Cook's Christmas Capers (The Angie Amalfi Mysteries)

by Joanne Pence

  How did she know the apartment had a roof access? She must have been there before.

  Connie faced Bruce, "What do you think?"

  "I think it's amazing that she seems so believable," he said. "Except that she's obviously hiding something from us. If it weren't for that, I'd say let her go. She's a confused woman who seems to either not know or not remember Aloysius Starr or anything about him. The problem with that is, why, out of all the apartments in the city and county that she could have gone to, did she choose his? It's got to be that she does know him, has been to his apartment in the past, and is either a top-notch actress or something bad happened to her that wiped out her memory."

  "The latter makes sense." Connie said. "She doesn't seem like a killer."

  "Not that most killers 'seem like' killers," Bruce added. "But I've been doing this long enough that my gut instinct tells me about people, and it tells me that she wouldn't know how to go about murdering someone. She'd be more inclined to talk someone to death than do anything physical."

  "I sort of like her," Connie admitted. "More than sort of. It's as if she's telling the truth, that she knows me and we're good friends. The poor kid claims she has no place to go, that she doesn't know a soul in town except me and a couple of my friends. So"—she hesitated a moment, then blurted out—"I'm thinking of inviting her to stay at my apartment."

  Bruce looked at her as if she might be as crazy as Angie Amalfi. "You're kidding me. Haven't you ever been warned about not taking your job home with you? Usually, it's meant in an emotional sense. Not physically. In this case, you'd be putting yourself in danger. That's not smart, Rogers."

  "Look, she didn't have to tell me about the body in the apartment. Not about the body in the park either, come to think of it. I'm a cop. How much more dangerous can she be than what I live with every day?"

  "Except that the body in the park was a victim of the Zodiac, or a damned good copy-cat killer, which I doubt. I'm not suggesting she's the Zodiac, but we don't know that he doesn't have an accomplice."

  "Nothing suggests she's any such thing."

  "Still." Bruce shook his head.

  "I know she's strange," Connie said. "I know none of this is rational, but I'm sure she's no killer. I'll take her home and keep an eye on her. There's something I'm missing, and I want to find out what that is. Anyway, it's the least I can do. I know I haven't been much help in this job since getting out of a patrol car and working with you."

  "You're new. Who knows if this assignment will work out for you or not. But it's not worth risking your life over."

  "This may be a way for me to earn my keep around here. Let me ask her."

  "If you do, I'll keep an eye on you," Bruce said.

  "What would Mrs. Whalen say to that?"

  "Nothing good, but that's par for the course." He frowned. "We've separated. She's filing for divorce. The life of a cop and marriage don't exactly go together."

  Connie heaved a weary sigh. "So I've been told."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Angie was upset about going with Connie to her house, not because she disliked Connie, but because she would have preferred to be with Paavo. But not this Paavo. She missed her tough cop. Mr. Hari Krishna didn't cut it.

  Still, she realized that for all the talk about the wild, free-love seventies, things were still pretty uptight. At the same time, some of what she heard made her want to warn people that herpes, HIV and Aids were on their way. Yet, she knew there was no way she could begin to explain. Even if she could, no one would believe her.

  Connie drove to a Rexall drugstore for Angie to pick up a toothbrush and a few other necessities. Her car was a Ford Pinto, which Angie had never heard of, but it was cheap and used little gas. If she thought people in her time were anxious about gas, it was nothing compared to these days. Everyone believed big, gas-guzzling cars of the past were dead. She guessed they would be stunned at the popularity SUVs and Hummers would gain in a few years.

  Angie had to borrow money from Connie to pay for her purchases. She had a fair amount of cash in her wallet, but she couldn't chance using the new bills. How she was supposed to get more money, she didn't know. Not only did her ATM card not have an ATM to go with it, her bank didn't seem to exist yet.

  Knowing the future put everything in perspective, she realized. And made the present quite weird. She wished she could get her hands on a history book so she could better understand what was coming next. Now, however, it wouldn't be history...it would be fortune telling.

