A Dinner to Die For (26 page)

It was eight-thirty when he met Pereira and me. Pereira was in uniform, but Howard was wearing jeans and a striped rugby shirt.

“I just hope we’re in time,” I said. “Yankowski’s had all day since I interrogated him. He’s had time to tell the friend of his choice that he told me Mitch was the poisoner. And that friend’s had the rest of the day to tell everyone else connected with Paradise. They’re like a family there, that’s what they all say. Any word about this case would be all over the place in no time.”

“But what about Earth Man?” Howard demanded. “Why was his being there so important?”

“Because,” I said, herding them out the door, “the health club boxes were delivered to Paradise on Wednesday. By the time the killer could buy monkshood tubers, it was Thursday. Mitch’s cold was almost gone. His nose would hardly have been stuffed up if he hadn’t been in one of his rages. He might have added only a drop or two of the horseradish, and stirred that into his soup—diluted it. He might have dawdled over his soup; he might have taken only a spoonful or two before he tasted something funny, or even felt odd. And he, of all people, would know what that meant.”

“But what about Earth Man?” Howard insisted.

“When Mitch saw Earth Man he threw the kind of tantrum Rue Driscoll remembered him having in her class. He screamed, turned purple, and ended with his sinuses completely clogged. Then he upturned the horseradish jar and dumped the aconite in the soup, stomped out of the kitchen, and bolted his food. He didn’t dawdle; he didn’t taste. He swallowed it too fast to realize what it was.”

“And the killer knew that seeing Earth Man there with his hand out, so to speak, would set Mitch off?” Howard asked.

“The killer and everyone else in the kitchen,” Pereira added.

“No, not everyone. In fact, no one but the killer.”

Together, we checked Paradise. It was empty; Mitch Biekma’s old black Triumph was gone. Rue Driscoll’s house was dark. She didn’t answer the door. No one was at Bhairava.

It was on the sloping street beside Adrienne’s flat that I spotted Mitch’s car. Next to it was the Bhairava truck.

“So all three of them are in there,” Howard said.

“Can’t these people do anything alone?” Pereira demanded as she got out of her car.

When McClellan, the beat officer, pulled up, we started. He and Pereira took the street the house fronted on, he at the end of the driveway, Pereira at the corner. Flashlights in hand, Howard and I headed through the hedge, across the shaded backyard. As we started up the six rickety wooden steps to the door, the lights went off.

I pounded on the door. “Police! Open up!”

From inside I could hear breathing but no movement. And no response.

“It’s all over! There’s no sense in prolonging it!” I yelled. “Open this door! Now!”

Silence.

Exchanging glances, Howard and I moved to either side of the door. I pounded again. “I’ve got officers all around. There’s no place to go.”

Feet shuffled against the wooden floor inside. I bent my knees in a half-crouch position. In the dim glow of the streetlights I could see Howard putting down his flashlight.

The door flew open. Before I could step forward, Ashoka Prem hurled past. As he leapt from the top step, Howard lunged for his legs, flying after him to the ground.

“Pereira, McClellan, back here,” I yelled, holding my ground. I shot a glance down at the pair rolling across the yard. In the dark I couldn’t make out Howard from Prem. As if she’d been watching for that, Adrienne rushed out in front of me, slamming my back against the railing. I grabbed her around the ribs, catching her arms at her sides. Her bushy hair covered my face. It smelled of lemon.

She tried to thrust her elbows back, but I had her too tightly.

In the yard Howard or Prem groaned.

“Let go!” Adrienne yelled.

I shoved her forward across the landing. “Get back inside.”

“No!” She slammed her heel down on my instep. I yelped, and squeezed in on her ribs. She let out a grunt. I loosened my arms and squeezed sharply, harder. She groaned. Then I could feel her inhale, brace her feet. “Laura!” It came out a harsh, raspy cry.

Laura raced down the steps.

I shoved Adrienne forward. She looped her foot around my ankle. I stumbled, grabbed the railing, fell to my knees. Adrienne was on my back. I slammed my elbow up into her stomach. She gasped.

A car door slammed.

I pushed myself up, grabbed the stair railing, and jumped to the ground. Adrienne grabbed for my jacket. I hit her arms. She reached for the railing, missed. I jumped to one side as her shoulder hit the ground. She screamed in pain.

