Murder By Devil's Food

CHAPTER ONE The Homicide division of San Francisco's Bureau of Inspections was located on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice, an ugly block-sized monstrosity that also housed the District Attorney's staff, courtrooms, judges' chambers, and the medical examiner. San Francisco Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith was the second to arrive that morning, right after Elizabeth Havlin, Homicide's secretary. It was his first day back after his honeymoon. "Welcome back," Elizabeth said, smiling broadly. "Thanks." Paavo had expected questions about his honeymoon, but instead of saying anything more, she just sat there looking at him with what could only be called a goofy grin. He gave a quick nod and strode into the bureau's main room where all the detectives had their desks. And froze. Surrounding his desk were flowers. A dozen red roses on one corner, pink hyacinths on the other, and purple and white camellias atop the bookshelf behind him. She didn't. At his desk a card waited. "To my wonderful husband— Enjoy your day. Love always, Angie." He sat at his desk. He knew she meant well, and that she'd be mortified if she had any notion of the reaction her flowers would get as his cohorts arrived at work. The thought came that he could throw them away. Some things, after all, simply didn't belong in Homicide. But he couldn't do that. And despite himself, when he looked at the flowers, he couldn't help but smile at his warm-hearted but often clueless wife. He loved her, even when she sent a ludicrous number of flowers to him at work. Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield was the next to arrive. In her mid-thirties, homicide's only woman detective was tall and attractive. Today, she wore her pale blond hair in a ponytail, while her navy blue sports jacket, starched white shirt and khaki slacks showed off her well-toned figure. She moved with an unconsciously athletic, no-nonsense gait, as sexy as it was businesslike. Also, she was currently spending a lot of time with Angie's cousin, Richie Amalfi. She stared a moment, then smiled and said only, "Glad to have you back." Paavo was equally glad she made no comment about the floral arrangement around him. "Thanks," he said, then returned to catching up with the memos and other paperwork stacked on his desk. "Whoa, ho, ho! Will you look at that!" Paavo didn't need to look up to know his partner, Toshiro Yoshiwara, aka "Yosh," had arrived. Loud, boisterous, a bit of a prankster, heavy-set, and about a foot taller than most Japanese-Americans, Yosh was a good complement to Paavo's quiet, serious ways. Paavo stood as Yosh caught him in a welcoming bear-hug. Yosh had brought a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and soon he, Rebecca, and Elizabeth each took one as they peppered Paavo with questions about his week in Hawaii. Rebecca's partner, Bill Sutter, came in a bit later and greeted Paavo with little more than a grunt. Sutter was the forgotten man on the force—non-descript, waiting for retirement, bland, and constantly wearing the expression of a person in need of a double dose of Pepto-Bismol. The other two detectives, Luis Calderon and Bo Benson, were on-call that week, so their schedules were anyone's guess. Paavo was again reading the backlog of memos when his peace was disrupted once more. "Mm, sure smells good around here, man." Inspector Luis Calderon stopped in his tracks and lifted his nose in the air. "Am I at work?" he asked his partner, Inspector Bo Benson, "or is this the perfume counter at Nordstrom's?" Calderon was an eighteen-year veteran of the force, in his late forties, divorced, and bitter about it. The other homicide inspectors speculated that he single-handedly kept the Rose Pomade Company in business with his foot-tall pompadour. Calderon liked the hairstyle when he was a teenager, and he wasn't about to change. Of course, back then, his hair color wasn't Grecian Formula, but no one dared point that out to him. Different in every way from him was Bo Benson—African-American, early thirties, streetwise, suave, and unabashedly single. He dressed like a Ralph Lauren ad, went out with a new woman every week, and had a face and physique so appealing that women's heads swiveled like turnstiles whenever he walked by. "What d'you know about Nordstrom's, Luis?" Bo jabbed Calderon in the arm. "The only perfume you ever smelled was a hooker's." Calderon widened his eyes in horror. "Don't go using those low-class words around him." He pointed his thumb toward Paavo. "Rich wife, house in the Sea Cliff. He's gone high society on us." Paavo folded his arms. The frown he wore when they first started teasing had now deepened to one that could make a panhandler give back spare change. "You two'll never make it as comedians. Go solve a murder—maybe your own if you keep up that talk." "Oooooh, I'm like scared, man," Calderon said, looking at Bo. "How about you?" "Leave him alone." Rebecca said. "I think it's sweet Angie sent him flowers on his first day back. And Yosh brought some doughnuts." Bo raised his hands as if he were being held up. "If we didn't pick on him, how else would Paavo know he's back at work?" "Believe me, I know it." Paavo rocked on the back legs of his chair. "What have you guys been up to while I was away? Or did you spend the time envious that I was in warm, sunny Hawaii and you weren't?" "We didn't have anything special," Rebecca said, then looked at Sutter. "Wouldn't you agree?" "Just the way I like it," Sutter mumbled. "I caught up with my paperwork," Yosh said, as he leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, hands clasped behind his head. "One of the benefits of having my partner out of town. I ended up with