  So much for that idea.

  For dinner, Connie put a couple of chicken TV dinners in the oven and made a simple salad.

  As they ate, they talked a bit about Angie's problem.

  "You have something more going on than amnesia," Connie said between bites. "But if you won't open up to me, I have no idea how to help you."

  "I don't know what's going on." Angie had an idea, but Connie would have her committed if she explained it.

  "If there's something troubling you deep down, a spiritual issue in a sense, I know a man who might be able to help you," Connie said.

  "A psychiatrist?" Angie asked.

  "No, not at all. His name is Reverend Jones. He's wonderful. Why don't you come with me to one of his sermons at his Temple?"

  "I don't think so, Connie." Angie was born and raised Roman Catholic. She might not attend church as often as she knew she should, and certainly had her less-than-saintly faults, but in her heart she believed in the tenets of the faith.

  "Well, I'll tell you, it's normally not me either, but Jim has changed my mind about all that. He's quite something!"

  "Jim...Jim Jones?" Angie asked, as something stirred in her brain. "You aren't talking about the People's Temple, are you?"

  "I am!" Connie smiled. "There! You do remember some things."

  Angie remembered all right. She had no idea when it would happen, but she knew Jim Jones would eventually move his People's Temple to Guyana, and—it was coming back to her now—a congressman from the San Francisco area would go down on some kind of "fact finding" mission, he would be murdered, and that would drive the paranoid Jones over the top. He served his followers Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, and all of them, over nine-hundred people, died.

  "It's surprising," Connie said, "that anyone with such a common name could be so special, but he is. He does all he can to promote integration and has adopted children from all races. Some of the things he says are, frankly, outrageous, such as his devotion to socialism and Marxism. But he does it only for publicity, I'm sure. If he meant it, he wouldn't meet with so many top political leaders."

  "He does?" Angie never heard that. She couldn't help but wonder if that side of Jim Jones was scrubbed from the history books after what was to come.

  "Oh, yes! Rosalynn Carter, Jerry Brown, Walter Mondale, Willie Brown, George Moscone, Harvey Milk…the list goes on and on. They all think he's simply wonderful!"

  "Holy shit!"

  "That's very blasphemous in this context, Angie."

  Angie put down her fork. She had no more appetite. "Connie, you've got to keep away from him!"

  "What do you mean? Why?"

  "Things aren't going to go well. His political supporters are going to drop him. The government will go after him. Trust me, you don't want to be involved."

  Connie looked angry. "You can't know that!" She stood up and began to clear the dinner dishes.

  Angie clutched Connie’s arm and looked at her intently. "Promise me that when he leaves the country, you won't go with him."

  "You're scaring me, Angie," Connie said, pulling her arm free.

  "Good! You should be scared. Now promise me!"

  "All right!" she cried, putting the chicken bones in the trash. "I promise that if he ever leaves the country, which he won't, I will not join him."

  Angie shut her eyes a moment. "Thank you."

  Soon after, Connie put sheets and a blanket on the sofa in the living room for Angie, and they said a chilly good-n
ight to each other.

  Angie waited until the sounds of snoring were heard from Connie's bedroom, then reached into Connie's purse and took out her car keys.

  o0o

  As Angie drove off in the small, weakly powered Pinto, she felt as if she were in a soap-box derby car.

  She headed south on the freeway to Hillsborough where her parents lived.

  She reached their street, but it wasn't a street. It was a country lane. The spot where their house should have been was a field. Then she remembered. Their house hadn't been built until 1989 or so.

  Where were they?

  She headed back to San Francisco, to her sister Bianca's house. Bianca was her eldest sister, and always there for Angie, even mothering her in a way that their rather bossy mother never did.

  To her surprise, when she reached Bianca's house, a Christmas tree filled the front windows and it was still brightly lit. Bianca always went to bed around eleven o'clock, and it was almost one in the morning. That alone gave Angie pause.

  She went to the window and peeked in.