The engine started. Loud, rough. The Biekmas’ Triumph. Where was Pereira? No time for that. “Stop!” I yelled as I ran across the yard, skirting Howard as he yanked Prem to his feet. “I’m going after her. Get me backup. And get Pereira on Adrienne.”

A burst of exhaust fumes hit me as I raced through the break in the hedge to the sidewalk. Across the street, a light came on upstairs.

The sportscar jolted forward, up the hill toward Spruce. I ran for the patrol car. It was facing the wrong way. I hung a U, and when I reached the corner she was two hundred yards ahead of me, going uphill on Spruce. I stepped hard on the accelerator. The car sprang forward, narrowing the gap. Spruce was relatively straight. I turned on the pulser light and floored the accelerator. Her sportscar was no match for the powerful patrol-car engine. It wouldn’t take me long to outrun her here.

She must have realized that. At the first corner she veered left, brakes screeching.

I turned on the siren, and pressed the accelerator harder, pushing for the last ounce of power before I had to brake for the turn. On those narrow hillside streets with their sudden cutbacks, my big engine would be useless. There the sportscar would have all the advantages.

I braked, then hit the gas as I turned down into the dark, that familiar fear leaping in my stomach. A canopy of trees blocked out any lights. Without warning, the street twisted. I pulled hard left, barely missing a truck parked halfway across the narrow lane. The siren rent the dark night air. I pulled the wheel back, braced my feet to brake. My hands were sweaty against the wheel cover. My pulse pounded in my throat. There was nowhere to look away now. I stared ahead at the road.

In the distance, I spotted the two red dots of Laura’s taillights. They disappeared; she had turned. I stepped harder on the gas. These hillside lanes snaked into each other unexpectedly. Laura knew them from visiting Adrienne. This had never been my beat; to me it was a maze.

At the corner I turned sharply, the screech of the wheels louder than the siren. No sight of her. But nowhere else to go. I yanked the wheel left at the next corner, looping back. In the distance her brake lights flickered; she turned right. A drop of sweat fell in my eye. I shook my head sharply. Hitting the gas, I took the corner, barely missing a van parked too near. I caught a flash of lights as she made another right. She was almost out of sight. At the corner I yanked the wheel right.

The block ahead was divided, our lane ten feet above the downhill one. I could see the red lights way ahead. I hit the gas, surging forward, steering the car next to the center divider, away from the eccentrically parked cars along the curb. The car bounced over the bumps and jolted into potholes.

She slowed at the corner. I was closing the gap. She turned right onto the Arlington, another divided road, another straight one. I could catch her there. I would be able to free a hand to call the dispatcher. He could call the Kensington P.D. to assist.

I pulled hard right and hit the gas. The siren strained for its high note. Laura was a hundred and fifty yards ahead now, heading for the block of shops and restaurants. At this rate, I would catch her on the far side of them.

Laura was no fool. She’d see me closing the gap. There were two breaks in the divider at either end of the shopping block. On the far side of the street, halfway between those breaks, was a half-circle parking lot. Two winding hillside roads converged there. Once she got on either road, Laura would be gone.

She passed the first divider break. Was I wrong? Would she keep on straight, up the Arlington? If I followed her and she hung a U at the second divider break, I’d lose her in the hillside cutbacks. To have any chance at stopping her, I’d have to cut through the first divider. If she went straight, I’d lose her. I had to make my choice before she committed herself.

She was a hundred yards ahead now, halfway between the divider breaks. I slowed. I couldn’t signal her by turning too soon.

Between the dividers the other lane dipped. Our lane was twelve feet above it, supported by a cement wall.

She was almost at the second cut. Her taillights held steady; she wasn’t braking for a turn. I had to choose now. I pulled the wheel hard to the left, speeding across the downhill lane. Just before the parking lot, I slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop two feet away from a light pole.

And watched as Laura’s Triumph spun out in the narrow divider break. Tires screeching, the little car skidded onto the lawn of the building beside it, seemed to stop momentarily, then jerked back into the street. She’d overcompensated. The car hit the cement divider wall, bounced, jumped the curb, spun sharply, and died. The driver’s door sprang open.

I grabbed the mike and called for an ambulance. Then, gun in hand, I ran for the wreckage.

She could have been dead. She could have been covered with blood. She could have had broken bones and enough soft-tissue injuries to leave her black and blue. But by the time I got to the Triumph, she was shaking her head slowly, and reaching for her seat belt.

