To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (12 page)

“That’s the house,” Angie said. She and Paavo parked across from the Liberty Street building where Cecily, Aulis, and the Finnish students had lived. “Do you remember it at all?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I had a murder case up here about three years ago. A dentist. I don’t know if the area feels familiar because of him or some other reason.”

“Let’s walk around a bit,” she suggested.

Walking the quiet street in the sunshine, even though the weather was chilly, gave Angie time to reflect on all that was happening. Last night she’d been frightened and horrified to hear about Paavo’s close call. He had paid no attention as the purr of a car engine grew louder behind him, and then a gun fired and the streetlight outside his house exploded in a hail of glass. Instinctively he’d ducked just as a bullet smashed into his front door, right where he’d been standing a split second earlier. More shots were fired at the end of the street, followed by two cars screeching away.

Chasing them in his old Austin Healey wasn’t even a consideration. Everyone on the block, ap
parently, had called the police, because half the Richmond station’s black-and-whites roared to the scene. The slug found in his house was from a high-powered rifle, a sniper’s weapon. The danger level of whatever was going on had just been upped tenfold.

Angie’s freeway adventure paled in comparison, at least to her, although he seemed as worried about her as she was about him. That neither of them had any idea of what was happening didn’t seem to matter to the person, or people, behind it.

Paavo had also told her about the homicide files he’d read, as well as Cecily’s. The police had based their conclusion that Cecily had gone into hiding on her having brought her children with her, but she hadn’t. Did that mean she was dead?

Angie’s head spun. They’d stayed up until dawn trying to put the pieces together, but nothing fit.

“When you were a boy, what did Aulis say when you questioned him about your parents and your name?” Angie asked as they walked.

“He gave me answers that, as a child, I accepted. He told me what to say when I went to school, and I did. It was only when I was older that I began to wonder.”

“Such as?”

“I learned that the Child Protective Services would never have allowed a neighbor to keep a child whose mother had abandoned him. Aulis told me that when Mary Smith disappeared, he had filed a missing person’s report, but they never found her. We moved our things to his apartment, and simply stayed. I now know that would have been impossible.”

“He had no family of his own, right?” Angie asked. “No one to question or complain about you and your sister?”

“He was alone. I always thought he saw us as the children he might have had, had his life worked out differently. He told us about his past many times when we were growing up.”

“Oh?” she asked, her voice lifting. He smiled at her obvious curiosity about the tale.

“Aulis left Finland immediately following World War Two,” Paavo began. “He was engaged to a woman named Müna, a neighbor. The two of them grew up together, always knowing they would marry. He’d been drafted into the Finnish army to fight the Soviets. After the war, the Soviets moved in. Parts of Finland were ceded to them. People were displaced, their land taken away, their freedoms lost.”

“How frightening,” she said.

“Aulis decided to leave the country. He told Müna he would send for her. He used to tell harrowing stories to Jessica and me of how he escaped through icy water in a small fishing boat crammed with other men. He landed in Sweden, and found a way to join the refugee groups popping up throughout Europe. After two years, he made it to the United States, and a year later he’d crossed the country to San Francisco.”

Angie nodded. After the war, refugees coming to California was a common story.

“Aulis arrived, got settled, and wrote to Müna. He had complete faith she’d waited for him. Instead, she’d gotten married a year after he’d left. She’d assumed he’d been killed.”

“How awful,” Angie cried.

“He swore he’d tried to forget her, but after so many years of loving just one person, the disappointment seemed to take the heart out of him.”

“He’s such a nice man. How could other women not have noticed?”

“Maybe they did, and he ignored them,” Paavo said. “He used to tell me and Jessie that we reminded him that there was more to the world than his own self-pity.”

Hearing those words let Angie understand how much those children must have meant to Aulis—the laughing, devil-may-care Jessica, and the quiet, somber little Paavo. Her hand tightened on his. “I’m glad—for all of you.”

When they reached the intersection of Sanchez and Liberty, Paavo gave a long, last look down Liberty Street, then headed toward Angie’s Ferrari.

