Lucky Catch

by Deborah Coonts

  I knew that look. “Learn anything interesting?”

  He didn’t answer me immediately. And inner battle raged—I could see it in his eyes, in the tautness of his expression.

  “Tell me.” Propelled by a need to know, I leaned forward. “You have to tell me. As you said, two people have died already—and one almost.”

  Teddie swallowed hard, a pained look contorted his features. “Your French chef was there.”

  “Jean-Charles?” Suddenly feeling light-headed, I reached for my flute. As if that was going to help. Without taking a sip, I replaced the glass, forcing a calm tone. “What was he doing?”

  “I saw him talking with the scientist who . . . got hurt, then I lost him in the crowd.” With his finger, Teddie pushed at a slice of mozzarella. The cheese had a dark slash across it, an angry balsamic stain that looked like dried blood outlining a wound. “I worked my way through the crowdk trying to catch sight of him again.”

  “And did you?” My hand shook, so I placed it palm-down on the table. The other one, I kept in my lap.

  Teddie glanced down at my hand. Pain pinched the skin between his eyebrows. His voice faltered.

  “Tell me.” My voice had gone hard as I braced myself.

  His eyes met mine. His face cleared. “I was far away—on the other side of the pit. And the crowd was pressing in, so I could hardly move. But I saw Jean-Charles. Just before the show started, he jumped on the crane and started climbing to the cockpit.”

  “Did you see him get inside?”

  Teddie drew his lips into a thin line and shook his head.

  Thinking back, I tried to remember the timing. “The crane’s engine, had someone already cranked it over?” Adrenaline blew through my brain, clearing some of the alcohol fuzz.

  Teddie furrowed his brows and glanced away. When his eyes returned to mine, they were untroubled. He nodded, slowly at first, then more vigorously, as his lips curled slightly upward. “Yes. Yes, the engine was already running.”

  “Are you sure?”

  This time, his smile broke through. “Absolutely.”

  “So someone else was in that cab.” My heart beat faster with renewed hope. “What did you do then?”

  “I fought through the crowd, trying to get to him. I’d almost made it . . .” He stopped.

  “What happened?”

  He looked at me just like he used to. “I saw you dive into that rock pile.”

  * * *

  Teddie had hugged me long and hard before he’d climbed the stairs back to his place. Several hours later, as I curled under a cashmere throw in the comfort of my winged-back chair in front of the window, I still felt the press of his body against mine. A fire flickered in the fireplace—gas logs, but they provided some heat and a comforting ambience I was grateful for.

  Sleep refused to come.

  Jordan and Rudy had tiptoed off to their quarters when Teddie had shown up. At first, I’d been peeved, as if the whole thing was a setup. Now, I didn’t care. Everyone had been right: dealing with Teddie was something I had to do.

  By carrying around the hurt and the anger, I hurt only myself.

  My phone, a new one Miss P. had handed me as Mona led me away, sounded at my hip. I had yet to personalize anything, much less the ringtone. So, no more “Lucky for Me.” I didn’t miss it.

  Two a.m. Who could it be?

  My heart rate accelerated as I thought of Mona—even though her due date was still weeks away, anything could happen. I pulled the phone from its holster and squinted at the number. No name—I had no idea how to synch my contacts through the cloud, as Brandy had told me to do. I thought the number looked like Romeo’s.

  I hit the green spot, then pressed the phone to my ear and took a flier that I might just be right. “Hey. You okay?” I whispered, not wanting to awaken my houseguests.

  “Sorta.” Romeo sounded dog-tired. “Are you still awake?”

  For some reason, recognizing his number felt like a small victory. I thought of my normal flip response, but decided this wasn’t the time. “Yeah.”

  “I know this is weird, but can I come up?”

  “You know I’ve moved back to my apartment, right?”

  “I’m downstairs.”

  “I’ll send the elevator.”

  * * *

  When the elevator doors opened, disgorging the crumpled detective, I thrust a beverage in his hand—three fingers of single malt in a cut-crystal Steuben tumbler.

