To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (5 page)

Angie hurried alongside Paavo from the parking lot to San Francisco General Hospital, a massive complex of old brick and modern cement-gray buildings. Her chest ached with fear. Aulis was the only family he had left.

Apparently a neighbor had found his stepfather and called for an ambulance. The police were contacted, and the responding officer knew Paavo. When he couldn’t reach him directly, he phoned Yosh. The blue brotherhood in action, she thought, not wanting Paavo to find out about Aulis from some stranger.

The hospital was chaotic. Most of the city’s emergency and trauma cases arrived there, hundreds each day, plus over a thousand scheduled patients. To simply get the desk nurse to direct them to the proper waiting room presented a challenge.

Seated on an aluminum and blue plastic chair in the bright yellow room, Paavo leaned forward, elbows on thighs, hands folded, and stared silently at the gray linoleum floor.

“Aulis will be all right,” Angie said gently. She sat beside him, her hand lightly rubbing circles on his back.

His complexion had a sallow cast to it, his eyes filled with sadness. “Not many eighty-year-olds can survive a gunshot wound.”

She had no words to ease his pain and blinked back tears. “I’m so sorry, Paavo.”

His hands clenched. “Damn it! I should have thought of Aulis when they hit your place, then mine!”

“Don’t! You can’t blame yourself for this. Any connection between you and me makes some sense. Or between you and Aulis. But you and me and Aulis? There isn’t any. It’s got to be chance coming up all wrong—one of those horrible, random things, so much a part of city life, that end up touching all of us.”

“I’ve worried about him living alone at his age.”

She rested her hand atop his. “He’s surrounded by friends and longtime neighbors, as he’s told you whenever you’ve brought the subject up. He’s happy in his home. This isn’t your fault!”

He pulled his hand away and clenched it. “I’ll know if that’s true, once I know what caused this to happen to him.”

“He’s going to be all right.” She tried desperately to give her voice conviction, but she failed. Like Paavo, she knew Aulis’s age was against him. A head wound…She shuddered.

Needing to do something more than sit helplessly and wait in the excruciating silence of the waiting room, she went in search of coffee. Near the waiting room, a canteen area held a coffee machine. On the first floor was a large, busy cafeteria. The coffee tasted weak and oily in both.

Paavo was talking on his cell phone when she returned. He soon hung up and eyed the Starbucks
label on the paper cup she handed him. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”

She offered some lemon tarts and almond bear-claws, but he shook his head.

“Has the doctor talked to you yet?” she asked, sitting in a plastic chair beside him.

“No one has,” he said bitterly, “except to say the doctors are with him. I tracked down the patrolman who took the call to go to Aulis’s place. He said the apartment had been pretty well trashed, and that Aulis had lost a lot of blood.”

Angie’s outrage nearly spilled over, but she forced it in check. Paavo had always been her Gibraltar. She was the one who got emotional, and he would rationally calm her down. Now he was the one hurting, and she had to help him. She wasn’t sure what to say or do, so she placed her arm across his broad back and silently held him.

After a while, a buxom, middle-aged nurse entered the waiting room and walked toward them. Paavo’s face paled. He slowly stood.

“You’re Mr. Kokkonen’s son?”

“Yes.”

“I understand no one has given you much information yet. I’m sorry.”

He nodded quickly.

“Fortunately, the bullet did not enter Mr. Kokkonen’s brain. But it did graze the skull and caused some bone damage and considerable swelling from the impact. We will have to see how much trauma the brain suffered. He’s in a coma. With his age, and this type of wound, I’m afraid the situation is extremely critical. You need to prepare yourself for that.”

He nodded again, not answering. Angie watched his hopes fall when the nurse said there was swelling.

“The doctor will probably be with him another hour or so. You might want to grab a bite to eat, then come back later when we’ll be able to tell you something more substantial.”

“I see,” Paavo murmured.

“Also, we’ll need Mr. Kokkonen’s insurance papers. Medicare will cover some of the expenses, but you might want to know all that he’s entitled to and what it will cost. I suggest you bring his policy into the hospital as soon as possible so that our billings staff can go over your options with you.” She shoved a set of papers as thick as the city’s phone book into his hands. He just stared at them as she walked away.

“Christ almighty!” Paavo collapsed into the chair again, then slapped the papers onto the empty seat beside him. “He might be dying and she wants me to worry about insurance forms.”

“The world is going crazy.” Angie reached over, grabbed the papers, and stuffed them into her tote bag.

“You go and eat,” Paavo said. “I’m not hungry.”

She gazed at the doors the nurse went through. Aulis was back there, alone and hurt, fighting for his life, and Paavo here, his heart aching.

“We’ll wait.” She took his hand.

