Two Cooks A-Killing

by Joanne Pence

  Connie wasn’t sure if that would help or hurt. Clutching Angie’s hand, she climbed higher, looked into the window, and gasped. “Those two? I thought she hated him.”

  “Isn’t it wild?”

  “Like on TV, only better,” Connie squealed.

  At that moment, Rhonda began to unbutton her dress while Bart walked toward the bed. He pulled back the covers and kicked off his shoes. Angie and Connie’s eyes grew round as saucers.

  “Uh…Angie,” Connie whispered.

  An X-rated Eagle Crest was not part of Angie’s viewing pleasure either. “I never did like those reality shows,” she said. “Time to get off this tree.”

  Connie began down. “Stop stepping on my hand!” she said. “Let me go first. Once I’m on the ground, I’ll guide you.”

  “Okay.” Angie tried her best not to glance back at the window—just a peek or two. Things were definitely getting steamier by the minute.

  Connie climbed down, and near the bottom, jumped.

  Angie slowly moved her feet down one limb and then another. The tree bark was hard and prickly, the twigs and branches hurt the tender soles of her feet. If she wore practical shoes like Connie’s one-inch pumps she could have left them on and not had to endure this torment, but now…

  All of a sudden, Connie turned and ran.

  Angie didn’t move, listening and wondering if the tree leaves would hide her from whatever had scared Connie. She certainly didn’t want anyone to know she’d climbed a tree right outside Rhonda’s bedroom. Now what?

  She stood there, about five feet up, clutching the trunk. She’d never realized how far five feet was. No way was she brave enough to jump. At best, it’d hurt. She could easily twist an ankle or worse.

  “Angie?” Junior looked up at her. She could understand Connie running. He looked like a wild man of Borneo, even if you didn’t know he was once charged with being a stalker.

  She felt trapped.

  Once, she read that sexual predators never changed, never could be rehabilitated. Was stalking the same thing? She wished she’d asked Paavo more about it.

  “Why are you up there?” he asked.

  Everything about Junior disturbed her, but she didn’t want to stay in the tree any longer. “Help me down, please.”

  She lowered herself to a sitting position. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on his shoulders. He took hold of her waist. Slowly, he eased her from the tree down to the ground. Their bodies touched, and he used his for leverage not to drop her. She felt more of his body than she ever wanted to.

  “Why were you up there?” he asked when her feet touched the ground, his arms still around her.

  She didn’t want to upset him. “I…used to climb trees all the time when I was a kid,” she said, easing herself away from him. “The going up was easier than coming back down.”

  “Like a cat.” He smiled, touching her cheek. He stepped closer.

  “Let me go, Junior,” she ordered.

  He did as she asked, his expression wary. “I saw your friends,” he said. “It seems I’m not the only one with secrets here.”

  “There are too many secrets in this house,” she said. “Why don’t you come inside, join everyone. There’s no need for you to continue to hide.”

  He looked at the house, at the cheerful Christmas lights. “Yes, there is.” He studied her. “Do you know where the music box is?”

  She was growing more nervous. “Music box?”

  “The Drummer Boy. ‘Come, they told me…’” he softly sang.

  His voice made a cold chill ripple down her spine. “I don’t know where it is. Do you?”

  “You should know, Angie. It’s important,” he said.

  His affinity with the poor child with no gift to bring struck her. His loneliness, his lack of gift, of any social grace or self-confidence, was sad to behold in one whose life should have been filled with so very much. On the surface, it was, but inside, she’d rarely seen such a hollow shell of a man. Her sister said he wanted someone to love and to love him. Maybe that’s what was behind the stalking charge—desperation rather than perversion. Still, it was wrong.

  “I’ve learned more about your mother since I’ve been here, Junior,” she said, wishing she could find a way to get through his solitary shell. Curious, he gazed down at her. “She was an unhappy woman. Unhappy, unfulfilled. Her bitterness wasn’t about you.” Angie ached to touch him, to comfort him, but something held her back, some sense that she needed to be careful not to cause more upheaval than she knew how to handle. If she said or did the wrong thing it could tip the scale in a dangerous way.