“I just don’t remember this area,” he stated.

“Let’s try one more spot,” she suggested.

They drove westward, first to the Lutheran church, which Paavo remembered Aulis taking him to as a boy, and then continued for another mile to a two-story brown-shingle home. “The Eschenbachs live there,” Angie said.

Paavo stared at it a long while. He shut his eyes, leaning back against the headrest. “I don’t know, Angie. There’s something familiar about it—something I don’t like about it—but I’ve covered so many areas as a cop, who knows what it is?”

“The way the wife acted troubles me. She seemed to know something—something that frightened her.”

“It’s weird—when I look at the house, I think of a lion, which makes no sense.”

She gasped. “But it does! The door knocker is shaped like a lion’s head. You were here! Aulis must have brought you here. But I wonder why.”

He stared at the house. “Whatever it was, I hated it. I wanted to go home…but I couldn’t.” He shook his head, and a look of such profound sadness came over him that it tore at her heart.

She was about to suggest that he could go home
now, to
their
little home, when, to her surprise, he got out of the car.

“Let’s find out what this is all about,” he said, marching straight for the house and its lion-head door knocker.

Mrs. Eschenbach scowled ferociously when she saw Angie, then turned toward Paavo. She gasped, her eyes wide. “Oh, my,” she murmured, pressing her fingers to her mouth.

“I do remember you,” Paavo said. “From church.”

She rested her hand on her bosom as if to calm her heart. “My God, you look so much like your father now, you startled me.”

A moment passed. “I’d like to talk to you about him.”

She stiffened, casting another angry glance at Angie. “All right.”

Angie expected to be led to the back of the house to see the pastor, but Mrs. Eschenbach brought them into the kitchen and gestured for them to sit at the table. “It’s such a shock seeing you again, Paavo,” she said as she darted about, flustered and nervous, and then poured them each a glass of red wine from a jug. “What do you do for a living now?”

He glanced quickly at Angie. “I’m a homicide inspector.”

The elderly woman paused, then slowly nodded. “I’m not surprised,” she murmured, and Angie wondered what she meant. She joined them at the table and lifted her wineglass. “Skoal!”

They responded and sipped the heavy burgundy.

“What can you tell me, Mrs. Eschenbach?” Paavo asked. “I’m trying to find out what happened all those years ago.”

“All I know is that Aulis brought you and your sister here one day. He asked us to hide you and said no one, no one at all, was to know you were
here. I had read about your father’s murder in the papers, and the day after you came here, we received word that your mother’s car had gone into the ocean. I asked Aulis about her, but he just shook his head. We needed to forget everything we ever knew about her or your father. They were gone, and the only way to keep you children safe was to change everything about who you were and who they were. You stayed here for ten days, then he came and got you. I didn’t see you again for almost five years, when Aulis again began to attend our church. We never spoke of those times with him.”

“What was he so afraid of?” Paavo asked.

She shook her head. “He never said, and we were afraid to ask. All we knew was that it was very, very bad, and the people involved were completely ruthless.” She turned to Angie. “When I heard your questions, the fear we lived with during those days came rushing back to me. Our lives were in danger—Aulis knew it, and so did we—because of the children. That was why I asked you to stay away.”

Her wrinkled hand touched Paavo’s, and her eyes grew teary. “I’ll admit that, right now, I’m glad you didn’t listen.”

Paavo showed up in Homicide that afternoon to find a message from Tucker Bond’s secretary. He answered her call, and was faxed a list of names and phone numbers of people who had worked with Cecily.

They all gave the same responses to his questions—none of them knew her. They remembered that she was a research clerk, but they didn’t remember her being in the office, or even where her desk was situated, or what she did. The few times they saw her she was pleasant and likable. They
knew she’d worked for Eldridge Sawyer, but nothing more.

Paavo phoned Tucker Bond. “Ah, Inspector,” Bond answered. “Did you get the information from my secretary?”

“Yes, thanks. I was calling with a different question about Cecily Campbell,” Paavo replied.

“Oh?”

“There’s nothing in her file about her second marriage.”

