A Cook in Time (6 page)

He had saved the desk for last. It was Scandinavian teak, with only a single drawer below the desktop. Lambert obviously wasn't one to fill his home with clutter. Slowly and methodically Paavo went through Lambert's personal papers, address books, day planners, and the few scraps of loose paper he could find.

He found the names of very few people, men or women, who might have been friends. It seemed that, whatever Lambert's hopes had been in coming to San Francisco, they hadn't been met.

Angie searched a bit for Derrick before entering the auditorium to hear the lecture, but she still couldn't find him. Malachi continued to hover nearby. She would have left, except that Derrick's telling her the lecture would be especially interesting and Kronos's telling her she'd hear what the astronauts really saw from the Mir space station had made her curious. She knew curiosity—or nosiness, as her mother, Serefina, called it—was a fault, but sometimes she couldn't help herself. Anyway, staying an hour or so more wouldn't matter in the least.

When she took a seat in the auditorium, Malachi pointed at the empty chair beside her. “May I?”

“Of course.” She glanced at the clock to the right of the stage. Nine o'clock already? She checked her watch. Yes, the time was right. So much for getting home early to spend the
evening with Paavo—if he showed up. She turned to Malachi. “May I ask you,” she said, having decided the man knew his subject, “if you have ever heard what aliens eat?”

He stared at her blankly for a moment, then his lips curled into a smile and he stroked his chin. “That's a matter of considerable speculation,” he replied gravely, “but no definitive answers.”

It figures
, Angie thought.

“What little we know, we've discovered by hypnotizing victims of alien abductions. Some people are abducted over and over, and in time, despite their fear, they develop an understanding of what's being done to them.”

Alien abductions?
“What is being done to them?” she asked.

“In most cases the abductees—both men and women—are stripped naked, strapped onto a table, and then long needles and probes are stuck into their bodies—eyes, nose, brains, and especially in the, er, groin area.”

“It's amazing,” Angie replied. Amazing that anyone would believe that if there were aliens roaming around the galaxy, they had nothing better to do than to study human sexuality. The idea gave voyeurism a whole new dimension.

Derrick had talked about the sexual angle, too, which made her wonder about him. Was this stuff just erudite porn for the wigged-out? Derrick used to be so normal.

That reminded her. She turned in her seat, searching again for him. Where was he? The
small audience of about twenty people, a few college-age, many middle-aged or older, was growing restless. She checked her watch. Nine-fifteen. The eight-thirty starting time for the lecture must have been MST—Martian Standard Time. It certainly had nothing to do with the Pacific Time the rest of the West Coast used.

She realized Malachi was still talking to her. “… and the government won't admit to any of this because they want to keep it hidden from their enemies.”

Angie began to hope desperately that Dr. Mosshad would be a lot more interesting than old Malachi was.

“Of course, it's a conspiracy of our government,” he continued, “that whenever anyone discovers proof that aliens exist, the proof is immediately spirited away to Area Fifty-one—Dreamland—in the Nevada desert.”

Angie could understand the Dreamland name. His long-winded discourse was making her sleepy. He didn't have anything useful to say about what aliens ate, either.

Where was Derrick? When would the show begin? She wanted to go home. She stretched, half rising from her seat, straining to look at the sides of the stage for Derrick to tell him she was leaving.

A blinding white light flashed onto the stage, covering the lectern and microphone, before it pulsated out over the audience. At the same time, a painfully high-pitched squeal blared into
the room from all sides. Angie cried out as she squeezed her eyes shut, her hands pressed hard against her ears. The light and sound seemed to go on and on, growing more unbearable with each passing second.

 

Paavo picked up the wastebasket by the side of the desk and overturned it onto the bed. A PG&E bill. A phone bill. A flyer that said
Roswell: The True Story
. Opening it, he saw it was about an alien spaceship that was supposed to have landed in New Mexico in the summer of 1947. No wonder Lambert had thrown it away. A Macy's bill showing he'd bought a $150 pair of shoes. Paavo dropped everything back into the trash except the phone bill. It would show whom Lambert had phoned out of town. The information might be useful. He put the phone bill into a small plastic bag to become part of his file.

He scrutinized the room once more. Unless Lambert's murder was strictly a random act, the reason he was killed had to be found through a careful study of his life—his job, his home, his hobbies. The answer was very likely somewhere in this meticulously tidy home, and Paavo intended to find it.

 

As suddenly as it began, the bright light vanished and the room became quiet as death.

