Beat Until Stiff Read online

  “A couple of the guys helped me. Unfortunately, the laundry closet is still off limits.” He flicked his wrist in the direction of the laundry closet. “They told me it would be cleared for us to use by Monday. Madre de Dios, those cops are complete pigs,” he said in disgust. He must have caught his reflection in the sheen of the stainless steel table because he ran both hands through his hair trying to slick it back down in an attempt to correct his uncharacteristic dishabille. “You would not believe it. I found coffee cups everywhere, cigarette butts ground into the tile floor. Someone even walked off with the cooking wine.”

  “How long did they keep everyone?”

  “Oh, for hours, Mary. I didn’t get home until at least four that afternoon. Poor Carlos. I talked with his wife this morning. She is very upset. She had to identify the body.”

  “It was…pretty awful.” I tried, but failed, to block out an image of Carlos’ battered face. “He was strangled and very badly beaten.”

  Juan leaned toward me and gently cupped my chin in his hand for a brief moment, his face creased with concern. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest. If I may say so, you look very tired. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “Thanks, I think I’ll take your advice. Is Brent here?” I hadn’t seen any evidence of anyone else, but Brent might be upstairs in the office mending fences with Mrs. Gerson.

  “No. He is still distraught about what happened last night. He decided not to come in today. If he calls I will let him know you asked about him.”

  As he talked his hands made small flourishes in the air. The affectations were resurfacing; I could leave without feeling guilty. Placing a firm hand on the small of my back, he steered me out the kitchen.

  “I’ll talk to you later. Bye,” I said over my shoulder as I entered the dining room.

  A second too late I saw out of the corner of my eye the delivery guy barreling toward me. He didn’t see me because the dolly was stacked up to the top with cases of wine. Before I could jump out of his way, he ran right into me. I screamed blue murder as the edge of the dolly sliced into my shin.

  “Mary?” Juan came running from back of the kitchen.

  Seeing me clutching my shin and moaning from the pain, Juan began screaming Spanish invectives at the delivery guy; his rage was terrifying. God knows what he said, but it must have been horrendous. The deliveryman shrank in fear, his back bending over a table in an attempt to get away from Juan’s fury.

  I limped over to Juan and put my hand on his arm to stop him. He wheeled around and was about to cuff me when he realized at the last second who I was. He stopped just short of shattering my jaw. We stood there frozen for a few seconds as if in a movie still, his arm half lowered and my arm half raised against the blow I had expected.

  Finally, Juan lowered his arm completely and apologized in his most courteous manner. “I am so sorry, Mary. I lost my temper. Please forgive me,” he implored. “I was so angry that this imbecile barged into you. I was not thinking.”

  The delivery guy across from me silently mouthed what looked like Hail Marys.

  “Well, don’t just apologize to me, apologize to him. You scared the shit out of him, too,” I managed to squeak out.

  Juan turned toward the driver and said something softly in Spanish, then stuck out his hand. The driver shook it very gingerly, bowed his head, took the dolly of wine, and headed for the truck.

  I had to get out of there fast. Blood was dripping down my shin from where the dolly hit me. If Juan saw me bleeding he’d insist on bandaging me up.

  “Gotta go, I’ll call tomorrow.” I limped out of the restaurant as fast as I could, ignoring his offers of assistance.

  What a bizarre scene. I’d never seen Juan lose it like that.

  Running a restaurant is an endless day of stomping out fires. Your dishwasher shows up drunk and you can’t find a replacement. The compressor on your refrigeration unit blows up on the hottest day of the year. Your best waiter decides to check into detox the night of the symphony opening. Juan deftly handled these sorts of crises without so much as incurring an extra crease in his pants. The stains on his shirt were as shocking as his uncharacteristic rage.

  I sat in the car for ten minutes, trying to stem the bloody mess from my shin with some of the napkins I had brought with my doughnuts. I fashioned a bandage out of napkins and a couple of rubber bands, hoping it would hold until I got home.

