Too Many Cooks (23 page)

He stopped short.

“What is it?” Paavo asked.

“Just a minute,” Henry said, light beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead. “There's something wrong here.”

Paavo, too, looked at the numbers. “November's expenses seem to be about ten thousand dollars higher than October's. Can you explain it?” Paavo asked.

“I…I'm not sure. Normally, everything is so simple in a restaurant. You buy raw ingredients cheap, cook them, then sell them for a lot more money. That's it. Here, we have a list of the cost of the raw ingredients.” Henry's fingers covered his mouth as he looked again at the November figures. After a while, he turned to December, then scanned what had been completed so far for January.

Paavo also peered at the numbers. “If it's so simple, can you tell me why November and December are both almost ten thousand dollars higher than previous months?”

“I have no idea.” Henry was sweating profusely at this point.

“Do you keep these books, Mr. LaTour?”

“No. I don't have much of a head for figures, I'm afraid. My wife does the bookkeeping.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes. She's a regular wizard at numbers. Can do a lot of math in her head even.”

“Does she also do the banking?”

Henry wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Yes.” He flipped to the back pages where Lacy listed out details of the various columns. “Saffron, truffles,”
he muttered, mopping his brow, “beluga—Oh, my!”

“Mr. LaTour?” Paavo said. The restaurateur looked ready to faint.

“I—I'm sorry, I just…” He swallowed, staring glassy-eyed at the books.

“Did you authorize the purchase of those foods?”

He shook his head, nearly on the verge of tears.

So Angie was right.

“What happened, Mr. LaTour,” Paavo asked, “to make November, December, and January different from the prior months?”

“I have no idea.”

“No?”

“None! Believe me. I don't understand it myself.”

“You never checked these books?”

“No. Why should I? I trust my wife.”

“Do you realize, Mr. LaTour, that the way these books are written, it appears that phony expenses of food were placed in the account books to siphon off ten thousand dollars each month?”

Henry looked from one page to the next. “It does appear that way.”

“Does anyone besides Mrs. LaTour work on these books?”

“No one.”

“No accountant?”

“None.”

“Tax preparer?”

“Lacy does our taxes.”

Paavo looked at him skeptically.

“She saves us lots of money.”

“I'm sure she does.”

Henry riffled the pages back and forth, leafing
madly through them. “I don't understand it. I just don't!” He looked frightened and confused. “I don't know what to tell you.”

“Perhaps you can tell me where I can find Mrs. LaTour.”

“You think she was taking this money?” Henry asked. “She wouldn't! What reason would she have?”

“I have reason to believe this money was going to Karl Wielund. It looks like he was blackmailing her. Now he's dead.”

“You think Lacy was being blackmailed? That she killed Karl? It's not possible! For one thing, she never said a word to me about it.”

Paavo didn't think he had to point out that murderers or people being blackmailed often didn't announce it, especially not to their spouses. “Perhaps it was because of you she did it?”

Henry seemed to shrivel. “No, Inspector Smith.” He shook his head and suddenly looked very old. “As much as I wish it were true, I know in my heart I'm not the type of man to drive a woman to commit murder. Not even my own wife.”

Angie looked from Lacy
to the gun and back to Lacy again. Lacy's hands were shaking worse than glass in an earthquake. Angie tried to calm herself. Somehow she had to take control. “What's this all about?”

Lacy glanced down at the gun, letting the barrel drop so that it was pointed toward the floor, and shook her head. “He's trying to make me take the blame. It's all coming apart.” She gave a harsh sob and tears filled her eyes.

“What is? Who do you mean? Henry?”

Lacy shook her head. “Axel promised me everything would be all right, but it isn't.” Suddenly she shrieked at Angie. “Why couldn't you leave us alone?”

Angie's heart nearly stopped. “I didn't do anything, Lacy.”

Lacy stared at her, and her expression changed from
anger to desperation. She placed the gun on the table where Angie had been sitting, as if even holding it had become too much of an effort for her. “Karl was
bad
,” she said harshly. “He was a horrible person. I didn't care when he died. He deserved it!”

Angic inched forward a step. If she could just keep Lacy talking, perhaps she could grab the gun. “Why did he deserve to die?”

“He was blackmailing me!”

