A Dinner to Die For

by Susan Dunlap

  “No.”

  “No?” She flung her arms in the air. “They’re saying I’ve lost my touch, that’s what. It could kill me. Do you know how I’ve worked to get some recognition?”

  “Sit down and tell me,” I said, motioning her to join me on a soft couch with throw pillows that reminded me of her smock.

  She sat. “I don’t have money like Ashoka.”

  “Ashoka Prem, Mitch’s friend from the English class?”

  “Yeah. Ashoka’s family has oodles. Had it for years. Being a chef is a hobby for Ashoka. Hell, life is a hobby for him. He can dabble till he’s eighty and it won’t matter. And Mitch, well, he had Laura to support him. I wish I’d had a wife to stay in California and work her tail off so I could spritz around some tourist cooking school near the Left Bank. Those places cost a fortune. Rich American dabblers come to spend money, they figure.” She threw up her hands, looking very French.

  “That’s where you went?” I asked, amazed.

  She jumped up. “Not me. Mitch and Ashoka.”

  I motioned her down again.

  “I went to the best school in Paris. I saved for five years to pay for tuition, and fare, and living expenses. I applied three times before they would consider me. I took French classes for years; they don’t speak English. I had to hock my soul to start Paradise. Look, this is the best place I’ve lived since I left my parents.”

  “But it’s worth it, isn’t it? You’ve been written up in the paper. Everyone in Berkeley knows your name.”

  “I’m not after fame. I’m not looking to write a cookbook like Mitch. I’m not hot for the talk show circuit. I want people to savor my creations and to know that this is the best it can possibly be.” She assessed my reaction. “How can I make you see. It’s like art. I don’t want to be just El Greco or Modigliani; I want to create the Mona Lisa. Or in music—”

  “I take your meaning.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, deflated.

  “About the poisonings ...” I prodded.

  “I might as well never lift a crepe pan again.” She sank back into the pillows, her small drawn face looking paler and sharper in contrast to their lush shades. Pushing herself back up, she rested her elbows on her thighs and stared directly at me. “It would be one thing if people had really been poisoned. If they’d died. Then everyone would know that there was a lunatic loose. But what I’ve got is the customers complaining that the food tastes funny. Funny! They feel lousy later on. What’s that? It doesn’t sound like a lunatic. There are homicidal lunatics; there aren’t indigestive lunatics. ‘Funny’ sounds like the milk has gone bad, or the spices came out of a jar. ‘Funny’ is how dinner tastes if your kid makes it. So no one’s going to think of a conspiracy. Everyone just assumes the problem is with me. Of course they’re not saying it to me, but I can tell. People shy away. It’s like I’m, well, poison.”

  I knew the feeling. “Why would anyone indulge in that type of poisoning?”

  I was prepared for the type of tentative reply Pereira had gotten from Laura Biekma, but Adrienne didn’t hesitate. “To destroy me.”

  “What about Mitch, it couldn’t have done him any good.”

  “He wasn’t the chef. Everyone in the business knew that. He never came in the kitchen till after the customers had left.”

  “Because you wouldn’t let him, right?”

  She gave me a quick nod.

  “Why?” I insisted.

  “Why? Because there can be only one chef in the kitchen. He hired me to be chef. I’m the chef. I can’t be bothered with him futzing around tasting the soup, tossing in a handful of cilantro—he did that once, in my soup! Or he’d say the wine sauce needed scallions instead of shallots. I can’t put up with that.”

  “But if you had an agreement …”

  “Had is the word. For Mitch, the agreement lasted while he was making it.” She reached out and put a hand on my arm, then, as if remembering the nature of our interview, drew it back. “Look, Mitch and I got along, in our way. He didn’t mean any harm, far from it. Mitch thrived on being liked. That was the problem. He was so busy concentrating on being liked now that the past slipped away.”

  “Criticizing your food was hardly the thing to make you like him.”

  “But the customers, if he made their dinners better by adding cilantro, they’d like him. And they did, they loved him. He was on their side, making sure they had the best dinners in town. If the food did taste funny, the only question they had about him was why he didn’t get rid of me. And then, they excused him that because I own a third of the place. He couldn’t fire me.”

  “Couldn’t he have bought you out?”

