If Cooks Could Kill Read Online Free PDF Page B

three-story building, the top two floors flats and a garage at ground level. In the back, a window leading into the garage had a loose board that could be pulled open wide enough for a child to squeeze through.
    The police had been called to help find the missing boy. With the help of a bilingual neighbor, the mother explained what had happened. The police soon located the child, but he wouldn’t obey the neighbor or his mother, and the cops didn’t speak Japanese. He huddled on a flat piece of old, rotten wood that had been placed across some rafters at the top of the garage. It could hold a five-year-old’s weight, but not an adult’s.
    Paavo and Yosh happened to be two blocks away investigating an apparent suicide when the call went out for Japanese-speaking assistance. As Yosh climbed up the ladder, he’d tried to remember the words and expressions he’d learned as a child. At nearly six feet tall, with powerful shoulders and legs, a thick neck, and stubbly hair, he looked like a cross between a sumo wrestler and the lead in a samurai movie.
    When he reached the top of the ladder, the boy gawked at him and shrieked, and before Yosh had finished saying, “Konnichi-wa. Omawari-san desu,” or “Hello. I’m a cop,” the child began to scramble toward his mother.
    Now that the boy was safe, Paavo grew curious about the run-down building he found himself in. “Who owns this?” he asked one of the uniforms who had stood under the rafter, ready to catch the boy if he slipped or the board broke.
    â€œThe neighbors say its been abandoned for property taxes—a victim of rent control. The city owns it now but hasn’t decided what to do with it,” the young cop replied. “The upstairs flats are infested with rats, and people never see anyone go in or out.”
    Eight shoeboxes, arranged in a stack, were the only things in the garage that weren’t coated with inches of dust and cobwebs. Paavo glanced at Yosh. “I wonder what’s in them.”
    Yosh took out his pocketknife. “Let’s find out.”
    Inside were baseballs. Yosh lifted one out and gawked at a valuable Roger Clemens autograph. “What the hell?”
    Lifting out other balls, they found signatures from Barry Bonds, Pedro Martinez, Mark McGwire, and a number of lesser known players. Paavo and Yosh opened the other boxes and found the same thing. Several ballplayers had signed more than once.
    â€œI wonder if this is someone’s baseball collection,” Yosh said. “Why here, though? Unless they’re hot.”
    â€œOr fakes. Let’s get them out of here. We can check them out—contact Robbery.” He glanced at the neighbors gathered. “They won’t last if we leave them.”
    After instructing a patrolman to send the boxes to storage, Paavo and Yosh left the garage and headed toward the city-issue Chevy. As Paavo took out his cell phone and called Robbery, a short, chubby man with a pencil-thin mustache and wearing a black suit with a red carnation in the lapel walked up to them. A fireplug with a flower.
    â€œInspector Paavo Smith?” he asked.
    Paavo glanced at him, still on the phone. Yosh gave the strange guy an incredulous once-over before pointing to his partner.
    Immediately, the little round fellow burst into a loud, operatic version of “O Sole Mio.”
    Paavo froze. What the hell? Then it struck him.
    She wouldn’t , he thought. As the octaves rose higher and the volume louder, he was forced to admit the awful truth: she would. He jabbed a finger in his ear, and spun 180 degrees, trying to finish his phone conversation. The singer followed, bellowing the tune with grandiose gestures, sobs, and catches in his throat at the heartfelt Italian lyrics, whatever they were. The fireplug had morphed into a singing windmill. A loud singing windmill.
    People stuck their heads out of windows, cars stopped on the street, panhandlers