A Cook in Time

by Joanne Pence

  “I never paid much attention to his comings and goings before this. He’d simply show up now and then.”

  “Who came up with the fake abduction idea?”

  Holton blew on his hands. “Can you turn on the heater?”

  “It is on.” Paavo waited for a reply.

  “The abduction was just for fun,” Holton said. “It’s the kind of thing that goes on in ufology.”

  “Hoaxes?”

  “I prefer to think of them as stunts.”

  Paavo stopped asking questions as he watched the traffic zigzag its way across Market Street. Between never-ending construction and the way the streets met at odd angles, it was always an adventure.

  Holton cleared his throat. “Um, may I ask—aren’t you investigating those bizarre murders where the bodies were mutilated?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are three?”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious about the numbers on the bodies. A seven, a five, and a four. Have you come up with what they mean?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Me?” Holton’s voice screeched. “No. No, not at all. I’m a scientist. We play with numbers. That’s all. They intrigue me. Any connection between the three men, by the way?”

  “None that we know of. Why?”

  “No reason. Idle conversation. Forget I asked.”

  Paavo watched Holton turn his head and stare out the passenger window while he nervously rubbed the fingers on one hand with those of the other. Why would Holton, with all that was going on with NAUTS, be paying attention to the mutilation murders?

  As they neared the Ingleside district, Paavo asked, “How close are you and Mosshad?”

  “Not close at all. He’s friends with Phil. They both knew the original leader of our group—a man named Neumann, Igor Mikhailovich Neumann. Maybe you should call Phil—or go with him. Let me go back to Stan’s. But don’t tell them where I am, okay?”

  “Why would Phil suddenly care about Mosshad? None of you seemed to give Mosshad a second thought earlier.”

  Holton glanced at Paavo, then stared straight ahead a long time before answering. “Because of Oliver Hardy,” he said finally. “If Hardy’s death was an accident, why was he hanging out an upper-floor window of an empty warehouse in the first place? If it was a suicide, what drove him to it? If, however, it wasn’t a suicide or an accident, then what about Mosshad? What about all of us? And which of us is behind it?”

  “That’s why you’re staying with Stan, isn’t it?” Paavo asked.

  Holton looked miserable. “You guessed it.”

  Paavo continued on to Mosshad’s apartment. When no one answered Mosshad’s door, they contacted the apartment manager. She entered and left the door open wide enough that Paavo could see into the studio.

  There was no sign of any disturbance in it. In the lobby, they found Mosshad’s mailbox stuffed with letters. They thanked the landlady and left.

  Paavo drove Holton to the Hall of Justice and escorted him to Missing Persons to file a report. Paavo needed to forget about Mosshad and Oliver Hardy and all the other nut cases Angie seemed to have a knack for involving herself with, and get back to work on the mutilation murder cases—to stop the killer before he killed again.

  He pressed the elevator button to the fourth floor as Holton’s questions played in his mind. Seven, five, four. What could those numbers mean to Holton? To a mathematician? Seven times five times four? One hundred forty? What else?

  “A watch!” Luis Calderon announced loudly.

  Jarred from his thoughts, Paavo discovered he was already in the Homicide Bureau and halfway to his desk.

  Had Calderon spoken to him? He glanced at the inspector. “Get her a watch,” Calderon said, looking at him. “For Christmas. A nice expensive watch. One that costs one, two hundred dollars. She’ll go ape over it.”

  “A watch isn’t romantic,” Bill Sutter said. Paavo spun around. Even Sutter had an opinion on this? The man never said anything at all. To anyone.

  “A sexy negligee. That’s what women love,” Sutter continued.

  “I don’t know if women love them,” Rebecca Mayfield said. “I think that’s a present men give to women that’s more for themselves. I think a weekend away—just the two of you, in some romantic setting—would be wonderful. It doesn’t have to be far. Carmel, maybe. Or Mendocino.” Her gaze met Paavo’s. “That’s the kind of present I’d love to receive anytime at all.”

