a line cook would just keep on getting those orders out, or lose his job. But Maddy's face . . . the place where her eye should have been . . . Remy couldn't stop shaking.

  "You gonna be okay now?" The detective called Minnow who'd been questioning her closed his notebook.

  Remy stared at him. Anybody could see she was not okay. He looked like an actor on one of the cop shows, somebody's idea of a cop. He had a round face and pasty skin, a bulging stomach. If she'd been in a better mood, she would have ana" lyzed his diet by how he looked. She thought of things like that. How people ate. He was clearly way past forty, which was the same to her as being a hundred.

  "Roomy?" He missed a lot of things, couldn't even say her name right.

  "Fine. I'm fine." Remy's head bobbed up and down. She could tell that sergeant didn't believe a word she said. She turned toward the garden, toward the gym where Maddy—where the body— still was. She wondered where Wayne was. Poor Wayne was going to freak out. But she was freaking out, too. Neither of them deserved this. The boys didn't deserve it. No one did. She didn't want to tell the police that she was having a relationship with her boss. They wouldn't understand how it really was. Jo Ellen had already chewed her out for what she called "alienating" Wayne's affections. She told Remy to keep quiet about what occurred in the privacy of her clients' homes. Shit, how could she be private about this?

  Remy's thoughts drifted back to the early morning when she'd gotten up so happily to make the pancakes, and Maddy's outrageous reaction. Then Wayne told her in the car that she'd have to try to make up with her if she wanted to keep her job. But when she got back, she couldn't smooth things over with Maddy because Maddy was dead. What was she supposed to do now? Remy wasn't aware that time was passing. She was thinking about her life out West, about what had made her move East, about her uncertain future here in New York. She retreated deep inside herself and didn't realize Sergeant Minnow had been replaced.

  "Remy? I'm Lieutenant Sanchez."

  Startled by the soft voice behind her, Remy turned around to face a woman about her own size. The woman was wearing a deep purple pantsuit and a gun in a holster at her waist. She didn't look like a cop, or Latina, for that matter. She looked like a model, or a talk-show host. Glamorous. Remy's spirits lifted at the sight of her. "Hi."

  "I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes."

  Remy was still shaking. She had no place to go. The boys wouldn't be through with play school until three. She wondered what would happen to them. Her thoughts started drifting again, and tears filled her eyes.

  "You were the one to find Mrs.—?"

  "I called her Maddy," Remy said, wanting to set the record straight. She wasn't a maid.

  "Okay." The woman took out a notebook.

  Remy was distracted by it. Minnow had had one, too. It seemed so old-fashioned. "What do you want to know?" she asked meekly.

  "Pretty much everything. What happened today. What the family is like. Your role here. Anything you can think of."

  Remy nodded and tried to remember what she'd already said. "I already told—" Remy looked blank. Suddenly she couldn't remember his name.

  "Sergeant Minnow. I know, but maybe I can help you." The woman smiled as if they were girlfriends.

  "Help me?" Remy swallowed. How could anyone help her? The whole thing was a big mess.

  "We'll work together. We'll figure it out, okay? Why don't we sit down?" The glamorous lieutenant led the way to a silver sofa.

  Remy shook her head. Maddy didn't like her or the children sitting in the living room. Then she remembered that Maddy couldn't tell her what to do anymore. Still, she felt uncomfortable sitting there in her kitchen jeans. She tried to focus on the first question.

  "Did you like Maddy?"

  "Of course, I liked her. Everybody liked her. She didn't have any enemies." That was what people said on "TV. She said it without thinking.

  "You two got along pretty well?"

  "Yeah. She was a dream to work for. What will happen to the boys? I'm supposed to pick them up at three." Remy knotted her fingers together.

  "We'll see about that later. Tell me what happened this morning. Anything out of the ordinary?"

  "Not really. Maddy had her usual temper tantrum. Wayne and 1 took the boys to play school at quarter to eight. I didn't see Maddy after that. Alive, 1 mean."

  "Why did she have a temper tantrum?"

  Remy sighed. "She was upset because 1 made breakfast."

  "Why would that upset her?"

  "I don't know. It's my job. 1 guess she was jealous because she can't cook." She shrugged.

  "You said she was a dream to work for."

  "Most of the time she was." Remy rubbed her nose.

  "Then what happened?"

  "Oh,'it was nothing. She made a fuss, and then Wayne and 1 took the boys to play school."

  "Do you and Wayne always take the - boys to play school?"

  "No. Usually 1 take them. But today was the first day of the summer session."

  "And Maddy didn't want to go?"

  "She has her trainer at eight. She never misses that. "

  "Every day?"

  "No, three days a week." A muscle jumped in her eye. Remy blinked to stop it.

  "Uh-huh." Lieutenant Sanchez wrote that down and moved on. "What happened in the car?"

