A Cook in Time (7 page)

“Look at this,” Yosh said early the next morning. “Someone's stuck a Post-it to the autopsy schedule. Who's Marcella?”

“I don't know,” Paavo said, glancing over at the schedule.
Merry Christmas from Marcella
. Incredible.

“She must be someone in the coroner's office,” Yosh said, reaching for the phone. “I've got to talk to anyone brain-dead enough to put Christmas cheer on a coroner's log.”

He punched in the number. “I'd like to speak to Marcella,” he said. Then, “Oh. Oh, I see. Okay. I'll call back. Thanks.” He hung up and chuckled. “She's one of the clerks. Does typing, filing. Called in sick today, though. God, I've got to meet her.”

“She's probably just a nice kid,” Paavo said. “Leave her alone.”

“I'll bet the note was for you, pal. She proba
bly took one look at those baby blues of yours and fell madly in love.”

“Not hardly,” Paavo said, turning back to his reports. Fending off lovesick females was about as far removed from his reality as … as being liked by Angie's father.

The funny part was, he was more used to being disliked by someone like Sal Amalfi than he was to being loved by someone like Angie. Throughout his life, the only one who ever professed to care about him and didn't die or leave him was his stepfather, Aulis Kokkonen. Everyone else seemed to die or run off first chance they got. Including his father—who had never even acknowledged fathering a child, as far as Paavo knew—and his unwed mother, who had abandoned him when he was four. What a pair.

No wonder he had no interest in marriage or lasting relationships. What firsthand experience did he have with either of them?

Maybe that was why he had been so ready to jump to the wrong conclusion about Angie's faithfulness. He was still kicking himself over the way he had quizzed her about going to the lecture the previous night. She'd said she'd gone with Connie. Stan had said she'd been with an old boyfriend. Which one should he believe? No contest. She had hesitated in her answers to some questions, but that was probably because she'd been shocked at his persistence.

He should get her something really special
for Christmas. Something that would show her how important she was to him. But what?

Yosh initialed a couple of circulating memos and put them in Paavo's in tray. “Isn't that how it was with Angie?”

“What was that?” Paavo asked, breaking away from his musings.

“One day Angie was just another case,” Yosh said, “and the next she had a case on you.”

Paavo scowled. “There was a lot more to it than that. And anyway, Angie's different.”

“Ain't that the truth!” Yosh laughed.

Inspector Luis Calderon pushed the door open and stomped heavily to his desk. In his forties, he wore his thick black hair heavily pomaded in a pompadour, and sported a closely trimmed mustache.

“What's the joke?” he asked, his voice low, his tone grumpy.

“Nothing,” Paavo snapped, turning back to the autopsy.

Calderon's eyebrows shot up.

“You had to have been there,” Yosh answered. “Say, do you know a clerk named Marcella in the coroner's office?”

“What do you care?” Calderon asked warily.

“Just wondering who she is,” Yosh said.

“Well, I never heard of her. What do you think, I spend my time checking out all the women in the place?” Calderon tossed a newspaper onto his desk and sank heavily into the seat. “Just because my wife took off doesn't
mean I play around, for cryin' out loud. Maybe she'll come back.”

“To add some sunshine to her life again,” Yosh said.

“Go to hell.” Calderon pushed aside a stack of papers and logged onto his computer. “One of these days she'll wise up,” he said, drumming his fingers as the network went through its security checks. “I should have seen it coming, though. She was always out when I tried to call. Out early in the morning, stayed out late at night. Had girlfriends to do this with, and that.” Behind Calderon, Yosh caught Paavo's eye and pretended to play a violin. “Then some guys starting hanging around,” Calderon continued, more to himself than the others, especially since they'd already heard his story many times. “Not boyfriends. Just guys who were into the same things she was. Things I didn't care nothing about. Then one day, I walk home and the place is empty.”

“It's tough,” Paavo said.

“You got that damn right. The thing that makes me mad, though, is I never even seen it coming. Not a damn hint. Not a clue. She was always understanding. ‘Oh, you gotta work late? No problem. You got a big, important job to do. Do it. Me and the kids, we're proud of you.' Yeah, proud of me right out the door.”

“She'll be back,” Yosh said quietly. He had suddenly stopped clowning and picked up another memo. “At least there's no other guy,” he added.

“That's the damned part of it.” Calderon shook his head. “No guy. She just got tired of me. Women!” He poured black coffee from a thermos into a cup coated with the crud from coffee of ages past. “What's to be tired of?”

Yosh didn't respond and the question hung in the air. “Beats me,” Paavo said, casting an eye on his partner. Calderon's question had been a perfect setup for another one of Yosh's shots at Calderon's dour personality, yet something in Yosh's demeanor had changed as the conversation continued. Now Yosh seemed engrossed in the report on the visits to the people who lived around Sigmund Stern Grove.

Paavo glanced at his partner, a coldness settling in his stomach.
There couldn't be anything wrong in Yosh's marriage, could there?

 

When Angie awoke that same morning, she was alone. Paavo must have gone home to shower, change into clean clothes, and go back to Homicide. She knew he was working on some sort of horrible case. As she waited for her coffee to brew, she opened that morning's
Chronicle
. There, on page five, was the story.

Angie stared at the article.
Former
NASA scientist? Why did it say that? But then it also said several hundred people had been there when to reach thirty would have been a stretch. Maybe the reporter had both facts wrong. She tossed the paper aside. If this was a plan for publicity, it had worked very well indeed. She wondered how many more people would show up at Tardis Hall for the next lecture. Perhaps she should hire Derrick to do PR for her Fantasy Dinner business. It certainly needed a shot in the arm.