“Second marriage? I don’t remember anything about that. She must have chosen to keep it from us.”

“Why would she?”

“Well, some women believed they’d go further in their career if unmarried. I don’t know if that was true in her case—”

“She married a Finn. He was here on a work visa.”

“Not an American. Well, that might have bothered us if she were placed in any sensitive areas. But she was just a clerk, Inspector. I’m afraid I don’t understand your interest in her at all.”

Paavo didn’t bother to explain. “Did you know her body was never recovered?”

“Now that you mention it, that does sound vaguely familiar. I’m afraid that detail slipped my memory. There was no question about her death that I was aware of.”

“You didn’t know the S.F.P.D. asked Sawyer’s help, treating her as a missing person?”

“I knew he was asked about her, but he was her boss. That wasn’t unusual in a situation that might have been suicide for all anyone knew.”

“What can you tell me about Eldridge Sawyer?” Paavo asked.

“Actually, our prior conversation got me to thinking about the old days,” Bond said. “Sawyer was mixed up with a lot of strange business back then. I suspect he had Cecily Campbell researching—or whatever—quite a bit of that stuff. If you ask me, find him, and you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

“What kind of strange business?” Paavo asked.

“If I knew the answer to that, I might be able to help you myself.”

“One last question,” Paavo said. “How long after Cecily Campbell’s death did Sawyer quit the Bureau?”

“How long?” Bond didn’t say anything for a moment. “Well, as I recall, it was almost immediately after. I can’t imagine, however, that the two were in any way connected.”

“Maybe there’s a better way,” Connie moaned, elbows on the bar, head in her hands.

“The better way is to drink tonic without gin in it,” Angie scoffed. “You’re getting sloshed.”

“I’m just doing my part to help find Paavo’s mama,” Connie said, swirling the toothpick-skewered lime wedge in her drink. She wore a short, sleeveless black dress that fit like a wide band of Spandex. “Anyway, if neither of us drank, for us to come to a bar would look very suspicious.”

“If you’d stop making googly-eyes at all the men, they wouldn’t be sending over so many drinks.” Angie’s Versace ice-blue outfit had an equally short, shiny skirt, and sleeveless, V-neck top. The heel of one high, ankle-strapped shoe was hooked on the rail of her stool, while the other foot waggled impatiently.

“I come to bars for one reason—and it’s not to quench my thirst,” Connie said. “Anyway, I’m not making eyes at anyone. This is just how I look.”

“Hah! If you were any more kissy-faced, we’d have to run your lips through a mangle iron to straighten them out.”

Connie stopped listening when a blond hunk entered the bar.

Angie took another sip of her virgin piña colada. The entire evening had been a waste of time. They were on Noe Street, in an area of neighborhood shops, bars, and restaurants just a couple of blocks from Liberty.

After learning that Paavo was nearly killed the night before, she wasn’t about to sit around tonight nervously pacing and cooking and praying he made it home in one piece. She was determined to do something! To find out exactly what was going on here. Whatever it was, it had drawn in people who’d lived in this neighborhood thirty years ago. And as Bianca had said, people talk. They knew a lot more about what happened in their neighborhoods than the police ever imagined.

She would discover what the police hadn’t. Aulis and his Finnish friends had lived here. Most were young men, and except for Mika, bachelors. She didn’t know any bachelors who didn’t go to neighborhood restaurants at least once in a while, and often to bars as well. The Noe Valley area was filled with friendly neighborhood establishments, and enough singles to make them interesting. The area hadn’t changed that much in the past thirty years, from all she’d heard.

She made a list of long-established nightspots and restaurants.

She and Connie began the evening at a listed bar, asking if the owner or anyone else there had lived in the neighborhood some thirty years earlier. No one had. They worked their way through other places, asking about customers, owners, and other establishments as they went. A few “old-timers” remembered some Finns in the neighborhood, but no one remembered their names or what happened to
them. At The Golden Spike restaurant, the chatty owner suggested a nearby Swedish smorgasbord. No Finnish restaurants existed in the city, now or thirty years ago, or Angie would have gone there first.

