To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (16 page)

As they talked, she caught a view of a tall man walking along the sidewalk toward the restaurant. “Oh! That’s my boyfriend now,” she said. She picked up her camcorder, set the viewer to enlarge the picture. She began filming him as he approached.

“You’re filming your friend?” Nick asked with amusement.

“Won’t he be surprised?” she said.

“I’m sure he—”

“Oh, my God!” she cried.

“What?”

She stood up, still looking through the viewer. “Help! Somebody! He’s being attacked!”

“Attacked?” Nick stood as well and looked out the window. The other customers put down their forks and knives and stared at Angie.

“He’s fighting with some guy!” she yelled. “Call the police! Waiter! Stop them!”

“I’ll call nine-one-one,” the waiter said, but instead, he rushed to the window with other customers. No one stepped out the door.

Angie looked up, as if in a daze, to see the people crowded around the window. She grabbed her tote bag, a heavy lethal weapon in itself, and ran outside, determined to swing it at the attacker and send him flying away from Paavo.

As soon as she reached the sidewalk, the attacker fled. Paavo was standing a bit wobbly, his hand pressing his mouth as if to make sure his teeth were all still there.

She grabbed his arm. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” he said.

“There’s some blood on your lip,” she said. “Let’s get you inside the restaurant.”

Inside, she led him into the women’s room. He hesitated, but she dragged him in and locked the door. She drenched a paper towel with water and dabbed the blood from his lip and chin.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he mumbled.

“Did he try to rob you?” She angled his head and patted cold water on his cheekbone where a weal was already building.

“No.”

“Did you recognize him at all?” Angie asked, back at his lip.

“Uh-uh.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve got his picture on tape. I was filming you walking toward the restaurant when he attacked.”

He pulled the towel out of her hand. “You didn’t stop filming?”

“I was too stunned to do anything. I’d set the focus to blow up the picture a lot and I could see better looking though the lens than not. That was why I kept using it.”

He looked at her strangely.

“Do you feel up to eating dinner? Or do you just want to go home?”

“Home.”

As she led the way to the table to pay the bill, she saw that Nick and his place setting were gone. The waiter was clearing his spot, and setting it again for Paavo until Angie told him they weren’t staying. “The elderly gentleman took care of your bill, ma’am,” the waiter informed her. “He said to tell you he had a very nice time, and he was sure you’d want to be alone with your young man.”

Angie was strangely touched by the message, and the man’s generosity. “How very kind. I’d like to thank him. Does he come here often?”

The waiter shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before.”

Paavo drove them back to the bungalow in Angie’s car, taking a circular route to be sure they weren’t being followed. After arriving, Angie immediately set up the camcorder with the VCR and she and Paavo sat on the sofa to watch the tape over the television screen. Immediately Angie saw that Paavo hadn’t been attacked at all, but the stranger had said something to him and tried to leave. Paavo decided to stop him. That was when the fight broke out.

The lighting was poor, but as the two men struggled, they moved near a storefront that was lit up and the other man’s face became clearer. He was enormous, with the physique of a bodybuilder. Finally he pushed Paavo hard and, half stumbling, ran away.

Paavo didn’t follow.

“What did he say to you?” Angie asked.

“‘Back off and you won’t get killed.’ I wanted him to explain himself, but he was feeling shy.”

“Hmm. I might be imagining things, but I think I’ve seen him before.” She rewound and played the fight again. “Muscles like that don’t show up every day, especially not in this city. They’re quite remarkable.”

“You’ve established you like his looks; now, where did you see him?”

“Actually, bubbly muscles like that don’t do it for me. I prefer—”

“Angie.”

“I’ve got an idea.” She sprang off the sofa to her stack of camcorder tapes. “Let’s take a look at some of these restaurant shots.” Setting up the tapes, she fast-forwarded through them until she reached the Basque restaurant she’d gone to with her sister. Seated alone at a table was Paavo’s studly friend. “Voilà!”

“Damn, I don’t get it.” Paavo leaned back, arms folded, and glared at the TV. “He had to know you were taking pictures. Why didn’t he care? Is it all a game with him, or what?”

“How did he find us tonight? That’s what I want to know,” Angie said, sitting on the floor and restacking her tapes in chronological order.

“He must be following you,” Paavo surmised. “It’s the only explanation. He could have been waiting to go into the restaurant, or watching you from the sidewalk—you’d been seated at the window the whole time, right?”

“That could be,” she said thoughtfully.

