The Voice Inside

8

The worst part was telling Duane.

Frost opened the door, expecting his brother to be alone, but instead Duane had his latest girlfriend with him. His brother hoisted two bags of groceries from Bristol Farms in the air. He whipped inside the Russian Hill house like a hurricane, leaving a pert redhead on the porch in his wake.

“Bison burgers!” he called to Frost over his shoulder. “On my famous garlic-rosemary focaccia buns, with melted Flagship cheddar. Plus sweet potato matchstick fries, edamame salad, and red-velvet truffles.”

Duane was already out of sight, heading toward the kitchen, but Frost heard him call, “Shack, Shack, Bo-Back, how are you, buddy?”

The girl on the porch, who was left alone, grinned at him. “I’m Tabitha, by the way, but everyone calls me Tabby. Tabby Blaine.”

Frost heard a belated shout from inside as his brother introduced them. “Frost, meet Tabby. Tabby, this is my bro!”

“Come on in,” he told her.

“Thanks.” She strolled into the foyer and then the living room, and she headed immediately to the panoramic view over the bay. “What a place.”

“It’s my cat’s,” Frost said.

Tabby glanced at him over her shoulder, and her green eyes sparkled with amusement. She had very long eyelashes. “Yeah, Duane told me about Shack. I bet that line works pretty well with the girls. ‘Hi, I’m Frost, I rent a mansion from my cat.’”

“It does, actually,” Frost admitted. “And here’s the little land baron himself.”

Shack hopped onto the back of the sofa, and from there, he jumped immediately into Tabby’s arms. She caught him with a startled giggle, but she knew exactly how to hold him, and Shack settled against her shoulder and began to purr and swipe at her long red hair.

“I hope you’re not allergic,” Frost said.

“Wildly, actually, but that’s okay. I love cats. You can’t have the nickname Tabby and not love cats, right? I popped a Benadryl before coming over here, so I should be good for a while.”

“Aw, Tabs, you made these matchsticks too thick,” Duane called in a crabby voice from the kitchen.

“They’re perfect,” Tabby called back. “Quit complaining.”

To Frost’s astonishment, Duane let it go. He’d never seen anyone challenge Duane about ingredients and live to tell the tale.

“So you’re a chef, too?” Frost asked her.

Tabby’s head bobbed. Shack continued to tickle her hair. “Yeah, I work over at Boulevard on the Embarcadero.”

“Impressive. They’ve got a Beard Award, don’t they? I figured you worked with Duane in SoMa.”

“Work with Duane? Oh please, do I look like a masochist? I helped him get ready for tonight, but that’s as far as I go. Did you know his nickname in the chef community is the Beast? Duane Beaston, that’s what they call your brother.”

“I did know that, actually.”

“So are you a beast, too?” Tabby asked, teasing him. “You don’t look like a beast.”

“Only during a full moon,” Frost replied.

“Well, well. I’d like to see that.”

Tabby held Shack and wandered comfortably around the house as if she owned the place. She had a firecracker personality, unabashed and unafraid. That made her different from most of the girls that Duane dated, who usually looked scared to say a word in front of him. Tabby didn’t look older than thirty, and she was only a few inches taller than five feet. She wore tight jeans and an untucked men’s yellow dress shirt that she’d probably borrowed from Duane. Her freckled cheeks had a permanent rosy flush, and her smile went easily from innocent to wicked to smart.

“What a beautiful figurine,” Tabby said, reaching up to caress the blue glass carving over the bay window. Her touch was delicate, as if she sensed that it was special.

“It belonged to our sister, Katie,” Frost replied.

Tabby’s green eyes became two little sympathetic emeralds. “Oh, of course.”

From the kitchen, Frost heard the sizzle of meat and smelled an intoxicating mix of seasonings. The house always smelled good when Duane came to visit. “I’m going to get a beer,” he told Tabby. “Do you want a drink? Chardonnay or something?”

“Beer sounds good.”

“Glass or bottle?” he asked.

“Oh, bottle, please. I may look like a girly girl, but I’m a tomboy at heart. Although I guess Tabby should be a tomcat, right? My mom was Catherine, and she was Kitty. So naturally her daughter became Tabitha and Tabby.”

Frost chuckled. He liked her a lot.

