To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery

by Joanne Pence

  “Nothing was stolen, miss,” he declared, his voice increasingly obstinate. “Perhaps my father took the brooch home to work on. I’ll search. Now, you say you didn’t pick it up, but might someone else have done it for you? After all, the store’s work request is missing.”

  “Someone else? No! No one even knew the cameo was broken”—then she remembered mentioning it to Connie—“except a girlfriend, and she wouldn’t have gotten it.”

  “Did you check with her?”

  Apoplexy threatened and she nearly ran a red light. “Of course I didn’t! The repair work wasn’t even paid for. No one picked up my brooch!”

  “I’ll call you.” He hung up.

  She slammed her phone shut, dropped it in her tote, and looked up to find honking cars and cursing pedestrians all around her.

  Just stepping inside the little house soothed Angie’s overheated emotions. Not only had Rosin sounded like a pompous blowhard talking down to her, but at Les Chats, the food looked and tasted like something Roto-Rooter flushed out of a clogged drain.

  Rosin would find her brooch or discover what it was like to meet a master nagger. A crazed pit bull was wishy-washy by comparison.

  She brought a raspberry tea Snapple out onto the deck and sat. It was a perfect place to calm down. She loved living here—and knew she loved it because Paavo was with her. She realized, too, that she was merely playing house with him.

  But playing it was better than not living with him at all, especially during this time when he was so upset about Aulis and, much as he didn’t want to admit it, his past. He tossed and turned each night, and at times seemed to dread going to sleep. She had never known him to be afraid of anything, until he told her about his recurring nightmare. Mixing his sister and his current job—the past and the present—would be troubling for him.

  To her surprise, she, too, had fears about the outcome of his discoveries about his parents. Before he reached his journey’s end, the path he was taking could lead to overwhelming or disturbing places, psychologically, if not physically. Somehow, she needed to help him through it.

  As she sipped her tea, her mind turned to poor Gregor Rosinsky. She could scarcely believe he had been murdered. He had seemed like an interesting old man. Robberies were so common—too common—in this city. Heck, everywhere. That was a reason she liked this little house. Since it was on a street too steep for cars, if anyone came here to rob, they’d have to lug the stolen goods up or down the stairs to a getaway car. Not very likely. But then, she always used to feel safe in her own twelfth-floor apartment, and look what happened. There, she’d been specifically targeted. She was sure of it. Just as Paavo had been, and Aulis.

  And Rosinsky? Why was his copy of her receipt missing?

  All of Paavo’s warnings to her came back again. She nervously raced through the house checking the locks on doors and windows, and then double-checked the gun Paavo had put in the nightstand for her if anyone tried to force his way in while she was home alone.

  After locking the French doors to the deck, she lounged on the sofa and tried to read the latest issue of Vanity Fair. The umpteenth article on Gwyneth Paltrow and a fashion layout from Milan had all the staying power of cheap lipstick. Feeling cold and lonely, she snuggled into an afghan and waited.

  When her tall detective walked in the house, his blue eyes found her and he smiled, and the world became right again. She ran to him with a hug and kiss. After Rosinsky, she didn’t want to hear any more about death and sadness. At times she wondered how he stayed sane in his job.

  So she chattered brightly about books and movies and TV shows, phone conversations she’d had with her mother and her oldest sister, her visit to Les Chats, and her video restaurant reviews. The first one was finished. All she needed was a television program to show it on. She had sent letters, E-mails, faxes, and phone calls to all the local TV stations. So far, no one had replied.

  Not until dinner was over and they were nestled side by side on the sofa did Angie bring up her troubling discoveries.

  “I have a confession to make,” she began, pulling nervously at a loose thread on a needlepoint pillow.

  He looked startled. “A confession?”

  “It has to do with my Christmas present.”

  “I noticed you stopped wearing it.” His voice was soft, his eyes resigned. “You decided you don’t like it after all?”

  “No, that’s not it.” The thread was getting longer and longer.

