Read Online Cooking Most Deadly by Joanne Pence - Free Book Online Page A

idea.”
    She put her elbows on his desk and leaned closer. “It’s a good idea for you, too, Paav. How about some dinner?”
    â€œI want to finish typing up my notes.” He flipped back and forth through his notebook. He and Yosh had split up the list of people whose offices overlooked the alley behind the jewelry shop. No one remembered anything strange. But putting all their statements together just might turn up something.
    â€œCome on,” she said softly. “You won’t forget what you wrote that fast. You have time for one fast-food hamburger, don’t you?”
    Nothing about Nathan Ellis made him a likely target for a killer. He’d been married three years. His wife worked as a legal secretary at a law firm five blocks away from the jeweler’s, which explained how she was able to get there so quickly after the robbery. Paavo frowned. What was he missing?
    â€œYoo-hoo, Paavo?” Rebecca called. “Dinner.”
    â€œOh, sorry, Rebecca. I’m not hungry—thanks anyway.”
    She cocked her head. “The building’s on fire.”
    Paavo stared at some scribbles in his notebook, trying to decipher them. He was still focusing on the most troublesome aspect of this case. Why would anyone pass up diamonds to take replicas of some museum pieces? He glanced at Rebecca. “If it was, the alarms would be going off.”
    â€œI give up,” she murmured, pushing herself away from him, her back against the chair and her arms folded.
    Calderon marched into Homicide. “You still here, Mayfield?”
    â€œJust a couple minutes more, then I’m leaving.”
    â€œAny luck?”
    Rebecca gazed at Paavo. “None at all…. Uh, oh yes…your reports. They’re on your desk.”
    Calderon grunted, the nearest he ever came to thanking anyone. Rebecca stood up. “You want to go to dinner, Luis?”
    â€œI already ate.”
    â€œWell, then, I guess I’ll go now,” she said. “See you tomorrow, Paavo.”
    â€œSee you,” he replied, never looking up from his computer screen.
    A short while later he shut the folder and put it in his desk drawer. Yosh had left for home long ago. Apparently the last couple of nights, between going to the Court House and working on the Ellis case, his wife was feeling neglected. Tonight was fence-mending time.
    One more example of how marriage and homicide didn’t mix. This caused him to think of Angie—and thereason why it did was so obvious it made him shudder. Every rational pore told him to give her up, that he wasn’t marriage material, and it was unfair to try to be a part of her life. But another part, a more selfish part, wouldn’t let her go. That part told him she was his— every petite, saucy, ambitious, warm-hearted, generous, maddening inch of her. They were as unlikely a pair as he’d ever come across, but when he was with her, he felt as if the whole world smiled. God, where had that come from?
    He thought about her phone call earlier that day, about her excitement at auditioning for the TV program, and her disappointment that he couldn’t celebrate with her.
    He pushed his chair back from his desk, not wanting to be here anymore. Suddenly, he knew exactly where he wanted to be.
    He got up, lifted his jacket from the back of his chair, and left.
    Â 
    The minute Angie saw Paavo’s house, she knew he wasn’t home. The lights were off, and his car wasn’t in the driveway. Stan was in the Ferrari with her. They should continue on to the Sound Works. Why bother to stop? But then, given the off chance Yosh had given Paavo a ride home, she parked and ran up to the front door. He’d given her a key to his house for emergency use, but it didn’t seem right to go barging in for no good reason. Instead, she knocked on the door and rang the bell, hoping against hope that he was there.
    He wasn’t.
    The frustration she felt told