Paavo fingered his swollen lip where his teeth had hit and caused the bleeding. It made him mad all over again. “I’ll take your tape to the Hall tomorrow and run a search on Jesse The Body. You’d better stay put in the house. Order out if you don’t want to cook, but keep away from restaurants.”

“Stay home? No way!” Angie was appalled. “I
should
go out. Now that I know I’m being followed, I’ll be extra alert. If the guy shows up again, I’ll hurry to a safe place and call you. Then you can arrest him and find out what’s going on.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Paavo said.

“But if I stay home, I won’t be able to learn things the way I did yesterday with Sawyer…and again today.”

“Uh-oh,” he murmured. “What now?”

“It’s what I’d hoped to discuss with you at the restaurant.” She excitedly joined him again on the sofa. “Today I visited Irene Billot.”

“Who?”

“She was a good friend of your mother’s.”

He looked at her as if he didn’t believe her. Since he hadn’t eaten dinner, as she told him about finding Irene—leaving out the bars and restaurants—and then everything she’d learned during her visit, they moved into the kitchen where she put on some lentil soup and he made himself a ham and cheese sandwich.

Paavo was silent for a long while after Angie completed the story. “Jesus,” he said finally. “Spying on her own husband. It’s crazy.”

“But it sounds like she thought she was protecting him,” Angie countered.

“Are you sure you could trust this Irene? I don’t remember any of that stuff coming out in Mika’s investigation. I remember seeing her interviewed, but that’s it.”

“Why would she lie now? It’s more likely she lied thirty years ago—the FBI and the Russian Mafia? Heck, I’d lie, too.”

“Damn it!” Paavo slammed down the knife he had used to cut the sandwich in half, and faced her. “That’s exactly what this is all about. Lies. Thirty years worth of lies! I’m fed up with the lies and the people making them. Damn them all!”

“Paavo!” She was shocked. He almost never raised his voice.

“Hell, Angie. Think about it. You’re caught up in
this, too. You’re in danger and can’t even go to your own apartment because years ago, people didn’t have the balls to level with me. What does that make them? Or me?”

“It’s not your fault,” she began.

“I’m not talking fault. I’m talking deeper. Who
are
these people? A mother who lies to her husband? A father who goes off on some idealistic mission and gets himself killed?”

She didn’t speak, giving him the chance to open up, to vent all he’d been holding in since this began.

“I was better off not knowing,” he said grimly. “I don’t want to know about them, not like this! I don’t want you to be a part of it. And most of all, I wish they hadn’t been so goddamn stupid!”

She reached for his hand, but he got up and walked into the living room. She shut off the gas beneath the soup, put his sandwich on a plate, and followed.

“You don’t mean any of that,” she said.

“I sure as hell do!” He paced. “But I’m not giving up. I’ll find out the truth now that I’ve come this far. It’ll tell me who I am.”

“What they were has nothing to do with you,” she cried, following him back and forth across the living room, the plate still in her hands.

“It has everything to do with me!”

“No. You’re wrong!”

“You just don’t get it,” he yelled, facing her. “You, with a city filled with Amalfis—more cousins than you can count—cannot begin to understand what it means to have no one. No one, Angie. I can’t look around and see anyone else with the same features, the same blood. No one with the same background that made me who I am and what I believe. I don’t
know
who I am. It’s all buried. And now that I’m trying to dig beneath it, it keeps getting worse.”

“You’re who
you
created,” she cried. “And you did a damned fine job, Inspector.”

His voice turned as cold as she’d ever heard it. “Don’t patronize me, Angie. That’s one thing I will not tolerate.”

“I’m not patronizing you!” She waved an arm in frustration. “I’m trying to tell you that whatever turns up about your parents, your past, doesn’t matter as far as who you are!”

“It does to me. Can’t you see that? How can you not understand something so simple, so basic?”

“Oh, I understand, all right. I understand this is an excuse of yours. You skitter away like a feral cat—”

“A
cat
?”

“Whenever I try to talk to you about our future—about getting married!”

He looked like he couldn’t believe his ears. “What does getting married have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with how you’re feeling about yourself. About us! I love you. I don’t give a damn about your ancestors. I want to marry you, not them.”

His mood was too ugly to listen. “You’re obsessed with the subject.”

“Obsessed!” The word exploded. “I’m trying to tell you how I feel, to let you know I see that you’re hurting, and I understand.”

“The only thing you understand is a white dress and wedding veil.”

She was literally hopping mad. “You arrogant jackass!”

