Free To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery by Joanne Pence

meant, but he did know that Aulis had kept his part of the bargain. He had told Paavo nothing about his mother.

Chapter 10
    “I didn’t know what to do or say, Bianca.” Angie was fighting tears. It was early morning, and she sat in the kitchen of her sister’s house, telling her about Paavo finding the strange letter from his mother. “First the shock of Aulis’s attack, and then that awful letter!”
    “There’s not much you could have said. You were there for him, that’s what matters.” Bianca was the oldest of her four sisters, the one she went to when she was troubled. She was little, like Angie, but outweighed her by about fifteen pounds. Where Angie’s hair was short and wavy with auburn highlights, Bianca’s was straight, chin-length, and dark brown.
    “Hercules is there for him. The man is hurting and confused. I’ve seen Paavo upset about his cases and—maybe once or twice—even about me, but nothing like this. You know how quiet he gets when he’s upset; well, it was silent-movie time at our place last night. I kept waiting for a piano player to show up.”
    Bianca had just taken a blueberry strudel from the oven, and cut a piece for Angie and one for herself.“When Aulis gets better, Paavo can ask him about his past.”
    “And if he doesn’t get better?” The two sisters looked at each other sadly. “If Cecily’s letter— if that’s what her name really is—is to be believed, Paavo’s whole life, his whole childhood, is based on a lie. It was such a strange, frightening letter. She gave Aulis her kids! I just don’t get it. How could any mother do that?”
    “It’s hard to imagine that such a story could have been kept quiet all these years,” Bianca said, pouring hot coffee and then sitting across from Angie. “People know about such things—and talk.”
    For the first time that morning, Angie smiled. “That’s right, they do. They’ll know. Neighbors will know. Anyone around at the time will know!”
    “Slow down! This happened thirty years ago.”
    “I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But we aren’t talking Harry Houdini here, either. She was just a woman with two kids, and no husband. Maybe she was heavily in debt, or…or owed money to some drug dealers. Who knows? That would be a reason to leave town!”
    “Poor Paavo,” Bianca murmured. “What a thing to discover.”
    “It’s got to have been really bad or she wouldn’t have left those kids, I just know it.” Angie sipped some coffee, lost in thought. “I wonder if he should be the one to find out. It could be potentially devastating for him. Aulis kept the past hidden for a reason. At the same time, it’s important. It’s the…the prelude, so to speak…of the good man he’s become. I’m afraid for him, Bianca. Maybe I should see what I can find out.”
    Bianca was lifting a piece of strudel to her mouth, but put it down at Angie’s words. “Aren’t you supposed to be hiding until the police catch whoeverhas been lurking around you, or your apartment, or whatever?”
    Angie pushed her piece of strudel aside, her appetite gone. “Oh, the more I think about it, those two guys might have been salesmen, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or even Mormons. I might have made a mountain out of something completely innocent.”
    “And Aulis’s shooting?” Bianca asked, with a worried frown.
    “Well…” Angie didn’t even try to answer. Instead of mountains and molehills, she was clutching at straws.
     
    “Ah, here you are,” Ray Faldo said as Paavo walked into the photo laboratory on the second floor of the Hall of Justice. “I’m just about ready to print. Give me a couple more minutes.”
    Faldo was the best lab man in the department. He could work wonders with the equipment they owned, making it perform almost as well as top-of-the-line merchandise. That was why Paavo had gone to him for help. Faldo stared into the scope of a photo enlarger, slowly adjusting dials. “I made a negative of the photo,”