The Da Vinci Cook (20 page)

Frannie wasn’t appeased. “We want action, and we want it now! You’ve got to tell Mamma that everything is fine. That you’ve found Charles, he’s safe, and that you’ve cleared Caterina.”

“I won’t lie to her,” Paavo said.

“It’s not a lie,” Bianca urged, “when it’s done to ease her mind. She’s frantic over Cat and Angie. We can’t have her fretting about Charles, too. Papa already suspects something’s going on.”

“And if he finds out, he’ll be on the next plane to Rome,” Frannie said, grimacing as if she couldn’t imagine anything much worse.

“Actually, it is a lie,” Maria chimed in, harkening back to Bianca’s earlier statement. “A sin, I’m afraid, but since it’s being done for a good reason, it’s venial, not mortal. I believe God would forgive you for it.”

Paavo held his hands up to stop them. “I’ll admit that Charles has me worried. The good news is that there was no sign of a struggle. The house was untouched, so we have to assume he wasn’t harmed.”

“Cat’s house always looks like that.” Frannie brushed off the comment. “Her cleaning lady shows up four times a week.”

That explained the newspapers and mail. Paavo had hoped Charles was the one who brought them indoors, but now . . .

Maria crossed herself. “Does Cat realize the seriousness of this? I thought she’d come home.”

Paavo shook his head. “I haven’t told her or Angie yet. The Tiburon police are on it and might track him down soon.”

“Give me a break.” Frannie’s lips curled derisively. “You bureaucrats . . . ”

Bianca scooted to the edge of her chair, nearer Paavo, her voice firm yet solicitous. “We want you to come to Caterina’s house with us. On the way over, we discussed it, and we want to go inside, but we hesitated to do it ourselves since it might be a crime scene. However, there could well be something that you missed but we would notice since we know Cat and Charles a lot better.”

“If I know Charles,” Frannie huffed, “he saw what happened, got scared, and he’s still running. But I can’t be sure until I go to Cat’s house and check it out myself. And I intend to do that.” She scowled at Paavo as if daring him to stop her.

“Frannie,” Paavo said. “Charles’s car is in the garage.” The implication of that wasn’t lost on them. Tiburon had almost no public transportation.

“That doesn’t change my wanting to see his house,” Frannie said as she rose to her feet.

Bianca and Maria looked at each other and nodded. “We’ll go with you, Frannie,” Bianca said, also standing.

Maria jumped up beside her. Three pairs of brown eyes, so much like Angie’s, yet so different, peered expectantly at Paavo.

He knew when he was defeated. He wanted to do more digging into Len Ferguson’s background that morning, and ask his contact at the TSA if Marcello’s flight to Rome had turned up yet. All that would have to wait a while.

Right now, he was going to Tiburon.

“What?” Angie paled, her heart nearly stopping at Marcello’s murderous confession.

“I didn’t kill him! My God, you should see your face!” He roared with laughter. Angie didn’t find it humorous in the least.

“The truth is,” he said, taking a carton of half-and-half and heading for the espresso machine, “I got this restaurant after my uncle died. A natural death.” He poured some liquid into a stainless steel pitcher. “My uncle started out as the cook here, and ended up owning the place. He enjoyed being in the kitchen, and worked in it until he grew too old and had to give it up. He showed me his recipes and taught me how to cook.”

Something in his tone spoke to the cook in Angie. “Sounds like you enjoyed it,” she said.

He gave a very Italian “a little yes, and a little no” shrug. “It ate up all my time,” he said. “I didn’t have a life. My marriage broke up because my wife wouldn’t come to Italy with me. She stayed in San Francisco, near her family. She’d come here every so often, but she’d complain that Rome was too crowded and too dirty. Hell, I don’t know what she was looking at. Rome looks fine to me, and these days, San Francisco’s no model for spic-and-span.”

He flipped the switch, and the machine sounded loud in the quiet of the kitchen as he waited for the espresso to brew. He began to whistle the slow, plaintive “Ritorna Me.” The familiar Dean Martin song reminded Angie forcibly of her own parents. She blocked the pang of homesickness.

