Too Many Cooks

by Joanne Pence

  “Thank you, Angie. You’re a good girl.” Mrs. Calamatti glanced back at Paavo and raised one finger, string dangling from it. “Prepare for the Depression!”

  Paavo held the doors as Angie led Mrs. Calamatti into the elevator. “Don’t worry about him,” Angie said. “He thinks he’s Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

  Mrs. Calamatti glanced at Angie and frowned. “Hmph. If he’s FDR, I’m Jimmy Carter.”

  Paavo did a double take. He couldn’t figure out if the woman was kidding or not.

  Angie extended her kitchen table to its full width, then spread a clean sheet over it. Her oldest sister, Bianca, slapped half of the mound of dough they’d mixed onto the cloth. She beat it down flat, and Angie took their grandmother’s three-foot-long wooden rolling pin and started rolling out the dough. Bianca was an older version of Angie by fourteen years, her dark brown hair straight instead of wavy, worn in a chin-length blunt cut instead of short, and the only color she put in it was to hide the gray, not to add blond highlights.

  “Henry LaTour’s pompous with nothing to be pompous about,” Angie said, pulling and stretching the dough to make it thinner. Then she picked up the rolling pin again. Using her forearm, she pushed her bangs away from the perspiration that was already forming on her forehead. “His nose is so high in the air I’m surprised he doesn’t get frostbite.”

  “All those radio types think they’re such hot stuff. I don’t know why you bother with them.” Bianca whacked some cloves of garlic with the side of a cleaver and then peeled and minced them. “You need to take charge of your life. Stop frittering it away.”

  “I don’t think I’m frittering anything away.”

  Bianca reached for an onion. “Teaching adult ed classes on San Francisco history is more a way for you to keep senior citizens off the streets than to build a career.”

  “I also do Henry’s radio show and tutor Hispanic kids in English at the Youth Center, I just sold a magazine article on San Francisco Victorians, and I’ve got an editor interested in my interview with the retired chef of the St. Francis Hotel—the one who worked back when presidents stayed there.”

  “Well, lah-di-dah! I still think you need to settle down.”

  “Give me a break, Bianca! You sound like Mamma.”

  “So? She’s right. What about Chick Marcuccio’s son, Joey? You adore Chick, Joey’s sister’s one of your best friends, and he’s always liked you.”

  “That’s why he used to steal my dessert out of my lunch box. I can’t stand Joey Marcuccio. Anyway, I am seeing someone, you might recall.”

  Bianca didn’t answer. Angie knew all four of her sisters and all four of their husbands didn’t approve of her interest in a homicide detective: too dangerous a job and not enough money in it. Her mother, on the other hand, was very fond of Paavo. Her father hadn’t met him yet.

  She rolled the dough harder, and in no time it reached about three feet around. Spreading a layer of flour over the top so it wouldn’t stick, she rolled it up and pushed it aside. While she did this, Bianca sautéed the garlic and onion in olive oil and added a pound each of ground beef and veal.

  “Is Henry LaTour young?” Bianca asked.

  Angie spread more flour on the sheet, slapped the last half of the dough on it and attacked it with renewed vengeance with the rolling pin. “No, and he’s married.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Too bad? Give me a break! That man should be selling snake oil instead of dinners. He’s so slick he’s lucky he wasn’t sucked up along with the Exxon Valdez oil.”

  Bianca was opening and closing all the drawers.

  “What are you looking for?” Angie asked, tugging at a particularly thick hard-to-roll portion of the dough.

  “Don’t you have a Ginsu knife? Like on TV? I’ve got to chop three bunches of spinach.”

  “Sorry. You’re going to have to make do with one of my professional-quality German ones.”

  “No need to get snippy.” Bianca continued to cook, not speaking as she allowed herself to sulk over Angie’s not listening to her big-sisterly advice.

  “You ought to spend more time with Mrs. Calamatti,” Bianca announced, after the chopped spinach had cooked, her ill temper now gone. She added three eggs and a cup of ricotta to the spinach and mixed it in with the meat.

  Angie stopped pushing the rolling pin and stared at her sister. “That’s just what I want to do! She’s a dear lady, but I’d hate to follow her into dumpsters looking for things to scavenge.” Deciding the dough had been rolled thin enough, Angie began adding pinches of thyme, marjoram, and rosemary to the meat dish. “God, this is a lot of work. I hope the Knights of Columbus appreciate it.”

