Too Many Cooks (7 page)

Angie's elbow rested on
the work station filled with radio paraphernalia, her hand cupping her chin as she despondently looked at the array of lights and switches on the call monitor in front of her. Henry had decided this was the day she'd begin to do the call screening for him. The trouble was, today she didn't feel like talking to anyone.

Since Paavo had gone back to work there'd been a strange undercurrent of something wrong between them. But what? Maybe she'd just imagined it. Still, when he left her Sunday night, everything seemed fine—or as fine as things ever got when dealing with a neurotic male—but when he telephoned Monday evening, he was a different person. He'd even sounded strangely guilty that he'd gotten the okay from Hollins for the Placer County Sheriff's Department to do an autopsy on Karl Wielund.

Then he said he couldn't come by to see her, and when she asked if he could make it tonight, he said he
was going to Yoshiwara's house. Yoshiwara! Paavo gave her the impression that eight hours of his new partner was as much as he could take in one day. But he'd chosen Yoshiwara over her.

Why didn't he want to see her?

He was crazy about her, wasn't he? He should be. She ticked off her attributes: money, wit, good looks. But then, Paavo didn't place much importance on money as long as he had enough for his simple lifestyle; he had a dry wit of his own and scarcely needed her smart-alecky one; and good looks wasn't nearly as important to him as good character. So what
did
he like about her?

Lunch with Henri's
new theme music, “The Teddy Bears' Picnic,” ended and Henry began talking to the people who made up his radio audience. All five of them.

Forget worrying about Paavo, she told herself. Concentrate on screening Henry's callers. It should be simple enough. She'd find out what the caller's question was, look it up in a cookbook, mark the page, and hand it to Henry. Talking to callers off the air was better than not talking to them at all, she reasoned—and a step closer to talking to the callers
on
the air, besides.

There was just one problem. So that she could talk to the callers and not be heard on the air, she no longer sat with Henry in the glassed-in soundproof studio booth. She now sat just outside it, beside a sliding window that she had to open and shut quietly to hand him pieces of paper with names and notes as well as helpful cookbooks.

She felt ostracized, like a poor relation left out in the cold, forced to peer in at the golden age of radio—
almost as ostracized as she felt with Paavo, in fact.

Why think about Paavo? There was nothing she could do if he didn't want to see her. Everything had been fine between them once and would be again. She couldn't be so dull he preferred other cops to her. Could she?

Henry's opening monologue was winding down. Quickly, she pushed the button on the phone system. “
Lunch with Henri
radio show. Are you calling to speak to Chef Henri?” she asked.

“Hi, there! I sure am,” an exuberant voice answered.

Why would anyone sound so happy to talk to Henry? “Your first name and where you're calling from, please.” She felt like Ernestine, ready to burst into “one ringy-dingy” at any minute.

“My name's Barbara, and I'm calling from Novato.”

Angie wrote down the name and location on a big yellow tablet. “Hello, Barbara. I'm Angie, and while you're waiting to talk with Chef Henri, I'll jot down the question you're planning to ask him.”

“Okay. Let's try it. My question is: I've got a recipe here that I want to use to make some oyster beef. It says to put in a teaspoon of five spices, but it never tells me what the five spices
are
. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do.”

Her life was in an upheaval, and someone wanted to talk about oyster beef? Angie sighed. What was she supposed to do when the man she loved…her eye caught the question she'd written on the tablet. With a start, she forced her thoughts back to the radio show, tore off the paper, slid the window open, dropped the paper into Henry's tray, shut the window, and sat back down with a sigh. “Actually, there's no problem,
Barbara. The recipe doesn't mean to use
five
spices. It means, use the seasoning called ‘five spices.' It comes in a jar already mixed for you. You can find it in any grocery store with a well-stocked Chinese food section.”

“Oh? That's all? Geezo-petes, why didn't the recipe say so? Well, let me hang up, I don't want to ask Chef Henri something so dumb. Thanks so much, Angie.”

