Chocolate Quake Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - San Francisco Shock

  Chapter 2 - Storming the Hall of Justice

  Chapter 3 - San Francisco Jail #2

  Chapter 4 - A Much-Interrupted Tale of Arrest

  Chapter 5 - Citizen Cake

  Chapter 6 - Meeting Harry Yu

  Chapter 7 - The Aging Tenor of Sacramento Street

  Chapter 8 - Husband Abandoned

  Chapter 9 - The Duty to Detect

  Chapter 10 - Frittata with the Pizza Man

  Chapter 11 - Sleuths: Day One

  Chapter 12 - The Happy Russian

  Chapter 13 - Help at Nutrition Central

  Chapter 14 - The List

  Chapter 15 - Canvassing 1-B

  Chapter 16 - Canvassing on Two

  Chapter 17 - Canvassing the Attic

  Chapter 18 - The Perversity of Husbands and Mothers-in-Law

  Chapter 19 - Pot Stickers with Clients

  Chapter 20 - Networking over Ginger Ice Cream

  Chapter 21 - Sleuths: Day Two

  Chapter 22 - Morning of a Professional Sleuth

  Chapter 23 - An Exotic Kind of Hot

  Chapter 24 - Chat with a Window Dresser

  Chapter 25 - Police Station Gossip

  Chapter 26 - Pool Halls and Dragon Rolls

  Chapter 27 - Delicious Dragon

  Chapter 28 - The Tale of Martina L. King, Jr.

  Chapter 29 - Earth to Moon

  Chapter 30 - Froggie and the Snitches

  Chapter 31 - Abuser and Wife

  Chapter 32 - Zaré: Lunch with a Fashion Plate

  Chapter 33 - Leather Chic

  Chapter 34 - Carolyn Undercover

  Chapter 35 - No Place for Scientists

  Chapter 36 - The Missing Knife

  Chapter 37 - Police Liaison

  Chapter 38 - Liaising with Harry and Cammie

  Chapter 39 - Lunch with a Philanthropist

  Chapter 40 - Following the Money Trail

  Chapter 41 - Chaos at the Center

  Chapter 42 - The Elimination of Croker and Bad Girl

  Chapter 43 - Safe at Sam’s

  Chapter 44 - Cell Phone Tag

  Chapter 45 - Crab Cocktail and the Faulk Story

  Chapter 46 - The Apprehension of a Cancer Victim

  Chapter 47 - Delfina

  Chapter 48 - Chocolate Quake

  Recipe Index

  Praise for the delectable Culinary Mysteries by Nancy Fairbanks . . .

  “Clever, fast-paced. . . . Food columnist Carolyn Blue is a confident and witty detective with a taste for good food and an eye for murderous detail. . . . A literate, deliciously well-written mystery.”—Earlene Fowler

  “Not your average who-done-it. . . . Extremely funny. . . . A rollicking good time.”—Romance Reviews Today

  “Crime Brûlée is an entertaining amateur-sleuth tale that takes the reader on a mouthwatering tour of New Orleans. . . . Fun.”—Painted Rock Reviews

  “Fairbanks has a real gift for creating characters based in reality but just the slightest bit wacky in a slyly humorous way. . . . It will tickle your funny bone as well as stimulate your appetite for good food.”—El Paso Times

  “Nancy Fairbanks has whipped the perfect blend of mystery, vivid setting, and mouthwatering foods. . . . Crime Brûlée is a luscious start to a delectable series.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Nancy Fairbanks scores again . . . A page-turner.”

  —Las Cruces Sun-News

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Nancy Fairbanks

  CRIME BRÛLÉE

  TRUFFLED FEATHERS

  DEATH À L’ORANGE

  CHOCOLATE QUAKE

  THE PERILS OF PAELLA

  HOLY GUACAMOLE!