  “It’s only because they’ll appreciate it that I offered to cook it—or offered that we cook it. Anyway, Mrs. Calamatti’s lonely. Did you add salt?”

  “Not yet. Here’s the pepper. She’s got lots of family, but she prefers to live alone. And now her house looks like a garage sale about to happen. Where’s the Romano?”

  “Uh-oh, I forgot to grate it. Poor lady.”

  Angie took the mixture off the stove and put it in a bowl. She grated cup of cheese and added it. “Ready?” she asked. Bianca nodded.

  They dumped the meat filling onto the flattened dough that covered Angie’s table top, spread it evenly, and then slowly and carefully unfolded the other piece of rolled dough on top. Angie picked up their grandmother’s ravioli marking pin—a long wooden roller, hollow, with wooden strips that formed squares. Pressing down firmly and evenly, she rolled the pin over the dough to seal the dough layers together and enclose the filling. Then she stepped back to admire her handiwork. The tabletop looked like a computer grid.

  Bianca poured them each a cup of coffee. Sitting on opposite sides of the table, the coffee at their sides, they picked up fluted-edged pastry wheels and began to cut the ravioli apart following the lines Angie had made with the marking pin.

  “Maybe you’d be better off working in Henry’s restaurant instead of on the radio,” Bianca offered, carefully separating the ravioli squares she’d cut.

  “I’d never do that.” Angie made a face. “Henry’s restaurant is no better than McDonald’s. LaTour’s wouldn’t have any customers at all if it weren’t for radio listeners taken in by Henry’s schmooze.”

  “He can’t be that bad.”

  “Yes, he can. Radio’s better. Someday, I might even be able to say a word or two on the air.”

  “Angie, did you ever think of trying to find yourself a nice dentist to settle down with? Someone like my Dominic? Remember, Joey Marcuccio’s always had his eye on you.”

  Angie had her eye on the masterful arrangement of canapés and finger foods on the buffet table. It would have been a meal to fit any posh party, if not for the photograph of Karl Wielund with a black cloth draped over its silver frame.

  Karl’s chef and his assistant manager, Mark Dustman and Eileen Powell, had thought of everything, including valet parking. Wielund’s was on upper Grant Avenue, on the once-Italian, northern side of Broadway. The purely Italian flavor of the area took its first hit in the 1950s when it became a center for beatniks like Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg. They’d come and gone, but the restaurants and coffee shops lingered still, in all their high-priced funky splendor. Wielund’s, right on Grant, fit like a fish in water.

  Angie and Paavo had been among the first to arrive, but soon about thirty people filled the open area, drinking white wine and eating. Their conversation was loud and often punctuated by laughter. Angie took in the boisterous crowd with amazement. These so-called mourners might next pull out party hats and favors.

  What was it about Karl, she wondered, that caused this reaction in so many people? Arrogance, always acting as if he were doing you a favor just by acknowledging your existence, gloating over his success and other people’s failures—yes, that might do it.

  Angie stood with Paavo at the edge of the crowd, where they could see everyone who ent
ered the room. In the past, Angie had always been in the middle of crowds, taking in everything around her. Since going out with Paavo, though, she’d learned that cops liked to stand on the fringe, where they can observe and be ready to defend or escape as necessary. It reminded her of old cowboy movies where the gunslingers always sat with their backs to the wall so no ornery polecat could sneak up and get the drop on ’em.

  “There’s Chick Marcuccio,” she said.

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s a close friend of my father. His daughter, Terry, and I were best friends until she got married last year. I can’t stand her husband. Chick’s also got a son, Joey.”

  “Another close friend?”

  “Hardly. Joey’s the sort who thinks a pie in the face is the height of humor. His dad owns Italian Seasons.”

  Paavo did a double take to see if Angie was kidding. Italian Seasons was the biggest and most expensive of the many Italian restaurants in the city. Her offhand comment was like being in a room full of jewelers and saying, “By the way, that one’s the owner of Tiffany’s.”

  Just then, Chick Marcuccio looked in Angie’s direction. She waved.

