Chocolate Quake

by Nancy Fairbanks

  “Threw a glass paperweight at her? We found one on the floor.”

  “Bruises?”

  “One.”

  “Could have happened when she went down.”

  “Could have.”

  “Prints on the paperweight?”

  “The victim’s were the only usable ones. It was broken, and she bled on it.”

  “No knife?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How about other people? You find anyone else who could have done it?”

  “No one else was seen in or near Faulk’s office.”

  “Listen, you know a cop named Marcus Croker?”

  “Sam, are you saying you think one of ours did it? The only cop in the building was my partner. She was upstairs taking a makeup class from some big-time black model, heard the commotion, and went down. And she didn’t see any suspects except the one we arrested.”

  “Croker was signed in, Harry. And he wasn’t signed out.”

  Harry gave me a disgusted look and began to tap computer keys. “Marcus Croker was on duty. Four to twelve. That pretty much eliminates him as a suspect, unless you think Arbus Penn, his partner, was in on the murder, too.”

  “Yeah. Well, thanks, Harry. I’ll be in touch if I get anything.”

  “You won’t,” said Harry.

  As I was leaving, I ran into Harry’s partner, Camron Cheever. “Hey, Cam,” I called. “Lookin’ good.”

  She liked that. Cammie is a real pretty black woman, and she knows it. Late twenties, early thirties, and a smart detective. Not many women that young make inspector. “What were you doing over at that center Thursday night? You don’t need any lessons on looking first-rate.”

  “How come you know about my case?” she demanded. “Harry an’ me don’t need any hotshot, football-player private eyes screwing with our busts.”

  “Oh, now you’re hurting my feelings, baby. I thought we were in love.”

  “Yeah?” She gave me a saucy grin. “If you weren’t white an’ gay, we would be, Sammie.”

  23

  An Exotic Kind of Hot

  Carolyn

  Did Sam have a car, I wondered, but choose the motorcycle to, as my son Chris says, “yank my chain?” Off we went, riding the hills to the Lower Haight and Gondar, the Ethiopian restaurant. Fortunately, I couldn’t see over Sam’s shoulder, so I was spared the sensation one experiences when almost at the crest of a hill in San Francisco, a queasy conviction that there is nothing beyond the skyline but sky and that one’s vehicle will simply fly off into nothingness. Rudyard Kipling described San Francisco as a city one-fourth reclaimed from the sea and the rest, sand hills held down by houses with no attempt to grade the hills and build streets at sensible angles.

  “You OK, chickie?” Sam shouted.

  My imaginings had caused me to tighten my grip. “Fine,” I shouted back.

  “Then retract your nails. You just hit flesh.”

  “Sorry.” I tried to relax one hand, then the other, without, of course, letting go.

  I needn’t have worried about proper attire. The staff at Gondar wore tunic-like garments, under which the women had long skirts and the men tight trousers. The customers were numerous and dressed, to say the least, casually. Very reasonable menu prices explained Gondar’s popularity.

  “Combination plates for three and diet Cokes,” said Sam to a young waitress. Obviously I was not to be allowed my own selections. “Tell Kebra we’d like to talk to her when she’s free,” he continued. When the silent girl nodded, he turned back to me. “Since we’ll be eating with our hands, it’s considered impolite not to wash first.”

  I followed him to the restrooms and washed my hands, keeping an interested eye on the “décor” both coming and going. The tables were topped with aging linoleum. The mismatched chairs had plastic-covered seats and backs, with aluminum legs and frames. Exotic, pseudo-Tibetan lanterns hung from the ceiling. On walls painted as yellow as a desert sun were paintings and enlarged photos: two men in rags and chains, dark-skinned and bearded, being led away from an ancient, oar-powered ship; another man in monk’s robes, wearing a high, white, brimless hat; photos of castle ruins; a round church; and ancient, humble dwellings among large rocks on the curve of a river. Last was a framed flag: green, yellow, and red horizontal bands with a yellow pentagram sending out rays on a light-blue disk.

