Mumbo Gumbo (11 page)

“Oh, could you?” Holly said quickly. “That would work. Take my car. I’ll just go and look at Donald’s house and you can come back and pick me up in a few minutes, okay?”

I slid over to the driver’s seat and buckled the seat belt. With a quick wave, I pulled out into the narrow street and headed toward Lemon Grove Drive, aware that I had left Holly in a very tender trap.

The address on Lemon Grove I was looking for was only about nine blocks away, as determined by the Thomas Bros. map. I pulled around a corner and headed in the proper direction up Knotty Pine Street. With the passenger window still open, I got a large whiff of smoky air as I approached the corner to Lemon Grove. I remembered the sirens and slowed down. At the corner, I made a right turn but a policeman standing in the road stopped me almost immediately. He waved me to turn around. Instead, I rolled
down the driver’s-side window. He reluctantly walked over.

“Sorry. Can’t let you go any farther,” said the officer. “We’ve got a fire down the road and we need to keep access clear for emergency equipment.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, “but I live on this street. It’s late and I’m just coming home from work at the studio.” I gave a quick wave at all the old scripts Holly had piled up in her backseat.

He looked at me and the scripts and asked my name and address.

“Madeline,” I said. “Madeline Stock. I live at 12226 Lemon Grove. Just down there.” I waved in the general direction of “there” and looked serious.

“Stock?” he asked. Then he spoke into his Motorola radio.

I waited to be busted, wondering how long it would take and whether there was a law against fibbing about one’s address to a traffic cop.

“Say, Mrs. Stock.” The officer was standing in the street next to my open window. “You better get down there. Sorry to give you such bad news, but they say it’s your house that’s been burning. And I’m afraid, ma’am, your husband may not have made it.”

“My husband?”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry. They’re pulling his body out of the house right now.”

T
he officer who approached the car was female and wore an LAPD uniform. “Are you Mrs. Stock?”

“What happened here?” The aftermath of chaos filled this block of large residential properties. The smell of smoke was everywhere. Lemon Grove Drive was slick with water and crisscrossed with fire hoses. Neighbors, roused from their evening television programs, stood around in twos and threes, subdued and watchful as the emergency workers went about their tasks.
Food Freak
had aired about two hours ago. It was an odd thought. Two fire trucks and a few other emergency vehicles were parked at odd angles, filling the street. Several firefighters were working cleanup, pulling equipment from one of the trucks. Others were still hosing down the smoldering shell that only an hour ago must have been the garage attached to Tim Stock’s home. No other residence on this affluent block of houses appeared to have been affected, but I noticed that several roofs nearby dripped water. A precaution.

“I’m Officer Blackwell,” the woman said.

A helicopter circled over our heads, rotors loudly chopping through the air, directing its searchlight on the
burnt, smoldering structure. In the bright illumination a new burst of puffy white smoke billowed upward.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” the young officer said. “We don’t know yet what caused the fire. Garage fires aren’t that uncommon. As you can see yourself, there’s been a lot of damage, but it’s mostly contained in the garage, as far as we can tell. The car is a total loss. The BMW M3 coupe. Was that your husband’s?”

It took a moment for me to realize she was talking to me.

“I’m sorry. There’s plenty of time for these questions. I’m just wondering if you know what time your husband got home tonight?”

I took a deep breath. “I didn’t know anyone would be here tonight, actually. But you are saying that Tim…he
was
here and now…now he’s dead?”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Stock,” Officer Blackwell said kindly. “You’re in shock. If you’d like to come sit in my squad car, you might be more comfortable. With a casualty, there will be detectives out here soon to take charge of things. They’ll want to ask you some questions, but why don’t you just rest until they get here.”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.”

Tim Stock. I tried to get my head around it. Tim Stock was no longer missing. Tim Stock was dead. The poor guy. It seemed impossible, and yet there had been something odd about the whole setup. I had felt all along that something might be terribly wrong.

An ambulance was pulling up to the front of the house now. This one was from the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office. I watched as two large paramedics lifted a gurney from the back of the still smoldering property and wheeled it over to the vehicle.
One of the neighborhood men pulled his young son around so he wouldn’t see the shape of the body under the thin blanket. But I couldn’t turn away. This was as close as I’d ever been to the man whose office I had been borrowing, the man who had spent the last year writing the country’s favorite game show, the man who had disappeared without a word to anyone.

