The Da Vinci Cook Read Online Free PDF

turned toward Angie, her face was considerably brighter. “If this idea of yours is any good at all, I’ll have to be the one to go.”
    “Not good, Cat.” Angie vehemently shook her head. “The police want to question you. They won’t like it one bit if you leave the country.”
    Cat pondered this, then smiled coyly. “I don’t know that they want to question me. No one’s told me that.”
    “You witnessed a murder!”
    “No, I didn’t! I saw a dead body. That’s completely different.”
    Angie couldn’t believe her ears. “You were seen fleeing the scene of the crime.”
    “I wasn’t fleeing! I was chasing!” Cat tossed her head. “If there’s a problem, Charles can hire a good lawyer or two.”
    “Martha Stewart had a whole team of them,” Angie pointed out. “And look what happened to her!”
    “Rocco must be going to Italy to meet Marcello, and I need Marcello to straighten this all out,” Cat said, thinking out loud.
    “Is that the real reason for your sudden interest in flying halfway around the world?” Angie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
    Cat coolly regarded her for a moment. “Of course! I want it done right. Join me, if you’d like.”
    “Thanks for your confidence,” Angie muttered, arms crossed.
    Undaunted, Cat went into logical, controlled mode, ticking off items on her To Do list. “I’ll have to ask Mamma to take care of Kenny for a couple of days, then tell Charles to bring Kenny to Mamma’s house, call Kenny’s school, then all my clients to say I’ll be out of town a couple of days—”
    “If we’re going, we’ve got to go now!” Angie said. “They won’t sell tickets much longer.”
    Cat’s mind whirred. “If we can do that, I should be able to keep my name out of the papers. Charles won’t have to contact his lawyer friends—they all have such big mouths! And no one will ever know anything at all about this. It’s not that big a scandal, after all.”
    “Not at all,” Angie agreed, hoping her sister didn’t notice when she rolled her eyes.
     
    Paavo banged his head against the steering wheel. Okay, it was childish, but given the provocation, understandable.
    He sat in the airport parking lot. The California Highway Patrol had contacted him when the two cars he’d sent a bulletin on showed up there, then he and Yosh headed that way. It was Angie’s car, all right. He could only assume the BMW was her sister’s. Yosh was talking to the garage attendant to see if he’d noticed the two women and which way they’d gone.
    From the time Paavo had gotten the call from the CHP, he’d tried to reach Angie, to find out which terminal she was in, but he still couldn’t get through.
    Then, just minutes ago, she’d called him.
    “Nobody saw them,” Yosh said as he got into the car, and noticing his partner’s agitation, asked, “What’s wrong?”
    Paavo turned his head to look at him, his expression blank. “They’re going to Rome. The two of them are in flight, as we speak. . . .”
    Disbelief rendered the big guy speechless for nearly a full minute, then he choked out, “Rome . . . as in Italy?”
    Paavo nodded as the ramifications of what they’d done hit him. Angie had told him they were following Rocco Piccoletti, the home owner’s brother, that he’d taken a three p.m. flight to Rome and had the relic Cat had been accused of stealing with him. Angie seemed to think that all she and Cat had to do was to track down this Rocco Piccoletti in Rome, tell Paavo and he’d ring up the Italian police and ask them to send Rocco back to the U.S., where he’d immediately clarify everything, turn over the relic, and leave Caterina free and clear.
    But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He’d been about to explain to her that there were rafts of laws involving extradition, and that, to begin with, he’d have to get all the higher-ups in the SFPD involved, not to mention the State Department, Justice Department, and the various embassy