  Our waitress followed us to our table with cans of diet Coke and a large, round platter lined with injerra, the flat, unleavened bread of the country. It was topped with varieties of wat, hot curries made in different colors and from different vegetables. All burned the throat, but many were enchantingly tasty. We tore pieces off the bread to dip in the pastes. I disliked the spinach but liked the chewy and flavorful cabbage, also the beany hot lentils, chickpeas that tasted slightly of vinegar, and best of all, the mushrooms. Never had mushrooms burned so rich or so hot on the tongue. “Amazing,” I said when I had tried each selection and washed them down with Coke. Between us we had almost finished the platter.

  No sooner had we wiped up the last smudges with bread than a different woman arrived with another platter. “Kebra, love. Join us. This is Carolyn Blue. It’s her mother-in-law who was arrested for Denise’s murder. Carolyn, Kebra Zenawi.”

  She was a beautiful woman with a thin, fine-featured face, creamy brown skin, full lips, and the most amazing dark eyes, large and thickly lashed. Kebra slid the platter onto the table and sat down with us. “My heart aches at the terrible death of my friend Denise, and I pray for her soul each day.” She spoke very precise English, but with an interesting lilt. “Nor do I believe, Mrs. Blue, that the mother of your husband would have killed Denise. A scholar does not wield a knife, nor does a woman who speaks for all women kill a sister.”

  “Thank you. Since you were in the building that night, we—”

  Sam cut me off by saying, “We’ll eat first.” Evidently I had committed a faux pas, so I scooped up some mushrooms and complimented Mrs. Zenawi on the dish. “I’m a food writer,” I explained. “I’d love to write a column about Ethiopian food and include a recipe if you’d be willing to provide me with one.”

  “I am desolated to say that the recipes are shared only among women of my family. If I were ever to have a daughter, I could tell her, or if I returned to my country, I could tell the daughter of my sister, but—”

  “Of course,” I interrupted hurriedly. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “How could you know?” she replied politely.

  “So what do you hear from Menelik?” Sam asked. “Did they send him off to the border to fight the evil Er itreans?”

  Before she answered Sam, she explained to me, “Menelik Zenawi was my husband. Together we fled to the United States because our lives were endangered during the coups that racked our country. However, Menelik was not happy here, although San Francisco is, in some ways, like Ethiopia—because of the earthquakes and droughts.”

  “Earthquakes here are caused by the tectonic plates grinding together,” said Sam. “In Ethiopia the Great Rift, where the land pulls apart, causes quakes.”

  “To the man who is killed by the heaving and splitting of the earth, it little matters what happens far below to cause his death,” she replied serenely.

  “What she’s telling you, in a roundabout way, is that Menelik, who thought he was hot stuff because he was named after some king who was the son of Solomon and Sheba—”

  “I too am proud of my name,” said Kebra, “for I was named for a queen in that dynasty. Mesqel Kebra is a saint in our church, as well.” She turned to me. “Ethiopia is a Christian country, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian denominations, although we are Monophysites and have some differences of belief from the Western sects.”

  Wondering what a Monophysite was, I smiled and looked interested.

  To Sam she said, “Will you come for the feast of Mesqel?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he replied. “And if I forget, Paul will r
emind me.” Then he explained to me, “It’s the celebration of somebody going to the Holy Land and finding the True Cross.”

  “St. Helena,” said Kebra. “But we were speaking of Menelik, whose unhappiness in the United States was not so much that no one recognized the importance of his name and family, but that no one had any interest in his academic credentials. Menelik is a noted scholar of Ge’ez, the ancient religious and literary language of our country. Alas, there was no job in San Francisco for a scholar of Ge’ez, so we opened a restaurant, a calling which he felt beneath him.”

  “Then he took it out on Kebra by beating her up,” said Sam.

