Cooking Most Deadly (17 page)

Paavo went to the computer
center and asked for his printout. The new supervisor told him the job was still running.

“What do you mean, it's still running?” he asked. “There's never been this kind of delay before.”

“It's a big job,” she said huffily.

“Not that big.”

She gazed pointedly at him. “You want us to be complete, don't you?”

“Where's Mr. Liu?”

“Myron has gone home.” The supervisor picked up a stack of printouts and loudly rapped their edges against the desk top to straighten them. Also, Paavo figured, to let him know he was being dismissed. “I'll handle this,” she said curtly.

“Can you get me the printout right now?”

“That's impossible.”

“I want Liu here in twenty minutes.”

“You can't order me around like that!”

He stared at her. He didn't bother to reply. Or to leave.

“All right.” She sniffed. “I'll phone his house. But I'm not guaranteeing anything.”

A half hour later, Myron Liu contacted Homicide.

“I'm at my computer, Inspector,” he said to Paavo. “Tell me exactly what you need, and I'll get it for you right now.”

“I want a list of any cases that Judge Lucas St. Clair and DA Lloyd Fletcher worked on together, in any capacity at all. Got it?”

“Yes. Give me ten minutes.”

“I'll be right down,” Paavo said.

 

Angie stood with Earl near the entrance to The Wings Of An Angel.

“Now, you sure you ain't gonna be alone wit' dis guy?” Earl asked again.

“I promise.” She smiled. It was kind of cute seeing him act the Dutch uncle with her.

“I don't even like you doin' business wit' him.”

“Shhhh! Here he comes.”

Carter walked into the restaurant. A hard look flashed across his face when he saw Earl, but it softened immediately as his gaze met Angie's. In that instant, as she noted his quick cover-up, all her own misgivings about the man revived. She was glad she was meeting him here and nowhere less public.

This was a business transaction. Nothing more. And she wanted it over with.

They sat at a table, Earl hovering nearby.

“This piece needs to be hidden in the egg,” Carter said, showing her a tiny round piece of metal. “Then you take this monitor”—he patted a black box with colored lights on it—“and it homes in on the pager. It blinks green as you get closer and red as you back away.”

He carried the chip to one end of the restaurant and demonstrated how the monitor worked. Sure enough, the red and green lights blinked as he moved forward and back. She nodded sagely.

“Put the chip in the egg,” Carter went on, “then take
the control home and hit this reset button. When—if—the egg starts to move, the control box will blink if it moves closer to or farther away from you.”

“That seems easy enough,” Angie said, deliberately giving a cool, businesslike edge to her voice.

“It is. But how about I come along to make sure it works.”

“That won't be necessary. I've written a check for a hundred dollars. Who should I make it out to?”

“Oh…Carter Westin is the name.”

She wrote out his name. “Here you are.” She gave him the check and picked up the device. “Thank you.”

“Shall we have some wine?” Carter suggested. “A little something to eat?”

“Miss Angie,” Earl said, “Butch is waitin' for your lesson about da rigatoni.”

“Thanks, Earl. I'm sorry, Carter. Good-bye.” So saying, Angie turned and hurried to the kitchen, Earl bustling along right behind her.

 

The computer listing had fourteen names on it. They were all dated seven to fifteen years ago—covering the time Fletcher presented cases as an assistant district attorney for the city, up to St. Clair's retirement. Paavo glanced over the names, then handed the list to Yoshiwara.

“Let's see,” Yosh said. “Darrin Alonzo, Percy Alexander, Dan Barrett, Peter Callahan, Wesley Carville, Manny Dain…lots of names here, pal. How do you want to handle this?”

Paavo frowned. None of the names meant anything to him. “Do you want the first half of the alphabet, or the last?”

 

Before pulling the criminal records for his half of the names on the list, Paavo drove over to the hospital and questioned Stan, still heavily medicated, but able to mum
ble a few words. Paavo could just make them out. Stan hadn't seen his attacker, but somehow he knew the man was muscular.

Paavo asked about the roses. Stan couldn't remember anything about them, not who had sent them or why. That was strange—how often did a man get flowers? He'd ask again later.

