A Cook in Time

by Joanne Pence

  When he’d called the night before, she had been so sleepy she could hardly speak, and what she did say must have been muddled, because she thought she’d heard a hint of a chuckle in his voice. All she could remember was that he’d said he was involved in a strange case that was going to take a while, and she shouldn’t worry. Just hearing his deep voice had set her mind at ease. He had told her he loved her, and that set her heart at ease. If he’d been beside her in bed to set her body at ease, she might have slept better than ever.

  But she couldn’t allow herself to reflect on Paavo just then. Her fantasy dinner needed a design, a structure on which to build the extraterrestrial theme Triana Crisswell had asked for.

  She toyed with the idea of an astrological design but nixed it. These people, she was sure, considered themselves scientific. It might be pseudoscience to some, but to themselves, they were serious students of technology, not dilettantes of the paranormal.

  She stood, folding her arms within the long kimono sleeves of her pink silk robe, and began to pace. She needed a theme that was both exceptional and unique. Something, perhaps, that the general public didn’t know about.

  Who did?

  A shave-and-a-haircut knock sounded on her door. She knew that knock—and knew it was not bringing the answer to her question.

  Angie opened the door to greet her neighbor, Stanfield Bonnette, a tall, blond, youthful-looking fellow. He should have been at work, not standing there casually dressed in off-white linen slacks and a forest green Joseph Abboud shirt. As much as he thought of himself as an up-and-coming bank executive, from what Angie saw of his work ethic, down-and-going was a more apt description.

  “I didn’t know this was a bank holiday,” she said, stepping back so he could enter.

  “I had a migraine this morning.” He did his best to feign suffering. “It’s gone now. I was wondering if you wanted to go to a movie. The Castro’s showing Plan 9 from Outer Space. With all this millennium talk in the news, I thought it would be fun.”

  “Considering the time of year, wouldn’t Santa Claus Conquers the Martians be more appropriate?” she asked.

  He walked into the kitchen. “If your cop friend is chasing dead bodies instead of yours—I mean, instead of taking you out—why not come with me no matter what’s playing?”

  “I’ve got work to do. I’m trying to start up a new business, but I don’t want to say more about it yet.” She followed him. “Plan 9, you said? Actually, for the business I should learn something about extraterrestrials, and maybe even UFOs.”

  “UFOs? What kind of business could you get involved with that has UFOs? Space cookies?” He lightly patted her coffeepot. “Ah! Your coffee is still hot.”

  “Have a cup. As I said, I don’t want to talk about the business, except to say I need new-millennium high tech, not old B movies using pie pans for flying saucers. I need help sorting through all the UFO and alien stuff that’s out there—someone to guide me to what’s popular and cool.”

  “I guess I’m just an old-fashioned kind of guy,” he said. “Oh, looky there! Chocolate-covered macaroons. My favorite. Homemade?”

  “Yes. Help yourself.”

  He was already reaching into the jar and took two. “What does your hotshot cop friend think about this business of yours?” He bit into the cookie. “Mmm. Fabulous.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell him.” Nor, she might have added, would she until she was sure about this job. She was tired of making big pronouncements about her grand career plans and then having them blow up in her face. Sometimes literally. She was tired of the piteous glances Paavo and her family gave her whenever that happened. So this would be her little secret until the business was declared to be as fabulous as her macaroons.

  “With all your acquaintances, I should think quite a few of them would know about UFOs and such. They’re so in,” Stan said.

  She pondered that a moment. “You may be ri … yes! You are right!” She smacked the heel of her hand to her forehead. “How could I have forgotten?”

  She dashed down the hall to the den. Stan grabbed another cookie and followed, watching as she pulled a desk drawer way out and reached into the back of it. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I just remembered an old boyfriend, an astrophysicist. He can tell me about UFOs.”

  “An astrophysicist?” He gawked at the handful of old Rolodex cards she held. “Are those all old boyfriends?”

  “Of course not!” She took off the rubber band and began flipping through the cards. “Only half or so. Ah, here he is—Derrick Holton.”

  She sat down on the white iron daybed across from her desk and stared at the name on the card. Derrick Holton.

