To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery

by Joanne Pence

  As soon as she reached the sidewalk, the attacker fled. Paavo was standing a bit wobbly, his hand pressing his mouth as if to make sure his teeth were all still there.

  She grabbed his arm. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “There’s some blood on your lip,” she said. “Let’s get you inside the restaurant.”

  Inside, she led him into the women’s room. He hesitated, but she dragged him in and locked the door. She drenched a paper towel with water and dabbed the blood from his lip and chin.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” he mumbled.

  “Did he try to rob you?” She angled his head and patted cold water on his cheekbone where a weal was already building.

  “No.”

  “Did you recognize him at all?” Angie asked, back at his lip.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve got his picture on tape. I was filming you walking toward the restaurant when he attacked.”

  He pulled the towel out of her hand. “You didn’t stop filming?”

  “I was too stunned to do anything. I’d set the focus to blow up the picture a lot and I could see better looking though the lens than not. That was why I kept using it.”

  He looked at her strangely.

  “Do you feel up to eating dinner? Or do you just want to go home?”

  “Home.”

  As she led the way to the table to pay the bill, she saw that Nick and his place setting were gone. The waiter was clearing his spot, and setting it again for Paavo until Angie told him they weren’t staying. “The elderly gentleman took care of your bill, ma’am,” the waiter informed her. “He said to tell you he had a very nice time, and he was sure you’d want to be alone with your young man.”

  Angie was strangely touched by the message, and the man’s generosity. “How very kind. I’d like to thank him. Does he come here often?”

  The waiter shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  Chapter 27

  Paavo drove them back to the bungalow in Angie’s car, taking a circular route to be sure they weren’t being followed. After arriving, Angie immediately set up the camcorder with the VCR and she and Paavo sat on the sofa to watch the tape over the television screen. Immediately Angie saw that Paavo hadn’t been attacked at all, but the stranger had said something to him and tried to leave. Paavo decided to stop him. That was when the fight broke out.

  The lighting was poor, but as the two men struggled, they moved near a storefront that was lit up and the other man’s face became clearer. He was enormous, with the physique of a bodybuilder. Finally he pushed Paavo hard and, half stumbling, ran away.

  Paavo didn’t follow.

  “What did he say to you?” Angie asked.

  “‘Back off and you won’t get killed.’ I wanted him to explain himself, but he was feeling shy.”

  “Hmm. I might be imagining things, but I think I’ve seen him before.” She rewound and played the fight again. “Muscles like that don’t show up every day, especially not in this city. They’re quite remarkable.”

  “You’ve established you like his looks; now, where did you see him?”

  “Actually, bubbly muscles like that don’t do it for me. I prefer—”

  “Angie.”

  “I’ve got an idea.” She sprang off the sofa to her stack of camcorder tapes. “Let’s take a look at some of these restaurant shots.” Setting up the tapes, she fast-forwarded through them until she reached the Basque restaurant she’d gone to with her sister. Seated alone at a table was Paavo’s studly friend. “Voilà!”

  “Damn, I don’t get it.” Paavo leaned back, arms folded, and glared at the TV. “He had to know you were taking pictures. Why didn’t he care? Is it all a game with him, or what?”

  “How did he find us tonight? That’s what I want to know,” Angie said, sitting on the floor and restacking her tapes in chronological order.

  “He must be following you,” Paavo surmised. “It’s the only explanation. He could have been waiting to go into the restaurant, or watching you from the sidewalk—you’d been seated at the window the whole time, right?”

  “That could be,” she said thoughtfully.

  Paavo fingered his swollen lip where his teeth had hit and caused the bleeding. It made him mad all over again. “I’ll take your tape to the Hall tomorrow and run a search on Jesse The Body. You’d better stay put in the house. Order out if you don’t want to cook, but keep away from restaurants.”

