To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery Read online

  “It’s fine.”

  Angie stepped as Connie held firm and lifted. With a wobbly clatter Angie was atop the garbage can on her knees, and turned to look at Connie. “Connie?”

  “Down here.” She sat on the ground rubbing her hands.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Only if you call being used as a ladder and tumbling on your butt okay.”

  “You’re okay.” Angie stood up on the groaning lid to look in the restaurant’s window.

  “What do you see?” Connie asked, rising to her feet.

  “This is so cool! I’m looking into the kitchen!” Her plan was working.

  “Fantastic!”

  “Unfortunately, there’s a rack in front of this window. It’s loaded with pans and blocks most of the view. I’m going to have to go to the next window to the left. That one should work better.”

  “Come down, then,” Connie urged.

  “Look, this can wasn’t very heavy. Why don’t you just drag another one over here? Then I’ll just step from this can to the next one.”

  “We’re on a hill, Angie. The cans are too unsteady for that.”

  “They’re huge and half-full of garbage. They aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Since when have I become Connie-the-garbage-woman?”

  There were times, Angie knew, when silence was golden.

  Connie wrestled another can into place. Angie gingerly stepped onto it. “Much better.” She raised her camera. “Testing. One, two—oops!” She ducked down.

  “What is it?” Instinctively Connie ducked, too. Her fierce whisper floated up to Angie.

  “Someone’s coming. Shush!”

  Angie slowly raised herself up to peer over the windowsill. The heavyset chef she’d seen earlier stood with his back to the window, chopping chicken. She had to get this on film. She put the camera up to her face, hoping against hope it was working.

  The man’s backside filled the lens. It was not a pretty sight.

  “What are you doing?” Connie tugged faintly at her ankle. “Come down before someone sees you!”

  “Quiet,” Angie whispered back. “I need another can over there.” She pointed to her left.

  “Angie, I don’t think—”

  “Hurry, Connie! This is a great shot!”

  She waited until she heard Connie say, “Okay.” Keeping her eye on the camera, she lifted a foot through the air, then toed the garbage can that Connie had put into place.

  “The can has a little problem…” Connie warned.

  Angie squared her foot on the new can.

  “The lid doesn’t fit very well.”

  As she shifted her weight, the garbage can cover gave way. The part she was standing on plunged downward while the other half soared straight up. Angie dropped like a stone. Connie ducked as the lid became airborne, whizzing by like a B-movie UFO to land with a ringing clatter on the street.

  When Connie looked up again, Angie was gone. She clutched the lip of the can and looked down at Angie sitting in the soupy muck. “Get out of there! Someone might have heard you screech as you dropped.”

  “This is so disgusting!” Angie stood. She wanted to wipe her hands, but she had nowhere to wipe them. Finally she gave up, grabbed the lip of the can, and tried to hoist herself up. The gunk she was standing in and the sides of the can were so greasy she felt like she was trying to climb straight up an oil slick. “I need some help.”

  “Ah, I know what to do.” Connie circled the garbage can to the uphill side. “Lean against the downhill side of the can.”

  Angie grasped the lip opposite Connie. “Why?”

  “Now, duck!” Connie yelled, pushing with all her might. The can began to tip.

  “Noooo!” Angie’s world tilted. As the sidewalk rushed up at her, she bobbed down. Garbage sloshed over her like a great, smelly tidal wave.

  On its side, free from the confines of the other cans, Angie’s had room to roll. And it did.

  A high, slightly gurgling wail filled the night air.

  Connie watched in mute horror as the can bounced down the hill, accelerating with each roll like some great planet spinning madly on its axis. Scraps of garbage whirled out onto the pavement, tracing a trail down the alley.

  Connie ran down the hill after it, waving her arms. “Angie! Stop!”

  The wail grew higher and louder.

  Finally the can smacked into a lamppost and, with a small, dying teeter, came to rest.

