“Was Jerry any help?”
Romeo shook his head. “No cameras on the back lot, or in the kitchens at Burger Palais. Everybody still is a suspect.”
“And for the time Mr. Peccorino died?”
“Jean-Charles and Teddie were on the Cielo property. As you know, your security system isn’t up and running yet. So no video feeds.” He raised his head and took a long draw from his glass. “Everybody else was roaming around town, by themselves. Wexler was once again doing his shopping—some of the food vendors remember seeing him, just not exactly when. Gregor was in the hotel, or so he said, checking on the cooking completion setup.”
“The doors should have been locked.”
Romeo nodded, but didn’t look at me. “They were. He had some other song-and-dance. We’re checking it out. Chitza said she was with Dr. Phelps, but he’s in no condition to say yea or nay.”
“No corroboration, then?” I said, thinking out loud.
“Only you.” Romeo smiled as he turned his head in my direction. “You were with me.”
“Desiree?” I picked at some stuffing poking through a hole in one of the pillows.
“She said she was with her daughter.” I started to say something, but Romeo stopped me with a slight gesture with one hand. “I didn’t even ask—of course, the girl would support her mother.”
I tried to push the stuffing back in the little hole, then decided I was making it worse, so I tossed the offending pillow onto the chair out of reach. “What about Brett Baker?”
Romeo’s mouth turned down at the corners. “He drives around in that dang food truck all day. But some of the workers at Cielo told me he swings by there every day.”
“Really?”
“But again, no one remembers exactly the time or date.” Romeo undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. “Like Adone as well. No alibi, but no one to place him at the scene, either.”
My fingers and hands ached, but I worked the joints slightly, trying to increase range of motion. “I think the whole thing started innocently, whether it was Homeland Security being overzealous, or Jean-Charles being anal about quality, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that somehow, he stumbled onto a scheme involving high-end specialty items.”
“Okay.” Romeo picked up the thread. “Let’s assume you’re right. So, your chef steps into a nest of vipers. Now, somebody wants to clean up the mess.”
“Exactly.” Still flexing my fingers, I uncurled my legs and rose—I did my best thinking when in motion. “So, someone is eliminating loose ends and framing Jean-Charles, or at least putting him in a very bad PR position. And we know, once the public finds a chink in the armor of someone’s reputation, they go after it, ripping it to shreds like a pit bull with a play toy.”
Romeo’s eyes followed me as I paced in front of him. “The person we’re looking for has tracks to cover and a bone to pick with Chef Bouclet.”
I stopped in front of the detective, my hands on my hips. “That really doesn’t help. Just about everyone in this ugly mess holds Jean-Charles accountable for some transgression.”
Romeo pursed his lips and gave me a little shrug, then he grabbed the baton. “And the UC-Berkeley guys just got into the mix by sheer dumb luck.”
I turned to my view, my hands clasped behind me as I drank in Vegas. “Everyone except Mr. Peccorino, I think. He added a layer of unreadability to the chips. I wonder why?”
“His colleagues are in the dark.” Romeo sounded fatalistic. “Here.” He rattled the ice in his glass. “Please.”
Thankful for a mission, I grabbed the glass and headed to the bar.
He talked as I poured. “I think we’re looking for a guy.”
“A guy?” I measured two fingers, paused, then added another. “Why?”
Romeo rolled his head back and looked at me over the back of the couch. “It would take a ton of strength to stuff a man, deadweight, into that oven.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Initially, I came to the same conclusion.”
“But now?”
“The oven wasn’t all that high.” I returned to stand in front of him and handed him his fresh drink. “Amped on enough adrenaline, and with a bit of leverage, I could probably do it.”
“Yeah, but you’re not . . .” He eyed me over the rim as he took a sip.
“Careful.” I eviscerated the warning with a grin.