Back in Homicide, the files waited for him.

Alonzo and Hurley still in jail. Forget them.

Alexander, vehicular manslaughter, out six months.

Barrett, dealing heroin. Out for four years. Seemed to have gone straight.

Callahan, in and out a half dozen times for robbery, drugs, pimping. Latest release last December. Career criminal.

Carville, second-degree murder. Out since late February. Model prisoner, no priors.

Dain, in for rape, skipped out on parole three months earlier. Still not located.

Paavo moved Callahan and Alexander to his highly doubtful stack. Career criminals and drunk drivers rarely turned into sexual psychopathic killers. Barrett—four years straight. A maybe. That left Carville and Dain as probables. Dain would be his sole likely candidate if it wasn't for the timing of Carville's release. Carville got out just a short while before the first murder was committed.

Also, Carville was the only murderer on his list.

Paavo looked up at the city map hanging on the wall, on which Calderon had posted the Fabergé egg robberies. From the address in his file, Carville was living in a cheap hotel in the Tenderloin district. He probably didn't own a car yet.

What was he supposed to have done, ride the Muni to commit murder? Ride a smelly bus with food wrappings, undefinable crud and wads of gum all over the floor…

He jumped up and hurried to the map. Could it be? It was too simple, he thought. But on the other hand, why not?

The first robbery—the one during which Nathan Ellis had been killed—took place one block off the Geary bus line on Post Street. The next, farther west, a block off the bus line on O'Farrell. Number three was west again, this time on Sutter Street. The fourth jumped all the way to the Richmond district's Clement Street, a block off Geary, and very close to the city's Russian immigrant community, centered around a large, beautiful Russian Orthodox church…located on Geary Street.

In fact, if the pattern held up, then on Tuesday—today—the next robbery would be somewhere on the Geary bus line to the west of the spot where the last one occurred.

Paavo called the Holy Virgin Cathedral and asked when they held services. Daily, eight in the morning and six at night.

That meant morning service ended about nine. Since it took a city bus nearly an hour to get from Twenty-sixth and Geary through traffic down to the Sans Souci Jewelers, a bus-riding thief would arrive at 10:00
A.M.
, when the store first opened.

Two robberies had occurred between 10:00 and 11:00
A.M.
, and two between 4:00 and 5:00
P.M.

The idea of a church-going thief was too crazy. Paavo didn't know if he believed this idea of his or not.

Quickly, he opened the phone book, looked for gift shops and jewelers near the Orthodox church, and started phoning. One shop, the Volga Jewelers, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Avenues, carried Fabergé replicas.

He tried to reach O'Rourke in Robbery, but O'Rourke was out on a bank holdup. He glanced at the clock. Three-forty-five. It was a long shot. But in case he was right, he didn't want to blow it.

He was almost out the door when he hurried back to his desk and made a call to Angie. There'd be no dinner date for him this evening.

“Hi! This is Angie. I can't answer your call right now…”

He nearly hung up. But then he remembered her irritation at the way he wouldn't leave her a message whenever he called. He might not have a chance to call back.

“Angie. It's me. I can't come by for dinner. Something came up. I want to see you, though. Maybe I can meet you later. Call anytime. I'll be here most of the night.”

He hung up feeling like a tongue-tied teenager. The message probably made little sense. God, but he hated those machines.

 

“I can't do it tonight, Angie,” Connie said.

“But I've got the paging device right here.” Angie put her purse on the counter at Everyone's Fancy and pulled out the black box and the small chip. “I bought the egg from you, remember? In case it got stolen, and we couldn't retrieve it.”

Connie frowned. “I'd like to help out. But…maybe we should give the police more time. I don't want to mess them up.”

“This won't mess them up. It's between you and me.”

“Well…the other thing is your cousin Buddy called me last night. He came over, and we…we hit it off really well. Tonight we're going out for dinner. I don't know what time, or if, well, what time, I'll get home.”

