Sleep had finally come, but it had been fitful as murders both real and imagined haunted my dreams. Taking a shower in my own home, then throwing open the doors to my closet, which was large enough to fill Imelda Marcos with envy, provided a positive start to the day, making me feel more like myself than I had in a long time. I chose a pair of black jeans and a cashmere sweater, casual chic, which went with my positive mood. And some ankle boots with low heels that went with my need for comfort these days. Comfort over cool? Did that mean I was becoming sensible?
Not a chance.
The apartment was quiet as I tiptoed toward the kitchen, so I opted to forgo uncovering the bird and punching the coffee machine—the noise generated by both could wake the dead. I stuffed a plastic dish filled with seeds through the door to Newton’s cage, affixing it to the bars, then, feeling guilty, I added a couple of slices of apple. One foot tucked under him, Newton gave me a one-eyed look with half-lowered lid—I didn’t need to be fluent in parrot to get his meaning.
Before I left, I scrawled a note to Romeo, who still slumbered on the couch, and left it on the coffee table in front of him under a bottle of aspirin. The note suggested he ask Jordan for his famous hangover cure. I had a feeling the kid would appreciate it.
Curiously, when I called the elevator and the doors opened, Teddie wasn’t lurking inside. I was a bit surprised—lately he’d been turning up in so many odd places and at awkward times.
The ride down was quicker than I remembered. Forrest nodded and gave me a bright grin, which I returned as I strode through the lobby, then pushed through the doors. Daylight assaulted me. Apparently, even though I was just joining it, the day was well under way.
I’d tossed my replacement phone in my bag and didn’t feel like rooting for it, and I hadn’t bothered with a watch, so the actual time was anybody’s guess. Not that it mattered. If life as we know it teetered precariously over the abyss, Miss P. could find me—she was uncanny that way.
Blinking against the sun, I decided to walk. The Babylon was twenty minutes away if I strolled, ten if I adopted a reasonable pace. I opted for something in between.
A Metro officer was removing the yellow crime scene tape from around Jean-Charles’s food truck as I walked by. Hadn’t Adone said they were releasing the truck earlier? I waved, but he didn’t notice me, or if he did, he didn’t respond . . . the more likely scenario. Metro didn’t exactly work on engendering warm fuzzies in the population—they turned a blind eye to their employers. I never understood that, but then again, I was in customer service . . . a dying field.
From the angle of the sun and the relative warmth, given that Thanksgiving was looming, I put the hour at just past noon. As I ambled up the curving entrance to the Babylon, a valet or two greeted me as they ran past. Others nodded and smiled.
I loved my job. Oh, it had its moments, all jobs did—at least, that’s what I was told. This was the only life I’d ever known, so who was I to say?
Once in the lobby, and before taking the stairs to the mezzanine and my little corner of the universe, I paused under the Chihuly winged creatures arcing across the high ceiling. They settled me, reorienting even my worst fears. They always had. I had no idea why.
Girded for the day, I took a deep breath, then pushed through the door to my office. Brandy skittered back to her desk, and Miss P. studiously ignored me. I decided not to be alarmed. “Why are you sitting out here?” I asked the newly promoted head of customer relations. “You have a very nice office. I should know, it used to be mine.”
When Miss P. looked up, her eyes shone and she had a goofy look on her face.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s going on?”
Extending her left hand, she waggled her fingers.
My eyes widened. Grabbing her hand and yanking it toward me, I dislodged her from the chair—she didn’t seem to mind. A bright sparkler winked on her ring finger. “Impressive. I want to hear all about it.” Ignoring my overflowing message box, I parked one butt cheek across Jeremy’s stenciled name on the corner of her desk.
“You know how much I love DW Bistro?” Breathless, she warmed to the story while she kept glancing down at her hand, as if she couldn’t quite believe the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock had indeed come through.
“Great place, but not the most romantic.”
“The romance is in the remembering—Jeremy paid attention when I told him about it, and he remembered. Isn’t that the best?”
I couldn’t help grinning—she looked twenty years younger, like a schoolgirl with her first crush. Maybe Jeremy was the first she’d really fallen for. I’d never thought about it before: why she’d never married. “You’ve captured the last good man. But he got the better of the deal.”
