by Joanne Pence
“Was he?” Janet asked.
Angie feared that in his old-world Roman Catholic heart, Chick still thought of Flo as his wife, even though their love had died and they couldn’t live in harmony together. She hoped she wasn’t lying when she said, “Of course.”
11
Sal Amalfi didn’t like him. Paavo knew that the minute Angie began to introduce him to her father.
Sal was the complete opposite of Angie. He was tall, standing eye to eye with Paavo, hawk-nosed, olive-skinned, broad-shouldered, and with a keen way of assessing people—that sharpness now mixed with sadness over the funeral of his old friend Chick Marcuccio.
Their handshake held cautious appraisal.
“So you’re the man my wife and daughter talk about all the time.” Sal’s words were softly accented, his manner one of elegant sophistication, yet the ravages of his heart condition showed in the gauntness of his cheeks and in the touch of frailty this obviously once-overpowering man now bore.
“I hope what they say is good,” Paavo replied.
“It is.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you too. All of it good.”
Angie watched both of them, not knowing what was going on.
“You want a drink?” Sal asked.
“Sure,” Paavo said.
Angie breathed easier. Everything would be all right. They were going to have a drink together.
“Angelina, go talk to one of your sisters or your friends,” Sal said. “We’ll be right back.”
Her smile disappeared as, once more, she looked from one to the other. “Oh? Okay…I guess.”
Sal led Paavo across the restaurant to the bar.
Chick’s restaurant was packed with the friends and relatives who’d attended the funeral, as well as the restaurateurs Paavo had seen at Wielund’s. In contrast to the falseness of the guests at Karl Wielund’s service, the people here looked genuinely saddened by their loss. All around, he heard snatches of conversations as people spoke in glowing terms about Chick, telling each other stories of adventures and schemes, usually humorous, that he’d been involved in. The more Paavo heard, the more he realized what a fine man had been senselessly killed.
Over the group, too, was the pall that murder brings. It was a feeling Paavo knew well. Where Wielund’s death had been thought at first to have been an accident, Chick’s was known to have been cold-blooded murder. And where the restaurant owners had been able to distance themselves from Karl—a newcomer to the city, his body found in a remote area of the Sierras—Chick was a friend to all these people, someone who came here as a young man, married, raised a family, began a business, and then was gunned down right in the neighborhood he loved. His death gave them all cause to be nervous. Why had he been killed? they asked. And who was next?
“What’ll you have to drink?” Sal asked.
“Tonic with a lime twist,” Paavo told the bartender.
“Jack Daniel’s on ice,” Sal said, then looked back at Paavo. “So. I was wondering when I’d meet you.”
“Same here.”
Sal took a sip of his whiskey. “Angelina sounds serious about you.”
Paavo slid his hands in his pockets. He was too old to be given a once-over by the father of the bride and made to feel wanting. Besides, he wasn’t convinced Angie would even be his bride—or that anyone would. “She’s a fine woman,” he said. “Good-hearted and generous.”
“Yes, she is. And ever since I was able to provide for her, I’ve always given her the best of everything.”
Paavo nodded. “I noticed.”
Sal’s dark brown eyes were stern. “Angelina is special to me. She’s my youngest. She knows history, music, and art, and she can write about anything. I sent her to the Sorbonne, in Paris, for a year. Did you know that?”
“She mentioned it.”
“You get my drift, then.”
Paavo got it, but he wasn’t about to let the man off that easy. “No. Not at all.”
Sal’s expression said he knew exactly what Paavo was doing. “So. You want to hear the words.”
Paavo took a deep breath. It’d been a long time—years—since he’d been told there was anything he wasn’t good enough for. The last person who tried it ended up with a broken jaw. He kept telling himself this was Angie’s father, who loved her, and Angie all but worshiped the ground Sal walked on.
Sal sipped his drink and stared at the ice. “I don’t want her to be hurt. That’s what this is about.”
“Neither do I.”
