To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery

by Joanne Pence

  The motel had brought back the nightmare with Jessica, but what he found was reality—the gunfire, the loss of his father, and soon after, of his mother.

  Her loss must have overshadowed everything else for him. That was the only way he could imagine believing Aulis and Jessica’s lies about his father. He rubbed his temple. It was all so very fuzzy to him, memories mixed together with lies.

  What must have been going through his child’s mind back then? And through Jessica’s for that matter? She wasn’t much older, but old enough to feel the full impact of everything that happened—old enough to understand, but not to have the maturity to handle it. That was probably why she’d been so close to him for so many years, closer than most brothers and sisters. Despite her youth, she’d learned how quickly those you love could be taken away from you.

  Was that why she’d been so eager to live life to the hilt? Why she had burned as a bright young flame that died too soon?

  Damn, if only she’d told him. If only he’d known the truth. Maybe he could have helped.

  Somehow he ended up on his street, in front of his house. The car that continued past him and stopped at the corner barely registered on his consciousness.

  Angie told him she’d sent a cleaning service over to haul away destroyed furniture, and pick up mattress feathers and other debris. He’d like to see his home again.

  As Paavo got out of the car, he didn’t look around him and particularly not to the end of the block. The shooter hadn’t expected him to. That was why this parking spot was chosen, along with an M40A1 rifle with a Unertl 9X scope. The car engine remained running as the black-clad sniper dropped behind the fender.

  Paavo bounded up the steps to his front door, reaching into his pocket for the key. The scope aligned the back of his head in its crosshairs. He slid the key into the hole, turned, and pushed.

  The world exploded.

  As Angie drove away from the restaurant, she noticed the headlights of the car behind her. It stayed back some distance, but made all the same turns as she did, and seemed to speed up whenever another car tried to slip between them.

  She made four lefts in a row. The car followed.

  Going home was no longer an option. Instead, she headed for the Hall of Justice, unable to lose her tail the entire way.

  Parking at the Hall was restricted to employees and people with special passes. Because it was an administrative building, not a police station as such, and fairly quiet at night, she didn’t want to park in a nearly empty public lot either.

  As she neared, she phoned Paavo to come down and meet her at the entrance. His phone rang, but he wasn’t there to answer it.

  Now what?

  She could call his cell phone, but he could be miles away at some crime scene.

  Hell, she had a Ferrari. Why not use it, just like she had when those jokers were outside her apartment? A freeway on-ramp was up ahead. Turning the wheel sharply, she darted through lanes of traffic and swung onto the freeway, flicked her radarlaser detector to high, and punched the accelerator. The car following her sped up as well, cutting off other drivers to reach the freeway entrance. For a while it succeeded in keeping up with her since she had to keep changing lanes to get around drivers paying attention to the speed limit. Once she passed the airport, however, the congestion loosened and her pedal hit the metal.

  The car following didn’t have a chance. And people asked her why she needed a Ferrari in San Francisco!

  She glanced at her silent radar detector. She’d received tickets for going 68 in a 65-mile zone. At one point tonight she’d hit 105, and nary a CHP in sight…thank God.

  When she finally reached the Filbert Street cottage, she was still pumped from her version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Paavo wasn’t there. The answering machine she’d recently hooked up had no message from him, and neither did her cell phone.

  Where was he? A homicide must have happened. She wished Yosh would hurry back to work. Having Paavo go off on calls alone made her even more nervous than usual. She held Hercules, scratching him behind the ears as she stood at the window.

  She assumed Paavo had caught a bite for dinner while he was out, but a warm, comforting dessert waiting for him when he got home would be a nice treat. She enjoyed cooking. Relaxing yet engrossing, it required a degree of expertise and creativity to do well, much as handcrafters found with needlepoint or crochet. Her Amaretto-pecan bread pudding was a particular favorite of his. She happily mixed enough to fill a nine-by-thirteen-inch-baking dish.