  “It was a silly present. I should have gotten you something new.” He sounded embarrassed.

  “Paavo—”

  “Stupid of me. I’m never sentimental—”

  She tossed the pillow aside and grabbed his shoulders. “Will you listen? I love the brooch. The only reason I stopped wearing it is because the cameo popped out of the setting. I brought it to a Russian jeweler to have it fixed. Did you know it’s an old, rare Russian piece?” He looked incredulous. “Anyway, when I went to get it back, I learned the Russian jeweler had been murdered.”

  He frowned at that news. “Rebecca Mayfield is investigating a Russian jeweler—Rose Jewelry.”

  “That’s it! Gregor Rosinsky was the owner.”

  “Where did you get this information?” he asked, brows furrowed.

  She told him all about her conversation with Martin Rosin.

  “Tell me again what you heard about the brooch being Russian,” he said.

  “The cameo is a profile of Alexandra, the last Tsarina—you know, Nicholas and Alexandra? Their daughter was Anastasia. Anyway, I first brought the brooch to my regular jeweler, and he sent me to Rosinsky. Rosinsky all but drooled over it. The little clear stones around the cameo are real diamonds—perfect diamonds, he said. He asked if I’d be interested in selling it. I told him absolutely not. He implied I shouldn’t keep it—that it was museum quality.”

  “Museum quality?”

  “Yes.” Angie looked at him hard. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure.” He stood and silently refilled their coffee cups, lost in thought. Only when he sat again did he speak. “Another man with a connection to jewelry was recently murdered. He, however, was on the other side of the line—he was a forger.”

  “A forger? A criminal? I don’t see the connection.”

  “He was also old, and of Russian descent.”

  “Old and Russian…It sounds like my brooch!”

  Blue eyes met hers. “I know.”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “Gregor Rosinsky’s shop was broken into the night before your place and mine were hit.”

  “A jeweler and a forger, my brooch, then you, me, and Aulis,” she said. “We can’t all be connected, can we?”

  When he made no reply, a chill went through her. Of the people she’d just mentioned, two were already dead, and the third might be dying.

  Chapter 13

  Leave it to Angie to have set up a printer and a fax machine in temporary living quarters, Paavo thought with a small smile. When Nelson Bradley called him on his cell phone at seven A.M., and said he had the requested files, Paavo was in the house getting ready for work. Not that he had slept in. He had hardly slept at all, but kept reworking the strange information about Angie’s brooch.

  He gave Bradley the fax number and asked Angie to turn on the machine.

  The phone rang, the fax took over, and in a matter of seconds, the first page began to spill out. It can’t be, kept running through Paavo’s head. All these years he had carried an image of his mother, and her being a government bureaucrat, married to an FBI agent, just didn’t fit it. Didn’t fit it at all.

  But then, Bradley’s words that Cecily Campbell was dead didn’t fit his image of her either.

  It was peculiar, but even though she had walked out on him and his sister, even though she had made it clear she didn’t care about them, and didn’t want them in her life, he always felt that someday…somehow…he would meet her. And then he could ask her, why?

&nb
sp; When Jessica died, he’d been positive their mother would show up for the funeral. He remembered standing beside Aulis, trying to keep his face stiff, not letting anybody see how hurt he was, or how angry. At the same time, he wanted to look around, to see if a strange woman was in attendance. He wondered if he’d recognize her, if she’d look like Jessica, although he couldn’t imagine anyone else being so pretty.

  Jessie had been beautiful and fun. She was one of the few people outside of Angie he’d ever known who could get him to make an out-and-out belly laugh. And make him angry. Yes, he was furious at her. Furious at the type of people she’d decided to hang out with, the type who’d caused her to overdose at age nineteen. Furious at her for dying.

  He shut his eyes, trying to tamp down the emptiness from losing her that would never go away. His mother hadn’t shown up that day. That was when he knew she was never coming back. He hadn’t cried about her since he was a little boy, but alone in his room, on the night of Jessie’s funeral, he had cried for the loss of them both. After that, he’d toughened, and never shed a tear for either one again.