Angie's pulse beat harder. So she and Paavo had been right. Wielund
was
a blackmailer. “Was it because of the kind of films you made years ago? I don't think people would care much anymore.” She tried to make her voice soothing. “You'll be all right, Lacy.”

“You're wrong there, Angie.” Lacy said. “People care; they always do. And Henry will. He won't…he won't want me anymore.”

Angie could see the hysteria building in Lacy again. “That's not true.”

“What do you know? The snobs, the in-crowd, take every chance they can to look down their noses at me. You belong. You don't know what it's like to have to claw your way to respectability, to find someone and something that's important in your life and then have to struggle to keep them.”

Angie was horrified, both by Lacy's words and the way she looked and acted. “I'm sorry, Lacy,” she said. “Let me try to help you. Please.”

Lacy paced back and forth. “That damned Sheila Danning. I should have known she was trouble, damn it. Lousy, stupid little bitch!”

Danning? Angie glanced from the gun to the glass that looked out beyond the studio booth to the full
radio station. No one was there. She inched closer. “I don't follow.”

Lacy's tears began again. “Axel said I was an accomplice. That if he was fingered, I'd be too. But I was just trying to help Sheila. She needed money, just like I did. Over the years, sometimes I'd see Axel. He'd always give me money. He even gave some to help the restaurant—not that Henry knows. But we needed it. It wasn't so bad of me to take that money, was it, Angie?”

“Uh, no, of course not.”

“Axel needed talent. I meet girls loaded with it. New to town, looking for a job as a waitress or whatever. Shit! Whoever said she was going to die, goddamn it to hell!”

Angie's skin began to crawl as she pieced together Lacy's tirade. “Was Sheila Danning making a movie for Klaw when she died?”

Lacy's eyes widened. “I said it was an accident!”

Angie's stomach knotted as she imagined—no, she
knew
, from all that she'd seen of those people—the kind of terror that must have filled Sheila Danning's last minutes. She looked at Lacy with disgust. “You know what happened to her, don't you, Lacy? You know how horrible it must have been.”

Lacy covered her ears. “It's not true!”

“Did Sheila tell Karl Wielund about her job?” Angie asked, now only about five feet from the gun. “Did she tell Karl that you sent her to Axel Klaw, and about your films, so that when Sheila died Karl began to blackmail you?”

Lacy wrung her hands. “Yes. He was horrible. A brute!”

“And that's why you, or Henry, killed him.” As Lacy just looked at her, dumbfounded, Angie lunged for the gun.

“No!” Lacy snatched the gun away just before Angie's fingers closed on it.

 

Henry had declared that Lacy wouldn't kill for him. Much as Paavo wanted to believe otherwise, Henry's words had the ring of truth. In fact, the more Paavo thought about Lacy, he wondered if she could, in fact, kill three people in cold blood. Somehow, he couldn't see it.

“Even if Lacy didn't kill Wielund, something did happen between them,” Paavo said. “Look at these books. The money didn't just walk out of your restaurant and into his.”

Henry rubbed his forehead and then nodded. “Yes. Something did. But I don't know what, or why. She started acting strange in November. I didn't understand. I still don't. She seemed so distracted, so removed. I thought…I thought maybe she didn't love me anymore.”

“Why do you say that?”

He fidgeted with his tie. “I guess I was jealous. She kept on talking about Karl Wielund and how well his restaurant was doing. He was like an obsession with her. She even fainted when we heard he had died. Frankly, I was glad he was gone. I thought things would be all right between us after that, just Lacy and me, just like before. But then she hired Wielund's cook, Mark Dustman. We didn't need him. We still don't. The only good thing about him are all the
recipes he brought with him from Karl's old restaurant.”

Henry's words triggered something in Paavo's brain. “Dustman brought you the recipes?”

“Yes.”

Paavo tapped his fingers on the desk, searching his memory. If only he'd paid better attention when Angie was talking about food! “Was one of the recipes some kind of veal—no, lamb, or something like that—in some kind of pie crust?”

Henry's mouth dropped open. “You mean the filet of lamb in puff pastry? How did you know that was one of Karl's? Dustman told us no one would know. He said we could—” Henry glanced at Paavo, suddenly realizing he'd said too much. His cheeks turned fiery red. “Dustman said we could pretend it was ours. And I'm ashamed to say I tried to.”