I’d heard a lot about Tim Stock over the past week. Jennifer Klein told me about him, what a good guy he’d been. How he read several books a week, everything from Shakespeare to Vonnegut to Dorothy Sayers with pleasure. How he’d often fly to New York for the latest musical, and he’d always take a less affluent buddy along as a treat. How she figured he’d never settle down, he was one of those guys who flitted from one beautiful young woman to the next, but how great a friend he’d been. A bike enthusiast. An animal lover. A talented amateur chef.

The gurney was raised, the stretcher was shifted into the back of the coroner’s van, and the rear doors were slammed shut. What had Tim Stock been doing here in his garage when he was supposed to be drunk in Las Vegas? Was he hiding out? From whom? From Greta or someone else at work? I couldn’t make any of it fit together. Why had he died tonight?

There was nothing left to see here. I turned away and began to leave.

“Madeline?”

I swung around. Lieutenant Chuck Honnett of the LAPD stood in the street, staring at me. His eyes were cautious.

I hadn’t seen in him in a while, and I hated how my breath seemed to get instantly shallow and short. Absence and all that. I checked him out: the same tall and
lean frame, the same wide mouth. Honnett was Honnett. His tanned face had seen too much sun, but he had this great jaw and these sexy hollows beneath his sharp cheekbones. His dark hair had begun to show some gray, but on him it looked good. Chuck Honnett, the guy who hadn’t called me in over three weeks. Of all the cops in all the cities in all the world.

“Hi,” I said.

Honnett seemed unable to hide the puzzled, assessing expression that had found its way into his laserblue eyes. This—my being here—was not computing. He looked down and tried on a frown. I didn’t often score one on the poker-faced cop. “What are you doing here?” he asked finally.

“That’s your greeting?”

“Look, I can’t really talk now. I just got here, Maddie, and I need to take over the scene.” He looked uncomfortable, but perhaps that was because he had jumped to the conclusion that I was here tracking him down to demand things. Like some time alone to talk about why he had been avoiding me. Like why a little thing like our going to bed together and having incredibly good sex had to mean our relationship must go instantly to hell. He cleared his throat and spoke in a low, intimate voice. “This isn’t a good time, you know?” And then, he finally found a smile for me.

“Okay,” I said, extremely agreeable, backing up. “No problem.” If Honnett was worried about some messy public scene, he was way, way off. I had other “issues” right now. I was pretty sure someone would be along any second and call me “Mrs. Stock,” and I’d be exposed as a fake and a liar. I gave a little wave and turned to walk over to Holly’s car. I was pretty sure
Honnett would find my involvement, not to mention my deception, here at the location of Tim Stock’s death peculiar and unseemly and just a big fat LAPD embarrassment. All would be best if I could just…

“Oh, Mrs. Stock? I see you have met the detective in charge.”

At Officer Blackwell’s introduction, Honnett adjusted his expression and turned to meet the victim’s widow. Naturally, there was no one there but me. By the time he could react, I had made it all the way over to Holly’s car, parked across the street.

Honnett kept his eyes on me as he stood, head bent down, questioning Officer Blackwell. He spoke to her again as I got into the Beetle and turned the key in the ignition. Unfortunately, at that same moment, the coroner’s van began backing out of the driveway. Another uniformed cop at the site stepped out into the street, blocking my easy escape, while the van pulled out. So I sat there, watching, as Tim Stock left his house for the last time. The poor guy. It was unlikely this fire was going to turn out to be a simple accident, not with all the mysterious troubles over the past week. Things always connect. When a guy hides out and then winds up dead, it adds up to trouble. What sort of trouble had Stock been involved in? Was there something going on at
Food Freak
that could get a recipe writer killed? Or was it something else, some personal problem that had become fatal?

I was just shifting out of Park, when Honnett called out, “Wait.”

He walked up to the car and checked it out for a minute before speaking. “Why don’t you step out of the car, Madeline?”

There’s something so impersonal when they use that officer-speak. “I thought you were in a hurry to get rid of me,” I joked, staying put behind the wheel of Holly’s red Beetle.

“Not anymore.” His voice sounded gravelly and tired. “Please?”