Angie lifted her head. “What was that?” She turned to Malachi, gripping his arm. He sat rigidly facing the stage.

A buzz of voices began spreading throughout the hall.

“I must think,” he said.

I must leave
, she thought.

The din in the room grew louder as she picked up her purse and her coat, which had fallen to the floor.

“Look at the time!” came a shout from the front.

“The time?” Angie glanced up at the clock to the right of the stage—nine-thirty—then at her watch. She tapped it a couple of times. “My watch says nine-twenty. Has it stopped? My two-thousand-dollar unstoppable Movado has stopped?”

“Mine did, too,” Malachi said. Suddenly an expression of almost beatific vision came over him. He climbed up on his chair and threw his arms high overhead. In a loud, booming voice, he cried, “They're here! The aliens! Look at the clock, then at your watches! Time stopped for us. It was an alien abduction—of us!”

First the auditorium turned absolutely still, then a woman screamed. Another stood up, then fainted. The man with her grabbed her and half dragged her out of the hall.

“What's going on?” Angie cried, also standing now.

Ignoring her, Malachi shouted at the small crowd, his voice booming. “Where is Dr. Mosshad? He needs to explain this to us!”

A cry rose from the audience as people began to clamor for Mosshad to tell them what had
happened, to assure them that everything was all right.

Time to go home
, Angie decided. She was trying to step past Malachi when he got down from the chair and grabbed her arm, holding it tightly. “Let go of me!” she shouted.

“Holton's onstage. He'll tell us what's happened. You'll see. Stay and listen to him.”

The audience grew hushed, expectant. People sat and waited. Finally, Angie too sat back down, Malachi's hand still on her arm.

“My friends,” Derrick began, his voice softer than Angie had ever heard it, “something just happened backstage. Something strange and something very extraordinary. There was a light, and a ringing that went on for a long, long while. When it stopped, those of us back there discovered that we all had been given a message—the same message. I can't say we heard it, because we didn't hear it with our ears. We heard it some other way, and it became embedded deep in our brains. Those of us backstage confirmed it with each other. I know it's hard to believe, but friends, I will share with you now the message we were given.”

Derrick drew in a deep breath and looked out over the hall, his gaze meeting those in the audience one by one.

“We have been told that Dr. Mosshad has—” He swallowed hard before continuing. “Dr. Mosshad has been abducted by a life force from another world.”

As Paavo and Yosh rode back to the Hall of Justice after spending over an hour at Lambert's house, they swung by the top of Mt. Davidson to view the disturbance being reported on the police band.

One of the city's many millennium cults had gathered on the hilltop and built a bonfire. Paavo wondered how many years it would be before all the people worrying that the millennium would bring about changes to the planets, visitors from outer space, the Second Coming, Armageddon, or God only knew what else would find something new to worry about. He didn't know if most cults were in fear or awe of the change in millennium, only that talk of the end of the world was running high. That worried the police. Fear of retribution and punishment was usually the easiest way to maintain order, but when people think the end was near,
anything goes. Although some people thought mankind was naturally “good,” years of police work had taught him otherwise.

Since there was a new moon that night, the cult had decided it meant their friends in outer space could see a welcoming bonfire. The top of Mt. Davidson was one of the few areas in the city that didn't have nearby buildings. It consisted of a small parklike setting with a large Christian cross that for years had marked the highest spot in the city until the seventies, when the Sutro television and radio tower dwarfed it. Considering the ungodly reputation the city had acquired since that time, the displacement was probably fitting.

Behind the cross, an enormous bonfire burned, silhouetting it. Paavo had never been a religious man and only went to church now and then to accompany Angie, but the contrast of the pagan bonfire and the cross was startling. The change in millennium was causing many people to search and to question. Even if they didn't know what they were searching for.

Paavo remembered the UFO brochure in Lambert's house. He wondered if Lambert, too, might have been seeking answers to the loneliness of his life. If so, he hadn't found them.

The two inspectors saw that the police had the situation under control and the reveling stargazers were being dispersed, so they continued on to the Hall of Justice. In the parking lot, they got out of the city-owned vehicle.

“I'm calling it a night, pal,” Yosh said, turning
toward his Mercury Sable. “Nancy's been making noises about never seeing me anymore. She's right. She's been busy, and I haven't even had the time to find out what she wants for Christmas. That isn't good for either one of us. If I get the wrong gift, I'm dead meat. I think leads on this case are pretty dead, anyway. A good night's sleep isn't going to kill them any more than they already are.”

