Cooking Spirits: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries) (21 page)

Thoughts swirled in his mind.

“The medical examiner is still trying to determine the time
and date of Gaia’s death in the face of some strange findings. Usually, when
people are killed because of a jealous rage, both are killed at the same
time—and the most likely place would have been their beach cabin.”

“Except that would have pointed straight at the wife,” Angie
said. “And everyone would know Taylor had been cheating on her. The wife
wouldn’t want that.”

“Good point, Angie. I knew I kept you around for some
reason.”

“Something more is out there.
Some missing
piece.
Once you find what it is, it’ll all fall together,” she said,
then
added. “The same thing is going on with my murder
case.”

“
Your
murder case?”

“The Flemings.”
She smugly nodded,
leaned closer and lowered her voice. “It was no murder-suicide. Someone killed
them both. But I don’t yet know why. I’ve got an idea, though. I’m looking at
the landlady.”

“The landlady?
That’s a pretty
harsh penalty for being late with the rent.”

“Very funny!
I think she might have
been in love with Eric Fleming.”

Just then, Paavo’s phone began to vibrate. He normally would
have shut it off, but he saw the call was from Katie Kowalski. “I better take
this.”

He got up and stepped into the hallway that led to the
restrooms, away from the diners. “Hello.”

“Uncle Paavo?” the young voice asked.

“
Micky
, how nice to hear you,”
Paavo said, worried that the child would be phoning him. “Is everything all
right?”

“Yes. I wanted to tell you I’m on the Panthers T-ball team
now,”
Micky
said. “I hit every ball!”

“Hey, great job!
I’m proud of you!”

“I wish you could have seen me,”
Micky
said softly.

Something about the way he said it, made Paavo’s heart
catch. “I do, too,
Micky
. But your Mom was there,
wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And her new friend?”
Paavo asked.

Angie stood in front of him now. She’d been watching his
face and knew something was wrong.

“What friend?”
Micky
asked.

Paavo wasn’t sure what to say, but Katie had told him…
“Maybe I misunderstood,” he began carefully. “I thought your Mom had a friend,
a man named Daniel or Dan, who liked to watch you play ball.”

“No. She comes by herself. She looked a little sad. I think
she wished you were there, too.”

Paavo shut his eyes a moment. “When is your next game,
Mick?”

“Tuesday, five o’clock, at Funston.”

“I don’t know for sure if I can be there, okay? I can’t make
promises because of my job. You understand that, right
Micky
?”

“Yes. But will you try?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good. I miss you, Uncle Paavo.”

“I miss you, too, son. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Bye, now.”

Paavo hung up and looked at Angie. “There’s no man in Katie’s
life according to
Micky
.”

Angie nodded. “And there won’t be as long as you’re there as
someone for her to lean on and to keep the past alive. You understand that,
don’t you?”

“I do. But
Micky
doesn’t. It’s
hard on the boy.”

“On you, too,” she said, and put her arm around his waist.
He didn’t have many people in his life that he loved.
Micky
was one of them, and now he’d been asked to stay away. No words would help, and
this was a situation with which she dare not interfere.

Chapter 23

ANGIE RANG THE doorbell at Enid
Norbel’s
house.

A tall, attractive woman with brown hair and eyes opened the
door. “I’m looking for Enid
Norbel
. My name is
Angelina Amalfi, and—”

“Oh, yes.” Enid immediately warmed up to the visit. “You’re
the person who keeps going to see my house! I hope you aren’t here to negotiate
on the price.”

“No, not at all—”

“But you still like it?” Enid asked.

“Definitely,” Angie said.
“Very much.
I’m sorry to bother you, and I know this isn’t the way things are usually done,
but I’d like to talk to you about it, if I may?”

“Certainly.
Come on in.” As they
walked to the living room, Enid said, “A friend recommended that I offer
whichever realtor sold the house a $20,000 bonus over and above any commissions
they might receive. I told your sister that when she called, and that’s all
I’ll say on that score!”

