Something's Cooking

by Joanne Pence

  10

  Paavo’s hand lightly touched Angie’s back as they walked down the hall to her apartment. Now she knew what a prisoner whose bail had been revoked felt like, and she sighed as she pulled out her keys. Still, in a prison cell, there was safety, just as there was safety in her apartment. If Paavo’s suspicions about the champagne were correct, it would do her no good to stay at her parents’ home, because the killer would have already found her there. Staying there would only bring danger to the rest of her family.

  At least her apartment was defensible.

  “It’s me, Rico,” she called as she placed the key in the lock. No answer. And no sound coming from the T.V. Odd.

  “He’s asleep, I guess,” she said, but Paavo pulled her away from the door and reached for the snub-nosed revolver hidden under his tuxedo jacket. She gasped and then leaned against the wall, her mind reeling with fear.

  Not here, she prayed. Not at my home. Please be all right, Rico. Please!

  Paavo turned the key in the latch, then twisted the doorknob until the latch clicked. The door slowly swung open, revealing a well-lit but too quiet apartment.

  Cold perspiration formed on her upper lip, and her pulse quickened.

  Paavo peered into the doorway and then entered. Angie inched closer, bolstering her courage. As much as she was afraid of what she might find inside, she wouldn’t stay in the hall alone. Only with Paavo did she feel safe. She entered the apartment. On the floor lay Rico, tied up. Paavo was kneeling beside him, removing the gag from his mouth.

  “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, rushing to help unravel the ties from his legs, while Paavo moved to the bindings that held Rico’s hands together.

  “It wasn’t my fault, Miss Angelina,” Rico protested as soon as the gag was off. “I called for a pizza. Some delivery man. He gave it to me and when I put it down to pay him, he bashed my noggin.”

  “It’s all right,” Paavo said.

  “I’m sure sorry, Inspector. Nothing like this never happened to me before. I thought it was okay, you off with Miss Angelina, so I eased up. I’m sure sorry.”

  “Nobody’s blaming you,” Angie said, working alongside Paavo to free Rico. “How do you feel?”

  “Like a jerk.”

  She smiled wanly as she and Paavo helped Rico stumble to the sofa. He muttered more than a few choice words as blood began circulating again through his limbs. Angie handed him some straight scotch and then surveyed the room. There wasn’t much damage, only papers pushed around, drawers opened, and the T.V. pulled out from the wall. It’s not so bad, she told herself. She wouldn’t admit that the break-in had anything to do with that other business. It was a simple robbery by a poverty-stricken pizzaman who saw her fancy apartment and decided to steal some money.

  She shuddered and rubbed her arms as the image flashed through her mind of some stranger touching her things, violating her home, her haven. She struggled to control the anger and hysteria building up within her.

  Rico raised his face somewhat sheepishly to the tall policeman. “He come in with the pizza. Then he don’t even leave it. Sonafabitch.”

  “You get a good look at him?”

  “Not much. He wore a Giants’ baseball cap and he kept his head down, looking at my pizza. I guess he wanted it, even then.”

  Paavo turned to Angie. “I’ll take him to Emergency to get him checked over. Then we’ll go to the station. I’ll need a description of the man, ask a few more questions, and have Rico check out some mug shots. Some men will come over to dust for prints. You’d better call Joey.”

  She nodded, then pressed Rico’s hands. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “I’m sure, Miss…. Wait, I just remembered.” Both pairs of eyes turned to him. “I think I heard him in the room with the computer. Looking for something, by the sound.”

  “Oh, no.” Angie ran to her den. Papers and disks were strewn all over the floor. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “My work!” she cried. “He’s destroyed everything!” Her emotions had been on a roller coaster ride all day, and she felt like the track had just ended in midair.

  Paavo came up behind her and gently placed his hands on her shoulders.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “You can put it right again.”

  “No! It’s gone. All of it.”

