Something's Cooking

by Joanne Pence

  He studied her. “That’s very wise.”

  She shrugged and gave him a half-smile. “Or maybe it’s a nifty justification for fooling around, Inspector Smith.”

  His gaze softened. “I don’t think so, Miss Amalfi.”

  “Lots of others do, though.”

  “It’s what you believe that’s important.”

  She felt her face grow warm from his words and the way he looked at her, and she quickly spun around to the stove to check on the large pot of water. She couldn’t understand it. She hadn’t blushed since she was fourteen, and now it’d happened twice in one evening. This was no time to take on that hideous trait again.

  “Ah,” she cried, “water’s boiling.” She put in the noodles. “The linguine can cook while I make a nice mixture to pour over it.”

  She began rummaging through her cupboard. “I could do a plain old cheese sauce, but I thought…Ah! Here they are.” She pulled out a small tin of anchovies.

  “Cheese is fine, Angie. Don’t go to any trouble.”

  “What’s the matter, Inspector? Doesn’t anchovy in your pasta appeal to you?” The man looked a little pale. “Hmm, I bet you even pick it off pizza.”

  “No. I never put it on pizza.”

  “Trust me.”

  She opened the tin, minced two anchovies, and then put a coat of olive oil in a big frying pan. Over low heat, she sauteed them with a couple of cloves of garlic and a few sprigs of parsley, then added a pinch of crushed red pepper and basil. Last, she added a half of a can of pitted black olives. Paavo watched her every move.

  As she chopped and stirred, she tried to get Paavo to talk a little about himself. All she learned, though, was that he, too, had grown up in the city. But he had lived in the Mission District—an old, tough neighborhood, far different from the stylish Marina District of her childhood. She listened closely to everything he said, every intonation and nuance, trying to glean insight from the few words he spoke. The man was a mystery to her. One of the biggest parts of the mystery was why she was so curious about him.

  She liked mannered, genteel men who were worldly and polished—men who could toss out a bon mot or devastating put-down in the cleverest of ways, men who lived in a world of elegance and took it as their due. A number of doctors, CEOs, and even a judge were among her coterie of suitors, and she thought them all just fine. Inspector Paavo Smith was completely different, and she didn’t understand him at all.

  While she drained the cooked linguine, she gave Paavo the job of stirring the olive-and-anchovy mixture and making sure it didn’t burn. Angie chuckled inwardly seeing him there, the wooden spoon dwarfed in his hand, his eyes never leaving the pot. He was clearly a man who took his duty seriously. She was sure he gave no less attention to his stickiest cases.

  Dinner was almost ready. Angie added the linguine to the pan, along with more olive oil, red pepper, and a quarter cup of grated Parmesan. As she tossed the mixture, Paavo stood behind her, leaning over her shoulder, watching intently.

  “It actually smells good, and looks even better.”

  “I can cook, you know,” she said, turning her head toward him. His face was only inches away. The sparkling blue of his eyes, the thick, rich waves of his hair, the clean, spicy scent of his aftershave reached her senses. Her breath caught at his nearness, and his eyes seemed to darken as they moved over her face. Flustered, she turned her attention to the linguine again.

  He stepped away from her quickly, too quickly, she thought. He too had felt whatever it was that had passed between them, and he wanted no part of it.

  The three hours they spent together went by quickly. Although Paavo was quiet, the few words he said were straightforward and honest, and he seemed to value her words, which she appreciated, because she loved to talk. As she warmed up a bit to his personality, so, too, did she come to appreciate his looks. She could have drowned in the blue lagoon of his eyes, and the couple of times she coaxed a smile out of him were well worth the trouble.

  Paavo helped her clean up the kitchen after the leisurely dinner. For dessert, she took some tortoni out of the freezer. They hadn’t even finished their espresso when Joey arrived. Angie smiled at him, feigning relief, while hoping her disappointment didn’t show.

  Paavo’s presence, to her surprise, had made her feel warm and safe. Even after he had left, when she lay in bed, she thought about the man, not the inspector, and was comforted.