  “Nice digs.” Romeo took a long pull on the scotch as he glanced around the apartment. I’d left the lights dimmed, so the Technicolor reflection of the Strip lights painted the walls in a rainbow of soft colors.

  The view beckoning, Romeo walked to the window. Silently, I stepped in beside him. “You’d never been here?” Considering the lifetime of disasters we’d shared over the past year, that seemed impossible.

  “Maybe once. I don’t remember.” He sipped as he drank in the view. “This town . . . ,” he started, then quit, shaking his head.

  “Is like a good woman—tough on the outside, tender in spots.” I crossed my arms to keep myself from hugging him. For some reason, I sensed he needed to stand apart, to find his own strength, to work through whatever had brought him here.

  “But all I see is the bad side of human nature, all day, every day.”

  “That’s all you allow yourself to see. Look harder.” I risked putting a hand on his arm and giving it a squeeze. “And if that fails, remember you always have me. I mean, how bad can life be with me in your corner? Life has graced you immeasurably, Detective.”

  He snorted twenty-five-year-old scotch through his nose as he doubled over. Personally, I didn’t think my comment was all that funny. When he’d dried his eyes and wiped his face with the napkin I’d handed him, he finally got down to business. “Your hunch about Barrymore was right. The chef had two more RFID chips, and a story about how Jean-Charles had asked him to order some high-end stuff and chip it.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Foie gras, mainly. And some Kobe beef for the hidden menu burger.”

  I stepped over to the couch and relaxed into its welcoming embrace. “Tell me about The Barrymore.” I pulled the pillows closer, packing them around me—my normal defensive position.

  “Not much to tell. Chef fed us, which was . . . amazing. What a romantic place. And the food! An undiscovered gem, if you ask me.”

  “Yes, it won’t be undiscovered for long.” I let him enjoy his memory for a moment, then I brought him crashing to earth. “And the murders? Did you find anything new?”

  “Just the chips.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  “None of them can be read by a normal RFID reader. Apparently, Mr. Peccorino added some sort of extra hoop to jump through. Curiously, none of the other Berkeley guys knew a work-around, so I handed all the chips to Homeland Security.” At my sharp intake of breath, he held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I didn’t use you to chum the waters. They’ve got a bunch of scientists working on tracking our food supply—all in the name of national security, or so they say. They’re reverse-engineering the thing, but it’ll take time.”

  “And they probably won’t share.” I thought about Special Agent Stokes . . . Joe. Maybe I had a work-around of my own. “Do you have any new info on Dr. Phelps?”

  “Not out of the woods yet, but they’re pretty sure he’ll make a full recovery.” Romeo plopped down next to me. Stretching his legs out, he leaned back and closed his eyes. His hands cradled his glass on his belly.

  “Anything interesting on the alibi front?” I asked.

  “Looking for easy answers?” The young detective shot me a smirk.

  “Any answers.” I curled farther into the corner of the couch, tucking my feet underneath me, and pulled even more pillows around me—if we were going to talk murder, I needed my defenses.

  Romeo stared at the ceiling. “Alibis. When Fiona was killed, the workday had pretty much started. Practic
ally everyone was wandering around on property at the Babylon. Everyone except Chef Wexler, who said he was off trying to find some interesting things at the Asian market in Korea Town.”

  “Was Jerry any help?”

  Romeo shook his head. “No cameras on the back lot, or in the kitchens at Burger Palais. Everybody still is a suspect.”

  “And for the time Mr. Peccorino died?”

  “Jean-Charles and Teddie were on the Cielo property. As you know, your security system isn’t up and running yet. So no video feeds.” He raised his head and took a long draw from his glass. “Everybody else was roaming around town, by themselves. Wexler was once again doing his shopping—some of the food vendors remember seeing him, just not exactly when. Gregor was in the hotel, or so he said, checking on the cooking completion setup.”

  “The doors should have been locked.”

  Romeo nodded, but didn’t look at me. “They were. He had some other song-and-dance. We’re checking it out. Chitza said she was with Dr. Phelps, but he’s in no condition to say yea or nay.”

