Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

“What does he call you?”

“Angie.” Among other things.

“Hmph. Very strange. What will we call him?”

I could see there was no escaping Thanksgiving, short of death or hospitalization. “His buddies call him Ted. I’m sure it would be fine with him for my family to call him that.”

“So his name is Theodore?”

The man was a pit bull, jaws clamped down hard, unwilling to release his victim’s leg from his mouth. I had to think hard. What was Tadeusz in English? “No, Papa, it’s Thaddeus.”

“Ah, Taddeo. Well, then, they should call him Tad, no?”

“Papa, it probably goes back to his childhood or something. Don’t pester him about it, okay?”

“Me, pester? Angel, you wound me. Now, you’ll call your aunt this week to confirm that Ted will be there.” It was not a question.

“Sure, Papa. No later than Friday.”

“Bene, Angel. I’ll see you for Sunday lunch. Maybe you’ll go to Mass with Terry this week?”

“Not this week, Papa.” He knew full well that I was what Aunt Terry termed a “lapsed Catholic.” I term myself a non-Catholic. Non-religious, really. And Papa, for all his jabbing about church, was pretty much the same. Aunt Terry refused to despair, though. My mother died when I was only five, and Aunt Terry left the novitiate of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary to raise me. Now in her late sixties, she still did much work for the order and even dressed a bit like the modern nuns I knew: short hair, dowdy clothes, flat sensible shoes. A few months ago, she started to date for the first time ever and we saw signs of femininity surfacing. To be truthful, Aunt Terry has a way to go to even reach average. But she never stops praying, especially for me and Papa. To paraphrase Tennyson’s ‘kind hearts are more than coronets,’ selflessness is worth more than beauty.

I hung up, wrung out from the exchange and the anxiety of introducing Wukowski to my family. Food. I needed food. Somewhere in the fridge was a plastic container of leftover stuffed cabbage rolls that Wukowski cooked for us the previous night. He told me that the Polish name for them meant ‘little pigeons’ in English. There they were. I slid them onto a microwaveable plate, nuked them, tested the inside for heat, and sank my fork and then my teeth into them. Mmm. Pork and beef, rice and seasonings, all rolled into cooked cabbage leaves, baked in a Dutch oven, served with pan juices and sour cream. Comfort food to the max.

I pictured Wukowski, a folded kitchen towel tucked into his jeans, assembling the meal in my kitchen. When I kidded him about his “man apron,” he whipped it off and used it to smack me on my butt. A faithful man, who cooked, could be playful, and was good in bed—make that really good in bed. Miracoloso.

Chapter 3

As soon as there is life there is danger.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

At eight the next morning, I called Adriana to check in.

“Oh, hi, Ms. Bonaparte.” Her voice was listless.

Small wonder that she was a bit depressed—her whole world was topsy-turvy. My maternal instincts urged me to make things better for her. “How is the apartment?”

“Really nice. It has cable TV. I stayed up late, watching all the channels.”

Obviously, the minor luxuries that many of us take for granted were a surprise to a kid who’d always done without. “Well, Adriana,” I counseled, “you can afford some nice things now. Not that you should toss your money away, but a late-model car and a splurge now and then on entertainment is not a bad thing. You might even want to upgrade your wardrobe a bit.” When we’d gone to her parents’ yesterday to pick up some of her personal things, there was hardly anything in her closet that wasn’t beige, tan or black—and all cheaply made. As for makeup, nada. The girl needed help!

“I’m not sure yet if the money is really mine. I still have a bad feeling about it. What if it doesn’t belong to me? Will I have to pay all this back? I can’t afford to, you know.”

“I’m meeting with Attorney Petrovitch this morning at nine. I hope to have a better sense of things then. But I believe that if the attorney of record tells you the money is yours, and since you’re not spending foolishly, there’s no question of eventual repayment. After he and I meet, I’ll pick you up and we can talk over lunch.” She agreed, but before I rang off, I needed to run a safety check without alarming her. “Adriana, how did you sleep last night? I never sleep very well in a new place.”

There was a little pause. “Well, I did wake up a few times. I’m not complaining, Ms. Bonaparte, but I can see why this particular apartment isn’t rented, with the overhead door to the parking garage being right below. People go in and out at all hours.”

“That would make me wake up, too. I’d probably even peek outside.”

She suppressed a little laugh. “I actually did get up, the first few times. But there was nothing to see. And no one approached my rental car.”

I was glad she didn’t have feelings of uneasiness. That would set off alarms for me. “Did you get any phone calls last night?” I asked.

“No. Of course, no one knows my cell phone number yet.”

It was a bit of a struggle to convince her to spend money on the new phone yesterday, but I managed. I’m pretty unstoppable in Mom mode.

We ended the call and, as I assembled my briefcase and purse, I mentally assessed Attorney Petrovitch. I’d run some background checks on him last night. There was very little information available. His name was originally Petrović. He graduated from Belgrade Law School, practiced in Sarajevo and emigrated to the U.S. in July of 1992, three months after the Bosnian War erupted. Because Wisconsin law did not