Killer Gourmet (10 page)

“What did you find among your phone numbers?” Savannah asked. “Anything interesting?”

“Actually,” Ryan said, “there were a couple of guests who were questionable. Not because they were there, but because they weren't.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Dirk asked.

“They were conspicuous by their absence,” John told him. “They had made reservations but didn't show up.”

“What's conspicuous about that?” Savannah wanted to know. “I'm sure restaurants have that happen all the time. People make reservations, and then their plans change. They aren't always courteous enough to call the establishment and let them know that they aren't coming.”

Ryan nodded. “That's true. No doubt it's a common occurrence. But these reservations weren't made by the absentee guests themselves.”

“Who made them?” Savannah asked.

John stroked the end of his lush, silver mustache. “Our victim, Chef Baldwin Norwood himself, made the reservations—apparently for people close to him, people with whom he wanted to share the experience.”

“Do we know who they were?” Dirk asked.

“The first turned out to be Norwood's inamorata.”

“Inamor-what?”

Savannah leaned toward Dirk and whispered, “I'm pretty sure that means his girlfriend.”

Ryan nodded. “Their address is the same and has been for quite some time, so we're assuming they're an item.”

“What's this gal's name?” Dirk asked, taking his notepad and pen from his pocket.

“Perla Viola,” John told him. “Forty-five years old.”

“We'll sic Tammy on her,” Savannah said. “By the end of the day you'll know what wine she drinks and the color of her knickers.”

Dirk sniffed. “I'd be happy just to know if she has an alibi.”

Ryan reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out his phone. He scrolled his thumb over it for a moment, then said, “The second no-show guest was a guy named Yale Ingram.”

“Ingram, as in the big-wig entrepreneur guy, who lives out in that creepy old monstrosity of a mansion on Milton Hill?” Dirk said.

Ryan's eyes widened a bit. “Wow. I'm impressed. Do you know him?”

“Naw. But his ol' lady's called us a couple of times when he didn't come home from wherever as quick as she thought he ought to. Because he's a big shot, the chief would send us out to search the streets for him.”

“Did you find him?” Savannah asked.

“Sure. It wasn't hard. I just checked out the expensive hotels in town and, sure enough, he was there, bumpin' some bimbo. A different bimbo each time, if I remember right.”

John drained the last sip of his coffee and pushed back a bit from the table. “Did you inform the unfortunate wife of her husband's indiscretions?”

“Hell, no.” Dirk sniffed. “I ain't as stupid as I look. Why should I put my butt in the sling just 'cause he's being stupid? That gal was scary—a real battle-axe. If I was him, I probably wouldn't come home any sooner than I had to, either.”

“What's Ingram's connection to Norwood?” Savannah asked.

“Ingram was Norwood's business partner. Together, they owned a restaurant in Hollywood called Villa Nuevo,” Ryan replied. “You may have heard of it.”

“I sure have,” Savannah said. “About a year ago there were articles about it almost every weekend in the
Times
, and stories on TV, too. It was the place to go for good food and celebrity spotting.”

“Supposedly, the foremost reason why it was such a successful establishment was our talented Chef Norwood.” A look of keen disappointment crossed John's face. “Why do you think we were so elated to have snared such a prize?”

Savannah recalled what Francia, Manuel, and Maria had said about Norwood being a fraud. Though she hated to tell her friends that they had been duped, she felt she had to under the circumstances.

But Dirk beat her to the punch.

“The funny thing is,” he said, “you boys hired yourself a fake cook. We have it from the folks we interviewed, who worked with him, that ol' Norwood couldn't cook his way out of a paper bag. Not even a grocery sack.”

“What?” they asked in unison.

“I'm afraid Dirk's right,” Savannah told them. “His help told us that he was nothing but a sham—a celebrity chef whose staff did all of his cooking for him. Apparently, that's why he was so adamant about everybody staying out of his kitchen or else.”

At hearing this news, Ryan and John looked even more dejected than before.

“I don't mind telling you,” John said, “I'm somewhat disappointed in us. I thought we had better judgment.” He turned to Ryan and slapped him on the shoulder. “We let that scoundrel bamboozle us most thoroughly.”

