Beat Until Stiff Read online

  As I struggled to balance the phone on my ear and eat at the same time, I dropped the interior of my sandwich first down my shirt, then onto the floor. Shit. Mustard and black olives on white tee shirt, a winning combination.

  “What’s up?” I snapped, not so much at her as at my own clumsiness.

  “Mary, I need to talk to you right away. The police were just here. I pretended I wasn’t home. I didn’t know what to say. With your ex-husband being a cop, I thought you might know what I should do.”

  To my tremendous embarrassment, the girl began to cry.

  “Hey, everything’s going to be okay. Calm down. It’s procedure.”

  While she sobbed for a minute or two longer, I gathered up the olive bits that had fallen onto the floor and put them back in the sandwich.

  Pulling herself together she sniffled, “You don’t understand. Last night Brent called me and told me I shouldn’t say anything about m…m…my relationship with him or anything about the restaurant. That they were going to try to embarrass him cause he’s a big-name chef and he didn’t want me to get dragged into anything. You know, for my sake.”

  I ignored the bullshit about his noble bid to save Teri’s honor from the police. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about her potential humiliation. I honed in on the part I found interesting.

  “So…what sort of things about the restaurant aren’t you suppose to talk about?” I tried to make my voice sound casual, but I must have blown it because she hung up.

  I called her back every ten minutes, but she wouldn’t answer the phone. What game was Brent playing? After an hour of cooling my heels by the telephone, I reviewed my options. Do I go to the restaurant, find out where she lives, and then beat her door down demanding an explanation?

  No, go to the source, I reasoned. I called Brent’s house for the next half hour. Busy signal. By now my curiosity overwhelmed my exhaustion and I was getting a second wind. Time to drive over to that weasel Brent’s house and find out the truth for myself. It might be something fairly innocent, but now I was intrigued. Brent could hang up on me, but he couldn’t avoid me if I was on his doorstep.

  I drove across the bridge for the second time that day and headed toward Brent’s house in the city. I kept flicking my eyes to the rearview mirror, trying to see if there was a blue van behind me. Once or twice I thought I saw it, but reasoned that there must be hundreds of blue Plymouth vans. At one point it was the most popular van in the U.S.

  There’s no easy way to get anywhere in San Francisco these days. Most of the freeway’s on-ramps and off-ramps were destroyed during the Loma Prieta earthquake. Due to neighborhood politics versus Caltrans versus the mayor’s office versus the S.F. Board of Supervisors, the majority of these ramps were torn down and not replaced. One year after the Northridge earthquake, all Los Angeles freeway overpasses and ramps were operational. Ten years after Loma Prieta, Caltrans reopened the Cypress structure. Sometimes there’s a heavy price for living in the land of the politically correct. On the plus side, the Embarcadero freeway was torn down and the waterfront now has a spectacular esplanade. The negative? It’s impossible to get to the neighborhoods without using city streets.

  After hitting every stoplight on Sloat, I finally reached St. Francis Woods where Brent lives, a precursor to the planned community. Back in the nineteen twenties, a developer created an exclusive section of elegant houses for San Francisco’s well-to-do. The truly wealthy live in Pacific Heights, but St. Francis Woods has a firm understated refinement that declares this is where the real San Franciscans live. The houses are large and graceful, with tasteful paint jobs complemented by meticulously manicured yards. Late-model Jeeps or Rovers sit in the driveways. Today’s version of June and Ward Cleaver country.

  I rang the bell several times. I was so engrossed in my residual road rage that it was a minute before I realized there was a horrific argument going on inside. A man and a woman were yelling in Spanish at each other loud enough to drown out the delicate chime of the doorbell.

  Tiptoeing my way through a flowerbed, I peeked through the living room window. Brent and Sharon were going at it hammer and tongs, no kids in sight. I knew that Brent was fluent in Spanish; it plays a not insignificant role in his ability to run a kitchen well: ninety percent of his staff is Latino. That his wife, Sharon, was equally fluent surprised me. I bet they were screaming at each other in Spanish in the naïve belief that the kids wouldn’t understand them. Ha. The vitriol being flung back and forth in their living room was universal in any language.