  "Wayne told me she would calm down by the time 1 got home and not to worry about it."

  "Did he say why not?"

  She made a face. "He told me to make up with her."

  "Did you come right back to the house to do' that?"

  "No. Wayne took me to Soleil first. He wanted to show me some new equipment he'd gotten."

  "Soleil?"

  "That's his new restaurant. It's only a few blocks away, so I walked home afterward. I wanted to give her time to cool off."

  Remy studied the lieutenant's face. The features were empty, blank of all emotion. It was a little unnerving the way it went flat. She opened her mouth to ask another question.

  "Did you think Maddy would calm down?"

  "Yes, she was a nice person, really." Remy looked down at her hands.

  "What time did you get back?"

  "Just before I called 911, whenever that was. I have a c
lass at ten." She was sweating now. She wanted to go to her room and hide.

  "What kind of equipment was it?" The questions kept coming.

  "Ah." Remy turned to stare out the window. There were so many things she didn't want to think about. She didn't want to think about the dead woman who'd gotten so mad at her because she'd made a wonderful breakfast. Maddy had no right to be jealous, especially when she was sleeping with that creep Derek. She tried to concentrate on the question. What was the equipment in the restaurant that Wayne had wanted her to impress her with?

  "An oven," she said after a pause.

  "Did you see the trainer when you got back?"

  Remy's attention wandered. Suddenly she knew what bothered her about the Latina lieutenant. She looked Chinese. And now she'd changed the subject again. She wanted to know about Derek. "No, I never see him. He doesn't come into the house."

  "What's his name?"

  "Derek Meke."

  "How does Derek get in? Did she let him in?"

  "No, he has the code for the garage door," she said.

  "Can you hear him coming and going?"

  "Sometimes, if I don't have the music on."

  The Chinese lieutenant with the Spanish name gave her a hard look. "Did you have the music on today?"

  "No, but I know he was gone when I got here."

  "Did you hear the garage door?"

  "No."

  "How did you know?"

  "When I went into the garage I could hear that the shower was on. He never goes into her shower."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I do the laundry. There's never more than one used towel." She looked at the ceiling.

  ' What about today, Remy—what made you go into the gym if you knew she was in the shower?"

  There, the lieutenant did it again. She changed the subject. Remy's heart thudded. "What made me?"

  "Yes." The pen was moving across the pad. The pages were filling up.

  Remy spoke in a small voice, a little-girl voice. "I wanted to make up. I was sorry she was mad at me. And I had to go to class. I wanted to make everything right before I left."

  "What school do you go to?" the detective said abruptly.

  "The Culinary Institute."

  "Ab, that's a good school. I thought of going there," she said.

  Remy was startled. "Why?"

  "My father's a chef. Why don't you show me the kitchen? You do the cooking, right?"

  Remy nodded. "But I'm not the maid," she said firmly. "I was just supposed to be here in the house until the new restaurant opened. I have strong restaurant credentials. I'm going to be the sous-chef there, Wayne promised. Very soon ..." Her voice faded off. "Are we finished?" she asked after a moment.

  "No," the lieutenant told her. "We're just beginning."

  Seven

  April's eyes dropped quickly to the page. She was surprised by what she'd written. Back in the day when she'd been a young detective in Chinatown and even in her old precinct the Two-Oh, on the Upper West Side, where she'd met and first worked with Mike, she used to piss off her bosses by taking notes in Chinese. She hadn't done that in a long time. Now some unknown force caused her to sketch out yang, the Chinese character for "sun." She stared at the long unused calligraphy. Sun. Wayne Wilson's new restaurant was called Soleil—"sun" in French. Doodling, April had translated it into Chinese.

  To April, doodles mattered in the same way that body language mattered. Remy's body language betrayed her in every way. The way she stood, the way she rubbed the side of her nose when she answered questions. Both were sure signs that she wasn't telling the truth. Now she was caught in a lie for sure, and April had recorded it in the Chinese character for "sun," the name of Wayne's restaurant. Yang, which was the spoken word for "sun," also meant male energy. Action and aggression. The opposite of yin, the symbol for female passivity.

  Even though April was an ABC, American-born Chinese, the teaching of ancients—Huangdi, Tao, Confucius—was in her blood and often guided her thinking without her even being aware of it. She'd heard the ancients' voices through many tutors in her Chinatown childhood. Those long-ago lessons had been impossible to evade then, and were no easier to escape now.

  The root of everything was the duality of yin and yang, earth and heaven. Female and male. Dark and light. All the qi (energy) in the universe was connected to the primal yin and yang: the four directions, the five earthly transformative elements, the six atmospheric influences. In the human body there were the nine orifices, the five organs, and the twelve joints. The ancients believed that balance in all elements of the universe was achieved only in the proper alignment of yin and yang. When male or female dominated the other half, trouble followed.