Angie stared at the telephone.
Geezo-petes?
Suddenly, she hit the phone line button again. “Barbara, wait!” All was silent.

Damn!
That did it. She'd lost a caller. And
Lunch with Henri
had so few of them, losing one was a minor disaster. Never again could Angie allow some stubborn, moody, unwilling-to-discuss-it-properly man get in the way of her job.

A minute later, miraculously, another call came in. She jabbed the phone button.

“Hello!” she shouted.

“Is this the radio?”

She forced herself to sound cheerful. “Yes, lucky caller. This is the
Lunch with Henri
radio show. I'm Angie, and I'm here to write down your name and your question for Chef Henri. Welcome!”

“Oh, why—um, my name is Anthea.”

Angie wrote it down. “What's your question for Chef Henri?”

“Am I on the air?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh. Good. I want to ask about pizza bread dough. I like to make my own pizza toppings, but I hate making the bread. Yeast is so much trouble. Does Chef Henri have any simple recipes?”

“Oh, that's a great question. Let me just finish writing it here.” She jotted it down, then dropped it in Henry's tray. “Chef Henri will love it. I'm sure he's got lots of ideas. I'll never forget the time my boyfriend—my sort-of boyfriend, that is—brought me a pizza. He thought he was bringing me Italian food—which is like coals to Newcastle, as they say—but really, it's so American, I had to laugh.” She remembered Anthea's question. “I used to make pizza for him using frozen bread dough.”

“What a great idea!”

“After it was defrosted, he would help me stretch it over the pizza pan. That was fun. We'd talk, and as the yeast warmed up, the dough would rise, and he'd warm up, and he'd rise…. Oh, well, I'm sure Henri will have lots of good ideas for you.”

“I can't imagine anything easier than what you just said. Thanks.”

To Angie's surprise, the phone went dead. She shrugged, then glanced at the monitor. No one else was waiting to have their call screened.

“And now,” Henry said, “it's time to go to our phones so that you, our callers, can ask me anything your hearts desire about cooking. Our first caller is Barbara from Novato. Hello, Barbara.”

No answer. “Barbara?”

Angie vigorously shook her head. Henry noticed and frowned. “Uh, Barbara seems to have been cut off. How about Anthea from…hmm. Anthea? Hello. Hello?
Hell
—oh.”

Angie's head shaking was a little slower this time. Henry's face turned purple.

“We seem to be having a bit of trouble with our
phone lines.” His voice was choked. “Let me give you the numbers to call once more, then we'll take a little station break, and when we get back I'm sure everything will be fine.”

He looked ready to break Angie, rather than a mere station broadcast.

 

“You didn't have to come by, Paavo,” Angie said, as she opened the door. “I know you have to go to Yosh's tonight.”

“It's all right.” He put his arms around her. “How are you doing?”

She leaned against him, enjoying the comfort he offered. “Better, I guess. That man is so hateful, I should just quit! In fact, I think I will. First thing tomorrow.”

“It can't be that bad.”

“It is. One—well,
two
little mistakes, and the way he carried on you'd think I'd murdered Betty Crocker.”

“You can't have done anything that terrible.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze. “I didn't.” Then she stepped away and paced, her steps faster and her arm movements wider as she spoke. “I just answered questions. I mean, I've
always
answered questions. Even when I was in kindergarten and the teacher would ask the class a question, and most kids would sit on their hands, guess who always raised her arm?”

“Angelina?”

“You're darn right. My teachers expected it of me. They praised me for it. So did my parents. Everyone could count on me to say
something
. Well, no more.
I'll be mute. A regular Marcel Marceau. Charlie McCarthy without Edgar Bergen. Milli without Vanilli.”

“Who?”

She breathed a weary sigh, then plunked down in her yellow antique Hepplewhite chair. “It doesn't matter. I'm quitting tomorrow.”

“I'm sure Henry will get over it.”

“I doubt it.”

“Give him another chance, Angie.”

