If Cooks Could Kill

by Joanne Pence

  Helen looked ready to deck him, and Angie had no doubt about the agonized outcome for Stan if it came to that. So much for matchmaking. “Uh, Stan, I think it’s time for us to go.”

  He waved her off. “I can say whatever I want, lady—and I use that term only because I don’t think it’s polite to say everything one is thinking.”

  Angie couldn’t believe her ears. Stan never stood his ground. Was he drunk? She shoved her shoe into Helen’s clenched hand.

  Scrunching the shoe as if it were tissue paper, Helen put both hands on her ample hips. “You can say what you want, you pencil-necked weenie, as long as you have the balls to back it up.”

  Angie wobbled dangerously on one shoed foot, tugging at Stan’s arm.

  He brushed her off. “Well, maybe mine aren’t quite as big as you wish yours—”

  “Why, you little—”

  “Stan!!” Still hopping, Angie grabbed him around the waist and pulled. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Hi!” Connie said from the doorway. “I thought I heard familiar voices. I was just heading home.” She met Angie with a smile. “Got to get ready for my date with Dennis Pagozzi, thanks to you.”

  Angie gave a whoop of joy and quickly decided her matchmaking failure with Stan and Helen was only an aberration.

  Connie gelled her hair into spiky strands that stood up on top and sprayed it into place. With this new hair-style she should buy stock in Clairol. She added globs of black mascara to her lashes, gray eye shadow, and pink blush. After sheer black pantyhose, and strappy black sandals, she squeezed herself into a slinky Victoria’s Secret black dress with a skirt so short and a neckline so plunging that if either was much shorter or lower, they’d have met.

  Eat your heart out, Pagozzi.

  She hadn’t believed his concussion story one bit, but having him call made her feel a lot better about him. Angie’s predictions about how much she’d like him, though, carried no weight after watching Angie try to matchmake Stan and Helen. Who was next? Charlton Heston and Rosie O’Donnell?

  Covering up with her sensible, long, and bulky navy blue overcoat, she headed for Wings. When she walked in, she spotted Pagozzi immediately, and all thoughts about him feeling remorse for missing their date vanished. Who was she kidding? The guy was drop-dead, mouth-watering, giant-size Tom Cruise gorgeous. He stood up as she walked in, all six feet, four inches of him, in what looked like a deep red cashmere sweater and well-fitted black slacks. She stopped breathing. “Connie?” He smiled pleasantly.

  “Hi, Dennis.” She fought for composure. She was supposed to be cool here, not gape and drool like some brain-dead groupie. “How nice to finally meet you.” They shook hands, he holding on a little longer than necessary.

  “Same here,” he answered, admiration in his eyes. “I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine, Wallace Jones. Everyone calls him Jonesy. Jonesy, meet Connie. She’s the chi—er, gal, I was telling you about.”

  When she could finally tear her eyes from Dennis, she saw an older man also sat at the table. Skinny, wearing a pinstriped suit with wide lapels, he had a left eye that twitched as he looked at her.

  He stood up and shook her hand. His hands felt dry and scaly, and his teeth looked the same.

  Dennis held out a chair for her as she removed her coat. His pleasant expression expanded into a wide, happy grin, and he murmured, “Wow.”

  Ecstatic, she sat and then turned her attention to his friend. “What do you do, Mr. Jones?”

  “It’s Jonesy, ma’am. I’m a collector.”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “How fascinating. What do you collect?”

  “Sports stuff, I mean, mem-or-a-bi-li-a,” he said slowly, as if he’d just learned the word and was testing it out.

  “That’s right,” Dennis said enthusiastically. “And if we make this into a sports bar, like I’m thinking would be a real good idea, Jonesy will supply the stuff to sell, and we’d get a cut.”

  Facing him, she was struck anew at what a stunning man he was. “Why would you care about a sports bar when you play football?”

  “A guy has to think about the future,” he said. “Someday, when I retire, I’ll need a backup plan. Of course, my contract will be renewed for next season. It’s not like there’s any problem.”

  “I see,” she said, although she didn’t, quite. Still, a man who thought about the future was fine in her book.

