Too Many Cooks Read Free Page A

couldn’t do that either, despite himself and his private demons.
    They’d met during his last case. She was wealthy, pampered, and bossy, a pint-sized whirlwind who was far out of his league and whom he would have steered clear of except for one thing—someone had been trying to kill her. As the case proceeded, he discovered that under her rich-kid facade, Angie had a heart that was bigger than her father’s fortune. Although she could have used a bundle of her daddy’s money to hide somewhere until the danger passed, when things got tough she stuck with Paavo, giving him all her trust. After he was wounded, Angie, the delicate debutante, taught him, the hard-nosed cop, about other kinds of brave.
    He’d fallen for her like a loser in cement shoes going off a pier and had spent the last two months recuperating and living a fantasy life that Angie was the main part of. She’d stayed near him day and night while he’d been in the hospital. When he was able to leave, he decided to go to the tiny apartment of Aulis Kokkonen, the elderly Finnish man who had raised Paavo and his older sister from the time they were young children. Angie would bring big pots and platters of minestrone, cacciatore, lasagna—anything she thought might be interesting, healthy, and filling. She always brought plenty because Aulis was a little too thin, and his cupboard a little too bare, to suit her. In time, Paavo was able to go back to his own house. She practically moved in.
    But then, Christmas and New Year’s arrived and Angie had to go to her parents’ large winter estate in Scottsdale to spend the holidays with her family. As Paavo faced those days alone and realized he’d soon be going back to work, cold reality set in.
    It was time to get on with his life. His real life. Would Angie fit into it? Given their backgrounds, their differences, one part of him had to admit she probably wouldn’t, but another part of him couldn’t say good-bye. Angie was the only thing in his life he couldn’t be coldly practical about, much to his dismay but also much to his joy.
    The flowers had arrived shortly after he did this morning. It felt strange to be back in the Hall of Justice squad room without his old partner, Matt Kowalski—without seeing Matt’s slightly balding head down on his desk, taking yet another nap. That was the other thing that happened during his last case. Matt had been killed…and a part of Paavo was emptier, colder.
    The showy, heavily scented flowers made Paavo’s head feel stuffy, made the air thick, the way it had been at Matt’s funeral. But now, within the barely controlled chaos of homicide’s squad room, voices around him spoke of sudden death on the street and within shabby rooms where there were no flowers, often no light. That their world was without flowers and sentiment was something Paavo’s colleagues would miss no opportunity to remind him of.
    â€œMm, sure smells good around here, man.” Inspector Luis Calderon, an eighteen-year veteran, stopped in his tracks and lifted his nose in the air. “Am I still at work?” he asked Inspector Bo Benson, “or is this the perfume counter at Nordstrom’s?”
    â€œWhat d’you know about Nordstrom’s, Luis?” Benson jabbed Calderon in the shoulder. “The only perfume you ever smelled was a hooker’s.”
    Calderon widened his eyes in horror. “Don’t go using those low-class words around him.” He pointed his thumb toward Paavo. “He’s gone high society on us.”
    Paavo folded his arms. “You two’ll never make it as comedians. Go solve a murder—maybe your own, if you keep up that talk.”
    â€œOooooh, I’m like scared, man,” Calderon said, looking at Benson. “How about you?”
    â€œLeave him alone.” The one and only woman in Homicide, Rebecca Mayfield, who’d just recently been