  “Stay home? No way!” Angie was appalled. “I should go out. Now that I know I’m being followed, I’ll be extra alert. If the guy shows up again, I’ll hurry to a safe place and call you. Then you can arrest him and find out what’s going on.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Paavo said.

  “But if I stay home, I won’t be able to learn things the way I did yesterday with Sawyer…and again today.”

  “Uh-oh,” he murmured. “What now?”

  “It’s what I’d hoped to discuss with you at the restaurant.” She excitedly joined him again on the sofa. “Today I visited Irene Billot.”

  “Who?”

  “She was a good friend of your mother’s.”

  He looked at her as if he didn’t believe her. Since he hadn’t eaten dinner, as she told him about finding Irene—leaving out the bars and restaurants—and then everything she’d learned during her visit, they moved into the kitchen where she put on some lentil soup and he made himself a ham and cheese sandwich.

  Paavo was silent for a long while after Angie completed the story. “Jesus,” he said finally. “Spying on her own husband. It’s crazy.”

  “But it sounds like she thought she was protecting him,” Angie countered.

  “Are you sure you could trust this Irene? I don’t remember any of that stuff coming out in Mika’s investigation. I remember seeing her interviewed, but that’s it.”

  “Why would she lie now? It’s more likely she lied thirty years ago—the FBI and the Russian Mafia? Heck, I’d lie, too.”

  “Damn it!” Paavo slammed down the knife he had used to cut the sandwich in half, and faced her. “That’s exactly what this is all about. Lies. Thirty years worth of lies! I’m fed up with the lies and the people making them. Damn them all!”

  “Paavo!” She was shocked. He almost never raised his voice.

  “Hell, Angie. Think about it. You’re caught up in this, too. You’re in danger and can’t even go to your own apartment because years ago, people didn’t have the balls to level with me. What does that make them? Or me?”

  “It’s not your fault,” she began.

  “I’m not talking fault. I’m talking deeper. Who are these people? A mother who lies to her husband? A father who goes off on some idealistic mission and gets himself killed?”

  She didn’t speak, giving him the chance to open up, to vent all he’d been holding in since this began.

  “I was better off not knowing,” he said grimly. “I don’t want to know about them, not like this! I don’t want you to be a part of it. And most of all, I wish they hadn’t been so goddamn stupid!”

  She reached for his hand, but he got up and walked into the living room. She shut off the gas beneath the soup, put his sandwich on a plate, and followed.

  “You don’t mean any of that,” she said.

  “I sure as hell do!” He paced. “But I’m not giving up. I’ll find out the truth now that I’ve come this far. It’ll tell me who I am.”

  “What they were has nothing to do with you,” she cried, following him back and forth across the living room, the plate still in her hands.

  “It has everything to do with me!”

  “No. You’re wrong!”

  “You just don’t get it,” he yelled, facing her. “You, with a city filled with Amalfis—more cousins than you can count—cannot begin to understand what it means to have no one. No one, Angie. I can’t look around
and see anyone else with the same features, the same blood. No one with the same background that made me who I am and what I believe. I don’t know who I am. It’s all buried. And now that I’m trying to dig beneath it, it keeps getting worse.”

  “You’re who you created,” she cried. “And you did a damned fine job, Inspector.”

  His voice turned as cold as she’d ever heard it. “Don’t patronize me, Angie. That’s one thing I will not tolerate.”

  “I’m not patronizing you!” She waved an arm in frustration. “I’m trying to tell you that whatever turns up about your parents, your past, doesn’t matter as far as who you are!”

  “It does to me. Can’t you see that? How can you not understand something so simple, so basic?”

  “Oh, I understand, all right. I understand this is an excuse of yours. You skitter away like a feral cat—”

  “A cat?”

  “Whenever I try to talk to you about our future—about getting married!”

  He looked like he couldn’t believe his ears. “What does getting married have to do with anything?”

  “It has everything to do with how you’re feeling about yourself. About us! I love you. I don’t give a damn about your ancestors. I want to marry you, not them.”