  “Nah!” Calderon cried. “A woman like Angie wants something tangible. Something she can show her friends. Like a watch.”

  Rebecca sauntered over to Calderon’s desk. “What do you know about women like her? She’s probably got an armful of watches.”

  “I’ll bet she hasn’t bought herself a really sexy negligee.” Bill Sutter’s eyes glazed. “Baby dolls. Sheer lace. The neckline plunging, and skimpy little panties with—”

  Paavo walked out. He didn’t want to hear it. Since Yosh wasn’t one of Santa’s little helpers, Paavo thought he must be out tracking down a killer. Paavo needed to be doing the same.

  Holton’s question about a connection between the victims caused his thoughts to travel along a new path. Because the three men had been so outwardly different, he and Yosh had been working on the assumption that the killings were random.

  What if they weren’t? What if there was some connection between them despite their surface differences?

  He sat in his car. The day had started out as a day off, but he’d already shot that concept to hell. Why stop now?

  He took out his notebook and flipped through it. In his jottings on Felix Rolfe, he noticed that some of the panhandlers around the ballpark had said Felix Rolfe spent a lot of time at Harvey’s Liquors on Third Street. That was as good a lead as any.

  An old man named Tom ran Harvey’s. He remembered Felix Rolfe. Ran him out of there at least once a week, whenever Rolfe came by without money. The rest of the time, Rolfe could pay for the cheap whiskey he liked. Like mother, like son, Paavo thought.

  Tom’s rheumy eyes went teary when he heard of Rolfe’s death, though whether it was out of sadness at the loss of the man or the loss of a customer, Paavo couldn’t tell. The old man directed Paavo to another friend of Rolfe’s, Cheryl Martin, who lived down on Gilman in public housing with her three kids.

  Paavo reached Yosh and had Yosh join him as they went into the public housing building. Not too many years ago, it would have been a lot more dangerous to go into public housing than it was to walk down a street in the city. Then city hall began to listen to the tenants instead of the lawyers of the gang members who terrorized those tenants, and put enough of the gang members in jail that things settled down and became safer. A little, at least. It still wasn’t a place for a cop to enter alone unless absolutely necessary.

  Paavo and Yosh kept their hands under their suit jackets, on the handles of their guns, as they walked down the littered, graffiti-covered halls to Martin’s apartment. They did their best to look forward, backward, and sideways as they passed doorway after doorway.

  Cheryl Martin shed no tears when she spoke of Rolfe, and readily told them what little she did know: the street people Rolfe had known, liquor stores he’d visited, places he’d panhandled and anything else she could think of. They wrote it all down.

  “Can you tell us when you last saw him?” Paavo asked.

  “Last week or so. I didn’t pay too much attention.”

  “Did he talk about doing anything different than usual, seeing any new people, or anything at all new or special?”

  She thought a moment, then smiled. “Come to think of it, he sure did. I didn’t believe him, though. Glad I didn’t or I jis woulda been disappointed. Now I’m not. I expected something would happen when he tol’ me, I jis didn’t expect it’d be this bad.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said he’d joined some group with some fellas he met when he was in the army—and they had a drawing, and that
he’d won. He said he was goin’ to collect him one hundred dollars, and after he got it, he was goin’ to take me out to have a fine dinner. I knew better’en to believe ’im. I knew better. Heck, if he’d a won, he’d a drunk it before I got that dinner anyways.”

  “Who was the group that had the drawing?”

  “I don’ know.”

  “Do you know where he was going to meet them?”

  “No. He didn’ tell me.”

  “Do you know anything at all about this group?”

  “No. Oh, wait, there’s one thing.” She began to rummage through a big stack of old newspapers and magazines and mail that covered the coffee table in front of the TV. “Here it is. He said they give him this paper.”

  Paavo took the brochure from her hand.

  Roswell: The True Story.

  19

  Angie rearranged the yellow day lilies on the dining room table and straightened the pillows on her sofa one more time, then paced back and forth. Her company was late. Maybe they had changed their minds. That would make things a lot easier for her.

