If Cooks Could Kill (3 page)

Feeling used and foolish—those words should be tattooed across her forehead—she flung herself back in the car and was speeding down the street when she passed a dark pile of rags against a building. She'd driven past them before they registered on her mind.

Stomping on the brakes, she backed up, threw on her hazard lights, and got out of the car.

She ran to his side, scared at what she'd find.

“Ronnie…”

What was he saying? “Yes, it's me, Max. Connie. I'm here.”

“I'm late…too late…Ron…”

“Max!” she cried, kneeling at his side, shaking him.

He struggled to open his eyes, and when he saw her, his whisper was like a prayer.
“Help me.”

The heavy metal doors opened and Veronica Maple walked out into the sunshine. She lifted her face and took a deep breath. Even early morning was hot in Chowchilla, a grim, dusty, ugly town in California's Central Valley. It was located about 40 miles from the “big city” in the area, Fresno, which even the inmates referred to as one of the world's armpits.

San Francisco was 150 miles away. It seemed more like a 150 light years.

None of that mattered to Veronica this morning. All she knew was that she was free. For the first time in three years, she was her own woman, and could walk the streets, go where she wished, see whomever she liked, and do whatever she wanted.

She turned one last time and stared at the sprawling, unadorned, concrete gray buildings that had been her home for the past three years. The Central California Women's Facility, 640 acres that made up the largest women's prison in the United States, and probably the world, had beds for 2,000 inmates, and housed around 3,500.

Once upon a time she'd thought a women's prison
would be a nicer place than one that housed men. Was she ever wrong. Deaths and mutilations, usually caused by other inmates, were rampant in the place. Getting out alive and unscarred meant she'd learned to kick ass with the best of them, and often better.

Hacking up a huge wad of saliva, she spit it hard at the gate. It hit. Yes! She wanted to dance, to laugh out loud. She'd have sung if she knew the words to any songs. The only words she knew went to children's songs.
Itsy, bitsy spider…
no, it didn't sounded right coming from an ex-con.

Ex-con.

Felon.

Thief.

Her good mood vanished.

She spun on her heel and sauntered to the bus stop, then squatted down on the arid, treeless road to wait. Brand new jeans, a blue-and-white striped blouse, cheap white running shoes, and a backpack to carry underwear and a few personal possessions had been given to her when she left.

Another “once upon a time” came to her—the time when she dressed so cool heads would turn, women's as well as men's. She reached up to touch her hair, pulled back in a barrette at the nape of her neck. It was so dingy it scarcely looked blond anymore. She used to spend a fortune on her hair. And on facials, manicures, even pedicures.

Her hands, dry, with sun-baked skin and short, broken nails, could have been a stranger's. She ran rough fingertips against her forehead. Relief that the three-year ordeal was over warred with bitterness. She'd been betrayed and arrested. No one did that to her and got away with it.

Normally, as a newly released prisoner, she should
have checked in at the office of her bald-headed probation officer. Not her, though. She made sure he wouldn't even know she was out until it was too late. Inside a cellblock, a few dollars could work wonders. Having been an exemplary prisoner made such schemes easy to pull off. Exemplary prisoner—that meant someone good at hiding all kinds of prison shit, playing the system, and having outside sources of supplies, from cigarettes to shivs, to trade for favors.

An ancient, once-beige, graffiti-marked bus rolled toward her, belching dust and black smoke as it came to a halt in front of the prison. The doors opened with a hydraulic
whish
. After waiting for the inmates' visitors to step off, she bounded up the stairs and gave a crumpled ten-spot to the driver. To her delight, he handed her change. Her smile spread as she swung herself into one of the black vinyl seats, its seams shredded from passengers past. To her, it was the most beautiful bus she'd ever seen.

She pressed her nose to the window and watched the scenery. Highway 99 had been pretty much forgotten when four-lane, divided Interstate 5 was completed as the fastest way through the sun-baked valley, and now, most of its vehicles were local passenger cars, old trucks filled to overflowing with lettuce and other green vegetables, and once in a blue moon, a bus. When the blinding, thick tule fog descended on the valley, they'd play bumper cars so often along a stretch of road near Fresno that it was called Dead Man's Alley.

