If Cooks Could Kill (15 page)

Sid Fernandez sat in the van's passenger seat and watched as a young female courier drove into the Sutter Street building's underground garage. She looked bored. This was just a job, one she'd done over and over, despite the supposed danger of it, and the danger in becoming blasé about it.

She should have listened to her boss's warnings, because as she shut and lock the truck's door, Julius Rodriguez stopped the van, sprang out, and hit her on the head with an iron bar. He caught her as she crumpled.

In under ten seconds, Julius had lifted her into the van. While he broke the courier's neck to make sure she wouldn't wake up and cry out, Veronica changed into the uniform stripped from the woman.

Fernandez watched as the two double-checked the company's ID to confirm that the one made for Veronica was the same as the IDs currently being used by Couriers Unlimited. It was.

Veronica took the courier's package, carefully removed the mailing label, and taped it onto a large padded envelope with heavy cardboard inside so it
wouldn't bend. She had to be sure Isaac Zakarian would open the door to receive it.

Zakarian's, a very exclusive diamond jewelry shop, was located on the third floor. It had a small public area, where customers could view the unset diamonds and settings, and a back room where the diamonds were stored in locked display cases. Each day, the office closed between twelve and two, and between one and one-thirty when his assistant went to lunch, the owner was alone. The only people he would open his doors for were couriers. And one or more came each day with a package for him.

Initially, Julius was going to handle the robbery, but when El Toro found out Veronica would be getting out of prison, he thought she would be less likely to arouse any suspicion on Zakarian's part. Their scheme required him to relax enough to open the door from the public area to the back where the diamonds were kept.

He and Julius would wait until she was in—giving her exactly one minute from the time she stepped onto the elevator. She'd send the elevator back down to the basement, and they'd hold it there, waiting, until the minute was up.

If they showed up on the cameras that scanned the hallway outside the shop, the owner would never open the inner office door for her. Once she knocked him over, they'd enter, clean out the store, take out the cameras, and simply ride down in the elevators, leaving the way they'd got in.

It was a simple, straightforward plan, and in his experience, that was the kind that worked best. Too many of his compadres came up with complicated robberies only to have some little something go wrong
and end up in jail. Just like what had happened to Veronica three years ago.

Once, he'd thought he could trust her with this job, but now he questioned that. She'd changed her hairdo—cut short and dyed a light blond—and she wore blue contacts over the gray of her eyes.

He didn't like to question the loyalty of his people. He didn't like it at all, but the robbery was set, and to change plans now would only create more delays.

Delays always brought bad luck. El Toro hated delays.

He'd also lined up an airtight alibi and made sure his fingerprints would be nowhere at the crime scene. Afterward, if she and Julius were being as disloyal as he thought, as he'd seen with his own eyes, he'd take care of the problem. Permanently.

They waited until Zakarian's assistant walked through the garage to his car and drove off. They now had a half hour to complete the job.

Veronica gave Fernandez a backward glance, then stepped into the elevator.

 

Veronica walked to the entry room and rang the bell. An older man with a round face atop an equally round body, receding gray hair, and oval glasses perched on the end of a nose with enormous, fleshy nostrils came to the bulletproof window.

“Delivery,” she called.

He didn't say a word, but opened the slot. “Give it here,” he ordered gruffly.

When she placed it against the slot and it wouldn't fit, she tried to fold it with no luck. “What the hell did they send me?” Zakarian complained. “Let me see it.”

She held it up to the window so he could read the label. “Okay, okay! Bring it to the door.” He stood. “Hold
it, you! Show your ID. Don't you know procedure?”

She held the ID against the glass.

“Cut your hair,” he said. “Looks better now.”

She kept her expression taut as she tucked the card into her back pocket.

He opened the door just a crack and was waiting for her to slip the package through when she hit the door hard, knocking him backward onto the floor. As soon as she did, she drew her gun. “Don't touch a thing!” she ordered, knowing there were panic buttons all over, on the floor as well as the walls. She grabbed the shoulder of his shirt, lifting and spinning him around so he didn't face her. At the same time she pulled him to his feet. “Keep your head down. Don't look at me!”

