Chocolate Quake

by Nancy Fairbanks

  Chaos at the Center

  Carolyn

  After talking to Myra and Charles, it seemed that Denise might have been a thief, but Nora Hollis had said Denise was investigating possible thefts. Well, I’d discuss the information with Sam. If he’d gotten hold of the elusive Jacob, that might help.

  At the sign-in desk I discovered a teenage boy, presumably the son, instead of Mr. Timatovich. His presence reminded me that the father had issues with Denise, fear of being revealed as an overtime thief, plans to blackmail her or force her to include him in the spoils. Maybe they’d quarreled that night, and he’d killed her. As Sam said, too many suspects.

  I was almost relieved to reach the kitchen and face a group of women who evidently thought cooking something that didn’t involve government surplus food would be a real treat. Some were dubious at the idea of cake made of finely ground walnuts instead of flour, but we progressed through the batter mixing and baking. Only when I went in quest of some pot holders and a knife with which to cut horizontally through the finished cakes did the unthinkable occur. I found, in a non-Japanese knife drawer in among the pot holders, the missing sashimi knife. It was coated with dried blood. I backed away from the sight in such haste that I tripped and fell. A blessing, evidence-wise. By the time the students had helped me up, I realized that no one must touch the murder weapon. Fingerprints had to be preserved. Accordingly, I slammed the drawer shut before the students saw its grisly contents, leaned against it, and instructed them to search the kitchen for suitable cake knives.

  While they searched, I pulled out my cell phone, called Inspector Yu, and told him I’d found the murder weapon. He questioned me, then told me not to touch it or let anyone else near it. He would send crime-scene techs over to take it into custody.

  My students found all kinds of things, including a number of useful knives and some duct tape. I taped the drawer closed and proceeded with my cake instructions. We sliced each cake in half horizontally, having refrigerated them straight from the oven in order to shorten cooling-off time. Then we slathered a thick layer of black raspberry jam on the bottom halves and settled the upper halves on top. Having reassembled them, we put them in freezers, and I demonstrated the preparation of the chocolate cream frosting, which they would have to make Saturday morning by themselves, while the cakes defrosted, and apply both between the two layers and then on the tops and sides of the four-layer extravaganzas. With the lesson completed, everyone milled around congratulating each other on how many compliments would come their way at the anniversary celebration. Some hugged me. Some asked if their names were going to be in my column.

  When the crime-scene techs arrived, we had just started cleanup. Needless to say, the police presence and the untaping of the drawer distracted my students, but they couldn’t see what was being taken out so carefully. And then it was over. We had returned to the cleanup of the processors, bowls, pans, and utensils when the shrieking started.

  Dragging their hands from dishwater, abandoning sticky kitchenware, my students stampeded toward the sound. With trepidation, I followed. In the front section of the house we discovered a stocky, graying woman proclaiming to an ever-increasing audience that it was just as she thought: her worthless husband was not where he should be, and she knew just what he was doing instead of his job, which he had palmed off on his son, the treacherous boy who would make a fool of his mother by concealing his father’s affair. She had a very distinct Russian accent.

  At the sign-in desk the teenaged math genius kept saying, “Mama. Mama.” He had no luck breaking into his mother’s noisy lamentation.

  “Gone last week. You think I don’t see you sitting here in his place, Vassily, traitor son? Now gone this week. Your father is an animal. One woman not enough for him.” She moaned and wrung her hands.

  “It’s the prostate, Mama,” cried Vassily. “He’s always in the bathroom when he’s not working.”

  “In the bathroom. He is in the toilet now?” She rushed over to the door under the stairs and banged her fist on it.

  “Just a minute please,” called a female voice.

  “Is the mistress,” cried Mrs. Timatovich and hurled herself against the door, which sagged on its hinges and revealed Maria Fortuni of the Crone Cohort sitting on the toilet. Mrs. Timatovich then decided that her husband and the alleged mistress were copulating in some nearby office, so she pushed through the crowd to begin a search.