“You enjoy it here.” She called over the noise of the brewing machine.

“It’s that obvious?” The coffee made, he shut the brewer. Silence echoed.

“Of course. Especially since you kept the restaurant instead of the wife. You loved what you were doing here too much.”

“It might have been that,” he countered. “Or that I realized she loved me too little.”

Angie found his words surprisingly sad. Her confusion about him grew.

He steamed some half-and-half. Like Angie, he made quite the opposite of the “skinny” drinks so popular in the U.S.

“I’ll admit,” he added as he ladled froth over his espresso, “that there is something special about creating a meal with my own two hands. You’re a chef, so you understand.”

She inclined her head in agreement, but didn’t speak, letting him continue.

“I’m the one who puts the ingredients together, who stirs and blends and tastes and adds until it comes out in a way that makes my customers sit up and say ‘
Bellissimo!
’ He sat down with his cappuccino, took a taste, and rewarded himself with a loud “Aaah.”

“You know, Angie,” he continued, reaching for a biscotti, “being a chef here is the only time I’ve ever made anything. I’d worked, sure. I was a salesman, or did ‘customer service.’ But you know what they are? One is selling something somebody else made, and the other is pretending to help someone with a problem somebody else created—when both of you know you can’t help, and that the one who caused the mess doesn’t give a damn anyway! Yeah, I was happy here. Maybe the happiest I’d ever been in my whole life.”

“Why did you leave?” Angie asked, for the first time feeling a spark of genuine interest and liking for Marcello.

He dunked half the cookie, waited a few seconds, then put the soggy end in his mouth. “Mmm,
squisito!
” He dunked, ate, and reached for another before answering her with, “Shit happens.”

“What do you mean?” She drank down her now cold cappuccino as she watched the reply churn in his mind.

After a second and third biscotti, he explained himself, his exuberance fading with each word. “My mother kept saying I was wasting my life in a tiny restaurant on the wrong side of Vatican City, where I couldn’t even overcharge the tourist trade. I was always the ambitious one, the one who said he was going to make big money. My mother was sure I’d had a nervous breakdown or something. She said I needed to concentrate on my furniture store in San Francisco—that it would be the thing that’d make me rich. I was a salesman, Mamma insisted, not a cook. I listened to her, hired Bruno to run Da Vinci’s, and left. I never told anybody this, Angie, especially not my mother, but leaving here damn near broke my heart.”

“I can understand that,” Angie said sincerely. With a shiver of regret, his casual mention of his mother made her remember something else—the man still didn’t know about her death. Did he have no contact at all with people in San Francisco?

This wasn’t the time, and she wasn’t the person, to tell him.

Marcello’s face tightened. He downed his coffee and put their cups in the dishwasher. “I have to admit, I thought my mother was right—that I was wasting my life. The thing I didn’t realize when I was young is that it really isn’t a waste to be doing something you love, even if that something will never make you rich or famous. Now I know better. Now that it’s too late.”

His words tore at her. With genuine sympathy, she said, “It’s not too late, Marcello. This is your restaurant. You just need to find out what happened in San Francisco. Find your brother, the chain of St. Peter, and who was killed in your home. Get that behind you and you’ll be fine.”

He said nothing and shook his head, a faraway look in his eyes.

“We can solve this thing together,” she pressed. “You’ve got to trust us—Cat and I. Tell us everything, starting with where Rocco is.”

He stood so abruptly the chair he’d sat on fell onto its back, hitting the floor with a loud thwack. Angie jumped to her feet. He picked up the chair and slid both of their chairs back into the dining room. “Look, I’m sorry Cat’s involved,” he said as he walked to the back door and opened it. “I know you both want to help, but you can’t. Stay here, and wait until it’s over.”

His glance lingered over the kitchen before he walked out the door.

