To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (7 page)

Angie constantly monitored the answering machine in her apartment for messages, especially on the lookout for those from her mother since Serefina knew nothing about her and Paavo living together in cousin Richie’s house, but also from the Russian jeweler. He hadn’t yet tried to contact her, or at least, hadn’t left a message. She called him, but the phone simply rang and rang. She wanted her brooch back.

Since she was going out anyway to take some video shots of a new downtown restaurant with the unappetizing name of Les Chats, she decided to swing by Rose Jewelry and find out what was going on.

As she drove slowly by the shop, searching for a parking space, she saw a
CLOSED
sign hanging on the front door. Taped below it was a note. She left her car double-parked and ran up to the note. It gave a telephone number in case of emergency. Back in her car, she punched in the number on her cell phone as she drove.

“Lyons, Bernstein, and Rosin,” the receptionist’s voice said.

“Hello. My name is Angie Amalfi. I’m a customer
of Rose Jewelry, Mr. Gregor Rosinsky’s shop, and it’s closed. A sign in the window says to call this number. Do you know what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Rosinsky passed away,” the nasally voice said. “His son, Martin Rosin, is handling business matters. Would you like to speak with him?”

“He died? How awful. Had he been sick?”

“Not at all. His shop was broken into. The robber killed him.”

“My God!” Angie was shocked. How hadn’t she heard? But then, with so much going on, she hadn’t read a newspaper in days.

“It was a terrible tragedy.” The woman spoke with all the emotion of announcing the weather. “I’ll put Mr. Rosin on the line for you.”

When Rosin answered, Angie offered her condolences before telling him about the brooch she had left for repair.

The son had a list of all the jewelry that was awaiting customer pickup, but after looking it over, didn’t see her name.

A description of the brooch was no help. Rosin hadn’t seen a cameo in the entire collection. Not only was there none among the jewelry that was being repaired, there was none for sale, either.

“That’s impossible!” Angie cried in a panic, trying to remember what she had done with Rosinsky’s receipt. How was she going to tell Paavo she had lost his present on top of everything? “I was given a receipt.”

“Would you read the number to me?” Rosin said. “I have all my father’s business papers here. I’ve been getting calls for days from customers.”

Her tote bag! “Just a second, I think it’s right here.” One hand on the steering wheel, the phone crammed in the crook of her neck, she rummaged
through the bottomless carryall, her car only occasionally crossing the double yellow line as she pulled out grocery and things-to-do lists. A red light allowed her to search two-handed and find the receipt safely tucked in her checkbook. “Got it!” she whooped, just a little while after the light turned green again. She read out the information he needed. The driver behind her seemed to be having some kind of fit—his face looked contorted and his arms waved spastically. She zipped away from him quickly.

Rosin put her on hold to check for her receipt’s numbers. After a long wait, he came back on. “The store’s copy with that number is missing,” he said with undisguised surprise. “I have the one before and the one after, but that page was removed from the sales book.”

She was first stricken, then furious. Her car weaved from one lane to the other as she screamed into the phone. “Removed? What do you mean,
removed
? Where is my brooch? It’s important to me!”

“I’m sure it is—”

“It’s a family heirloom!” She pounded the wheel instead of steering with it. “It was given to me by my—”

“Miss Amalfi, calm down! Give me your phone number,” Rosin said soothingly. “I’m sure we’ll find it. I’ll contact you as soon as we do.”

“I just don’t understand how it can be missing,” Angie protested, unsuccessfully trying to calm herself. “I heard your father was killed in a robbery. My brooch must have been among the things stolen! God, oh, God, how will I ever get it back?” She stamped her feet, and the Ferrari lurched and jerked and nearly sideswiped a startled pedestrian crossing the street.

“Nothing was stolen, miss,” he declared, his
voice increasingly obstinate. “Perhaps my father took the brooch home to work on. I’ll search. Now, you say you didn’t pick it up, but might someone else have done it for you? After all, the store’s work request is missing.”

