The Da Vinci Cook (31 page)

“How can this be?” She looked around, dazed and confused.

He held her arm. “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.”

Angie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She was sure it hadn’t been a dream. She’d never been inside the church before, yet knew exactly what it looked like. That was impossible. She shuddered from more than cold.

Father Daniel led her outside again.

“I don’t understand.” She clasped her hands. “I know what I saw!”

He frowned. “You must have visited years ago when you lived in Italy. You forgot, but subconsciously you remembered all of it.”

“No! I’m sure I was there today. I don’t get it.”

Her eyes searched his clear gray ones, but he had no answer for her. He put his arm around her back and turned her toward the cottage.

“Getting a little familiar, aren’t you, Father?”

Angie and Daniel froze at the gruff voice. Cautiously, they turned, and the two “goons,” as Cat had called them, who’d broken into both Cousin Giulio’s place and their bedroom at Da Vinci’s, stood before them. For the first time, Angie could see them clearly. The slim one had a goatee. He was the goateed man who’d followed them when they first arrived in Rome. The hulking one was ugly with a bandaged nose. He was so huge it was no wonder they couldn’t knock him out last night.

“Where’s the chain?” Goatee demanded brusquely.

“We don’t have any chain,” Angie said.

“Don’t get smart!” The Hulk stepped forward, raising his hand to smack her.

“No!” Daniel jumped in front of Angie. The Hulk changed his open hand to a fist and punched the priest in the face. Daniel went down hard. His head hit a tree trunk, his glasses flew off, and he was out cold.

“Father!” Angie started toward him, but Goatee grabbed her and dragged her toward the cottage.

“We can’t just leave him!” she cried.

“You’re going to get that chain for us right now,” Goatee said.

They opened the door to the cottage. Cat wasn’t there. They searched, but she and the chain were nowhere to be found.

“Where’d she go?”

Confused and miserable, Angie shook her head. She couldn’t believe Cat was gone.

Chapter 36

“You made us look like idiots!” the Hulk yelled as he stuffed Angie into the backseat of a tiny two-door Fiat Panda—all three inches of it—and got in front. “A dog chain! Goddamn it!”

She was curled up like a pretzel. “I did no such thing! I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I demand you let me go. You don’t know the trouble you’re going to be in.”

“Do we look worried?” Goatee asked with an evil chuckle. He got into the driver’s seat.

“Where’s the chain of St. Peter?” the Hulk demanded.

“You took the only chain I’ve ever had,” Angie said. “If it’s not what you want, go find Marcello, or should I say Rocco Piccoletti?”

“We’ve watched Piccoletti. He doesn’t have the chain. We know he thinks you and your sister have it. We want it. Where is it?”

“I don’t know!”

“Then your sister does!” Goatee started the car and peeled from the church grounds. “If she ever wants to see you alive again, she’ll give it to us.”

“What do we care about some old chain?” Angie watched the roads. Entering the highway, he turned toward Rome. “You saw how fast we gave it up once already. We’d give it to you in a heartbeat if it meant we were safe.”

“It’s worth a lot of money,” the Hulk said.

“So am I,” Angie told him. “Let me go, and I’ll pay you.”

“You’ll pay all right! Believe me.”

“Please.” Angie clutched the back of the driver’s seat. Goatee drove so fast and the car was so small, she wondered if they’d survive to ever get to Rome. “Let me talk to Piccoletti. Listen in as I do. You’ll see that my sister and I don’t have the chain. He’s got it! You’ve got to believe me. Would I lie to you?”

“Sure you would.” Goatee spat the words at her, then said to his partner, “I think we should start to send little pieces of her to her sister. That’d get us the chain real fast.” He glanced over his shoulder at her and grinned. “Maybe first an ear, then a little finger.”