  He took the information from the fax machine, folded it in half, and walked out onto the deck to sit.

  Angie, in a satin nightgown and pink robe, placed a hot mug of coffee beside him, her eyes heavy with concern, then she went into the house, leaving the French door partially open.

  He took a sip of coffee and unfolded the papers.

  Their words were too cold, too mechanical, to be about a parent. They had a bureaucratic, impersonal ring—true government files, all dates and facts, about a stranger.

  At age twenty-two, Cecily Jean Hampton, both parents deceased, took a job as a clerk-typist with the FBI. Six months later, she married Lawrence Campbell, and a year after that, Jessica Ann was born.

  He stopped there for a moment. Jessica Ann Campbell. How odd that he’d never known that. She never let on. She’d been nine years old when Cecily walked out. A nine-year-old understands a lot, and recognizes when it is necessary to hide, and to create a false identity. The realization of all that Jessie must have known and kept hidden from him was staggering.

  He continued reading. When Cecily was twenty-four, her marital status changed to widowed. Three years later, at twenty-seven, she transferred to the San Francisco Field Office. Nothing appeared in the file for six years, until the annotation “deceased” was entered. That was it. No explanation, no embellishment.

  No nothing.

  He turned to Lawrence’s file. Campbell had been an agent, twenty-three years older than Cecily. The file showed his parents’ names—Jessica’s grandparents. Paavo wondered if they had still been alive when Jessica was a child, and if so, why they had never contacted their granddaughter, never sent her a Christmas present or birthday card. He could look up information about them; a lot of personal data was available to him in his position, but some things were better not knowing about. Some could do nothing but open old wounds and cause more heartache.

  Lawrence Campbell had died of a brain aneurysm at age forty-seven. Until the time of his death, he’d apparently been a healthy, active man. Survivor benefits had been paid to his daughter, Jessica, until she was age nine, when the folder was annotated “Suspend benefits until new address received. Checks returned. Unable to locate.”

  Paavo stared at that a moment.

  Cecily had walked away from her children thirty-one years ago, leaving that strange letter with Aulis, and the change in name to Mary Smith.

  What had happened that made the FBI think she’d died, and was it true or not? Why was Jessica’s name changed, and her whereabouts hidden, so she no longer even received survivor’s benefits from her father’s account?

  Paavo searched for answers in Cecily Campbell’s file. He worked his way through tedious reports on her progress as an employee, but found nothing of note. She was rated as competent and hardworking, a team player, not one to take risks, and she followed protocol. Generally, the reviews were uninspired, unhelpful. Her supervisor in San Francisco was shown as Eldridge Sawyer, and his reports were second-signed by Tucker Bond.

  Paavo went back inside. As he tapped into his cell phone’s address book, he caught Angie’s anxious expression from the living room and motioned her to join him.

  “FBI,” a woman’s voice answered.

  “I’m trying to reach an agent named Eldridge Sawyer,” he said.

  “Thank you.” After a short wait the operator came back on the line. “I’m sorry. No one by that name is here.”

  “I see. What about Tucker Bond?”

  Her response was immediate. “One moment, I’ll connect you.”

  A second pleasant female voice came on the line. “Mr. Bond’s office.”

  “This is Inspector Smith from the San Francisco Police Department. I’d like to meet with Mr. Bond as soon as possible.”

  “Can I tell him what this is concerning?”

  “A former employee, Cecily Campbell.”

  “Let me check his calendar.” She put him on hold. About two minutes went by before she came on the phone again. “He has a few minutes available today at twelve-thirty.”

  “That’s fine. Can you tell me what Mr. Bond’s exact title is?”

  “Certainly. He’s the Special Agent in Charge.”

  “Thank you.” Paavo hung up the phone. The SAC was the head of the San Francisco office. So Bond had moved up in the world over the past thirty years. He wondered what had become of Cecily’s boss, Eldridge Sawyer.