“My, my. From cat to jackass. Sounds like I’m moving up on the food chain.” He folded his arms, looking so smug she picked up half his sandwich
and threw it at him. He ducked and it sailed past him to land with a splat on the television screen.

“Hah!” he shouted in triumph just as the second half hit him square on the chin. The sandwich opened up as it flew, and mayonnaise and mustard caused the bread slices to stick a moment before dropping to the floor.

Realizing what she’d just done, Angie covered her mouth as he slowly wiped his face. He looked at his greasy hand, then at her.

She backed up.

He stepped toward her.

She took another step backward. “Now, Paavo.”

Suddenly his eyes filled with mirth and, to her surprise, he began to laugh.

And so did she.

Jane Platt awoke with a start. A strong, icy cold hand covered her mouth and nose, smothering her. The child’s eyes flew open to see a woman’s face looming in front of her.

“Stop struggling!” the woman hissed, pressing Jane’s head farther down into the pillow. “Stop struggling and I’ll remove my hand. Will you do that?”

Jane tried to nod as tears rolled down her cheeks. She wanted her grandpa. If he were still alive, this woman wouldn’t be here scaring her. No one would ever scare her.

The woman eased back a little, and when Jane didn’t call out or try to get away, she sat on the edge of the bed.

The bedroom window was wide open, and Jane realized that was how the woman got into her room. She tried hard to stop crying, but it wasn’t easy. The foster family she’d been sent to wouldn’t like it if they found out that someone broke into the
house because of her. They wouldn’t want her anymore, she feared, just as her aunt didn’t want her.

“Now, Jane,” the woman said in a harsh whisper, “we’re going to talk about your grandfather, and a cameo brooch. Do you know what a cameo is, Jane?”

Paavo walked into the crime lab with Angie’s videotape first thing in the morning, and talked to his friend Ray Faldo. They ran the video until they found a clear shot of the man Paavo had fought with, froze the frame, and made a print. While Paavo phoned contacts in the FBI and Interpol—he had worked with one of their agents not long ago—and transmitted copies of the photo to them, Faldo put the suspect’s characteristics into the database and set up a photo lineup. They found no hits in the state or city mug shots.

The homicide book on Mika’s murder was still on Paavo’s desk, and he looked up interviews with Irene Billot. The woman had given the homicide inspectors no information beyond being a neighbor and recognizing the family if she passed them on the street. She wasn’t mentioned at all in the investigation on Cecily’s auto accident, conducted mostly by a different police force due to the jurisdiction of her death.

On a hunch, he decided to see what, if anything, the S.F.P.D. had on Irene Billot. The information that turned up surprised him.

Records of her calls to the Mission Station about Cecily existed—dire warnings, conspiracy theories, fears for her own life—contact after contact, all dismissed as a troubled woman who couldn’t cope with her friend’s death. The beat cops who talked to Irene weren’t given access to the background of Cecily’s disappearance. They were simply told her car had plunged off a cliff into the Pacific. Faced with Irene’s weird ravings, they half expected her to announce aliens had abducted Cecily. Irene’s own words didn’t help her case any, and Paavo couldn’t reconcile the difference between the alarming, shrill woman the police reported and the calm, collected woman Angie told him about.

He had just finished reading the reports on Mrs. Billot when Interpol contacted him. They had a photo match on Mr. Muscle and faxed him the information.

Leonid Stavrogin: Russian Mafia enforcer. Righthand man to the leader of the West Coast Mafia, known only as Koba, the Russian Robin Hood “little people’s protector” figure the Gang Task Force inspector told him about.

Stavrogin, despite his physical strength, wasn’t a man who gave out verbal warnings. He shot people. Why should a man like that warn Paavo?

More distressing than his remark, though, was the knowledge that he’d been watching Angie, and following her.

Angie was a target.

Paavo had to find out why.

Angie and Paavo stood in front of the Diamond Street apartment where Irene Billot lived.

They rang the bell, and when there was no answer, knocked. The door next to Irene’s opened and a man came out. He had a pencil-thin mustache
and slick, shoe-polish-black hair. “She isn’t home,” he said.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Angie asked. “I’m a friend.”

“Try April,” he announced, looking rather pleased with himself.

“April?” Angie was shocked. “Where has she gone?”

“Arizona. She always goes down there for the winter. Likes the sun, hates the rain.”

Angie and Paavo glanced at each other.

“Wasn’t she here yesterday?” Paavo asked.

“Yesterday?” The man chuckled. “My goodness, no. I’ve been taking care of the place for her, watering her plants and all. She’s been gone a month already.”