  8

  The next afternoon, the telephone rang.

  “You’re going to die, pigeon.” It was a man’s voice, very deep and slurred.

  Shock raced through her. “What?”

  “Thought you had the brains to understand a clear message. Guess I was wrong. You’re dumb. Keep it up and you’ll be dead.”

  Her hands shook as she clutched the receiver tightly. “Who is this?” she screamed. “What did I do? Tell me, please! Don’t do this to me!”

  There was a click as the caller hung up.

  An hour later, Paavo entered the apartment. “Did you receive any more phone calls, Miss Amalfi?” She had called him immediately to report the threatening call, and she was puzzled at how formal and businesslike he sounded on the phone. He remained so now, and a sense of disappointment settled over her.

  Last night, for a little while, she had allowed herself to forget he was a detective—Mike Hammer and Dick Tracy rolled into one—and had enjoyed his company until he had turned back into that pumpkin otherwise known as a homicide inspector.

  Facing Paavo now, though, she realized that he clearly regretted the lapse in their strictly professional relationship. She had believed that he, too, had enjoyed the evening before, but obviously she had been wrong.

  She tried to shake off her feeling of loss and lifted her gaze to his, inwardly vowing to never again forget that he was a cop just doing his job. But his eyes were so beautifully blue….

  Her lips tightened. This reaction to him did nothing but irritate her. She felt like a schoolgirl, a real sucker for a uniform—even if it was a plainclothes one.

  Rico had replaced Joey on the sofa in front of the T.V., so she gestured toward the large wingback chairs nestled in a corner of the room.

  “No other calls,” she replied finally, when they were seated. He quizzed her about the one she’d received—the exact words used, the voice, accent, anything special she could remember. The caller had used the term pigeon, and Paavo questioned her over and over about birds, stool pigeons, chickens, turkeys, fowls, fouls, foes, even badminton, until she was ready to scream, if not chirp or caw.

  “All right,” he said, backing off. “Tell me again about any visitors you’ve had.”

  “I told you. I’ve stopped everyone from coming by except my sisters, my neighbor Stan, and you. That’s it. Others came by, but I didn’t let them in.”

  “What others?”

  “Delivery men, Edith from downstairs, the paper boy, people asking for money, a contributor to my food column—”

  “You never mentioned that before.”

  “The contributor? I told you I went to the Shopper to drop off recipes. You were too busy yelling about me going there to even ask me where I got the recipes.”

  “I never yell. But anyway, you’re saying this ‘contributor’ dropped off the recipes in person?”

  “Right.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Everything’s unusual about my food column. But since that newspaper article gave out my address, I guess anyone can find me the way he did.”

  “He?”

  “A fair number of men contribute recipes.”

  “Oh? So, why didn’t he just mail the recipes to the paper?”

  “I think he wanted to explain. This man, his name is Edward Crane, said he’s friends with another contributor named Sam Martin. Sam brings me ‘spoof’ recipes for breakfast foods, and signs his name as ‘Waffles’ for use in my column. If you’d ever seen my column, you’d know what I mean. Anyway, Waffles, or Sam, has
gone to Carmel to work, and now Crane will be giving me the ‘spoof’ recipes.”

  Paavo just looked at her for a long time as if trying to sort out what she had just said. “A number of people mentioned your column and that sometimes it can be pretty…funny. Tell me more about these ‘spoof’ recipes.”

  “Well, for me, they started out as a joke, I mean, they’re really weird recipes—things like Chocolate Oyster Pancakes, or Peppermint Brains Soufflé. But Jon Preston, my publisher, liked them, and claimed a lot of readers wrote in and said they liked them as well. He insisted I publish the ‘Waffles’ recipes whenever I got them. As long as they’re popular, we’ve kept them up.”

  Angie caught his head shaking. She should feel insulted, but instead she laughed, imagining this whole recipe thing must sound like science fiction for all he understood about women’s food columns or male contributors to them. But he wrote down the names Edward Crane and Sam Martin, and said he’d have them checked out.