She pshawed, then shared the rest of the story. There’d been Champagne—from the glazed look in her eyes, I suspected quite a bit. Then the pivotal question on one knee. The whole restaurant had been in on it, and they had partied until the wee hours, ending with a celebratory conga line on the patio.
“This calls for some bubbly.”
Miss P. didn’t say no, so Brandy fetched a bottle from the fridge in the kitchenette where I kept emergency rations. The three of us stood in a circle as I poured into the proffered flutes, then filled my own. Setting the bottle on the desk, I raised my glass. “A toast. To good friends, good life, good love. Don’t waste even one moment.”
We clinked, then drank.
I wrapped Miss P. in a hug.
She whispered, “This is the first time. I never thought love would find me.”
Filled with joy, I squeezed her tight.
The door behind us burst open. Letting Miss P go, I turned at the intrusion. Amazingly, I didn’t spill even one drop of Champagne.
Romeo skidded to a stop, his eyes taking in our glasses. He looked about as I expected: crumpled clothes that he’d slept in, a puffy face, red eyes. He held a hand to one temple, pressing as if afraid his head would explode.
When he looked at me, a chill chased through me.
“We found Gregor.”
* * *
The home of many parties, even an ice cream social for the young daughter of a famous welterweight, Bungalow 7 had never welcomed death through its doors . . . until now.
Shoulder to shoulder, Romeo and I hurried through the casino and down the long hallway.
“Did you have Jordan fix you his hangover cure?” I asked, avoiding the task in front of us.
“Yeah, took the edge off.” He ran his hand through his hair and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. He looked sheepish. “Sorry about last night. I’m not feeling even half-human these days.”
“What are friends for?” I almost slapped him on the shoulder, then thought better of it—his head would probably roll right off its perch.
The officers standing sentry motioned Romeo and me inside. Crime scene techs were already dusting and processing. For some reason, I tested the air for the lingering smell of the room’s most recent inhabitant, the truffle pig. Housekeeping had done a stellar job—no porcine perfume. Although I thought I detected a hint of fish. Keeping the bungalows with their in-room kitchens smelling nice was a never-ending battle for our staff. And now, they were going to have a field day with the mess the techs were making. I didn’t want to even think about what the caustic black powder would do to the fine finish on the antiques, so I didn’t.
My plate was full.
A man with coroner stitched in block letters across the back of his jacket knelt beside the body. Even in death, Gregor looked like the puffed-up pompous ass he had been. Lying on his back, his prodigious stomach popping the buttons on his shirt, eyes open, his skin a bluish tint, his black hair still oiled into place, he looked like he’d just dropped where he fell, overtaken by death.
“Hey, Doc. You know Lucky O’Toole from the hotel, right?” Romeo asked as we stepped behind the coroner.
I bent over him, like a vulture looming over dinner—an analogy that made my stomach turn. “Doc.”
“Lucky. Figured you’d show up.” Without turning around, he reached into his kit. “You guys sure are keeping me busy. We got another note.”
My stomach flipped. “Where?”
Over his shoulder, he handed me a plastic bag with a scrap of white paper in it. “We found it in his jacket pocket . . . with a black Sharpie.”
“Really?”
The coroner answered with a nod.
Romeo followed me as I headed toward the bar to lay the note flat on the granite surface.
Staring down at the note, Romeo asked, his voice hushed. “Think he’s been writing all these notes?”
“And killing everyone?” I didn’t try to hide my disbelief.
“Then who killed him?”
“The killer,” I deadpanned.
He didn’t appear to appreciate my jocularity as he squinted at me out of one eye.
“Lights too bright in here for you?”
“No, just rethinking why I brought you along,” he growled.
We hunched over the note, hoping for a clue. I read the lines out loud. “Mistakes made, nothing new. A gag, a joke, a dream come true. No smiles, just pain. With everything to gain. Why cheat, why steal. A Carnival, a party where no one . . .” I looked up into Romeo’s clear blue eyes, rimmed in red. “It stops in the middle.”
“So he was writing them?”
I thought about that a moment—conclusions were so easy to jump to, especially when you wanted some answers. “I don’t think we can assume anything. We need some proof.”
“We’ll try to pull some prints.” The coroner’s voice was muffled as he hunched over the body. He didn’t sound hopeful.