  She heard a knock on her door and hurried to open it. Triana Crisswell and Algernon stood in front of her. As they entered, Algernon gazed deeply into her eyes and handed her a box of See’s chocolates.

  She hoped he didn’t notice that she turned slightly green. Ever since an unfortunate episode during which she had decided to become a chocolatier and had spent too much time cooking and testing the little dollops, she had trouble looking at a box of chocolates without feeling a bit woozy. “Thank you,” she said weakly, then took Triana’s coat.

  The two guests sat in the living room and Angie brought out a tray with prosciutto-wrapped melon balls, sliced kiwi, an assortment of petits fours, and strong Italian-roast coffee from North Beach.

  “The view from this apartment is incredible,” Algernon said, turning toward the window that faced the northern portion of the city from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge.

  “Your things are lovely, too,” Triana said, running her hand over the arm of the sofa. “Are these real antiques or reproductions?”

  Angie was taken aback by the question. “Real.”

  “I never could tell myself.” Triana plopped an entire petit four into her mouth. “Um, scrumptious!”

  Algernon picked up a piece of kiwi and, catching Angie’s gaze with his, curved his mouth around it and bit down. He didn’t let go of her eyes as he chewed. Angie cleared her throat and concentrated on her coffee cup.

  “Well,” Triana said. “About your plans for the dinner. You’ve kept me in suspense long enough. Do tell us everything.”

  It was show time. Angie took a deep breath. “I’d like to use the theme of Roswell,” she said. Triana’s lips turned downward at the name.

  Angie hurried on. “Everyone seems to know the story,” she said, “and it would be easy to build a fantasy about it. Women could dress up in nineteen-forties outfits—high heels with ankle straps, tight slinky skirts, short fitted jackets, their hair done up in poufs on top, then pulled back and smoothed to a roll or a cascade of curls at the nape of the neck—a very Joan Crawford or Betty Grable look. Men could wear old army uniforms—those very starched and polished khaki ones, like Eisenhower or Patton. Or people could dress up like an alien if they wished.”

  Triana thought a moment. “It has possibilities.” She turned to Algernon for his reaction. Busy eating a prosciutto-wrapped melon ball, he simply nodded.

  “I like it!” Triana said immediately, with a big smile. “We can even work up an act, if we can find a third person to join us, and do a sort of Andrews Sisters routine, like that song about the boogie-woogie bugle boy of company B.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” Angie said with a laugh, delighted at Triana’s reaction to her idea. “And Roswell was after the war, not during.”

  “From my perspective, that long ago is all ancient history,” Triana said, blatantly lying.

  “We can watch some old TV shows—Jack Benny, Milton Berle,” Angie mused. “I guess they were from that period.”

  “I’ve got it, sweetie! War of the Worlds!” Triana cried. At Angie’s confused expression, she explained. “Orson Welles put on a radio show sometime back then. Such a panic it caused! Listeners thought it was real. It’s about alien invaders.”

  “Was that during World War Two?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s close enough for government work, and that’s what this UFO stuff is all about—the government keeping it from the citizens. So with some people dressed like government workers and others like aliens, that would be perfect. Don’t you think so, Algernon?” Both Triana and Angie turned to him.

  “I believe your original concept is one of humor—to let people come to the event and be joyful,” he said grandly.

  “Absolutely!” Angie said. “People usually go places to have a good time.”

  “But in this case, we need to be serious,” he explained. “This is not a good-time issue. While I agree with the theme of Roswell, we must handle it seriously. With dignity.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Triana announced. “I really didn’t care for that bugle boy song, Angie.”

  Angie’s heart sank. “What about the costumes?”

  “I don’t think they would contribute to the seriousness of the affair,” Algernon said.

  Why in the world had they hired her, then? She kept her voice even. “The whole idea of a fantasy dinner is to allow people to take part in the fantasy of the event,” she said. “I think it would only enhance the reality of Roswell if we allowed the attendees to come in the dress of the period. They would know, and feel, what it meant to be in Roswell on that historic day over fifty years ago when the spaceship crashed. You could then build on an event that will seem far more real to the participants because they will be living it.”