He raised his arms up even though she didn't tell him to. He'd seen lots of movies. “What the hell is this?”

“Unlock the cases and grab those trays.” She handed him a pillowcase to put them in. “We're going out the back way. Fast!”

“Okay,” he squawked. “Anything you say.”

She knew he was thinking about the alarm on the back door, which, if opened when not deactivated, would cause the office to be surrounded with security, and soon after, the police.

It was all right. She'd be out of there by then. With the diamonds. And if Fernandez and Julius were caught lurking around the hallway, so be it.

He stuffed a bunch of trays into the pillowcase. She looked at the time. Fifty-five seconds had gone by.

“That's enough. Move it!” She shoved him toward the back of the store. “Listen, old man. My friends expect me to kill you then let them in, but I'm not. I'll let you live. Got it?”

He nodded, quivering.

“I want you to run right down the stairwell to your
car. If you don't run fast enough, my friends might catch us. Then we're both dead. Understand?”

He turned a pale shade of green and nodded again.

“Now. Run!”

He ran, faster than she thought he could, literally jumping from stairs to landing as he descended the three flights to the garage. She stopped him as he got there, stuck her head out, and didn't see El Toro or the others. They should be riding up on the elevator by now, or even waiting in the hall.

“Now!” she ordered, and he ran, dripping sweat, to his car, a blue Buick.

They jumped in, and he tore out of the garage, using his key card to open the door and get out.

One good thing about silent alarms even in jewelry shops was that so many people tripped them by mistake, nobody took them as seriously as they should. There was always a delay—an “is-it-real-this-time-or-just-another-false-alarm?” moment—which she was counting on to give her the additional seconds she needed to escape.

“Hey!”

She didn't know if it was a security guard or one of El Toro's men who yelled, but she ducked and told Zakarian to head for Ghirardelli Square.

He kept staring straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel, his foot like lead on the gas pedal. “Slow down!” she yelled. “Do you want to get a ticket?”

“You've got the diamonds. Let me go,” the old man pleaded as they neared Ghirardelli Square.

“Shut up and drive.”

Max stood beneath the clock tower, just as he'd said he would. “There. Stop the car in the bus stop,” she ordered.

“The bus stop? But what if a bus comes?”

She waved at Max, and he nodded back. She watched Zakarian stare unblinking at Max while not daring to glance at her again. He remembered her warning. His voice quaked as he whispered, “Please let me go.”

“Ask him—he's the boss.” She swiveled toward the jeweler and smacked the butt of her Smith and Wesson hard against his temple. He slumped against the driver's door.

Clutching the bag with the diamonds, she jumped out of the car and ran down the hill. Max stared in horror at the old man, the blood now gushing from his head, then ran after Veronica.

People in the busy tourist area began to put together what had happened, and several yelled for Max to stop. Veronica reached her Ford Escort and in seconds was pulling away. She wove around the busy traffic, ran a red light, and somehow managed to find enough space open on the roadway to leave quickly. In the rearview mirror, she could see Max's diminishing figure, and she started to laugh.

 

The idea came to Angie from weddings in which each table of guests was given a disposable camera to take pictures—their point of view, so to speak. A number of people who worked with Paavo had witnessed his proposal to her in an old abandoned church after an insane killer had been stopped. To them, she had sent inexpensive tape recorders along with a blank tape, instructions, and a return envelope, and asked that they tell her what they saw, from the time Paavo proposed and she fainted, until she woke back up and her
compos
became
mentis
again. She hoped for a lasting memory of that wonderful moment since, unfortunately, she'd missed most of it.

They did as she'd asked, and now, the tapes were in front of her. With great anticipation, she picked up the first one, Yosh's, placed it in the tape recorder, and hit “Play.”

“Paavo rushed off without me. When is he going to learn not to do that? We're partners, damn it. Supposed to depend on each other, not go it alone. I should have been with him the whole time. You tell him, Angie. You want me there. If he'd told me what he was going to do, I could have had a glass of water in my hand, then when you passed out, I could have splashed it on you, right? But did he ask my help? No! He went and asked all by himself, and look at how it ended up. When will he learn? I give up.”

