The Da Vinci Cook (32 page)

“No good, Inspector.” Ferguson’s attorney began stuffing papers back into his briefcase to leave. “You’re wasting our time.”

“The only way I can do anything for you,” Paavo said, addressing the prisoner directly, “is if I can show that all of this wasn’t your idea, but that you were only working for someone else. Cooperate with me on this, and everything will go easier on you.”

“My client has nothing more to say at this time.” The attorney stood. “Come back to me when you can deal. It’ll be worthwhile, believe me.”

“Mr. Ferguson?” Paavo didn’t avert his gaze.

Ferguson looked ready to speak when the attorney stopped him. “I . . . I’ll have to think about it,” Ferguson mumbled.

Paavo knew he had to get out of the interview room fast before he reached across the table and throttled Ferguson or his pigheaded attorney to force cooperation. For now, his hands were tied, and the interview was over.

He met Yosh and Charles back in Homicide. Paavo again checked his phones for messages, and again Angie hadn’t called. He nervously ran his fingers through his hair. The sickening fear that something was wrong filled him.

“We’ve got to figure this out logically,” he said, forcing his attention back to what he could do. He wondered how much Charles really knew. “Did Cat ever mention Marcello to you before he became her client?”

“No, not that I remember.”

Paavo pulled out the financial records he’d gotten from Piccoletti’s store. “She shows up as a purchaser of some items.”

Charles looked it over. “That’s when she was doing her interior decorating. It looks like she bought some things from him.”

“Cat had high-end clients, and Furniture 4 U sells cheap merchandise. Does that make sense?”

Charles shook his head. “No, but now, I remember something strange. A while back, when she asked me if one of my clients might want to buy a Christian relic Piccoletti wanted to sell, she said this one was ‘real.’”

“‘This one’?” Paavo repeated, puzzling over the words.

“Let’s go back to the handkerchief,” Yosh said, still eyeing Charles with suspicion. “It belongs to you, Mr. Swenson. How did it get to Piccoletti’s house?”

“I had nothing to do with it!” Charles picked up on Yosh’s look. “I can’t imagine Cat would have either, unless you’re suggesting Piccoletti was at my house at some point . . . in my bedroom, and helped himself.” He clamped his mouth shut. “That’s impossible!”

“Who put in your security system?” Paavo suddenly asked.

“I’m not sure. Cat handles the household bills. I think she said something about going with a new company that impressed her.” Paavo had Charles use his computer to access the Svenson family’s online bank information. “She learned about it through someone at Moldwell-Ranker,” Charles said. “They deal with a lot of household professionals. . . . Oh, my. Our company is Assurance! That’s the name on the van I was in!”

“Ferguson knew how to override the system.” Yosh looked over Charles’s shoulder at the computer screen. “He could have gone in, taken the handkerchief. But why? And why steal something of Charles’s?”

“It was white, satin, and had Caterina’s initials,” Paavo said. “He might have thought it was a woman’s.”

“I hardly think so!” Charles exclaimed indignantly.

Since both Yosh and Paavo had thought it was Cat’s, neither responded.

“Someone had to send Ferguson to get the handkerchief, right?” Yosh said after a moment. “And most likely to frame Cat.” He looked at Paavo and Charles for agreement. “I think Cat showing up at the crime scene was a fluke. No one could expect that she’d go to Piccoletti’s house at that time.”

Paavo recreated the crime in his mind. “That was where the problem came in,” he said. “If Cat hadn’t gone to the house, we’d have found the handkerchief, learned she was the realtor, learned she’d been accused of stealing something of value that was also missing, and we would have wasted all kinds of valuable time proving her innocent while the murderer took off with the chain! Cat and everyone else would have had no idea what really happened.”

He began to pace as the original plan grew clearer. “We wouldn’t have found out that Rocco Piccoletti was in Italy because we wouldn’t have even had a reason to look for Rocco. We’d have found the body. Flora would have identified it as her son, Marcello. Once he was identified, there’d be no reason for anyone else to look for him. Besides, he was shot in the head. Closed casket. No one would have told the police that Rocco had been pretending to be Marcello for several years.”