  The yelling got louder, the hand gestures more violent. Well, I thought, now is not the time to interrogate Brent. I’ll make an exit and phone him in the morning. But then Sharon became so enraged she started throwing pillows at him. When she reached for a lamp, I started frantically banging my fists on the window in an effort to stop someone from getting hurt.

  “Hey,” I yelled as loud as I could. “No, Sharon, no!”

  They both looked up and stopped their screaming. She asked him something in Spanish. He shook his head no. Shooting me a look that would curdle milk, she put the lamp down and lumbered out of the room.

  Brent opened the door, blocking the entrance with that solid Teutonic body of his. He’d obviously been crying, his face splotchy and mottled, his eyes as red as raw hamburger. Standing there mutely, he waited for me to make the first move. I felt like a complete jerk, but I’d come all this way and damned if I was going to leave empty-handed.

  Maybe I’ll just ease into the thing with Teri I thought. Making no comment regarding the fight I’d just witnessed, I said, “Brent, I was in the neighborhood and was wondering if you know when and where is Carlos’ funeral?”

  Brent stared at me as if I were speaking Martian. The inappropriateness of the question was blindly apparent, but I pressed on.

  “I know this is a bad time”—his face said “No shit, Sherlock”—“but I’m kind of not answering my phone these days. And, uh, my answering machine seems to be on the fritz. Do you know?”

  He rubbed his large hands over his face for a minute, probably hoping that when he removed his hands I’d mercifully be gone.

  “Mary, call Juan. He’ll know. I think he’ll be at the restaurant tomorrow sometime. Just keep trying. I can’t help you tonight.”

  He started to close the door. I needed to do something fast or I’d have made this trip for nothing. I quickly put my shoulder against the door so he couldn’t close it.

  “Uh, one more thing, Brent. I need to talk with you about something else. Can I come in, please?”

  “Christ, Mary. Not now,” Brent groaned.

  I looked over Brent’s shoulder to see if Sharon was anywhere in sight.

  “I know it’s not a good time, but I just talked to Teri Baxter, and she…”

  Brent’s face immediately flushed tomato red at the mention of her name. He dug five meaty fingers into my shoulder and pushed his face toward me, not three inches from mine, his breath hot on my cheeks. “This is none of your goddam business.” He dug his fingers in further, just in case I didn’t understand the first time, let go with a push, and then slammed the door shut.

  I was still leaning lightly against the door, so that the force of it propelled me off the steps and down the front path. I went splat on the bricks. I was lucky I didn’t break an ankle. Before I could get back on my feet, he closed the drapes and turned off the porch light, leaving me in the dark. I went to my car and sat there for a couple of minutes thinking about my next move. Obviously Brent wasn’t going to tell me what was going on. I’d have to pry it out of Teri. Her address would be at the restaurant.

  The alley in front of the restaurant was deserted, not one lone curious thrill seeker. American Fare is located near South Park. People told Brent he was crazy to open a large bistro-type restaurant in an area previously renowned for its S&M leather bars, but with Brent’s unusual ability to nail trends, he predicted that the South Park area would become m
ecca to dot-com companies. For a song he bought a run-down, rat-infested brick building that used to be a meatpacking plant and transformed it into the West Coast’s hottest restaurant. The collapse of the dot-com boom hadn’t affected our bottom line yet, no doubt thanks to Brent’s endless publicity gigs.

  Big shivers climbed up and down my back when I got out of the car. Our proximity to the ocean and being sandwiched between old industrial warehouses makes the alley cold and damp. Even though it was dark, I decided to leave the lights off. I didn’t want anyone to know I was here. I’d have trouble explaining why I was in the office when we were closed for the next three days.

  I went through the kitchen, up the back staircase, and into the office. What the hell, I thought, and wrote down the other girlfriend’s address too. I was just about to turn out the lights when voices wafted up the hallway. Someone was in the kitchen, and it sounded like they were coming up the stairs. I made a dive for Juan’s desk and scrunched myself into the chair space.

