Cooking Most Deadly

by Joanne Pence

  Cooking Most Deadly

  An Angie Amalfi Mystery

  Joanne Pence

  Dedication

  To my husband, David, for twenty-five wonderful years of love, laughter, unwavering support, and never a dull moment—here’s to the next twenty-five.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Angie Amalfi Mysteries by Joanne Pence

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  He sat in the cold, cramped, lime green Honda, his legs and spine stiff and aching.

  Earlier, he had watched the fog advance from the Pacific to immerse the neighborhood and its bundled-together houses under a suffocating shroud. Shapes had become blurred and obscure in the frigid dampness, the streets slick and treacherous.

  Now it was night. The thick fog had faded into a fine mist that powdered his windshield.

  No one seemed to notice him sitting there. No one had paid any attention to him last evening either, or the evening before that. Alone, he kept his vigil over the homicide inspector’s brown-shingled cottage. If tonight didn’t work out, he’d return tomorrow. What did one day, or five, or even ten, matter? His patience would be rewarded.

  He’d planned everything meticulously. Even the unexpected had been anticipated, reasoned. He’d learned that when people rush they grow careless, make mistakes. But, even taking his time, it should be over by Easter. He chuckled at the symbolism.

  The low, throaty rumble of a Ferrari Testarossa engine reverberated as it turned the corner onto the quiet street. Once, he’d have given his eyeteeth for wheels like that, but he’d cleansed his flesh of such material desires. His desires in this lifetime were far more pure, more simple.

  The Ferrari stopped in front of the cottage he’d been watching. Its headlights switched off, and the door of the low-riding car swung open. He adjusted his glasses higher on his nose and leaned forward to watch, as if the few inches would matter with his nearsightedness.

  A foot in a high-heeled shoe emerged, a narrow ankle, a shapely calf, then another. As the woman eased her way from the car, her cherry red skirt rode up, exposing the curves of her nyloned legs. She was petite, beautiful, and dressed to match the expensive elegance of the sports car.

  Starting the Honda’s engine, he waited until he was sure she was headed toward the cop’s house, then made his way slowly toward her.

  Angelina Amalfi turned around at the rackety pings of the approaching car and watched as it pulled up alongside hers. The driver leaned toward the passenger door and rolled down the window. The nearby streetlamp illuminated a long, narrow face with thick, black-framed glasses and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap pulled low over the brow.

  “Complimentary copy of the Chronicle for you.” The driver sidearmed a rolled-up newspaper over the hood of the Ferrari. It skidded to a stop at her feet.

  She picked it up and read the date. “This morning’s news. How exciting.” She was tempted to fling it right back, but she’d never been too good with Frisbees.

  “Wait,” he called, as she tucked the paper under her arm and walked toward the house. “Are you the lady of the house? Two months for the price of one.”

  “Sorry, not interested.” She kept going.

  “Maybe your husband is?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “He’s not my husband, but I’m sure he’s not interested either.”

  “Maybe someday, real soon.”

  “What?” His puzzling words caused her to stop, but he’d already lurched the car forward, the tires squealing on the wet pavement. He stopped at the next house and tossed a paper onto the front steps, and then went on to the house after that.

  She’d have to tell one of her friends down at the Chronicle that they needed to hire a better class of salesman. There was something vaguely troubling about this late-working one.

  “I thought I heard your car.”

  The voice startled her from her thoughts. Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith stood in his doorway, one hand against the frame, the other on the doorknob.

  “What are you doing out there?” he asked. He had a just-awakened, slightly disoriented look, his blue eyes soft instead of sharp and controlled, and his wavy, dark brown hair falling onto his brow instead of neatly combed to the side. His gray sweatshirt was rumpled, and bare feet showed beneath his jeans.

  “Did I wake you?” She hurried up the front steps to him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and kissed him. He was a big man, strong, hard, and tough. But not with her. “I’m sorry, Paavo.”

  “It’s all right.” Keeping his arms around her, he backed into the house and shut the door. “I fell asleep on the couch. I was having this great dream”—he returned her kiss—“and here you are.”

  He felt good in her arms, too good, too able to make her forget why she had come here. She broke away and walked into the living room. With its mismatched, overstuffed furniture and array of well-read books and magazines, the room was somehow comforting to her, so different from her formal, antique-laden apartment. “I thought you only dreamed about murder cases, Inspector.”

  “Not always,” he murmured, following her. He studied her a moment. “Out with it, Angie.”

  “Out with it?” she asked innocently.

  He tilted his head, his expression wry. “It’s clearly not my devastating charm that brought you here tonight. What’s on your mind? Is anything wrong?”