“We did.” Ryan nodded somberly. “I'd consider beating the crap outta him . . . if he wasn't already dead.”

After a long silence, Dirk nudged Savannah and told her, “If I'd said that, you'd be kicking me under the table.”

“Yes, I would.”

“So, why aren't you kicking
him?
”

“He's not my husband.”

Dirk sighed. “Gee. Lucky me.”

“I
don't know how Eileen and her crew can stand to work in this part of town,” Savannah told Dirk as she drove the Mustang into the area of San Carmelita that locals simply called “the industrial park.”

Dirk gave her one of his long-suffering, patient husband sighs and said, “I don't know how I can stand to listen to you gripe every time we come down here about how much you hate . . . let's see now . . . oh, yeah, everything in sight. The buildings—”

“—big ol' cement block cracker boxes, that's all they are.”

“The roads—”

“Y'all got a lot of nerve, talking about how bad Georgia roads are. Look at all these potholes. I'll betcha there are folks who've fallen into those holes and never been heard from again.”

“The trees—”

“There
aren't
any trees. There's not one green living thing in sight—unless you count those scraggly weeds growing up out of the potholes.”

“And you bellyache about all of it every time we have to come to the lab.”

“I do? Every time? Really?”

“Every single time. And for a gal who goes around preaching to
me
about how I need to focus on the positive and not gripe about annoying crap, you should take some of your own advice. As soon as we come into this part of town, your mood turns as black as that rainy night in Georgia they sing about.”

Savannah nodded thoughtfully. “You know, that's true.”

“What? Are you saying I'm right again? Wow! I'm on a roll.”

“It's true that Georgia gets a bad rap. For our lousy roads. For our rainy nights. For Sherman's army marching across it and burning all those pretty mansions to the ground.”

“Now, see? That's exactly what I'm talking about. If you were sitting on the beach right now, you'd be talking about Georgia peaches, Vidalia onions, and all the beautiful belles who come out of that fine Southern state. But no. The minute we drive down into the industrial area, it's potholes and rain and Sherman's army marchin' and burnin'.”

She looked around at the rectangular, gray, mostly windowless buildings lined up, row upon row. Each was the same as the last.

Architectural design, or the lack thereof, at its worst.

The girlie-girl decorator in her rebelled at the thought of such ugly, soulless construction. Would it really have been all that hard to stick in a few more windows, attach flower boxes underneath them, and plant a few petunias, for heaven's sake?

A brighter, happier, more serotonin-enriched area of her brain whispered that the guys who operated their auto shops out of this park might not be the petunia-loving sort, but she ignored it. It was bad enough she had to argue with Dirk on an hourly basis. The last thing she needed was some pesky Pollyanna whispering in the back of her head and pointing out the errors of her logic.

Besides, they had arrived at the county crime lab. In moments they would be contending with Eileen, the Wicked Queen of the CSI.

Savannah was convinced that in a former life Eileen had been a Marine drill sergeant. One plagued with hemorrhoids, impacted wisdom teeth, and ingrown toenails who took it out on her troops.

Possibly even in this life.

Dr. Liu might have a bit of a mean streak that showed once in a while, when she was especially aggravated. But for Eileen, “mean” was an avowed lifestyle.

Figuratively speaking, Eileen ran a tight ship, and anyone who didn't meet her high standard was tossed overboard to the crocodiles.

To avoid suffering that fate, Savannah usually brought a container of freshly baked goodies, just as she did when visiting the medical examiner. But since she had already exhausted that currency with Dr. Liu at the morgue, she was concerned that perhaps she and Dirk would be staring into gaping crocodile maws before the visit was over.

“Damn. We don't have any more cookies,” Dirk said, again stating the obvious, as they left the Mustang and walked up to the nondescript door, adorned with only the county seal, a security buzzer button, and a camera and speaker mounted above.

“I was just thinking that.” Savannah scrambled to reach the button before Dirk. He had a tendency to push it far too long, virtually leaning on it for five seconds at a time. The nerve-jangling, ear-splitting racket was less annoying when it was only a tiny burst.