Paavo leaned back in his chair, deep in thought. “Were you aware, Mr. LaTour, of your wife's connection with a man named Axel Klaw?”

“Who?”

“Were you aware that she was ever involved in pornography?”

Henry stood. “This has gone far enough, Inspector Smith! I've cooperated as much as I can, but for you to slur my wife's good name—”

“Sit down,” Paavo ordered. “We'll worry about reputations later. Right now, we've got a dead waitress, Sheila Danning, who was killed last November, and who knew Wielund and Axel Klaw.”

“November? What? I don't understand! This Klaw is nothing—”

“Your wife knew Klaw, and possibly Danning as
well. And it looks like Wielund was blackmailing her.”

“Coincidence!”

Paavo leaned closer to Henry. “Chick Marcuccio knew you had Wielund's new recipe, and now he's also dead.”

Henry paled and tried to scoot back farther from Paavo.

“Then,” Paavo continued, “your wife hired Mark Dustman, who knew all these people.” Mark Dustman, who had also lied about knowing Sheila Danning.

“Yes?”

Paavo rubbed his jaw. “Dustman had Wielund's notes and recipes. Nona Farraday wrote an article on Wielund that said he worked on new recipes
at home
, not at his restaurant.”

“He did?”

Paavo stood and began pacing back and forth in the small office. “And Wielund's landlord, looking in the kitchen, said the place looked like it was missing something. Like it'd been cleaned up.” Paavo stopped and faced Henry. “Wielund's notebook! The one with his recipes! The killer would have been the one with the time and opportunity to take it.”

Henry also stood. “Dustman?”

“But Dustman had an alibi. He went to work, showed up in the kitchen, got everything started, then went into the office and handled Eileen Powell's work all day. It might be that no one actually saw him, only saw the light on in the office, assumed he was there working, and didn't dare disturb him. He could have killed Wielund and driven up to the Sierras in three hours in Wielund's car. After rolling the car with
Wielund's body off the cliff, he could have walked a short distance and then hitched a ride. There's an airport in Tahoe. To fly back takes less than an hour. He'd still have been back in time to put the finishing touches on the dinner menu. But why?”

The shrill ring of the phone startled them both. Henry picked it up and in a moment handed it to Paavo.

“Smith here.”

“Sorry to bother you,” Yosh said, “but there's something you need to know.”

“What is it?”

“Angie called. She told me to tell you she'd be doing Henry's radio show today since he was with you. I thought I'd turn it on and listen to her. But something's wrong. Do you have a radio there?”

Paavo motioned to Henry to turn on the radio. The dial was located properly for KYME, but instead of Angie talking about cooking, warbling over the air was the mellifluous voice of Doris Day, singing “Que Sera, Sera.”

“
Don't shoot, please
,” Angie cried, her arms outstretched imploringly. “Please, Lacy!”

“You've got to believe me, Angie! You're my only hope.”

Angie's throat seemed to close. She didn't know what to say.

“This is the gun that killed Chick,” Lacy said. “I heard him confront Mark Dustman in LaTour's kitchen about giving us Karl's recipe. Mark tried to deny it, but he couldn't explain how we could have gotten it, if not from him. Next thing I knew, Chick was dead.”

“What are you saying?”

“Mark planted the gun on me. He said everyone would think I killed Wielund and then Chick. And you do think that, don't you? Mark was right!”

“No. I never did. I thought—” She stopped, suddenly realizing how foolish it was of her to ever
suspect poor, bumbling Henry of such crimes. She bit her bottom lip. “Please, Lacy, put the gun down. Please.”

“You couldn't possibly have suspected Henry, could you?”

She took in Lacy's earnest gaze. “Only after the threat came over the radio. It seemed too phony, too much of a setup to throw suspicion away from Henry and not at all in keeping with the rest of the killer's style.”

Lacy shook her head, and her arms dropped to her sides. “That was me. I called. I did it to throw suspicion away from Henry and me. If anyone suspected us, if they looked into my past, they'd find out about my films, and Axel, and maybe even Sheila Danning. I couldn't let that happen.”

Angie nodded, not saying a word.

“But then Mark told me you were going to tell your friend the cop that Henry or I did it,” Lacy explained. “When your friend came and arrested Henry, I realized that all the other stuff—the films, and even introducing Sheila to Axel—were nothing compared to this, to murder! I had to see you, to explain. To tell you Henry and I are innocent.”