  MOZZARELLA MOST MURDEROUS

  BON BON VOYAGE

  FRENCH FRIED

  Anthologies

  THREE-COURSE MURDER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CHOCOLATE QUAKE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with

  the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / April 2003

  Copyright © 2003 by Nancy Herndon.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16144-9

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published

  by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and

  the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design

  are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  I would particularly like to thank Eileen Hirst, chief of staff at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, who provided so much information on the jail; Inspector Sherman Ackerson of the San Francisco Police Department, a wonderful source of information on police procedures in San Francisco; Elizabeth Falkner, executive pastry chef and managing partner of Citizen Cake, who sent me the recipe for the delicious hazelnut and chocolate dessert; Hoss Zaré, owner and chef at Zaré, a restaurant, in San Francisco, who provided recipes for Wild Mushroom Soup and Dungeness Crab Cakes; my son and daughter-in-law, Bill and Anne Herndon, who were my hosts and guides to the city, from the Hall of Justice to the many neighborhoods and wonderful restaurants.

  The following books provided information on and pictures of the city and were invaluable research tools: San Francisco Memoirs, 1835-1851 and More San Francisco Memoirs, 1852-1899, compiled and introduced by Malcolm E. Barker; Reclaiming San Francisco, History, Politics, Culture, edited by James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters; A Short History of San Francisco by Tom Cole; Fodor’s San Francisco; San Francisco Victorians , photographs by Michael Blumensaadt, essay by Randolph Delehanty; and San Francisco Points of View, photography by David Wakely, essays by Dan Harder.

  Last but never least, thanks to my agent Richard Curtis and my editor Cindy Hwang, both of whom have been so supportive as the series progresses, to my friend Joan Coleman for her friendship and support, to my son Bill for running my website, and to my husband Bill, scientific consultant, travel companion, innovative chef, and walking dictionary. Any words I misspelled are probably his fault. However, he was right about the opera in which “Una Furtiva Lagrima” appears and the spelling of the Italian word for tears. And I was wrong. It takes a woman to admit that.

  N.F.

  For Bill and Anne Herndon,

  my son and daughter-in-law,

  who were my hosts and tour guides in San Francisco

  1

  San Francisco Shock

  Carolyn

  W e flew into San Francisco, registered at a lovely hotel, and had dinner in the company of several scientific couples at a French restaurant. Of course, it wasn’t like the nineteenth-century French restaurants in San Francisco, where male patrons could go upstairs for champagne, poker, and pretty companions from “the finest eastern finishing schools.” In fact, after the earthquake of 1906, the mayor was indicted for taking kickbacks from French restaurants. He provided liquor licenses; in return he received money and “finishing school” favors. No one invited us upstairs for champagne, and downstairs we had to pay for our own.

  Still it had been a lovely evening, after which I dropped into a comfy chair
in our hotel room and did my wifely duty. I called my mother-in-law to say we were in town. This is what I heard on her answering machine: “You have reached the number of Professor Vera Blue. I am not at home because I have been arrested for first-degree murder and am presently housed in San Francisco Jail # 2 at the Hall of Justice, seventh floor, 850 Bryant Street. Visiting hours are 11 A.M. to 2 P.M. on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. I am told that a prospective visitor should take the elevator to the sixth floor by 7:30 A.M. and line up for one of the twenty-minute appointments, which fill up rapidly. To avoid this inconvenience, you might prefer to call my lawyer, Margaret Hanrahan, at the Union Street Women’s Center, or leave a message after the beep, which I can retrieve and try to return. We are allowed to call out. We are not allowed to receive calls. You may send a letter, but no doubt the San Francisco Police will have realized their error before any exchange of mail can occur.”

  “Jason!” No answer, but I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. I hung up and rushed to inform my husband that his mother was in jail. If it were some feminist protest she’d been involved in, I wouldn’t have been so shocked. Not that a woman her age seemed a good candidate for participation in a protest involving police presence and arrests. Mother Blue, as I humorously call her, but not to her face, must be near seventy, when women should be protecting their bones as well as their convictions.

