Motive

by Jonathan Kellerman

  He frowned. “Yale, playwright. Yeah, that would work.”

  “For all we know he had her believing he was a bona fide attorney. Working at the firm, Williams would’ve picked up more than enough jargon to be convincing. We need to talk to Kleffer again. I just tried to reach him, no success. But let’s give it another shot.”

  This time, the chef answered and I asked if he knew Jens Williams.

  “That fucker, that fucking asshole fucker! Tell me before you find him, give me fucking five minutes alone with him in a fucking locked room, I bring my Japanese cleaver, I turn him into fucking paste, I grind his bones in a fucking duck press, I—!”

  I held the phone out to Milo.

  He took it and said, “Darius, when’s your next break?”

  CHAPTER

  32

  Kleffer met us in the cut between Beppo Bippo and the furniture store. We found him smoking and stamping each foot in turn. His back was to us. One palm was pressed to the wall, pushing stucco hard enough to raise sinews on his arm. Dime-store Samson out to topple the world around him. When he saw us, he shoved his phone at us. “Look!”

  The tiny screen shook in his grasp, a rectangle filled with movement and sound. The scene was white-garbed people, slicing, sautéing, deep-frying. The soundtrack was clatter.

  Kleffer jabbed the mini-movie. “See?”

  Milo said, “See what?”

  “Shit—look—shit, I lost it, hold hold—shit okay, here, this is me. With the sausage. And over there, in the back—what the fuck—okay … there. That’s him!”

  Enlarging a corner of the image, he indicated a tall, thin figure behind a stainless-steel counter. Dark hair streamed from under the man’s snood. Heavy-rimmed eyeglasses stood out against pale skin but even at max size, features weren’t discernible.

  Hands worked fast. Chop chop chop.

  Milo said, “That’s Jens Williams?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Kleffer. “He was called J.J. A better name is Asshole.”

  “You worked together?”

  “The New York food scene, people move between the same places.”

  “Which restaurant is this?”

  “No, no,” said Kleffer. “This is no restaurant, this is a show. Mega-Chef Slice-Dice.”

  “For TV?”

  “Yeah, yeah, The Gourmet Network. This was the pilot, it didn’t get picked up. I got on the A-team because I was already sou-ing for Mr. Luong, he knew I had talent. Asshole got on Billy Slade’s team, wanted to sous but only got prep.”

  “Prep being—”

  “You slice raw vegetables over and over. That’s like you suck.”

  “Meat woulda been better?”

  “Protein?” said Kleffer. “What do you think? The more up in front you are, the more you get to transform protein. I got sweetbreads, Mr. L., he knew what I could do with them. I made sausages with a chestnut sauce, judges came in their pants.”

  Milo said, “Meanwhile, J.J.’s chopping lettuce.”

  “Kale. Swiss chard. Carrots.” Kleffer laughed raggedly. “Got so pissed he cut himself, bled all over the mise en place, everything ruined, he got kicked off the show in the middle. Like a fucking exile! He was just a prep slut, anyway. Meanwhile, I’m doing my sweetbread with the chestnut sauce, must have drove him nuts, he hated me.”

  “Because of the sweetbreads.”

  “More than the sweetbreads,” said Kleffer. “My team won. And he was a fucking loser.”

  Milo had him email the video to the desktop at his office and to his cell phone.

  “Anything else, Darius?”

  “I know he hurt Kathy, you just told me on the phone.”

  Milo said, “Not exactly—”

  “You hand him to me, I give him mega-pain slice-dice.”

  “Let’s take it slow, Darius.”

  Kleffer smoked, kicked the ground, slapped a wall.

  “Darius?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m mellow.”

  “You think Williams would’ve killed Kathy to get back at you because he was upset over a cooking competition?”

  “When he fucked himself up by bleeding on the mise, everyone was talking about it, Billy Slade fired his ass from Inca Grill. Last I heard he was making burgers in a dive-bar on Delancey Street.”

  Kleffer laughed again, tilted his hand back and forth. “Sear, flip, sear, flip. That’ll melt your brain. Asshole deserved it, he was a shithead from day one, even unloading on the Guatemalans.”