“You may be right,” Paavo said. He looked at the Hall, then thought of the bonfire he'd just left. Some people were out there having fun even in their anxiety, feeling alive, while he was supposed to go up to the fourth floor to deal with death. Maybe Yosh was right. The next day would be soon enough. That night, he had something else to do.

Visions of Angie came to mind, along with how he'd felt when her loathsome neighbor said she'd gone out with another man. He needed to see her.

“Going to get some shut-eye yourself, Paav?” Yosh asked.

“Not hardly.”

Yosh's eyebrows rose, then he laughed out loud as Paavo waved good-bye and headed for his car.

 

Angie pulled open the door at the first of Paavo's light taps. He had a key to her apartment—as she did to his house—and he would have used it to let himself in if she were sleeping.

He fixed his attention wholly on her, waiting for the shift of an eye, a flinch, the slightest nuance that might tell him he should be in any way concerned about her neighbor's words. Even if Angie had gone out with an old boyfriend, though, it wouldn't mean anything. He knew her, trusted her. Hell, he'd even told her he loved her, something he'd never told any other woman.

“Thank God you're here.” She threw herself into his arms. “It was so exciting, Paavo! I couldn't believe it. It was so incredible! How did you find out already? Is it already on the news? Oh, of course! The police-band radio.”

He held her close, shutting his eyes a quick moment in relief at her greeting and in disgust at himself for having allowed the slightest flicker of doubt to enter his mind. “Angie, hold on.” He lifted his head to look into big, brown, smiling eyes. “Find out what?”

His hands held her waist. She wore a soft, fluffy yellow bathrobe that brushed the floor, and had washed off her makeup, making her look and feel so desirable it was all he could do not to stop her words with kisses. But she clearly was a lot more excited about something other than him just then.

“You really haven't heard?” A small furrow formed between her eyebrows.

“I came here to see you,” he said softly. He couldn't help but lift one hand to her face to feel the soft, smooth warmth of her skin. As
their eyes met, his hand rested a moment on her shoulder, then slid down her back, past her waist to her hips, pulling her closer, pressing her tight against him.

“Oh well … I …” Her gaze drifted from his blue eyes to the deeply shadowed lower lids, high cheekbones, and angular nose, and rested on his mouth. Her mood shifted, and suddenly the reality of the handsome man in her arms was a lot more interesting than the peculiar events at Tardis Hall. She lifted her arms to his neck.
Who cares about some old aliens
, she thought. His head lowered to hers, and their lips met. In minutes her robe lay on the floor of the living room while his clothes left a bread-crumb-like trail straight to Angie's bed.

In the bedroom, his touch, his kisses, his caresses sent her spinning higher and higher until she arrived at a spot in outer space far beyond mere UFOs and Martians. He was her universe.

Afterward, they lay on the bed, arms and legs intertwined. He ran his hand along her spine, enjoying the feel of her body against his.

“So,” Paavo said, his mouth near her ear, his voice low, “what was this exciting thing you thought I came over here to learn about?”

She inched even closer, her head on his shoulder and one arm draped across his chest. This was not the best time to tell him about Derrick, her new business, or anything else that might prompt enough questions to break the
spell of the moment. Three nights and two murders since she'd last seen him meant she wanted all his attention on her for a while. Since he might find it odd that she would go to a place like Tardis Hall alone, she decided to pretend her girlfriend hadn't abandoned her.

“Connie and I wanted to hear a lecture tonight,” she said casually. “But we weren't able to because the lecturer was abducted by aliens.”

“Aliens?” He cupped her breast and lightly kissed the furrow on her brow that had intrigued him earlier. “You mean illegal aliens?”

“I mean little green men.”

He lifted his head and stared at her. He should have been past being surprised by things Angie said and did. But he wasn't. “You're joking.”

“Well, I'm not saying the roof opened up and Leonard Nimoy grabbed the guy, but someone made an announcement telling us that was what happened.”

At Paavo's smirk, she quickly added, “It was probably a publicity stunt.”

“I'd say so.”

“You may be right. Let's forget it.” She nibbled his ear, raising herself as he rolled onto his back. Her hand rubbed his chest, then his stomach.

“You said you went with Connie?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmmm,” she murmured, kissing his jaw, his neck, his shoulder as her hand drifted lower.

“Just the two of you?”

Her hand stopped. He couldn't know, could he? Earl wouldn't have called him and said anything. No, she was just feeling guilty for no reason whatsoever.

“Just”—her mouth hovered over his—“the two of us.”

As she kissed him, her hand found its destination and he asked no more questions.