“You, then me, now Aulis,” he whispered, his hand tightening painfully on hers. “Why, Angie? It doesn’t make any sense. What could we have that would make anyone interested in us, and why in hell would anyone want to hurt a sweet old man like Aulis?”

There were no words she could say. They sat in silence, Paavo’s hand in hers, and she hoped the connection brought some comfort beyond his dark, lonely thoughts.

“Rosinsky and Platnikov are dead!” Harold Partridge screamed into the phone, his voice growing shriller with each word. “Do you realize what this means? Do you?”

“We’re sorry, sir.”

“Sorry? That doesn’t begin to say what you’ll be!” He had a strangle hold on the phone and wished it were their necks. “I still don’t have the brooch. It’s got to be with the woman.”

“She seems to be hiding. She hasn’t returned to her apartment.”

“I’m surrounded by complete, utter morons! Do I have to do everything myself? Her boyfriend’s a cop, goddamn it! A homicide cop. Find her through him!” Partridge’s voice was raw from yelling. It was good his office was soundproof.

“I guess we can try to find him and put a tail on him.”

“Hell, if you can’t find him any other way, you can always
kill
someone, then wait while he shows up to investigate!” He hung up, his heart beating so hard and fast he feared for his blood pressure.

Rosinsky and Platnikov. He took off his glasses and shut his eyes, fear and dread drenching him with sweat.

He wasn’t about to let it start again; he would stop it, one way or the other.

Paavo parked in the driveway of Aulis’s apartment building. As he and Angie got out of the car, the area seemed eerily quiet. Usually neighbors milled about on the street chatting with each other, children played, dogs barked, and low-rider cars generated a pulsating
thump-tha-thump
from bass speakers as they cruised by.

They were about a block from Mission Dolores, built by Spanish padres with Ohlone Indian labor at the same time as the Revolutionary War was erupting on the other side of the continent. This part of the city was a touch of Mexico in the heart of the city, filled with
los restaurantes y las abarroterías
.

Aulis’s apartment was located on the ground level of a three-story building, at the end of a long, flowerpot-lined path behind the garage. Paavo unlocked the front door and walked in, leaving the door wide for Angie to follow if she wished. He wouldn’t blame her if she preferred to remain outside. Being here, knowing Aulis lay hospitalized and close to death, chilled him to the bone.

Three steps inside the door a dark pool of blood stained the beige carpet. His breath caught.

Yesterday, investigators had swept through the crime scene. He was glad he had asked the CSU to go over Angie’s apartment after the break-in there, as well as the one in his own home. Now the crime lab could look for similarities between the three. There had to be some.

Yesterday, too, he and Angie had spent the entire day and most of the night at the hospital. Aulis remained in a coma in intensive care, and was allowed no visitors. His condition had not changed this morning.

The only joy in the past twenty-four hours came from bringing Hercules back to the little cottage. He was so ecstatic to be with Paavo again that every time Paavo sat down, all eighteen pounds of cat bounded onto his lap. Angie immediately treated the big tabby to a plate of fresh salmon. Paavo found himself barely acknowledging the happy cat, though. His thoughts were elsewhere.

Now he forced his eyes from the carpet stain to the rest of the apartment. The destruction so much resembled what had been done to his own home, for a moment he was unable to move. Sofa and chair pillows were slashed, drawers pulled out, books and magazines opened and strewn all over. A throbbing in his temples beat dully in synch with the heavy beat of his heart.

A quick walk-through left him ready to explode in rage and frustration. Nothing, it seemed, had been stolen. He would talk to Aulis’s neighbors, find out what they saw and heard.

Once he found out who was behind this, there’d be no stopping him. The bastard would pay in blood.

When he returned to the living room, Angie moved toward him. “What would you like me to do?” she asked.

“Nothing! Don’t touch a thing.”

He was immediately ashamed of his tone with her, especially when she gazed at him with quiet understanding. “I’ll look for his address book,” she said. “You’ll need to make some phone calls, Paavo, to let his close friends know what’s happened.”

He hadn’t thought of that. He stood again unmoving as a moment of excruciating silence went by. God, how was he going to get through this? He turned toward the bedroom.

In the top drawer of the pine highboy, Aulis kept important papers. Paavo and his sister had been taught to never go near that drawer if they valued their skins. Aulis had a “system” and if the system was in any way disrupted, it meant he might not pay bills on time or find important papers, and the stability of the world order would fall into disarray.

It was heartrending to see that most crucial drawer on its side, the contents littering the floor. Grimly he righted the drawer, knelt down, and began to stack the papers.

He didn’t have to dig too deeply through old tax filings, Social Security notices, property tax billings, and other such documents before coming across the medical policy. Along with Medicare, Aulis had good coverage and should be well taken care of.