  Connie dropped to her knees beside it, afraid to look inside. “Angie?” she squeaked. She gave it a little tap. “Angie? Are you still alive? Can you talk to me?”

  Slowly, painfully, Angie crawled onto the street.

  Suddenly a male laugh erupted, then cut off as quickly as it began, followed by the sound of running footsteps.

  “The nerve of some people,” Angie said, wiping from her face and hair coffee grounds, eggshells, all manner of once-green vegetables, and what looked like inner parts of a crab.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Connie blubbered, wringing her hands.

  “One thing.” Angie sat woefully on the sidewalk. “Next time I ask you to help me…”

  “Yes?”

  “Refuse.”

  Chapter 6

  Monday morning, Paavo sat in Lieutenant Ralph Hollins’s office on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice. Although the room was minuscule, tucked in a corner of the fourth-floor Homicide bureau, the Hall itself was massive, ugly, and overlooked a freeway. It was not your high-class real estate. By comparison, the new city jail built behind it looked like Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome.

  He told Hollins about the break-ins at his and Angie’s homes. “I can’t figure out what they want, what they were looking for, or why they tore up my place after giving Angie’s the kid-glove treatment. It’s like they were pissed off, or irritated that they couldn’t find what they wanted. Whatever it was.”

  Ben Chan finally had found time to check Paavo’s house, but so far had nothing to report. The only good news was that his cat had come home.

  “It sounds weird,” Hollins said. In his fifties, with gray hair and a protruding stomach, he was in charge of Homicide, which gave him a close acquaintance with Rolaids. “Take the time you need and keep me posted. I don’t believe in coincidence either.” An unlit cigar was held firmly between his lips. He couldn’t light it—not with San Francisco’s no-smoking policy—but he could pretend. “Any leads yet on Friday’s Tenderloin murder?”

  “No leads, but I found something interesting,” Paavo said. “The vic had a record. Served time for armed robbery, burglaries, was even accused of some killings, but they were never proven.”

  “Killings? Plural? You talking organized crime?”

  “Not sure. He seems like a loner—a guy who, now and then, got in over his head. We were told his name was Jacob Platt, but it’s really Platnikov. Jakob-with-a-K Platnikov. He was born in Russia, came over here in the sixties. I haven’t heard that there were Russian gangsters in this country back then.”

  Hollins quietly watched cars zip by on the freeway. “These Russian mafias are fairly recent, but there’s always been a criminal element. He could have been part of it. Hell, I’ve heard their black market worked better than the Communist party. That’s why it survived while the party went to hell.”

  “We’re trying to find out what Platnikov was involved in, if anything. Based on something his granddaughter said, he might have been making forgeries of good jewelry. Whoever killed him might have been looking for the good stuff. We found no jewelry—real or fake—in the apartment, so my guess is that they found what they were looking for.”

  Hollins took the cigar from his mouth. “Jewelry? Have you talked to Mayfield about her new case?”

  Rebecca Mayfield…the one Angie called the “little helper bee.” “Not yet. Why?”

  “She’s got a dead jeweler on her hands. A well-known and respected jeweler. The jeweler’s name was Gregor Rosinsky—another Russian.”
/>
  As much as Angie welcomed living with Paavo for a few days, staying at a hotel was extravagant.

  Especially when he walked out and left her alone each morning. There was duty, and then there was suffering from being enjoyment-challenged.

  She was walking a little slowly this morning; the bumps and bruises she’d gotten rolling around in garbage had stiffened over night. She took a couple of Advil, then made an appointment for a locksmith to meet her at her apartment. New, maximum-security locks would make it safe for her and Paavo to simply stay at her place until his new bed was delivered. A couple of days under Sal Amalfi’s roof shouldn’t bother him too much.

  As she approached her apartment building, her nerves jangled, and her mind replayed Paavo’s reaction to the break-ins. He was usually pretty sanguine about things, but this robbery attempt seemed to shake him up. That troubled her.