  She nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m so upset!” She took a deep breath. “I’ve walked my feet raw trying to find an interesting restaurant to write about for Haute Cuisine magazine. There’s nothing out there. I’m so discouraged, I don’t know what to do!”

  He led her toward the sofa. “Angie.” Her name was a sigh of relief. “Is that all?”

  “All?”

  “I know it’s important, but—”

  “So it’s not homicide. It’s just my life, my career.”

  He sat on the sofa, trying not to smile, then leaned back. Long legs stretched out in front of him, and folded hands rested on his stomach. “Let’s start over. Explain it to me. We both know this city’s loaded with restaurants. Now, what’s the problem?”

  She put the newspaper down on the coffee table and placed her purse on top of it, then took off her
jacket and dropped it over an easy chair. Paavo’s big yellow tabby, Hercules, curled up on an afghan on the opposite side of the sofa, glowered at this disturbance to his peaceful slumber.

  Angie went over to Hercules. Using her long, silk-wrapped, raspberry-colored nails, she scratched the top of his head and around his ears. He purred, contentedly shutting his eyes. “The problem is that nobody wants to read another magazine article about Chef La-di-dah’s latest epicurean adventure,” she said, her back to Paavo. “That’s old hat. I want to write about something unique. Something that will make people sit up and take notice—of me, if not the restaurant. I’m tired of not having a decent job to call my own.”

  Paavo reached for the hand she was using to pet the cat and took it in his own. “Something will turn up for you, Angie. Give it time.” His voice held comfort and assurance. “Believe me.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said softly.

  Tugging on the hand he held, he drew her toward him. This time, she didn’t resist.

  As the green Honda climbed California Street, its wheels spun on cable car tracks wet from the drizzling mist. Damn! If he’d been able to find a parking place, he wouldn’t be having this problem. But finding parking at midnight on Nob Hill was impossible except for ridiculously expensive parking garages. He wasn’t about to pay the money.

  He’d waited at the cop’s cottage over an hour for the broad to come out, but she didn’t. He figured she’d spend the night there. That was fine with him. He had another little friend to check on.

  Just past Taylor Street, a silver, boat-sized Mercedes sat in valet parking a few steps from the Coventry Hotel. It had been parked for two hours already. The Coventry seemed like pretty plush digs to be used as a by-the-hour screw parlor. But what else was it?

  For those same two hours, he’d driven up and down the city streets, waiting, compelled by the need to be sure. A lesser man would have discovered the existence of a more direct target and would have stopped there. But not him. He double-checked everything. Everything had to be exact.

  Two days ago he’d visited the woman’s apartment up on Twin Peaks and gave her a complimentary copy of the Chronicle. Women were suckers for freebies like that.

  She was blond and attractive, with a body that was ripe, fleshy, and well rounded; the kind that would fall to fat hips and sagging breasts in a few years, but in the meantime, made for pleasure. A man’s pleasure. She was also a bit dense. He’d had to explain what he meant by a two-for-one offer.

  Abruptly breaking off his thoughts, he stared hard, squinting, to see better the two figures that emerged from the hotel. He stopped the car at the first open space he could find—a garage driveway. Blocking it, he cut the Honda’s headlights.

  It was 11:53.

  As they passed under yellow streetlights, the features of the tall, silver-haired man and the young woman beside him were illuminated. She was indeed the dull-witted blonde he’d met at the Twin Peaks apartment. But even more than the woman, his interest was directed at the man.

  The man escorted her to her white LeBaron and with a smug, self-confident expression, watched her drive off, before hurrying to his Mercedes. He glanced once, dismissively, at the bespectacled man in the illegally parked Honda, then got into his car and drove off.

  The next morning, the Honda cruised by the brown-shingled cottage once again. The Ferrari and the cop’s car, an old Austin Healey, were both gone.

  It didn’t matter. They’d be back. No need to hurry. He’d planned too carefully to blow it now.

  Ten years was a long time to plan. A long time to make up for.

  He deserved something for those ten years. And for Heather.

  This was all about Heather.

  He sped through the winding, wooded paths of the Presidio to emerge at the east gate. On Baker Street, he parked directly across from the Palace of Fine Arts, the orange-hued Grecian landmark of the elegant Marina district. A half hour later, the front door of a large, stucco home opened. An elderly, shrunken man, nattily dressed in gray slacks, a gray plaid sport coat, and bowler hat, stepped out. He watched as the old man slowly walked down the long flight of stairs to the sidewalk and turned toward the Green, the popular, lawn-covered play area that ran along the north coast of the city from the Presidio to Fort Mason.

