To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

finisher, and finally, a magnetic polisher. Jewelry-making equipment.
    No jewelry, metals, or gems were found, and he wondered if Platt had been killed for them. Judging from the equipment, Platt could have had a lucrative business—and judging from its location, it was probably illegal, or at best questionable.
    Officer McNally talked with the girl while Paavo continued to sketch and survey the scene. He had no sooner finished when the CSU arrived. He went over to the young girl and sat down beside her. She wore jeans and a gray zippered sweatshirt over a red T-shirt. “How are you doing, Jane?” he asked.
    “I’m all right.” Her voice was soft, and she looked more shy than tearful. Wide-eyed, she watched the crime scene investigators enter the apartment.
    “How old are you?”
    She lifted blue-eyeglass-framed eyes to his. “Nine.”
    He flashed onto his nightmare. Even staying with Angie in that beautiful hotel—an indulgence he would have to give up as he seemed to have exaggerated the danger she was in—the nightmare haunted his sleep.
    In the dream, his sister was the age of this girl. Nine. Why had he dreamed of her being only age nine? She’d been nineteen when she died, not nine. He tried to dismiss the memory. “Do you live here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Just the two of you?”
    She nodded.
    “When you came home, was there anyone in the apartment besides your grandfather?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “I called hello, and when he didn’t answer I looked for him.” She shuddered. “Then I phoned nine-one-one.”
    Jane’s eyes grew even rounder when Assistant Coroner Evelyn Ramirez walked into the apartment carrying a medical bag. She waved at Paavo, but one look at the young girl’s face, and instead of making her usual ghoulish comments, she went straight into the bedroom. Two med technicians followed. Paavo noticed that the child’s breathing had grown heavy. She was a good actress, but apparently not nearly as unmoved by her grisly find as she pretended to be.
    He placed his hand on her narrow shoulder. “Where can we reach your mother or father?”
    “They aren’t here,” she said.
    They aren’t here . That was how Jessica used to answer whenever kids at school or teachers or others would ask about their mother or father. Older, and tough, and protective of her little brother, Jessie would never say, “They’ve gone away,” or “They abandoned us,” or what he knew she really wanted to reply to the busybodies who questioned them, toshake her fist and cry out, “We don’t know who the hell our fathers are, and we don’t give a goddamn about our mothers anymore, so what’s it to you, asshole?” Instead, she’d politely reply, “They aren’t here.”
    “Do you have any relatives or friends to stay with?”
    “I have an aunt,” she said in her matter-of-fact manner.
    “I called her already, Inspector,” McNally said. “She’s on her way.”
    “Okay, good.” Paavo’s gaze swept over the apartment. There was a limit to how long a kid could sit in a room permeated with the smell of her grandfather’s death, and this little girl had gone way past that point. “Want to go outside to wait for your aunt?”
    “Yes.” Her face filled with gratitude and she stood. On the floor was her book bag. She picked it up and hitched it to her shoulders.
    As they left the apartment, his gaze caught the equipment-laden table in the bedroom. “Do you know what your grandfather did in there?”
    “He made jewelry.” She reached under her collar and pulled out a pendant on a gold chain.
    Paavo stared in disbelief. The necklace was beautiful. It looked like something Angie might have owned—a large ruby with a small diamond on each side.
    “It’s just a fake,” the girl said. “It has a flaw in it. That’s why Grandpa gave it to me to play with.”
     
    “I really don’t think this is going to work, Angie,” Connie whispered, crouching behind a row of industrial-size garbage