  “The Guatemalans?”

  “The prep guys, they’re like the backbone of the kitchen, you don’t piss them off. Asshole actually hit one in the face, claiming the guy was messing him up on purpose. Which is stupid, the Guatemalans are professionals. You can get away with a lot of shit in a kitchen but you don’t mess with the Guatemalans, they know more than you. That was his problem, thinking he was smarter than everyone, going to Harvard.”

  “We’ve been told Yale.”

  “Same difference,” said Kleffer. “So what if you took Persian fucking philosophy? Can you conceive a badass sauce? Can you marry flavors? The kitchen is the ultimate test, Asshole couldn’t stand up to it. He never liked me because whenever we ended up in the same place, I was higher up. That’s why he stole Kathy from me. I know it was him.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. “I leave New York and come here. So guess who shows up? It’s like, you’ve got to be kidding.”

  “J.J. showed up at Beppo—”

  “No, no, a place in the Valley, fusion Italian Japanese, I’m not working, I’m eating.” Kleffer’s eyes narrowed. “I’m having dinner with Kathy, the relationship’s going good, I’m thinking we’re solid, everything’s copa. All of a sudden, who’s standing at the table? I say hi but I don’t invite him. He sits down anyway, like we’re bros. Real friendly, smooth, like a different person than an asshole who’d hit a Guatemalan. What am I going to do, kick him out and look like a dick in front of Kathy? So he has a couple of drinks with us, soon he’s talking more to Kathy than me.”

  I said, “Talking about what?”

  “Basically how fucking great he is. Harv-Yale, whatever. How he used to be a chef, the culinary world had its ‘charms’ there’s nothing better than feeding human beings, one day he’s gonna tackle world starvation, but now he’s moved on, time for a change, he’s working in law. I knew it was bullshit but who cares? All I wanted was to get rid of him, get Kathy home and … he leaves, gives me a bro-hug, I never see him again.”

  He smoked greedily. “I never think anything about it, why would I?”

  I said, “You never connected him with the man you suspected Kathy of seeing.”

  “The bastard she cheated on me with?” said Kleffer. “Why would I think it’s him, he’s a dick.”

  “How soon after he showed up—”

  “Maybe a coupla months.” Head shake. “She drops it on me. You’re out, Darius. Not saying it but I know: Another guy’s in. It fucking broke me.” Patting the left side of his chest. “Why would I think it’s him? She said she was looking for stability.”

  “Working in law,” said Milo.

  “Yeah, yeah, but that didn’t register because I knew it was bullshit. Asshole’s chopping vegetables, now he’s a lawyer?”

  “He said he was an attorney?”

  “Working in law, what the fuck does that mean? You really think it’s him?”

  Milo said, “We don’t think anything yet, Darius. We’re collecting facts. Anything else you want to tell us that would help find J.J.?”

  “You do think he did it,” said Kleffer.

  Milo moved closer. Kleffer’s back was to the wall. “Darius, I’ll repeat myself this one time—”

  “Okay, okay … no, I don’t know where he is. Didn’t hang out with him in New York, don’t hang out with him here.”

  “Who did he hang out with in New York?”

  “Nobody, that’s the point,” said Kleffer. “Like after hours, we’d all go drinking, che
fs, the Guatemalans, sometimes servers. We’re tired and hyped and hungry, looking for a great beer, a nice sandwich.”

  “Not Williams.”

  “Not him never.”

  I said, “Did he have any girlfriends in New York?”

  “Nah,” said Kleffer. “Hope to hell he didn’t.” He rocked on his feet. “If what you’re thinking is true.”

  He returned to work.

  Milo said, “Stealing another guy’s girlfriend to make up for poor knife skills.”

  I said, “His knife skills failed on TV but they’re good enough for his extracurricular interests. And Kleffer could be wrong about Williams not having any girlfriends in New York. There could be a crime scene or two in Manhattan—”

  “I checked for similars.”