  “Angie,” he whispered, turning her around with a light pressure on her shoulders. She guessed he wanted her to pull herself together, hold her chin up, and not fall apart, but she was beyond that. She hurled herself at him, her arms circling his back and clutching him tight against her. His nearness and strength were the only real, secure things in a world suddenly hostile and frightening. She buried her face against his shoulder and sobbed. It wasn’t just her papers, it was days and days of fear and madness all come together.

  His hands remained properly at her shoulders a long while, and then she felt his body soften. Slowly, he moved his hands across and down her back, gathering her to him, his cheek resting against her hair. “It’s okay, Angel,” he whispered, stroking her hair, her face. “Don’t cry.” Perversely, as much as she had hoped he’d understand, when he did, she cried even harder.

  When her tears eased a bit, he straightened, his hands found her shoulders again and he stepped back, breaking her hold, yet calming her still with his gaze. How could she ever have thought his eyes cold?

  “We’ll stop the person who’s doing this, Angie. We’ll protect you.”

  “He’s been here in my apartment. He’s followed me to my family. No one can even find him, how can anyone stop him? He’s like some kind of monster out of childhood nightmares, and I just don’t—” Her voice choked.

  “He’s human, and human beings make mistakes. I won’t let him hurt you.”

  She needed to believe him, to trust him.

  Slowly he lifted his hands to her face, then rested his fingertips lightly against her jawline. As she gazed up at him, he gently brushed the teardrops from her cheeks with his thumbs. His eyes darkened as one thumb passed slowly over her top lip, then under the fullness of the bottom one. Her breath grew shallow at his touch, and she lay her hands against his waist to steady herself and to bring her closer to him. Suddenly, though, he lowered his hands, his mouth forming a grim line.

  Angie stepped back, wondering bleakly how it was possible for him to be so gentle in one moment, then turn away so completely the next, as if he regretted allowing himself and her that momentary lapse, as if he regretted even touching her.

  “I’ll call Joey for you,” he said briskly, again the police inspector as he walked to the telephone on her desk.

  She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold.

  He also called the police department to send some lab people, so that by the time he left to take Rico to the station, Angie’s apartment was crowded with Joey and numerous other policemen, more than one of whom looked with astonishment at Angie’s elegant dress and the inspector’s tuxedo. No one dared ask why they were dressed that way, though.

  Angie tried to stay out of the way and was sitting in a corner of her kitchen when a youthful-looking policeman, tall and lanky, came up to her. He shifted from one foot to the other before he spoke.

  “I’d like to apologize,” he said finally.

  “Apologize?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m Officer Crossen. I got the call from you about the bomb at your place.”

  “I remember.”

  “Oh. Then you probably remember that I didn’t take your call very seriously.”

  “That’s right.”

  He blushed. “I’m sorry. I’m just glad, well, you know….”

  Angie studied him a while. He seemed too young to have so much responsibility for other people’s lives and to be so willing to put his own on the line. “It’s okay.”

  “At least Inspector Smith’s on the case. He’s the best.”

  “The best?” Angie said, hoping to draw out more information about Paavo.

  Crossen need
ed little coaxing. He sat on a counter stool. “Do you remember the big Aquarius case?”

  She nodded. It had been in the paper for months.

  “He cracked it. And the nut who was systematically killing insurance executives? Smith figured out that one too. Plus lots of other cases that weren’t famous because he nailed the killers before they got much play in the papers.”

  “I see.” She had no idea Paavo was in that kind of a position. She tried to remember what she had read in the papers about those cases. “Didn’t the Aquarius case end in some kind of a shoot-out?”

  “Oh, yes. Just Smith, his partner, Kowalski, and two patrol cops. They brought in the whole ‘family’—twenty people. It was a fine action.”

  She stared at Crossen as his words penetrated. Killings, shoot-outs—and getting misty-eyed at weddings. Would she ever understand Paavo Smith?

