Cook's Night Out Page 5

  “Everyone really enjoyed the chocolates you sent, Angie,” Paavo said, cutting a bite of meat. “All three boxes went fast. Have you found your angelina yet?”

  “Not even close,” she said with a sigh.

  “No?” He chewed ecstatically. She enjoyed a man who appreciated good food.

  “I’ve been experimenting like mad, but all I’ve ended up with are pounds and pounds of good, but not very special, chocolate candy.”

  “I’m sure your friends appreciate it.” He poured more wine.

  “To a point.” She sipped her wine, then ran a finger lightly around the rim. “But since it looks like my experimenting will continue for a while, I decided to find some worthy cause—some really good people—to donate the chocolates to.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “I settled on the Random Acts of Kindness Mission.”

  His fork, with a tender morsel of filet, froze in midair. “That’s the new rescue mission, isn’t it?”

  She heard the uneasiness in his voice and suddenly felt defensive. “Yes, it is.”

  Paavo was silent for a moment. “I remember a couple of guys at the Hall of Justice talking about the place—saying it’s billed as a soup kitchen but looks like a private club. They found it fishy.”

  “That’s only because it’s just getting started,” she explained quickly. “But Reverend Hodge has plans to turn it into a very nice rescue mission once he has enough money. ‘You can’t plant until you own the land,’ or something like that, is how the reverend puts it.”

  “You can’t what?”

  “You need to come and see it.” Angie desperately wanted Paavo to understand her feelings, even though she had trouble understanding them herself. “Meet Reverend Hodge. He’s a good man. Many fine people—some very wealthy women, as a matter of fact—work as volunteers for him, and he needs my help with the food for the auction.”

  “What auction?”

  “There’s going to be a lavish charity auction fundraiser. All the best society people will attend. That’s where the money will come from…the money for the seed to plant the mission.”

  Paavo’s brows drew together. “Tell me about this Reverend Hodge,” he said. “Where is he from? What’s his church affiliation? What did he do before coming here?”

  “Honestly, Paavo,” she exclaimed. “He’s not a murderer, he’s a reverend. I didn’t put him through the third degree. I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I’m sure none of them are secret.”

  For dessert, the waiter brought Paavo a vanilla bean crème brûlée, and for Angie, a passion fruit cheesecake with mango sauce, both served with strong espresso.

  “Let me get this straight, Angie,” Paavo said. “This mission is in a nice building, comfortably furnished, with lots of wealthy people around it, and the reverend is going to hold a high-society auction in order to raise money to turn said nice, comfortable building into a soup kitchen. Right?”

  “Exactly.” She beamed, glad she’d finally gotten him to see the picture.

  “Sounds like a setup for a scam of some sort.”

  “A scam? No way! These people are good. And the reverend is simply wonderful. A little nervous, a little unsure of himself, but other than that, he’s delightful.” She decided to leave out mention of his manipulative trait.

  “Let me see what I can find out about the place,” Paavo said. His expression made it clear her defense had no effect on him. “In the meantime, it would be safest if you forget about it awhile.”

  Her back stiffened. “I will not forget it. I promised Reverend Hodge I’d go back and help, especially with his auction.”

  Paavo reached for her hand. “Angie, because of what happened to you not long ago, I know it’s important for you to restore your trust in people. But I’m not sure that’s the place to do it.”

  He was referring to a man who had tried to kill her. The experience had left her shaken and fearful. Finding truly good people—people such as the reverend and his volunteers—was the perfect medicine for the mistrust she had developed. “Don’t worry about me, Paavo. The Random Acts of Kindness Mission is a fine place. As Reverend Hodge says, ‘The loving-giver lovingly gives.’”

  “Is that a joke, Angie?”

  She stared at him, suddenly furious at his crossed brows, his downturned lips. “Paavo, I don’t think I like your attitude.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Paavo took the call from Inspector Rebecca Mayfield that caused him and Yosh to jump back into their unmarked—as if that fooled anyone—police-issue Chevy Cavalier and drive to Sunset Liquors on Taraval and Thirty-eighth Avenue. The Sunset district was a neighborhood of tiny, middle-class homes in the area unaffectionately referred to as the “county” of San Francisco. The charm, hills, cable cars, restaurants, ethnic sights and smells, tourists, and street musicians found elsewhere in the city were conspicuously absent from the Sunset.