As he gathered up the rest of the papers and envelopes to return to the drawer, an envelope from the Ford Motor Company caught his eye. He added it to the stack. It was odd, though. Aulis had never owned a car. Didn’t even like cars, Paavo thought. Had Aulis harbored some secret passion for a Mustang GT? Curious, Paavo pulled it out of the pile and opened it.

Inside was a photograph and another, smaller envelope. He pulled out the photo, and his blood ran cold.

Three people stared at the camera. One of them,
looking very young and very innocent, was his mother.

He knew her immediately, even though he had seen only one other picture of her. That other picture, one of his most valued possessions, showed him standing on her lap, leaning across a table and staring intently at a birthday cake with two candles. His hair was blond and wispy—it hadn’t turned dark brown until his teens—and he wore canary-yellow short pants with matching suspenders over a white shirt. His cheeks were puffed out and he seemed to be blowing hard. His mother was holding him at the waist and laughing.

She was a pretty woman, her face fine-boned, with white, almost translucent skin. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes—they were Kodak-flash red in the photo—but her hair was auburn, shoulder length, and parted on the side. Her head was cocked and her hair swung free and easy except for a strand of it tucked behind one ear.

His only vivid memories of his mother were seeing her laugh in that picture, and hearing her cry as if her heart had broken.

In this newly found photo, she looked very serious. Her eyes squinted against the sun, causing her brow to furrow, and her lips were set firmly. Her hair was cut in an over-the-ear bob, the bangs so short they only covered the very top of her forehead. Her pink dress was big and boxy, with a high-necked Peter Pan collar. She held a black-haired baby in her arms in a way that showed off the baby’s frilly matching pink dress and booties. The baby had to be Jessica. She had a knockout smile even at that young age.

The woman in this picture didn’t mesh at all with the image he had of his mother. She was taller than he’d imagined, and bore herself in a stiff, cau
tious manner. Clipped to the waistband of her dress was an identification badge of some kind.

Beside her stood a hard-featured older man. He wore a similar badge clipped to the lapel of his suit jacket. His face was heavily lined and shades darker than the woman’s. His eyes were thin slits from squinting, his mouth turned down at the edges, and his brows crossed. His short hair, Paavo saw, was as black as Jessica’s had been.

Jessie had never known who her father was. It was hard to imagine this dour-looking man being him, but the resemblance showed in the dimpled chin and in the widow’s peak. How odd that Aulis hadn’t given her this picture. But then, Paavo didn’t know his own father either—only that he wasn’t the same as Jessica’s.

He’d always assumed that meant his mother was “just that kind of a gal.” Love ’em and leave ’em Mary Smith. She walked out on men, on her own kids. She was a real winner. Good old Mom.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he reached again for the Ford envelope and shook it, dropping out the smaller white one still inside. On its face, in a cursive, feminine hand, Aulis’s name had been written.

Inside were two sheets of paper. The first was a simple statement.

He snorted, surprised his mother had bothered with such legal niceties. Maybe she’d run off and
left them with Aulis more than once, and the last time hadn’t returned.

He put the sheet aside. The one under it was a letter, written in the same hand as the statement had been. As he read, his throat began closing, tightening, until he could scarcely breathe.

He stared at the letter, unable to believe its contents. Reading it again, he was hurled back in time and place. The old pain, the loneliness, the question
why
—all those feelings he had sworn he would never again allow himself about his mother or his past—washed over him. He was back at the age when he told himself that strong boys don’t cry, the age he had taught himself not to do so any longer.

He dropped his head forward, his eyes squeezed tight.
Kiss Jessie and Paavo good-bye for me
.

It hurt his heart to see those words.

Cecily. Why had his mother signed her name Cecily? Her name was Mary. Mary Smith…so common a name he’d almost,
almost
believed it was false. But then if someone were choosing a fake name, he’d convinced himself, she would certainly pick something less blatantly phony than Mary Smith.

Over the years he told himself he was being too suspicious thinking her name was false, being too much the cop. Now he wondered if he’d been right. Strangely, the name Cecily resonated with him. He had no idea why, but seeing it written there, hearing it in his head, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

His fingers smoothed the folds of the letter. It was undated. What did she mean about keeping her children safe? Aulis had never given any indication of them having been in danger, but that would explain why he had taken them to L.A. shortly after their mother had abandoned them…not that Paavo remembered being there. He was so young it didn’t much register on him which city he was in, but Jessica had told him about it. All he did remember was that Aulis seemed to move around quite a bit, taking him and Jessie from city to city, one small apartment to another, until they all became a blur to him. Eventually they returned to San Francisco.

He didn’t understand what any of this meant, but he did know that Aulis had kept his part of the bargain. He had told Paavo nothing about his mother.