Whew! She put on Calderon's tape.

“You keeled over, then you woke up. So what?”

Next, she picked up a tape from Officer Crossen, a cop Paavo had asked to protect Angie. She wondered about it when he wrote “to Angie” and instead of a dot over the
i,
there was a
. She hit “Play.”

“Your big brown eyes fluttered shut like a butterfly folding its wings. You slowly sank to the floor and stretched out over the hard ground before anyone could save you, looking like a real-life Sleeping Beauty waiting for her handsome prince. I guess you've settled for Smith, but if you ever get tired of him, give me a call.”

She gawked, tempted to listen again, but instead went to Bo Benson's.

“I was pretty cool that night. Caught a serial killer and all. He was dead before I got there, but he knew I was real close. Mean sucker, wasn't he? I was talking to the coroner when you hit the floor. She was interested in how the killer died. I explained it to her. When
people finished asking for my help, you were awake. Oh, yeah. Congrats.”

Angie put the tape recorder away. Some ideas just didn't work out.

Kevin Trammel rang the bell to Connie's apartment. He had to see her, to talk to her alone, and she should be off work by now. It couldn't really be over between them. She'd give him a second chance; hell, she always had before.

If not, having an ex-wife who hung out with a Forty-Niner team member might not be such a bad thing. She always did have a soft spot for him, and if suddenly she was rolling in dough, she wouldn't be too selfish. It wasn't in her nature to be.

He waited, but there was no response. He rang again.

Maybe she was out with her jock. He probably had a fancy car, fancy house, fancy servants. He wondered, had the guy learned yet how much she enjoyed making love in the morning, when the house was chilly, but the bed toasty warm? Or the way nibbling on her ear and neck turned her on?

Hell, but he missed her.

Still no answer. Damn it!

From deep in his pockets, he pulled out a ring of keys. He tried a couple before finding the one he'd been looking for. He unlocked the main door, then quickly climbed the stairs to the third floor.

Kevin Trammel wasn't born yesterday. The last time Connie had tried to make up with him and he'd stayed with her over a week until she decided it just wasn't working out, he'd had copies made of the keys she'd given him.

He knew they might come in handy someday. Like today.

He let himself into the apartment.

Nothing had changed since the last time he'd been there. Same old furniture, same pictures on the walls, same old-fashioned dolls junking the place up. She'd thrown out his beer-bottle collection, he noticed. He'd been trying to save bottles from all over the world. They looked really cool, or so he thought. What did she know, anyway?

He walked into her bedroom. She'd made the bed. Now, he couldn't tell if it had been slept in on just one side, or two. It was the queen-sized bed they'd used. Damn thing nearly filled up the whole room.

He turned away. There were some memories he didn't want to have. He walked into the kitchen and found a beer in the refrigerator. Bud Lite. It figured. Connie was always worried about her weight.

When he had money, he was a Heineken man. Today, Bud Lite would have to do.

He picked up the beer, then settled down in the living room to wait for his wife, ex-wife, to come home.

 

Julius kept his head facing straight ahead; only his eyeballs swiveled toward Fernandez. El Toro was still red-faced and sweaty with fury. Julius had never seen him so out of control as when he realized Veronica had somehow gotten away with the jewels.

They'd stepped onto the elevator, expecting to ride up to the third floor, when it stopped on one. Someone
in a wheelchair had to get in, but the person pushing the chair kept getting the wheels skewed in the wrong direction. The space was tight, and by the time they'd gotten it squared away, the security guards had rushed in and stopped the elevator. There'd been a robbery attempt in the building.

El Toro and Julius simply stepped off the elevator, walked out of the lobby, and left.

They abandoned the van they'd stolen for the job in the garage and waited at the end of the block to see what happened next, expecting to see Veronica under arrest.

It didn't happen. She'd gotten away…with the diamonds. El Toro's diamonds.

As terrifying as Fernandez's anger was, the ensuing silence was worse.