  I started the car and was about to pull away when I heard a horn beep. In the rearview mirror I saw a red BMW pull up behind me.

  Thom.

  I rolled down the window, but kept the engine running to let him know I wasn’t going to give the encyclopedia version of yesterday’s events. Even on his day off Thom was a walking advertisement for Ralph Lauren: khakis, white linen shirt, and tasseled loafers. His outfit probably cost more than the blue book of my car.

  Thom usually sauntered everywhere, his lazy style in sharp contrast to most of us in the restaurant who operate at light speed. Today he actually sprinted over to my car.

  “Mary, how are you? Did you see anything? Was it just too gory?”

  I debated which question he really wanted answered. I wasn’t about to go into details; he probably wanted salacious tidbits to bandy about the gym. “No blood, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So lucky you didn’t run into the murderer. Are you sure you didn’t see anything? Did you sleep a wink last night? Is there anything I can do?”

  These trilogies of questions were getting annoying. However, he was being awfully friendly. Stung by Amos’s criticism, I was determined to be nice.

  “No, I didn’t get much sleep last night, but I’m all right. How about you? You look a little pale.” Naturally florid, today he looked washed out, accenting the rigidity of the botox treatment.

  “Surviving, just barely. Well, when I got Juan’s message about the…” he paused, searching for the right word.

  “Murder?” I chimed in.

  “Yes, if you must put it like that. As soon as I got the message I ran over to Mrs. Gerson’s and begged for forgiveness. I convinced her this was a blessing in disguise. If the benefit is held in the spring, the flowers would be so much more…well, spectacular.”

  I’m sure Carlos’ wife didn’t see her husband’s murder in quite that light. I promised myself I’d be nicer to Thom in the future, but he was making things very difficult.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Gerson was reason personified.” My voice was dry as cooking parchment. I bet that harpy and Thom commiserated for hours about how Carlos’ death had momentarily derailed her social climbing. Time to leave. If the conversation continued in this vein, I’d be up on charges for vehicular manslaughter. I revved the motor a little to let Thom know that our conversation was at an end. “See you later, Thom. We’re opening on Tuesday for lunch. Check with Juan. He’s inside.”

  Thom leaned over and placed a pudgy hand on the edge of window to make sure I didn’t drive off. “Mary, wait. Did you go upstairs at all?”

  A mean, salty wind from the bay was whipping through the Mission, yet Thom’s forehead was beaded with sweat and the little silk scarf tied jauntily around his neck was damp around the edges.

  “No, I was in the dining room or the kitchen the whole time. You look stressed. Is anything missing?”

  “I don’t think so. They called me last night with an inventory of the equipment in the office. It sounds like it’s all there. I’m going in to double-check and phone the insurance company. That equipment is top of the line, sweetie. They’d better have kept their clumsy hands off my computer.” His mouth puckered in distaste, as if the S.F.P.D. were lepers and their disease-crusted hands had spread life-threatening germs all over his equipment. “I’ll sue the department if those oafs so much as touched the keyboard.”

  Once he said oafs, all bets were off.

  “You know, Thom.” This time I pronounced the “th” on purpose. “My ex-husband’s a
cop. The detective in charge of this case is a personal friend of mine. I wouldn’t go broadcasting your low opinions of S.F.P.D. too loudly.”

  When I mispronounced his name he flinched, stood up straight, sucked in his gut, and shot me a look of pure hatred. “Bitch,” he spat. “Too bad there wasn’t room for two in that laundry bag.” He turned heel and stomped into the restaurant as fast as his tasseled loafers could carry him.

  Driving across the whole length of the bridge I obsessed on Carlos’ murder and forced myself to answer some very basic questions.

  If you died next week, would you want to have wasted what precious time you had left hating your ex-husband? That was a toughie. I moved on to an easier one.

  If you died next week, would you want to have spent your last few days in a house painted instant-depression mauve? But, do you have the energy to paint? The first answer was obviously no. Unfortunately, the second answer was another no. Impasse.