“The wife, Nell Ferguson, is ready to deal on the Flora Piccoletti murder,” Paavo reported to Lieutenant Eastwood. It was early morning. “She and her husband were paid to make Flora talk—to tell them where to find her son. Flora refused. The wife said Leonard kept getting rougher as his frustration grew with the old girl. Finally, he wrapped her bathrobe sash around her neck, threatening to pull it tight if she didn’t talk. She spit at him, and he yanked. Nell tried to pull him off, but couldn’t get him to stop until it was too late.”

“The loving wife,” Eastwood said. “I had one of those once. Did she say who paid them?’

“She swears she doesn’t know. Len Ferguson made the contact. She also claims no knowledge of Marcello Piccoletti’s murder, and added that if her husband did it, he should fry.”

Eastwood grimaced. “At least we agree on that.”

“Your wife gave you up,” Paavo said to Len Ferguson. “She fingered you for Flora Piccoletti’s murder. She said she tried to stop you, but she couldn’t.”

They were in an interview room at City Jail, Ferguson’s attorney by his side.

“That bitch!” Ferguson added a few more choice words. “None of it’s true! She’s the one who killed the old lady. She was just supposed to hold the tie around her neck to scare her, not pull it tight, but she was mad because it was taking too long. I can’t believe she’d blame me! All I was doing was asking the woman some questions.” He did all he could to look wide-eyed and innocent. This time his act didn’t work.

“Tell me about Marcello Piccoletti.”

“I know nothing about Piccoletti,” Ferguson said, “except that him and his brother had pulled some kind of switch. One pretended to be the other or some damned thing. That’s all I know, except that he was supposed to have gone to Italy on Monday. The house was supposed to be empty.”

Paavo’s stare was icy. “But it wasn’t.”

“No. Both brothers were there.”

“Why were you there, Leonard? You’d already set up a deal for some men to buy the chain from Piccoletti. What were you trying to do?”

Ferguson shrugged. His attorney shook his head. “No comment,” Ferguson said.

Paavo leaned toward him. “When the men you worked with sent Marcello to buy the chain from Rocco, they cut you out of the deal, didn’t they? Suddenly, you were useless to them.”

“No comment.”

“There was nothing in it for you except to get a few debts forgiven.” Paavo watched every nuance of Ferguson’s expression. “By this time, you’d learned exactly how valuable the chain was. You wanted more.”

The attorney placed a hand on Ferguson’s shoulder. “My client doesn’t wish to comment on that line of questioning at this time, Inspector.”

“You were wearing a priest’s costume.” Paavo never took his gaze from Ferguson. “Why?”

“No way!” Ferguson replied.

“We showed your photo to the owner of the costume shop. He identified you.”

Ferguson sucked in his bottom lip. “I was . . . I was curious about what was going on. That’s not illegal. I wanted to watch. Most people don’t really see priest’s faces, you know. They just see the collar.”

Paavo didn’t know that Ferguson’s assertion was true at all. Just the opposite in his experience. He moved on. “As you headed for Piccoletti’s house, what happened?”

“I heard a gunshot,” Ferguson said. “I hid and waited. Soon I saw the realtor. She followed one of the Piccolettis. I figured she was there all along, working with them.”

Suddenly the attorney put up his hand to stop Ferguson from saying anything more. “Inspector Smith,” he began, “my client might have a statement to make. Before he does, I’d like you to discuss with the D.A. what good it would do for Mr. Ferguson to be so cooperative. Until we get a reply to that, my client will answer no further questions.”

Paavo stood. Ferguson was at the point where he’d explain who sent him after Flora Piccoletti and Charles. He wasn’t smart enough to do anything on his own.

Frustrated, Paavo ended the interview.

Goatee drove around the block while the Hulk looked for Cat inside Da Vinci’s. It was lunchtime, but she wasn’t there, and no one had seen her.

Angie listened with horror as the goons each tried to one-up the other with the dreadful things they were going to do to her eventually. They didn’t, however, seem to know what to do with her or where to take her right then.

How had she gotten herself into this? Why hadn’t she simply stayed in her beautiful apartment in San Francisco, gone to her interview with Chef Poulon-Leliellul, and planned the perfect wedding for her and Paavo? No, she had to get involved. When would she ever learn?

