Read To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery for Free Online Page A

place.
    “The can has a little problem…” Connie warned.
    Angie squared her foot on the new can.
    “The lid doesn’t fit very well.”
    As she shifted her weight, the garbage can cover gave way. The part she was standing on plunged downward while the other half soared straight up. Angie dropped like a stone. Connie ducked as the lid became airborne, whizzing by like a B-movie UFO to land with a ringing clatter on the street.
    When Connie looked up again, Angie was gone. She clutched the lip of the can and looked down at Angie sitting in the soupy muck. “Get out of there! Someone might have heard you screech as you dropped.”
    “This is so disgusting!” Angie stood. She wanted to wipe her hands, but she had nowhere to wipe them. Finally she gave up, grabbed the lip of the can, and tried to hoist herself up. The gunk she wasstanding in and the sides of the can were so greasy she felt like she was trying to climb straight up an oil slick. “I need some help.”
    “Ah, I know what to do.” Connie circled the garbage can to the uphill side. “Lean against the downhill side of the can.”
    Angie grasped the lip opposite Connie. “Why?”
    “Now, duck!” Connie yelled, pushing with all her might. The can began to tip.
    “Noooo!” Angie’s world tilted. As the sidewalk rushed up at her, she bobbed down. Garbage sloshed over her like a great, smelly tidal wave.
    On its side, free from the confines of the other cans, Angie’s had room to roll. And it did.
    A high, slightly gurgling wail filled the night air.
    Connie watched in mute horror as the can bounced down the hill, accelerating with each roll like some great planet spinning madly on its axis. Scraps of garbage whirled out onto the pavement, tracing a trail down the alley.
    Connie ran down the hill after it, waving her arms. “Angie! Stop!”
    The wail grew higher and louder.
    Finally the can smacked into a lamppost and, with a small, dying teeter, came to rest.
    Connie dropped to her knees beside it, afraid to look inside. “Angie?” she squeaked. She gave it a little tap. “Angie? Are you still alive? Can you talk to me?”
    Slowly, painfully, Angie crawled onto the street.
    Suddenly a male laugh erupted, then cut off as quickly as it began, followed by the sound of running footsteps.
    “The nerve of some people,” Angie said, wiping from her face and hair coffee grounds, eggshells, all manner of once-green vegetables, and what looked like inner parts of a crab.
    “Is there anything I can do?” Connie blubbered, wringing her hands.
    “One thing.” Angie sat woefully on the sidewalk. “Next time I ask you to help me…”
    “Yes?”
    “Refuse.”

Chapter 6
    Monday morning, Paavo sat in Lieutenant Ralph Hollins’s office on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice. Although the room was minuscule, tucked in a corner of the fourth-floor Homicide bureau, the Hall itself was massive, ugly, and overlooked a freeway. It was not your high-class real estate. By comparison, the new city jail built behind it looked like Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome.
    He told Hollins about the break-ins at his and Angie’s homes. “I can’t figure out what they want, what they were looking for, or why they tore up my place after giving Angie’s the kid-glove treatment. It’s like they were pissed off, or irritated that they couldn’t find what they wanted. Whatever it was.”
    Ben Chan finally had found time to check Paavo’s house, but so far had nothing to report. The only good news was that his cat had come home.
    “It sounds weird,” Hollins said. In his fifties, with gray hair and a protruding stomach, he was in charge of Homicide, which gave him a close acquaintance with Rolaids. “Take the time you need and keep me posted. I don’t believe in coincidence either.” An unlit cigar was held firmly between hislips. He couldn’t light it—not with San Francisco’s no-smoking policy—but he could pretend. “Any leads yet on Friday’s Tenderloin