  I drove straight to my local hardware store and whiled away an hour looking at paint chips. It was the first time in eight months I was doing something that wasn’t food-related.

  I asked the guy behind the counter, “How many gallons of latex will it take to cover up this yucky mauve color on my living room walls?”

  I’d reached the stage in my life when I was older than most of the people who waited on me. I resent the way that when you turn thirty, not only are you not cool, you’re invisible, too. This guy was no exception. Plus, he had four piercings I could see and God knows how many I couldn’t. And his hair was dirty to boot. I try not to make value judgments on this sort of stuff, but it’s hard. If this guy had bothered to make eye contact instead of moving his eyes somewhere in my direction, I might have been more tolerant.

  “How big a space we talking about?” He was chewing gum and talking at the same time. The gum kept getting caught on the stud in his tongue. I felt my stomach flip-flop.

  Trying to avoid his various piercings, I fixed on a pimple above his right eyebrow.

  “Standard living room size. This mauve’s pretty intense though.”

  “Usually a couple of gallons, but for your house…who knows? We don’t do house calls, lady.”

  I hate being called “lady.” Giving him one of my “you jerk” looks, I scooped up all my paint chips and left the store.

  As I was walking to my car, I saw a young Latino male standing behind a lamppost.

  Oh, my God, it was Gilberto, Carlos’ brother.

  I rushed up to him and was about to hug him when I stopped dead. He didn’t move to greet me, his body was stiff, his eyes fierce.

  “You’re the one who found Carlitos.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  I moved to touch him. He flinched. I backed off.

  “He’s dead.”

  Again, it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, Gilberto. I’m so sorry. I…is there anything I can do?”

  His face paled, and then contorted with grief as he tried not to cry. He opened his mouth several times as if to speak, then turned away from me and ran across three lanes of traffic. He was out of sight within thirty seconds. I screamed, “Wait,” several times to no avail. He must have tailed me all the way from the restaurant. Why didn’t he go to the police to get information about Carlos?

  Knowing Gilberto had followed me all the way from San Francisco without my having a clue was pretty unsettling. By the time I reached my block, I’d convinced myself into near hysterics that the blue van trailing three cars behind me all the way from the paint store to my house was after me. I couldn’t get a good look at the driver; the windows were darkened. But when I parked a couple of doors away from my house, it continued down the street. In my neighborhood it was probably filled with screaming toddlers and a harassed suburban mom driving home from the grocery store. It was just my overactive imagination. The events of the last two days were making me paranoid.

  I changed before the inevitable inquisition with my mother that afternoon. The clothes I’d worn yesterday were in a sad pile on my bedroom floor. I threw them away knowing every time I put them on, I’d think about Carlos’ battered face in the laundry bag.

  Chapter 7

  My mother and stepfather, Ed, live on a cul-de-sac in Kensington, a wooded enclave in the hills between Berkeley and El Cerrito. My mother has either a trowel or a knitting needle in hand, weather depending. Ed’s a great reader, with a keen interest in politics.

  One of my nicest memories is sitting around the kitchen table discussing history with him, especially WWII. He was a radio operator with the Royal Air Force and was captured by the Japanese early on in the war. Ed spent four years in a Japanese POW camp. That man has some stories to tell. His latest hobby is shortwave radio. He beeps and dots by the hour.

  I spent a couple of hours at their kitchen table reliving the murder several times over. Once Ed heard the most salient details and ascertained I was all right, he went back to beeping and dotting, knowing my mother would retell the mostly grisly bits at dinner that night.

  As I sat in my mother’s kitchen, listening to the gurgle of the garden fountain through the open door and watching my mother scatter walnuts throughout the garden for the squirrels, the ball of pain lodged between my shoulder blades since the morning of the murder gradually disappeared. My equilibrium was returning. Peace.

  Once the squirrels had been fed, the two of us sat at the kitchen table guzzling more coffee and thumbing through the mountains of catalogues she’d gotten in the mail in anticipation of Christmas sales.