Sal smacked his drink onto a coaster, hard. “She’s been raised to get the best. And that’s not a cop. You don’t have the money, you don’t have the time to spend with her, and as long as she’s with you she’s going to live every minute you’re away wondering if she’s going to get a phone call or a knock on the door and have someone tell her you’re dead.”
Paavo’s stomach twisted. “These days, that can happen just walking down the street—or getting into your car after closing up your restaurant for the night.”
Sal shook his head. “No. Not the same. You know it, and so does Angelina. Don’t take this personal, because it isn’t. I think you’re probably a charming fellow. My Serefina, she says so all the time. All the time. But I don’t want you for Angelina.”
“That’s for Angie to say, not you.”
“Maybe it’s for you to say. I love her too much to watch her throw her life away. You’re a smart cop. You know I say the truth. If you love her, even half as much as I do, you know I’m right. Angelina’s strong, she’s young. She’ll get over it.”
Hearing Sal express his own thoughts, his own doubts, made Paavo feel as if he’d been given a body blow. Paavo’s expression was rigid, his voice low and firm. “Whatever happens between Angie and me is up to us, not you, to decide.”
“As her father, I have a say in what’s right or not right for her. And I will speak. Do we understand each other?”
“Perfectly.”
Sal walked away.
Paavo stood alone, then ordered a scotch and soda. Sal Amalfi’s words gnawed at him. They reinforced other words, those of Calderon and Benson. Even Yosh, good-natured Yosh, looked askance at the possibilities of a lasting relationship between him and Angie.
Paavo downed his drink and ordered another. Angie had always insisted they could make it; she loved him. He wanted to trust her when she said that. Hell, even Yosh said she’d acted like a mother bear defending her cub the way she wouldn’t let him wake Paavo up for the press conference the other morning. But all that meant, Yosh also said, was that she didn’t understand his job. Paavo had defended her, but deep down he knew Yosh was right.
He wondered, too, if she knew how her father felt. He suspected not. He suspected that Sal, just like Paavo, did all he could to protect Angie from what was harsh and cruel in the world. She adored her father. If she had to make a choice between the two of them, what would she do? And what would he do, knowing that asking her to make such a choice would tear her apart? He couldn’t bear to hurt her.
He looked at Angie standing in the middle of a crowd of old friends and relatives beside Terry. The intensity of the group could be felt across the room as they gave comfort to one another. Their wealth and position hung about them like a Swiss bank account. She fit right in, while he, always the outsider, didn’t fit at all. Why had he ever expected otherwise?
“Refill?” the bartender asked.
“Sure.”
A sultry voice behind him said, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
He looked over his shoulder at a tall woman with enormous green eyes, a perfect heart-shaped face, and flowing, shoulder-length blond hair—the kind of willowy, sexy female he’d always thought of as his type until little brunette Angie confused his aesthetics along with everything else.
“Isn’t that my line?” he asked.
Her lips curved up in a wicked smile, suggestive of all kinds of promise. “My name’s Nona Farraday.”
His gaze met hers with interest. “Haute Cuisine magazine, right? You do restaurant reviews.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of me. How nice. And you’re with the police department, correct?”
“Paavo Smith, Homicide.”
“I was right. What brings you here?”
“Friend of the family.” The thought of what ‘friends’ he and Sal were brought a twisted smile to his lips. His gaze drifted over Nona again. The cost of the dress she wore easily ran into four figures. She screamed money. Like Angie. “What about you?” he asked, trying to muster interest.
“I thought I’d do a story on memorial service fare. Which restaurant is the best place to have a ‘dearly departed’ meal? They’ve had so much experience lately.”
Snooty and cynical. How charming. “Right.” He turned away from her and drank more of his scotch.
“We should get together and talk about it sometime.” She placed an elbow on the bar and leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder.
“I don’t talk about food. I hate food. I may never eat again.” He stared at his glass, watching the ice slowly circle.