  She remembered how thrilled she had been to have attracted the attention of such a handsome astrophysicist. A rising star at NASA, no less. Her parents had been ecstatic. She and Derrick had dated for four months, but the relationship was far more serious on his part than hers.

  Stan sat on the daybed beside her. “Well, if he’s an astrophysicist, I can see why you dropped him. He was probably old, stodgy, and boring.”

  She smoothed the ragged edges of the card. “Actually, he was young and good-looking. But he wanted to get married. I was more interested in going to Paris for a few months. Which I did. He took the hint, and that was that.”

  Stan’s eyebrows lifted. “He wanted to marry you? You were that close to him?”

  “We were close, yes.” She gathered the rest of the cards once more, tapped them against the desk into a smooth packet, rubber-banded them, and tossed them back into the drawer.

  Stan stared at the drawer a moment too long. “I think you did the right thing,” he said firmly. “You wouldn’t have been happy with a guy like that: serious, possessive, with his head in the clouds. You need someone down-to-earth and fun.”

  “Like Paavo,” she said, turning back to face him.

  “Oh, now there’s a barrel of laughs.” Stan tightened his lips into a pout. “Someday, Angie, you’ll open your eyes and discover the jewel right under your very nose.”

  “Forget it, Stan.” She headed back to the living room, Stan following like a puppy.

  “You’re breaking my heart,” he said.

  “Have another macaroon.” She flicked her thumb toward the kitchen.

  “I will. Anyway, I don’t think it’s a good idea to call an old boyfriend. He might get the wrong impression. It could be awkward for you both.”

  “I’ll have to make my purpose clear.” She dropped onto the sofa. “That’s all there is to it.”

  Stan called out from the kitchen over the rattle of the cookie jar’s lid. “Still, to call a NASA scientist and ask him about UFOs could be taken as an insult.”

  “Derrick’s not that way. And if he doesn’t know about them, I’m sure he’d point me in the right direction.”

  “Well, I think you’re just asking for trouble.” Balancing a stack of four cookies in the palm of one hand, Stan opened the front door to leave. He glanced back at Angie. “If you won’t listen to me about this, talk to the cop.”

  She couldn’t imagine any reason to tell Paavo about Derrick, and even less reason to tell him she planned to get in touch with an old boyfriend again. Not that Paavo was jealous—he wasn’t—but he was unsure where she was concerned. “I can handle this on my own, Stan. Paavo’s much too busy to deal with UFOs.”

  “Christ!” Henry Fisher’s face blanched. “You told me it was bad, but I never expected …” He lifted a horrified gaze from the sheet-covered corpse on the metal slab in front of him and stared at the blank wall, his Adam’s apple fluttering from hard gulps. The morgue was on the ground floor of the Hall of Justice, which made it easy to wheel in gurneys from the parking lot. It also made it accessible to the public without them having to go through the security checkpoints at other entrances.

  “Are you all right?” Paavo asked. That morning the DMV computers had spit out a name and address based on the mutilated v
ictim’s fingerprints: Bertram Lambert, thirty-nine years old, 5’9”, 160 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes. The address—1551 O’Farrell Street, apartment 8—proved to be an old one. Lambert’s former landlady had insisted she knew nothing about him except that he worked in the data processing center at the Bank of America. Paavo contacted the bank and was put in touch with Lambert’s supervisor, Henry Fisher. The supervisor knew of no close friends or relatives nearby. On his employment forms Lambert’s address was still shown as the incorrect earlier one, and the only next of kin was a sister who lived in Iowa. Paavo had tried to reach her, but there was no answer at her home. Despite Lambert’s driver’s license, no car registration was found.

  Since no one else was available, Fisher agreed to identify the body. He’d been warned about the mutilation done to Lambert’s face, and that any identification would have to be made on the basis of hair, eyes, and bone structure. He’d been warned, but obviously not strongly enough. Or perhaps no amount of warning would have sufficed in this case.

  “I—I’ll be all right,” he said.

  “Cover the face from the eyes down,” Paavo told the assistant who held the sheet. The man did so.