“Someone else? No! No one even knew the cameo was broken”—then she remembered mentioning it to Connie—“except a girlfriend, and she wouldn’t have gotten it.”

“Did you check with her?”

Apoplexy threatened and she nearly ran a red light. “Of course I didn’t! The repair work wasn’t even paid for.
No one picked up my brooch!
”

“I’ll call you.” He hung up.

She slammed her phone shut, dropped it in her tote, and looked up to find honking cars and cursing pedestrians all around her.

Just stepping inside the little house soothed Angie’s overheated emotions. Not only had Rosin sounded like a pompous blowhard talking down to her, but at Les Chats, the food looked and tasted like something Roto-Rooter flushed out of a clogged drain.

Rosin would find her brooch or discover what it was like to meet a master nagger. A crazed pit bull was wishy-washy by comparison.

She brought a raspberry tea Snapple out onto the deck and sat. It was a perfect place to calm down. She loved living here—and knew she loved it because Paavo was with her. She realized, too, that she was merely playing house with him.

But playing it was better than not living with him at all, especially during this time when he was so upset about Aulis and, much as he didn’t want to admit it, his past. He tossed and turned each night, and at times seemed to dread going to sleep. She had never known him to be afraid of anything, until
he told her about his recurring nightmare. Mixing his sister and his current job—the past and the present—would be troubling for him.

To her surprise, she, too, had fears about the outcome of his discoveries about his parents. Before he reached his journey’s end, the path he was taking could lead to overwhelming or disturbing places, psychologically, if not physically. Somehow, she needed to help him through it.

As she sipped her tea, her mind turned to poor Gregor Rosinsky. She could scarcely believe he had been murdered. He had seemed like an interesting old man. Robberies were so common—too common—in this city. Heck, everywhere. That was a reason she liked this little house. Since it was on a street too steep for cars, if anyone came here to rob, they’d have to lug the stolen goods up or down the stairs to a getaway car. Not very likely. But then, she always used to feel safe in her own twelfth-floor apartment, and look what happened. There, she’d been specifically targeted. She was sure of it. Just as Paavo had been, and Aulis.

And Rosinsky? Why was his copy of her receipt missing?

All of Paavo’s warnings to her came back again. She nervously raced through the house checking the locks on doors and windows, and then double-checked the gun Paavo had put in the nightstand for her if anyone tried to force his way in while she was home alone.

After locking the French doors to the deck, she lounged on the sofa and tried to read the latest issue of
Vanity Fair
. The umpteenth article on Gwyneth Paltrow and a fashion layout from Milan had all the staying power of cheap lipstick. Feeling cold and lonely, she snuggled into an afghan and waited.

When her tall detective walked in the house, his blue eyes found her and he smiled, and the world became right again. She ran to him with a hug and kiss. After Rosinsky, she didn’t want to hear any more about death and sadness. At times she wondered how he stayed sane in his job.

So she chattered brightly about books and movies and TV shows, phone conversations she’d had with her mother and her oldest sister, her visit to Les Chats, and her video restaurant reviews. The first one was finished. All she needed was a television program to show it on. She had sent letters, E-mails, faxes, and phone calls to all the local TV stations. So far, no one had replied.

Not until dinner was over and they were nestled side by side on the sofa did Angie bring up her troubling discoveries.

“I have a confession to make,” she began, pulling nervously at a loose thread on a needlepoint pillow.

He looked startled. “A confession?”

“It has to do with my Christmas present.”

“I noticed you stopped wearing it.” His voice was soft, his eyes resigned. “You decided you don’t like it after all?”

“No, that’s not it.” The thread was getting longer and longer.

“It was a silly present. I should have gotten you something new.” He sounded embarrassed.

“Paavo—”

“Stupid of me. I’m never sentimental—”

She tossed the pillow aside and grabbed his shoulders. “Will you listen? I love the brooch. The only reason I stopped wearing it is because the cameo popped out of the setting. I brought it to a Russian jeweler to have it fixed. Did you know it’s an old, rare Russian piece?” He looked incredulous.
“Anyway, when I went to get it back, I learned the Russian jeweler had been murdered.”

