Cooking Spirits

1 Not much remained to identify. San Francisco Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith and his partner, Toshiro Yoshiwara, stood in an alley in the city’s Financial District surrounded by high-rise offices with restaurants, delis, bars, and a myriad of shops filling the ground floors. The alley mainly existed for garbage pickup. They had seen many dead bodies in their time, but none as mangled as the poor sap before them. The brightness of the morning sun, the beauty of a new day, seemed bizarrely at odds with watching the medical examiner’s team pull body parts, piece by piece, from a garbage truck. Even hardened crime scene investigators struggled to keep their breakfasts down. Earlier, one of the scavengers on the route had been wheeling a dumpster back into place when his partner operating the truck told him to climb up to see why the trash compactor seemed to be straining. The scavenger saw the human legs and feet—jeans and a man’s leather slip-ons—slowly being sucked into the mechanism. He screamed for his partner to cut the power, but it was too late. Only one foot had been saved. Blood dampened the ground in front of the location where the dumpster had been, making it appear as if an altercation had taken place there. The victim must have been tossed into the dumpster. “We won’t be able to tell anything until the medical examiner’s team sorts all this out,” Paavo said, although from the color, hardness and lividity of the foot that hadn’t been smashed, the death may have occurred a day or so earlier. He tried to find a jacket or pants pockets to look for a wallet or other identifying papers, but at the moment neither pockets nor their contents were identifiable. Finally, he peered with dismay at their crime scene. They stood in the busiest section of San Francisco during the week, and one of the quietest areas on weekends. The job of canvassing the Financial District and talking to anyone who might have seen or heard something would be a nightmare. “The poor bastard’s teeth were crushed when his head went through the compactor,” Yosh said. “Dental records won’t help.” Paavo nodded. “Let’s hope we have some fingerprints on file.” “Yeah,” Yosh said, “once we find his fingers.” Angelina Amalfi had just entered her penthouse apartment high atop San Francisco’s Russian Hill when she heard a knock on her door. “I was just thinking about you, Angie,” her across-the-hall neighbor, Stanfield Bonnette, said as he strolled in. “And then I heard your door. You look tired.” “I am tired.” She tossed her jacket over the arm of a chair, kicked off her four-inch high heels, and plopped herself down on the sofa. Stan sat beside her. He was thirty, thin and wiry with light brown hair and brown eyes. His was the only other apartment on the top floor of the twelve-story building on the corner of Green and Vallejo Streets. Stan could afford his place thanks to his father, a bank executive. And thanks to him, Stan had a job at the bank. His father's help didn't motivate Stan to work hard—or to work at all for that matter. “I just fired the worst wedding planner the world has ever known,” Angie said wearily. His eyebrows rose high. “You fired her? I thought you needed someone to help you with your wedding.” “I do. That’s the problem.” She leaned forward and rubbed her temples. “But she kept pushing a wedding dress cut too low with a bouffant skirt that puffed out at the waist. I’m short. I’ve been clothing this short body for many years. I know that with so little material on top, and so much on the bottom I’d look like a marshmallow. And I did. She insisted the dress was perfect, and I ‘needed’ to buy it without letting my mother or sister or anyone else give an opinion. She said families only confused the bride.” “That may be true.” Stan shuddered at the mention of Angie’s mother and sisters. “As if that wasn't bad enough, she wanted the reception to be decorated in blue. I’m not a blue person. I’m Italian!” She heaved a sigh. “Finally, I realized the only thing I ‘needed’ was a new wedding planner. One not so bossy.” She picked up a See's chocolate from the candy dish on the coffee table and took a bite, chewing morosely. Raspberry cream. She didn’t even like raspberry cream, but ate it anyway. She was truly miserable. Wedding planning was a stress test, and she was losing. Stan had wandered off to the kitchen as Angie talked. “Tell you what.” His voice sounded muffled as he perused left-overs in the refrigerator. “Why don’t I help you cook dinner tonight? After we eat, you’ll feel a lot better, I’m sure.” Despite his words, Stan couldn’t cook. “Eat whatever you’d like, Stan. Paavo’s coming over later, and we’re going out to dinner.” She took another chocolate, this one a caramel chew, as she thought about her handsome fiancé. She loved everything about his looks from his thick, dark brown hair, to his high forehead, penetrating light blue eyes, high cheekbones, and aquiline nose with a small jog in the middle where it had been broken. He was broad-shouldered, his body long and lean, and everything about him exuded power and, to her, more sexiness than one man should possess. The whirring of her microwave pulled her from her daydreams. Stan put a placemat on the dining room table and in another minute carried a dish with two pieces of Chicken Kiev. “I tell you, Angie, if you were marrying me, I’d be home every night for dinner.” “I know.” One of the ironies of her relationship with Paavo was that his busy schedule often caused him to work late into the night and miss dinner. At the moment, he had no complicated cases that she knew of, which meant he should have time to help with their wedding plans. “I hope, once we’re married and living together, we’ll share more meals. That reminds me, I’ve got to clear out some of my things so he’ll have room here.” “Oh my God!” Stan put down his fork before he’d finished, a remarkable thing for him. “You aren’t saying he’s moving into this apartment, are you?” “Of course he is. I can’t fit into his house. It has only one bedroom, one bathroom. Not even a dining room.” “Angie, you can’t expect him to live in your father’s apartment building!” Stan said, digging in again with gusto to make up for lost time. Angie had already recognized that it wasn't a stellar idea, but she hated hearing Stan say it. “My father might own the building, but we’ve always considered this to be my apartment. I’ll clean out the den and make it Paavo’s ‘man cave.’ He’ll like that.” Stan took another bite, savoring the rich flavors as he digested the information. “But if you do that, where will you put your desk and computer and all your business books?” “For all the good they’ve done me!” Angie interrupted. Now, she was not only tired, but dejected as well. Her inability to create a rewarding career for herself was one of the banes of her life. She had a talent for cooking, but even though she had tried to become a cake baker, a candy maker, newspaper food columnist, restaurant reviewer, took part in a radio cooking show and a TV cooking show, and on and on… nothing ever worked out. Stan frowned as he savored the last bite of Chicken Kiev. “Paavo living here is not going to work, Angie. If I were him, I’d hate living in your apartment. In fact, I’d do everything I could to postpone the wedding just to avoid it. Just wait. He’s going to back out of this. First, he'll start breaking dates with you. Next, he'll suggest the wedding be postponed. You’ll see.” “Paavo wouldn’t do that,” she said, glaring fiercely. He sniffed. “Paavo doesn't want to upset you so he’ll suffer in silence, growing more and more unhappy every day until, finally, he'll walk out on you.” “Nonsense! That’s a horrible thing to say.” But even as she protested, she knew Paavo held things inside if troubled. He would turn quiet and distant instead of blathering and complaining the way she did. When she first met him, she thought he was cold because of that. Quickly, she learned how much he felt—sometimes too much. Stan put his plate, fork and knife in the dishwasher. “He’ll deny it, but that doesn’t mean he’ll like being here.” Angie fumed. How could he know more about Paavo than she did? And yet, Paavo never actually said he wanted to move into her apartment, just that he agreed she couldn’t fit all her stuff into his little house. “I’m busy, Stan. Why don’t you go home?” He poured himself a generous glass of the Beringer Petite Sirah. “You can kick me out, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore my advice.” Holding the wine, he headed out the door. She folded her arms and sat back on the sofa, but she couldn’t stop the question reverberating in her head: What if Stan was right?