  “No corroboration, then?” I said, thinking out loud.

  “Only you.” Romeo smiled as he turned his head in my direction. “You were with me.”

  “Desiree?” I picked at some stuffing poking through a hole in one of the pillows.

  “She said she was with her daughter.” I started to say something, but Romeo stopped me with a slight gesture with one hand. “I didn’t even ask—of course, the girl would support her mother.”

  I tried to push the stuffing back in the little hole, then decided I was making it worse, so I tossed the offending pillow onto the chair out of reach. “What about Brett Baker?”

  Romeo’s mouth turned down at the corners. “He drives around in that dang food truck all day. But some of the workers at Cielo told me he swings by there every day.”

  “Really?”

  “But again, no one remembers exactly the time or date.” Romeo undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. “Like Adone as well. No alibi, but no one to place him at the scene, either.”

  My fingers and hands ached, but I worked the joints slightly, trying to increase range of motion. “I think the whole thing started innocently, whether it was Homeland Security being overzealous, or Jean-Charles being anal about quality, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that somehow, he stumbled onto a scheme involving high-end specialty items.”

  “Okay.” Romeo picked up the thread. “Let’s assume you’re right. So, your chef steps into a nest of vipers. Now, somebody wants to clean up the mess.”

  “Exactly.” Still flexing my fingers, I uncurled my legs and rose—I did my best thinking when in motion. “So, someone is eliminating loose ends and framing Jean-Charles, or at least putting him in a very bad PR position. And we know, once the public finds a chink in the armor of someone’s reputation, they go after it, ripping it to shreds like a pit bull with a play toy.”

  Romeo’s eyes followed me as I paced in front of him. “The person we’re looking for has tracks to cover and a bone to pick with Chef Bouclet.”

  I stopped in front of the detective, my hands on my hips. “That really doesn’t help. Just about everyone in this ugly mess holds Jean-Charles accountable for some transgression.”

  Romeo pursed his lips and gave me a little shrug, then he grabbed the baton. “And the UC-Berkeley guys just got into the mix by sheer dumb luck.”

  I turned to my view, my hands clasped behind me as I drank in Vegas. “Everyone except Mr. Peccorino, I think. He added a layer of unreadability to the chips. I wonder why?”

  “His colleagues are in the dark.” Romeo sounded fatalistic. “Here.” He rattled the ice in his glass. “Please.”

  Thankful for a mission, I grabbed the glass and headed to the bar.

  He talked as I poured. “I think we’re looking for a guy.”

  “A guy?” I measured two fingers, paused, then added another. “Why?”

  Romeo rolled his head back and looked at me over the back of the couch. “It would take a ton of strength to stuff a man, deadweight, into that oven.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Initially, I came to the same conclusion.”

  “But now?”

  “The oven wasn’t all that high.” I returned to stand in front of him and handed him his fresh drink. “Amped on enough adrenaline, and with a bit of leverage, I could probably do it.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not . . .” He eyed me over the rim as he took a sip.

  “Careful.” I eviscerated the warning with a grin.

  Romeo recovered. “You’re not average.” He seemed pleased with himself, then he shifted gears, almost leaving me flat-footed. “So, I’m siding with you on the theory that Jean-Charles is sending you the pictures, leading you to the RFID chips. It doesn’t make sense it would be anyone else. But why? We can’t read them, surely he would’ve known that.”

  “Unless Peccorino added that little twist all on his own.”

  Romeo shot me a look as if he hadn’t thought of that possibility. “Interesting. But again, why?”

  “Hell, I’m making this up as I go, how would I know?” Now, it was my turn to sound frustrated. “But I have a feeling the chips will lead us to a location—the one where shipments are getting tampered with. Somehow, that seems to be the key. And it seems to me that Peccorino must’ve coded those chips to route all the shipments through one location. That just makes sense—how else would all of them end up flowing through the hands of the person who tampered with them?”

  “Good point. But hiding that little scam seems a pretty weak motive for murder.”

  I gave him a little grin. “I’ve contemplated it for less.”