Romeo recovered. “You’re not average.” He seemed pleased with himself, then he shifted gears, almost leaving me flat-footed. “So, I’m siding with you on the theory that Jean-Charles is sending you the pictures, leading you to the RFID chips. It doesn’t make sense it would be anyone else. But why? We can’t read them, surely he would’ve known that.”
“Unless Peccorino added that little twist all on his own.”
Romeo shot me a look as if he hadn’t thought of that possibility. “Interesting. But again, why?”
“Hell, I’m making this up as I go, how would I know?” Now, it was my turn to sound frustrated. “But I have a feeling the chips will lead us to a location—the one where shipments are getting tampered with. Somehow, that seems to be the key. And it seems to me that Peccorino must’ve coded those chips to route all the shipments through one location. That just makes sense—how else would all of them end up flowing through the hands of the person who tampered with them?”
“Good point. But hiding that little scam seems a pretty weak motive for murder.”
I gave him a little grin. “I’ve contemplated it for less.”
He conceded the point with a chuckle. “So, if your chef doesn’t have all the chips, and he doesn’t have the reader,
and
his science guy is dead . . .” Romeo let the thought hang.
I felt hope and fear at the same time. “Then Jean-Charles doesn’t know who the killer is, either. He’s running, but he doesn’t know from whom.”
“Then time is short.”
I blew out in exasperation. “Of course, it’s short. The killer has practically told us he’s going to kill again. And if we don’t move, then the whole operation that set this killing spree off will move.”
“And we’ll be back to square one.”
“With several dead bodies.”
“Okay.” Romeo set his glass down on the side table and pushed himself to a more upright position. “So, why do you think Jean-Charles thinks someone is listening in on him?”
I eyed Romeo’s drink, suddenly craving one of my own, but I’d already far exceeded my daily allotment. “I know he said that, but I passed it off as overly dramatic. I mean, I know someone could follow him, but listen in on his conversations? Only the government would be able to do that, right?”
“You did say Homeland Security showed up on your doorstep.” Romeo ran a hand through his hair. I was going to have to tell him to stop doing that—his cowlick would never remain tamed. “But there’s also another way.”
“Really? How?”
“Spyware. You can download it. Technically, it’s a huge crime to use it against others, but the government hasn’t blocked the sale of it because personal use is cool.”
“The sanctity of personal privacy resting solely on the exalted character of humankind.”
“Look on the positive side.” Romeo teased. “But point taken. One would assume that a person who had already shown flagrant disregard for the law, like a killer, would not be put off by a pesky little federal statute, no matter the severity of the penalties for violation.”
I mulled over Romeo’s theory, trying to shoot holes in it, but I couldn’t . . . or didn’t want to. “What about the note?”
Romeo mumbled, “Pigs to find a feast so rare. But eat a morsel taking care. A bit is fine but take heed. Death will come to those with greed.”
“Pigs to find a feast so rare. Sounds like the truffle to me.”
Romeo nodded. “The middle part seems straightforward. But that last part about greed—hell, it could be any one of the current cast of players.”
I had to agree—they all seemed to be playing their own angles for personal gain. But really, who in life wasn’t? “If you have any theories as to a lead suspect, I’d like to hear them.”
“If I was a betting man, I’d say Gregor.” Romeo reached to the side and grabbed his glass with his fingers, then wiggled his hand, tinkling the ice in his glass.
Even in my diminished state, I got the hint. “Another dose?”
“Make it a double.”
“Grasshopper, do as I say, not as I do.”
“Not tonight.” Romeo’s voice actually had a hard edge that I’d never heard before.
“Okay.” I held out my hand. “Give me your car keys.”
He hesitated.
“I know your limits.”
He opened one eye, then rooted in his pocket. The ring caught on the lining of his pocket, but he yanked the keys loose, ripping a hole, then dropped them into my open palm.
“I’ll put these on the hook by the elevator.”
When I returned with not only his knockout drink, but also a pillow and blanket, I thought he was already asleep. As I leaned across him to set the glass on the side table, he reached for it. After a sip, he cupped both hands around the glass, holding it in his lap, his eyes still closed, his head back.