  “You weren’t the problem,” she continued. “It was her. There wasn’t anything you could do, no way for you to change, to make it up to her. You’ve got to understand that.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said stubbornly.

  She didn’t know what else to say. The possibility that Brittany, unknowingly, had set off Junior worried and sickened her. He could have been a good man.

  “I’m going inside now, Junior. I have to find my friends.”

  “Your friends?” He touched her cheek once more. “You’re my friend, Angie. My only friend.”

  She hurried into the house.

  Chapter 31

  The Quetzalcoatl gang member who’d come out the back door firing got off one shot before he was wounded by the SWAT sniper on the opposing roof. The other SWAT members fired until the back door was pulverized. Then they stopped and waited.

  In a matter of minutes, the other members surrendered.

  Since Quetzalcoatl had been the gang moving into the city and upsetting the perverse balance of power that existed among the drug dealers there, with them out of the way, the city could go back to the status quo.

  Ironically, that meant the police had helped the dealers return to selling, rather than hiding in order to save their own lives.

  Paavo and the other cops knew it; as they made the arrests, they could see it in each others’ eyes. All they could do was shake their heads over the situation and hope that arresting and jailing the members of one ruthless gang would create an overall drop in drug traffic. Still, many of them were probably going to have a long struggle with their consciences over this case. According to the law, they’d done the right thing.

  As soon as he could, Paavo left the city. Worry about what was going on at Eagle Crest nagged at him. Often, Angie managed to stir a pot in ways that caused trouble to bubble up even when it wasn’t there before—or was there, but hidden under the surface.

  At night, Highway 29 through the valley was nearly empty, far different from the weekend parking lot he’d dealt with the last time. When he turned off it for Eagle Crest, the narrow road was pitch black. He put his headlights on high, but he could have been alone in the world for all that was visible around him.

  He drove for five minutes before he saw a light in the distance. A shining light in the East. He chuckled to himself. Angie’s talk about Christmas had impressed him more than he’d imagined.

  He followed the light. As he got closer, he saw it wasn’t one light but many, strung around the house, over the roof, porch, and windows to look like something out of a Hallmark advertisement.

  He turned into the parking area. In this light, even the fake snow looked pretty.

  “Angie, the door,” Mariah said, her lips pursed, but she didn’t look nearly as irritated as she had in the past.

  Angie was in her room. After leaving Junior, she’d found Connie and Minnie on the front veranda. She saw them off, with plans to return the next day. Since then, she’d thought a lot about Junior, as well as holding a full-fledged debate with herself over whether her “ghostly” dinner party ruse had been helpful, harmful, or simply a foolish waste of time and energy. Unfortunately, she was leaning toward the latter.

  Now who? she wondered. Had Connie returned for some reason? As she headed downstairs, she expected the foyer to be empty, that her guest would have been left
outdoors as usual.

  He wasn’t.

  Paavo stood in the foyer wearing a brown leather jacket, cream-colored sports shirt, jeans, and looking so handsome she could hardly stand it.

  She threw her arms around him, showering him with hugs and kisses. “I’m so glad you made it. I wasn’t expecting you this soon.”

  He kissed her back with equal enthusiasm. “I couldn’t wait. At least this time, you aren’t on your way to San Francisco.”

  “Thank goodness!” She hugged him again before stepping back, his hands in hers. “Now that I’ve dragged you up here, though, I can’t help but wonder what you could possibly do. Maybe I’m just imagining things. Maybe I’m putting my nose where I shouldn’t and—”

  “Why don’t you show me the scenes of the crimes?”

  “That’s easy.” She led him through the main floor, then to the wine cellar, the family and guest wings of the second floor, and finally to her bedroom. It was a good spot, she decided, eyeing him, to end the tour.

  “A kosher goose?” Angie looked incredulously at Paavo later when they got around to talking once again.