  After waiting a couple of minutes, he stepped from his car and ran up the stairs to the front door, dropped a Chronicle in front of it, rang the bell, and raced back down to the sidewalk.

  Soon, an elderly woman appeared in a pink floral housecoat, her white hair in dozens of tight little ringlets across her head, as if she’d just removed her curlers and hadn’t had time to brush her hair out.

  He waved at her, pointed to the rolled newspapers in his arms, and then to her stoop. When she saw the paper lying at her feet, she smiled and nodded, waved back to him, then took the newspaper indoors with her.

  It was going to be almost too easy, he thought.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You better button it up, Vinnie,” Butch Pagozzi shouted, running halfway down the basement stairs. Over sixty years old, he was small, lightweight, and felt every bit as spry as forty years before, when he’d fought Tiny Alvarez for the bantamweight title. Butch lost. “We got a customer. A broad!”

  “You gotta be kiddin’. What kinda broad would wanna eat in a joint like this?” Vinnie Freiman stood his pickax against the cement wall right beside the sledgehammer, picked up his cigar, and chewed the end as smoke billowed around his balding head. A Coleman lantern lit the area beside him. When he glanced up at Butch, the light created shadows on the layers of bags under his eyes, giving him even more of a basset hound look than usual.

  “I don’t know,” Butch muttered. “What am I gonna do?”

  “Get ridda her.”

  “I cooked somethin’ up just in case somebody wanted to eat. But what if she don’t like it?”

  Vinnie, a short, stocky man, pulled a huge, rumpled handkerchief out of the back pocket of his baggy brown trousers and mopped his brow and the back of his neck. “Who the hell cares? We don’t want her here anyway, remember?”

  “You’re right. Who cares? But you never know—she might like it.” Butch wrung his hands. “I mean, nobody ever complained about my cookin’ before.”

  Vinnie took the cigar out of his mouth. “That’s ’cause they was too busy barfin’.”

  “Jesus! What am I doin’ here?” Butch grumbled. He sat down on the steps. “How’d I get into this mess?”

  “Get up there and get ridda the broad,” Vinnie ordered. “I got work to do. Or maybe you think doin’ this is better than standin’ over a stove? You want we should change places?”

  “But you don’t cook,” Butch said.

  “Not a lick.”

  “I’ll take care of the customer.”

  “I thought so.”

  Butch ran back up to the kitchen of what had once been a small but thriving restaurant. The kitchen was fully equipped and clean. After some of the places he’d cooked, Butch still marveled every time he stepped into his new quarters.

  Still, the thought of a paying customer in the dining room made his eye twitch so badly, he could barely keep it open. He checked the seasoning in his spaghetti sauce. He guessed it was okay. It seemed okay. Sort of.

  “ ’Ey Butch,” Earl White yelled, pushing through the swinging doors from the dining room. Earl, the third member of the trio, had the assignment of working the dining room since he was the only one with experience in dealing with customers. He’d once worked as a bouncer in Vegas. The job didn’t last too long, though. Tough as he was, he found that five-foot-five bouncers sometimes got bounced themselves. “Da broad ain’t leavin’. What am I s’posed to do?”

  “Give her a menu.”

  “A menu? But you only cooked spaghetti an’ meatballs.”

  “So?”

  “But I t’ought I was s’posed to get ridda her,” Earl said quietly, not wanting to press the obvious. He didn’t
want Butch to get mad at him.

  Butch eyed the door to the basement. Vinnie’s cracks about his cooking still smarted. “Well, maybe she wants to eat somethin’ first. This is a restaurant, you know.”

  Heaving a sigh, Earl searched for a menu.

  Angie glanced over her shoulder at the sign in the window. It definitely said “OPEN.” Too bad no one connected with the restaurant knew it. When she walked in, the waiter had stared at her without a word and then run into the kitchen.

  As she waited at the entrance, she looked over the empty dining area, a small, cozy room, with wood-stained walls and big, round, white lighting fixtures. It might have had some charm except that the tables were topped with gray Formica, had aluminum legs, and were surrounded by aluminum chairs with padded gray vinyl seats. Glass salt and pepper shakers completed the decor. This was hardly the accoutrement she expected in a restaurant with the ethereal, whimsical name of The Wings Of An Angel.

  Then it struck her. This had to be one of those fifties nostalgia places. That’s why it looked so tacky. It was supposed to. She felt a little slow, but then, she was a nineties kind of gal.

  The chubby little man who’d run away earlier peered at her from the kitchen and then stepped through the swinging doors into the dining room. He wore a yellow shirt and brown polyester slacks—the sartorial equivalent of gray Formica and vinyl, she guessed.