  She shrugged, “He might have thought about it, but he didn’t have the money. Besides, I would never have sold. Not the way things were. That’s what I’m telling you; now I couldn’t get another position. No one would hire me even as sous-chef, much less give me free rein.”

  “Free rein?”

  “Look, Mitch might have been an egomaniac, but he wasn’t a fool. He caught on real soon in Paris. He knew he’d never be great. Ashoka never understood that. He still thinks he’ll open a restaurant that will transform Indian food. But Mitch got it quick. He knew if he was going to make a splash he needed an artist. And he knew enough to realize I was an artist. So we had a deal.”

  “So Mitch was never the chef?”

  For the first time Adrienne hesitated. “Not really. No. He cooked. He even created some dishes, sometimes they were good, but just good, not superlative. And good’s nothing. In Berkeley, good is what you get on any corner.”

  “Then what is it he put in his cookbook?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Your recipes?”

  “You got it.”

  “Why did you allow that?”

  Scowling, she squirmed, reached behind her, and yanked out the offending lump—a bleach-spotted tan wool cap—and tossed it angrily to the floor. “Stupidity. Greed. Innocence. Take your pick. It was part of the agreement. I wanted security, a place where I could create, where no one would tell me what to cook or how to cook it, and no one could fire me. And I got that. No matter what happens, I stay at Paradise.”

  “Suppose Mitch and Laura had decided to sell their shares? You have right of first refusal. Would you have bought them out?”

  “Before this poisoning business, I’d have jumped at the chance. I could always have gotten backing. People would have been lined up for the honor.”

  “And now?”

  “Now only an insecticide company would take the chance.”

  “And if the Biekmas had wanted to buy you out?”

  “They wouldn’t. I am Paradise. Without me it would be nothing.”

  “But suppose.”

  “They could shove it. Particularly now.”

  “What did Mitch get out of the deal?”

  “Fame,” she said with disgust. “He got his restaurant. He got the notice of being the cook there. The deal was that for publication we were both chefs for the first year. And he got the recipes. I didn’t care. What’s one year? I’ll be cooking for the rest of my life. What I created last year is gone. I’m not interested in that. I care about what I’m creating now. So as long as Mitch presented the recipes right, and he did do that, he was welcome to them. He could have his picture on the cover, he could do the signing circuit, he could hold press conferences, he could angle for Johnny Carson: that was all fine. I didn’t want any of that, and frankly, he was damned good at it. Talk shows were his thing. I saw him on a couple. He loved being the guest chef. But he could as easily have been the guest lion trainer. He wasn’t a chef, he was a personality.”

  “So you are saying the deal worked out for both of you?”

  “Yeah, until the poisonings.”

  I shifted on the cushion. “Adrienne, you’ve given this a lot of thought. Do you have any suspects?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course! Who?”

  “A
shoka.”

  Ashoka Prem, the guy with all the time and all the money, the friend who had helped out as sous-chef last night. “Why?”

  Adrienne looked at me with the same expression I had seen on the faces of people catching their first sight of Earth Man. She looked like I had just descended from outer space. “The ordinance. The Gourmet Ghetto Ordinance that limits the number of restaurants. Ashoka’s had his restaurant ready to open for ages. He’s got every cent tied up in it. And he’s next on the list.”

  CHAPTER 19

  ASHOKA PREM WAS FIRST on the list to open his restaurant in the Gourmet Ghetto, an enviable position to the fifty or so restaurant, boutique, or produce-shop owners who crowded behind him. But perhaps it didn’t seem so desirable to him as he sat around month after month waiting for an establishment to fail, or an owner to die. How was he handling the good fortune of Mitch Biekma’s death? I wanted to observe him in his own restaurant. But it was already one o’clock, time for my “after lunch” appointment with Inspector Doyle.

  The fog had cleared; the sky was that unbroken birds-egg blue so characteristic of the West. But as I drove down Spruce I could feel my throat tightening and a line of sweat forming at my hairline. It was the same sweaty fear that had clutched me in the plane. Get hold of yourself! Glancing down the steep, winding street only enough to drive, I focused frantically on an oak-beamed English cottage, on a wispy blue-violet-flowered jacaranda tree, on a date palm, as if I could lower myself from one to the other down the hill. I glanced furtively at the empty road, then back to a Spanish villa, to a wooden split-level. They were all the rage in Jersey when I was a kid.