  His mood was too ugly to listen. “You’re obsessed with the subject.”

  “Obsessed!” The word exploded. “I’m trying to tell you how I feel, to let you know I see that you’re hurting, and I understand.”

  “The only thing you understand is a white dress and wedding veil.”

  She was literally hopping mad. “You arrogant jackass!”

  “My, my. From cat to jackass. Sounds like I’m moving up on the food chain.” He folded his arms, looking so smug she picked up half his sandwich and threw it at him. He ducked and it sailed past him to land with a splat on the television screen.

  “Hah!” he shouted in triumph just as the second half hit him square on the chin. The sandwich opened up as it flew, and mayonnaise and mustard caused the bread slices to stick a moment before dropping to the floor.

  Realizing what she’d just done, Angie covered her mouth as he slowly wiped his face. He looked at his greasy hand, then at her.

  She backed up.

  He stepped toward her.

  She took another step backward. “Now, Paavo.”

  Suddenly his eyes filled with mirth and, to her surprise, he began to laugh.

  And so did she.

  Jane Platt awoke with a start. A strong, icy cold hand covered her mouth and nose, smothering her. The child’s eyes flew open to see a woman’s face looming in front of her.

  “Stop struggling!” the woman hissed, pressing Jane’s head farther down into the pillow. “Stop struggling and I’ll remove my hand. Will you do that?”

  Jane tried to nod as tears rolled down her cheeks. She wanted her grandpa. If he were still alive, this woman wouldn’t be here scaring her. No one would ever scare her.

  The woman eased back a little, and when Jane didn’t call out or try to get away, she sat on the edge of the bed.

  The bedroom window was wide open, and Jane realized that was how the woman got into her room. She tried hard to stop crying, but it wasn’t easy. The foster family she’d been sent to wouldn’t like it if they found out that someone broke into the house because of her. They wouldn’t want her anymore, she feared, just as her aunt didn’t want her.

  “Now, Jane,” the woman said in a harsh whisper, “we’re going to talk about your grandfather, and a cameo brooch. Do you know what a cameo is, Jane?”

  Chapter 28

  Paavo walked into the crime lab with Angie’s videotape first thing in the morning, and talked to his friend Ray Faldo. They ran the video until they found a clear shot of the man Paavo had fought with, froze the frame, and made a print. While Paavo phoned contacts in the FBI and Interpol—he had worked with one of their agents not long ago—and transmitted copies of the photo to them, Faldo put the suspect’s characteristics into the database and set up a photo lineup. They found no hits in the state or city mug shots.

  The homicide book on Mika’s murder was still on Paavo’s desk, and he looked up interviews with Irene Billot. The woman had given the homicide inspectors no information beyond being a neighbor and recognizing the family if she passed them on the street. She wasn’t mentioned at all in the investigation on Cecily’s auto accident, conducted mostly by a different police force due to the jurisdiction of her death.

  On a hunch, he decided to see what, if anything, the S.F.P.D. had on Irene Billot. The information that turned up surprised him.

  Records of her calls to the Mission Station about Cecily existed—dire warnings, conspiracy theories, fears for her own life—contact after contact, all dismissed as a troubled woman who couldn’t cope with her friend’s death. The beat cops who talked to Irene weren’t given access to the background of Cecily’s disappearance. They were simply told her car had plunged off a cliff into the Pacific. Faced with Irene’s weird ravings, they half expected her to announce aliens had abducted Cecily. Irene’s own words didn’t help her case any, and Paavo couldn’t reconcile the difference between the alarming, shrill woman the police reported and the calm, collected woman Angie told him about.

  He had just finished reading the reports on Mrs. Billot when Interpol contacted him. They had a photo match on Mr. Muscle and faxed him the information.

  Leonid Stavrogin: Russian Mafia enforcer. Righthand man to the leader of the West Coast Mafia, known only as Koba, the Russian Robin Hood “little people’s protector” figure the Gang Task Force inspector told him about.