“If you could just give us something to go on, some hint of a connection between these three, maybe we could lighten your future workload.”
He glanced around, holding my eyes for a moment. I didn’t have to explain.
“Any idea what killed him?” Romeo asked, nodding toward the bloated corpse of Chef Gregor.
Turning back to his work, the coroner reached into Gregor’s mouth with a pair of forceps. Maneuvering, he squeezed his fingers, and the catch caught with an audible sound. Pulling the forceps free, he held them aloft, rotating them as he eyed the chunk of white flesh held in the instrument’s grasp. “Fugu.”
“What?” The young detective looked lost at sea.
“Just a guess, mind you. I won’t know for certain until we run all the tests. But from the state of the body, the uneaten sushi feast on the counter over there—” He motioned to the dining room table. I hadn’t noticed the remains of dinner scattered there, but they explained the smell of fish. “It sure looks like a neurotoxin.” The coroner rocked back on his heels, then pushed himself to his feet. He was taller and thinner than I remembered. His eyes looked sad, but his manner was businesslike and perfunctory. Death was an everyday occurrence for him, after all. I’d noticed the same jaded look on Romeo recently. “I’ll have to run some tox screens.”
“Fugu is a poison?” Romeo tried to catch a thread.
“Technically, a fish,” I explained. “A delicacy in Japan, the wild fugu feeds on some sort of plankton or something that in turn ingests a large amount of neurotoxins. The fish eats so much, its flesh becomes saturated with the stuff. Especially its organs.”
“Why would anybody eat that?”
“As a stupid show of manhood. Just another of the many curses of the Y-chromosome.”
The coroner actually laughed. “And how did you come to hold the male of the species in such high regard?”
“Experience.”
He gave me a shrug and a weak smile. “It’s the best teacher.”
“Apparently, I’m a slow learner.” I grabbed Romeo’s arm and squeezed as a thought zinged through my synapses. “Pigs find a feast so rare.”
His eyes widened. “It wasn’t a four-legged pig at all.” He looked at the bloated body of Chef Gregor and winced. “The rest of the note makes sense now.”
I turned to the coroner, who watched us with interest. “I’m interested in how Chef Gregor came by a lethal dose of fugu, assuming your theory holds up.”
Romeo pulled out his tattered note pad and pen from his inside jacket pocket and began taking notes. Odds were, he slept with the thing. Of course, lately he’d been sleeping in his clothes, like a firefighter ready to roll out of bed, step into his boots, then run at the sound of an alarm.
“Surely with all your Japanese clientele, you’ve had to deal with fugu at some point.” The coroner played out the obvious.
“Of course, but the stuff is highly regulated, as you can imagine. Talk about hoops to jump through! And the sushi chef handling the stuff must have been trained by the masters in Japan and certified to work with the fish. Apparently, serving a lethal main course to high-roller clients is considered bad form, not to mention the chilling effect it could have on business.”
Romeo looked up from his note taking, his hand poised over the paper. “High rollers?”
“Super pricy stuff,” the coroner said.
“Adding insult to injury.” I couldn’t help myself.
Romeo gave me a wide-eyed look. I shrugged in response.
“You two ought to take your act on the road.” The coroner bagged the fish and motioned to his techs, who descended on the body like flies. “But the carton over there says this stuff came from One Fish, Two Fish.”
Our eyes wide, Romeo and I looked at each other.
“Bingo,” we said in unison.
* * *
Brett Baker’s Twitter feed indicated his food truck would be downtown today at the Farmers Market. This being November, the number of farmers there would be few. With the holidays on top of us, the vendors would have mainly packaged goods, maybe even canned cranberry jellies and other traditional fare. Of course, the baked goods would be amazing—I tried to conjure some willpower, but I’d already given it up for Thanksgiving.
Romeo angled his unmarked car across two handicapped spots. Normally, I would’ve said something, but today, even though he didn’t have the sticker, he could probably qualify, so I let him be.
As we stepped out of the car, I motioned him to follow me. “The food trucks will be around on the other side.” With the detective on my heels, I strode quickly through the building, past the many stalls, dodging patrons with their reusable bags. California sensibilities leaking into the Consumption Capital of the World? I smiled at the incongruity. The aroma of roasting chestnuts almost brought me up short, but I kept moving.