  “True. Menelik did not feel that I was a properly humble woman. He felt that I was picking up unseemly attitudes here in the United States, which he thought to beat out of me. It was then that Denise came to my rescue. She secreted me in a house for women in danger of being killed by their husbands and sent the police to remonstrate with mine. Unhappily, Menelik would not be appeased or turned from what he considered his right and duty as a husband. Then Margaret Hanrahan was recruited by my friend and defender, Denise. Margaret had my husband deported and our restaurant put legally into my hands. I am a very lucky woman to have such friends.”

  “And Menelik?” asked Sam.

  “Menelik too is safe and happy, for his political enemies are no longer in power, and the church has granted him an annulment from his undutiful, barren wife. He has become a monk and will no doubt find a life of chastity and scholarship to his taste.”

  “All’s well that ends well,” said Sam, grinning. “If he’s taken vows, he’s not likely to show up and give you grief.”

  “Indeed,” said Kebra and turned to me. “I observed when you came in that you took note of my pictures. Would you like to know what they represent?”

  “Yes, please.” Anything to keep on a subject that wasn’t impolite.

  She nodded. “The two men led from their boat in captivity are St. Frumentius and his brother, who became favorites of the king and converted my country to Christianity in the fourth century A.D. The bearded man in the white hat and robe is a monk, such as my former husband is now. The castle is in Gondar, once the capital of our country. The picture of the round dwellings with conical roofs is of Aksum, a holy city. These photos I took from the Internet and had made large. The paintings I commissioned from a fellow Ethiopian.”

  “Fascinating,” I murmured and embarrassed myself by impolitely scooping up the last of the mushroom curry. I was distracted by trying to reconcile the idea of this exotic woman, with her unusual clothing and adventurous history, decorating her walls with photos from the Internet.

  “And now that we have broken bread together, of what help can I be to you in your search for the true murderer of my friend?”

  “Did you see anyone that night who might have killed her?” Sam asked. “Who had something against her? Who shouldn’t have been there?”

  Kebra folded long fingers on the plastic table—ours was a bilious green—and bowed her head in thought. Then she said, “I was in the office of the Battered Women’s Advocacy that night. It is on the second floor. A very bad man named Piñon came in and screamed at me many rude things in demand that I tell him in which shelter we had hidden his wife. Do you know him?”

  “By reputation,” said Sam. “What did you do?”

  “I told him to leave or I would call upon the police to remove him.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He left, of course. I pointed my weapon at him. No doubt, he was afraid of injury and humiliation, having been previously shot by another woman whom he attempted to frighten.”

  To my astonishment, when she mentioned her weapon, she pulled a black metal, rather squared-off gun from the folds of her robe. Several customers at surrounding tables noticed and became agitated.

  “Do not be alarmed,” she said to them. “I am authorized to carry this weapon by the city of San Francisco, because I am the proprietor of a business and because my former husband was a man of violence.” She smiled at the customers, then resumed her description of last Thursday night.

  “Once Mr. Piñon had departed, I closed the office and went downstairs to the kitchen to speak to Bebe Takashima, who had just finished teaching an ethnic cuisine class. I wished her to take a class for me tomorrow night because we are having a family party here to celebrate the birth of a child. In the kitchen I saw a person I did not expect to see, Mr. Charles Desmond, who was flirting most outrageously with my friend Bebe.”

  “He wasn’t on the sign-in list,” I remarked to Sam.

  “Neither was this Bebe,” Sam replied. “So who’s Charles Desmond, Kebra?”

  “He is the love of Myra Fox, who was once our accountant before she was afflicted with cancer of a female sort. How unkind of him to flirt with another woman when his love is in danger of dying and subjected to dreadful medical treatments. I felt very sorry for Myra, whom I know from before Denise replaced her in financial matters.

  “I believe this Desmond could see my disapproval of his unfaithful conduct, even though he has not married Myra Fox, as would be proper. He hurried to tell me that he had come to the center to secure financial papers for Myra to work on at home because inactivity has caused her depression. He seemed angry that the center had replaced her, even temporarily, while she was sick and said it would be good if she were to come back to work and take over her old duties.