She laughed, low and wicked. “That’s an illness, you know. I bet I have a remedy for it. Oh, dear. Mark Dustman’s headed this way. I promised him I’d see him after the service ended. He’s extremely anxious to keep Wielund’s, you know; he’s willing to do just about anything to get it. But he has no money, the poor dear. Never had. He owed his soul to Karl Wielund.” She placed her forefinger on Paavo’s shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”
He turned and watched her walk away.
“Careful! I don’t think I’ve seen a neck swivel that far since the last time I watched The Exorcist.”
He spun around. “Angie! What are you talking about?”
“Oh, nothing. I’m ready to leave any time.”
“Angelina! Paavo!” The shrill tones of Angie’s mother, Serefina Teresa Maria Guiseppina Amalfi, cut through the murmur of voices around them. “It’s so terrible, Angie,” Serefina cried, her arms outstretched. Her black dress had long wide sleeves, and a black hat sat squarely on top of her five-foot-one hundred-and-fifty-pound frame. “Poor Chick. Povero me!”
“I know, Mamma,” Angie began, ready to offer her mother comfort, but Serefina kept going, straight up to Paavo.
She put her hands on the back of his neck, pulled his head down, and gave him a kiss on each cheek. “Paavo, caro, how nice of you to come here, to share our family’s grief. He was such a good friend. Shot down so young. È terribile.”
“We’re trying hard to find whoever did it, Serefina,” he said, his hands holding her full waist. He loved this woman. She was the sort who could take over a room and not irritate anyone, who could be bossy and nosy, yet do it all with an honest bigheartedness that put others at ease.
“I know, caro mio. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you earlier. I’ve been so busy, so many people I haven’t seen in years and years, all come here to pay respects. He was a good man.”
“I can see he was well liked,” Paavo said.
“Angelina told me you’ve gone back to work. How do you feel?”
“I’m fine.”
Serefina stepped back, gripped his jaw, and turned his face left and right, peering closely at it; then she let him go and turned to her daughter. “He looks pale, Angelina, and too thin. Don’t you give him enough to eat? He needs big dinners—liver, some nice blood sausage—to make him strong.”
“I don’t give him dinner, Mamma. I mean, we’re not married.”
“Hmph, and you won’t be, you treat him like that! Mange, Paavo. Get Angie to cook for you. Don’t let her be so lazy—”
“We were just leaving, Mamma,” Angie interrupted. Her arms were folded, and Paavo could see she was steamed.
Serefina put her hand on his arm, stopping him from leaving just yet, her eyes, so much like Angie’s, seeming to read clear through to his soul. “You met Salvatore?” she asked softly.
He nodded.
She gripped his hand tight, encouragingly. “He worries too much, but he means well. You do what you have to.”
Her unexpected words, the trust she showed in him with her daughter, meant more to him than all the medals and commendations he’d ever received. Do what you have to, she said. Her simple words, combined with the logic of Sal’s, made clear to him what path he must take. “I will,” he whispered, then bent over and kissed her cheek. “It’ll be all right. Ciao, Serefina.”
“Ciao, caro,” Serefina said.
As Angie stood astonished, looking at the two of them, he took her arm and led her from the restaurant.
12
Angie knew something was wrong as Paavo rode with her in the elevator up to her apartment. He’d been there whenever she needed him since Chick’s death, but now he was too quiet, too distant. She tried to ignore the twinges of jealousy that struck her whenever she thought of how intimately he and Nona Farraday had conversed and how he’d watched Nona walk away. If he’d stared any harder, his eyeballs would have seared her backside. But he couldn’t be interested in Nona. Angie might not yet understand Paavo all that well, but she knew he wasn’t the type to be swayed by just another pretty face. Was he?
On the other hand, why not? He was certainly attractive. She had only her own ideas as to why he’d never married. She thought it was because he was basically a loner. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe he was just a gigolo.
She glanced at his profile. No. She couldn’t be that bad a judge of people.
She unlocked the door to her apartment.
“I think I’ll say good night here,” Paavo said.