  Then quickly backed away.

  It looked like an orgy. Fortunately, Bianca wasn't included.

  "Hey, ducky, I seen you peeking through the window. Why don't you come join us?"

  She looked up to see a long-haired man standing in front of the door. He was stark naked except for a Santa Claus hat on his head.

  Cheeks burning, she ran to the car and drove away.

  At her sister Frannie's house, an old woman in a bathrobe answered the door. "Who the hell are you waking me up this time of night?!"

  "I'm looking for my sis—, I mean, Frannie Levine. She lives here with her husband Seth and their little boy."

  "Levine? Jewish? Humph! Sounds like some of those New York hippie types taking over this city. Well, they don't live here. And don't bother me again or I'll have you arrested." She shut the door and Angie just stared at it a moment.

  She turned away from the house. Being arrested was becoming a definite theme.

  Angie's third sister, Maria, was married to a man who played the horn at a jazz nightclub on Broadway. It was almost closing time, but Angie went there to see what was going on.

  What should have been a jazz nightclub was a topless bar. Angie stopped at an open space in front of a fire hydrant. Should she go in? Did topless bars use live music?

  Only one way to find out. She turned off the engine, locked the car, and hurried past the barker. A band played. As the topless dancer shimmied and gyrated wearing little besides a reindeer’s antlers and a tail, Angie waited for the song to end. She had never seen anything like it, and gaped, goggle-eyed, at how hideous it was. When the music finally stopped, she asked the pianist if he knew Dominic Klee or Maria Amalfi Klee. He never heard of either one of them.

  She would have gone to her sister Caterina Amalfi Swenson's home, but Cat lived in Tiburon, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Angie pretty much suspected what she would find if she went there. Nothing.

  Traveling through time was trying, not to mention exhausting.

  Maybe she should go to sleep. Maybe when she woke up, all would be back to normal again.

  With that hope, she drove back to Connie's apartment.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "You sure can sleep," Connie said, opening the curtains in the living room casting light on a sad little green tree on a tabletop. The ornaments and tree lights were still in boxes on the floor.

  Angie looked at the clock—7:30 a.m. She hadn't returned to Connie's until nearly 2:30, and then couldn't fall asleep. Now, she was having trouble waking up. She pulled herself up a bit, propped on one elbow. "What year is it?"

  "What are you talking about?" Connie asked.

  Angie wasn't sure what to say. "Where's Lily?"

  "Who's she?"

  That was Connie's dog in Angie's world. Now, she knew she wasn't yet back in her own time. She dropped her head back on the pillow. "Just a dog I once knew."

  "A dog? Sounds like a description of some of my former boyfriends. Not to mention my ex." Connie fastened the buttons on her uniform. "If you mean a real dog, now you're talking. I've always wanted a dog. But with my job's crazy hours….Anyway, speaking of my job, I've got to get going. I left some phone numbers on the coffee table for you, and there’s eggnog in the fridge, and a fruit cake, if you want something to eat."

  Angie didn't want food or eggnog or to call anyone in this world. All she wanted to do was to go back to sleep. She had been dreaming she was home again, and loved the feeling. She didn't want anything more to do with this alien time or place. She turned over and shut her eyes.

  "I asked Paavo to come and look in on you later. Too-da-loo!"

  Angie mumbled a response and was soon fast asleep.

  o0o

  Angie awoke to the sound of the doorbell. She opened her eyes and was immediately disoriented. Where am I?

  She sat up on the sofa. It was Connie's apartment, but at the same time, it wasn't. What was wrong? Then it all came crashing back to her.

  Her life had gone kaput.

  A deep sadness, worse than she ever felt before, weighed her down. The doorbell rang once more. Her shoulders felt so heavy she didn't think she could move. Was that the third or the fourth ring? And who could it be?

  Vaguely, the memory of Connie telling her she was going to work struck, and that Paavo would come over.

  Paavo! Connie had put a bathrobe on a chair for Angie to use, and she wrapped herself in it now.