  “Are you working on anything else?”

  “I was given the go-ahead for an article on the mayor for a Los Angeles–based magazine. I haven’t been able to start it yet.”

  “The mayor?”

  “He’s a friend of the family. I’ve done several human interest stories on him already. It’s no big deal, but I guess he’s good copy.”

  Paavo leaned back in the chair, his expression thoughtful.

  “That’s not what’s behind all this, Inspector.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll keep it in mind, though.”

  She shook her head, then looked at him a moment before speaking. “Did you have lunch?”

  He jerked his head toward her. “I never eat—”

  “I am a food columnist, after all,” she said as if that were an explanation as she disappeared into the kitchen. She returned almost immediately with a mug of hot coffee. While he sipped it, she made him an enormous cold cuts and cheese sandwich.

  “You’ll be less difficult on a full stomach,” she said in response to his questioning look as she handed him the sandwich.

  He paused, as if contemplating how anyone could call him difficult, then began to demolish his lunch.

  There was a knock at the door. Now what? Paavo stepped toward the door as Angie and Rico stood clear of the entry.

  The detective peered through the peephole, glanced back at Angie, then with an oddly amused expression on his face, swung the door open all the way.

  Rico took a step backwards into Angie, who nearly lost her balance. Scrambling to see what was going on, she peered around Rico’s arm toward the doorway.

  There, filling the lower half of it, stood her mother, Serefina Teresa Maria Giuseppina Amalfi, all five-foot-one, one hundred fifty pounds of her. She entered the room like the HMS Queen Mary lumbering from its berth.

  “Mamma,” Angie whispered, her hand going to her throat.

  Serefina slowly took in Angie and the two men beside her, and clearly found them all wanting.

  “I’ll be outside,” Rico muttered as he slipped out the door.

  Coward, Angie thought. “Mamma,” she said, “what are you doing here? I thought you were in Palm Springs.”

  Serefina stared at her a long moment, then crossed the room and dropped her handbag on the coffee table with a thud. She took off her neckscarf, then her overcoat, revealing an expanse of white polka dots against a navy blue background and hefty, black walking shoes. Her black hair was pulled straight back into a bun.

  “Che pasticcio!” she said, reproach emanating from every outraged inch of her.

  “Mamma, what did I do?”

  “Dimmi! I ask you that!” She looked at Paavo. “Who’s this?”

  Paavo cleared his throat.

  Angie came to his aid. “This is Paavo Smith, Mamma. Paavo, my mother.”

  “Mrs. Amalfi,” he held out his hand, “nice to meet you.”

  “Hah!” came the response. He pulled back his hand.

  “Angelina! You don’t talk to your mother or your sisters. I came myself to find out what’s going on.”

  “I telephone you, Mamma!”

  “Hello, good-bye. That’s a phone call?”

  Paavo tried to interrupt. “I think I’ll be going—”

  “Aspetti!” Serefina ordered. She studied Paavo, top to bottom, then looked back at Angie. “What does he do?”

  “He…he’s a homicide inspector.”

  Serefina’s eyes widened as her gaze jumped from one to the other. “Homicide? So you are in danger, Angelina!”

  “No, Mamma. There’s nothing to worry about, believe me. Don’t worry.”

  “How can I not worry when my baby has strange things blowing up under her very nose? Living alone here this way. It’s not good, Angelina!”

  “Please, Mamma! It’s all right. Just go back home.”

  “Go home? Dio! You’re talking to your mother this way!”

  “Ladies,” Paavo began again as the two stood wringing their hands and looking at each other, both on the verge of tears. “If you’ll excuse me—”

  Angie spun toward him. “How can you think of leaving when my mother is so upset?”

  “Well—” he began.

  “Angelina, poverina!” her mother wailed. “Does he always want to run out on you like this?”

  Paavo’s face tightened.

  “He’s assigned my case, Mamma. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Serefina cast her gaze, full force, on him.

  Paavo loosened his tie. Poor man, Angie thought. He had to face Serefina when he could be out chasing a simple murderer.