  I clutched the wheel. My throat throbbed. Check the road; not much traffic now. Relax your grip.

  I slowed, barely moving. The afternoon breeze hadn’t picked up yet. The leaves were still. Their steady shadows accented the glimmer of the sunlit stucco houses.

  A van passed; I swerved to the left, my heart pounding. Why was I panicking? This wasn’t the helicopter. I’d driven last night; I’d driven up here an hour ago. What was going on?

  But I hadn’t driven downhill.

  I unclenched my fingers, easing up on the wheel, and drove on, staring at the pavement ahead. What about Ashoka Prem? Think about him! He was in the Virginia Woolf seminar with Mitch and Laura. He must have been there when they found the house Paradise was in. What else? He was in Paris with Mitch, and with Adrienne. Paris, where the one-of-a-kind horseradish jar came from.

  I braked at Marin Avenue. I could turn right here, down the hill; it would be just as fast; faster because it was steeper. I swallowed, let my eyes shut, gathering all my control behind them. One more breath, then I’ll go—forward. Spruce is steep enough for today. One more breath. An engine raced behind me. I checked the rearview mirror. Three cars lined up.

  I stepped on the gas. Prem. He trained as a chef. He’s sunk his money, all of it, Adrienne said, into a restaurant that can’t open till one goes under. And he just happened to call Mitch yesterday afternoon after the regular sous-chef had called to say his tires had been slashed.

  I braked at Rose, and looked ahead, feeling my breath ease. The hill flattened to a gentle grade here. I would be okay. For the moment.

  Sweat still coated my forehead, and my turtleneck stuck to my back when I pulled into the parking slot. I turned off the ignition and glanced in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. I didn’t look like someone who had panicked; I just looked like I’d been up all night. My gray-green eyes, always the bellwethers, reflected the gray of my skin. My brown hair was sticky and clumpy. A wash, a combing, a little makeup to replace what I’d sweated off, some clean clothes—they’d make me look less like someone recently exhumed. But if I couldn’t shake this ridiculous panic, it wouldn’t make any difference.

  I got out, slammed the car door, and strode across the lot.

  “Detective Smith!” Three men raced toward me. Reporters. “You’re in charge of the Biekma murder, right?”

  “No comment.”

  “Do you have any leads?”

  “No comment.”

  “No leads at all?”

  “I said, no comment!” I walked into the station and slammed the door.

  I stopped in the bathroom and made what repairs I could, and headed on to Doyle’s office.

  Inspector Doyle was hurrying out his door. He paused, hand on the knob. “No time, Smith. Phone’s been going all day. Half the city council’s been on the horn. Reporters from New York, St. Louis, Miami, New Orleans, Toronto, and even Paris. And now someone from the mayor’s office is coming down. I don’t know how they expect us to get anything done.” Releasing the knob, he said, “And I’ve got the press in half an hour. What do you have for me, Smith?”

  “Only suspicion.”

  “Smith, I need facts. I can’t give these people suspicions. I need to show them progress.” He shook his head. “I could take Eggs off rotation—”

  “It’s my case, Inspector. I’m handling it!” I snapped. “I haven’t been home since last night. In the last four hours I’ve done two interrogations, conferred with Pereira twice, and stuck my head up inside Earth Man’s cloak. What more do you want?”

  Doyle’s thin lips quivered. “Okay, give me this suspicion of yours.”

  I told him about Ashoka Prem. “He’s been a friend of the Biekmas for years. He probably knew about the salad chef quitting, and how tight things were at Paradise. It would have been no problem for him to find out where the sous-chef lived.”

  Inspector Doyle nodded. For the first time I saw a hint of a smile on his face. “And he probably knew how to slash a tire too. Right, Smith?”

  “He called Paradise just after the sous-chef told Mitch he couldn’t get to Berkeley. That does seem a great coincidence.”

