A Dinner to Die For (18 page)

“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?”

“Ashoka.”

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.”

A
SHOKA
P
REM 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.”

M
Y 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 cases. 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.

“I’m Detective Smith, Homicide, and this is Officer Murakawa,” I said before he could begin another breath. “You’re Ronald Struber, also known as—”

“Ashoka Prem,” he said with a great sigh. His chest looked like a punctured balloon.

“Right. I need to talk to you. Inside.”

“It’s the middle of my practice. I still have my
pranayama
—breathing—and two more hours of
pratyahara
—what you might call meditation—to do.”

“We’re here about Mitchell Biekma’s murder.”

His dark pelted arms crossed. “I’m sorry, but I just finished the
asanas,
the yoga poses. My chest is supple now. If I wait, I’ll lose it. In an hour—”

“Now! This is murder.” Already, I could sympathize with Adrienne Jenk’s exasperation.

He began inhaling again, his eyes moving toward Varanasi.

I had the urge to pinch his nose. “Prem!”

“Oh, very well,” he snapped. He turned and stalked inside, into the center of the room.

The interior must have been gutted in the reconstruction. From five small rooms it had been transformed to one large windowless square with double doors that led from the middle of the rear wall to what was presumably the kitchen. The walls were white, the marble-tiled floor looked worthy of the Taj Mahal, and in the center of the room was a four-foot-high sandstone post that resembled a thick, stubby pencil—eraser end up—with faces protruding in four directions near the top.

“You like it?” Prem asked with sudden eagerness. “It’s a
pancamukhalingam,
from East Rajasthan. It’s over a thousand years old.”

“It must have cost a fortune.”

His lips curled; then clearly by will alone, he forced himself to begin another inhalation. I had the suspicion that “yahoo” was the term for me that had crossed his mind. But if so, he restrained himself from acknowledging it. Maybe breathing exercises did nourish self-control. What he said was, “The five-headed lingam is a Hindu fertility symbol, a symbol of the structure of the world. The five faces of Shiva.”

Murakawa stared at the huge sculpture. “Shiva have a few children?” he asked with a straight face.

Prem glared at him. “The idea,” he said, “is that the
sadhaka
or seeker learns practices like
pranayama,
the breathing techniques, and through them he learns to transmute the sexual energies at the lower chakras at the base of the spine, up to the seventh chakra here.” He tapped his forehead. “Spiritual energy,” he said, his eyes resting on the giant lingam with an expression that suggested he viewed transmutation with mixed feelings. There was an intensity in his eyes, eyes that had stared at one spot for hours or years, eyes that had resisted seeing normal life so long as to become strangers to it, eyes that looked lustfully at the stone
pancamukhalingam.
Had I not been a cop, I would have felt damned uncomfortable with him. Even being a cop, I wouldn’t have picked him for a weekend guest.

I looked from him to the
pancamukhalingam.
“
Five-
headed?” Four heads looked out, and three of those had the same pleasant, if not seductive, expression. The fourth had the look of a cutthroat. There was no fifth face at all.