Yosh’s and Charles’s eyes widened as they recognized the truth of what Paavo was saying. Paavo continued. “I want to think we would have easily gotten Cat off—the evidence against her is small and circumstantial. But we’d be stumped as to where to look for the real killer. Only because she was there and followed Piccoletti to the airport did the entire plan fall apart.”

Charles gaped. “You have to admit, it was a clever idea.”

Paavo nodded. “Not Ferguson’s.”

“Never,” Yosh said. “We’ve just got to find out from him whose it was.”

“We don’t have time to pussyfoot with him and his attorney!” Paavo said, his anxiety about Angie reaching the breaking point. “Whoever came up with this is a lot cleverer than we thought. And a lot more dangerous.”

“Cat and Angie still haven’t called,” Charles’s desperation matched Paavo’s.

Yosh put out his hands to calm both men. “Let’s back up, guys. The answer is here. We’re just not seeing it yet. Start at the beginning. What was the first thing that happened?”

“Marcello wanted to sell the relic,” Charles said, “and he put his house up for sale. I guess he was going to cash out.”

“Especially since he wasn’t Marcello,” Paavo pointed out.

“But the relic didn’t sell, and neither did the house,” Charles said. “Cat was lamenting that. I do remember.”

“And then?” Yosh asked.

“Then all this.” Charles threw his arms up in frustration.

“Wait,” Paavo said. “Then out of the blue, Meredith Woring said Marcello called to accuse Cat of stealing the St. Peter chain. That’s the piece that never made sense. Why would he do it? I never did contact Woring. You neither, right, Yosh?”

“Whenever I called, I was told she was still with her mother somewhere in Los Angeles and would return ‘the next day.’ I left messages on her cell phone, but she never answered.”

Paavo glanced at Charles. “We know there were two groups after the chain—Ferguson all but admitted to it.”

“He did?” Charles said.

“The first group ditched him to deal directly with Rocco and Marcello. They cut Ferguson out of that deal. He wanted more, so he had to go somewhere with his complaint. And the place he went had to have a connection to Cat because she was the red herring. Which means”—Paavo and Yosh looked at each other and said at the same time— “Meredith Woring.”

Angie sat docile and in tears in the backseat as the goons drove through the streets of Rome. She had no idea where they were taking her, but she’d determined that to get out of this, she’d have to do it alone.

Her chance came when Goatee turned a corner and she saw a double-parked police car up ahead. A policeman stood beside it, looking up at a building. The Hulk took his eyes from Angie to watch the officer.

As quickly as she could, she glommed on to Goatee’s head and stuck her fingers in his eyes. As he yelled and reached up to grab her hands, she managed to evade him just long enough to jerk the steering wheel toward the police car before the Hulk got hold of her and flung her hard against the backseat.

Goatee was too slow to free himself from Angie, adjust the wheel, and put on the brakes—or his brain wasn’t big enough to think of three things at once—because the little Fiat headed straight for the cop’s car.

Angie ducked and covered her head.

The cars collided with a shrieking, clanging crunch of metal.

For a moment the goons sat stunned, then they leaped from the Panda and ran. A little dizzy, Angie heard shouts and more running. She popped her head up behind the backseat.

First she saw the cop chasing the goons.

Then she saw the car keys still in the ignition.

“I’d like to speak to Meredith Woring,” Paavo said to the receptionist after introducing himself and showing his badge. Yosh and Charles were beside him. “Is she in the office yet?”

The young woman blanched. “I’m sorry, but Miss Woring is out of the office? We don’t expect her back today?”

Paavo was initially taken aback by her questions, then realized the woman had one of those irritating styles of speech where every sentence ended with her voice lilting upward.

“Exactly what does that mean?” he asked.

“It means her mother’s sick? Or she is?”