Bursting through the swinging doors on the far side of the building, I allowed myself a nanosecond of satisfaction. One Fish, Two Fish was the third food truck lined up along the curb, its awing unfurled and its window open for business. A line of people waited while Brett, in his best smile, took orders. Someone I couldn’t see plated the orders and stuffed them through the small delivery window to the side. I assumed no one cooked—I didn’t know much about sushi, but I felt fairly certain there wasn’t much cooking involved.
Romeo shouldered his way to the front of the line, then flashed his badge. “May I have a minute of your time?” His tone left no room for refusal.
Brett looked surprised, but not alarmed.
“This won’t take long,” Romeo assured him with a grim smile.
The sushi man wiped his hands on a white towel hanging from the apron string at his waist. “Sure. Meet me at the back of the truck.”
The crowd muttered a bit, but no one abandoned the line. Their doggedness made me want to try the sushi, but I’d lost my taste for it recently. While both men made their way to the meeting point, I stayed at the order window, inching closer. A head popped into view, stepping in to fill Brett’s spot.
Desiree’s eyes widened when she saw me. “His help didn’t show up. Brett was alone when I arrived with his delivery. I stepped in to help, if you must know.”
“I didn’t ask.”
She gave me a flat stare. “Yes, you did.”
“Who was his help?”
She shrugged and shook her head, her curls bouncing.
The first in line, a broad-shouldered man with a scowl, stepped up and barked his order, which Desiree jotted down with a perfunctory smile. She eased back inside and out of view, but given the size of the truck, I felt sure she could still hear me.
“Are you always so hands-on with all your customers?”
The sushi buyer shot me a dirty look. “Leave the woman to work, would you?”
“Women are experts at multitasking. You’ll get your food, and I’ll have my answers.” I stared him down—my patience had evaporated after the last lap of life, which had me running in circles.
He narrowed his eyes, but left me alone.
Desiree reappeared, pushing a Styrofoam container at him. “That’ll be twenty dollars. Sauces are over there.” She motioned with her chin toward a table set up off to the side.
He handed her the bill, grabbed his loot, and retreated.
“Brett is a friend.” Desiree smiled at the next patron as she noted the order, yet talked to me. “He worked for Jean for quite some time.” She popped out of sight, then returned quickly, exchanging the container of food for a crisp twenty.
“Does he have any reason to hate your brother?”
She frowned at me. “Of course not.”
I lowered my voice, but I needn’t have worried. The next in line was still absorbed in the menu. “What about Chitza DeStefano?”
Desiree looked at me coldly, clearly tired of the game. “Who?”
I shrugged off her tone, keeping my voice conversational. “Do you have any fugu on the menu?”
The question stopped her dead. Her eyes widened, and the cool dropped from her tone. “Why?”
“Just curious.” I smiled. “Do you?”
Desiree paled. “Not on the menu, no.” She turned to the next customer, a well-heeled lady on her cell phone. “Excuse us just a minute, please. I’ll only be a moment.” The lady seemed unperturbed as she stepped to the side to continue her conversation and stay out of ours. Desiree motioned me closer and lowered her voice. “Why did you mention fugu, specifically? I had an order come in only yesterday.”
Now that, I wasn’t expecting—I don’t know why. Unlike Romeo, to whom everyone was a suspect, I’d granted the Bouclets innocent-until-proven-guilty status. Hopelessly American, I know. “An order for whom?”
“Christian Wexler.”
“Did you deliver it?”
“Of course. His paperwork was in order. The fish was superior quality and at the peak of freshness. I had tracked the shipment myself.” Her brows crinkled. “There was one odd thing, though.”
“Only one?”
She ignored the sarcasm. “Oui, the shipment was short several ounces. I have a call into the supplier, but have yet to hear back. I didn’t know whether it left the facility that way, or was once again one of the shipments tampered with somewhere along the way.”
“My money is on the latter.”
She gave me a concerned look. “I do not know. But I will. I kept the chip, and it is one of Jean’s.”
* * *
Romeo and I reconvened inside the market away from listening ears. “What’d you find out from Brett Baker?” I asked the detective as he scanned his notes.
He blew out a long breath. “Not much. He had all the right answers. An alibi, which I will check out. Apparently, he has a girlfriend.”
