The Da Vinci Cook

by Joanne Pence

  Paavo swallowed hard. “Do you have the name of the installer at the Sea Cliff house?”

  “Len Ferguson. He’s been with us about two years.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Late twenties, about five-eight, blue eyes, curly sandy-colored hair, a bit overweight.”

  The description was somewhat similar to the “teddy bear” a witness saw near the Piccoletti home. “Does he drive a black truck?”

  “Ferguson? No, not that I’ve ever noticed. He usually comes to work in an older Honda sedan—green and fairly banged up.”

  “Do any of your employees have a black truck?”

  “Yes. You can see it from the window.” They went to the window, which looked down on the firm’s parking lot. Staggs pointed out a black Ford F-250, ten years old. “The installers leave their cars and trucks here and take the company vans when they work.”

  Paavo excused himself and went outside to the truck. As he used his cell phone to take pictures and send them to Yosh’s phone, he felt like a college kid. They were the ones who used features like cellular photographs the most. He wouldn’t even own such a high-tech phone if it weren’t for Angie, who enjoyed giving him the latest gadgets. Whenever he got a new electronic toy, Yosh, a complete technophile, got one for himself.

  But even Paavo had to admit that the phone was useful in this line of work.

  Within ten minutes, Paavo got a call back from Yosh. The truck looked exactly like the one that had been parked near Piccoletti’s at the time of the murder.

  Paavo returned to Staggs’s office and asked to speak with both Ferguson and the truck’s owner.

  Ferguson had called in sick that day, but Ray Jones was on a job. Paavo took down Ferguson’s home address and phone number, then tracked Jones down at a St. Francis Woods home undergoing a complete remodeling.

  Jones had gotten a page from his boss and was told to sit tight and cooperate. He did.

  He was twenty-four years old, clean-cut, and pleasant. He said that he’d loaned his truck to Len Ferguson on Tuesday to get himself some lunch because his car was acting up.

  “What time did he take the truck?” Paavo asked.

  “About twelve-thirty.”

  “What time did he return?”

  “That’s the thing.” Jones looked hesitant for a moment, and then explained. “I thought he was just going down to Quiznos, so he should have been back in twenty, thirty minutes. But at one o’clock, when I had to go out on my next install, he still hadn’t returned. We use Assurance vans on our installs, so I left. But I was kind of worried about my truck, so at two I called back to the office. Helen, the secretary, said Len was back—but that he’d just arrived, maybe five minutes before. He should have been docked an hour’s pay, except that the boss wasn’t around and Helen felt sorry for the guy. He’d already used up all his sick time.”

  All of which meant that Len Ferguson was unaccounted for during the time of the murder . . . and was driving a black truck. Paavo could hardly wait to pay Ferguson a visit.

  Chapter 17

  “I donna care if you are friends with Marcello!” The fat man yelled, his arms rotating like windmills. “You donna touch Luigi’s food! This is my kitchen! You put one bay leaf, one pepperoncini, one grain of salt in anything, and I chop off your hand!”

  Angie stepped back. His knife set looked very sharp. “But I know how to cook,” she said meekly.

  “You no cook! I have no spies here. What you wanna do, find out Luigi’s recipes and give them to that fannullone, that sfaticato, that poltrone at the Taverna Rosa? He canno cook his way out of a paper bag. He’s cretino, no sense of taste. And all he wanna do is steal recipes from Luigi! I donna care if you’re friends with il Papa himself! I donna want you to touch my food!”

  Luigi Pugliese picked up his cleaver and whacked it down hard onto a chopping board, separating a slab of spare ribs into individual pieces with fast, precise chops.

  “Maybe we should go?” Cat whispered nervously, tugging at Angie’s elbow.

  Ignoring her sister, Angie faced Luigi. “We were hired to help you. We won’t do anything you don’t want us to. So, what do you need done?”

  Luigi looked at her slyly. “Anything?” he asked.

  “Anything,” she replied.

  “Venite qui,” he said, and they followed him to a nook just off the kitchen, which was a lot cooler than the area near the stove. He pointed at a small, hand-cranked pasta machine.

