Too Many Cooks by Joanne Pence Page A

make it too. She’s a great gal. All the guys think so. Solid, dependable, like my Nancy. And she really likes you. So what if she doesn’t have lots of money? Money doesn’t buy happiness.”
    â€œYosh!” Paavo stood up. He’d had it. Yosh had spouted one cliché too many.
    Yosh grabbed his jacket and headed toward the door, shouting to Paavo as he went. “Nancy’ll be glad to meet you both!”

7
    Angie’s elbow rested on the work station filled with radio paraphernalia, her hand cupping her chin as she despondently looked at the array of lights and switches on the call monitor in front of her. Henry had decided this was the day she’d begin to do the call screening for him. The trouble was, today she didn’t feel like talking to anyone.
    Since Paavo had gone back to work there’d been a strange undercurrent of something wrong between them. But what? Maybe she’d just imagined it. Still, when he left her Sunday night, everything seemed fine—or as fine as things ever got when dealing with a neurotic male—but when he telephoned Monday evening, he was a different person. He’d even sounded strangely guilty that he’d gotten the okay from Hollins for the Placer County Sheriff’s Department to do an autopsy on Karl Wielund.
    Then he said he couldn’t come by to see her, and when she asked if he could make it tonight, he said hewas going to Yoshiwara’s house. Yoshiwara! Paavo gave her the impression that eight hours of his new partner was as much as he could take in one day. But he’d chosen Yoshiwara over her.
    Why didn’t he want to see her?
    He was crazy about her, wasn’t he? He should be. She ticked off her attributes: money, wit, good looks. But then, Paavo didn’t place much importance on money as long as he had enough for his simple lifestyle; he had a dry wit of his own and scarcely needed her smart-alecky one; and good looks wasn’t nearly as important to him as good character. So what did he like about her?
    Lunch with Henri’s new theme music, “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” ended and Henry began talking to the people who made up his radio audience. All five of them.
    Forget worrying about Paavo, she told herself. Concentrate on screening Henry’s callers. It should be simple enough. She’d find out what the caller’s question was, look it up in a cookbook, mark the page, and hand it to Henry. Talking to callers off the air was better than not talking to them at all, she reasoned—and a step closer to talking to the callers on the air, besides.
    There was just one problem. So that she could talk to the callers and not be heard on the air, she no longer sat with Henry in the glassed-in soundproof studio booth. She now sat just outside it, beside a sliding window that she had to open and shut quietly to hand him pieces of paper with names and notes as well as helpful cookbooks.
    She felt ostracized, like a poor relation left out in the cold, forced to peer in at the golden age of radio—almost as ostracized as she felt with Paavo, in fact.
    Why think about Paavo? There was nothing she could do if he didn’t want to see her. Everything had been fine between them once and would be again. She couldn’t be so dull he preferred other cops to her. Could she?
    Henry’s opening monologue was winding down. Quickly, she pushed the button on the phone system. “ Lunch with Henri radio show. Are you calling to speak to Chef Henri?” she asked.
    â€œHi, there! I sure am,” an exuberant voice answered.
    Why would anyone sound so happy to talk to Henry? “Your first name and where you’re calling from, please.” She felt like Ernestine, ready to burst into “one ringy-dingy” at any minute.
    â€œMy name’s Barbara, and I’m calling from Novato.”
    Angie wrote down the name and location on a big yellow tablet. “Hello, Barbara.