  Hours later, the bread pudding had grown cold and he still wasn’t home.

  At midnight she called Homicide, with no luck, and his cell phone was switched to go straight to messages.

  At two-thirty she heard footsteps on the front walk. She sprang from the bed to the window. It was Paavo.

  They both reached the front door at the same time.

  He grabbed her, his face buried against her neck, and held her tight.

  Chapter 20

  “That’s the house,” Angie said. She and Paavo parked across from the Liberty Street building where Cecily, Aulis, and the Finnish students had lived. “Do you remember it at all?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I had a murder case up here about three years ago. A dentist. I don’t know if the area feels familiar because of him or some other reason.”

  “Let’s walk around a bit,” she suggested.

  Walking the quiet street in the sunshine, even though the weather was chilly, gave Angie time to reflect on all that was happening. Last night she’d been frightened and horrified to hear about Paavo’s close call. He had paid no attention as the purr of a car engine grew louder behind him, and then a gun fired and the streetlight outside his house exploded in a hail of glass. Instinctively he’d ducked just as a bullet smashed into his front door, right where he’d been standing a split second earlier. More shots were fired at the end of the street, followed by two cars screeching away.

  Chasing them in his old Austin Healey wasn’t even a consideration. Everyone on the block, apparently, had called the police, because half the Richmond station’s black-and-whites roared to the scene. The slug found in his house was from a high-powered rifle, a sniper’s weapon. The danger level of whatever was going on had just been upped tenfold.

  Angie’s freeway adventure paled in comparison, at least to her, although he seemed as worried about her as she was about him. That neither of them had any idea of what was happening didn’t seem to matter to the person, or people, behind it.

  Paavo had also told her about the homicide files he’d read, as well as Cecily’s. The police had based their conclusion that Cecily had gone into hiding on her having brought her children with her, but she hadn’t. Did that mean she was dead?

  Angie’s head spun. They’d stayed up until dawn trying to put the pieces together, but nothing fit.

  “When you were a boy, what did Aulis say when you questioned him about your parents and your name?” Angie asked as they walked.

  “He gave me answers that, as a child, I accepted. He told me what to say when I went to school, and I did. It was only when I was older that I began to wonder.”

  “Such as?”

  “I learned that the Child Protective Services would never have allowed a neighbor to keep a child whose mother had abandoned him. Aulis told me that when Mary Smith disappeared, he had filed a missing person’s report, but they never found her. We moved our things to his apartment, and simply stayed. I now know that would have been impossible.”

  “He had no family of his own, right?” Angie asked. “No one to question or complain about you and your sister?”

  “He was alone. I always thought he saw us as the children he might have had, had his life worked out differently. He told us about his past many times when we were growing up.”

  “Oh?” she asked, her voice lifting. He smiled at her obvious curiosity about the tale.

  “Aulis left Finland immediately following World War Two,” P
aavo began. “He was engaged to a woman named Müna, a neighbor. The two of them grew up together, always knowing they would marry. He’d been drafted into the Finnish army to fight the Soviets. After the war, the Soviets moved in. Parts of Finland were ceded to them. People were displaced, their land taken away, their freedoms lost.”

  “How frightening,” she said.

  “Aulis decided to leave the country. He told Müna he would send for her. He used to tell harrowing stories to Jessica and me of how he escaped through icy water in a small fishing boat crammed with other men. He landed in Sweden, and found a way to join the refugee groups popping up throughout Europe. After two years, he made it to the United States, and a year later he’d crossed the country to San Francisco.”

  Angie nodded. After the war, refugees coming to California was a common story.

  “Aulis arrived, got settled, and wrote to Müna. He had complete faith she’d waited for him. Instead, she’d gotten married a year after he’d left. She’d assumed he’d been killed.”

  “How awful,” Angie cried.

  “He swore he’d tried to forget her, but after so many years of loving just one person, the disappointment seemed to take the heart out of him.”

  “He’s such a nice man. How could other women not have noticed?”