“Had he noticed any of his containers missing?” I didn’t need to hear his answer, I already knew.
“He said he has thousands of the things. He wouldn’t know if a couple went missing.” The detective confirmed my guess.
“Men,” I scoffed, but I doubted I’d do any better of a job. Details weren’t my best thing. “Too bad there wasn’t some sort of break-in or something.”
Romeo looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, which presupposed I had one in the first place.
“If his alibi checks out, then someone took those cartons.” Romeo and his everyone-was-guilty attitude. “But since he didn’t notice them missing, he didn’t report the theft, and any evidence we may have found has been lost.”
I scoffed again. “Metro wouldn’t have worked that scene, anyway. Small potatoes for your lofty egos.”
He didn’t argue. “More budgetary constraints than ego constraints, but you have a valid point.”
I thought that a gross understatement, but Romeo was already well aware of my disdain for those running Metro. “With Fiona…out of business…did you ask him who supplies him now? How he comes by such high-quality foodstuffs?”
“Desiree Bouclet services his account personally . . . now.” Romeo kept his voice flat.
“If he’s in so tight with the Bouclets, why didn’t he just go through Desiree in the first place?” I started to tell him about the fugu shipment and the chip Desiree had given to me—she had it in her pocket, intending to give it to Romeo, but had gotten absorbed in helping Brett Baker—when shouts filled the air.
“Stop them, oh, my God, stop them, please!”
Romeo turned to me, his brows crinkled. “That sounds like—”
“Mona.” I took off at a run toward the voice. Rounding the corner to turn down the middle aisle, I skidded to a halt and pressed myself against the stall to one side.
A gaggle of angry turkeys, darting from side to side, feathers flying, swarmed in my direction. Behind them, arms akimbo, her hair a mess, came Mona, just as I feared. “Oh, Lucky! Thank God! Stop them!”
For some reason, I did as she asked. Stepping into the fray, I shouted to the people huddling behind me: “Close the doors.” I pointed to Romeo: “Come on, you know what to do.”
After a fraction of a second of hesitation, he rallied, shouting orders at the other bystanders. Within a few moments, we’d cornered the turkeys, then herded them back into their pen. I have no idea how.
Sure that everything was back to normal, I advanced on Mona. Whatever spark of humanity her cries had appealed to had been effectively extinguished . . . especially when the last large tom bit me in the butt. “May I ask what the hell you are doing?”
The emergency past, Mona gathered her composure, tucking a few stray tendrils back into place as she found her smile. For the first time, I noticed the cameramen . . . from every major station in town. “Great.” I offered a few other choice epithets under my breath as I grabbed my mother’s arm and propelled her out of the spotlight. Grasping her elbow, holding her tight to my side, I pasted on a fake smile as I leaned down, my mouth close to her ear. “Explain. And it had better be good. You just managed to make fools out of both of us on the nightly news.”
“They just got away, that’s all.” Mona managed not to whine, which meant she would live at least a few more heartbeats.
“What are the turkeys doing here?” I wanted to ask her how she had gotten them here, but the details would be superfluous.
She took a deep breath and puffed out her chest. “You told me the turkeys were my problem, and I quite agree. I’ve been using you so that I could avoid my messes for far too long.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What have you done with my mother? You look like her, you even sound like her, but those words, she would never say them . . . not ever.”
“Perhaps you underestimate me.” She held me with a steady, serious gaze—I saw maturity, a resolve I’d never seen before.
I let go of her arm and took a step back. “Perhaps.” For some reason, I felt like I had just waded into a pool of quicksand.
Relief sparkled in her shy smile.
“Mother, you shouldn’t be chasing poultry in your condition. You look ready to pop. Tell me, do you really want to have those twins at the Farmers Market?”
“It’d make a great story.” She shot me a jaunty grin. “As they say, any press is good press.”
“The jury’s still out on that one.” I glanced at the cameramen. Still rolling. “But we’ll know soon enough. I can’t wait to see how they handle this on the evening news. But if I’m to do damage control, perhaps you could give me the rest of the story—short and sweet.”