Julius didn't know where they were going. They were still in the city, but in the southwest corner, near the Pacific.

Raymondo stopped the car by the sand dunes.

“It's peaceful out here, isn't it, Toro?” Julius said.

“Peaceful. Yes, that is one word for it.”

“We'll find her,” Julius added quickly. “She can't hide from us.”

“She can't hide. That's true. Not from me. You can't either.”

His nerves jumped. “Me? What do you mean?”

Fernandez's eyes were harder and blacker than coal. “Where are you planning to meet her?”

Sweat beaded on Julius's forehead. “Boss, what do you mean? I had nothing to do with this!”

“Get out of the car, Julius.”

He quaked. “No! I mean, Toro, you've got to believe me.”

“You
will
tell me where she is. Don't doubt it for a minute.”

Raymondo opened the door beside Julius and waited for him to step out of the limo.

 

Max dashed into Connie's shop a half hour before closing time. “Are you all right?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He looked around the shop, then stepped outside and searched the street.

“What's going on?”

He tried to appear nonchalant. No sense scaring her more than he probably already had. “It's all right. Just…nothing. Why don't I take you to dinner? There's a Chinese restaurant down the block. I was paid a little yesterday for helping with some tax forms.”

She studied him, and he was afraid she'd refuse. They'd spent a pleasant evening together the night before. She'd cooked a simple dinner, and they'd talked. He asked about her marriage, and about her sister, and how she'd coped with losing both. She didn't say much about her ex-husband, and that troubled him. He even was surprised at a pang of something—could it have been jealousy?—that made him want to say the guy had been a complete jackass.

It had been a long time since he'd sat and talked, as a friend, with a woman. He'd enjoyed her company, her humor, her good nature. He thought she might ask him to stay, but she didn't do that either, and he left a little before midnight.

He wouldn't blame her if she tossed him out again, now. Who was he to ask anything of her? But then she smiled and his heart lightened and lifted.

He stayed as she counted and wrote up the day's receipts, then locked up the shop. They went to dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant and then decided to go for a walk. Max had never been to Lake Merced, so they drove over to it, a lonely stretch of parkland tucked into the southwest corner of the city by the sand dunes and the Great Highway. No businesses or tourist attractions were in the area, put off by the nearly perpetual cold wind and fog and lack of public transportation.

Max held Connie's hand as they strolled along the path that circled the lake. He should have felt carefree and happy; instead, his mind kept going back to the afternoon at Ghirardelli Square, and he was worried.

Although he hadn't seen Veronica in three years, he was shocked when he saw her. She looked just like Connie.

It couldn't be happenstance; something more was behind it.

Veronica and Dennis had a lot more going on between them than he ever imagined, and Dennis knew Connie. Was that the connection? Something involving Dennis?

His instinct told him Connie had no idea about any of this, and he wondered about Dennis. Still, if Veronica was involved, it meant danger—and he was afraid the danger could extend to Connie.

In the distance, a loud report, sounding like a gunshot, rang out.

Max's grip on Connie's hand tightened and he turned off the pathway, plunging into a forest of tall pines and pulling her with him.

“Was that a gunshot?” Connie asked, eyes round. “It sounded far from us, Max. Why are we running?”

He stopped, confused. “You're right. I'm just a little tense after…”

“After what?”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn her to hell! The gunshot wasn't meant for us this time…”

“Damn
who
? What are you talking about?”

He glanced at her, but his eyes were clouded, his mind elsewhere. “I'll make sure she doesn't get me, or you, if it's the last thing I do,” he whispered.

Connie grew even more desperate. “You're scaring me, Max. Am I in some kind of danger? What's wrong?”

“Be careful, and don't trust
anyone
, Connie. Do you hear me? Don't trust anyone.”

He rode back to her apartment with her, and after seeing her safely inside and checking to be sure the apartment was empty, he left.

She immediately called Angie, needing to talk to her about what had just happened, to ask if she could make any sense out of it and to get some advice. But Angie wasn't home.

She hung up without leaving a message and rubbed her chilled arms as she glanced over her silent apartment.

When Max told her not to trust anyone, that included him.