I turned off the ignition and left the keys dangling as he opened the car door for me. I stepped out and then leaned back, resting my body against the cool lacquered sheet metal. Honnett took a step closer. I could smell the fresh scent of lemon soap on his skin.

“What is it?” I asked, meeting his eyes. The chopper above drowned out the words as it roared closer overhead and then moved off a little. Its search beam washed over us, lighting us up as if we were onstage for a few moments, and then leaving us in the dark as it moved off, hunting for the source of the white smoke billowing again from Tim Stock’s garage across the street.

“Are you planning on getting me in trouble with the department?” he asked quietly.

“Why would I do that?”

“Look, you found me here, right? You seem to have done a pretty good number on Blackwell, pretending you are related to the victim, for Christ’s sake. So if you went to the trouble to scam your way onto a crime scene to see me, I’ve got to figure you are plenty pissed off. And, hell, Maddie, you have every reason to be. But can we take this somewhere private?”

“I’m not mad at you.” I looked at Honnett. He hadn’t called me in almost a month. Why was that? “Well, I guess I am, but that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I was in the neighborhood”—I almost
laughed at how it came out, but what else could I say?—”and thought I’d visit a friend.”

“In the neighborhood?” He smiled. “Right. Who were you visiting around here this time of night?”

“I dropped Holly off at her ex-boyfriend’s house down on DeMille Drive. She needed a few minutes so I thought I’d just stop off and see this guy I work with. And now, I think I’m in shock.” Nothing sounds as fake as the truth. Nothing. I’m not sure why I even tried.

“So your story is, you were stopping in to see some guy. What guy?”

“This guy, Tim Stock. When they told me his house was on fire, I just hurried over to see if I could help or something.”

“Aw, Maddie. That’s bullshit. Stock didn’t work with caterers and party planners. He worked for some TV show.”

“Right.
Food Freak.
I know. I work there, too, Honnett.”

“What’s that?”

“Yeah. And you would know where I was working these days if you ever called me. But I guess you’ve been busy.”

He didn’t actually blush, but he paused and took the hit before he went on. “So you really do work with Stock?” he asked. “Since when?” He had begun to relax. In fact, he was checking me out, his eyes wandering down the front of my black T-shirt, down my white jeans.

“Just about a week. I’ve been helping them out as a temporary thing. Writing recipes.”

“So you weren’t out looking for me?” he asked, beginning to buy into my story.

“Just a coincidence,” I said. Which was a mistake. Detective Chuck Honnett believes in coincidences just about as much as I do.

“Uh-huh,” he said slowly.

I reached out and put my hand on his arm. The strong, hard muscles beneath his black shirt were tense. If Officer Blackwell was checking us out from across the street, I wondered what she would make of the grieving widow now. “I had no idea you’d be here,” I said honestly. “But naturally, if I didn’t have so much work going on right now, I’d be missing you terribly. In fact, I’m definitely stalker material when my hormones are acting up.”

“You’re looking good, Maddie,” he said, almost breaking a smile. “You always do.”

Why, if I could still get to him like this, hadn’t he called me?

“I gotta go back to work,” he said.

“Right.”

“Sorry about all this, Maddie. Sorry about your friend Stock. And, well, sorry about a lot of things.”

I like it when men apologize. It may be one of my favorite things. I pushed my heavy hair off my shoulders and waited to get the whole enchilada. “You are?”

“Yes. Sorry about us, too.”

“How about that,” I whispered.

“I’ll call you.”

“You will?”

“Tonight. Later.”

“Want to stop by?”

“Maybe.” His smile was slow and friendly. “See how late this thing goes.”

“So I can leave now, Lieutenant?” I asked, rubbing against him almost by accident as I stopped leaning
against the car and slowly stood up straight. I reached for the car-door handle, but he beat me to it and opened it for me.

“I know where to find you,” he said. The perfect cop exit line.

I slid back behind the wheel and again turned the ignition. Honnett put his hand on the open driver’s-side window. “So,” he drawled, “how do you suppose Officer Blackwell there got the wild idea that you were the
wife
of the deceased?”

“Well…” Honnett had a better view of the low-cut V of my T-shirt from his present position, so I took a little extra time to answer. “I had to tell the officer down the street something. Tim was a friend. I was upset. I can’t stand being kept away. You know me.”

“I know you,” he said, watching me pull out from the curb, “too well.”