  They were side-by-side on the narrow single bed. “There’s a lot involved,” she said. “In kosher cooking, you aren’t supposed to eat anything that’s been strangled, for example. For poultry, that means the bird can’t be killed by wringing its neck. I can find out more for you, if you’d like.”

  Paavo shifted his arm under her shoulder. “So if the goose isn’t kosher, a simple meaning would be that its neck was twisted, or broken. Interesting.” Paavo then told Angie about the e-mails Fred had sent to Tarleton. “They tie in somehow, I’m sure. Keep an eye on Minnie. She’s an actress. I don’t know that you can trust her.”

  “Same as all the others in this house,” Angie said, her arm across his bare chest.

  Paavo was silent, thoughtful.

  She shivered and pulled the covers higher. “This room is always so cold,” she said. “Some say it’s caused by Brittany’s ghost.”

  “Very funny. Isn’t there a thermostat around?”

  “The house has central heating, but none comes in here.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” He got out of bed and put on his jeans. Angie switched on the small lamp by the bed.

  Behind the bureau he found a wall register. “Maybe this is your problem.” He shoved the bureau to one side. It actually looked better since it was now centered.

  Paavo held his hand in front of the grate. “There’s no air. I wonder if some inside vents are closed.”

  “I looked, but they’re open,” Angie said.

  He studied it. In the dim light, it did appear to be open. He knelt closer, then got up and grabbed Angie’s rat-tailed comb and pushed the handle inside the grate. It didn’t go in far at all.

  “Something’s blocking it.”

  “There is?” Angie wrapped herself in his cotton shirt and knelt down beside him.

  “Do you have a screwdriver?” he asked. At her blank expression, he continued. “Knife? How about a fingernail file?”

  “That I’ve got.”

  He used it to unscrew the cover from the wall. A piece of black cardboard had been pressed against the register cover so that, to the casual glance, it appeared one was looking into the open cavernous maw of a heating system.

  He pried the cardboard off. “Someone wanted it cold in here.”

  “Or someone wanted to hide something,” Angie said. She reached into the opening and pulled out some papers.

  They were from an obstetrician–gynecologist in San Francisco. The patient’s name was Brittany Keegan. As Angie and Paavo read through all the medical jargon and the billing records, one fact became clear. When she died, Brittany Keegan was pregnant.

  Chapter 32

  When Angie awoke the next morning, she discovered that much of the crew was on the job, and the craft service was back. She’d been relieved of breakfast duty, which was good since this was her big day: the day she was going to cook the test-run of her Christmas feast.

  As they ate breakfast, Angie took the opportunity to introduce Paavo to the cast, plus Tarleton, Mariah, and Camille. Soon after, Sterling and Serefina showed up, and Silver joined them briefly.

  Angie made it clear to one and all that Paavo was a homicide inspector. She’d hoped that would cause one of them to fall to their knees and confess.

  No such luck.

  No one even looked especially guilty.

  “Now that you’ve met everyone,” Angie said to Paavo when they were alone in the kitchen, “what do you think? Did you see the shifty eyes, the guilty demeanor of a killer?”

  “They all look like they’re hiding something,” he replied.

  “Sterling and Silver, too?” she asked. She couldn’t believe either of them had anything to do with murder.

  Paavo wasn’t so quick to judge. “Sterling’s a ladies’ man. We know he and his wife didn’t get along at all. You mentioned rumors of his interest in Brittany as well as Rhonda and Gwen.”

  “That doesn’t make him a killer,” Angie said.

  “I’m not saying he is, only that you can’t rule him out. Same with Silver. Hormones making a sixteen-year-old boy go a little nutty are not unknown. Or, an older one for that matter. What was Junior at the time, twenty-one or-two? He already had a record as a stalker.”

  “True,” Angie agreed.

  “Fred Demitasse knew more happened in this house than was ever made public,” Paavo said. “When he heard about the Eagle Crest reunion, he wanted to be part of the show and sent those e-mails to Tarleton. ‘Aren’t you curious about the gander who plucked your goose?’ and so on. That means he also knew who Brittany was having an affair with.”