Again, the brush-off. Was it Nona? Someone else? She spun toward him, ready to ask, then stopped as she saw his closed expression, the reserve he wore like a barrier reef. Suddenly, she was afraid of what he might answer. “I suppose you have to get to work really early tomorrow. Lots of crimes to investigate.”
“True.”
“Heaven forbid you come in my apartment, then. You don’t want to risk exposing yourself to my wiles and not get a good night’s sleep.”
“That’s not it.”
“No? Afraid I might lock the door and not let you leave?”
“Angie.”
She shut her eyes as she drew in a deep breath. “Tell me.”
He looked at her a long while, Sal’s words playing in his mind as they had all evening. He put his hand on the doorframe. “This isn’t the time. You just got back from a funeral.”
Her blood turned to ice. “Seems to me that makes it perfect.”
As ever, he warred with himself over her. Maybe because the scotch muddled his brain, he decided he should level with her. “All right. I think this…this thing between you and me is a mistake. You need to see other people. So do I.”
The color drained from her cheeks. “Is there someone else?” she asked.
“No. Not for me. Not yet, anyway.”
Her eyes smoldered. “Not yet? Well, that says a lot about how you feel about me, doesn’t it?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t remember the truth ever hurting more. “I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that we might not be right for each other. Hell, you know it as well as I do.”
“I do?” How many times had she imagined saying those same words to Paavo, but not as a question. Now, though, everything was upside down, wrong. So wrong for them both.
“Angie, let’s give ourselves a little time, a little space. Okay?”
She bit her bottom lip to stop its trembling. “You really mean it, don’t you.”
His gaze held hers. “Yes. I mean it.”
She wished he didn’t look so heart-stoppingly handsome in his dark gray suit and pale blue shirt—a blue that perfectly matched his eyes—as he stood there saying good-bye to her. She wished she didn’t remember so well the softness that came into those beautiful eyes when he gazed at her with affection and warmth, instead of with this bleak cold look. She wished she didn’t u
nderstand how much he cared about people and making things right in the world, or how well he took care of those few people he allowed close to him, like Aulis Kokkonen and Matt Kowalski’s son and widow. She wished she didn’t know how it felt when he took her in his strong arms, or how, when they kissed, the spicy clean scent of him sent her senses reeling, or how the rapid drumming of his heart felt when he pressed her close. If all that meant nothing to her, it would be easy to say good-bye to him now.
But she was never one to insist that a man stay with her. Quite the opposite, in fact. “If that’s how you feel, then fine,” she said, forcing her voice to sound strong. “I’m not any more eager to see you than you are to see me. So good night, Inspector Smith. You needn’t bother to call me again.”
She opened the door to her apartment and stepped inside. He turned and walked toward the elevator. She hurled herself against her door, slamming it shut. Almost immediately, she regretted her action.
She stood at the door a moment, waiting for him to come to his senses, but instead she heard the elevator doors open, then close. She opened the front door a crack.
The hallway was empty.
She couldn’t believe it. She stood there a long, long while, watching the elevator door, believing he’d come back to her. Then she shut her eyes, shut out the tears that threatened, and went back inside.
Willing herself not to feel, not to think, she curled up on the sofa. On the floor next to her she noticed Paavo’s briefcase, an old-fashioned one, with handles on the top and a wide bottom. He’d carried it up to her apartment because his car doors’ locks weren’t very good, and nothing left in a car on city streets was safe anymore—not even people. He told her he’d needed it for work that morning; then, since he came straight to her house to go with her to the funeral without stopping at his desk, he brought it to her apartment. Now he’d forgotten it. He’d be back to get it, she knew.
Her gaze went to the briefcase again. Why would a homicide detective need such a thing?
Curious, she walked over and picked it up. It was heavy. She couldn’t help but wonder if its contents had anything to do with Chick’s murder. That had to be Paavo’s main case. Remembering the telephoned threat against Henry made Angie even more nervous. Could someone really want to kill restaurant owners?