  Dennis placed his hand on Jonesy’s back. “No sense talking business tonight, friend. I’ll call you.” Jonesy took the hint and left.

  The evening went by in a haze of glory. Dennis Pagozzi treated her like a princess, and he was large enough that she could feel almost petite around him. His hazel eyes had a way of gazing at her as if she were both interesting and intelligent.

  She kept pinching herself to make sure this evening was real. That she was here, and so very happy.

  Much too early, he escorted her to her Toyota. She’d hoped he’d ask her to go to a nightclub or out dancing. How many times could a girl say she loved to dance without appearing too obvious? But, no luck.

  It was just a first date, though. He should call back. And maybe he really did have a concussion. At this point, she’d have believed him if he said he’d missed their blind date because he’d turned into Superman and saved Metropolis.

  “I almost forgot,” he said, as they neared the car. “You talked with Max Squire the other night.”

  Max who? was her first reaction, but she smiled and said she had.

  “Did he say anything about how I could get hold of him?” Dennis asked. “I heard he was looking for me, but he didn’t leave a phone number or anything.”

  That’s the question she’d planned to ask him, back when she was able to hold a thought in her head. “He didn’t say, specifically. Only that he lived near here—in easy walking distance. I suspect he might show up again.”

  “I see…” Dennis nodded, looking around. “Anyway, I got to go. See you around, Connie.” With that, he hurried down the block to his Jaguar.

  Connie hadn’t even put the key into the ignition before she saw him drive off. What was he in such a hurry about?

  Chapter 7

  Veronica Maple sat in a coffee shop across the street from Wings of an Angel. When she’d first arrived in the city, she’d rented a Ford Escort—cheap, easy to park, and unmemorable—and she used it now to follow Dennis, to see if he’d go straight to Max Squire. Instead, he went first to a run-down apartment building in the rough China Basin area, where he picked up a sleazy-looking little guy with a pinstriped suit and an eye tic, and then to the restaurant.

  Before long, the skinny guy left, but not Dennis. When he finally did, he walked out with some stacked blonde. They took separate cars, and judging from the directions the cars went off in, they weren’t going to reconvene at some love nest.

  From the outside, the restaurant looked like little more than a dump, although it did a decent business, especially in take-out. She’d peeked in the window and seen that it was clean and kind of cute, if you liked the cozy and intimate look. Definitely not what she’d consider a Dennis Pagozzi go-to place.

  She had to find out what Dennis was up to. He wasn’t nearly as malleable as when he was younger, and she didn’t like his new assertiveness. He had the nerve to say “no” to her. Nobody said no to Veronica Maple. She thought he’d learned that years ago.

  The three years she’d been in jail must have been long enough for him to forget. Or perhaps he thought her time there had softened her. If anything, it’d made her harder and tougher than the girl she once was.

  They’d been clever. Neither one of them could simply take what they wanted—it was their way to keep things straight between them. No schemes, no double-crosses.

  Now, though, it was working too well. Now that he was balking, she had to find a way to get him to go along, or find a way around him. Somehow, she would. No matter what it took.

  Max Squire was the one she had to
keep out of this, by one means or another. He knew too much, and he’d do anything he could to screw her over.

  She’d prefer to get out of the city before he found her. Dennis swore he didn’t know where Max was. For his sake, she hoped he was telling the truth.

  The more she looked at the restaurant, the more she decided to check it out. What if Max was in there? What if the blonde was just a ruse?

  She entered and stood at the door, looking around cautiously, peering at every corner, her right hand inside her large shoulder bag, her fingers wrapped around the handle of her Smith and Wesson. Inside, the restaurant was filled with the smells of Italy, cloth-covered tables with candles and single roses, wooden chairs, bottles of wine, and frilly white lace curtains adorning the tops and sides of the large window facing the street.

  “You wanna table?” the waiter asked from his stand a little past the front door. Behind him were a couple of tables and swinging double doors to the kitchen. Most of the tables were to the right, as was the window.

  She didn’t see Max, or anyone else she knew. “I’m looking for Dennis Pagozzi. Do you know him?” she asked, stepping back from the disgusting little man.