  Maria pulled her knee-length underpants up under her dress, and said, “I should have believed Yolanda. People are breaking in on old ladies. We’re not safe here. I’m going home.” She picked up her purse and, cane thumping angrily on the floor, scuttled toward the old ladies’ exterior ramp. Meanwhile, Mrs. Timatovich had broken through the police tape and into the untenanted business office.

  “No, no, Mama,” her son cried, running after her. “That’s where the lady died.”

  The mother screamed and backed out into Vassily’s arms. “I see bloody ghost. She still there in office.” Mrs. Timatovich began to weep. Members of the crowd peered into Denise’s office to see if they too could spot the gory sight.

  I quickly pushed them away, explaining that the office was a sealed crime scene. As I closed the door and stuck the tape back up, I didn’t see any bloody apparitions. Vassily put his mother into his chair behind the desk and tried to explain that his father was working another job, while he, Vassily, filled in here.

  “Why he’s not telling me about other job? He’s spending the money on his mistress.”

  “No, Mama. It’s so I can go to Cal Tech.”

  “Many good colleges here. Why not study here?”

  Since their conversation did not seem to be winding down, I interrupted. “He wasn’t here last Thursday?” I asked.

  Vasilly looked shame-faced. “I called him before the police came, and he left his other job to come back so no one would notice that I’d taken his place.”

  “So where exactly was he when Denise Faulk was killed?” I demanded.

  “He substitutes as a guard on Thursdays at the Faulk building. It’s—”

  “I know where it is.” If this was true, Timatovich hadn’t murdered Faulk, but he might know if her stepson had an alibi. “Did you kill her?” I asked the son bluntly.

  The boy was so astonished that he couldn’t speak. However, his mother could. “My son? You think my son is killing some woman? Having sex with some woman? Shame. Shame. He is good boy. Is virgin.”

  “Mama!” The son turned bright red.

  Before I could pursue the matter, Sam burst through the front door. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “I’m double-parked out front, and we’ve only got a few minutes left to set up surveillance.”

  “You won’t believe what’s been going on here this evening,” I said as he hustled me down the steps.

  “Tell me later,” he responded brusquely. “If I miss Croker, I’m going to call your father-in-law and tell him, either you quit or I do.”

  “Goodness, you’re cranky.”

  This is a very tasty cake, not too hard to make, and worth the effort.

  Chocolate-Black Raspberry-Walnut Cake

  MAKE A DAY BEFORE SERVING

  Serves 10 to 12

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 9-in. cake pans.

  • Grind 9 to 10 oz. shelled English walnuts to a fine powder (2 cups) in a food processor or blender.

  • Separate 6 eggs. In a large bowl beat egg whites until stiff. In a separate bowl beat yolks until lemon-colored and fluffy. Gradually beat 1 cup sugar into egg yolks and fold into beaten whites. Fold in powdered walnuts.

  • Pour batter into the prepared cake pans and bake 25 to 30 minutes or until the cake pulls away from the sides and is lightly browned.

  • Invert pans on racks immediately and let cool slightly. Then remove cakes from pans and let stand 2 to 4 hours.

  • While cakes cool, prepare chocolate cream frosting.

  • Melt 3
oz. semisweet chocolate in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in 5 tbs. sugar and then stir in 1 1/2 cups heavy cream. Stir constantly until mixture almost comes to a boil. Remove immediately from heat. Chill up to 2 hours, no more.

  • Slit cooled cakes horizontally and spread cut sides with black raspberry jam. Put each cake back together.

  • When ready to frost, beat the chocolate cream with an electric beater until it is the consistency of whipped cream. Spread between cake layers and then on top and sides of cake. If you wish, sprinkle top with shaved chocolate.

  • Refrigerate overnight.

  Carolyn Blue,

  “Have Fork, Will Travel,”

  Boca Raton News

  42

  The Elimination of Croker and Bad Girl

  Sam

  “You brought a car!” she exclaimed, as if I’d brought roses.

  “Yeah, it’s hard for two people to sit on a motorcycle doing surveillance without being noticed by the sur veillee.” She gave me a don’t-be-mean look, but hell, she knew we had to be in the area before Arbus stopped to let Croker out. I had to risk a speeding ticket to get us there. “If he gets picked up by another car, we drive after him.”