Ah-ha! Angie thought. That explained Connie's languid, off-in-the-clouds demeanor today. She was acting like a woman in the throes of newfound passion. Despite her and Buddy both having had bitter experiences with love, and particularly with marriage in the past, they'd sought each other out and were ready to make a try at a having a good relationship this time. Angie added this bit of news to her marriage survey.

“I'm glad,” Angie said. “Well, we can always try another day.”

Connie looked relieved. “Here,” she said, handing Angie the wooden box with the egg inside. “It's almost Easter. Why don't you take it home and enjoy it the way it
was meant to be. The police will do okay with this one. Trust them.”

“I do.” Angie took the box. “But sometimes I think they need a little nudge, that's all.”

 

Paavo drove down Geary Boulevard. He had just passed Eighteenth Avenue when he saw a small, bearded man slipped into the Volga Jewelers. He double-parked, flashers blinking, drew his gun, and hurried toward the shop.

Two women stepped out of a restaurant in front of Paavo. “Police! Stay back,” he said. They ran back indoors.

He kept his body against the wall and slowly leaned forward to look into the shop from the big storefront window. The jeweler was lifting a Fabergé egg into a paper bag. The robber's gun was drawn.

Paavo waited until the thief had the paper bag, his gun no longer pointed at the owner, and then he stepped into the shop. “Police!” he shouted. “Drop the gun.”

The thief didn't move. The jeweler froze.

“Drop it
now
. Raise your hands and turn around.”

The gunman let go of the gun and it fell to the floor. He turned slowly and, facing Paavo, reached up and removed his beard, then peeled the short, black hair from his head.

When the wig was gone, shoulder-length brown hair, streaked with gray, bushed out around a ravaged, tear-stained face. The thief was a woman.

“It's not my fault,” she said. The woman was of medium height, with a frail build. She looked in her early to mid-fifties.

Paavo pulled her arms behind her back and slipped handcuffs on her. As he did so, Officer McMahon from the Richmond Station showed up in response to Paavo's earlier request.

Paavo turned the thief over to the officer to read her her rights.

The jeweler, a thin, wiry little man, walked up to him,
his hand extended. “I'm Gregorovitch. Thank you for coming so quickly. When I got your call, I couldn't believe anyone would really want to steal such a thing. Then, when I saw the gun…” He shook his head.

“You did well,” Paavo said, shaking his hand.

“I didn't want to hurt anyone,” the thief cried. “I wouldn't have hurt him. I was just trying to help myself. Those eggs aren't worth much, you know. Just a little. This isn't even a felony, is it?”

“Armed robbery is a felony,” Paavo replied. “And so is murder.”

“Murder!”

“The murder of Nathan Ellis, the clerk at Sans Souci Jewelers. A young man with a wife, a future.”

“But I didn't mean to—” She turned her head, her lower lip trembling.

“What's your name?” Paavo asked.

“Claudia Zelenin.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Address?”

“Ninety-three Presidio Terrace.”

He glanced up at the posh address. “Do you live with anyone?”

“Alone. The house was once my parents'. It's mine now.”

“Occupation?”

“I don't do anything,” she replied. “The house is all I have left. It takes every bit of cash I can put my hands on just to pay property taxes.”

“I see. It's tough.” Paavo managed to keep a straight face. The house was probably worth a million, easy.

“That's why I needed the Fabergé eggs.” Her hands were clasped, her eyes pleading. “I had a Fabergé once, you see, but it was stolen. It was a family heirloom, taken away from me.”

“You had a real Fabergé egg?” He had read enough about them to know how impossible that was. They were museum pieces.

“Not an egg, but a ring box. It was very small and simple for Fabergé, but incredibly valuable nonetheless.”

“Excuse me, Ms. Zelenin,” he interrupted. “You might want to speak with your attorney before you say any more.”

“I know,” she said. “It's just that all this is so silly. So frustrating. I'm no criminal, to be handcuffed. I'm the victim.” She spoke quickly, growing more impassioned with each word. “My grandfather brought the Fabergé with him when he left Russia, you see. But I was so stupid, I let someone come into my house, into my heart, and take it from me.” Suddenly she began to sob. “I would have done anything for him! Anything! But he just wanted my money and valuables.”