  “You use that little thing?” Angie was appalled. “In a restaurant?”

  “It make the best pasta.” Luigi regarded her as if she had to have lied about her cooking abilities. “Everything we do is il migliore—the best. So you use, eh?”

  Angie knew there was an art to making pasta. Most was made in factories with semolina flour and water, usually formed into long round strands ranging from the thinnest cappellini to increasingly larger sizes such as vermicelli, spaghetti, and macaroni, as well as shaped pasta such as penne, ziti, rigatoni, shells, and bow ties.

  The type most often handmade used soft wheat flour and eggs. These were the flat delicate noodles that ranged in size from the relatively thin tonnarelli to linguine, fettuccine, tagliatelle, pappardelle, and lasagne, as well as stuffed pastas such as ravioli, tortellini, tortelloni, and manicotti.

  Angie remembered her mother agonizing that a cousin’s noodles were always lighter than hers. It seemed no matter what she did, Serefina was never satisfied with her own product. A cook had to find the right mix of ingredients as well as the right “feel” to the uncooked pasta dough. From that point, shape alone determined the different taste and texture sensations.

  Luigi pointed out the attachments for the pasta machine to form differing shapes for the egg noodles. “One of you can work here,” he said, “and the other do the tomatoes.”

  “Do what?” Cat whispered to Angie, who had no answer.

  “Now,” Luigi announced, “I show you how I want the pasta.”

  In the traditional way, he dumped three cups of flour directly onto a large wooden board, hollowed out the center, and broke three eggs into it.

  “Why doesn’t he use a bowl?” Cat’s stage whisper caused Luigi to glare.

  Taking a fork, he slowly worked the flour into the eggs until the eggs were no longer runny. Then, using his hands, little by little he mixed more flour into the egg. He kept doing this until he was able to poke his thumb into the dough and have it come out dry. At that point he added no more flour.

  Some cooks added olive oil, some added salt, some water, to the egg-flour mixture, but using only egg and flour—if done right—resulted in the softest, fluffiest noodles. Angie was impressed.

  “Now,” he said, “you clean the board. Then you knead the dough. Eight minuti. Donna do it no longer. After, you roll it through the machine. Nice and thin, eh? Fold, then roll it out again. Due, two times. That make it better. You use the attachment, questo, for fettuccine, but you must cut for tagliatelle. Capite?”

  “Yes,” Angie said. At Cat’s bewildered expression, she added softly, “I’ll explain.”

  “Bene. I want five kilo fettuccine, and five tagliatelle.”

  “That’s a lot of pasta,” Angie exclaimed. “Are you planning to feed a small army here tonight?”

  “It’s no just for tonight.” He tapped his temple. “Luigi alla time think ahead, and I donna believe none of the things you told Bruno. He is a businessmen, not a sensitive artist like Luigi. He is—come si dice?—gullible. But I, Luigi, can see through you. So, today, you work. If you come back tomorrow, allora, I will be the most surprise of all.”

  Angie rubbed her hands together. She’d show him a thing or two.

  Angie had Cat mix up another batch of dough while she kneaded the one Luigi had prepared. Cat was not amused at trying to mix anything with her long acrylic fingernails. She kept using the fork, and where Luigi mixed the two elements quickly, Cat took forever.

  “I’ll show you how to us
e the pasta machine,” Angie said, “then I’ll go and see what he wants done with the tomatoes.”

  “It would make a lot more sense,” Cat said, picking globs of sticky flour and egg off her fingers, “if I worked on the decor of the place. It completely lacks character.”

  “Don’t be silly. You can handle a simple pasta machine,” Angie said.

  Cat slanted her gaze at the contraption. “I’m sure I can handle it, but ask me if I want to.”

  “Cooperate, Cat.” Angie struggled to remain patient. “Marcello will soon learn we’re here, and he’ll come and talk to us.” She then took the ball of dough she’d just finished kneading. “I’ve been taught that the best way to get an idea of how much dough to put into a machine at one time is to multiply the number of eggs used by three, then separate the dough into that many parts. Since Luigi used three eggs, that means nine parts of dough.”