Leaving Tabby to cuddle and coo with Shack, he went into the kitchen, where Duane seemed to be in five places at once. He was a whirlwind of motion. Meat grilled, buns baked, edamame shelled, olives chopped, and through it all, he sang a bad karaoke version of “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots.

“Listen, I want to talk to you about something,” Frost told him. “Can we grab a few minutes alone after dinner?”

Duane eyed him curiously. “Man of mystery. What’s going on?”

“It can wait. I’ll tell you later.”

“Sure, whatever.” His brother didn’t waste time on anything else when he was cooking.

“Tabby’s great,” Frost added.

“Yeah, she is.” Duane raised his voice. “Hey, Tabs, Frost thinks you’re great.”

“He’s great, too,” she replied from the living room.

“You want to help me with the cooking in here?” Duane called to her.

“Nah, you’re good,” Tabby replied.

Frost laughed. He enjoyed seeing another chef stand up to Duane. “How long have you two been going out?”

“Six months,” Duane said, with a hint of a smile.

Frost’s mouth fell open in surprise. To Duane Easton, six months was a lifetime. His brother usually went through sous chefs as lovers like a kid grabbing chocolates from a box. Duane’s life was his career, and the girls he dated were mostly about burning off sexual energy at the end of a fourteen-hour day.

“And I’m only finding out about her now?” Frost asked.

“I wanted to see if it was real first. Actually, we’re practically living together. She stays at my place most of the time.”

Frost had nothing to say, but he liked hearing it. He was almost willing to believe that a miracle had happened and that his brother was in love.

Duane was older than Frost by five years, but he’d always acted younger. Frost and Katie had looked like twins, but Frost didn’t see much resemblance to himself in his brother’s face. Duane was shorter than Frost by nearly half a foot and as skinny as pencil asparagus. His hair was straight and shoulder length, and tonight he had it tied behind his head. He had a narrow nose that was so long that it seemed to droop at the end by its own weight.

“Have you told Mom and Dad about her?” Frost asked.

“They introduced us.”

“Seriously? How did that happen?”

“It’s a long story,” Duane said.

Their parents lived in Arizona and didn’t come back to San Francisco very often. The city was mostly about bad memories for them. Frost waited for an explanation of how his parents had brought Duane and Tabby together, but Duane was back in the middle of his bison burgers, and he didn’t have anything more to say about the origins of his new relationship.

Frost grabbed two Sierra Nevada beers and returned to the living room.

He drank with Tabby on the sofa near the window. Shack licked beer from her finger, which made her giggle. She told him about her job in the restaurant, her time in culinary school, her favorite foods, and her cousin who played for the 49ers, but when he tried to maneuver her to the topic of how she and Duane had met, she smoothly changed the subject.

Before he could try again, his brother interrupted. Dinner was ready, and Duane’s food waited for no one.

They laughed their way through the meal for the next hour. Duane told dirty jokes, but his were like Ivory soap compared to the ones Tabby told. Frost was in no rush to finish, because he was preoccupied with a sense of dread about the after-dinner conversation. Duane wasn’t going to like what he had to say, so Frost put off telling him.

In the midst of dessert, however, the phone rang. Frost let the machine take it, which was a mistake. Everyone heard the message.

“Inspector, this is Khristeen Smith at the San Francisco Chronicle. I’d like to talk to you about the court hearing for Rudy Cutter next week. There are a lot of rumors flying, and the one name that keeps coming up is yours. Please call me back.”

The reporter left her number, and then the house was silent. He watched a concerned glance shoot back and forth between Duane and Tabby. His brother put down the truffle that was in his hand, and he shot Frost a laser-like stare. The two of them had eyes that didn’t let go.

“Rudy Cutter?” Duane asked.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Frost said.

“So talk.”

Frost glanced at Tabby, but Duane quickly intervened. “She can hear anything you have to say.”

“Okay. Cutter’s attorney filed a motion to have his conviction thrown out.”

“What the hell for?” Duane asked.

“Jess manufactured evidence against him. The watch she found in Cutter’s house was planted. A fake. It didn’t really belong to the last victim.”

Duane stood up in the dining room. He went to the front windows and peered through the curtains. He was silent for a long time. On the other side of the table, Tabby stared at her plate with a kind of quiet shock fixed on her face.