He frowned at that news. “Rebecca Mayfield is investigating a Russian jeweler—Rose Jewelry.”

“That’s it! Gregor Rosinsky was the owner.”

“Where did you get this information?” he asked, brows furrowed.

She told him all about her conversation with Martin Rosin.

“Tell me again what you heard about the brooch being Russian,” he said.

“The cameo is a profile of Alexandra, the last Tsarina—you know, Nicholas and Alexandra? Their daughter was Anastasia. Anyway, I first brought the brooch to my regular jeweler, and he sent me to Rosinsky. Rosinsky all but drooled over it. The little clear stones around the cameo are real diamonds—perfect diamonds, he said. He asked if I’d be interested in selling it. I told him absolutely not. He implied I shouldn’t keep it—that it was museum quality.”

“Museum quality?”

“Yes.” Angie looked at him hard. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” He stood and silently refilled their coffee cups, lost in thought. Only when he sat again did he speak. “Another man with a connection to jewelry was recently murdered. He, however, was on the other side of the line—he was a forger.”

“A forger? A criminal? I don’t see the connection.”

“He was also old, and of Russian descent.”

“Old and Russian…It sounds like my brooch!”

Blue eyes met hers. “I know.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Gregor Rosinsky’s shop was broken into the night before your place and mine were hit.”

“A jeweler and a forger, my brooch, then you, me,
and Aulis,” she said. “We can’t all be connected, can we?”

When he made no reply, a chill went through her. Of the people she’d just mentioned, two were already dead, and the third might be dying.

Leave it to Angie to have set up a printer and a fax machine in temporary living quarters, Paavo thought with a small smile. When Nelson Bradley called him on his cell phone at seven
A.M.
, and said he had the requested files, Paavo was in the house getting ready for work. Not that he had slept in. He had hardly slept at all, but kept reworking the strange information about Angie’s brooch.

He gave Bradley the fax number and asked Angie to turn on the machine.

The phone rang, the fax took over, and in a matter of seconds, the first page began to spill out.
It can’t be
, kept running through Paavo’s head. All these years he had carried an image of his mother, and her being a government bureaucrat, married to an FBI agent, just didn’t fit it. Didn’t fit it at all.

But then, Bradley’s words that Cecily Campbell was dead didn’t fit his image of her either.

It was peculiar, but even though she had walked out on him and his sister, even though she had made it clear she didn’t care about them, and didn’t want them in her life, he always felt that some
day…somehow…he would meet her. And then he could ask her,
why?

When Jessica died, he’d been positive their mother would show up for the funeral. He remembered standing beside Aulis, trying to keep his face stiff, not letting anybody see how hurt he was, or how angry. At the same time, he wanted to look around, to see if a strange woman was in attendance. He wondered if he’d recognize her, if she’d look like Jessica, although he couldn’t imagine anyone else being so pretty.

Jessie had been beautiful and fun. She was one of the few people outside of Angie he’d ever known who could get him to make an out-and-out belly laugh. And make him angry. Yes, he was furious at her. Furious at the type of people she’d decided to hang out with, the type who’d caused her to overdose at age nineteen. Furious at her for dying.

He shut his eyes, trying to tamp down the emptiness from losing her that would never go away. His mother hadn’t shown up that day. That was when he knew she was never coming back. He hadn’t cried about her since he was a little boy, but alone in his room, on the night of Jessie’s funeral, he had cried for the loss of them both. After that, he’d toughened, and never shed a tear for either one again.

He took the information from the fax machine, folded it in half, and walked out onto the deck to sit.

Angie, in a satin nightgown and pink robe, placed a hot mug of coffee beside him, her eyes heavy with concern, then she went into the house, leaving the French door partially open.

He took a sip of coffee and unfolded the papers.