  “Is this your car?” she asked.

  Just like a female, more interested in the car than the work at hand. If I hadn’t been gay before, working with Mrs. Carolyn Blue would have done the trick. “It’s Paul’s car, and if we put so much as a scratch on it, he’ll kill us both.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have driven so fast.”

  “If you hadn’t insisted on tagging along and then turned up late, I wouldn’t have needed to, and if I’d gotten a ticket, believe me, you’d have paid the fine. Now forget about the car. If Croker starts out on foot, we walk.”

  “Of course.”

  She’d gone into that prissy, indignant mode. Pretty soon she’d be bitching about my language. “There he is.”

  The squad car pulled up across the street; Croker got out and started walking. “Get out quietly. We’ll stay on this side. You hold my hand.”

  “I will not. I’m not afraid of a policeman.”

  She met me on the sidewalk, and I grabbed her hand, muttering under my breath, “We’re trying to look like a couple. If he glances over at us, you look up at me and giggle or some damn thing.”

  “Oh, I see,” she murmured grimly.

  We didn’t have to do any couple imitations because Croker never looked around. He walked half a block, turned right, walked a block over, and went into a place called The Barnum—hotbed hotel. I pulled the scarf from Carolyn’s hair so it dropped around her face in an unchar acteristically messed-up way. She didn’t look like a whore, but she’d have to do. “Quick, unbutton a few buttons.”

  “What?” She turned and gaped at me.

  “Your blouse. You need to look like you’re coming here to meet some guy. Get inside and see if you can find out what room he’s going to. I’ll be behind you but coming in the alley door so he doesn’t recognize me.” I watched her sashay in, actually swinging her hips and flipping her hair. A little overdone, but it probably wasn’t part of her repertoire. I pelted around the corner to the alley and met her at the elevator.

  “Two-oh-seven,” she said. “The desk clerk knows him and the number. He didn’t even pay.”

  “Right. He’s a cop.” I’d poked the up button on the elevator, while the desk clerk yelled, “Hey, you. You’re not—” but he didn’t catch us. I dragged Carolyn in and hit the close button.

  So who was Croker meeting? Was he on the take and picking up a payoff? I patted the gun I’d stuck in my belt. He wasn’t going to be happy to see me, even if being caught did eliminate him as a suspect in Denise Faulk’s death. We got off and headed down the hall to two-oh-seven. I could hear a female voice behind the door. Shit! It wasn’t graft, and Carolyn was going to be embarrassed. If we were lucky, the woman wouldn’t have taken off too many clothes before we got in. I knocked and said, muffling my voice, “Hey, Croker, it’s Arbus.”

  Croker opened the door and tried to close it when he saw me, but I gave it a good shove and pushed him back into the room. The woman was already on the bed, buck naked, and Croker had his shirt off and his pants unzipped. Evidently they weren’t into precoital conversation. Having followed me in, Carolyn gasped at the view.

  “What the hell, Sam?” Croker snarled. His face was red, and he looked ready for a fight, which I could provide, although the ladies probably wouldn’t appreciate the show. Or maybe the one on the bed would.

  She said, “If you think you’re bringin’ your friends for freebies, Marcus, forget it.”

  He said, “Shut up, Lucille.”

  I said, “Sorry to interrupt this interlude, Croker, Lucille. I just want to know if you do this every week. Like last Thursday. Was Croker here with you last Thursday, Lucille?”

  “What do you care, Flamboise? You wanna watch?” Croker sneered.

  I glanced at Carolyn, who was frozen in astonishment as she figured out what was going on. “Maybe your wife hired me to follow you,” I suggested.

  “The fuck she did!”

  “Listen, Croker,” said Lucille, “this is too weird. Is he some I.A. guy who’s gonna drag the both of us into court because I’m trading sex for protection? If I end up in jail, I’m gonna tell them the kinda stuff you do. I don’t like bein’ roughed up. Maybe I can file charges. Can I do that, mister?” she asked me.