  When she reached her block, she scrutinized the sidewalks, the doorways, the parked cars. Being this close to home, she’d expected her uneasiness to dissipate, but it didn’t. Driving slowly, she continued past her building. Around the corner, situated with a view of the main entrance to the apartments and the garage, two men sat in a dark blue Mercury. One raised a newspaper higher as she drove by.

  Was it to cover his face?

  What kind of people sat in their cars to read newspapers in a residential neighborhood? She didn’t think she wanted to know.

  As she circled the block, she called Stan on her cell phone.

  “Look out your window,” she said when he answered. “Two men are sitting in a dark blue sedan at the corner. Do you see them? Do you know if they’ve been there long?”

  “Gee, Angie, I don’t make it a habit to sit at my window and ogle parked cars.” She heard him moving about. “I see the car. So what? Where are you?”

  “I’m a couple blocks away. I’m just being a little paranoid, okay? I want to be sure those guys aren’t waiting for me.”

  “A little paranoid? You’ve hung out with that cop too long. This is not normal behavior. I know you had a break-in, but—”

  “Humor me. I’m going to park and walk slowly toward the building. If you see those guys get out of the car, tell me, and I’ll run back to my car and get away.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Why don’t you park in the building’s garage like you always do? It’s secure.”

  “Not secure enough. If anyone is after me, I’m not entering some dark, creepy garage. Now, will you just watch, please?”

  “All right. I’m watching. If I were you, I’d just put more locks on my door.”

  The only open parking space was a half block from her apartment. She took it, then unclipped the keyless-entry remote and left the key in the ignition. She might have to make a fast getaway.

  “You still there, Stan?” she asked as she neared the building.

  “I’m here. I see you. I can’t see the guys in the car, but I see the car.”

  She froze. “What do you mean, you can’t see the guys in the car?”

  “Not from this angle. But if they get out, I’ll see the doors open.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She slowly began walking again. “So far nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  She was just two doors from her building, with each step feeling more self-conscious and foolish for having asked Stan to help.

  “Angie, stop!” Stan’s voice was hushed, urgent.

  Her feet felt glued to the pavement. “What?”

  “I moved to the bedroom to look. The blue car is empty. Of course, it could mean nothing.”

  Or it could mean…She bit her lip, clutching the phone. How paranoid was she? They could be anybody. Two men looking for an apartment to rent, checking the want ads. Or…

  Oh, hell! She could meet the locksmith another day when her nerves weren’t as wound up as a Slinky toy.

  She turned back toward her car.

  “Angie, run!” Stan yelled.

  Aches and bruises forgotten, she didn’t even stop to look back, but hurled herself at her car, jumped inside, and slammed down the door locks. All she could think of was to turn the key, throw the transmission into drive, and stomp on the gas.

  Heart pounding, she glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the backs of the men’s heads as they hurried toward their car.

  Her Ferrari left them in her dust for the moment, but she wasn’t sure how long it would be before they caught up with her.

  “Hello? Hello?” Stan yelled.

  Her hands were too tight on the wheel to pick up the cell phone. She careened wildly down Russian Hill, tearing across level intersections and then feeling the car become airborne as the pavement dropped steeply after each cross street. The jarring as the wheels bounded onto the roadway made her wince, both for her car’s body and her own. She felt like a stunt driver in a Hollywood action film.

  “Angie? Angie? Where are you? Can you hear me?” Stan was sounding desperate.

  She glanced again in the rearview mirror. No dark car followed. With shaking fingers, she lifted the phone from the floor where it had fallen. “I’m here.” She was breathless. “Did you see them follow me?”

  “No. They went back to their car, sat awhile, and then drove off.”

  “Thank God!”

  “I tell you, you made a faster getaway than Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield walked into the detail and sat at her desk.

  Hangdog eyes that always made Paavo slightly uncomfortable peered up at him as he approached her. If it hadn’t been for Angie coming into his life, the two of them probably would have been a bureau item. She was the type of woman who had attracted him in the past, the type everyone who knew him believed was right for him. On some gut level, he knew Rebecca and the bureau matchmakers had a point.