  That thought caused me great uneasiness. What if floor number seven was a prison hospital? “Jason!” I knocked sharply on the glass shower door. Murder? There had to be a mistake. Aging, if sharp-tongued, professors of women’s studies at prestigious universities do not murder people. They just hack their opponents down to size with the daunting power of pen and tongue. Goodness knows, she’s done it to me often enough.

  For years her disdain was predicated on the fact that I stayed home raising children and giving gourmet dinners for peripatetic scientists visiting my husband instead of contributing my talents to assure the place of women in the power structure. Not that my mother-in-law ever admitted that I have any talents. Lately, with the children off at college and me pursuing a career as a food columnist, she has turned her attention to my size. Just because I’m five-six doesn’t make me a giant. Jason’s taller than I am—by an inch—and my mother-in-law is simply short. Furthermore, I am not fat. I’ve taken off the weight I acquired eating at wonderful restaurants in New Orleans, New York, and France. But she sent me a size sixteen dress for my birthday. I wear a ten, and I did not appreciate the gift. “Jason Blue, have you lost your hearing? You’re probably letting the shower run into your ears,” I shouted.

  Jason opened the door an inch and replied, “I don’t want to hear about the dangers of wet ears. You nagged Chris and me about wash cloths and wet ears all the way through our tour of Northern France.” He grinned at me through the opening. “Has it occurred to you, love, that you’re becoming obsessive about a number of things now that you’re in your middle years?”

  I ignored the reference to middle age and said, “Your mother’s in jail.”

  “Right.” Jason laughed and started to shut the shower door.

  “No, really. She’s charged with murder.”

  “Terrific. Then we won’t have to take her out to dinner. Who did she kill?”

  “Jason, I’m not joking. She’s in San Francisco Jail #2, seventh floor.”

  Jason did some noisy splashing, turned off the water, and reappeared wrapped in a towel. “And I suppose she told you this?”

  “It was on her answering machine.”

  “Then you got the wrong number.”

  “The message began, ‘You have reached the apartment of Professor Vera Blue’.”

  “Someone’s playing a joke on you.” Towel-wrapped, my husband inspected his beard in the mirror. “Do I need a trim?”

  “If you don’t believe me, I’ll dial the number, and you can listen to the message.”

  A puzzled frown creased his forehead, and, dripping, he padded bare-footed into the lush bedroom we’d been assigned at the Stanford Court, where a conference on environmental chemistry and toxicology was being held. Jason called the number of his mother’s San Francisco sublet. She was spending the summer as a consultant to some much-touted, multipurpose, multiethnic, cutting-edge women’s center.

  As he listened to the answering machine message, his face expressed absolute astonishment. When it finished, he said, “Mother, it’s Jason.” He gave her the number of the hotel and our room but explained that he’d be in committee meetings and other first-day activities of the conference until evening the next day, Sunday. “Carolyn will come down to the jail to see you and find out what happened. If you get this message tonight call or leave us a message.” Then he paused. “Murder? You’re kidding, right? Well, get in touch, or we will.”

  “I’m going to visit her in jail?” I exclaimed. “She doesn’t even like me. She sent me a size sixteen dress for my birthday!”

  “I know, sweetheart,” said my husband soothingly, “and I did mention it to her. I hope you sent it back.”

  “I certainly did, and I have yet to receive a size ten in that frumpy number or some equally unwelcome replacement gift.”

  Jason sighed. “The thing is, the editorial committee is meeting tomorrow morning at eight, and there’s a meeting of the board at 10:30, after which I’m to meet my graduate students from El Paso for lunch and review the research they’ve done since I’ve been in New York. I did tell you that this would be a very busy meeting for me,” he added defensively. “After the students, there’s registration for the conference.”

  “I remember your attempt to dissuade me from coming to San Francisco with you. What you didn’t tell me is that I’d have to visit your mother in jail.”