Their words were too cold, too mechanical, to be about a parent. They had a bureaucratic, impersonal ring—true government files, all dates and facts, about a stranger.

At age twenty-two, Cecily Jean Hampton, both parents deceased, took a job as a clerk-typist with the FBI. Six months later, she married Lawrence Campbell, and a year after that, Jessica Ann was born.

He stopped there for a moment. Jessica Ann Campbell. How odd that he’d never known that. She never let on. She’d been nine years old when Cecily walked out. A nine-year-old understands a lot, and recognizes when it is necessary to hide, and to create a false identity. The realization of all that Jessie must have known and kept hidden from him was staggering.

He continued reading. When Cecily was twenty-four, her marital status changed to widowed. Three years later, at twenty-seven, she transferred to the San Francisco Field Office. Nothing appeared in the file for six years, until the annotation “deceased” was entered. That was it. No explanation, no embellishment.

No nothing.

He turned to Lawrence’s file. Campbell had been an agent, twenty-three years older than Cecily. The file showed his parents’ names—Jessica’s grandparents. Paavo wondered if they had still been alive when Jessica was a child, and if so, why they had never contacted their granddaughter, never sent her a Christmas present or birthday card. He could look up information about them; a lot of personal data was available to him in his position, but some things were better not knowing about. Some could do nothing but open old wounds and cause more heartache.

Lawrence Campbell had died of a brain aneurysm at age forty-seven. Until the time of his death, he’d apparently been a healthy, active man. Survivor benefits had been paid to his daughter, Jes
sica, until she was age nine, when the folder was annotated “Suspend benefits until new address received. Checks returned. Unable to locate.”

Paavo stared at that a moment.

Cecily had walked away from her children thirty-one years ago, leaving that strange letter with Aulis, and the change in name to Mary Smith.

What had happened that made the FBI think she’d died, and was it true or not? Why was Jessica’s name changed, and her whereabouts hidden, so she no longer even received survivor’s benefits from her father’s account?

Paavo searched for answers in Cecily Campbell’s file. He worked his way through tedious reports on her progress as an employee, but found nothing of note. She was rated as competent and hardworking, a team player, not one to take risks, and she followed protocol. Generally, the reviews were uninspired, unhelpful. Her supervisor in San Francisco was shown as Eldridge Sawyer, and his reports were second-signed by Tucker Bond.

Paavo went back inside. As he tapped into his cell phone’s address book, he caught Angie’s anxious expression from the living room and motioned her to join him.

“FBI,” a woman’s voice answered.

“I’m trying to reach an agent named Eldridge Sawyer,” he said.

“Thank you.” After a short wait the operator came back on the line. “I’m sorry. No one by that name is here.”

“I see. What about Tucker Bond?”

Her response was immediate. “One moment, I’ll connect you.”

A second pleasant female voice came on the line. “Mr. Bond’s office.”

“This is Inspector Smith from the San Francisco
Police Department. I’d like to meet with Mr. Bond as soon as possible.”

“Can I tell him what this is concerning?”

“A former employee, Cecily Campbell.”

“Let me check his calendar.” She put him on hold. About two minutes went by before she came on the phone again. “He has a few minutes available today at twelve-thirty.”

“That’s fine. Can you tell me what Mr. Bond’s exact title is?”

“Certainly. He’s the Special Agent in Charge.”

“Thank you.” Paavo hung up the phone. The SAC was the head of the San Francisco office. So Bond had moved up in the world over the past thirty years. He wondered what had become of Cecily’s boss, Eldridge Sawyer.

Angie was bursting with questions by the time he hung up. “Did you find out anything?”

They went out to the deck and he handed her the FBI files. “There isn’t a lot here.”

She scanned them quickly. “I wonder where she lived. No address is shown.”

“So I noticed. There are names, though. I’m starting with one of her bosses. I wonder how much he’ll remember about her.”

Angie’s eyebrows rose. “Judging from the pictures I’ve seen of her, whether he admits it or not, he’ll remember a lot.”