And most important, it didn't annoy Queen Eileen as much.

Eventually the speaker over the door crackled to life. “Hi, Savannah,” said a halfway cheery voice.

Halfway was as cheery as Eileen ever got, so Savannah felt special.

“Hi, Eileen,” she replied. “Could we come in for a few minutes? We need to talk to you about the Chef Norwood homicide.”

“Tell Coulter I don't have anything yet. And when I do, I'll give him a call.”

Savannah turned to Dirk, who was standing right beside her, fully able to hear every word coming from the overhead speaker. “Sorry, darlin',” she told him. “But she says—”

“Hell, I heard what she said.” To the speaker, he shouted, “I ain't deaf, you know. And I'm the investigating officer, so show me some damn respect and open this door right now, in the name of the law.”

Savannah turned to him, her eyes wide, eyebrows raised. “In the name of the law?” she whispered. “Really?”

But to her surprise the door opened, and Eileen was standing there, filling it with her massive presence, a bit of a smirk on her face.

“Woo-hoo,” she said. “Look who's wearing his big-boy pants today.”

Dirk pushed by her, inviting himself inside. “Yeah, and I got a gold shield inside my big-boy pants. So don't give me any of your nonsense, woman. I've only had three hours of sleep and one meal in twenty-one hours, so I ain't in the mood for harassment.”

Eileen turned to Savannah. “I thought you were supposed to be civilizing this grizzly bear now that you're married to him.”

Savannah shrugged. “We're making a little headway with the table manners. But the rest of it comes and goes.”

“Well? What's going on around here? How far have you got?” Dirk asked as he looked around the office area, with its cubicles where the CSI techs did online research and bookwork.

Eileen's cubicle was larger by a few square feet—the only physical evidence of her seniority. Standing six foot two and as massive in her girth as in her height, Eileen hardly needed any additional trappings of authority.

Eileen reached into the pocket of her white smock and pulled out a rubber band. She twisted her long, wildly curly silver hair into a bun and fastened it with the band. “All right, then, if you insist. Come on to the back,” she said, “and I'll show you what we don't have.”

“Gee,” Dirk replied. “I can hardly wait to see it.”

Eileen led them through the office area toward the rear of the building, which housed the laboratory. The large room had numerous, long tables, and its walls were lined with workbenches.

The equipment that covered those surfaces reminded Savannah of a mad scientist's “la-BOR-a-tory”—or so they had pronounced it in the horror movies of her childhood. Beakers and microscopes competed with all sorts of newfangled, meter-faced gadgets . . . equipment that Dr. Frankenstein wouldn't have known what to do with.

“Okay, you asked for it. So here goes,” Eileen said as she headed toward a table where numerous items they had collected from the restaurant crime scene were spread. “First off, we don't have a murder weapon.”

Savannah looked at the bloody fillet knife and cleaver. She couldn't remember when she had begun a homicide investigation with two murder weapons and ended up so quickly with none.

Dirk took a pair of surgical gloves from his pants pocket and offered them to Savannah. Then he took out a pair for himself and put them on. “Dr. Liu already told us that this knife wasn't the one used on Norwood. I guess she told you, too.”

An indignant look crossed Eileen's face as she said, “No, I haven't spoken to Dr. Liu. Believe it or not, Coulter, I figured that out on my own.”

Eileen pointed to the blade that was stained crimson from hilt to tip. “I've seen enough bloody knives in my time to tell the difference between a knife that was pulled out of a body and one that was dragged through a puddle of blood.”

“And this one was dragged through blood?” Dirk asked.

“Or dipped in it,” Eileen told him. “Either way, blood was deliberately deposited on this knife.”

Savannah asked, “Are you saying it was deliberately bloodied as part of someone staging the scene?”

“I'm sure of it.”

Savannah thought that over for a moment. “That's rather strange. With all the stabbing and the whacks with the cleaver, you'd think this was a rage killing, an out-of-control blitz attack. And yet the killer had the presence of mind to plant a fake murder weapon. That doesn't make sense.”