  “Holy sh——-! I mean, excuse me.” Crossen’s exclamation jarred Angie out of her reverie.

  “What is it?”

  “This.” He waved a recipe she had hanging on the refrigerator door. “My Mom’s a great cook, and I know a little about it myself. I heard you had some crazy recipes, but I never thought they’d be this goofy. ‘Mix together one package chocolate cake mix, half a cup of butter, three eggs, one cup of water, and two thirds of a cup of sauerkraut drained and chopped!’ Can you imagine? Kee-rist! ‘Bake at three hundred and fifty degrees for thirty minutes.’ Ha! My Mom would bust a gut laughing at this.”

  Angie’s face went rigid. “That’s my recipe.” She sniffed. “It’s really quite tasty.”

  Crossen put down the recipe, his eyes wide as he backed out of the room.

  11

  Paavo reread the lab report on the champagne: a quality bubbly with a lethal dose of arsenic.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. It didn’t make any sense. The more he got to know Angie, the more he saw that her life revolved around her family and a few friends. She didn’t seem to know anything that could make a person particularly angry at her, let alone want to kill her. She was slowly driving him crazy.

  She was friendly and warm, devoted to her family, and fearless in protecting her loved ones.

  On the other hand, she knew how to bat her eyes and get a man to jump through hoops for her.

  She was trusting; she was mouthy.

  She was thoughtful; she was stubborn.

  Most of all, thoughts of her kept him awake at night.

  He wished he had never heard of her. Yet, around her, he felt more alive than he had in years.

  Paavo stood up from his desk, slipped his fingers into his back pockets, and walked to the window that overlooked the gray, concrete freeway. He’d find out who wanted to harm her, arrest him, and then close the file and go back to his life, just as it had been before Ms. Society Belle made it all into a big muddle. Go back to the world he belonged in, where he faced no temptation of anything so far beyond his reach. Such temptation was the true road to Hell.

  He’d thoroughly checked out her family. If he were the IRS, he might see a problem, but as a cop, he didn’t.

  He’d checked out her job. The Shopper’s sole purpose was to serve as an excuse to publish advertisements. Jon Preston was a name-dropping snob who seemed to think being a small-time publisher made him important. George Meyers looked as if he was just this side of a nervous breakdown. There were a couple of other columnists, one who did travel and one for finances. They worked the way Angie did: they faxed in their columns, showed up at the paper once in a while, and held the jobs strictly for the pleasure of seeing their words and names in print, not for the tiny remuneration received. The other employees were typists or telephone salespeople who seemed to know Angie by sight, but no more. He saw nothing crooked in the operation.

  Angie’s last three magazine articles had all consisted of complimentary reviews of restaurants in San Francisco. And she hadn’t started her next one yet.

  Her historical research? So far, original research was nonexistent.

  This case was slowly driving him as batty as George Meyers.

  “You must be thinking about her again, Paavo,” Matt said with a wink as he walked to his desk and dropped a load of papers on it.

  Paavo looked up. “Who?”

  Matt folded his arms and sat on the corner of his desk facing Paavo. “Who, he asks! Who you think you’re kidding? I know lovesick when I see it.”

  Paavo began to leaf through a memo. “I don’t know what the hell you’re yapping about now, Kowalski.”

  Matt chuckled. “What else? I’m talking about the girl of Ptomaine Tommy’s dreams. The queen of the greasy spoon. Your girlfriend, the one, the only—”

  “Stuff it!”

  Matt lifted an eyebrow. “You care about her that much, do you?”

  Paavo frowned. “Hell, I’m not even sure I like her.”

  Matt gave him a long look. “We should talk, pal. This sounds serious.”

  Paavo shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. Matt could always read him like a book.

  “Come over Wednesday night. Katie’s going out with the girls, and you can help me with Micky. That’ll let you know what you’re in for if this gets really serious.”

  The phone on Paavo’s desk buzzed, and he lunged for it, glad for the distraction. “Come in to my office, please. And bring Inspector Kowalski with you.”