  As Paavo got out of the car he saw Rebecca Mayfield, the detail’s newest and only female homicide inspector, standing in the liquor store, talking to men from the coroner’s team. Her partner, Bill Never-Take-a-Chance Sutter, was out on the street, hands in pockets, acting as if he was doing nothing more than passing the time of day with one of the patrol cops. Back at the office, everyone said he spent far more time thinking about retirement than about his most recent cases.

  Paavo stopped at the store’s entrance. Rebecca saw him and walked over, wearing a smile that the other fellows in Homicide said she reserved for him alone. “Glad you could make it, Paavo.”

  He nodded and glanced over the crime scene. Only the closed cash register drawer made this scene different from the other hundred-plus armed robberies that went awry each year and ended up with a death. The dead man was the owner, Haram Sayir.

  “What’ve you got for me?” Paavo asked.

  “Come this way,” Rebecca said. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

  He followed her to the office. They went in and she pointed to a file cabinet with two six-packs of beer on the floor beside it. “The beer was on top of the file cabinet. When I moved it, I found this notebook underneath.” A five-by-eight blue spiral notebook lay atop the file cabinet. Wearing latex gloves, she didn’t hesitate to pick it up and open it. Inside were columns of numbers.

  “Numbers running,” Paavo said softly. “What the hell’s going on in this city?”

  “The numbers are dated, too,” Rebecca said. “The dates end five days ago.”

  “Five?” Patrick Devlin had been killed five days ago.

  She nodded. “Going back, I found that at the end of each day a line had been drawn and two letters placed beside it. The letters might be initials. Especially since for the last few weeks, the initials are PD. I don’t think it means ‘police department’…or ‘paid.’ And then the numbers stop altogether.”

  PD… Patrick Devlin? Paavo’s gaze gripped hers. “You think this guy was part of Devlin’s numbers racket?”

  “I sure do.” Her words were emphatic.

  He nodded grimly, then went back to studying the notebook. “It looks like he took a few more numbers after the prior day’s payoff. Maybe word hadn’t yet reached him that Devlin had been killed.”

  “That’s what I figured. Then, for some reason, he stopped altogether.”

  “There’s something ugly coming down here involving numbers,” Paavo said. “I hope there aren’t too many more guys around like Haram Sayir. Messing with racketeers is a no-win, and everybody should know it.”

  “Despite that,” Rebecca said softly, taking in the liquor store that the dead man had owned and worked hard to keep, “I can’t help feeling sorry for him.”

  A tray of marzipan-coated chocolate truffles had been pushed to the back of the countertop to the left of Angie’s kitchen sink. On the right side, another tray filled with chocolate-ripple divinity was precariously perched on the dish-draining rack. And scattered about the counter between the refrigerator and the
cooktop, stacked atop the microwave, and balanced on the toaster were assorted plates of chocolate-walnut crunch, chocolate-honey nougats, chocolate-covered mini montblancs, chocolate florentines, and chocolate-coconut fudge cups.

  Connie Rogers dropped into a kitchen chair and let her head hit the tabletop with a thunk. She and Angie had met in the course of the investigation of the murder of Connie’s younger sister and, although opposite in almost every way, had become close friends. Where Angie was slim, dark-haired, and single, Connie was a little overweight, blond, and divorced. Angie had a college degree, traveled widely, and was well versed in art and literature. Connie had graduated from high school only and had never left the United States. Also, Connie owned a small gift shop called Everyone’s Fancy, and Angie hadn’t yet found the job of her dreams. “Take a break, Angie,” Connie said. “You’re wearing me out.”

  “I’m all right.” Angie stood in front of the stove, where she was tempering the latest batch of bittersweet chocolate. She was glad there was no mirror nearby. Her complexion had to be nearly as green as Connie’s. “Anyway, I’d rather keep busy. When I stop, I begin thinking about Paavo.”