Right now, though, it looked beautiful. She even liked the smell of the old bus's blue smoke diesel exhaust. Freedom was smelling whatever the breeze carried your way as you traveled wherever your heart and your money took you.

One quick detour, that was all she needed, then the world was hers. Kathmandu sounded pretty good at the moment.

The bus rolled into Fresno about 10:30
A.M
. Veronica hurried from the bus station to the flat-roofed brick post office across the street.

A blast of air-conditioned air hit her. No one was in line, so she walked right up to the counter. “Do you have any letters for Veronica Maple at General Delivery?”

The clerk, a heavy, round-faced black woman with wide-spaced protruding teeth, frowned. Post office clerks tended not to like general delivery customers. While at times they were people vacationing in the area, they were more often drifters who looked bad and smelled worse. Veronica wondered how many showed up here still wearing their Chowchilla glad rags.

With a weighty sigh, the clerk stepped into the back room. Veronica held her breath. This was the first real test of how much she could trust him. Everything up to now had been promises, and she'd learned at about age twelve to put no faith in a man's promises.

Five minutes later, the clerk returned with a single envelope. “This is all of it,” she said with disdain.

“Thanks.” It was exactly what Veronica was expecting. She opened the letter and removed a pawn ticket.

A pawnshop, iron bars covering its windows, stood forlornly beside the Greyhound depot. She went in and handed the owner the ticket. From the back room, he carried a Japanese chest.

“I remember taking this in last week.” When the elderly owner spoke, his missing lower front teeth made his words slosh. “A skinny Mexican-looking guy left it.
Had a little goatee. Ugly as sin, if you asked me. He talked good English, though. Better'n me, matter a fact. It's heavy, so be careful.” Veronica didn't bother answering, the old fellow seemed to like having someone to talk to. “The guy said it had sentimental value for the family,” he continued. “Looks kinda like an antique. Or maybe something brought over after the Second World War, you know. You got the key? I couldn't get it open.”

“The family has the key,” she said through gritted teeth. “How much do I owe you?”

“That'll be a hundred dollars.”

As Veronica gave him the money, she noticed an old hammer among a pile of tools. “What do you want for that?”

“The hammer?” He stroked his chin, looking from the hammer to the way she was dressed. “Five bucks.”

She gave him the money and took her possessions into the women's room in the bus depot. Her pulse raced as she used the claw side of the hammer to rip the box open.

The inside was stuffed tight with cloths. Frantically, she yanked them out until she felt the object she'd hoped for. Even through the cloth the shape was recognizable. She smiled at the familiarity, at the heaviness, at the sense that now, she was the one with the power and that no one could push her around anymore.

He'd come through for her; now, she had to do what she'd promised. She looked forward to it.

She hid the Smith and Wesson 9mm automatic at the bottom of her backpack and threw the chest and wrappings in the trash. Tossing her backpack over her shoulder, she sauntered up to the Greyhound station attendant and flashed him a big, sexy smile. Why not
make his day? “I'd like a ticket for San Francisco,” she cooed breathlessly. “One way, on the next bus out of here.”

 

Angie Amalfi drove her immaculate new silver Mercedes-Benz CL600 coupe down West Portal Avenue looking for a parking place, otherwise known as a fool's mission in San Francisco. An unoccupied yellow loading zone beckoned, and she eased right into it, much to the irritation of the people behind her who were most likely also eying the illegal spot. She didn't care. Let them honk and glower and pound their steering wheels. Life was good; luck was with her; and the world was a panoply of baked Alaska straight from the oven, a pouffy dark chocolate soufflé, and flaming crêpes suzette.

She was engaged.

The to-be-married kind of engaged.

And she still couldn't believe it.

After an eternity of wishing, hoping, praying, hinting, and wondering if she'd have to resort to conjurers and mojo practitioners, one week earlier San Francisco Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith had proposed.

Before turning off the ignition, she glanced at her hand on the steering wheel. Her engagement ring, a unique half-carat Siberian blue diamond in an elegant marquise cut and a Tiffany setting of white gold, gave her goosebumps each time she looked at it, and then everything but Paavo and love flew right out of her head. Maybe she was being silly, but so what? This was a life-altering, karma-enhancing, family-churning event, and besides, she'd never been engaged before.