  Fisher drew in a deep breath and forced himself to peer once more at the corpse. “I would say that’s Lambert’s hair. His forehead … his eyes.” He turned away again, gasping.

  “Thanks,” Paavo said to the assistant, who then pushed the slab back into the wall as Paavo and Fisher left the morgue.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Fisher said, subdued and visibly shaken. “He was so quiet. No one could possibly want to hurt him.”

  “Do you know anything about his personal life? Who his friends were? If he had any friends at work?”

  Fisher shook his head. “I don’t think he kept friends. He was … I don’t know, too needy. He came on too strong, overwhelming people with attention until they felt smothered and backed off. He was always looking for friends, though. Looking for clubs and groups to belong to.”

  They stepped out into the parking lot, and Fisher put a cigarette in his mouth. He had trouble lighting it because of the way his hand was shaking. Finally, he drew in several deep puffs, as if to rid his nose and lungs of the stagnant air of the morgue. He glanced at Paavo. “I always saw Bert as a prime candidate for some wacko cult. You know, like that Heaven’s Gate group where they all killed themselves to fly up to some comet.”

  “Do you know if he found any groups like that to join?”

  “Not that I noticed. I’ll ask around at work, but the guy was—hell, I suppose I shouldn’t say it now that he’s gone—but the guy was boring. He led a dull life and told people all about it until they just stopped listening. At least, I stopped.”

  “I’d appreciate whatever you could find out,” Paavo said.

  “Sure. It’s funny, though, after trying so hard …”

  “Funny?” Paavo prodded.

  Fisher’s gaze was dull. “Considering the way he died, I guess he finally found somebody who took an interest in him.”

  “Hello.”

  The warm timbre of Derrick Holton’s voice over the telephone line was exactly as Angie remembered it, and it hurled her back to the time when they had first met. He had possessed a ready smile and used to act on her every whim, remember her every word, dote on her like a man possessed. He had always been there when she needed him, not off somewhere dealing with dead bodies and murderers.

  Why had she dropped him?

  “Hi, Derrick. This is Angie Amalfi.”

  Silence. Had he forgotten her that quickly? Her hand tightened on the telephone, and she sat down on the yellow Hepplewhite chair in her living room. “Remember me?” she asked.

  “Of … of course! Angelina, is it really you? I’m breathless.”

  Breathless. She smiled. That was a very Derrick-like, elegant word. The sort of word Paavo wouldn’t have used if a gun were put to his head. “It’s really me,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sorry to bother you after all this time, but I was hoping you might spare a few minutes to help me with a project.”

  “I still can’t believe it’s you, Angelina. Are you back in San Francisco?”

  She noticed he hadn’t answered her question. Was this a once-bitten-twice-shy situation? “I’m here. I don’t need much of your time, Derrick. If it wouldn’t be a problem for you, that is.”

  “A problem? No … no, not at all. As a matter of fact, if you’re free this evening, we could meet for an early dinner. I have to go to a lecture at eight-thirty. Before that, I’d love to meet and talk with you.”

  “Dinner?” She wasn’t sure about that. There were certain implications about having dinner with an old boyfriend. It smacked of a date. “I only need to ask you a few questions. It won’t take long. Coffee somewhere would be fine. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  There was a lengthy pause. “It’s no waste of time.” His voice was low and, for the first time since he’d picked up the phone, sounded truly sincere, like the Derrick she’d once known—and tried to convince herself she loved, without success. “I’d like to see you again,” he said. “To hear about your family. About you. Don’t worry, I quite understand this phone call wasn’t because you decided you were wrong about us. I’m not that foolish. Dinner together would be for friendship’s sake only. If we met at six o’clock, that would give us a couple of hours before my lecture. We could even go Dutch, if that would make dining together more acceptable to you.”

  Six o’clock. She could leave her apartment a little after five-thirty and be home a little after eight. That should work. Paavo would most likely come over late that night after putting in a long day at work. This way she wouldn’t miss him.

  “In that case …” The best spot for them to meet would be a restaurant that was basic, without any of the ambiance that might give him the wrong impression or tinge their meeting with any hint of nostalgia. “I know just the place,” she said.