  “I wondered, if he was on an errand for Myra, why he was in the Nutrition Central smiling with lascivious intent at Bebe Takashima. His conduct embarrassed me, and I left. And now I must return to my duties. Please give my regards to the mother of your husband, Mrs. Blue. Perhaps you would care to join us here in September for the celebration of Mesqel.”

  “Thank you, but we’ll be back in Texas by then,” I replied and complimented her on a lovely lunch. Sam got the name of the company Ms. Takashima worked for.

  “Two more people to see,” I remarked as we walked to his motorcycle. “I wonder if Mr. Desmond saw Denise that night before she was killed? Or saw the murderer?”

  “Or was the murderer,” Sam suggested.

  “It wasn’t as if Denise had taken Myra’s job for good,” I pointed out, “only until she was well enough to come back. Several people said Denise was anxious to return to the battered women, and the interim head is certainly anxious to have her back.”

  “What if someone didn’t want Myra to get her old job back?”

  “Ah, maybe the director, Mrs. Timberlite. Maybe they had to keep Denise in place so she’d head off the Women of Color protest against his project.”

  “In that case Denise would still be alive, chickie. We’re getting our suspects mixed up here.”

  “Well, Sammie,” I replied sarcastically. “What do you think we should do next?”

  “Find Bebe and see what she says about Desmond.”

  “Could we stop somewhere and get a glass of milk? My mouth is on fire.”

  Sam grinned as he handed me a helmet. “Then you shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

  24

  Chat with a Window Dresser

  Carolyn

  Bebe Takashima, a designer of store windows, was setting one up for a shop on Union Street. The window contained interesting furniture, ornamental objects, and a young Japanese woman directing two men while a super-thin older woman looked on. Saying he had an interview to conduct himself, Sam promised to pick me up at the center, which was nearby, in an hour to an hour and a half. I agreed to that vague plan because if he wasn’t back promptly, I could pass on Vera’s message to one of the Working Women about Jesusita Gomez’s imminent arrival from jail.

  Sam roared off, and I tried to pat my hair into shape using a small hand mirror. The super-thin woman spotted me and beckoned me inside. “I saw you looking at the teak and rosewood cabinet. It’s stunning, isn’t it?”

  I peered at the window from inside and agreed. The cabinet was stunning, the price tag even more so. “Ac
tually, I’m here to see Bebe.”

  “We mustn’t disturb her in midcreation. Why don’t you look around until she’s done?”

  How long will that be? I wondered. While looking, I spotted a wonderful black and white dress in an abstract print with the fitted body and flaring skirt of a flamenco costume. Now the dress was stunning! And probably very expensive. I needn’t have worried because the proprietor snatched it off the hanger. “Not for you, darling. Eight is the biggest size we carry in this one, and Bebe wants it for the window.”

  My dress disappeared toward the front of the store, while I checked the size tags on the other two. Six and four. Were all the woman’s customers as skinny as she? And did she, like my mother-in-law, think that I wore a size sixteen? I took a peek into the window, but Bebe was now draping the dress over a very modern black chaise longue while the two men moved the $7,500 cabinet into another position, the skinny proprietor fussing at them as they grunted and heaved.

  I moved off again and found a collection of bizarre stuffed animals from which I chose, as a present for my daughter Gwen, a lime-green and purple fish with puffed lips and crossed eyes. By the time I’d paid for the fish, Bebe had finished the window, hopped down onto the showroom floor, and flitted in my direction.

  She was a tiny thing—the dresses here would fit her—wearing green sandals, tight green pants, and a huge green and white polka-dot shirt that reached almost to her knees. Long bangs and straight, black, shoulder-length hair completed the look. “So what’s up?” she asked. “Hedwig said you wanted to talk to me.” Then she looked at the clear plastic bag the clerk handed me and said, “Cool fish!”

  “Thank you.” If she liked it, maybe Gwen would. “I just had lunch at Gondar—”

  “And you’re looking for a bathroom,” Bebe interposed with a giggle. “If you ask nicely, Hedwig will let you use hers.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, embarrassed. “I’m investigating the murder of Denise—”