“Give
him
another chance?”

“He needs you, remember?”

“He does?”

“Why else would he have hired you?”

She perked up. “That's right. To think, I'd forgotten. You're absolutely correct! How could I forget? Paavo, you're wonderful.”

He didn't quite know what to say.
Wonderful
wasn't an adjective he'd often heard applied to him. Maybe never before, in fact.

“There's something else I almost forgot,” she called, as she dashed into her bedroom. “I was so upset today that I went shopping. I found something for you.”

“For me? You went shopping?”

She came back carrying a large City of Paris box and handed it to him. “I didn't go shopping
for
you, but when I saw this I couldn't pass it up.”

He stared at the box in his hands. “It's sure big.”

“Open it, silly.”

“It's not my birthday or anything. And Christmas just passed.”

“And all I got you for Christmas were those silly
suspenders. I mean, I should have known you don't wear suspenders, but they were so adorable.”

He remembered the blue and yellow floral braces. Adorable wasn't quite what he'd call them.

With more than a little trepidation, he took the lid off the box. Inside was a double-breasted camel-hair overcoat. His heart sank and he could only think one thing—it looked expensive. He couldn't stop himself from touching the material along the collar, though. It felt like velvet.

“Try it on.”

He swallowed. “I can't accept this.”

“Of course you can! Let's see how it looks on you. You can take it back and they'll tailor it, of course, but I described to the man just how you were built. How wide your shoulders are, and how long your arms are, and he adjusted it a bit already….”

As she talked, he put the coat on over his sports jacket. She smoothed his collar and ran her hands over the shoulders and then downward, against his broad chest. “Perfect,” she said, adding a sigh over how handsome he looked. “Come see.” She took his hand and led him to the full mirrors on the sliding closet doors in her bedroom.

He stood and stared at the rolled collar, the perfect fit of the coat. He'd never worn anything like this before.

“You look dressed for the Top of the Mark on a winter's eve. Wow! I
knew
that coat was you, I just knew it.”

He raised his arms, holding them right out in front of him. So often when he did that, the sleeves of his jacket would nearly bare his elbows. This coat scarcely
showed the cuff of his shirt. He loved it. Quickly, he took it off and handed it back to her. “It's too much.”

“Too much what?”

“Money.”

“Money! It's a gift. What do you mean?”

“I mean, hell, anyone sees a cop with a coat like that, they'll figure I'm on the take for sure.” He slid his hands in his trouser pockets, not giving in to the temptation to touch the soft material once more.

“That excuse is so lame, Inspector. When fog and biting breezes come in off the ocean, even a cop can get cold. Take the coat. Please.” She held out her arms.

He shook his head, unable to find the words to explain that as much as one part of him was warmed and touched by her present, another part was troubled. He rarely received any presents at all. And for sure, no one had ever given him a present this expensive. Not ever.

She laid the coat on the bed, then looked up at him. “Did you know I was beside myself when I got home today? I didn't know what to do. I felt like such a failure…again. Then I called you, and despite your plans to go to Yosh's house this evening, you stopped here first. I can't tell you how much that means to me.”

“It was nothing,” he said awkwardly.

“You're wrong, Inspector. That
coat
is nothing. How one person makes another feel inside,
that's
what's important.” She touched his arm. “That's everything, Paavo.”

He gave her a long look. She was right. She was being generous and warm and caring; he was the one
being petty. He glanced again at the coat, then nodded. “I guess I can wear it if I ever take you to one of those operas you're always talking about.”

Her face lit up. “You'd go with me to the opera? That's wonderful. In fact, I've got a friend who's offered me a couple of tickets to
Götterdammerung
.”

“To what?”

“Wagner. The twilight of the gods. Four and a half hours. Valhalla's destroyed and Brunhild rides a horse into her lover's, who's also her nephew's, funeral pyre. There's so much loss, it's wonderfully
emotional!
” She waltzed out of the bedroom. “I'll go check the schedule.”