The Da Vinci Cook (28 page)

When he finally reached the top of the hill, he couldn’t see the van. He continued along Hyde. As he crossed Lombard, he looked at the lineup of cars going down the so-called “crookedest street in the world.” It was one-way with no room to pass, and cars could go no faster than the slowest car ahead of them. Halfway down was the van.

Paavo sped around the block, careening from Hyde to Leavenworth and back to Lombard. Ferguson must have had a slow, scared driver in front of him because he’d gotten to the intersection only seconds before Paavo. Ferguson hurtled across Leavenworth and continued down Lombard to North Beach.

It was an area filled day and night with people and traffic. Between high, steep hills, often slippery from cable car tracks, not to mention the cable cars themselves, double-parked cars and delivery trucks, tourists who had no idea how to drive in San Francisco, and Muni bus drivers who were probably the scariest of all, it wasn’t a good area for a car chase.

Ferguson was probably hoping Paavo would back off.

He didn’t. At stake were Angie’s and her sister’s life and safety.

He went down Columbus Avenue, past Angie’s favorite little restaurant, The Wings of An Angel, and past Angie’s church, St. Peter and Paul’s. Ferguson turned onto Stockton Street and drove past Angie’s favorite pastry shop, Victoria’s. Paavo wondered if everything in the city was going to remind him of Angie before long. And if so, that was okay.

They zigzagged their way through North Beach without incident. Things got worse when Ferguson neared Chinatown, which was always filled with a crush of people. Someone opened a car door without looking and Ferguson knocked it off. He kept going.

The car owner started to get out as Paavo approached, but smartly nosedived right back into his car.

In Chinatown things went from bad to worse. Two tiny, elderly Chinese women in long black dresses, each carrying two shopping bags filled with groceries, were slowly crossing an intersection when the light changed. Ferguson had to stomp on the brakes, hand on the horn, trying to get them to hurry. The women began to beat his car with bok choy, and yelled at him for being so inconsiderate of his elders.

Somehow, he got past them. As Paavo raced by, the old women were still standing in the street, shaking their fists. Now they added Corvette drivers to their harangue.

Paavo had a sudden macabre image of Angie and her sisters as little old ladies, doing much the same thing. The thought was at once humorous and a little scary, but also made his insides twist with worry and love for her. He shook it away to concentrate.

Ferguson must have realized his mistake by then because he had nowhere to go. To the east was Grant Avenue, which was impossible to cross in less than two lights. To the south was the downtown, a traffic nightmare of one-way streets, blocked streets, buses and trolley cars with center islands to load and unload passengers. Paavo approached from the north. The remaining direction was westward, to Nob Hill.

Ferguson’s van strained to go up Sacramento Street, another brutally steep street for any heavy vehicle to climb. Halfway up the block was a narrow side street, and he turned into it, hoping to pick up speed.

Paavo was right on his tail by this time, and pulled into the side street behind him. At the same time, the police car had gone up the parallel street and stopped at the mouth of the side street, blocking it.

Ferguson went up on the sidewalk and jumped out of the driver’s side. His wife sprang from the passenger side. Both began to run.

The wife was picked up immediately by one of the officers as she attempted, unsuccessfully, to go over the cyclone fence that surrounded a small neighborhood playground.

Ferguson ran in Paavo’s direction, then broke toward Yosh, perhaps thinking that a fairly large, rather rotund Japanese-American was no match for him. He was wrong. Yosh easily caught him and flattened him against the sidewalk.

Paavo pulled the car keys from the ignition. Ferguson had leaped out so fast, he’d left the car running. Paavo unlocked the door to the storage area.

Inside, bound and trussed, was a very scared-looking Charles Arthur Swenson.

Angie and Cat didn’t wake up until it was dark out. They scraped together their last few euros and went to a deli for dinner. Foccaccia came in large sheets with a variety of toppings, much like American style pizzas. They selected a sausage-mushroom mixture. The shop owner cut them each a long rectangular piece, warmed it, folded it in half, and wrapped one end in a paper holder. They ate it like a sandwich. It was delicious.

For water, they drank from a public fountain, as did many Romans. Clean, cold water from mountain springs was found all over Rome in fountains called
il nasone
because the outlet pipe was shaped like a nose.

Next they found a public telephone.

“Angie!” The relief in Paavo’s voice pulsated across the wires. “God, but you worried me! Where are you?”

“Worried? How did you find out about the men?”

“What men?” he asked, tension building.

“The ones who broke into Cousin Giulio’s. I didn’t even tell you about Cousin Giulio, did I? Anyway, I gave them a dog chain and they took it and ran. We’re fine. Although they may be back, once they discover what they’ve got.”

“You’re kidding me,” Paavo said, seemingly following her rambling explanation.

“Actually, Paavo, when a person’s been through all I have the past few days, it sort of takes away one’s sense of humor.”

Paavo apologized, and then let her know that Charles had just been rescued. A medic was checking him over at that moment.

Angie broke off to quickly tell Cat.

“Angie, listen carefully,” Paavo said, and she knew a pronouncement was coming. “The dead man is Marcello.”

“No. We’ve been through that,” Angie said dismissively. “Marcello is here. We’ve spoken with him.”

“Wrong. You’ve been talking to Rocco! He’s pretended to be Marcello for some years. When the real Marcello came back, it appears Rocco may be the one who killed him. The man you’ve been talking to—the one you say you like—is very likely a murderer.” He let the words sink in before adding, “Come home!”

“Wait until I tell Cat,” Angie said, horrified. “We’ll be home soon.” Relief coursed through her at the thought.

“You’re telling the truth this time?” he asked.

“Absolutely! We’re leaving for the airport right away.”

She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “I’ll be right here waiting.”

Chapter 33

Angie and Cat couldn’t leave the country without their passports, and Bruno had locked their passports in a safe at Da Vinci’s.