  “Nine! It’ll take forever!”

  “It is time-consuming.” Angie’s jaw was clenched as she divided the dough into three equal parts, then each part into three additional groups, and wrapped each with plastic so it wouldn’t dry out. She took one part, patted it flat, and ran it through the pasta machine with one hand, while cranking the machine with the other. A long, thin sheet came out. She then folded the sheet and ran it through the machine a second time. The sheet came out perfectly flat, and she placed it on a towel off to one side to dry a bit and lose its stickiness before being cut.

  “Want to give it a try?”

  “No need,” Cat said. “It’s child’s play.”

  Angie ran two more portions of dough through the pasta machine, then added the fettuccine cutter attachment and ran a sheet through it, showing Cat how to hold the cut pasta as it came out of the machine so it didn’t clump.

  “Nothing to it,” Cat said. “What about the tagliatelle?”

  Since tagliatelle was wider than the widest cutting attachment on the machine, the strips had to be cut by hand. Angie took a sheet of the flat dough she’d made earlier, made sure it had lost its tackiness, then folded it into a single roll and cut the roll into ribbons about a quarter-inch wide. “That’s all there is to it. Want to try while I watch?”

  “No.” Hands on hips, Cat tossed a look of disgust at the little appliance. “Go take care of the tomatoes. What a ridiculous way for me to spend my evening.”

  Just wait, Angie thought, and couldn’t suppress the smile that spread over her face as she left Cat with the seemingly innocuous device.

  The only good thing so far that day, Paavo thought, was that no Amalfi was waiting for him when he returned to Homicide. He left his cell phone on, and kept checking his messages on his home and work phones for Angie’s call. She’d said she was going to come home soon, and he was expecting her to phone from the airport.

  Trying to concentrate on the case while worrying about Angie was maddening. There was much more here than met the eye, but what it was, he couldn’t tell yet. The danger would come as he got closer, and it was very likely that danger would lead to Rome.

  If only he could be certain Angie was on her way home, he could concentrate on the case. He’d tried calling the number she’d phoned him from, only to learn it was some calling card. He left messages, one after the other, at her hotel. She wasn’t in the room. The bad news was that she still hadn’t checked out.

  Lieutenant Eastwood called him into his office and proudly showed a map of San Francisco that he’d taped to the wall of the onetime supply closet. He used large red thumbtacks to show the two homes where the homicides occurred, as well as Marcello’s Furniture 4 U store and the San Francisco airport.

  “These are the key spots we need to concentrate on.” Eastwood beamed at his achievement.

  “Right,” Paavo replied, clearly bored. He brought Eastwood up to date on the investigation, and was happy to escape the office.

  Until he saw the person sitting at his desk.

  Chapter 18

  Cat was disgusted about wasting her time making pasta. Who did these people think she was? It was all she could do not to grab Bruno Montecatini by his fat neck and demand he tell her Marcello’s location. She had to find Marcello and talk to him.

  Not only about the two of them. Also about her husband.

  She put the pasta dough into the machine and began to crank the handle. It came out in a thin sheet. How easy!

  She couldn’t help but wonder . . . had her secret not been such a secret after all? Did Charles meet with Marcello? Was he somehow involved?

  She let the sheet of dough fall onto her hand as Angie had done. The sheet rapidly grew long, and she moved her hand. This caused the sheet to buckle and one part of it to touch another. Then, to Cat’s horror, much like Saran Wrap that folded back on itself, the dough stuck together. The more Cat tried to separate it, the more it stuck. She pulled and tugged. One part stretched until it made a hole. She jerked her hand back to stop the break, and more stuck. The sheet turned into one big blob.

  She threw it away and tried again. On the third try she got it right.

  Slowly and carefully, she turned the remaining balls of dough into sheets of pasta.

  She had mentioned the St. Peter’s chain to Charles, but he seemed to hardly listen. Had he paid more attention that she’d thought? Had he followed her to meetings with Marcello? He did ask a few more questions than usual about Marcello, but she had put it down to small talk. At the time.