I thought he might be drifting off, but I kept talking, it helped to think out loud. “This is like one of those group cluster fucks at that swinger place—everybody here is doing everybody else. We have Chef Wexler, who got his head handed to him by someone who calls himself The Phantom Phoodie. And Gregor beat him out of the restaurant space in the Bazaar . . . the one that is now occupied by Jean-Charles. Chitza DeStefano, Jean-Charles’s former lover, is shacking up with the injured Dr. Phelps. Fiona Richards was shacking up with Desiree Bouclet’s husband—who has a huge bone to pick with his brother-in-law. And Fiona goes to Gregor with news of the missing truffle, pushing the stone off the cliff, and I’m running all over town collecting RFID chips. Homeland Security is breathing down my neck. Jean-Charles is on the lam.” I rubbed my eyes. “My head hurts.”
“Don’t forget Teddie,” Romeo added, surprising me. “He’s sure turned up at some interesting places. And him taking the note from the scene of the second murder—that sorta piqued my interest.”
Piqued mine, too, but I wasn’t going to add fuel to that fire. The thought that practically everyone close to me was working individual angles, that they were being less than forthcoming, shall we say, just hurt my heart too much. “Christ.” I glanced at Romeo, who had rotated his head and was watching me. “Jean-Charles is at the center of this whole thing.”
“And he’s nowhere to be found.” Romeo once again closed his eyes. “Even with all that in the hopper, I still think Gregor is the likeliest candidate. He’s got a missing truffle, Fiona was right in the middle of that.”
“What about the Berkeley guy?”
“If the truffle was chipped, he knew where it went. Maybe he wasn’t telling.”
“Doesn’t really make sense, then, for Gregor to kill him.” I tired to figure out where Romeo was going with all of this.
“Maybe he didn’t care about finding the truffle.” Romeo raised his eyebrows as he raised that question.
“And why wouldn’t he want to find it?”
“He had it insured for a huge sum. Without the truffle, he’d get cash, and all of it, as the value of the truffle would be impossible to dicker over.”
“So this was just about money?”
“Well, more like life or death, for Gregor.” Romeo tried to push himself higher in the chair, then gave up. “I can’t prove it…yet…but rumor has it Gregor was in deep to some bad dudes.”
“In deep?” That little confusion bomb exploded in my head. Then a thought hit me. “You know, back when he was running the Italian place, a rumor that he had some important friends was making the rounds.”
“If he’s taking money from those guys, he better be careful,” Romeo said needlessly.
“What if he borrowed the money to buy the truffle?” I was plucking at straws, but I’d always been told to follow the money when a crime had been committed. It had worked before.
“I’ll check it out, but you’d be better at chasing that lead. You have sketchier friends.”
I didn’t argue. “I’m sure Gregor could shed some light.”
Romeo’s eyes shut and remained that way. “We’ve been looking for him, but can’t find him.”
I reached over and extricated the young detective’s almost empty glass from his loosening grasp. “We both saw him at Dr. Phelps’ show.”
“Well, he’s dropped off the grid since then.” There was a hint of fatality in Romeo’s voice. “Just once, wouldn’t it be fun to have an investigation just sort of come together seamlessly?”
“You have the proverbial smoking gun. What more do you want?” I deadpanned, rather proud of my delivery.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” Romeo said without even a hint of tease.
“You’re just figuring that out? We should send you back to detective school.”
“Nope.” Romeo still stared at the insides of his eyelids—sleep fuzzied his voice. “If I had a do-over, it’d be truck driving school. Then I could get the hell out of here.”
This time, when the urge to give him a hug struck me, I didn’t stifle it. Amazingly, he gave me an appreciative smile.
Pausing, I touched his face. His skin was hot. Running this long at full throttle on high-octane fuel, he was heading straight for a flameout.