  Connie gazed over the candy-filled kitchen. “Then you sure don’t want to think about him much,” she said, propping her head up with her arm. “What’s happening that’s got you so upset?”

  “He’s troubled by some strange goings-on at work, and he hasn’t quite been himself. I simply tried to tell him about the Random Acts of Kindness Mission, and he made it sound like the place is a front for the mob or something,” Angie confessed. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you think it is?” Connie dragged herself from the table to take over the stirring.

  “I have no reason to doubt Reverend Hodge,” Angie said, grateful to sit for a moment. “I trust him.”

  “Then don’t worry, Angie. What does a homicide inspector know about rescue missions and reverends, anyway?”

  “Maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t let it bother me.” She reached for a chocolate-honey nougat and popped it in her mouth.

  “I swear,” Connie said, “a man can drive a good woman crazy faster than bees make honey.”

  Angie grimaced. “Tell me about it.”

  “I’ve given up on them. All the satisfaction in my life comes from just one thing.” She pointed to the pot she was stirring. “Chocolate.”

  Angie chuckled, which wasn’t easy to do when nauseated by the smell and taste of bittersweet, semisweet, milk, and white chocolate. Not to mention the nougat she had just swallowed.

  “It’s true! I even gave up sex for chocolate,” Connie said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not? Good chocolate, at least, is easy to get.”

  Angie laughed. “You’re right—and you can have it anytime you want. Even in the middle of your gift shop.”

  “Exactly. And when you say the word commitment,” Connie added emphatically, “you don’t see chocolate pick itself up and go running down the street.”

  “Like my cousin Buddy?” Angie asked, a bit cautious about this, a sensitive subject. On the other hand, Angie was dying to know what had gone wrong with Connie and Buddy’s relationship.

  “Exactly!”

  Angie sighed. “I understand.” She got up and checked the candy thermometer. “Ah! The chocolate’s just about the right temperature. Time to start again.”

  For this latest attempt in the search for the perfect angelina, they had melted chocolate and caramel, and Angie had pitted a bunch of dates while Connie had cracked and shelled pecans, then quartered them lengthwise. Those that shattered were chopped extra fine.

  The recipe called for them to pour a smidgen of melted caramel into each date’s cavity, then quickly, before the caramel thickened, to shove in a quartered pecan, dip the date into the chocolate, and roll it in the minced pecan.

  Connie turned the chocolate over to Angie and began stirring the caramel. “If I didn’t love chocolate so much,” Connie said, “I’d swear the smell is making me sick.”

  “Stir, Connie. Be strong. And remember that whatever we have left over will be donated to the Random Acts of Kindness Mission. So all this work is for a good cause.”

  “I’m stirring, I’m stirring.”

  Angie picked up a date, opened it without tearing it, and then, holding it with thin tongs, dripped hot caramel into it with a small spoon. “Let’s pray that these are the angelinas we’re looking for.” She handed the tongs to Connie and took over stirring the caramel.

  “That’s what you said about the last three recipes.” Connie shoved a pecan into the date and, still using the tongs, dipped the date into the chocolate. She passed the tongs back to Angie. “Maybe this perfect confection you’re looking for just doesn’t exist. Why are you doing this? Use something already popular. Does the world need angelinas?”

  “I’m not one to jump on someone else’s bandwagon,” Angie said. “I like the idea of angelinas. Besides, if I called them amalfis, people might think they were shoes.”

  “Har, har.”

  The number of candies cooling and hardening slowly began to grow.

  “About the mission,” Angie began, using her arm to brush her hair back off her forehead. Without thinking about it, she drizzled some chocolate into the date and handed it to Connie.

  “Yes?” Connie asked as she too became turned around and shoved the pecan into the chocolate and then dipped the date into the caramel to coat it.

  “Why don’t you come with me sometime? You can judge it for yourself.”

  “Just what I need, another place to do volunteer work. Between my business, my house, visiting my mom, who still hasn’t gotten over my sister’s death, and my on-again, off-again relationship with your cousin—”

  “So it’s not completely over?”