“Were you home yesterday?” Angie asked, trying to get to the bottom of this.

“Yes…except for while I was at racquetball.”

“When was that?”

“In the afternoon. I go every Tuesday and Thursday.”

“You are talking about Irene Billot, right?” Paavo asked. “Sixties, in a wheelchair.”

Now it was the neighbor’s turn to appear shocked. “Well…yes and no. I am talking about Irene Billot. She is sixty-something, but she’s not in any wheelchair. She’s the reason I began exercising—to be in half as good a shape as she is.”

“Oh, dear,” Angie murmured.

“Has she ever mentioned an old friend named Cecily?” Paavo asked.

The man’s eyebrows rose. “As a matter of fact, she has. Several times. Cecily was the reason she moved here. She said she had to get away from her old place because it wasn’t safe. Someone killed her friend, and as much as she tried to tell the police
about it, they wouldn’t listen. As far as she was concerned, they proved their incompetency, and made it clear she would have to take care of herself, because no one else would do it. She took lessons in self-defense, even”—he shuddered—“learned to use a gun.”

“Did she say who she was afraid of?”

“It sounded like just about everybody.”

Angie felt as if she were walking on air. She was in the television studios of Bay TV. This was her milieu, she decided. Television. It was what she’d been born for, lived for. After all, she was a child of the age of television. She simply had to find herself a job here and all would be well with the career part of her life—she just knew it.

In a way, she was glad they hadn’t been able to talk with Irene that afternoon. Paavo returned to work and she didn’t have to tell him about the call she’d received that morning from
BayLife Today
. Their scheduled guest canceled and they needed an immediate replacement. Was she available? Her heart was in her mouth, but she managed to croak out, “
Yes!
”

It wasn’t a prime-time news show, and it wasn’t a major syndicated program. Instead, it was an area “events” show on a local cable channel. As cousin Richie would say, “Hey, a start is a start.”

Bended-knee begging and a hefty tip got her an immediate appointment at her hairdresser’s, plus a manicurist. Careful not to destroy her hair, she rushed from the beauty parlor to Sissy’s of Maiden Lane for a new suit. A peppermint-pink Anne Klein looked properly Diane Sawyerish.

She signed in at the guard station on the ground floor and a casually dressed fellow with dreadlocks greeted her and silently led her up to the studio.

“Which way is makeup?” she asked.

He looked confused. “The women’s room is down that hall.”

She glanced where he pointed. “Oh?”

“The studio’s in there.” He gestured toward double swinging doors at the end of a wide hallway filled with computer terminals. No one sat at any of them, though.

The dreadlocks fellow disappeared. Angie gaily bustled into the studio and promptly tripped over a maze of cables on the floor. To avoid stumbling again, she minced toward the brightly lit set.

A woman with hair shorter than Paavo’s, wearing a beige smock tied around her much like a butcher’s apron, ran up to her. “Miss Amalfi?”

“Oh!” She put her hand to her chest. “You recognize me!”

The woman looked at her strangely. “Well…you
are
the only guest on the show tonight. I’ll take your restaurant-review tapes to the producer. You can sit over there. You’ve got a half hour before the live show. Any questions?”

Angie looked at the chair the woman pointed at. It was in a dark corner. “Aren’t we going to rehearse?”

“Rehearse? No. We like spontaneity.”

“Aren’t we at least going to run through my videotape?”

“No need. You know what’s on it. You tell us when to run it, and we will. Then you explain to the audience what we’re seeing. It’s simple.” The woman smiled.

Angie had her doubts about how simple it would be. The first inklings of panic began to tickle her. “Where’s makeup?”

“Makeup? You’re fine.” She dashed off and left Angie clutching her makeup case.

She always wore makeup, and wore it with care so that it didn’t look like she had it plastered to her face. TV makeup was different, or should have been. She thought it was supposed to look plastered so that when the lights washed out the color, she would look alive rather than ghostly pale.

In the women’s room, she darkened her makeup, then returned to the studio to sit and wait. She practiced her opening lines—a clever, witty little speech about who she was and what her video restaurant reviews were all about. She wished she could talk someone into a teensy-tiny rehearsal.

The technicians were running about shouting incomprehensible jargon at one another, and the woman who took her tapes was nowhere to be seen.

Carol Metcalf, the star of
BayLife Today
, suddenly appeared and stepped onto the set, the lights bright on her face. One instant, people dashed in frenzy, and then the next, all fell silent. The program began.