  “Hmmm.” Algernon put his hand to his chin and pondered this. “You may have a point.”

  “Also, I’d like to set up a pictorial display of Roswell and newspapers at the time. We’ll use reproductions—old Life magazines and so on. It would be a nice touch. And just think how interested the press would be in something like that. They could pick up the whole story there.”

  “Yes. To prove that there is something to this,” Algernon said. “I’ll even have the Prometheans build a replica of a flying saucer. I like it. Some fun, plus seriousness, side by side.”

  “My thinking exactly!” Triana cried, girlishly clapping her hands.

  “Afterward, we will become serious,” he said. “I will talk to the people in attendance, to let them know about me and the Prometheus Group. I expect that some of the press will be there—that is so, isn’t it, Triana?—and we will need to give them information that they can write up in their newspapers and magazines. This is for publicity, as you know.”

  “Of course,” Triana cried. “We’ll get you a world of publicity for this event. I’m working very hard on it.”

  “I’ll be sure to set up a fantasy exactly the way you want it,” Angie added.

  Algernon gave her a long, smoldering gaze. “That is precisely what I had in mind.”

  “This is a silicon chip.” Ray Faldo, black lacquer chopstick in hand, pointed to the small square as he spoke to Paavo and Yosh. They sat in the crime lab, the chip lying on a clean white cloth. “It’s old, from the fifties. As far as I can tell, it’s a prototype of an integrated circuit chip—the chip that led to personal computers and all the microcomputer technology we have today.”

  “Where could anyone get something like that?” Paavo asked.

  “Defense research and development is one spot. Possibly R and D at some of the big private labs like Bell,” Faldo answered before continuing. “It’s an interesting object. The chips have changed remarkably since these early, crude attempts.”

  “This chip is from the fifties?” Yosh asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Same as the night goggles we found on the earlier vic,�
� Paavo said as much to himself as to the others.

  “Now this,” Faldo said, holding up the cable, “is even more interesting. It’s a bulky prototype of a fiber-optic cable.”

  “That’s interesting?” Yosh asked dubiously.

  “It is to me. It isn’t like any fiber-optic cable we have now. The earliest attempts at fiber optics that are documented are from the early sixties. This is older. It’s fifties technology—and undocumented. It’s incredible.”

  “That is strange.” Yosh agreed.

  “You guys are getting all this stuff from the mutilation murderer, right?” Faldo asked.

  “He left one of them beside each body,” Paavo answered.

  “Well, then, you should start looking at some scientists, or maybe engineers. Or sons and daughters of men who worked on defense R-and-D contracts in the fifties. This stuff all led to the creation of the high-tech life we have today. I’d love to meet the guy who owned it all. Too bad he’s a crazy murderer. He must be an interesting man.”

  “Do the numbers seven, five, four mean anything to you?” Paavo asked.

  “As in seven hundred fifty-four, or seven-six-five-four and the six is missing?”

  “I don’t know. Any way at all. And we don’t know if the number is complete, or if there are more numbers to come.”

  Faldo wrote the numbers down and studied them a moment. “Right now they don’t mean a thing. I’ll play around with them.”

  As Paavo and Yosh headed for the door, Paavo stopped and looked back at Faldo. “Is there any connection between all this stuff and—” He hesitated to even say it. “And UFOs?”

  Faldo’s lips slowly curved into a smile. “You nearly got me with that one! And they say death cops have no sense of humor!”

  “What was that about?” Yosh asked as he stepped onto the Hall of Justice elevator and hit the button for the fourth floor.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Paavo said. The elevator doors slid shut. “All the materials left with the victims are early prototypes of high-tech equipment—equipment that has changed our way of life. The guy who disappeared at Tardis Hall was a scientist. The group he was a part of calls itself the National Association of Ufological Technology Scientists. They may be UFO nuts, but they’re scientists nonetheless. Now one of them is dead and another is asking me about seven-five-four. And two of the three victims had Roswell brochures.”