She started up her computer to check her e-mail, hoping against hope that someone else had contacted her about a fantasy dinner through her Web site: fantasydinners.com. It
would be nice to know there was at least one other person in the world who wanted a fun party. But the
You've got mail!
voice didn't sound for her that day. Not even a lousy piece of spam. So much for potential clients beating a path to her door, or her computer.

Just then her telephone rang.

“This is Triana Crisswell,” the woman said in response to Angie's cheerful hello.

“Mrs. Crisswell, I was just thinking about you,” Angie said.

“Good, because I've just got to tell you, sweetie, you'll need to come up with an idea that's a lollapalooza. This party is simply taking off!”

“What do you mean?” Angie asked.

“I mean the abduction!” Angie had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Didn't you hear about it? It's the talk of the whole city.”

“I was there,” Angie said.

“You saw it? I can't believe this. How I envy you!” Triana lowered her voice and said, “So you must realize what this means, sweetie.”

“No, I'm afraid I don't,” Angie said.

“It means this party will be so hot, I can't tell you! Already I'm getting calls from people who want to be sure to be included. We're going to have at least two hundred. Maybe more. It won't be held at my house. This place is simply too small. And I don't want to wait. I want the party now. Immediately.”

Now Angie was the one shouting into the phone. “That's impossible.”

There was a pause. “A week from Friday, then.”

“That gives me no time,” Angie wailed. “I need a theme, catered food, special decorations—these are supposed to be fantasy dinners, after all.”

“Fantasy, shmantasy. Forget the dinner. All I want is a party, right away, with something to munch on. Heck, I don't care if you serve hot dogs!”

“We need to talk about this,” Angie said, desperately attempting to calm her first—and maybe her last—client. “Keep in mind that the best caterers are already booked for next week. In fact, all the caterers are booked. This is the time for holiday parties. Also, to cook for two hundred people is no small potatoes. You do want the best, don't you?”

“Honey.” Triana sounded even more annoyed. “You think this is about food? It's about publicity. Getting people to join our cause. It's about making a great name for Algernon.”

“I haven't even met him yet.”

“I suppose you have a point,” Triana said, her tone suddenly hard as chipped ice. “He should be at a meeting of the group Thursday night. I'll meet you there and introduce you.”

Angie sighed as Triana brusquely gave her the address. If Triana didn't care about the tastiness of the food or the imaginativeness of the fantasy, why should she? Except that it was her first fantasy dinner, and she had hoped to use it to
build her reputation. But she was a clever person, and if this is what her client wanted, she would find a way to deliver it. “Thank you, Mrs. Crisswell. I'll see you tomorrow night. Tell me, since the dinner is now too big for your home, where will it be held?”

“There's only one place. Tardis Hall, of course.”

 

Criminologist Ray Faldo reached his gloved hand into the evidence bag and took out the heavy goggles that had been found on Bertram Lambert's body. Blowing on them to remove a trace of fingerprint powder, he placed them on the table in front of the two inspectors. Faldo was a pro. Even though he'd worked in the crime lab nearly fifteen years, he didn't simply put in his hours and go home at the end of the day. He still approached his work ready for the excitement that discovery could bring. For that reason, Paavo had gone to him about the goggles in the first place. “Do more than test for prints,” Paavo had said. “Find out what in the hell they are.”

When Faldo had called a few minutes earlier and asked Paavo to come down to the lab when he had time, Paavo made time right then. Yosh joined him.

“They're old,” Faldo said as they peered down at the heavy black object. “Fifty years, at least.” He picked up a black lacquer Japanese chopstick and used it as a pointer. “You can tell that from the way they were made, and the way the glass and metal
sheathing have become scratched and worn from handling. For the longest time, I had no idea what the goggles were supposed to be used for, until I happened to have them on at the exact right moment.”

He picked them up and gave them to Paavo. “Take a look.”

Paavo peered through the goggles. The lab looked fuzzy and distorted. Faldo switched off the light.

“Hey!” Yosh cried. “What's going on? I can't see a thing!”

But Paavo could.

“Don't reach out that way, Yosh,” he said. “You're about to hit a beaker.”

“What?” Yosh pulled back his hand. “You can see in the dark with those things?”

Faldo spoke. “That's what I discovered. I was looking through them when the lights flickered. That's when I realized the view had changed. I didn't understand how it changed—but it had to do with the light.

“I turned off the lights in the lab and put the goggles on. What Paavo sees is what I saw. They're not as sophisticated as the night-vision glasses the military has now, of course, but an early version of that very technology. Something is strange about them, though.”

Paavo took the goggles off and handed them to Yosh.

“Holy Toledo!” Yosh cried. “Will you look at
that! You know, Paavo, we should use something like this when we travel around at night in the city. Can you imagine? We could see the crooks but they couldn't see us. It'd be great! Maybe I should ask Nancy to get me a pair for Christmas. I wonder what they cost.”

Faldo flicked the lights back. “There you have it.”

“You said there was something strange about them,” Paavo said to Faldo as Yosh took the goggles off and gazed at them admiringly.

“I looked through catalogs and manuals about old military gear—early night goggles and such. The earliest versions were very poor. Huge, bulky things. The current generation of them, issued during the Vietnam War, used a very different technology—they were slimmer, more reliable, easier to use and see with. These seem to be a prototype of the current generation. What's strange is that they've never shown up in a catalog or anywhere else. I could find no documented history of the evolution from the early ones to the night goggles of today. It's as if there was a missing link in night-vision technology. These are that missing link—a secret prototype, from all I can tell. But I have no idea where they're from or who made them. Nada.”