  When they entered the office, I recognized the voices immediately—Brent and Sharon. They must have left five minutes after I did.

  Sharon said in a sharp voice, “What’s the light doing on in here?”

  “How should I know, Sharon? Maybe the police or Juan left it on. Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Your pride and joy? Spare me. You sure as hell didn’t mind spending eighty hours here last week.”

  “Shar, lay off for once,” Brent pleaded.

  “Lay off, I’ll lay you off, you bastard. The computer. I want it taken care of tonight.”

  “I told you already, everything on the computer’s been erased. See?”

  I heard clicking as Brent’s fingers played over the keyboard.

  “What about the invoices? Did he shred them?”

  “No, he can’t. He promised me he’d doctor new invoices. We shipped it with other stuff so it wouldn’t be noticed. Mary signs for a lot of stuff, and so does Thom. We bundled it with other shipments.”

  “You call him right now to make sure he’s on it,” she demanded.

  Oh shit, I thought, the jig is up. He’s going to come around the front of the desk to use the phone, and he’ll see me sardined under this desk.

  But he replied in that patronizing voice I’d only heard him use with his wife, “I’ve already spoken with him about it. He’s working on it. Do you have any idea how many invoices there are?”

  “Stop whining,” she ordered. “What about the menu? Is it on the menu?”

  “No,” he replied sullenly. “Do you think we’re total idiots?”

  “You don’t want to know what I think,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  They turned out the light and left the office.

  I waited five minutes and then un-pretzeled myself from under the desk. This whole thing was getting weirder and weirder. Why would Brent need to steal files from his own restaurant? Clutching the addresses in my hand, I slowly and quietly made my way out of the building.

  No blue van in sight.

  Chapter 8

  Teri Baxter lived in Albany. If I’d actually displayed some polite interest in her I’d have discovered she lived two blocks away from me on San Pablo Avenue in a ratty stucco apartment house right next door to a seedy bar called The Glow Worm. The kind of place with no windows—just a door—where the regulars line up at ten in the morning for their first shot. Her apartment building, a blank utilitarian style that was de rigueur in the sixties, screamed urban prison. Although I couldn’t imagine living in a place like this, the reality is that at seven dollars an hour this is what Teri probably could afford, if she were willing to sacrifice charm for privacy.

  Despite all the hype, the food business pays barely subsistence wages. A few big name chefs like Brent make a ton of dough, but the majority slog along until they realize they aren’t going to make more than about twelve dollars an hour, usually no benefits. If you’re lucky, you get a job in the hotels, which pay well and have benefits. I was fortunate. I’d hitched my star to Brent, who had parlayed his talents into a virtual culinary empire. My salary was decent, but I was in a tiny minority. In particularly bitter moments, I viewed restaurants as the late twentieth-century version of the sweatshop.

  Standing before Teri’s door, I heard the television blaring. I rang the doorbell and hollered, “Teri, it’s me, Mary. Let me in.”

  No answer.

  I shouted louder, “Teri, please let me in. I have to talk to you.”

  She opened the door. Her eyes raw from crying, she resembled one of those creepy all-white rabbits with the pink eyes. She sniffled something that sounded like “come in.”

  Teri’s studio was so small she could easily brush her teeth at the sink in the bathroom with one hand and simultaneously fry eggs at the stove with the other. The furniture consisted of a nightstand, a queen-size bed, and several pieces of expensive media equipment. Her TV was wider than my kitchen table.

  Dramatic music overwhelmed the tiny room. Automatically, we both turned toward the television. Heathcliff and Cathy were on the moors, the wind whipping around them.

  Teri walked over to the VCR and turned it off, saying, “My favorite movie.” She plopped down on the unmade bed, positioning herself between three remote controls and the remains of a bowl of popcorn.

  “One of mine, too,” I admitted.

  There was no place to sit besides the bed because all the available space was devoted to her wide-screen television, CD player, tape deck, and VCR. I shifted my weight, trying to look nonthreatening.