The Swedish restaurant’s owner was active in the community, and the Lutheran church, and knew Aulis, but that was as far as it went.

Back to barhopping, they came across some people who’d been students back in the late sixties and who remembered a Finnish guy named Sam. All they remembered was that he had been killed—they thought by another Finn.

Angie doggedly dragged Connie to the one last restaurant and three last bars on her list, tearing her away from a number of gallant men who offered drinks and anything else they wanted.

“We’re so close,” Angie cried with frustration, shoving her piña colada aside. “But this just isn’t panning out. Let’s go home.”

“Good idea.” Connie stood, but was a bit wobbly on her stiletto heels. “I don’t even like the guys in this place. We could go back to that second bar, though. Did you notice the Polynesian-looking fellow who kept smiling at me? To die! Or, wait, was he at the third?”

“Forget it, Connie.” Angie looped her arm around Connie’s and the two of them tottered outside.

As they reached Angie’s car, Connie rubbed her stomach. “I don’t feel so good.”

“You aren’t going to be sick, are you?” Angie asked in alarm.

“I don’t think so. It must be just a stomach ache. From all that herring at the smorgasbord. I should never eat herring.”

“And everyone knows herring doesn’t mix with gin and tonic.”

“Oh, please!” Connie turned several shades of green.

A small grocery store was at the corner. “Let’s get you some Pepto-Bismol. It should help until you get home and lie down.”

The grocer took one look at Connie’s sickly pallor and tipsy state and pointed Angie in the direction of the medicines.

Connie leaned heavily against the counter, her shoulder against a bread rack. “We’re here trying to find anyone who knows Cecily,” she said, her words a little slurred. The grocer was a middle-aged Chinese man. He stared silently at Connie, clearly torn between wanting her gone before she squashed the bread, and human curiosity as to how long she could stand upright. “You don’t know Cecily, do you? It was a long time ago. No, you’re too young to remember her.”

“Did she live around here?” he asked.

Connie rubbed her forehead. “She sure did. Right up there on Liberty Street, according to my friend Angie. She was young and pretty—I mean Cecily, not Angie. Angie’s single. I was married once, though. A real shithead. My ex, not Cecily’s. She was nice. She had a couple of kids, and a Finnish friend. But then she left, or died, or something.”

“Oh,
that
Cecily,” the grocer said.

Angie walked up with the biggest bottle of Pepto-Bismol she could find. She couldn’t believe her ears. “You knew Cecily Turunen?” she asked, and shoved the bottle into Connie’s hands.

“I didn’t know her personally, but I knew who she was. My father used to own this store, and I worked here after school. She used to come in with her kids. She was a nice lady. Then it seems something or other happened, and they all disap
peared—her, her husband, their friends. It was weird. Everyone talked about it for days.”

“Oh, my God!” Angie cried, scarcely able to believe her good fortune. “You did know her!”

Connie was fighting with the bottle top. “See, I told you it was a bad idea to go to all those bars and restaurants.”

“I didn’t
know
her,” the grocer said. “Not really. One of my customers was a good friend of hers. Why?”

“We could have simply gone grocery shopping,” Connie murmured, whacking the side of the cap on the counter. “But no-o-o-o-o.”

“I need to find out more about Cecily,” Angie said. “Lots more. Can you tell me how to reach that customer?”

He thought a moment while eyeballing Connie, who had finally gotten the bottle open and was now glugging pink stuff like it was water. He winced and said, “Well, I couldn’t do that, but if you want to leave your name and phone number, I’ll tell her about you. She’ll need to decide if she wants to contact you or not.”

Angie quickly wrote down the information and gave it to the grocer. “Thank you so much. Tell her it’s very, very important that I speak to her. It’ll just take a little while, and I’d be eternally grateful.”

“Sure thing. By the way, I think your friend is going to need more than Pepto-Bismol.”

Angie had forgotten all about Connie. She swiveled around to find her still standing, but her eyes were shut and her forehead rested on a flattened loaf of Wonder bread.