  “Maybe they did, and he ignored them,” Paavo said. “He used to tell me and Jessie that we reminded him that there was more to the world than his own self-pity.”

  Hearing those words let Angie understand how much those children must have meant to Aulis—the laughing, devil-may-care Jessica, and the quiet, somber little Paavo. Her hand tightened on his. “I’m glad—for all of you.”

  When they reached the intersection of Sanchez and Liberty, Paavo gave a long, last look down Liberty Street, then headed toward Angie’s Ferrari.

  “I just don’t remember this area,” he stated.

  “Let’s try one more spot,” she suggested.

  They drove westward, first to the Lutheran church, which Paavo remembered Aulis taking him to as a boy, and then continued for another mile to a two-story brown-shingle home. “The Eschenbachs live there,” Angie said.

  Paavo stared at it a long while. He shut his eyes, leaning back against the headrest. “I don’t know, Angie. There’s something familiar about it—something I don’t like about it—but I’ve covered so many areas as a cop, who knows what it is?”

  “The way the wife acted troubles me. She seemed to know something—something that frightened her.”

  “It’s weird—when I look at the house, I think of a lion, which makes no sense.”

  She gasped. “But it does! The door knocker is shaped like a lion’s head. You were here! Aulis must have brought you here. But I wonder why.”

  He stared at the house. “Whatever it was, I hated it. I wanted to go home…but I couldn’t.” He shook his head, and a look of such profound sadness came over him that it tore at her heart.

  She was about to suggest that he could go home now, to their little home, when, to her surprise, he got out of the car.

  “Let’s find out what this is all about,” he said, marching straight for the house and its lion-head door knocker.

  Mrs. Eschenbach scowled ferociously when she saw Angie, then turned toward Paavo. She gasped, her eyes wide. “Oh, my,” she murmured, pressing her fingers to her mouth.

  “I do remember you,” Paavo said. “From church.”

  She rested her hand on her bosom as if to calm her heart. “My God, you look so much like your father now, you startled me.”

  A moment passed. “I’d like to talk to you about him.”

  She stiffened, casting another angry glance at Angie. “All right.”

  Angie expected to be led to the back of the house to see the pastor, but Mrs. Eschenbach brought them into the kitchen and gestured for them to sit at the table. “It’s such a shock seeing you again, Paavo,” she said as she darted about, flustered and nervous, and then poured them each a glass of red wine from a jug. “What do you do for a living now?”

  He glanced quickly at Angie. “I’m a homicide inspector.”

  The elderly woman paused, then slowly nodded. “I’m not surprised,” she murmured, and Angie wondered what she meant. She joined them at the table and lifted her wineglass. “Skoal!”

  They responded and sipped the heavy burgundy.

  “What can you tell me, Mrs. Eschenbach?” Paavo asked. “I’m trying to find out what happened all those years ago.”

  “All I know is that Aulis brought you and your sister here one day. He asked us to hide you and said no one, no one at all, was to know you were here. I had read about your father’s murder in the papers, and the day after you came here, we received word that your mother’s car had gone into the ocean. I asked Aulis about her, but he just shook his head. We needed to forget everything we ever knew about her or your father. They were gone, and the only way to keep you children safe was to change everything about who you were and who they were. You stayed here for ten days, then he came and got you. I didn’t see you again for almost five years, when Aulis again began to attend our church. We never spoke of those times with him.”

  “What was he so afraid of?” Paavo asked.

  She shook her head. “He never said, and we were afraid to ask. All we knew was that it was very, very bad, and the people involved were completely ruthless.” She turned to Angie. “When I heard your questions, the fear we lived with during those days came rushing back to me. Our lives were in danger—Aulis knew it, and so did we—because of the children. That was why I asked you to stay away.”

  Her wrinkled hand touched Paavo’s, and her eyes grew teary. “I’ll admit that, right now, I’m glad you didn’t listen.”