  “You know as well as I do that NCIC doesn’t catch all the relevant details. In an isolated case, why would dinner for two be seen as important? All it would imply is a killer the victim knew well. Even if investigators did find it interesting, they might want to hold it back.”

  He thought about that, produced his cell. “Sean, how’s your time situation?… good, I need you to call every precinct in Manhattan, nothing shows up there, try Brooklyn. Find out if they’ve got any unsolved murders with our dinner-for-two angle. Not just food at the scene, a table actually set up … because we got a new suspect who lived there for a few years … Fellinger’s assistant, Williams, I’ll tell you about it later … try Connecticut, too—specifically New Haven.”

  On the way back to the station, he checked the Corey sisters’ latest credit card activity. Still in Vancouver, one purchase: tampons.

  I said, “They’re not spending big so they’re definitely staying with someone. Maybe Ursula has relatives in Canada.”

  “Maybe, but I’m sure not gonna ask Richard. Speaking of which, what do you make of the dinner scene at Ursula’s house? She wasn’t one of Williams’s slaves. She was a contract hit.”

  “Williams sees himself as an artist, so he signs his creations.”

  “Sick bastard,” he said. “And now he probably does have the Santos girl … or had. Apart from BOLO’ing his van, if he’s even still driving it, what the hell else can I do?”

  I said, “Williams is gone but as far as we know Corey’s still in his condo in Oxnard. Give Nguyen the new facts and get him to say Corey killing the horses and terrifying his daughters is grounds for a search warrant. Then toss the condo for Corey’s cash-stash and anything that links him to Williams. Same for the warehouse downtown where he trucked the contents of Ursula’s house. With evidence, you can leverage him for info on Williams’s whereabouts.”

  “Assuming he knows.”

  “All we can do is assume. You search and find nothing, you can always beat the truth out of him.”

  He laughed and got Nguyen on the phone. The deputy D.A. said, “I like horses as much as anyone but that ain’t even close.”

  For the next hour, Milo did all the right detective things: instigating the BOLO on Jens Williams’s van and the ten-year-old Lexus registered to Meredith Santos, then diving into government paper.

  Social Security finally offered up the tidbit that Williams had resided for nearly two years in Miami prior to New York. Milo back-traced his employment records: working as a buffet chef at two resorts.

  Both hotels had Williams leaving of his own accord, neither had anything notable to say about him. He’d been driving the same van, hadn’t even racked up a parking ticket.

  At Miami PD Homicide he spoke to a lieutenant named Abel Sorriento and inquired about homicides with a culinary aspect.

  “Food? Everything’s food here,” said Sorriento. “Plenty of nonsense goes down outside nightclubs and restaurants, but almost all of it’s one idiot shooting another, nothing psycho like what you’re saying.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Bon appétit.”

  A check-in with Sean Binchy revealed nothing encouraging at the handful of New York precincts the young detective had reached.

  “There seems to be this general suspicion thing even when you give them a badge number, Loot. A few times, they actually called to verify me.”

  “Overcrowding, Sean.”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Urban living,” said Milo. “Put too many rats in a small cage, they get protective of their pathetic millimeters.”

  “Ha,” said Binchy. “I’ll remember that the next time Becky gets on one of her I-want-to-travel kicks. You ask me, nothing beats L.A. on a warm day.”

  Just before four p.m., Milo tried Frank Gonzales.

  The Oxnard D said, “Back on dry land for the rest of the day, had to clear some papers. Corey’s in there, all right, one of my rookies spotted movement behind the drapes. Also, the next-door neighbor stopped by with an envelope, probably the rent check, and got let in.”

  “Thanks for taking the time, Frank.”

  “No prob. I’ve been thinking about Corey. Guy kills a bunch of women but has no history at all? Just decides to start in middle age?”

  “The situation might’ve changed, Frank.” Milo updated him on a possible link between Corey and John Jensen Williams.

  Gonzales said, “Corey contracted his wife but this other dude did all the work?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Any indication Corey and Williams are still interacting?”

  “Not so far.”

  “If this Williams got paid, no reason for him to show up,” said Gonzales. “You still see Corey as high priority?”