“Is she?” Her questioning tone was confusing.

“I guess?”

“When will she be back?”

“I’m not sure she said?”

“Is she home?”

“Probably?”

The receptionist was beyond irritating. “Miss, uh—”

“Ashley?”

“That’s as good a guess as any,” he muttered.

“Pardon?”

He was gritting his teeth. “Ashley, I need to talk to Miss Woring immediately. I want her home phone number and address right now.”

Her mouth moved open and shut like a fish, then she brightened. “I can call her for you and she can tell you?”

“Fine,” he said.

Ashley studied the telephone, then hit a button on speed dial. The bored look she wore quickly changed as the phone went directly to messaging. “I don’t get it? She never turns off her cell phone?”

“What’s her address?” Paavo demanded.

The receptionist was probably trained not to give out such information, but seeing the look on his face, she did.

Paavo, Yosh, and Charles went to the small but exclusive house Meredith Woring lived in. A Mercedes was in the driveway and the lights were on, but no one answered the doorbell or when they knocked.

The front door had a slot for the mail, and Paavo peeked inside.

Several days worth of mail was strewn on the floor.

He and Yosh went around to the back of the house, followed by Charles. The back door was much thinner than the one in the front. With a couple of hard whacks from Yosh’s shoulder, it sprang open.

“Ms. Woring?” Paavo called. “Are you here?”

They followed the muted sounds, Paavo and Yosh covering each other while Charles cowered anxiously by the door.

The television in the den was on.

Guns drawn, they slowly headed toward it.

Meredith Woring sat in front of the television set, but she wasn’t watching. She’d never watch anything again.

A bullet had drilled through the creamy smooth skin of her forehead.

Chapter 38

Angie crawled over the seat of the Panda. It was the tiniest car she’d ever been in, and that included bumper cars at amusement parks.

After several tries she managed to shove the stick shift into reverse. She slowly lifted her left foot off the clutch as her right gave it some gas. The car lurched and died. She had learned how to drive a manual transmission on Paavo’s ancient Austin Healey, the car he’d struggled with until she bought him a Corvette. She should have practiced more.

If she couldn’t get away from the police car fast, she might be arrested.

Again she tried to get the tiny auto to move in reverse. Once more the car died.

At this rate, leaving on foot would be faster.

The front bumper of the Panda had somehow gotten wedged under that of the police car. That required strength and power.

She gave a lot more gas and raised the clutch slowly. The engine revved louder and louder. Suddenly, the bumper sprang loose, falling to the ground with a clatter. The clutch engaged and the car, free now, shot backward at Mach 5 speed, throwing her hard against the steering wheel. It zipped away from the police car, raced right across the narrow roadway, bounded up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, knocked over a trash barrel, and died.

Then the back bumper fell off.

Oncoming cars honked and slammed on brakes.

Angie stripped the gears as she hunted for first. Eventually the little Fiat began to jerk and shimmy in a forward direction. Somehow she got it off the sidewalk and onto the middle of the street, where it died again.

People opened windows and shouted, disturbed by the sound of car horns and flying garbage. With cars blocked on both sides of the street, drivers gesticulated furiously and obscenely. The traditional American “one-fingered salute” was mild compared to the whole arm gestures Angie witnessed. Finally, head high, she engaged the gear and putt-putted away.

She thought driving in San Francisco was difficult with the hills, cable cars, tourists, and crazed Muni bus drivers, but it was child’s play compared to the terrors of Rome’s traffic.

Travel lanes were ignored, speed limits considered foolish suggestions. Cars cut in and out in front of her with only a hair’s breadth separating them. The only bit of traffic control anyone paid attention to were lights, but sitting at a red light reminded Angie of Nascar: “Drivers, start your engines.” Engines revved and Angie knew that if she didn’t burst from the gate at the first flicker of green, she’d be rear-ended, run over, and possibly the featherweight Fiat would be picked up and tossed into the nearest junk heap.