“I was wondering,” Dirk said, “why two weapons were used. If you've already stabbed a guy seventeen times in the chest and belly, why switch over to a cleaver and go for his head? Talk about overkill.”

“Is there any chance that we have more than one killer?” Savannah asked Eileen.

“I doubt it,” she said. “The prints are the same on the cleaver and the knife.”

“You've got prints?” Savannah and Dirk shouted in unison.

“You said you've got nothin',” Dirk said, excited and annoyed in the same moment, “and now you're telling us you've got fingerprints?”

“I didn't say they were fingerprints. Not unless a cow left them.”

“A cow?” Dirk was starting to lose it. “What the hell are you talking about, woman?”

Eileen gave him a satisfied smirk. “Your killer was wearing gloves,” she said. “Leather gloves. And leather is nothing more than cow skin, and skin leaves a distinctive print—whether it's human or bovine.”

After pulling on her own sterile gloves, Eileen picked up the knife and the cleaver and carried them over to a microscope. She situated the knife handle under the lens and motioned for Dirk to take a look.

“See those three oval prints,” she said, “right there in the blood, clear as day.”

He peered through the scope for quite a while, then said, “I think I see what you're talking about. But I wouldn't say it's all that clear.”

“They're clear to an experienced eye, which you apparently do not have.” Eileen tugged him away from the microscope and motioned for Savannah to take a turn.

Savannah looked for a long time, too, wanting badly to see what Dirk had missed, if for no other reason than that she could tease him about it later. But she had to be honest. Granny Reid was on her way from Georgia, so Savannah felt the need to get into her Truthful Good Girl mode in preparation for Gran's visit.

Savannah's love and respect for her grandmother had always brought out the best in her character—that and the threat of a hickory stick vigorously applied to her rear end out behind the garden shed.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Eileen said, losing her patience. “And you two call yourselves detectives?” She took the knife out of the scope. “Then there's no point in showing you the cleaver. The prints are even less pronounced on it. But you can take my word for it—there are three prints on the cleaver that match the prints on the knife. They were held by the same person, and that person was wearing leather gloves.”

“And if we brought you a pair of leather gloves,” Dirk said, “you'd be able to determine whether they were the same ones that left those prints, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Can you tell us anything about the gloves?” Savannah asked. “Like if they were large or small, a man's or a woman's?”

“I'm good, Savannah,” she replied with a grin. “Not that good. I can't do all of your work for you.”

Eileen walked back to the table where the case evidence was spread and replaced the knife. As she was slipping the cleaver back into its evidence bag, she said, “You might be interested to know that, considering how many times your victim was hit with that cleaver, there wasn't much blood on it. Some skin, hair, and a couple of bone fragments. But not a lot of blood. I would've expected more on a weapon that was creating head wounds like those on Norwood.”

“Hmmm . . .” Savannah said. “Are you thinking those injuries might have been postmortem?”

“I certainly am. I suppose Dr. Liu will know for sure after she finishes the autopsy. But most of the blood at the scene appeared to have come from the chest and abdominal wounds. And since the head bleeds profusely when it's cut, and this guy's didn't, I'm thinking his heart had already stopped beating before those final chops.”

“That doesn't make a lot of sense either,” Savannah said. “Why would you stab the heck out of your victim with your own knife that you had brought to the scene, only to then pick up a weapon of opportunity like the cleaver and go at the dead guy with that?”

Dirk ripped off his gloves and ran one hand wearily through his hair. “When it comes down to it, it makes no sense to commit a murder in the first place.”

“That's true,” Savannah agreed. “No matter what kind of situation a person finds themselves in, killing somebody is just gonna make it worse.”

“I've been pretty pissed off at people in my life,” Dirk continued. “Downright furious at times, for that matter. But I can't imagine being so mad at somebody I'd wanna take a cleaver to them.”

“I can,” Eileen said calmly, coldly. “People who come into my lab and ask a bunch of silly questions, and waste my time . . . I can imagine all sorts of implements of destruction that I would like to use on them. And in creative ways, too.”