  “Who knows? Anyway, I’d like to see this fancy mission, but I won’t have much time.” Connie handed Angie a pecan with caramel smeared over it. Angie rolled it in crushed pecan, then reached for a date to start the next one.

  “No problem,” Angie said. “It’s for charity. Any amount of time you can give will be gladly received.” With her head swimming and the smell of the chocolate growing ever stronger, Angie looked down to see that she was trying to shove a date into a pecan. “You know, Connie, even if this was the perfect angelina, I’d go nuts making these things all day long. Let’s finish this up fast.”

  “Good idea, but how? Look at all those dates.”

  “No problem.” As Connie watched in amazement, Angie spread the chocolate on cookie sheets, ran the dates and pecans through her Cuisinart, tossed them into the caramel, and stirred. She spread the mixture over the chocolate, then topped it with another, thinner layer of chocolate. Before it hardened, she cut it into half-inch squares.

  “You know, Connie”—Angie looked down at the chocolate and cocoa powder that covered her from head to toe. She was exhausted and completely sick of the smell, taste, and sight of candy—“you almost had me convinced about the wisdom of giving up sex for chocolate, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’ve never heard anyone complain about having too much sex.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “We’ve gone through every piece of evidence in the Hall,” Paavo said to Yosh as they rode down Harrison. “We couldn’t find the blouse and beer bottle from the crime scene. Whoever made the switch got rid of them.”

  “It was worth checking,” Yosh said. “We’d have looked like a pair of jerks if the evidence to nail Peewee Clayton was sitting in some locker all the time.”

  “Right. Even more foolish than we do now.” And that was plenty foolish. As much as Paavo was checking out others, the other cops were giving him plenty of odd looks in return.

  “I wouldn’t take anything for granted around here,” Yosh said. “Hey, you got to remember, this is the city where a piece of valuable jewelry placed in evidence was left unattended in a jury room. Then it
disappeared. We can’t prove a juror snatched it, but we aren’t taking any bets that they’re innocent.”

  “Don’t remind me of that.” Paavo shook his head at the memory of one of the city’s more bizarre courtroom incidents. “This fiasco is bad enough.”

  “I wonder if you should have tried to bluff your way through the prelim,” Yosh mused. “What if you had simply lied and said it was the blouse and beer bottle from the scene? I mean, you had lab tests to back you up.”

  Paavo shook his head. “I saw Clayton’s eyes. He knew. His attorney would have asked for an evidentiary hearing. It would have taken a little longer, but the result would have been the same. Clayton would have walked.”

  They parked the car in the middle of Valencia Street and got out. The buildings on the street were old Victorian flats, most covered with peeling, chalky white paint that obliterated the elegant woodwork on the gables and around the doors and windows. Gentrification hadn’t yet reached this neighborhood.

  Paavo rang the bell to the walk-up flat. The door buzzed, and he pushed it open—a relic of older times when city dwellers opened their doors without first knowing who was outside them.

  “Who is it?” an elderly voice called down.

  “Mrs. Clayton?” he called back. He couldn’t see her at the top of the stairs. “Police Inspectors Smith and Yoshiwara. We’re here to speak with your son.”

  “He’s sleeping. Leave him alone.”

  “It’s important, Mrs. Clayton. We need to talk to him.” He waited for her reply.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then he heard the old woman grumble, “Well, just a minute, then.”

  He and Yosh waited a good ten minutes before she called them to come upstairs and led them into her small living room. They sat down on a rust-colored sofa, and she settled into a brown lounge chair. She was a barrel-shaped woman with a flat, round, reddish face and spidery tufts of gray hair. Turning her head, she shouted into a hallway behind her, “Peewee, hurry up.”

  In a few minutes, Peewee came in wearing pajama bottoms and an unbuttoned, mismatched pajama top. His dark brown hair stood on end, his eyes were heavy with sleep, and he needed a shave. A cigarette dangled out of his mouth. Peewee wasn’t an especially small man, which led to a lot of speculation as to why he’d been given that particular nickname. But he was a mean SOB, so no one asked. The reality was probably a lot less humorous than the jokes the possibilities gave rise to, anyway.