  “Something’s strange here,” Serefina said, “but he’s got good eyes. He’s quiet. I like that in a man.”

  Paavo raised his eyebrows.

  “I know more is going on than you’re telling me, Angelina. What can I do? Right, young man?” She finally addressed Paavo.

  Angie chuckled inwardly as she realized he had no idea how to respond.

  “There, now I’ve embarrassed him! Mi dispiace!” She reached up and grabbed his cheek between her thumb and forefinger and gave it a little squeeze.

  “It’s all right,” Serefina continued. “You take Angie to her cousin’s wedding tomorrow, and you watch her good, you hear? Meet the family, too, except Salvatore, he couldn’t come. His heart, you know. But Gina’s father is only his second cousin, so it’s okay.”

  “God, Mamma,” Angie lay her palms against her forehead. “I forgot about the wedding.”

  “Dio! How could you forget your own cousin?” Serefina raised her hands upward with desperation.

  Paavo stepped back.

  “She’s only my third cousin, Mamma.”

  “She’s family.” Serefina turned to Paavo. “You come to my house at three tomorrow. It’s formal. Angelina, give him the address.”

  “I’m sorry…” His voice had a slight quiver to it. Angie recognized the symptom shared by many who ran headlong into Serefina. She hadn’t realized even hard-nosed police detectives were susceptible. She feared Paavo would find himself at a wedding tomorrow with no idea how he got there.

  “Mamma, he’s a detective. He’s got to work.”

  Serefina shrugged. “So? Watching you isn’t important work? I’ll call Commissioner Barcelli.”

  Paavo cleared his throat. “I have tomorrow off.”

  “Maybe Rico should take me,” Angie quickly suggested.

  “Rico?”

  “He was the man who was just here who ran out the door.”

  Serefina’s eyes drilled her daughter.

  Angie sighed and looked beseechingly at Paavo. “It’s all right for you to come with me, isn’t it? I’m not a suspect or anything.”

  “It’s not against procedure, but—”

  “Va bene.” Serefina interrupted. “Enough talk. You know how to keep my Angelina safe. I know it’s hard. She makes my hair gray the way she won’t listen. And she never phones her mother.”

  Serefina turned Angie toward her bedr
oom. “Get your things for tomorrow, Angelina. You come home with me now. We have a lot to do. I have a taxi waiting. I came here straight from the airport.”

  “Walk us to the cab?” Angie looked back over her shoulder at Paavo.

  “Sure.” His eye caught hers as if to tell her not to worry, she’d be watched.

  Serefina looked from one to the other, then nodded.

  9

  Angie felt like a bird released from its cage as she waited for Paavo in the library of her parents’ Hillsborough mansion. Her apartment had become a prison cell. Now, for a little while at least, she could forget about all that madness.

  She had summoned her hairdresser to her parents’ home that morning, saying she was too busy to get to his shop, but paid him well enough to cover any lost business. The back of her hair was pinned up, while the front and sides were softly curled, framing her face and making her eyes seem even larger, darker, and more dramatically almond shaped than usual.

  The late afternoon wedding was to have a formal reception. Angie wanted to wear something particularly beautiful and had chosen an ice-blue silk Celine that skimmed her waist and hips to a short, sexy puff of a skirt. With it she wore matching pumps and a simply mounted diamond necklace, earrings, and bracelet.

  She knew, at her cousin’s wedding, with Paavo, she could feel safe. She also wanted to feel glamorous and alive, once more. Not that it would matter to him. He had made it clear that to him she was just another case.

  Now, standing in the library with bright sunshine streaming in through the windows, her freedom was heady. She felt good for the first time in days. She shut her eyes and tilted her head back, soaking up the warmth.

  “Miss Angie?” the housekeeper called. Angie turned to see Paavo standing in the doorway of the library watching her. Their eyes met, and for a moment the way he looked at her made her head spin. But then his expression closed, becoming shuttered, as always, and she wondered if she had just imagined that there was ever anything more. Still, the sensation lingered.