  No, she was worrying about nothing. Charles wasn’t the type to actually do anything, no matter what she was involved in. He had to be the world’s most passive man. Sometimes she wanted to kick him just to get some reaction.

  Oh, well, she had other things to occupy her time and energy.

  But still . . .

  Shaking off the worry, she took the first sheet and ran it through the fettuccine cutter. It took one hand to feed the sheet of pasta into the machine, another to crank . . . and somehow she was supposed to keep the strands of cut pasta from touching each other and clumping together. Or from breaking into short pieces. How had Angie done it?

  She threw the messed-up strands away and tried again.

  It wasn’t working.

  Visions of Charles kept distracting her. How much did he know?

  Shoving the pasta machine to one side, she took a sheet of pasta and folded it into a roll the way Angie had, then began to slice it. Rather than the neat, perfect rows Angie created, some of her pieces ended up as wide as lasagna noodles. Others started out the right width at the top of her cut and ended up either too skinny or too fat at the other end.

  She threw them all away. Damn!

  She eyeballed the dough. It would not defeat her. Caterina Amalfi Swenson was not going to be bested by a bunch of noodles.

  Just then, the middle-aged busboy, Cosimo, peered around the corner at her.

  Smiling like a shark smelling blood, she crooked her finger at him.

  Angie stood in the main kitchen area, looking with dismay at the boxes of fresh tomatoes stacked in a corner. She felt like she’d been parboiling and peeling them for hours, and the stack hardly went down.

  It was Luigi’s job to cook and plate the meals; Bruno took orders, brought the food into the dining room, and settled the bills; and Cosimo cleared dirty dishes and cleaned the tables for the next customers.

  “Cosimo isn’t keeping up!” Bruno yelled as he headed for the dining room, four dinner plates balanced in his arms. “I need more tables! Angelina, you do it.”

  “Me? Bus dirty dishes?” Angie squawked.

  But Bruno had already gone.

  She hurried out to the dining room, a large round tray and thick washrag in hand.

  As soon as she stepped out there, she noticed the father and son pair. Studying him, she realized it definitely was the father who’d gone to Marcello’s hotel the night before. She needed to meet them. No table near them needed bussing, but they hadn’t been served yet.

  She went to the only table that needed cleaning and
quickly sponged it off. As she was rushing back to the kitchen, she noticed the young blond-haired priest seated once again among the diners. He seemed quite lost in thought, as usual. She wondered vaguely what weighed on him so heavily. An empty antipasto plate was in front of him. She picked it up as she zipped by.

  He started. “Thanks, I mean, grazie.”

  She skidded to a stop, and with a big smile replied in English, “You’re welcome. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He seemed uneasy for a moment, then relaxed and pleasantly smiled back. “It’s okay.” His accent was pure American.

  She went to Bruno to find out what the two men’s meals were, and offered to help serve—strozzapretti with sausage and a red sauce for the younger, and spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, and pepper for the older. She brought them out, approaching slowly as she eavesdropped on their conversation.

  It set off all kinds of alarm bells. They were discussing some sort of archeological dig. Her mind raced: Archeology. Ancient Christian relic. It fit.

  She needed to hear more.

  The younger man caught her eye as she placed his dish in front of him. He gave her an appreciative assessment, and she did the same to him. When need be, she could flirt with the best of them.

  A short while later she returned with some bottled water, once again hovering near as long as she dared. Her Italian wasn’t great, but it sounded as if they were talking about some pottery and mosaics from the time of Augustus Caesar. She opened the bottle and served the water with more ogling interest from the young man.

  “Molto grazie,” he said, and asked if she was a new employee.

  Angie answered that she’d just started that day, and immediately he proclaimed, “Americana!”

  She guessed her pronunciation wasn’t as authentic as she thought. “My name’s Angelina,” she said. “Angelina Amalfi.”

  “We are Stefano,” the younger man touched his heart, then gestured toward the elder, “and Umberto Falcone.”