  “You bet.”

  “Okay, we’ll stay with him.”

  Moe Reed, watching Flora Sullivan, had managed to make it up to her firm’s entrance without being noticed. No sign of Cousin Jens. Same for the parking tiers. Just to make sure, he’d asked Al Bayless to check the new tapes. Zilch.

  Milo said, “Any new impressions of Sullivan, Moses?”

  “Just saw her in passing. She walks fast but not due to nervousness, if that’s what you mean. More like it’s her normal pace.”

  A few moments later, Grant Fellinger rang in, wanting to know if any progress had been made locating Meredith Santos. When Milo said, “Not yet,” Fellinger said, “You really need to be taking this seriously,” and gave him the Arizona home phone number of Santos’s parents. “Obviously you’re going to want to touch base with them.”

  Muttering “obviously,” Milo reached the Santoses, did a lot of listening and torturing his necktie. He hung up saying, “Nice people in a terrible situation—okay, time for a beer. Or six. I need to get outta here. You with me?”

  We were walking to the stairway when Sean Binchy phoned, excitement making him sound like a birthday boy. “Nothing in New York, Loot, but I talked to a captain at New Haven and he referred me to a city nearby called West Haven and they connected me with their chief. He had something just like it. Same year Williams was a student at Yale. Fantastic, huh?”

  Milo whipped out his pad. “Good work, Sean. Go.”

  “Victim was Loretta Sfiazzi, twenty-five, waitress at one of their better seafood restaurants. She didn’t report to work, was found by her landlady in her apartment, laid out on the floor, no sexual assault but strangulation and multiple stab wounds just like Ms. Hennepin. Dinner for two on the table, but not fancy like ours, just canned chili and an unopened bottle of red wine. A couple of ex-boyfriends were questioned but they alibied out and after that no suspect was ever developed. What he—Chief Donald Molinaro—thought was strange was the chili. Loretta worked at a high-level restaurant, it didn’t come from there and when she entertained she was known to take food home regularly, all the employees were allowed to. Her folks said she never ate chili and her table was set with nice dishes and flatware—they’d belonged to her grandmother. The wine fit, though. Parents confirmed it as a Christmas gift from them, Loretta was saving it for a special occasion.”

  “He comes with a can in his pocket, borrows the rest,” said Milo. “Premeditating at eighteen.” />
  “That’s what I figured, Loot. Anyway, West Haven had no idea what to make of it, they were shocked to hear what I had to say. Not that I could tell them much, just that Williams was our prime suspect.”

  Milo filled him in.

  “Bizarre,” said Binchy. “I asked Chief Molinaro if Williams could’ve worked at the same restaurant as Ms. Sfiazzi. Unfortunately the place closed down, everyone’s gone or dead. But I did compare the date of the murder with Williams’s peep bust and it happened real soon after—ten days.”

  “Expelled, so he takes it out on a woman.”

  “Not exactly, Loot, he was still enrolled, they took their time kicking him out. Chief Molinaro said it’s always like that, Yale tries to cover up everything. He also said the toughest part about the place is getting admitted, after that you coast. But I guess Williams was feeling unhappy.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  The beer break took place at a tavern called Doc of the Bay, a block and a half west of Café Moghul. I’d never been there but the bartender greeted Milo like an old friend. I thought I knew all his haunts. Learn something every day.

  Getting there was interesting, a quick walk prolonged when Milo crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and continued past the tavern before recrossing.

  I said, “Why the mini-hike?”

  He pointed to the Indian restaurant. “Don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “You guys are going steady?”

  “Hey. Stardom has its responsibilities.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Bear in the zoo, does he need to know anything about his keeper except grub gets tossed in on time?”

  “But if he’s smart, he doesn’t growl.”

  “Exactly.”

  The bar was small, stuffy, hung wall-to-wall with sports jerseys in plastic boxes and a single white physician’s coat displayed in the center of the memorabilia.

  I said, “Doc of which bay?”

  “What do you think? The sick bay. Owner’s a bone-setter named Schwartz, worked as a team physician for the Rams.”