Cooking Spirits: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries)
Read Cooking Spirits: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries) Online
Authors: Joanne Pence
Here’s a Taste of Some of the Praise for
Joanne Pence’s Angie Amalfi Mysteries
"Angie
Amalfi is the queen of the culinary sleuths."
—Romantic
Times
"A
winner...Angie is a character unlike any other in the genre."
—
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
"A tasty
treat for all mystery and suspense lovers who like food for thought, murder and
a stab at romance."
—The Armchair Detective
"Joanne Pence is a master
chef."
—Mystery Scene
"Pence can satisfy the taste
buds of the most skeptical mystery reader."
—
Literary Times
"Singularly
unusual characters...fervently funny."
—
The Mystery Reader
"A wicked flair for light
humor...a delightful reading concoction."
—
Gothic Journal
"Another terrific book...a bit
of Lucille Ball and the Streets of San Francisco"
—
Tales
From
a Red Herring
"Murder couldn't be served up
in a more delicious manner."
—The Paperback Forum
"...the humor, the wit and the
satisfying twists of this romantic tale... just the right measures of intrigue,
danger, jealousy and warmth."
—The Time Machine
The Angie Amalfi Mysteries
COOKING SPIRITS
THE DA VINCI COOK
RED HOT MURDER
COURTING DISASTER
TWO COOKS A-KILLING
IF COOKS COULD KILL
BELL, COOK, AND CANDLE
TO CATCH A COOK
A COOK IN TIME
COOKS OVERBOARD
COOKS NIGHT OUT
COOKING MOST DEADLY
COOKING UP TROUBLE
TOO MANY COOKS
SOMETHING'S COOKING
Also by
Joanne Pence
ANCIENT ECHOES
DANCE WITH A GUNFIGHTER
SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES
THE GHOST OF SQUIRE HOUSE
GOLD MOUNTAIN
DANGEROUS JOURNEY
Cooking
Spirits
An Angie
Amalfi Mystery
J
OANNE
P
ENCE
Quail
Hill Publishing
This
is a work of fiction. Any referenced to historical events, real people, or the product
of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to real locales are used
fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are actual events,
locales or persons, living or dead,
is
entirely
coincidental.
No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval
systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who
may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded
for distribution to others.
Quail
Hill Publishing
PO Box
64
Eagle,
ID 83616
Visit
our website at www.quailhillpublishing.net
First
Quail Hill Publishing Paperback Printing: April 2013
Quail
Hill Publishing E-book: April 2013
Excerpts
copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2003,
2004, 2006, 2007
Copyright ©
2013 Joanne Pence
All rights
reserved.
ISBN:
0615779417
ISBN-13:
978-0615779416
To Michaela and Matthew
Table of
Contents
From the Kitchen of Angelina Amalfi
A Note from the Author
Dear Reader,
Six years have passed since the last Angie Amalfi mystery
(which was the fourteenth book in the long-running series), and I would like to
thank the many people who have written to me to ask for another story. Because
it’s been so long between books—and because I hope many new readers will give
this story a try—I’ve done my best to introduce each character so that no one
will feel lost as to who’s who, or what has gone on in the past.
In a nutshell, Angelina Rosaria Maria Amalfi, the
youngest daughter of a large, wealthy San Francisco Italian-American family,
wants only two things in life: a good job in the culinary field, and San
Francisco Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith. Her relationship with Paavo is
progressing, albeit slowly, since they met in the first book in the series,
Something’s
Cooking,
which was written as a stand-alone ‘romantic suspense’ and not as a
mystery (I point this out because true mystery readers will find it easy to
solve!). Since readers were interested in what happened next to the couple, the
mystery series was born.
In book 4, Cooking Most Deadly, Angie meets Connie
Rogers who becomes her best friend, as well as three ex-cons who (some say)
bear a close resemblance to The Three Stooges.
Paavo is a bit of a mystery man (what kind of a name
is Paavo Smith, anyway??) and Angie doesn’t learn his background until book 8,
To
Catch a Cook
.
Connie tells her story in
If
Cooks
Could Kill
, the 10th book, and Angie’s neighbor, Stan
Bonnette
,
stars in book 12,
Courting Disaster
. Angie goes international in book
14,
The DaVinci Cook.
And throughout all are Angie’s struggles with love,
life, crime and cooking.
For some people, characters in novels are just
that—words on a page. For me, after (now) fifteen books with Angie and Paavo, I
prefer to think that somewhere ‘out there’ is an alternate universe where
Angie, Paavo, their friends, family, and co-workers live and are every bit as
real as you and I. If that were the case, and if Angie came to my door, I’d
gladly invite her in for a cup of coffee and Italian cookies, and we’d talk
about her latest adventures and, of course, Paavo…
I hope you enjoy this story, as Angie goes
house-hunting with some ‘spirited’ results.
Sincerely,
Joanne Pence
Cooking
Spirits
Chapter 1
ANGELINA AMALFI HAD no sooner entered
her penthouse apartment high atop San Francisco’s Russian Hill than she heard a
knock on her door.
“I was just thinking about you, Angie,” her neighbor,
Stanfield
Bonnette
, said as he entered the apartment.
“And then I heard you come home. You look tired.”
“I am tired.” She tossed her Balenciaga jacket on the arm of
a chair, kicked off her Jimmy
Choo
four-inch high
heels, and plopped herself down on the sofa.
Stan sat beside her. He was thirty, thin and wiry with light
brown hair and brown eyes.
His was the only other apartment on the top floor of the
twelve-story building on the corner of Green and Vallejo Streets. Stan could
afford his place thanks to his father, a bank executive. He had a job in the
bank for the same reason. Neither provided much motivation for Stan to work
hard, or to work at all for that matter.
His one regret in life was that Angie wanted to marry
someone who wasn’t him. He thought they’d be perfect together—her money and
what he saw as his self-evident charm. He continued to hold out hope that
someday Angie would come to her senses and dump her fiancé, San Francisco
Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith. Stan was ready, any time, to take his place.
“I just fired the worst wedding planner the world has
ever known,” Angie said.
“You fired her?” Stan couldn’t imagine getting up the nerve
to fire anybody. “But I thought you needed someone to help you with your
wedding.”
“I do! That’s the problem!” She leaned forward and rubbed
her temples. “But she kept pushing a wedding dress cut too low with a bouffant
skirt that puffed out at the waist. I’m short. I’ve been clothing this short
body for many years, and so I know that with so little material on top, and so
much on the bottom—the skirt was wider than it was long—I would look like a marshmallow,
a miniature marshmallow, and I did! The dress swallowed me up completely, but
she insisted it was perfect and I ‘needed’ to buy it without letting my mother
or sister or anyone else give an opinion. She said families only confuse the
bride.”
“That may be true,” Stan murmured, giving a shudder at the
mention of Angie’s mother and sisters.
“And then, she thought the reception should be decorated in
blue. I’m not a blue person. I’m Italian!”
She heaved a sigh. “Finally, I realized the only thing I
‘needed’ was a new wedding planner.
One not so bossy!”
She picked up one of the See's chocolates in the candy dish on the coffee table
and took a bite, chewing morosely.
Raspberry cream.
She didn’t even like raspberry cream, but ate it anyway. She was truly miserable.
Wedding planning was a stress test and she was losing.