  Angie was bursting with questions by the time he hung up. “Did you find out anything?”

  They went out to the deck and he handed her the FBI files. “There isn’t a lot here.”

  She scanned them quickly. “I wonder where she lived. No address is shown.”

  “So I noticed. There are names, though. I’m starting with one of her bosses. I wonder how much he’ll remember about her.”

  Angie’s eyebrows rose. “Judging from the pictures I’ve seen of her, whether he admits it or not, he’ll remember a lot.”

  Chapter 14

  Although the FBI files didn’t show Cecily’s address, Angie had a good idea how to find out where the woman had lived, or darn close to it. Despite the many lies Paavo had been told about her, Angie was fairly confident that Cecily and Aulis had been neighbors. What else could a young widowed FBI employee and a middle-aged Finn have in common? Hmm, Angie decided not to pursue that, especially in view of Connie’s brainstorm about the two of them.

  The cleaning service had done a nice job on Aulis’s apartment. Still, being here made Angie’s hair stand on end big time. And the fact that the last time she was here, a man standing beside her car ended up wearing a toe tag only added to her nervousness.

  She dashed into the bedroom and flipped through papers and old envelopes until her eye fell on one postmarked thirty-three years earlier from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company with stock certificates.

  The address showed Liberty Street in the city. She had no idea where that was. Several more recent envelopes had different addresses, even some in Los Angeles and Bakersfield, but Liberty Street was in the correct time frame.

  Not until she was back in her car, doors locked, did she breathe again. In the glove compartment, a Thomas Bros, map of the city gave her the information she needed. Liberty Street wasn’t far at all.

  What the map didn’t tell her was that she couldn’t reach it by the most direct route, along Sanchez Street. An imposing cement wall, with stairways on both sides, blocked the way. She had to circle around and approach from the opposite side.

  The street was quiet and narrow, high on a steep hill, with a barrier at the far end to prevent cars from going any further. Most of the homes were elegant Victorians, some badly weathered, and others “gentrified.” A couple of modern houses looked overbearing and sadly out of place. Near the end of the block, she found Aulis’s old address in a two-story Victorian. A long staircase with an ornately carved wooden banister led up to
a covered front porch with four doors. An overhang on the porch mirrored the ornate carvings of the banister. As with many older buildings in the city, the house most likely had once been an elegant single-family home that was divided into four apartments. Such apartments used to be inexpensive places to live. No more, though.

  Getting out of her car, she lifted her tote bag to the shoulder of her plum-colored, tweed Ellen Tracy suit, and picked up her camcorder and purse. Nobody would slam the door on a stranger wearing a sophisticated Ellen Tracy.

  She knocked on the door to Aulis’s old apartment. A barefoot young woman in jeans and a T-shirt, a toddler on her hip, opened it.

  “Hello, there!” Angie said brightly. “My name is Angie Amalfi.” She thrust a business card into the woman’s hand. One good thing about not having a set business, her cards were generic. “I’m working on a special feature for San Francisco magazine on people who have lived in neighborhoods for many, many years. Like, say, thirty years.”

  “Oh?” The woman stuffed the card in her pocket and pushed a strand of brown hair back off her face. The butterfly clip high on the back of her head wasn’t doing its job. “That’s not me.”

  “We’re giving away a year of the magazine to everyone who helps us put the article together. Do you happen to know any neighbors who have been here a long time?”

  The woman looked blankly at her. “We just moved in last year.” She put her little girl down inside the house and stood blocking the doorway so the child couldn’t get out. “I’ve never heard of that magazine.”

  “You haven’t? It’s quite wonderful. Can you tell me about the other people in this building? Have they been here long?”

  The woman rolled her eyes upward as if the answer might be printed on the underside of the porch roof. This was no candidate for Mensa. “Well, I live upstairs in back. The guy below has been here a few years, but he’s only twenty-eight. A gay couple lives in front. They’ve been here five years at most. I guess the oldest is Terry, above them. Her and her old man bought the building ten years ago, or something like that.”