the easy stuff." "Yeah, well I'm glad somebody's having fun here," Calderon said, half snarling as he threw his notebook onto his desk. "You wouldn't be if you saw what we did yesterday." "It sucked, big time," Bo agreed. He took a bottle of Evian from his desk and opened it. "I'll be looking real hard to get my hands on the son-of-a-bitch." "What've you got?" Paavo asked. Calderon took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "A killing. A Guatemalan girl, Anna Gomez, nineteen years old, smart, pretty. Doing well for herself, too. s**t!" Paavo was surprised at Calderon's tone. It wasn't like him to sound so personal about a victim. "She was last seen alive waiting for the bus to take her home from a City College night course," Bo remarked. "Everyone said she was a good kid. Going to school at night, working days. And some bastard killed her. She'd been missing all night, but her folks thought she was with a boyfriend. Her body was found this morning by garbage men in an alley just off Lobos, across from Ocean View Playground." "s****l assault?" Yosh asked, sitting upright, feet on the floor as the seriousness and tragic nature of the murder filled him. "Won't know until the autopsy. But the really weird part—she was surrounded by burning candles, those little votive candles like you see in church—" "Weird, all right," Yosh agreed. "No, that wasn't it," Calderon interrupted. "The weird part was that her heart had been cut out." "You mean it's gone?" Paavo looked from him to Bo. "You got it," Bo said. "It was like something you'd see in one of those horror movies, the ones with demons and witches and Christopher Walken." "My favorites," Yosh said. "Not mine," Bo admitted, head shaking. "Gave me goosebumps." "Hell, now I gotta deal with a chicken partner," Calderon grumped, pouring himself a cup of strong, black coffee while he took another doughnut. "He's probably going to be seeing Freddie Kruger in every closet." "As if you weren't freaked out," Bo protested. "I can't forget how she looked lying there, naked, that candle wax all around her, and a hole the size of a fist in her chest—" "Bawk, bawk, bawk!" Calderon flapped his elbows. Bo shook his head and turned around. "Sounds like some kind of ritual," Paavo said. "Do you think that's what you're dealing with?" "That's what I don't like about this," Bo replied. "Who uses an alley as a ritual site? Other people could wander by, notice something going on. It's too much of a chance to take." "Do you think she was killed someplace else," Paavo asked, "and brought there?" "For sure. There wasn't enough blood for it to have been done where she was found." Bo lifted his dark eyes. "Still, to carry around dead weight, then set up all those candles … it makes me wonder if the killer didn't have others helping him, others as sick as he is." "Yeah, but she was just a little thing," Calderon added. "Hardly a hundred pounds, I'd say." They all remained in quiet contemplation for a moment. "Let me know if I can help," Paavo said finally. "Not you, Paav," Yosh said. "You've got other things on your plate right now." "I do?" Paavo asked. He'd seen nothing important on his desk. "You're a married man now. You've got to get home on time—at least the first day back at work. If I know Angie, she's already cooking a huge dinner for you." Yosh winked, then glanced at Paavo. "I'd say Yosh is right." Rebecca nodded vigorously. "Home. On time. At least your first week." "Don't worry about it," Calderon said. "Bo and I have it covered. We don't need help." Paavo wasn't used to being shut out. He knew the others thought they were being helpful, even thoughtful, but this was his job. It was what kept him going and made him who he was, married or not. Calderon and Bo headed out to continue their investigation, then Rebecca and Sutter left on one of their cases, and Yosh had to go to court to testify on an old case he'd handled. Soon after, Lt. Eastwood, Homicide's boss, breezed into the office long enough to say, "Welcome back," and then scurried off to another of the many meetings that seemed to take up most of his day. Alone in the bureau, Paavo walked to the window. He had finished his "in-box." Nothing of particular interest was in it, nothing that captured his imagination the way the Anna Gomez case did. The sky was gray that day, and he stared out at the lights of the freeway snaking south and east, leading cars out of the bowels of a city where death could occur so quickly, and so brutally. As he regarded the world beyond the windows, he had the strange feeling of something peculiar going on, as if the city was no longer the gold-toned, sunny place it had once been, but had become something darker, uglier. A chill rippled along his back, one of those that Angie described as someone walking over your grave. He couldn't help but think that he and Angie needed to find some way to live life to the fullest, every day, and to start now. Time, he knew, was a ruthless master. o0o The house felt empty and unnaturally quiet as Angelina Amalfi-Smith wandered from room to room. Paavo had gone to work, and their long-planned, longer anticipated, wonderful getaway of a honeymoon was officially over. She was glad for the company of Paavo's cat, Hercules. The big yellow tabby was very sweet, getting up in years, and Paavo adored him. At the moment, he was curled up on a chair asleep and paying no attention to her whatsoever. In the living room she looked out at the garden and beyond it to the Pacific Ocean. She loved the view and loved her house, even though there was a reason she and Paavo were able to afford a home in the Sea Cliff, one of San Francisco's wealthiest neighborhoods. A not-so-great reason. She hadn't really thought much about it before. Not