  “Sure. He’s da cook’s nephew. He just left, though. I don’t t’ink he’ll be back—”

  “Butch is the cook here?”

  “Yeah. You know him? He’s—hey!”

  She slipped past the waiter, toward the kitchen. He tried to step in front of her, but she ground the heel of her boot on his instep. As he hopped around in agony, she shoved the swinging double doors open and marched in.

  She’d know him anywhere. Short, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair, a pugnacious grimace to his mouth, and an upturned nose, the only difference between the fleabag before her now, and the one she’d met years ago, was that his hair was no longer black.

  Butch glanced up at her and stuck one hand behind his back. “What the hell are you doin’ in town?”

  “Isn’t this interesting,” she murmured, looking around the all-stainless-steel kitchen with its commercial-size ovens, sinks, and refrigerator, until her perusal hit the take-out boxes. She flipped open a Styrofoam lid and smirked.

  “Hey!” the waiter yelled, and pulled the box away from her, too late.

  “What’re you doin’ lettin’ her in here, Earl?” Butch demanded.

  Just then, another man bounded up the stairs from the basement at the noise.

  “I didn’ do not’in’, Vinnie!” Earl cried. “She ran past me. I tried to stop her!”

  Vinnie, wheezing from his dash up the stairs, was short like Earl and Butch, but where Earl was stocky and Butch was wiry, Vinnie sagged all over—cheeks, jowls, chest, stomach, even his feet seemed to splay all over the floor. If a pear could melt, it would end up shaped like Vinnie.

  His hair was straight, deeply receding at the forehead and with a bald spot at the pate. He looked at the situation in the kitchen and ran his hand over his hair as if to make sure the bald spot was covered. It wasn’t.

  “Who is she?” he asked the other two.

  “If you’re lookin’ for my nephew,” Butch growled at her, “he ain’t here. He ain’t in town, even. An’ he don’t wanna see you. You keep away from him!”

  She laughed. “Do you really think your Dennis is so clean?”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Vinnie asked.

  Butch ignored him. “His only mistake was gettin’ involved with you!”

  “Funny man.”

  She took a Benson and Hedges out of her purse and grabbed a book of matches. “You always hated me, didn’t you? Maybe that’s because you were jealous. You wanted me for yourself, but I belonged to Dennis.”

  “You’re sicker than I thought!”

  She laughed, blowing smoke in the air. “You’ve got a nice place here, Butch. With a couple of your friends, I see. Friends from San Quentin, right?”

  Vinnie’s and Earl’s heads swiveled from Butch to the woman.

  “What you gettin’ at?” Butch asked.

  “I think you know. Dennis’s told me about you, Uncle Butch. You got caught twice, didn’t you? First time was just a little thing—auto theft, right? Still, it’s a felony. And then the second time. Burglary, wasn’t it? Another felony. That makes two strikes, Butch. You get a third, and you know what that means in California—the jailer will throw away the key.”

  “Butch!” Vinnie yelled so loud his face turned beet red. “What the hell is this about?”

  Butch glared at her. “She’s an old girlfriend of Dennis’s. She just got outta jail.”

  “An ex-con?” Earl muttered.

  “I’d hate it if Dennis’s uncle got into trouble.” She smiled coyly at Earl and Vinnie while walking around the tabletop, her fingers lightly touching the take-out boxes, one by one. “It’s too bad all of you left so much evidence laying around. It’s my civic duty to tell the police, don’t you think?”

  “Get the hell out of my kitchen!” Butch rushed at her. Earl grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “The only thing I want to go to jail for is killin’ you! It’ll be worth every minute I’m there!”

  “Easy, Butch,” Vinnie said. “Nobody’s gonna believe nothin’ from her.”

  “You stay away from my nephew!” Butch bounded on his toes, like in his old prize-fighting days, unsuccessfully trying to yank his arm from Earl’s grip. “So help me…”

  “It’s too late for that, sweetheart.” Veronica smirked.

  “Damn you!” Butch lunged again, but before he could break free, Vinnie hustled her out of the kitchen and out the door.

  Instead of being angry at him, though, her reaction was even more chilling. She laughed.