“I’m not here to talk money,” Angie said. She now understood
Cat’s sudden interest in selling the place, and her generosity in turning over
the commission as a wedding present!

Angie sat on the
sofa,
and Enid on
the love seat facing her. “My grandfather built the house,” Enid said. “What
did you want to know about it?”

“Did you ever live there?”

“No. My mother moved to the smaller house across the street
after my father died, before I was born.”

“I assume she rented out the big house because she could get
more money from it than from the little place,” Angie said.

“Not really. My father left her well off. She never said why
she moved. The small house was roomy enough for the two of us. I assumed the
bigger house reminded her of my father. She was desperately in love with him,
and never got over his death.”

“I see. That would make sense,” Angie said.

“To tell the truth, I think she both loved and hated the 51
Clover Lane house. My father died while they lived there, and later, some
tenants who were living there also died—not in the house, of course.
A murder-suicide, apparently.
My mom said the ordeal was a
nightmare with the police and newsmen tramping all over and asking everyone
questions. I think she decided she didn’t want to bother with any more tenants.
Oh, dear! Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying all this. It might make the house seem
undesirable to you. But no one died in the house. Not even all that close to
it!”

“No, it’s all right,” Angie said. “I already knew about all
that.”

“Good.” Enid sounded relieved. “Actually, my mom often said
that if she found someone she could love, she would want to live in the big
house with him, so she never held anything against the house as you can see!
Unfortunately for her, she never fell in love again. Now it’s too late.”

Angie found this conversation terribly sad.
“Too late?
Is she sick?”

Enid fidgeted. “Well, if you buy the house, it’ll come out
so I may as well explain now. My mother has a mental illness. It’s not
something easy to put a name to. She’s borderline paranoid schizophrenic. Not
dangerous since her medication stabilizes her, but she tends to live in her own
little world that has nothing to do with reality. It’s easy to hold a
conversation with her on the simplest level. ‘What would you like for dinner?’
‘Do you want to watch television?’ But if you try to talk to her about anything
complex, she can’t follow it. People say she had some sort of a nervous
breakdown after my father died. She was always troubled, and she’s gotten worse
over the years. Recently, I was granted conservatorship over her finances.”

“I’m so sorry about your mother,” Angie said. “Does she live
with you?”

“She spends most days at a care facility, Restful Gardens in
the Richmond district. It’s nice, but terribly expensive. That’s why I’d like
to sell 51 Clover Lane. Unlike my mother, I have no reason to keep it.”

“I see.”

“On good days, they allow her to go home, which is nice for
her.”

“Home?
To 60
Clover?”

“Yes.
When she’s there, a nurse’s aide
stays overnight with her.
But I doubt she’ll be able to go home much
longer. I haven’t decided yet, when that time comes, if I want to sell that
house as well, or simply rent it. It’s not as special as 51 Clover, but still a
beautiful piece of property.”

“Yes, it is,” Angie said, then after a slight pause, asked,
“I’m wondering if it would be possible for me to speak to your mother?”

“She doesn’t talk to strangers. She’s easily frightened.”

“You think she’d be scared of me?”

“When she sees someone she doesn’t know, she often thinks
the person is a ghost.”

Angie was taken aback. “She thinks she sees ghosts?”

“Yes, it’s crazy.”

“Was she institutionalized because she thinks she sees
ghosts?” Angie asked.

“She not only sees them, but she believes they’re after her
and want to kill her.”

Angie’s left eye began to twitch. “I see. Um…did she ever
say who haunted her?”

“Not directly,” Enid answered. “But from things she said, I
think she believes she’s being haunted by her renter, the woman who was
murdered. Oops…maybe I shouldn’t have said that. But you did say you know about
the renters.”

“Yes, Natalie and Eric Fleming.”

“My goodness, you have done your homework, haven’t you? I
scarcely remembered their names myself! But she once said a little thing that
made me think she referred to the dead woman.”

“What was that?”