  “Shut up,” said Croker.

  “This wasn’t my idea,” Lucille whined. “He said I put out or he jailed me. Every time he saw me on the street, he’d pull me in and charge me.”

  “You meet him every Thursday this time of night?” I asked. Croker moved threateningly toward Lucille, so I pushed him against the wall. “That the deal, Lucille?”

  “Yeah, ask the guy at the desk. I even gotta pay for the room. Last Thursday. This Thursday. Every Thursday since he decided I was the whore of the month. He gets here at 8:00, 8:15. An hour in the sack with this gorilla. I could do three guys in an hour an’ make some money, but I gotta meet Mr. Let’s-Try-All-the-Weird-Stuff here.”

  “Always an hour?” I asked. She nodded and stared defiantly at Croker.

  “OK. That’s what I wanted to know. You feel like reporting him, you got my permission, Lucille.” I grabbed Carolyn’s arm, and we were out of there.

  “That’s horrible,” she whispered as we slipped into the elevator, which I’d jammed open. “And he’s a policeman. Isn’t that illegal?”

  “You bet,” I agreed, “but he didn’t kill Denise. You want to catch bus eighteen with me and see what we can find out about Bad Girl?”

  I figured she’d decide to go home, but she agreed. We walked back to the car with me keeping a wary eye out for Croker. Not likely he’d have any friendly feelings for me in the future. Carolyn was bemoaning the sad and seedy fate of prostitutes as we sailed along in the BMW. There wasn’t much traffic on the streets, so we made it to a number-eighteen stop in about fifteen minutes, then parked and waited for the bus to show up.

  When we got on, the driver, a friendly black guy, said, “First time I seen someone git outa a BMW and git on my bus. You slummin’ or what, man?”

  I paid the fare and described Bad Girl to him.

  “Whatchu want with her?” he asked as the bus chugged up a steep hill. “She mindin’ her own business back there. Sleepin’ most likely. Guess she back on her pills the las’ few days. Don’ bother the passengers so much. Nods off. Mos’ nights we git to the park, I wake her up, she git off an’ head out into the trees. She do like the trees. Say her mama sometime a tree.”

  “Would you remember, sir, if she was on your bus last Thursday?” Carolyn asked politely.

  “My, oh, my. Ain’t you a nice-spoken lady? Whatchu runnin’ around with an ugly bald guy for? In this here town it’s a real pleasure to pick up someone that talk an’ look normal like you, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” said Carolyn.

&nbs
p; “Lotsa strange folks live in San Francisco, an’ I do think they all ride my bus.”

  “I suppose it’s hard to remember one passenger who might have been on your bus a week ago,” she said sympathetically.

  “Oh, I’m not likely to forgit las’ Thursday. Had to stop an’ call an ambulance. Poor little Martina, she goin’ plum crazy. Like to scare the white hair off this ole lady live near the end of my route ’fore I start up to the park. Girl screaming at the old lady ’bout knives an’ such. Sayin’ ‘Don’ let him git you, Mama.’ I try to calm her down. Then I put in the call. She back on Monday, say, ‘Mr. Bus Driver, why you send me to the bad doctors?’ Guess they keep her in the hospital the whole weekend. She do hate that. She cain’t hear her mama when the doctors givin’ her them pills an’ shots.”

  Carolyn sat chatting with the bus driver about what the kindest thing might be to do for someone in Bad Girl’s situation. She didn’t even notice when I went to the back of the bus to wake up Martina L. King, who seemed both sad and sane when I talked to her. She had indeed been in a psych ward for four days. When she got off at the circle fronting the museum, I had to restrain Carolyn from trying to take her home. The driver let us stay on and ride his bus back to Paul’s car.

  “Well,” said Carolyn, “this has been a dreadful evening, but we have eliminated three suspects.”

  “Who’s your candidate for innocent number three?” I asked.

  “Timatovich. He wasn’t at the center last Thursday. He was working another job at the Faulk Building. Of course, we’ll need to check it out, but I think his son was telling the truth. So Timatovich may be able to tell us whether Faulk was at his office that night.”