  What did it have to do with the murder of Maddy Wilson? April had no idea. But it came to mind because sun was the ultimate yang. Clearly Wayne Wilson identified himself with the sun qi, the heavenly energy that surrounded and protected the earth. He was the very epitome of yang.

  April hadn't let on to Remy that she knew all about Wayne Wilson and his new restaurant. The new bistro Soleil happened to be nearby in Mike's precinct. Wayne had invited the precinct captain to its opening night, and feeling very special, April had gone with him. That was how she'd met Wayne Wilson. And that was how she knew that the woman who'd discovered Maddy Wilson's body had probably never been slated to be a chef at that restaurant. The restaurant was not going to open. It had already opened, and it was going strong. It was, in fact, a big hit. So Remy was either confused or betrayed—or lying.

  Furthermore, April knew all about chefs. Her father had held on to his job for thirty years. They were going to have to carry him out of the upscale Chinese restaurant where he still worked five days a week. Mike's father had also been a chef. He'd died at his station in a West Side Mexican restaurant a decade ago. Since Soleil already had a chef and a sous-chef, Remy's story didn't play. She had restaurant experience and was going to cooking school, but was working as a nanny? Why? But before April could explore that question with the young woman, there was a commotion at the front door. Wayne Wilson was home. Remy jumped to her feet.

  "Maddy!" Wayne stared at Remy as he said his wife's name. "What happened to my baby?" he cried.

  The girl cringed as he said the word baby. April watched their exchange.

  "Remy! Tell me it's not true!" He looked shocked.

  Remy opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Then Sergeant Minnow came out of the kitchen and stopped the interaction before it could go any further.

  "I'm sorry, sir. I need to talk with you," he said.

  Wayne spun around. "Who the hell are you?"

  "I'm Sergeant Ed Minnow," he replied almost apologetically.

  "You've got to be kidding." Wayne made a move to brush him aside.

  "No, sir, I'm not kidding. I'm in charge here." Minnow lowered his voice so April couldn't hear him.

  It was that terrible moment that April had lived through many times when she had to tell a family member of a murder victim that his life was no longer his own. His house was no longer his house. His secrets were no longer his secrets. All would be revealed in the name of justice. Yangs like Wayne didn't do well in the role.

  Wayne's personality had been clearly displayed at the Soleil opening. He'd been wearing black slacks and a black shirt with a black jacket. Very chic. The only color relief had been his gold-on-gold tie with a big sun in the middle of his chest. The brassy color splashed down the front of his shirt and spiked out in all directions. That same logo was on the cocktail napkins, the matchboxes, the dinner plates. TiepinS in the same shape had been the party favors.

  He'd moved around the three large rooms of his restaurant, like the Sun King himself, encouraging guests to try his Godiva. chocolate martinis, lime martinis, mango martinis—every kind of martini a fan could dream about. Glasses of pink champagne circulated on ever-full trays. A wine bar offered glasses from the bottles on the wine list, and the finger food was exceptional. That night
no one went home hungry. Or sober. The crowd swilled the alcohol at a frantic pace. The celebs and models who were invited and photographed at so many events like this all over the city were there. Wayne had been particularly gracious to his precinct captain, singling him out and introducing him around. It was New York, after all, where cops were celebrities, too.

  Wayne was not going to let Sergeant Minnow finish his spiel. "It's my wife, my house. I want to see her. That's my right."

  Sergeant Minnow tilted his head to ' one side, sweat gleaming on his forehead. April knew he was sizing up Wayne, trying to figure out how to control the situation. April did not intrude. Mike would have told the sergeant that April would be "helping" him. But he didn't have to tell April to be discreet about it. She already knew the sergeant would not be wanting any help from her.

  Minnow lowered his voice even more. April could hardly hear a murmur. She guessed that he was explaining the procedure. Mr. Wilson could not see his wife's remains. The Crime Scene Unit had arrived and was now working in the gym. No one could go in there. Wayne interrupted with a cry of horror.

  "She died in the gym? Shit! I built that gym."

  Minnow tried to say more, but Wayne couldn't listen. He turned to Remy and saw April. Relief flooded his face.

  "Oh, thank God. Lieutenant Sanchez, come over here." He wagged his finger at her.

  April almost turned around, thinking Mike was behind her. Most people still called her "Woo." Not "Sergeant Woo" anymore, but "Lieutenant Woo." Or just "Lieutenant." Or even "ma'am." Then she remembered. She was Lieutenant Sanchez. "Stay here for a moment," she told Remy.

  "But I need to talk to him," the girl protested.

  April shook her head. They could not speak to each other.

  "Please!"

  "No."

  "But I have to," she pleaded.

  "Look, Remy, you discovered the body. That puts you in the hot seat. Remember what I told you. If you want my help, you have to do what I say."

  "I would never hurt Maddy. Never. I couldn't do that." Remy looked like a zombie when she said it, though, devoid of emotion.