She wondered if Father Daniel had woken up or if he was lying there with a concussion and no help. Had Cat found him or even knew that Angie was gone? Were Cat and Father Daniel trying to find her?

No one knew who these men were who had her, why they were here, or who they were working for.

Given all that, how would anyone rescue her . . . ever?

Paavo hated law-enforcement politics and game playing. They wasted time, and he had no time to waste. He also hated making deals with criminals. And he particularly hated that where his old boss, Lieutenant Hollins, had been a good cop who’d worked his way up in the ranks and whose main goal was to see that bad guys were put away, Lieutenant Jim Eastwood brought whole new elements of politics and complexity to the bureau.

Paavo had to go to him before approaching the D.A. for a deal for Ferguson. Ferguson not only could provide evidence to charge someone with Marcello Piccoletti’s murder, but also the person who hired him to go after Flora and Charles.

Paavo needed that name.

Ferguson was a pawn—a murderous one, but a pawn nonetheless. Paavo wanted the king.

Eastwood insisted on talking to the D.A. alone and personally, and Paavo got the definite impression that this arrest was suddenly going to be presented as Eastwood’s own. That Eastwood wanted the chief of police job was clear to everyone from the moment they met him. To do so, he needed the D.A.’s support to break into the “old boy and girl network” that was a huge part of San Francisco’s political scene, both locally and nationally. Even in Washington, D.C., California’s most powerful politicians were a female triumvirate from San Francisco. Those women all frequented the same San Francisco social set. So did the D.A. and the current police chief. Eastwood was going to find getting ahead in this small, close-knit town a lot more difficult than he ever imagined.

Which might be a good thing. Eastwood just might slink back under the Southern California rock he came from sooner rather than later.

The only problem was that Paavo’s case was being delayed in the meantime. And any delay could be making things worse for Angie. He’d never been so frustrated, so completely in the dark for hours and days about what was happening to her. Once he got her home—and he had to believe he would—he never wanted to let her out of his sight again!

As Paavo waited, word came that Marcello Piccoletti’s Volvo had finally been located. He contacted the CSI team that would impound the car and do full forensics work on it.

He also checked the airlines in hopes that Angie was on a flight home and simply couldn’t phone for some reason. She wasn’t.

Paavo seethed as he waited for Eastwood to return. As he watched his boss’s office, Office Justin Leong knocked on Eastwood’s door, then opened it and stuck his head in as if he was expected. Finally Paavo knew where Eastwood had gotten so much information about him and the case early on.

As Leong backed away from the empty office and shut the door, he must have felt Paavo’s eyes boring a hole in him because he suddenly glanced toward Homicide’s main room.

When he saw Paavo, his face paled. He bowed and bobbed a couple of times before he turned and fled.

Paavo sighed, checked his watch, and went back to his desk.

When Eastwood finally returned, he glanced at Paavo, declared, “No deal,” and turned toward his office.

Checking the expletive burning on his tongue, Paavo stood. “I’d like an explanation!”

Eastwood stopped, head down. When he heard Paavo’s footsteps behind him, he lifted his chin. “The D.A. says our case is a slam-dunk against Ferguson for Flora Piccoletti’s murder, along with kidnapping your soon-to-be brother-in-law, and he wants that prosecution. The public is getting antsy about his record, and next year he faces reelection. He’s decided to change his image. The killer of an old lady in her home is important. The mastermind behind a plot that ended up with some shady character dead is not. In fact, according to him, whoever did that should get a civic award.”

“Did you tell him—”

“I told him as much as I could. Don’t harass me about this!” Eastwood went into the supply closet/office and slammed the door.

Obviously the meeting hadn’t gone as he’d hoped.

But Paavo was left with the problem.

Chapter 37

“There’s no deal because your wife already made one.” Paavo had hurriedly put together another meeting with Len Ferguson and his attorney. “The D.A. is through dealing.”