She kept pinching herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. And looking at her ring. And hugging herself. And looking at her ring. She'd gotten two mani
cures in two days, trying to find the perfect accompaniment for Siberian blue. A natural French manicure was winning at the moment, since it didn't distract from the ring in the slightest. And her pale green Nina Ricci suit enhanced both.

God, but she loved being in love. She picked up her cell phone to call Paavo—just to say “hi” and to wish him a happy lunchtime, admiring the way her ring sparkled as she hit the phone's buttons.

The ring was especially precious because she knew he'd bought it with money he'd been saving for a new car. His Austin Healey was beyond ancient. If it was in good shape, it might be a collector's item. But the bailing wire and glue that held it together had destroyed any value beyond scrap metal.

Paavo wasn't at his desk, and Inspector Bo Benson answered the phone. Benson told her Paavo and his partner were called to a job in Japantown at Bush and Scott Streets, and it wasn't a homicide.

That gave her an idea. A brilliant idea, in fact. Gleefully, she made another phone call, and then, after rubbing a smudge off the dashboard, got out of the car. She was a little woman, with big brown eyes, and short brown hair with eye-catching red highlights, thanks to her favorite Fairmont Hotel beauty salon. Now, as she hurried up the quaint block lined with specialty shops and delis to Everyone's Fancy to hear all about Connie's blind date—holding her hand out in front of her to catch the sparkles of sunlight on it as she went—a quick halt stopped her from barreling smack into the closed front door. She tried the latch handle, but it was locked.

Why was the store shut down at this time of day?

She knocked and peered through the lace curtain behind the glass door. Nothing moved inside. Maybe
Connie was in the back room, sick or something. She'd talked to Connie yesterday, and she'd sounded upbeat and healthy. Why wasn't she at work?

Angie backed up and examined the store. Under a brick red awning, the window display hadn't been changed for at least three months. Boredom was hardly the way to entice neighbors into a shop they passed by every day. Connie needed to use a display with pizzazz, one that shrieked, “Buy me!” to window-shoppers. The linens, lace, doilies, and glass bottles gathering dust didn't even whimper.

Angie purposefully hadn't telephoned this morning, even though she was dying to find out all about the date, because they'd agreed to meet at one
P.M
. Had Connie forgotten and gone to lunch without her? Or…

What if something had happened to Connie on her date? What if she'd been in an accident?

It couldn't possibly be that she'd been so enthralled with that jock, that Dennis Pagozzi, or whatever his name was, that she'd gone home with him and decided not to come to work today, could it? A long night of wild, passionate, raw sex? No way.

That wasn't Connie's style. Or, to be more precise, it wasn't her kind of luck.

“Angie!” Helen Melinger, a broad-shouldered, well-muscled woman who owned the shoe repair shop next door, lumbered onto the sidewalk. “I saw you standing out here. Where the hell's Connie?”

“You don't know, either?” Angie asked. “Hasn't she been here at all today?”

“No.” Helen folded her thick, muscular arms and scrunched her bulldog face. “I'm ready to piss my pants I'm so goddamned curious about that date she had last night. What the hell's wrong with her, doing this to me? Where could she be?”

“Good question,” Angie said.

“Aagh, it's probably just that she's got a hangover. You know Connie around booze. She never could hold her liquor.”

“True, but she doesn't drink much when she's nervous. She knows it goes straight to her head. I don't see that as being the problem.” Angie was suddenly worried. “I think I'd better go over to her apartment.”

“If you run into her, tell her I don't give a damn how sick she is, she'd better come to work tomorrow, or I'm coming to get her, understand?”

“I got it,” Angie said, wanting to smile, but not quite sure if Helen was joking or not.

“And congratulations,” Helen added gruffly. “Connie told me you were getting married.”

“Yes. My cop friend finally proposed.” She held out her hand to show off the engagement ring. Everyone she came in contact with had it stuck under his or her nose at some point before the conversation ended.

Helen took hold of Angie's finger, twisting it this way and that in the sunlight. “Look at that ice! Beautiful. Ring's got good fire and saturation. I like it.” She dropped Angie's hand. “So, when's the big day?”

Angie was speechless for a moment, not expecting the gruff shoe repair woman to know the stone was a diamond, let alone its excellent qualities. “Well, I'm not sure yet,” she murmured finally. “There's a lot of planning to do.”