Chapter 24

With Frannie in the passenger seat beside him, and Maria and Bianca in back, Paavo zipped almost silently through the narrow, hilly streets of San Francisco behind the wheel of Frannie’s hybrid Prius. It was the strangest car he’d ever driven.

The “key” slid into a slot in the dashboard, and you pushed a power button to make it go, sort of like powering up a computer. When he stepped on the gas—no, the accelerator—the car began to move in electric mode, which meant it was all but completely silent. A stealth car. It was eerie. And, in keeping with its environmentally friendly reason for being, it had a large Energy Monitor console that he kept looking at to see if he was wasting gas as he drove.

As he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and then north on 101 to Tiburon, the sisters plied him with questions about the missing chain, Cat being fired from Moldwell-Ranker, and the dead man in Marcello Piccoletti’s kitchen.

“Watch out for the bottle!” Bianca cried, but too late.

Paavo drove over it and heard the crunch of glass. “I’m sorry, Frannie. I was looking at the display that tells me how much gas I’m using. If the tire’s punctured, I’ll replace it for you.”

“No problem,” she groused. “The car’s already got dings and scratches from me running into things looking at that damned console. There should be a law against it. Seth was right when he said I was too anal about wasting natural resources to get this car.” Her voice reeked with bitterness. “After him being wrong about everything else, who knew?”

No one commented.

They reached Cat’s house. Frannie picked up the morning newspaper, Bianca checked the mailbox, and Maria prayed. As Paavo unlocked the door, Bianca asked, “How do you turn off the alarm?”

“It’s not on,” he said. “It wasn’t last night either.”

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise.

Paavo pushed the door open and let the women in with an admonition not to touch anything.

As soon as he moved aside, however, they dashed inside like kids at the opening of an amusement park. Maria headed upstairs, Bianca turned into the living room, and Frannie raced off toward the kitchen.

“Paavo, you’d better come here!” Frannie called. “I thought you said the house hadn’t been broken into?”

“It hadn’t.” He headed her way. Hearing Frannie’s call, Maria joined him. Bianca, in pure “once bitten, twice shy” mode, hung back. Way back.

A paned-glass door led from the kitchen to the side utility yard, a fenced-off area with garbage cans and gardening supplies. One square of glass had been knocked out. From the opening, a person could reach in and unlock the door. Paavo had specifically checked all locks the night before. The door had been fine.

“Someone broke in,” Frannie said, stating the obvious, then frowned at Paavo. “I thought you said the Tiburon police were watching the house?”

Paavo stepped out to the yard. The door was well hidden from the street and neighbors. The sisters looked the situation over.

“Who would have broken in?” Bianca asked. Not having heard screams of anguish, she had joined them.

“This makes no sense,” Maria said. “If whoever did it is the same person that took Charles hostage, why not just use his key?”

“We have no proof Charles is a hostage,” Frannie argued. “I still think he’s scared and hiding somewhere.”

Paavo pivoted and headed for the family room. The three sisters, goggle-eyed and frightened, followed like ducklings behind their mother. The lamp table that had held keys was now empty.

The four headed out to the garage. Charles’s Lexus looked untouched. Paavo checked inside. There had been a cell phone attached to a recharger cord inside. It was gone as well.

All of them searched the house in case the Tiburon police had moved the keys and cell phone for some reason. Neither were found. Although it was impossible for him to know for sure, as far as Paavo could remember, nothing else seemed to be missing. The sisters affirmed it.

“Why the hell would someone have broken into the house just to get keys and a cell phone?” Frannie demanded. “That’s stupid!”

“I don’t understand it either,” Bianca agreed.

“I can think of a reason,” Maria said. “What if whoever took Charles wants to talk to Cat, to find out something from her? I suspect it’s about the chain of St. Peter. They can’t reach her in Italy and expect Cat will phone Charles on his cell phone. When she does, they’ll answer her call. I think it proves Charles is a hostage.”

Paavo stared a moment at Maria. Her explanation was bizarre and convoluted—and possible. She was more like Angie than he’d thought.