  “Angelina! Come sta? Good to see you!” He crossed the room toward her, his arms open wide the whole way. When he reached her, they clasped shoulders and he kissed her on both cheeks.

  “Chick, I’d like you to meet my friend, Paavo Smith. Paavo, this is a dear family friend, Chick Marcuccio.”

  Chick was short and heavyset, with slicked-back steel-gray hair. As he reached out to shake Paavo’s hand, a huge diamond in his pinky ring caught the light. “Any friend of Angie is a friend of mine,” Chick said earnestly. “And this is my very dear friend, Janet Knight. I’ve wanted you two to meet for a long time.”

  The woman by his side was tall and slender and flirting with middle age. She wore a sophisticated gray suit, and her blond hair was pulled back in an elegant chignon.

  Angie and Paavo shook hands with her. “Janet Knight,” Angie repeated, taking in every detail of the woman before her. “I’ve seen your picture many times. Paavo, this is the food editor at Haute Cuisine magazine.”

  Paavo’s attempt to express excitement at this news was about as successful as Angie should have expected from a man whose idea of gourmet cooking was adding onion powder to Stove Top Stuffing Mix.

  “I’ve always wanted to do an article for you,” Angie said.

  Janet smiled. “Really? You should submit one.”

  “I have,” Angie said, her heart sinking as she realized her submittals never even made it past the first readers and onto the editor’s desk. “Several times.”

  “Ah. I see.” A hint of red showed on Janet’s porcelain cheeks. “I used to enjoy your food column. I’m sorry it ended.”

  “Well, those things happen, I guess,” Angie replied, her dismay that Janet had never seen her submittals subsiding a bit with the compliment.

  Chick jumped in. “Sure they do, Angie. Don’t mean nothing. Right, Paolo?”

  Paavo winced at this latest mangling of his name, but he saw that Chick was aware of Angie’s discomfort and was trying to help. “Right. Sometimes it’s for the best.”

  “Good advice,” Chick said.

  Angie looked at Paavo as if he’d taken leave of his senses.

  “I’m so glad I finally met you,” Janet said, addressing Angie. “Chick’s told me about you and your family for years.”

  “Oh?” Angie knew she couldn’t hide her shock as she glanced at Chick. Terry hadn’t mentioned anything about her father’s having a long-time lady friend. In fact, the way Chick hung around Flo, his ex-wife, they had assumed Chick was still carrying a torch for her. “I didn’t know that,” Angie said.

  “Well.” Chick looked uncomfortable. “Time to go say hello to the competition. Looks like most of them turned out tonight, the snakes.”

  “I think everyone’s curious about what happened to Karl,” Angie said.

  “I’d love to get my hands on his recipes. They’re a food editor’s dream: the menu that made Wielund’s famous,” Janet added.

  “Funny, ain’t it?” Chick said. “The way Wielund’s was packing in the customers, most of the people here probably wished old Karl was dead when he was alive. Now they’re all pretending to cry over his death, when all they want to know is what’s going to happen to his restaurant and his notes about cooking.”

  “Do you think that’s all it is?” Angie asked.

  Chick stared at Angie as if she were crazy. “The guy was a first-rate son of a bitch. These people are here for show, Angie. Never forget it. So long, cara.” He hugged her, then turned to Paavo and shook hands. “Good to meet you, son.” He took Janet Knight’s arm and walked into the crowd.

  Angie leaned against Paavo’s arm. “That was one owner. As for others, over there in the purple dress with the white feathers is Eunice Graves. She owns Europa, an elegant continental cuisine restaurant. She’s about as elegant as Roseanne Barr.”

  Paavo glanced at Angie in surprise. She shrugged.

  “Over on the far side, the guy in the blue suit with the white carnation—”

  “Gray hair?”

  “Right. That’s Albert Dupries, La Maison Rouge.”

  This caught Paavo’s attention. La Maison Rouge was where the dead cocktail waitress, Sheila Danning, had worked.

  “We haven’t met, but I did a review of the place and thought it was overpriced,” she said. “Then, the tall woman in the green Chanel suit is Hattie Walker of Old South. Her place is said to have the best hush puppies and sweet-potato pie this side of the Mississippi.”

  “That sounds good,” Paavo said.