  CHAPTER 20

  MY OFFICE WAS EMPTY save for two cardboard boxes of clothes Howard had left, and the growing pile of papers in my in-box. I poured myself the dregs of Pernell Jackson’s coffee and stood while I dialed the bullpen for Murakawa; he’d meet me at Prem’s restaurant. I wasn’t going to take the chance of interrogating such a likely suspect without backup. Still standing—tired as I was, it would be fatal to sit—I read through Doyle’s report on Ronald Struber aka Ashoka Prem.

  Ashoka Prem had been born Ronald Struber. That he had changed his name didn’t surprise me, hundreds of Northern Californians had changed their names in the last decade. Animal rights advocates called themselves Laughing Otter, the ecology-minded became Singing Rainbow or Green Meadow, and those who found gurus switched from Jim, Jane, and Jerry to Ananda, Jyoti, and Ram.

  And it didn’t surprise me that Struber had maintained his chosen name of Prem so long as no one thought to mention the change. I doubted whether someone like Adrienne Jenks had ever heard the name Ronald Struber.

  Ashoka Prem—I found myself thinking of him as Prem—had been cooperative with Inspector Doyle, albeit too distraught to be much real use as a witness.

  His account of the activities in the kitchen had fit with those of the others. He had stated he lived on the premises of his own ready-to-open restaurant and was there, alone, all the previous day until he went to help the Biekmas. The initial papers indicated that Prem had been a disciple of a guru in Maharashta in central India. He had been to the ashram there on and off for some years. Now that he was back in Berkeley, he rose at four every morning to do esoteric breathing exercises. If he had been distraught last night, I had no idea what shape he would be in this afternoon. I hadn’t been to India, though I had friends who had (you’d have to look hard in Berkeley to find a person who didn’t have friends who had). But I did know that breathing exercises done without guidance could be dangerous. How dangerous in the hands, or nose, of one already distraught was anyone’s guess.

  Murakawa was waiting when I pulled up in front of Prem’s.

  “How’re your ribs?” I asked.

  He shrugged. Murakawa had assisted me on a number of cas
es. He was young, eager; had stamina that would have awed Inspector Doyle in his prime. I had yet to hear Murakawa complain. “I’m okay. But I’ll keep an eye on you from now on, especially on slides.” Glancing toward Prem’s restaurant, he said, “I can’t wait to see the inside of this place.”

  Like Paradise, this building had originally been a house. However, there the likeness ceased. What had once been a five-room dwelling on a residential street now looked like an Indian stupa—a white stucco building that blended upward into a dome and culminated in a golden spire. It hadn’t been finished a week before it was christened the North Berkeley Boob.

  “It looks like a place you’d go for hotdogs in L.A.,” Murakawa said as he walked up the white path.

  There was no sign outside, no windows. It took me a moment to find the white stuccolike door, so closely did it blend into the facade. I knocked.

  There was no answer. “Asleep?” Murakawa suggested.

  “If he’s asleep, it’s in here.” I knocked again, louder. To the right, beyond a shoulder-high hedge, neighbors stared through their windows.

  “Maybe he breathed himself into oblivion.” Murakawa grinned. At twenty-three, he was too young to have been pulled into the Eastern mysticism that had left Berkeley with Buddhist establishments from Thailand, Tibet, India, and Japan, with Moonies and Rajneeshis, and with yoga classes of all varieties. For Murakawa, life was sinews and muscles, stakeouts and deductions, and the pull that spurred most cops—the chance to make a difference. “You want me to guard the back, if I can find it?”

  “I’ll give him one more chance.” I pounded hard. Almost immediately footsteps were audible.

  The man who answered the door was what I might have expected of Ronald Struber–Ashoka Prem. He was tall, robust, with dark hair curling off his bare chest, a thick pelt of dark hair on his forearms and the tops of his feet, and no hair, dark or otherwise, on his head. He wore blue drawstring pants with Om stenciled on the right hip. With an asthmatic-sounding wheeze, he pulled the air in through his nose and down into his expanding chest. I waited for him to exhale, but he kept taking in air; the pale skin on his chest kept stretching out to the sides, blowfishlike, the dark hairs springing to attention. His pale blue eyes shone; they may have reflected a surge of enthusiasm, but it wasn’t for anything here. There was no question that only Prem’s body had come to the door. His mind might be anywhere between here and Varanasi. Just as I was wondering how soon his face would match the color of his pants, the wheeze lowered in pitch and the skin began to pull inward.