It was a shock to Cat to learn that Marcello was dead, and that all this time Rocco had convinced her he was his brother. They wondered how much Bruno knew about the brothers, and how much he was in on. They didn’t want to alert Bruno to their plans if they could help it, since he might tell Rocco.

“I always thought there was something fishy about Marcello,” Cat said. “Now I know why.”

“Now you tell me!” Angie didn’t want to discuss it.

They waited until the restaurant was closed for the night. Using their key, they snuck inside, locked the doors, and put boxes in front of them. They searched high and low for the combination to the safe, hoping Bruno had written it down and hidden it somewhere in the office.

Angie found numbers, all right. Lots of them in a special slide-out compartment under Bruno’s desk. She now had a good idea why so many customers showed up even if they weren’t having dinner, why so many wanted to shake Bruno’s hand, and why he never let anyone else compute tabs or handle meal payments.

None of those numbers, however, opened the safe.

Finally, they gave up and phoned Cosimo, waking him.

He didn’t know the combination or where to find it. They asked him not to tell Bruno or Luigi about their call and to go back to sleep. He sounded asleep before he ever hung up.

They knew if they phoned Bruno, he might contact Rocco, so they decided to wait until Bruno arrived at work the next day. Then they would get their passports and immediately make a run for the airport, hoping that with all the security in place, Rocco couldn’t try anything.

Assuming that the people after the chain would think they were long gone from Da Vinci’s, they decided to remain right where they were.

The restaurant was large, dark, and eerie late at night. Angie found a rolling pin and Cat an iron frying pan, and they went up to the bedroom to wait out the hours.

The bed was inviting, and even the old pajamas were more comfortable than the grubby clothes they were wearing. Morning would come more quickly if they could at least doze a bit.

They got into bed, lights out.

“I’ll be so glad to get home,” Cat said into the darkness.

“Me, too,” Angie said. Only a sliver of light from a street lamp reached the window. “Are you as shocked as I am that Marcello is really Rocco?”

“You know why I should have picked up on it?” Cat put her hands beneath her head, elbows out. “Because I just never cared for him. The old ‘zing’ I felt as a kid around Marcello was never there. You’d have thought some spark would have continued, wouldn’t you?”

Angie’s thoughts turned to Charles, along with relief that he was safe. “Do you think Charles might be involved in any way?”

“Poor Charles.” Cat shut her eyes a moment. “I feel so bad about him. I’m sure he’s completely innocent.”

“Let’s think about this,” Angie said. “You were set up when Rocco called Meredith Woring to accuse you of theft. A handkerchief with your initials is left at the crime scene to further implicate you. Then Rocco takes the chain and runs off with it.”

Cat thought about it. “The timing is all off. Rocco—I should call him ‘the phony Marcello’—told people he was leaving San Francisco on Monday, but then he stayed there until Tuesday, when the real Marcello showed up and Rocco killed him. Why would he do that?”

“I have no idea. It makes no sense.” Angie rolled onto her back and held her head.

Cat yawned. “As long as I’m not implicated, I don’t care. I just want to go home. Stay on your side, Angie. I’m going to sleep.” She rolled over, her back to her sister.

“One good thing, at least, has come out of this visit to Rome,” Angie said. “It’s brought home to me the importance of tradition, of my roots. I’ve actually figured out where I want my wedding.”

“Miracles do happen!” Cat looked over her shoulder at her. “Where?”

Angie sat up. “I know you’re going to laugh after all my fussing about something special, but I want to have it in the church where Mamma and Papa got married—St. Peter and Paul’s in North Beach. It’s a beautiful church, and I can’t think of a better place to begin my own married life.”

“And it can hold an enormous number of people,” Cat said in approval, “so that won’t be a problem. My my, after all this, you decide on a traditional wedding! Frankly, I think you’ll be happiest with that. If you went with trendy, a lot of trendy things simply end up old and dated before long, whereas traditional always looks good.”

Angie was thrilled to hear Cat affirm what she’d suspected. “Great! Now I’ve just got to figure out where I want my reception.”

Cat sat up as well, plumping a pillow behind her back. “It’ll be so huge, too bad the
Queen Mary
isn’t for rent.”

“A ship!” Angie clapped with delight. “We could rent a ship and sail from Fisherman’s Wharf down to Monterey or Carmel. Paavo and I could get off there to get on a plane and go on our honeymoon—maybe somewhere here in Italy. The guests can sail back to the city without us. What fun!”

“Don’t you think that’s a little extravagant, even for you?”

“You think?”

“Yes!”

“As I recall, your wedding was extravagant,” Angie pointed out. “And anything but traditional.”

“Teal and purple were the big colors that year. Being in design, I wanted to go with whatever was chi-chi. Big mistake. And no one needs a convention center for a reception. I steer my clients away from doing the same thing. Back when I had interior design clients, that is.”

Angie noticed her poignant tone. “Do you miss it?”

“I do. Selling houses is hard work, takes a lot of knowledge, creativity, time, and energy, but most of the time I feel more like a lawyer or a kindergarten teacher than anything. I try to suggest things for people to do to make their homes more attractive to buyers, but the bottom line is money. Is it worth the expense, time, and trouble? If not, forget it. It’s not like sitting down with clients who love their homes and want to make them as beautiful and livable as possible. I guess I’ve gone from one extreme of home owner to the other. It’s a bit of a shock.”

“What would Charles say if you went back to design?”

A long time passed before Cat answered. “What does he ever say? Whatever I want, he goes along with. Sometimes, Angie . . . ” She paused. “Sometimes, I don’t think he cares about me anymore.”

“That’s not true!” Angie said. “He sits quietly in corners, true, but I’ve seen how he looks at you. And he’s always been quiet.”