  Paavo showed up in Homicide that afternoon to find a message from Tucker Bond’s secretary. He answered her call, and was faxed a list of names and phone numbers of people who had worked with Cecily.

  They all gave the same responses to his questions—none of them knew her. They remembered that she was a research clerk, but they didn’t remember her being in the office, or even where her desk was situated, or what she did. The few times they saw her she was pleasant and likable. They knew she’d worked for Eldridge Sawyer, but nothing more.

  Paavo phoned Tucker Bond. “Ah, Inspector,” Bond answered. “Did you get the information from my secretary?”

  “Yes, thanks. I was calling with a different question about Cecily Campbell,” Paavo replied.

  “Oh?”

  “There’s nothing in her file about her second marriage.”

  “Second marriage? I don’t remember anything about that. She must have chosen to keep it from us.”

  “Why would she?”

  “Well, some women believed they’d go further in their career if unmarried. I don’t know if that was true in her case—”

  “She married a Finn. He was here on a work visa.”

  “Not an American. Well, that might have bothered us if she were placed in any sensitive areas. But she was just a clerk, Inspector. I’m afraid I don’t understand your interest in her at all.”

  Paavo didn’t bother to explain. “Did you know her body was never recovered?”

  “Now that you mention it, that does sound vaguely familiar. I’m afraid that detail slipped my memory. There was no question about her death that I was aware of.”

  “You didn’t know the S.F.P.D. asked Sawyer’s help, treating her as a missing person?”

  “I knew he was asked about her, but he was her boss. That wasn’t unusual in a situation that might have been suicide for all anyone knew.”

  “What can you tell me about Eldridge Sawyer?” Paavo asked.

  “Actually, our prior conversation got me to thinking about the old days,” Bond said. “Sawyer was mixed up with a lot of strange business back then. I suspect he had Cecily Campbell researching—or whatever—quite a bit of that stuff. If you ask me, find him, and you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”r />
  “What kind of strange business?” Paavo asked.

  “If I knew the answer to that, I might be able to help you myself.”

  “One last question,” Paavo said. “How long after Cecily Campbell’s death did Sawyer quit the Bureau?”

  “How long?” Bond didn’t say anything for a moment. “Well, as I recall, it was almost immediately after. I can’t imagine, however, that the two were in any way connected.”

  Chapter 21

  “Maybe there’s a better way,” Connie moaned, elbows on the bar, head in her hands.

  “The better way is to drink tonic without gin in it,” Angie scoffed. “You’re getting sloshed.”

  “I’m just doing my part to help find Paavo’s mama,” Connie said, swirling the toothpick-skewered lime wedge in her drink. She wore a short, sleeveless black dress that fit like a wide band of Spandex. “Anyway, if neither of us drank, for us to come to a bar would look very suspicious.”

  “If you’d stop making googly-eyes at all the men, they wouldn’t be sending over so many drinks.” Angie’s Versace ice-blue outfit had an equally short, shiny skirt, and sleeveless, V-neck top. The heel of one high, ankle-strapped shoe was hooked on the rail of her stool, while the other foot waggled impatiently.

  “I come to bars for one reason—and it’s not to quench my thirst,” Connie said. “Anyway, I’m not making eyes at anyone. This is just how I look.”

  “Hah! If you were any more kissy-faced, we’d have to run your lips through a mangle iron to straighten them out.”

  Connie stopped listening when a blond hunk entered the bar.

  Angie took another sip of her virgin piña colada. The entire evening had been a waste of time. They were on Noe Street, in an area of neighborhood shops, bars, and restaurants just a couple of blocks from Liberty.

  After learning that Paavo was nearly killed the night before, she wasn’t about to sit around tonight nervously pacing and cooking and praying he made it home in one piece. She was determined to do something! To find out exactly what was going on here. Whatever it was, it had drawn in people who’d lived in this neighborhood thirty years ago. And as Bianca had said, people talk. They knew a lot more about what happened in their neighborhoods than the police ever imagined.