  The way things were, though, this was one bureau romance that was never going to happen. He couldn’t see past Angie—outwardly wrong for him in every way. His colleagues in Homicide knew that, too. For all their apparent incompatibility, he felt more alive when with her than at any other time in his day. He trusted in that.

  Rebecca gave Paavo the files he’d requested on Gregor Rosinsky, the jeweler whose murder she and Never-Take-A-Chance Sutter had been investigating. Their too polite and all too professional discussion denied Rebecca the conversation she really wanted.

  Back at his desk, Paavo began to read.

  Rosinsky was seventy-two when he was killed. He’d been in the U.S. fifty years. After World War II, he had left the USSR by way of China, working his way to Japan and finally to California.

  He seemed to spend his early years in the U.S. walking a fine line between legality and crime. His rap sheet showed several arrests, but he had spent less than a week in jail, and that was at the county level for passing bad checks. He probably would have been given a suspended sentence for the crime, except that he’d been allowed so many chances in the past.

  Then his arrest record suddenly stopped. That meant he had gone straight or had found protection.

  Rosinsky was married, with two sons and a daughter. His wife didn’t work; all three children were married. The daughter had moved to Phoenix and was a realtor, one son lived in Los Angeles where he worked as a cameraman at Warner Bros., and the other, the oldest, was still in San Francisco, now calling himself “Rosin” and working as an attorney.

  Twenty years ago, Rosinsky had opened Rose Jewelry, Ltd. Small and exclusive, it had earned a reputation for quality jewelry and fine workmanship.

  Nothing in the file indicated why Rosinsky ended up on the wrong end of a bullet.

  His death occurred at approximately eight o’clock in the evening. The store was closed, and he apparently had stayed to do paperwork. Rosinsky’s wife had called her son late that night, worried when she couldn’t contact her husband. She’d been particularly anxious because three nights earlier, someone had broken into the store. They must have been scared off because nothing had been stolen.

  Th
is time, strangely, there were no signs of a break-in. Rosinsky’s body had been found in back of the shop. Whoever killed him may have entered from the back door, but if so, Rosinsky must have opened it for him. Paavo couldn’t see a jeweler opening any door after hours unless he knew and trusted the caller. Rosinsky had known his killer.

  If whoever killed him had stolen some of the jewels, the crime would have made more sense. That, at least, would have been a red herring and thrown the police off on motive. Right now it looked like an execution.

  Paavo read through the crime lab reports. A lot of fingerprints had been lifted in the back area. He doubted anything conclusive would show up, though. Since he knew no one had whacked Rosinsky as part of a conventional robbery, it couldn’t be investigated as that kind of a case. Paavo’s instincts told him that this had been a professional job. Someone had wanted the jeweler dead.

  Paavo read through Mayfield and Sutter’s reports on talks with friends, neighbors, and associates of the victim, but nothing there was helpful. Something niggled at him as he read, and he turned back to the beginning of Rebecca’s write-up.

  Then he saw it. Rosinsky’s wife had said the store was broken into three nights before he was killed. Angie’s and his homes were burglarized the very next day. It was an interesting coincidence, but nothing more, he was sure.

  Chapter 7

  While Angie directed, Paavo drove her Ferrari nearly to the top of Telegraph Hill, and parked on Montgomery Street near Filbert. While most of the hill sloped gently down from Coit Tower to Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach, the east side dropped steeply to the Embarcadero. Streets were no more than footpaths and stairways, and ended abruptly at retaining walls, hillsides, or parapets. Sections of unpaved landscaping and terraced, private gardens made the area green and lush.

  Angie could have danced with excitement, but kept mum about where they were going or why. After telling Paavo about the two men watching her apartment building, she knew she wouldn’t be returning there until this situation was settled. He seemed to assume she’d move in with her parents for a while. She had a better idea.