Cook's Night Out by Joanne Pence

business?”
    â€œI want to become a chocolatier.”
    Serefina’s brows crossed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
    â€œIt’s someone who makes chocolates,” Angie said, a little too firmly. “That’s what I want my business to be.”
    â€œChocolates? My daughter, a chocolate maker?” Serefina pressed her hands to her chest. “ Dio! You should be making babies—you and Paavo.”
    â€œI’m working on it.”
    â€œ Madonna mia! ” Serefina jumped up. “Is that the kind of thing to tell your mother? I raised you to be a good girl, to save yourself for marriage, and now you tell me—”
    â€œMamma, wait!” Angie flung her arms outward. “I meant that I’m working on us getting married.”
    â€œOh,” Serefina sat. “You nearly gave me a heartattack! You have to get married in white, you know. Otherwise, what will my friends say?”
    â€œI’ll get married in white…someday. Right now, I’m working on my career, on something to do with my life.”
    â€œFirst you get married.” Serefina jabbed the tabletop with her finger. “Later you worry about careers. That’s what I did.”
    Angie gulped more sherry. “You helped Papa with his store. I can’t help Paavo be a homicide inspector. I need my own career.”
    â€œIt seems you get involved in his work too much already. You need to settle down. You’re not going to find what it means to be a wife and mother by making a chocolate mint patty!” Serefina folded her arms. “The world doesn’t need any more chocolates, anyway. We’re already too fat.”
    That does it! Angie stood. “I really don’t want to discuss this, Mamma. I’m going home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
    â€œ Vai, vai .” Serefina dunked the biscotti in her sherry. “Maybe by tomorrow you’ll come to your senses!”

CHAPTER TEN
    Paavo walked slowly along Third Street in the rundown Old Bayshore part of the city. The collar of his black leather jacket was turned up against the brisk night air. Fog swirled around the streetlights, dimming them, but despite that he wore black-rimmed Ray-Bans. Most men did in this part of town.
    Black Levi’s, worn black boots, and a blue denim shirt completed his disguise. The sleeves of the shirt and jacket were folded back to show a heavy silver link bracelet instead of the practical black leather watchband he usually wore.
    He walked with an easy, loose-limbed swagger, and had combed his hair so that the front flopped onto his forehead. What was funny about this, he thought, was how little disguised he truly was. He had grown up on these streets, dressed much like this. At times, it seemed that dressing up each day to play Mr. Homicide Inspector was the disguise and this was his reality…or should have been.
    He stopped at an alleyway just outside a dive called El Torero. Slowly, he lifted a cigarette from his shirt pocket and, taking his sweet time, lit it.
    He paid no attention to the cigarette, though. The few people on the street continued on their way without a backward glance at him, no car drove by more than once, and there wasn’t the least flutter in the curtains and shades covering the windows above the streetlevel shops.
    He took a couple more drags of the cigarette, then let himself be swallowed up by the darkness of the alley.
    Leaning against a cobblestone wall and facing the street, he waited. The wait wasn’t very long.
    â€œHey, my man,” a voice said.
    Paavo dropped the cigarette, crushed it out, and glanced back. A youthful black man stood behind him, nervously bouncing from one foot to the other.
    â€œGlad you made it, Snake Belly,” Paavo said.
    â€œI always do. Smooth, slick, and deadly, that’s me,” he said, his voice vibrating in rhythm with his feet. “So, what you need me for, big man?”
    A