  The full moon cast a ribbon of white on the ocean just beyond the wide, gritty sand of Baker’s Beach. Paavo and Angie took off their shoes and socks and walked barefoot. It was a rare night in San Francisco, no wind, no fog, only a peaceful stillness. To the north, the Golden Gate Bridge spanned the narrow entrance to the bay, and to the south, high, steep rocks supported the posh neighborhood known as Sea Cliff. Waves from the Pacific lapped at their feet.

  Angie was restless. Connie was going out with Dennis tonight, and she was wildly curious about it. She hoped Connie would have a good time. She deserved it. Life hadn’t been easy for her.

  Between anxiety and dreams of matchmaking, Angie was afraid that if she and Paavo had gone out to dinner, she couldn’t have resisted staying away from Wings. Instead, she’d suggested they eat at his place and then bundle up and go for a walk on the beach. In early spring, San Francisco’s beaches were usually cold and windy, if not foggy and rainy. Except for a few weeks each year, usually in September and October, only tourists went there without heavy jackets.

  The cold water stung as it hit Angie’s toes and she ran, lifting her feet high, to dry ground. Paavo chuckled at her. “Sissy,” he said.

  “You never told me if Homicide liked the pâté I made,” she said suddenly, apropos of nothing. Paavo was used to that kind of thing.

  “They thought it was…quite romantic of you.”

  She beamed at him. She couldn’t help herself. Everywhere, all the time, with nearly every breath, she thought about him, and ideas would pop into her head, ideas that she absolutely knew would please him and let him know how much she loved him. Also, after the gut-rot motor oil the guys at the Hall of Justice drank, and the greasy doughnuts they ate, gourmet coffee and tea sandwiches had to have been a wonderful change.

  “I’m so glad,” she said, relieved. “Isn’t it great to share the romance with your friends at work?”

  Paavo looked a little stricken. “It’s different,” he admitted. He continued to walk through the cold waves while Angie darted back and forth out of their reach, but then, he was part Finnish. After learning that Finns enjoyed jumping out of a hot sauna to roll around in the snow, Angie knew she’d better be prepared for just about anything from Paavo. Her Italian blood couldn’t begin to understand it, however. Just looking at his blue toes mad
e her shiver.

  “It’s the happiest time of my life,” she admitted, beaming at him.

  He walked to her side on dry land and put his arms around her. “For me, too,” he admitted, with a kiss that sent her head spinning. Then he tucked her close by his side as they continued their walk.

  “I just wish I hadn’t passed out when you proposed,” she said.

  He laughed aloud. “You didn’t miss much.”

  “Hmm, I wonder…” An idea was beginning to form.

  “You know, now that we’ve got this being engaged thing down, and we both like it,” Paavo said, “have you ever thought about eloping?”

  “Eloping?” She stopped dead, her jaw dropping. “Are you joking? I’ve dreamed all my life of a big, beautiful wedding. I just sent in subscriptions to Bride, Modern Bride, and Bridal Guide. I’ve bought an armful of books, including Priceless Weddings, Planning a Wedding to Remember, and How to Set Your Wedding to Music. I’ve already checked out four wedding boutiques and have seven more to go, from Carmel to Tiburon. I even tape the Lifetime channel twenty-four hours a day so I won’t miss any of their wedding specials!”

  After a long wait, he quietly said, “I always thought eloping would be romantic.”

  Hopefulness filled his voice, and she repressed a laugh. “It is, but not nearly so romantic as what I want. I can already see it in my head…”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll be standing at the altar, looking so handsome, and I’ll be wearing the most beautiful gown in the world. At least a dozen bridesmaids will lead the way—”

  “A dozen?”

  “And my father will escort me to your side—”

  “Scowling the whole way. The guy hates me, Angie.”

  “We’ll have a Mass as part of the ceremony—”

  “Not just quick ‘I do’s’?”

  “With a children’s chorus singing traditional hymns, several of them—”

  “Angie, are you sure you don’t just want to go to Reno? Or, maybe Las Vegas?” Paavo asked one more time.

  His question pulled her out of her reverie. He just didn’t get it. “Positive,” she replied succinctly.