“Well . . .” Mona drew out the intro, sounding proud of herself. “I put out the word that anyone who wanted an all-natural, fresh turkey for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow could come get one. I hired some butchers to do the deed.” At the look on my face, she fluttered a hand, stalling my words. “Don’t worry, it’s all done out of sight. No one would’ve known the turkeys were here, had a young boy not gotten away from his mother and decided to set them free.”
“Boys, they mess up everything.” I couldn’t resist swinging at that hanging curve ball.
Mona raised an eyebrow and tried to look serious. “But they do add some much needed spice. Anyway, if folks can’t pay for a dressed bird, they can have one for free. But I encourage those who can give something, to do so. All the proceeds will go to provide the Thanksgiving meal for the homeless tomorrow.” She waited, eyes large and round, almost begging for approval.
I couldn’t disappoint—not when she was showing so much . . . growth. “Nice thinking. Have at it.”
Crossing my arms, I watched Mona, her public persona dropping neatly over her real one as she strode in front of the cameras in full damage-control mode.
Romeo stepped in next to me. “Your mother, she does know how to make an impression.”
“Unfortunately, the only way she knows how is to stir things up. I wouldn’t be surprised if she let those turkeys go herself.”
“Any evidence of that?” Romeo sounded like he could almost believe it.
I watched as she cleverly ushered everyone back toward her stand, where young women in scanty attire waited to relieve them of some money.
“Circumstantial, and a lifetime of anecdotal, but nothing more.” I graced the detective with a confused frown. “She always comes out smelling like a rose. I’d sure like to know her secret.”
“You.” Romeo raised his eyebrows. “You are her secret weapon.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Then I need a me.”
“But you’ve got you.” Romeo shook his head slowly, but his brightening look indicated his pain might be easing. “I have the oddest conversations with you sometimes. Right now, there’s not much I can do about Mona. I can’t think of any laws she’s broken.” Romeo kept the smile off his face, but not out of his voice.
“Such a steward of the public trust you are, leaving her to feast on unsuspecting bystanders.”
Romeo squinted down the aisle at Mona’s booth, then swallowed hard. “Are those girls . . . ?”
“Working girls? Looks that way.” I recognized a couple of them from Mona’s Place, the Best Whorehouse in Nevada, to hear Mother tell it. “But today, hopefully, they are more interested in toms than johns, and there isn’t a pastry in sight.”
“Pastry?” Romeo clearly had not made it onto the party bus.
“I heard rumors of a bake sale.”
“Offending Brownies the world over.”
“Well.” I elbowed him. “You may go sample their wares, but I need to talk to a chef about dinner.”
* * *
Chef Omer was exactly where I’d hoped to find him—in the kitchen at Tigris, going through paperwork, preparing for the day. Tigris didn’t open until five o’clock, although the bar opened earlier. Even still, the kitchen staff was busy unloading produce, fish, poultry, and other ingredients for tonight’s selected repast. Like most of the top chefs, Chef Omer created a menu each day based on the availability of only the freshest, most succulent foodstuffs.
The aroma of fresh coffee filled the kitchen. Even though I knew his taste ran to thick Turkish coffee whose merits eluded me, I poured myself a thimbleful of the viscous fluid into a mug Desperate for the caffeine hit, any delivery vehicle would do. I did cut it with a serious amount of half-and-half, but I resisted the sugar on principle—drawing lines gave me the illusion of control.
After savoring a java jolt, I straddled a stool across from the chef, then tapped my fingers on the stainless steel countertop before I drew his attention. When he looked at me, his scowl was already in place, and, from the looks of it, well entrenched.
He brightened a bit when he recognized me, but a bit of anger still puckered the skin between his eyebrows. “Lucky. Twice in less than a week..”
“Did I catch you at a bad time? You look preoccupied.”
He shook his head, and his readers slipped down on his nose. He fixed his glare over them. “It’s nothing, really. The paperwork on my shipments is off—something doesn’t add up. Not to mention, the quality is slipping. Trying to provide the best culinary experience in this . . . wasteland . . . is a challenge.”
“I think I can explain some of that. But maybe you ought to try the food market in the garage. I’ve been told they have primo stuff.”
That stopped Chef Omer cold. “What?” His tone turned icy.
“The food market in the garage. I’m taking it you don’t know about it?”
“Show me,” he said with a growl. “And you’d better call Security.”