  At five-forty-five Paavo rode the elevator up to Angie’s twelfth-floor apartment. He’d walked so many circles around his desk that Yosh had finally told him to get away for a while, to take a break. He’d been frustrated by the complete lack of evidence at the crime scene, along with not being able to reach Bertram Lambert’s sister. They’d interviewed the victim’s co-workers, but they knew nothing about his personal life.

  Lambert hadn’t dropped out of the sky dead. There was a reason he’d been murdered and carved like a Thanksgiving turkey ready for stuffing, and someone had to know what it was.

  Paavo had spent the afternoon dressed in a paper gown, mask, and booties at Lambert’s autopsy. Despite the industrial-strength disinfectant, the stench from the body permeated the room.

  “I see some of my work’s already been done for me,” Dr. Evelyn Ramirez had said as she studied the body. The assistant coroner normally didn’t hesitate before making the first slightly rounded incision from shoulder to shoulder, and the next straight down to the groin. Except this time there was no groin.

  Ramirez shook her head and drew the scalpel downward from the breastbone until she ran out of flesh. The organs were those of a nonsmoker in good health. No ruptures or puncture marks. Not until the coroner cut around the back of Lambert’s head and peeled the skin away did they find cracks in the skull and, after the cranium was removed, a broken brain stem. The trauma and shatter pattern on the skull indicated that a powerful blow to the head—with what kind of implement, she couldn’t yet say—was the likely cause of death.

  The results of tests on what little blood they could find would come later, along with Ramirez’s conclusions as to the type of instrument used to make the precise cuts on the body. The wounds, she noted, had been cauterized. Paavo had left the autopsy with more questions than when he entered it.

  Now he knocked on Angie’s door. After waiting a few minutes, he knocked again. All he wanted to do was to see her and remember that there was more to life than the stench of horrid death and autopsies. Angie brou
ght a joy to life he had forgotten existed—or perhaps he had just never known.

  Stanfield Bonnette opened the apartment door across the hall. “She’s not home.”

  Paavo had never cared for Angie’s nosy neighbor. Angie thought it was jealousy, but it was simple dislike. The man relished being the bearer of bad, or at least irritating, news. “Did she give you any idea when she might return?” Paavo asked.

  “Oh, it’ll be late.” Stan folded his skinny arms. “Quite late, I’d imagine,” he added with measured insouciance.

  Paavo waited, one eyebrow slightly arched. It was obvious Bonnette was dying to tell everything he knew.

  “She’s gone out with an old boyfriend,” Bonnette said, scarcely able to prevent a smile from forming on his lips. “A very close old boyfriend. My suggestion is—” He delicately coughed. “Don’t wait up for her.”

  4

  Wings of an Angel was a small North Beach restaurant. The owners, Vinnie Freiman, Butch Pagozzi, and Earl White, had been lifelong friends and partners. Partners in crime, to be precise, and because of that, cellmates. Now in their sixties, after their last caper was derailed by Paavo Smith, they had decided to go straight. With Angie’s help, they’d learned to run a restaurant and had made it a favorite among people who lived in the city and wanted tasty, inexpensive Italian food.

  “’Ey, Miss Angie, good ta see ya.” Earl, who had the build of a fire hydrant, greeted her warmly in his role as maître d’, waiter, and busboy. Butch cooked, and no one knew what Vinnie did—except that he handled the money and kept Butch and Earl in line.

  “Hi, Earl,” Angie said, searching the small restaurant. Despite telling herself that this meeting was strictly business, she’d taken great care with her outfit, settling on a pale blue Donna Karan suit and sapphire earrings. To her surprise, she found that she had butterflies in her stomach. “I’m going to be eating with a fr—” There he was. She stopped speaking. He waved, smiling broadly. Just like in the old days. He was still the good-looking man she remembered. His hair was light brown and wiry, with streaks of gray, though he was only in his early thirties. His complexion was slightly ruddy, his eyes hazel, his lips wide; his front teeth had a boyish space between them that gave a devil-may-care look to the serious astrophysicist that he was. She smiled back.