Angie could scarcely breathe. Hers was the third segment. She sat, without moving a single muscle, through the endless television ramblings and bad jokes until she heard the announcer say, “Next, San Francisco’s own restaurant reviewer, Angelina Amalfi, will be here to present a
video
restaurant review. We’ll see for ourselves the restaurant Angie went to, and hear what she has to say about it! Stay tuned!”

Her legs wobbled as she approached the set and sat beside the star. Carol turned to her. “Now, remember, keep your answers short, and be as outrageous as you wish.”

“What?” Angie looked at her blankly.

“No speeches,” Carol ordered. “And be controversial.”

Angie nodded, taking deep breaths. The opening she’d prepared was a bit lengthy, but surely she
could introduce herself. No one would object. Nevertheless, she grew so nervous, she was sure perspiration glistened on her face. She remembered a scene from an old movie in which a guy had spent his entire career thinking he could be a news anchor on TV. When he finally got his chance, he sweat so much, viewers began to call the station thinking he was having a heart attack. She prayed she wouldn’t be like that.

When a production assistant called out, “Five seconds!” her mind went absolutely blank. Her only coherent thought was
Get me out of here!

She was hyperventilating when Carol Metcalf began speaking into the camera. “Angelina Amalfi is, herself, a gourmet cook and frequent restaurant reviewer for
Haute Cuisine
magazine, published here in the Bay Area. Angie, which restaurant did you go to?”

“Thank you, Carol,” she said. Her mouth felt like it was filled with uncooked Quaker Oats. “I—” Her voice came out in a high squeak and she just hoped it would drop an octave. Or two. She began her introduction. “I’m here to give a video restaurant review. I—”

“Yes!” Carol interrupted. “I’ve never seen one before. So you went to an interesting restaurant, I take it?”

“I did.” Her eyes caught the camera and all she could think of was all the people in the Bay Area watching her at that very moment. She tried to return to the introduction she’d practiced. “Video restaurant reviews are a new concept.”

Carol frowned.

Angie hurried on. “They’re something I just dreamed up for this very program. For you. And for your viewer…viewers.” She was dying inside. She
wished she could die on the outside; then at least she’d get sympathy instead of being laughed at.

“How nice, Angie.” The woman’s jaw was tight. “
Where
did you go?”

Panic set in as she noticed that the veins on Carol Metcalf’s neck were beginning to protrude. She threw away her set speech, but nothing filled what now felt like a huge, empty gap where clever bon mots and turns of phrase should have been. “I went to a restaurant that is called”—
Oh, God, what, what, what?
—“Pisces. It is a zodiac that features seafood.” She took a deep breath. Time for the videotape. “Here are some scenes from it.”
I hope
.

Like magic, her video began to roll.

She tried to think of what Carol had said. Short answers. Controversial. “See how pretty it is. See the waiter. See the customers. See them eat.”

Carol Metcalf kicked her.

She was ready to cry.

“Did you like the restaurant, Angie?” Carol asked.

“Yes. I liked it very much. This is my waiter now. He is bringing me steamed lobster with a saffron-tomato broth.” Angie racked her brain for something interesting and controversial to say. She definitely wanted to make it big on TV, and she had to make up for her blown introduction. The camera stared at her. “The lobster was a little mushy and a little stronger than lobster should be. Sounds disgusting, doesn’t it? And…” Her voice rose. “There was too much thyme in the broth. It overwhelmed the saffron. Usually there’s not enough thyme for anything…ha, ha. Get it? Time…”
Oh, Lord!

Carol looked stricken. “How was the dessert?”

“I had a hazelnut torte à la mode.”
Controversial! Be controversial!
“It was, um, um, uh, a little stale. A
little like chalk. Here is my waiter bringing me my dessert.” He slammed it onto the table—the camcorder had irritated him, Angie recalled—and the ice cream slid from the torte and off the plate onto the tablecloth. He scooped it up, stormed away, and soon was seen bringing her another plate. He made faces at the camera, then left.

“He must have thought this was a
Candid Camera
revival, ha, ha!”

Carol gave her a long, withering stare, then signaled the camera to focus on her. “And now, for our weather report. Here for an
expanded
report is our meteorologist…”

Angie stopped listening. All she wanted to do was curl up and die. Thank God she hadn’t told Paavo she was going to be on TV tonight. Unfortunately, she did tell her parents, her four sisters, several girlfriends, a number of cousins, the grocer, her hairdresser, the woman who did her nails, and some guy selling newspapers on the corner. When would she ever learn to keep her mouth shut?