  Paavo and Matt looked at each other with raised eyebrows. It sounded like Chief Hollins, but it couldn’t have been. That man was never so polite to his own mother.

  Paavo and Matt put on their jackets and went into Hollins’s office.

  “Ralph Sanchez and Don Klee, Treasury. Inspectors Smith and Kowalski,” Hollins said. The four shook hands.

  “These gentlemen,” Hollins told Paavo and Matt, “work for Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. They’ve been watching a man called Samuel Greenberg, but Mr. Greenberg disappeared. A week ago, they ran a routine fingerprint search and learned their suspect had been murdered. His name is Samuel Jerome Kinsley. You know him as Sammy Blade.”

  “What were you watching him for?” Matt asked.

  “Gun smuggling,” Klee said. “Automatics.”

  Paavo looked from one man to the other. “Sammy Blade was no gun smuggler.”

  “True,” Sanchez replied. “But there are a few groups the FBI’s been watching in this area—white supremacists to black brotherhoods and every nut case in between. A lot of Uzis and AK-47’s have been showing up lately, and it’s got the FBI real worried. A few of the trails of these groups cross with those of Samuel Greenberg, or Blade. Too many for coincidence. We’d like to see your files on the Blade case.”

  “Miss Amalfi?” The thin, older woman rapped against the open door of the den.

  Angie turned around in her chair. “All finished, Mrs. Clark?”

  “Good as new.”

  Angie searched for her purse then paid the housekeeper. She thanked her for coming to clean up on such short notice. While Mrs. Clark was putting the apartment back in order, Angie had done the same with her papers and disks. Paavo had been right; it wasn’t as difficult to put back together as she had feared. She’d spent the morning concentrating on her disks and papers, without letting any other thoughts intrude upon her work.

  Mrs. Clark stepped toward Joey, supine on the sofa. “It was so nice to meet you, too, Mr. Butz. A widow, like myself, quickly learns to recognize quality in a man…. I do hope we meet again.”

  Joey opened one eye. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  Mrs. Clark beamed as she turned toward the door. “Such a nice man! Do call me any time, Miss Amalfi. I can always find time for you.”

  Angie held open the door as Mrs. Clark left and then fastened the deadbolt once again. She looked at Joey, undershirt tight over bulging stomach, wrinkled brown slacks held up by suspenders, shoes off. She shook her head in amazement.

  “Nice lady,” she said as she sat on the Hepplewhite.

  “Reminds me of Olive Oyl,” he mumble
d.

  She turned her attention to the T.V., but in no time her thoughts wandered to Paavo, and her mind replayed again how good it had felt to be held by him, the gentle touch of his hands, his words of comfort…and the way he had abruptly turned away from her.

  She sighed and went into the kitchen to make some rispedi for Rico and Joey—a good old Italian recipe from Serefina—but with a new twist. Instead of working for hours making dough, watching the yeast rise, kneading it down, and so on, she had bought frozen bread dough and thawed it. It had grown to about double its original size, so she pulled off a piece, twisted it around a dried red chili pepper, then deep fried the whole thing to a golden, bar-shaped puff. She could see her diet-conscious friends swooning at the mere thought of these little gems.

  She’d just brought a plate of fresh-made rispedi to Joey and sat down to eat a couple with him when someone knocked on the door.

  Angie stood.

  Joey went to the door. “Who’s there?”

  “My name is Bill, sir,” a youthful voice answered. “I need to see Miss Amalfi.”

  Angie looked at Joey and shook her head. She knew no one named Bill with that voice.

  “What’s your business?” Joey asked.

  “Messenger, sir, Bay Area Shopper. I’ve come for Miss Amalfi’s column.”

  “Oh my God!” Angie cried. “‘Eggs and Egg-onomics.’ George threatened to send someone after it if he didn’t get a column from me. But I still forgot to send it. Let him in, please.”