“Mark Dustman!” Angie whispered.

Lacy's weary tear-streaked eyes met hers. “Yes.”

“Oh, my God!” Angie stepped to Lacy's opposite side from where she held the gun, and grabbed her arm. “Let's get out of here! Paavo didn't arrest Henry; they're just talking. They've gone to LaTour's. Dustman usually shows up there a little after twelve. If he sees the two of them together, he might start to worry and go looking for you. If he realizes you're here, with me, where we could have talked this through—” She shivered.

The two hurried out of the studio and nearly stumbled over the station engineer, lying unconscious on the floor just outside his console. He was breathing, but just barely. The back of his head was a bloody mass.

“Dustman's here already,” Angie whispered. “Get down.” She tugged on Lacy's arm. They dropped to the floor, below the glass surrounding the console.

Lacy looked ready to faint from fear. “Let's get out of here.”

“Wait. He's got to be hiding somewhere.”

“I've got a gun,” Lacy said, suddenly recalling the weapon she still held in her hand.

“That's probably why he didn't burst in on us. He wants to be able to take it away from you.”

Lacy inched forward, peeked around the console, and looked back at Angie. “All clear. Let's run to the door and get out of here.”

“I've got a better idea. Let's go in the engineer's console, lock the door, and call nine-one-one. It's too risky to run. He might be hiding anywhere.”

“I'm not letting myself get trapped in there!” Lacy's whisper was harsh. “I'm getting out!” She stood up slowly, waving the gun from side to side. All remained quiet. She took a step, then another and another.

Angie didn't know what to do. If she stayed here, she was unprotected, but following Lacy also scared her to death. Holding her breath, expecting Mark to leap out at her at any moment, she crawled in the direction Lacy had gone.

Lacy had almost reached the door that led to the outside corridor when, from behind a metal file cabinet, Mark Dustman reached out and grabbed her hand.

He twisted her arm. The gun dropped, and he threw the terrified Lacy to the floor.

Angie darted past them toward the door. She hadn't even reached it when she was slammed against the wall. Her breath came out in a painful
whoosh
. A hard arm went around her waist; cold metal pressed against her temple. “I can shoot you here if I have to. It'd just be a little quieter in a sound-proof booth.” Dustman chuckled.

“Why, Mark?” Angie cried.

“Shut up!” He dragged Angie closer to Lacy. “Get up.”

Lacy cried. “I can't. I think you broke my arm.”

He shoved the fallen woman with his foot. “Move it! You're going to shoot Angie and the engineer and then, in remorse, you're going to kill yourself. Now get the hell up!”

Lacy sobbed hysterically. In disgust, Dustman pushed Angie aside hard, knocking her into a supply cabinet, then reached down for Lacy, grabbing her hair to pull her to her feet. She screamed.

 

Paavo and Henry stepped off the elevator. A scream pierced the air, and Henry began to run.

“Stay back!” Paavo ordered.

Henry didn't listen but burst into the radio station. “Lacy!”

Paavo first saw Angie, leaning against a cabinet, her face terror-stricken, and then Mark Dustman. Dustman let go of Lacy's hair and spun around, his arm outstretched, in his hand a .38 caliber revolver.

Paavo grabbed the back of Henry's suit jacket and
yanked him back as hard as he could, into the corridor, just as a shot rang out. Henry cried out, falling and landing hard against Paavo's bad shoulder. A mind-numbing pain went through Paavo as he pulled out his gun. Dustman's frantic gaze met his.

Suddenly, Angie hurled herself hard against Dustman's back, shoving him with all her strength. Dustman stumbled forward as his gun went off, the bullet wild and wide of the mark. Instantly, Paavo was on top of him, wrestling him to the ground and taking his gun.

As he locked the handcuffs on Dustman, Paavo's eyes caught Angie's. His heart was still in his throat as he thought of the chance she'd taken, throwing herself at the gunman. He smiled. “Good job,” he said.

“Thanks.” Her voice quivered. Nervously rocking back and forth on her heels, she looked from Henry, who was sitting on the floor looking at a bullet wound in his leg, to Lacy, still crying, to the bloodied engineer, to Dustman lying there handcuffed, and back to Paavo. Then she fell to the ground in a dead faint.