She’d fastened her seat belt! Christ, she could be the centerpiece of the Highway Patrol’s buckle-up campaign. “Fasten Your Seat Belt Every Time You Drive, Especially in a High-Speed Chase! Safety Pays!”

She unclasped the belt and moved her feet slowly around to the ground.

“Don’t take the chance of moving,” I said. “The engine’s off, you’re okay there.”

The Kensington fire department was less than half a mile away. Already their sirens cut through the cackle of my radio. When they got here the medics would check her out. If she could wait, I’d call the dispatcher and we’d roll our own ambulance to a Berkeley hospital. And we’d roll our own tow truck for the Triumph.

Laura looked up. The pulser lights turned her face alternately brick red, then gray. Her fingers rattled against the door handle. She stared at them as if they were an anomaly of the automotive design, then looked away. “They didn’t know.”

“Who?”

“Adrienne and Ashoka. I want to be sure you realize that. I killed Mitch, just me. They didn’t know till tonight. They figured it out then.”

“None of them had seen enough to know how Mitch would react, right? Only you knew how to make sure he swallowed all the poison.”

She flinched at the word poison. “Yes,” she said softly. “They didn’t know. They didn’t help me. Only just now they tried to protect me, because they’re friends. It’s like that when you cook together—all or nothing. They didn’t plan to attack you; they just reacted. I want to be sure you understand that.”

I shook my head. Laura really was Mrs. Nice. From memory I recited her rights.

“You didn’t have to bother,” she said. “I killed him. Bastard! I gave up my dreams for him, for Paradise. I put everything into Paradise. Mitch never told me he was closing it. I didn’t know till I saw the boxes. Goddamn him. I deserve to go to jail. Not for killing him. For being stupid enough to put up with him all those years. He said I was essential to him; I wasn’t essential, I was just useful.” A tear hovered momentarily at the corner of her eye, then plunged down her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice. “I could have been a good chiropractor; I could have healed people. I could have been a decent chef. And what am I? A killer.”

The sirens shrieked through the suburban night. In a minute the ambulance would be here. In another, passing cars would stop, neighbors would peer out of windows, or hurry up the street. I had time for one question. I said to Laura, “Why did you use aconite?”

“Because it’s like horseradish. Horseradish was the only thing I could be sure Mitch would eat.”

I
PULLED A BOTTLE
of white Riesling from my refrigerator. Howard got the glasses.

It was six o’clock Sunday morning. The aftermath had taken us hours. Laura Biekma was in the hospital. We had booked Adrienne Jenks and Ashoka Prem; they were still in holding cells, refusing to say anything. And there were more reporters around the station than there had been at the Reykjavik arms talks. As was too often the case, I felt not elated by a big collar but sad. Just as everyone else had, I liked Laura Biekma. I couldn’t bring myself to condone poisoning her husband, but I could understand what drove her to it.

Howard must have been thinking the same thing. “It’s hard to picture Laura as a killer.”

“Mitch took everything she had, then he tossed it aside. She had put her own ambition to be a chiropractor on hold, and by the time she could have afforded to go back to school, it was too late. So she decided to concentrate on Paradise, to enjoy being a good cook at a great restaurant. And then Mitch destroyed Paradise.”

“Real charmer.” Howard uncorked the bottle. “Still, everyone at Paradise knew what he was like. Why did she put up with him all that time?”

I shook my head. It was the question I had been asked after my divorce—why did you stay with him so long? The only time you talked was to argue. Everyone knew your marriage was doomed. Why couldn’t you see it? To Howard I said, “When you’re in a situation long enough, it takes on a sense of normality. It takes a shock to make you recognize what’s really going on. For Laura that shock was seeing those health equipment boxes.”

Howard nodded slowly. I couldn’t tell whether he was recalling a similar experience or just trying to understand. It was a moment before he said, “But Jill, how could you be sure it was Laura who killed him?”

“She was the only one who could have predicted Mitch’s reaction to Earth Man. Rue and Ashoka saw him go into a rage at her class when another student made a fool of him. They knew how he hated to be shown up. But they didn’t know that Yankowski had used Earth Man to set him up. They might have found it odd that Earth Man was being fed at Paradise, but they had no way of knowing why it was. Even Earth Man didn’t know that. Mitch ran into Earth Man in the street once and started screaming at him, but he could only guess why. Even if he’d been told, he would never have comprehended that he was the wrong kind of poor person for Mitch’s free meals.”