  “Mom, look. Truly hideous,” I chuckled, pointing to a gaudy, sequined number that had trailer trash written all over it. “And they want three hundred dollars for it.”

  “Mary, I talked to Jim this morning.”

  The pain came roaring back with a speed and ferocity that left me breathless. I looked at her in astonishment. Traitor, my inner voice screamed. Avoiding eye contact, she began flipping rapidly through a catalogue whose specialty was matching outfits for pets and their owners.

  “Did he tell you about our fight? How I almost had a stroke over AT&T?” I demanded.

  “No, we didn’t talk about your fight. I still don’t understand what happened between you two, but I don’t think it’s as simple as you make it out to be. That’s another subject,” she said firmly and slapped the catalogue closed.

  Taking my hand that lay on the table, she squeezed it tight and looked right at me. “The person I love is you, and I’ll do anything it takes to keep you safe. If that means talking to Jim, then I’ll talk to Jim. Anyway, he called me, I didn’t call him. So get that look off your face. He’s worried about your safety. He wants you to stay with me until this case is solved.”

  Maybe spending the last week of my life hating my ex-husband was a good thing.

  “Mom, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. Carlos’ murder has nothing to do with me. I happened to stumble on his body. End of story. I resent Jim calling you up and getting you all worried. Besides, O’Connor’s on the case. He wouldn’t dare risk your wrath if anything happened to me. True?”

  She nodded her head slowly. “I’d feel better if you were here.”

  “Look, I need to do a few things around the house. I can’t stay here. Okay?” I squeezed her hand back. “I’m not answering my phone right now, I don’t want to talk to him. If you want to talk to me, call once, then hang up and call again.”

  She acquiesced reluctantly. Jim knew what a worrywart my mother was. What in the hell was his problem?

  When I finally got home it was after five and I was famished. No food in the house, of course. My stomach screamed in agony from tea burns and starvation.

  Although chefs cook with all sorts of wonderful ingredients all day long and conjure up mouthwatering culinary extravaganzas for other people, if they don’t have families to feed, their cupboards at home are often bare because when do they have time to shop? The only staples I always have on
hand are sugar, flour, yeast, eggs, and salt, so I can always make bread. Otherwise I buy for events like dinner parties and barbeques. My cupboards are filled with things like capers and candied ginger, but no real food, as I eat at the restaurant. I know one chef who doesn’t even have cutlery or dishes. He has one spoon and one coffee mug ready for use, if by chance he remembers to buy instant coffee.

  The sole contents of my refrigerator were one moldy container of Kalamata olives, some Parmigiano-Reggiano, the heels of a stale loaf of Grace’s Stormy baguette, a jar of Grey Poupon, and three pounds of Peet’s coffee. Pathetic. I scraped the mold off the olives, mashed them up with a little of the Parmesan and the mustard, and toasted the bread. It wasn’t half bad. As I munched down this culinary delight, the phone rang. Silence. Then the phone rang again. Sigh. Mom calling to make sure I got home in one piece.

  “Mom, I’m fine.”

  “Is this Mary Ryan?” The voice was tentative and small.

  “Uh, yeah. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Teri from the restaurant. I really need to talk with you. Um, about Brent.” She sounded extremely upset, her voice breathy and clipped like she was trying not to cry.

  Teri Baxter, a bus person at the restaurant, was one of Brent’s current squeezes. There are two kinds of redheads: the type with the rice paper-white skin and copper-gold hair, and Teri’s type, the kind with skin the color of a peeled potato and hair so red that it looks like your finger would blister if you touched it. I’d never understood Brent’s attraction to her.

  Teri had worked at the restaurant for about six months. When she first started she made timid hints to me that what she really wanted to do was learn pastry. Normally, I love teaching and feel strongly about promoting from within. These days I just didn’t want to explain why bread flour was different from pastry flour, what a “turn” in croissant dough was, why you had to temper eggs before you added them to hot milk, and so on. To her credit, she hadn’t used her relationship with Brent to muscle her way in. She was a nice kid, much too nice to be mixed up with that hound Brent.