  My voice was gentle. “Teri, I spoke to Brent tonight.” That part was true. “You can’t protect him any longer. The police need to know everything. Anything might be important. I’m sure Brent had a very good reason for telling you to keep certain things from the police, but it’s not in your best interest. You need to talk with them.”

  She started to cry again, her sobbing loud and sharp. I hated Brent. Here she was wrapped up in her dingy bedclothes, watching a movie about an impossible love affair, crying her eyes out, and eating microwave popcorn for dinner. I couldn’t in my wildest nightmares compare Brent to Olivier, but obviously she felt she was living in a drama of Heathcliff/Cathy-like proportions.

  I walked over to her bed and gently placed my hands on both her shoulders and said quietly, but forcefully, “Teri, stop crying. Stop.” I took her chin in my hand and made her look at me.

  Once we established eye contact, she started to pull herself together. She stood up. “Let me wash my face,” she muttered thickly.

  While she cleaned herself up, I checked out her apartment: tacky, tacky, tacky. The walls were painted that ubiquitous “sand” color apartment owners love, and aside from the all-consuming electronic equipment, there weren’t any pictures on the walls, or plants, or anything that reflected Teri’s personality. Even the bedclothes were nondescript, the same color as her walls. The only personal object in the room was a blurry picture of Brent sautéing over some burners propped up on her nightstand. He looked hot and tired, not very sexy.

  Turning toward the kitchen I got the surprise of my life. She’d taken all the cupboard doors off her upper cabinets, and filled them with lovely Italian ceramic plates and platters, and Venetian glass goblets. An enormous ceramic platter propped up on a plate stand caught my eye. For years I’d drooled over that very platter in the windows of Biordi’s in North Beach, but had never had the nerve to buy it. I walked over to one of the cupboards and took a heavy, cobalt blue Venetian goblet in my hand. Even in the glow from the cheap fluorescent light it was beautiful.

  Teri came out of the bathroom and found me coveting her dishes. She looked a little less rabbitty.

  “Isn’t it just perfect? I make a point of buying one thing a month.”

  Embarrassed to be caught snooping in her cupboards, I made a show of filling one of those exquisite goblets with water from her sink, took a couple of perfunctory
sips, and gently set it down on the Formica.

  “I’ve been lusting after that platter for years,” I confessed. “You have some beautiful things.”

  “Brent bought me that platter last month. Isn’t it gorgeous? When he comes over, he cooks for me, and we pretend we’re in Italy and have picnics on the bed.” She smiled in remembrance.

  For a brief second I pictured the two of them drinking frascati and eating figs wrapped with prosciutto, those gaily painted plates covering the ugly bedspread. I also understood why Brent had taken to her. She was simple and vulnerable and probably the one person in his life besides his children who just accepted him the way he was. He didn’t have to be the trend-setting sexy chef or long-suffering husband, just plain old Brent Brown from Denver. And looking at her kitchen shelves lined with all that exquisite glassware and ceramics, I saw she obviously had a deeper, more sensual side. I bet she wore nondescript pastel clothing from Mervyn’s over expensive black lacy demi-bras from Victoria’s Secret.

  “Teri, what did Brent ask you to say? Did he tell you to lie for him?”

  Standing there hugging herself tight with her arms, she hedged, “Well, no, not exactly. He said the police would be asking questions about the night of, you know, the murder and they’d probably ask if he and I, were, well, you know, that sort of stuff. Then they might ask about the money and stuff.”

  Having scared her off once, I decided to lie. “Oh yeah, the money. Brent mentioned it to me a couple of months ago. What did he tell you?”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, nervously picking at the nubs on her blankets. “Well, one night when he came over and we’d had a lot to drink, Brent told me how in another couple of years he’d be on easy street. I asked him if the restaurant was doing well and he said the restaurant was doing fantastic. Then he raised his glass in the air and sloshed wine all over the bedclothes and started to giggle about how much money he was making on the side that nobody knew about. I guess he realized he’d said something he shouldn’t because he got all worried looking. He told me never to tell a soul. And I haven’t, not a single person. I swear.” She sounded like she was making a Girl Scout pledge.