Cooking Spirits: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries) Read online

  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

  JOANNE PENCE

  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

  A Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  From the Kitchen of Angelina Amalfi

  About the Author

  The Angie Amalfi Mysteries

  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.

  Stan also ate one, and wandered off to the kitchen as he licked the chocolate off his fingers.

  “This isn’t going the way I want, Stan,” Angie called. “What am I going to do?”

  “Tell you what.” Stan’s voice sounded muffled, his head inside the refrigerator as he perused the left-overs. He always said he could get better food eating Angie’s leftovers than at some of the most expensive restaurants in town. “Why don’t I help you cook dinner tonight? After we eat, you’ll feel a lot better, I’m sure.”

  Despite his words, Stan couldn’t cook. “Go ahead and eat whatever you’d like, Stan. Paavo’s coming over later, and we’re going out to dinner.” She took another chocolate, this one a caramel chew, as she thought about her handsome fiancé. She loved everything about his looks from his thick, dark brown hair, to his high forehead, penetrating light blue eyes, high cheekbones, and aquiline nose with a small jog in the middle where it had been broken more than once. He was broad-shouldered, his body long and lean, and everything about him exuded power and, to her, more sexiness than any one man should possess.

  The whirring of her microwave pulled her from her daydreams.

  She reached for a third chocolate, a pecan butter cream, her favorite. Before this wedding was over, she will have learned what was inside each chocolate just by looking at the swirls on top. “This is all making me so nervous, I’m putting on weight. I haven’t even settled on my bridesmaids yet. Do you know how many sisters and cousins I have? And they all expect to be part of the wedding. At the same time, Paavo keeps saying he wants a small wedding. You know how much he hates crowds. It’s a nightmare.”

  “It’ll all work out.” Stan put a placemat on the dining room table and in another minute carried a plate with two pieces of Chicken Kiev.

  “You can make yourself a salad or some broccoli as a side,” Angie suggested.

  “No, no. This is fine. I wouldn’t want to overdo it.” He cut into a piece and hot, garlicky butter oozed onto his plate. One bite and he was in heaven. “I tell you, Angie, if you were marrying me, I’d be home every night for dinner.”

  “I know.” One of the ironies of her relationship with Paavo was that his busy schedule often caused him to work late into the night and miss dinner. At the moment, he had no complicated cases that she knew of, which meant he should have time to help with their wedding plans. “I hope, once we’re married and living together, we’ll share more meals. That reminds me, I’ve got to clear out some of my things so he’ll have room here.”

  “Oh my God!” Stan put down his fork before he’d finished, a remarkable thing for him. “You aren’t saying he’s moving into this apartment, are you?”

  “Of course he is. I can’t fit into his house. It has only one bedroom, one bathroom. Not even a dining room.”

  “Angie, you can’t expect him to live in your father’s apartment building!” Stan said, digging in again with gusto to make up for lost time.

  Angie had already recognized that it wasn't a stellar idea, but she hated hearing Stan say it. “My father might own the building, but we’ve always considered this to be my apartment. I’ll clean out the den and make it Paavo’s ‘man cave.’ He’ll like that.”

  Stan took another bite, savoring the rich flavors as he digested the information. “But if you do that, where will you put your desk and computer and all the books you have that you’ve used to start businesses?”

  “For all the good that’s done me!” Angie interrupted. Now, she was not only tired, but dejected as well. Her inability to create a rewarding career for herself was one of the banes of her life. She had a talent for cooking, but even though she had tried to become a cake baker, candy maker, newspaper food columnist, restaurant reviewer, took part in a radio cooking show and a TV cooking show, and on and on…nothing ever worked out.

  Stan frowned as he savored the last bite of Chicken Kiev. “It’s not going to work, Angie. As a man, I can tell you that Paavo will not be happy here. If I were him, I’d hate living in your apartment. In fact, I’d do everything I could to postpone the wedding just to avoid it. Just wait. He’s going to try to back out of this. First step will be breaking dates with you, and then he’ll start suggesting the wedding be postponed. You’ll see.”