  She looked at him as if she thought he was crazy. “Really? Ah, now talking to Dupries is Vladimir Polotski. His Russian restaurant is doing about as well as the former Soviet Union, and it’ll probably share the same fate.”

  Paavo shook his head. All these owners were starting to swim together.

  “The only other competitor of Wielund’s that I see here is Greg McAndrews. He’s the young guy loading up his plate with pastries. I heard Mark Dustman, Wielund’s chef, baked everything you see on the table. Looks like he’s trying to find a new boss who’s got a sweet tooth. Anyway, McAndrews owns Arbuckle’s Seafood Restaurant down on the wharf.”

  Paavo’s gaze leaped from one to the other, taking them in.

  Angie smiled. “So what do you think?”

  Before he could reply, his attention was caught by a stout older man with snowy white hair done in a pompadour at least five inches high, stepping into the restaurant, waving and barking greetings to everyone around him. Beside him was an elegantly dressed woman with lots of red hair, the ends of one side sticking up as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.

  “Look who’s here,” Angie said with distaste. “That’s my boss. And with him is his wife the fainter, Lacy.”

  “Lacy?” Paavo looked at her as if she were joking. “His wife’s name is Lacy LaTour?”

  “Yes.”

  He grinned. “Sounds like a stripper.”

  “Real funny. She’s all involved, I learned, in Henry’s radio show, as well as his restaurant. To hear her, they’re the Fannie Farmer and Wolfgang Puck of the restaurant set, but word has it she knows even less about cooking than he does.”

  Henry turned his head in Angie’s direction and smiled.

  “Hello, Henry,” she called, in her most charming voice. “And Lacy, darling, how good to see you!”

  Once again, Paavo realized he could never successfully move in Angie’s social circle. He wasn’t that good an actor.

  “Oh, no,” Angie whispered. “They’re actually coming this way.”

  “Good job, Angie,” Paavo murmured as the LaTours turned toward them. Introductions were exchanged.

  “Mr. Smith,” Lacy said, giving him a delicate handshake.

  Henry gripped Paavo’s hand. “Angie talks about you all the time,” he said, pumping hard. “She was quite
worried about you, you know. You’re back at work, I hear.”

  “I’m doing fine now.”

  “Back at work?” Lacy cocked her head. “Are you in the restaurant business too, Mr. Smith? Like my Henry?”

  “I know nothing about cooking.”

  “Oh, it’s not difficult. Just a little of this and a little of that.” She nervously patted her hair, as if making sure the upswept fringe hadn’t gone limp, while her eyes darted over the room. “Nevertheless, I believe one cook in the family’s quite enough. You know what they say about too many cooks, right?”

  “They spoil the broth.” Henry’s belly shook with his loud laugh. Others turned and stared at him.

  A waiter carrying a bottle of lightly chilled Mondavi fumé blanc stepped up to them. “May I interest anyone?” They all accepted a glass.

  “Speaking of cooks,” Henry said, “has anyone heard what’ll happen to Wielund’s? I suspect it’ll sink like a stone. Without Karl, this place is nothing.” He looked scarcely able to contain his glee.

  “That’s why it’s so strange he’d go off and leave it when his assistant manager was out of town,” Angie said.

  Henry pursed his lips. “He might have thought he could be back from the Sierras before the big dinner crowd. Maybe that’s why he was driving too fast. Even a little speeding can be dangerous on those twisty mountain roads.”

  “That’s all very possible,” Angie agreed. “But why didn’t he tell Mark Dustman?”

  “Good God,” Henry said. “The man’s an adult—or was. He surely could come and go as he pleased.”

  “But we just agreed he wouldn’t leave his business that way.”

  “Oh.” Henry looked from Angie to Paavo and back again. “Well, I’m sure I have no idea. Won’t you excuse us?” He took Lacy’s arm and hustled her away.

  “He did it, Paavo,” Angie said, her eyes merry as she turned to Paavo, waiting until the LaTours were out of earshot. “My boss is guilty! He did it.”

  Now it was Paavo’s turn to look surprised. “Guilty of what?”

  “Of whatever happened to Karl. Didn’t you hear Henry giving me excuses? Remember the old Columbo shows? The real murderer always gave excuses to everything Columbo mentioned. Just like Henry!”