  “Minnie said something to me and Connie once,” Angie added thoughtfully, “that others didn’t see ‘little people’ as people—they only saw them in relation to their size. Fred could have silently gone about, watching and listening, and no one paid attention.”

  “Let’s think about this a bit more. And about Minnie Petite. Why is she here?”

  Angie filled him in on her blackmail theory. “Fred was blackmailing someone to keep quiet about what he saw the night Brittany died. Maybe Rhonda?”

  “If she was paying him blackmail money, why would he cast suspicion on her?”

  “Good point…but Rhonda has to be the killer. Fred publicly confronted her with her tale of bursitis.”

  Paavo shook his head. “Rhonda looks like a strong wind could blow her away. Fred was short, but solid. I don’t see how she could lift him.”

  “So it can’t be her,” Angie said. Everyone seemed guilty…and no one.

  But it was time for Paavo to leave. He had plans and needed to get started with them.

  “Don’t be late for dinner!” she cried. “Seven o’clock.”

  “I’d like to review Brittany Keegan’s autopsy report.” Paavo showed his SFPD badge to the clerk at the Napa county coroner’s office.

  The young clerk had apparently never been given a request like that because she grew flustered and went back to talk to the coroner. In a moment, a stoop-shouldered man with gray-streaked black hair, sunken chin, and silver-framed glasses approached.

  “Steven Ellsberg,” he said, extending a long-fingered hand. “I’m the medical examiner for the county.”

  Paavo introduced himself and again showed his credentials.

  Ellsberg studied them. Satisfied, he said, “I understand you’re interested in learning about Brittany Keegan’s death.”

  “I am.”

  He regarded Paavo a moment. “Please come into my office.”

  “This was a very sensitive case,” Ellsberg explained, seated behind his desk. “We nearly didn’t do an autopsy on her because the people involved were afraid any results might get leaked to the press. For over ten years, we’ve kept the findings quiet, and I don’t expect that to change.”

  “Are you saying the autopsy threw the accidental death ruling into questi
on?” Paavo asked.

  “No, I’m saying autopsies can provide information about a person that isn’t known to the general public. Private information.”

  “Which you want to make sure remains private,” Paavo added.

  “Exactly.”

  “Unless it would in some way have material bearing on the case I’m looking into, I would have no reason to make anything in the autopsy public.”

  Ellsberg folded his hands on the desk, his eyes flinty. “What is the case you’re looking into?”

  “Fred Demitasse’s. You might know him as Rudolf Goetring or Larry Rhone.” Paavo explained his own involvement in the case. “Two accidental deaths, two actors. It’s possible, but it appears suspicious.”

  “Put that way, I’d tend to agree,” Ellsberg admitted. He leaned back. “I worked on Mr. Demitasse this morning, in fact.”

  “You did an autopsy?” Paavo asked.

  “No. None was requested, and it doesn’t seem any is needed. They’re rare in this county. Most deaths here are caused by auto accidents—tourists, mostly. Or old age. That’d be the residents. People here live a long time. It’s the wine, if you ask me. On the other hand, of those who die young, it’s often the wine there, too. I guess it all evens out.”

  Paavo didn’t like there being no autopsy. He’d witnessed a number of them that resulted in a cause of death far different from what was first suspected.

  The ME rambled on, clearly relishing the chance to talk about his work.

  “It’s a good community,” Ellsberg continued. “Changing, but what isn’t? We’re far enough away from big cities that most of the crime you deal with hasn’t reached us yet.”

  “Except for Eagle Crest,” Paavo said.

  Ellsberg’s gaze met his. “True.”

  “Did you find anything surprising when you looked at Demitasse’s corpse?” Paavo asked.

  “He’s in the morgue.” Ellsberg’s eyes twinkled. “Want to see?”

  “You’re looking thoughtful this morning,” Serefina said as she entered the kitchen to see if Angie needed help.