  “Paavo never breaks dates with me…unless he has no choice because of a homicide, which is perfectly understandable,” she said, glaring fiercely. “Fortunately, you’re nothing like Paavo.”

  He sniffed. “No. I tell you exactly what I’m thinking; Paavo doesn't. He doesn't want to upset you so he’ll suffer in silence, growing more and more unhappy every day until, finally, he'll walk out on you!”

  “Nonsense!” she said, but even as she said it, she knew Paavo held things inside if troubled. He would turn quiet and distant instead of blathering and complaining the way she did. When she first met him, she thought he was cold because of that. Quickly, she learned how much he felt—sometimes too much.

  Stan put his plate, fork and knife in the dishwasher. “He’ll deny it, but that doesn’t mean he’ll like being here.”

  Angie fumed. How could he think he knew more about Paavo than she did? And yet, Paavo never actually said he wanted to move into her apartment, just that he agreed she couldn’t fit all her stuff into his little house. “I’m busy, Stan. Why don’t you go home?”

  He poured himself a generous glass of the Beringer petite sirah sitting on the counter. “You can kick me out, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore my advice.” Holding the glass high in the air, he headed out the door. “I’ll bring it back next time.”

  She folded her arms and sat back on the sofa, not sure if she was more irritated at Stan or herself, as she glanced at the half-empty box of chocolates. But she couldn’t stop the question reverberating in her head: What if Stan was right?

  o0o

  Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith walked into Katie Kowalski’s house holding the hand of Katie’s young son, Micky. Katie was the widow of Paavo’s first and long-time partner in Homicide, Matt Kowalski. They had gone through the police academy together and had been best friends.

  After Matt had been killed in the line of duty, Paavo made sure he visited Katie and spent time with Micky at least one Saturday or Sunday afternoon each month, and often two or three times a month. He particularly enjoyed taking Micky to a park, to baseball games, playing sports with him, and doing at least some of the things he thought Matt
might have done with his son if he had lived.

  Katie stood in the living room of the small house to greet them. “Welcome home!” she said. “Micky, why don’t you go wash up and change your clothes! You look like you fell into a pig sty!”

  “Aw, okay. Bye, Uncle Paavo! Thanks for everything!”

  “Bye, Mick! See you soon.”

  Paavo faced Katie. “The field had a few mud-puddles from last night’s rain, and Micky found every one of them. Often on purpose. But I think he’ll be feeling pretty good about himself when he joins that T-ball team next week. If you’d like me to take him, I’ll do my best to get off work on time so I can.”

  Katie didn’t answer right away, but looked at the floor a moment before lifting her gray eyes to his blue ones. “Paavo, I don’t know how to say this. I appreciate all you’ve done for me and Micky, but I’d like you to stay away…for a while, at least. I’ve met someone.”

  His brow furrowed. He had expected this day would come, but not so soon. “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter, except that he’s not a cop. He’s a fine man, and good to Micky, and…” He waited as she struggled to find the right words. “I need to move on with my life. It’s too hard when I see you.”

  She bowed her head and folded her arms tight against her stomach. When she looked up at him again, her words poured out quickly and pain-filled. “When you’re here, I remember too much. I remember Matt too clearly. And you! When Matt was here, the three of us spent a lot of time together, and when he was gone, I thought…” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Katie,” he whispered.

  She shook her head as if to shake off the emotions that gripped her. “I knew there was no chance for me, that you never saw me that way, but I thought if you ever broke up with Angie, that maybe”—she shrugged—“but it’s not meant to be. It never was. Now this man, his name is Daniel, he’s a good man. My head tells me to give him a chance. But my heart—as long as you’re here, I’m stuck in the past. I can’t forget Matt. I can’t forget you! So, I ask you, please give me time. Give me space.”