  Stavrogin, despite his physical strength, wasn’t a man who gave out verbal warnings. He shot people. Why should a man like that warn Paavo?

  More distressing than his remark, though, was the knowledge that he’d been watching Angie, and following her.

  Angie was a target.

  Paavo had to find out why.

  Angie and Paavo stood in front of the Diamond Street apartment where Irene Billot lived.

  They rang the bell, and when there was no answer, knocked. The door next to Irene’s opened and a man came out. He had a pencil-thin mustache and slick, shoe-polish-black hair. “She isn’t home,” he said.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?” Angie asked. “I’m a friend.”

  “Try April,” he announced, looking rather pleased with himself.

  “April?” Angie was shocked. “Where has she gone?”

  “Arizona. She always goes down there for the winter. Likes the sun, hates the rain.”

  Angie and Paavo glanced at each other.

  “Wasn’t she here yesterday?” Paavo asked.

  “Yesterday?” The man chuckled. “My goodness, no. I’ve been taking care of the place for her, watering her plants and all. She’s been gone a month already.”

  “Were you home yesterday?” Angie asked, trying to get to the bottom of this.

  “Yes…except for while I was at racquetball.”

  “When was that?”

  “In the afternoon. I go every Tuesday and Thursday.”

  “You are talking about Irene Billot, right?” Paavo asked. “Sixties, in a wheelchair.”

  Now it was the neighbor’s turn to appear shocked. “Well…yes and no. I am talking about Irene Billot. She is sixty-something, but she’s not in any wheelchair. She’s the reason I began exercising—to be in half as good a shape as she is.”

  “Oh, dear,” Angie murmured.

  “Has she ever mentioned an old friend named Cecily?” Paavo asked.

  The man’s eyebrows rose. “As a matter of fact, she has. Several times. Cecily was the reason she moved here. She said she had to get away from her old place because it wasn’t safe. Someone killed her friend, and as much as she tried to tell the police about it, they wouldn’t listen. As far as she was concerned, they proved their incompetency, and made it clear she would have to take care of herself, because no one else would do it. She took le
ssons in self-defense, even”—he shuddered—“learned to use a gun.”

  “Did she say who she was afraid of?”

  “It sounded like just about everybody.”

  Angie felt as if she were walking on air. She was in the television studios of Bay TV. This was her milieu, she decided. Television. It was what she’d been born for, lived for. After all, she was a child of the age of television. She simply had to find herself a job here and all would be well with the career part of her life—she just knew it.

  In a way, she was glad they hadn’t been able to talk with Irene that afternoon. Paavo returned to work and she didn’t have to tell him about the call she’d received that morning from BayLife Today. Their scheduled guest canceled and they needed an immediate replacement. Was she available? Her heart was in her mouth, but she managed to croak out, “Yes!”

  It wasn’t a prime-time news show, and it wasn’t a major syndicated program. Instead, it was an area “events” show on a local cable channel. As cousin Richie would say, “Hey, a start is a start.”

  Bended-knee begging and a hefty tip got her an immediate appointment at her hairdresser’s, plus a manicurist. Careful not to destroy her hair, she rushed from the beauty parlor to Sissy’s of Maiden Lane for a new suit. A peppermint-pink Anne Klein looked properly Diane Sawyerish.

  She signed in at the guard station on the ground floor and a casually dressed fellow with dreadlocks greeted her and silently led her up to the studio.

  “Which way is makeup?” she asked.

  He looked confused. “The women’s room is down that hall.”

  She glanced where he pointed. “Oh?”

  “The studio’s in there.” He gestured toward double swinging doors at the end of a wide hallway filled with computer terminals. No one sat at any of them, though.

  The dreadlocks fellow disappeared. Angie gaily bustled into the studio and promptly tripped over a maze of cables on the floor. To avoid stumbling again, she minced toward the brightly lit set.