  He conceded the point with a chuckle. “So, if your chef doesn’t have all the chips, and he doesn’t have the reader, and his science guy is dead . . .” Romeo let the thought hang.

  I felt hope and fear at the same time. “Then Jean-Charles doesn’t know who the killer is, either. He’s running, but he doesn’t know from whom.”

  “Then time is short.”

  I blew out in exasperation. “Of course, it’s short. The killer has practically told us he’s going to kill again. And if we don’t move, then the whole operation that set this killing spree off will move.”

  “And we’ll be back to square one.”

  “With several dead bodies.”

  “Okay.” Romeo set his glass down on the side table and pushed himself to a more upright position. “So, why do you think Jean-Charles thinks someone is listening in on him?”

  I eyed Romeo’s drink, suddenly craving one of my own, but I’d already far exceeded my daily allotment. “I know he said that, but I passed it off as overly dramatic. I mean, I know someone could follow him, but listen in on his conversations? Only the government would be able to do that, right?”

  “You did say Homeland Security showed up on your doorstep.” Romeo ran a hand through his hair. I was going to have to tell him to stop doing that—his cowlick would never remain tamed. “But there’s also another way.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Spyware. You can download it. Technically, it’s a huge crime to use it against others, but the government hasn’t blocked the sale of it because personal use is cool.”

  “The sanctity of personal privacy resting solely on the exalted character of humankind.”

  “Look on the positive side.” Romeo teased. “But point taken. One would assume that a person who had already shown flagrant disregard for the law, like a killer, would not be put off by a pesky little federal statute, no matter the severity of the penalties for violation.”

  I mulled over Romeo’s theory, trying to shoot holes in it, but I couldn’t . . . or didn’t want to. “What about the note?”

  Romeo mumbled, “Pigs to find a feast so rare. But eat a morsel taking care. A bit is fine but take heed. Death will come to those with greed.”

  “Pigs to find a feast so rare. Sounds like the truffle
to me.”

  Romeo nodded. “The middle part seems straightforward. But that last part about greed—hell, it could be any one of the current cast of players.”

  I had to agree—they all seemed to be playing their own angles for personal gain. But really, who in life wasn’t? “If you have any theories as to a lead suspect, I’d like to hear them.”

  “If I was a betting man, I’d say Gregor.” Romeo reached to the side and grabbed his glass with his fingers, then wiggled his hand, tinkling the ice in his glass.

  Even in my diminished state, I got the hint. “Another dose?”

  “Make it a double.”

  “Grasshopper, do as I say, not as I do.”

  “Not tonight.” Romeo’s voice actually had a hard edge that I’d never heard before.

  “Okay.” I held out my hand. “Give me your car keys.”

  He hesitated.

  “I know your limits.”

  He opened one eye, then rooted in his pocket. The ring caught on the lining of his pocket, but he yanked the keys loose, ripping a hole, then dropped them into my open palm.

  “I’ll put these on the hook by the elevator.”

  When I returned with not only his knockout drink, but also a pillow and blanket, I thought he was already asleep. As I leaned across him to set the glass on the side table, he reached for it. After a sip, he cupped both hands around the glass, holding it in his lap, his eyes still closed, his head back.

  I thought he might be drifting off, but I kept talking, it helped to think out loud. “This is like one of those group cluster fucks at that swinger place—everybody here is doing everybody else. We have Chef Wexler, who got his head handed to him by someone who calls himself The Phantom Phoodie. And Gregor beat him out of the restaurant space in the Bazaar . . . the one that is now occupied by Jean-Charles. Chitza DeStefano, Jean-Charles’s former lover, is shacking up with the injured Dr. Phelps. Fiona Richards was shacking up with Desiree Bouclet’s husband—who has a huge bone to pick with his brother-in-law. And Fiona goes to Gregor with news of the missing truffle, pushing the stone off the cliff, and I’m running all over town collecting RFID chips. Homeland Security is breathing down my neck. Jean-Charles is on the lam.” I rubbed my eyes. “My head hurts.”