Enid smiled. “You’ll probably laugh, and I guess it is
funny. Like I said it was a little thing, but I remember it clearly. She said
that before the ghost showed up, she knew she was coming because ‘she smelled
Joy’. Not until years later did
I
learned Joy was the
name of a perfume!”

Angie felt a cold chill. “Yes, my mother used to wear it as
well. It’s a beautiful, expensive and memorable scent.”

“Well, there you go! Maybe you are meant to buy the house,”
Enid said with a chuckle. “Especially if the ghost shows up and you like her
taste in perfume. Anyway, I never considered a perfume-wearing ghost to be
anything that I or anyone else should be afraid of.”

“Did you ever consider that your mother might have been
right—that the house is haunted?”

Enid laughed.
“Of course not!
If I
had, I’m sure I’d have been sent to a loony bin like my mom.” She then grew
much more serious. “I’m sorry to say that my mother spent her life grieving for
my father. Unfortunately, while grieving for him, she forgot that she had a
daughter who was very much alive. She gave me next to no attention as I grew
up, and now that I’m an adult with my own family, I do what I must with her. No
more, no less.”

 “I can’t say that I blame you for that,” Angie said,
her expression sympathetic. She guessed she had been completely wrong about the
landlady being in love with Eric if she grieved that desperately for her
husband.

But, while Angie could understand the portrait Enid had
painted of Carol’s grief, she also saw how unfair it was to the child.

Seeing Angie’s empathy, Enid continued, “I must admit she
never seemed all that crazy to me, but once she started talking about ghosts,
well, I couldn’t argue against sending her away.”

Angie swallowed hard. “I guess not. Can you tell me…when did
she start having these hallucinations and other problems?”

“As long as I can remember, actually.
As I say, she never got over my father's death. She mourned him every day and
said he was the love of her life. She often said she wished she had died when
he did, which would have meant I was never born. I don’t think she even
considered that. I’ll tell you, it was a pretty devastating thing for a child
to hear.”

“I can imagine. How terrible for
you,
and tragic for her.”

“She had no family, and neither did father. It’s hard to
believe these days, but I don’t even have any pictures of him except one. She
said she burned them all after he died because she was so angry with him for
‘getting himself killed by being stupid’ as she put it.”

“Surely, she didn’t destroy her wedding pictures,” Angie
said, knowing what a huge part of wedding planning the photo shoots would be.

“She and my father eloped, so there weren’t any special
wedding photos. Keep in mind that well before any doctor diagnosed her, my
mother was ‘not quite right’ in the head. She kept one photo of my father, and
she didn’t show it to me until years later. I have to say, he was every bit as
handsome as she claimed him to be. If you’re interested, I’ll show you.”

“Well…sure,” Angie said. She wasn’t particularly interested,
but remembering Bill Fleming’s angry reaction when she implied she didn’t care
to hear about him, she didn’t want to insult Enid.

Enid went into another room and soon came out with a framed
photo and handed it to Angie.

Angie tried to keep her expression bland as she stared at
the photo. Smiling back at her was Eric Fleming. Angie looked more carefully at
Enid now. Her early suspicions about Carol Steed’s relationship with her
tenant—at least while he was single—as well as the reason Carol suddenly found
herself pregnant after thirteen years of marriage, were confirmed. Clearly,
Enid had never seen Eric Fleming’s photo, and Angie wasn’t about to be the one
to tell her. “So this is your father, Edward Steed?” Angie asked.

“That’s right,” Enid said.

“He was very handsome,” she said, handing the photo back.
“And I do see the family resemblance. Thank you for showing me.”

“It’s all I have of him,” Enid said, running her finger
along the edge of the frame to remove dust. “People who have families are very
lucky. That’s why my husband and I have four children. They’re grown up now,
and are starting to have children of their own. We have three grandchildren so
far and hope for many more. It’s a blessing to me. I often think if my mother
weren’t so alone, she wouldn’t have had these mental problems. Now, she can’t
even enjoy the family she has.”