  She was about to press the buzzer that opened the front door when caution struck. What if it isn't him?

  The main door to the six apartments in Connie's building had a panel of thick glass with a lacy curtain in front of it. Angie ran down the stairs, went to the door and slid the curtain back a smidgen, just enough to see the landing. No one was there.

  What if it had been Paavo and he gave up and left?

  She hurried out to the street, but still saw no one. Someone had been ringing the doorbell, however.

  She walked, barefoot, to the next apartment building, wondering if whoever rang her bell had been a delivery man or some such thing and moved on to the next building. But still, no one.

  She continued down the block when she realized that she was walking around on the street barefoot wearing an oversized bathrobe, hair uncombed, face unwashed, no makeup, and probably looking like the crazy woman others thought she might be.

  She turned to go back inside when she heard music.

  Now, I know I'm crazy, she thought, as she looked around.

  She didn't see where it was coming from, but she distinctly heard what sounded like a saxophone playing "I'll Be Home for Christmas." She never liked that song. It always made her sad since the next line was something like “if only in my dreams.” She hoped it wasn’t prophetic.

  She stomped back into Connie's apartment building and slammed the door.

  o0o

  Paavo had to admit to being nervous as he headed up the steps to Connie's apartment. Earlier, when he received no answer, he drove back to his place to get Connie's key. She had given it to him when they were dating. Boy, had that ever been a mistake! They decided they got along much better as friends than lovers, so he kept the key to her place, and she kept the key to his.

  He had been shocked when Connie told him Angie Amalfi was at her house. For all they knew, she might be a murderer, somehow connected to the killing of Aloysius Starr. Why she would do that, though, made no sense to him. After all, she was the one who told him that she found Starr's body in an apartment. She claimed it was her apartment, but the woman was clearly a basket case.

  Oh, well. He shrugged it off. Connie was the cop, not him, so she should be the one making sense of all this.

  It was weird that Angie had thought he might be a cop. He had reacted with indignation, but he had to admit that there was much about Connie's job that fascinated him. Not that he wanted to do it. For one thing, he was opposed to guns. They should be banned. Even
by cops. After all, they didn't use guns in England, and look at how much less violent crime took place in that country. He liked to envision a world with no guns, no violence, and world peace.

  He often meditated on it.

  o0o

  Angie had finished stringing lights and had started hanging ornaments on Connie’s small tree when she heard a key in the lock. The door opened.

  "Connie?" she said, but instead of Connie, Paavo entered.

  She froze. The need to go to him and hold him, to have him tell her everything would be fine, was a physical ache.

  "Are you all right?" he asked, looking at her warily.

  She immediately realized he wasn't the man for her to cling to. It hurt, and the lump that formed in her throat made it impossible to speak as she added a few more ornaments.

  "Angie?"

  "I'm just fine!" She whirled towards him and spat out the words. "I don't know who I am, where I live, what I'm doing here, and people that I recognize don't know me. I'm absolutely 'hunky-dory.' How's that for an old fashioned term? One you should understand."

  "It's old, all right. My mother uses it."

  That jarred her. She looked at him, puzzled. "You know your mother?"

  His brow lifted. "Know her? How could I not? She calls and visits all the time, a real pain in the…well, anyway, thank God she lives in San Diego. She likes the weather down there better than San Francisco's."

  Angie nodded. Maybe there were things about this world that were better in some ways. Her Paavo barely knew his mother and was greatly troubled by it. She turned back to the ornaments. "And your father?"

  "He's with her."

  No, that didn't make sense. She thrust up her chin. "How did you get such a strange name as Paavo Smith. Paavo is a Finnish name!"

  "So?” He began to help her. “My mom's Finnish and named me after her father. Put it together with my father, Benjamin Smith, and you end up with Paavo Smith. I don't see what's so strange about that, except, of course, in California."

  "In California?"

  "You know all the people moving here from Mexico. Since pavo means turkey in Spanish, they find my name pretty funny. I try to ignore their laughs."