  “Caro, that’s hardly something I could have foreseen, and we can’t very well ignore her. I’m sure it’s some ridiculous mistake. Maybe you could visit her lawyer.” Then a bolt of inspiration struck him. “You could take the lawyer out for lunch after you see Mother at the jail, talk about the case, and eat something wonderful that you can review.”

  “I can see the column now,” I replied. “While investigating a charge of murder against my mother-in-law, famous feminist Gwenivere Blue, I enjoyed a truly excellent example of San Francisco’s delicious seafood.”

  “I don’t see that you need to mention my mother,” Jason interrupted. “We’ll meet back here at six for the welcome mixer. In fact, I’ll try to be in the room by 5:30 so you can tell me what you’ve found out about Mother.”

  While carrying on this discussion, Jason had finished drying himself off—for a man of forty-seven he does have an admirable physique—and pulled on his pajamas. If Jason hadn’t been so inviting to look at, I’d probably have been a lot angrier at the thought of spending my first full day in San Francisco rising early enough to get to the jail and afterward pursuing whatever distressing duties might fall my lot.

  I had insisted on accompanying Jason to San Francisco because the day he mentioned the meeting, the temperature was 103 degrees in New York City, where we were summering with our daughter in a small apartment. It wasn’t even 103 degrees in El Paso, where we live most of the year and Jason teaches. I had thought: San Francisco, new restaurants to explore, cool days, light breezes off the bay, fog drifting along the hills, delightful Victorian row houses painted in soft colors with intricate gingerbread wood carving and charming bay windows, and eating at the Cliff House dining room with its view of the seals, sunning themselves on Seal Rocks and barking. (My mother took me to a seal show at the St. Louis zoo when I was a little girl visiting my Aunt Virginia. I still remember those seals, balancing balls on their noses and doing cute tricks.) Such were my expectations for San Francisco.

  I did not think: Jail #2, my mother-in-law in a particularly foul mood, talking to policemen and lawyers and opinionated women at the center, women who won’t like me unless I volunteer for radical social projects.

  I sighed and looked up the
telephone number of Jail #2 to be sure that Gwenivere Blue was really there and that I could visit her tomorrow if I arrived early enough to join other relatives of alleged criminals in the competition for visitation appointments. She was; I could; and murder one was the charge. Good grief.

  When I glanced at the bed, my husband, far from lying awake worrying about his mother, was asleep. No doubt dreaming of toxic molecules and committee squabbles over the refereeing of scholarly papers. I considered plugging in my laptop to transcribe the notes I’d made on our dinner. The food had been excellent, but I was too tired for newspaper-column writing. Instead I dropped into bed, secure in the knowledge that Jason would awaken at some ungodly early hour to take a healthful and invigorating run up and down the hills around the hotel, after which he’d awaken me in time to get to the jail by 7:30.

  How long will that take? I wondered. I’d use a cab to be sure of arriving in a timely fashion. No doubt the bell captain could accommodate me, and I didn’t have to tell him that I was going to the jail. The Stanford Court is a very nice hotel, known for its stellar service, built on the site of the Leland Stanford mansion, whose owner had led the movement to build a cable car line from the financial district up to his Nob Hill house in 1878.

  Of course our hotel probably wasn’t as posh as the old Palace Hotel, which opened in 1875. The Stanford Court didn’t have 7,000 bay windows, a gold dinner service for one hundred, or a chef stolen from Delmonico’s. Still, it was expensive. Thank God, Hodge, Brune & Byerson, the company for whom my husband was consulting during the summer, was footing the bill. The only fault I’d found with our lodgings was the terrifying experience of near death by limousine when I alighted from our cab. Their entrance is a chaos of vehicles zooming around under one roof and endangering anyone on foot. It does have a famous restaurant, which might provide me with solace tomorrow after chatting with my jailed mother-in-law. Look on the bright side, Carolyn, I told myself and fell asleep.