while going through the purchase process and escrow, and definitely not while the house was filled almost daily with people remodeling the kitchen, painting, and laying down new carpets as well as re-sanding and re-staining the hardwood floor. Not even when she and Paavo first moved into the house after returning from their week in Hawaii. But now, with Paavo at work, and her life as a new bride slowly settling down to some semblance of normalcy, she realized how very much alone she was out here on a small point of land clinging to the westernmost edge of San Francisco. Maybe she should turn on the TV or the radio. That would take away the quiet. But she hated to succumb to a need for "noise." No, she would get used to this. It was home after all. The strangeness she felt was, she believed, simply a matter of going from having lived in a large apartment building at the top of Russian Hill where she was always surrounded by people, to being here surrounded by no one. And hearing the silence. But it wasn't the silence that bothered her, nor the emptiness of the house. It was, in fact, quite the opposite. It was the possible company that came with the home—the kind of company she had insisted didn't exist. Ghosts. When Paavo was here, she never felt their presence. Oddly, she met a couple of people who had supposedly seen her ghosts, but she never had, unless she were to believe that a cute little dog who came to visit now and then was one. How silly was that? For one thing, ghosts didn't eat, did they? And that little dog certainly woofed down the fancy canned food she bought for him. She was sure he was no ghost. Quite sure. Sort of. She suspected he belonged to a neighbor. Even the other people who described sightings that in her own mind could have been ghosts, hadn't thought they were seeing anything supernatural. She was sure the so-called ghosts were perfectly normal people who had legitimate explanations as to why they had turned up in certain places. Anything else was a fantasy put into her head by trouble-causing busy-bodies, and nothing more. Of course, the fact that a married couple, Eric and Natalie Fleming, had been murdered in her home's backyard several decades earlier didn't help. Because the couple had been young, wealthy, and attractive, their murders caused quite a bit of news at the time. Angie had learned all she could about the murders before she and Paavo decided to go ahead with the purchase. And now … Get over it, Angie! Six days ago they had moved into the house ready to start life as "Mr. and Mrs. Paavo Smith"—or "Angie Amalfi-Smith" as she decided she should be known. The honeymoon had been magical, and despite Angie's nightmares that their week alone would be spoiled by a murder and Paavo being asked to investigate, it hadn't happened. She guessed that sounded awful—her ruined honeymoon couldn't compare to being a murder victim. But fortunately, there was no victim, and she and Paavo had been amazingly happy. After returning to San Francisco, they had their belongings moved to the new house, picked up Paavo's cat from his step-father, Aulis Kokkonen, and spent the final week of their honeymoon putting their new home in order. And now, all of a sudden, those heady pre- and post-wedding days were over and it was time to get back to a more normal way of life. Doing what? With no deadlines or big events looming, Angie felt lost, as if she had more time on her hands than she knew what to do with. She strolled into the kitchen and made herself a fresh cup of coffee. She glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty in the morning. She was usually still asleep at this time. But she had wanted to be a good wife and see Paavo off to work. She even offered to cook him a nourishing breakfast. She knew he wasn't normally a breakfast eater. A piece of toast or an English muffin and a cup of coffee were his usual fare. But she'd been warned that "marriage can change a man," and she should be prepared for anything. Thank God, he hadn't changed that much. And now … here she was. She sat at the kitchen counter and yawned. Hercules jumped onto Angie's lap and purred as she petted his sleek yellow and white fur. She looked up at the clock. Seven forty-five. Coffee finished, she meandered up to the spare bedroom and looked at the mass of boxes in it, boxes filled with duplicative, unneeded, or unwanted wedding presents. Angie had tried putting away the gifts, but soon ran out of room. Besides, she didn't need five Belgian waffle irons or enough cake platters with glass dome lids to supply a large bakery, not to mention seven punch bowl sets, three hand blenders, four coffee pots, and seven salad spinners. She also received more towel sets, plastic kitchen containers, and bakeware sets than she'd need if she lived to be a hundred. Some gifts, like the two fondue pots, had probably been regifted so many times they were nearly antiques. Everything she didn't need or didn't want, she put into the spare bedroom that she hoped, one day, would serve as a nursery. She quickly realized that the last thing she felt like doing was dealing with wedding gifts. She headed back to the kitchen. There, she saw Hercules sitting bolt upright on a chair, his eyes wide as he seemed to be following the movements of something in the room. Something Angie couldn't see. A chill raced down her spine. Cats always do that, she told herself. It meant nothing. Still, she grabbed her phone and called her best friend, Connie Rogers. She hadn't seen Connie since returning from Hawaii because she'd been so busy. "Can you come over for breakfast before opening your store?" Angie asked when Connie picked up the phone. "I'm making cranberry-raisin scones." Connie didn't hesitate. "I'll be right over."