“Is Cutter going to get out?” Duane asked.

“That depends on the judge, but it looks that way.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I was.”

“This is bullshit. That son of a bitch killed Katie and all those other women. What judge is going to put him back on the street?”

“I know that. The thing is, what Jess did—”

“I don’t care what she did,” Duane interrupted him. “I wish we’d fried him in the electric chair. That piece of shit doesn’t deserve to be breathing.”

“I hear you. You’re right.”

Duane turned back from the window and jabbed a finger at him. “Why does this reporter want to talk to you? She said your name keeps coming up. Why are you involved in this?”

Frost rubbed a hand across his beard. He tried to come up with words. Tabby still didn’t look up.

“I’m the one who blew the whistle on Jess.”

“What?”

“I found out that she planted fake evidence. I took it to the captain and the district attorney.”

Duane shook his head. “Why would you do that?”

“What do you mean, why? I had an obligation. It’s my job.”

“Your job? Your job is to let murderers out of prison?”

“Jess committed a crime, Duane. She rigged the whole system. Don’t you get it? Cops can’t do that. If I let that slide—”

“He murdered Katie!” Duane shouted, his voice filling the room.

Frost stopped talking. There was nothing to say.

“I can’t believe you,” Duane snapped. “I can’t believe you would do this. You’re going to have to tell Mom and Dad, you know that? You realize what this is going to do to them?”

Frost didn’t have an answer. He knew Duane didn’t really want one.

“We’re out of here,” Duane went on. “Come on, Tabs.”

His girlfriend finally looked up. Her bubbly, ever-present smile was gone, and her face had clouded with sorrow. “Actually, Duane, could you wait in the car for a minute? I want to talk to Frost.”

Duane nodded and then said something that Frost didn’t understand. “Yeah, that’s right. You can tell him what he’s done.”

His brother stalked out of the dining room, and Frost heard the thunder of the front door slamming.

The two of them were alone. Tabby stared at him. The sparkle had left her green eyes, but he saw something he hadn’t seen in his brother’s face. Empathy. She brushed away a strand of red hair.

“I know how hard this is for you,” Tabby said. “Duane knows, too. He’s just angry.”

“I’m angry at myself,” Frost admitted.

“You didn’t have a choice, did you?” Tabby got up and came around to the other side of the table and sat in the chair next to him. She took his hand; her skin was warm. “Listen, Frost, I didn’t realize that Duane hadn’t told you about me, which pisses me off a little. I guess that means you don’t know how we met.”

“He said my parents introduced you.”

“Sort of. I’ve known your parents for several years. When they found out I was a chef, they told me about Duane. Of course, I already knew who he was. Everybody in the culinary community knows Duane. Your mom said I should meet him, but I wasn’t really interested. He has a reputation for playing the field. But earlier this year, Duane called me. I guess your mom was pressuring him, too.”

“My mom usually gets what she wants,” Frost said.

“Apparently.”

“How do you know my parents?” he asked.

“Through the victim support group meetings.”

He closed his eyes. Suddenly, it made sense. “Who are you connected to?”

“Nina Flores. Cutter’s first victim. Nina was my best friend. We grew up two blocks apart. Actually, Nina and I knew each other before we could walk. She was more like a sister to me than my own sister was. The families were kind enough to include me in the support group.”

“I was never really into that sort of thing,” Frost said. Grief wasn’t something he shared with strangers. It was personal and private. He had to feel close to someone to invite them into that part of his life.

“That’s okay. It’s not for everyone. Anyway, believe me when I say, I really do understand what this is doing to you.”

“Thanks.”

“I should go,” Tabby said. “Duane is waiting for me.”

“Sure.”

She let go of his hand, and she stood up. “I don’t blame you for any of this. Duane won’t, either, when he settles down. It’s not your fault.”

She bent down very near his face, and he realized how pretty she was in close-up. A hint of perfume drifted across the space between them. He was jealous of his brother, having this woman in his life.

“What happens next?” she asked. “I mean, if they let Cutter out of prison.”

“I put him back inside,” Frost said without hesitation.

“Good,” Tabby replied with a casual confidence that he was a man who kept his promises. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”