Cook's Christmas Capers (The Angie Amalfi Mysteries)

by Joanne Pence

  "What’s so funny, Mike?" She pushed back the sides of her black wool blazer, her hands on the hips of her black slacks as she surveyed the area. The air was crisp, the sky pale blue. Gulls swarmed overhead awaiting discarded food from overfed, harried shoppers. "You guys look ready to split your guts about something."

  Officer Hennessy’s eyes darted toward his partner. His mustache twitched in his effort to keep a straight face. "There’s nothing funny, Rebecca. A man’s death is never amusing."

  His partner sputtered and clamped a hand over his mouth. Rebecca glared. The more he tried not to laugh, the more his shoulders shook.

  "You’re right, Mike." Rebecca flipped open her pocket notebook. "A man’s death is a grave matter."

  Hennessy’s partner stomped his foot, and doubled over from his struggles.

  "Remove the sheet, please," she ordered.

  Hennessy carefully lifted it away, reversing the direction he’d placed it over the body to cause minimal disruption to any evidence.

  Even being a cop, the sight jarred her at first, then calmly, she studied the victim. He looked like a bloodied, broken rag doll.

  His bones were twisted at unnatural angles and his body seemed oddly squished, as if he’d fallen from a great height. She looked up and then all around. They were in an open parking lot. No buildings were near. There was nothing for him to have fallen from.

  That was when she realized what had amused the cops. Even before Hennessy spoke the words, she could predict what he was going to say. "It looks like"—he began before, like his partner, he sputtered and chuckled—"it looks like he fell off his sleigh."

  "He hit the eject button by mistake," his partner blurted.

  "Santa the sky-diver." Hennessy howled.

  As the two rolled around with laughter, Rebecca made no reply. It was Christmas Eve, and Santa Claus—red suit, tasseled hat, black boots and all—lay at her feet, dead.

  o0o

  "What the hell! This is crazy!" Richie Amalfi stomped back and forth over an empty parking space, gesturing wildly. A short while ago the space was filled by a monstrous white Econoline passenger van. And the van was filled with twelve Very Important People. But now, it—and its passengers—were gone. "I don’t believe it!" he bellowed with rage.

  Wasn’t it bad enough that he, a man who usually saw the light of dawn as he was going to bed, had to face it this morning when he got up? Now, the whole reason he had roused himself at such an ungodly hour had all fallen apart. He should have stayed home. Bed, booze and broads—they were what made life worth living. And his life wasn't going to be worth squat if he didn't solve this present problem.

  He ran both hands through his black hair. His eyeballs bulged; his scalp felt like it was being squeezed.

  It was nearly Christmas. Filled with good cheer, he had agreed to handle this little task. Now, his Christmas spirit was going to get him a .45 through the brain.

  That morning at the San Francisco airport he'd picked up his charges one-by-one as they arrived from different parts of the country. The first was there at seven, the last at ten. The four who had come in from the east coast had arrived the night before and stayed at an airport hotel.

  Like some little Mary Sunshine googly-eyed social director he’d gathered them all together, waited while they put on their disguises—lifetimes of paranoia didn’t die easy—and squeezed them into the twelve-passenger Ford Econoline van he’d borrowed from a goomba for just this purpose.

  He'd barely left the airport, on 101 North, when the piece of crap van started to cough and shimmy like a TB victim. He pulled off at the nearest freeway exit. It was just a block from a gas station, so he’d told the passengers to wait while he went for help. Nothing wrong with that, was there? At least he didn’t have to go far, dressed as he was in an Armani double-breasted pin-striped suit, white shirt with lots of starch in the collar the way he liked it, a red tie, and brand new wing-tipped shoes.

  He’d had to wait about twenty minutes for the station’s mechanic to finish up with one customer, even though he'd tried to slip the guy a C-note to ditch the earlier job. It could have been a lot worse, though. The day before Christmas, every housewife, Sunday driver, and certifiable moron who should never be allowed behind the wheel of a moving vehicle got on the road to clog it up and call for help when they couldn’t figure out how to get the car out of "Park." Bah, humbug! When he saw he’d have to wait for the mechanic, he’d tried AAA, but the phone line was so jammed up he was left on hold and couldn’t even get through to an operator.

  The day had not started out the way he’d expected, to put it mildly.

  And it had just gotten worse.

  "It’s a van!" he yelled at the bored mechanic. "A huge mother! It can’t just disappear."

  The mechanic leaned against the tow truck and chewed on a toothpick. "Maybe this is the wrong street?" His manner was so lackadaisical, his tone so condescending that Richie was ready to take the toothpick and shove it down his throat.

  But then he thought ... maybe the jerk-off was right.

  Not that he forgot where he left the van, but that his passengers might have gotten it going again and test drove it a little way. Yeah, that was it. Hadn’t he heard that Joe Zumbaglio used to be called Joey Zoom because he was so good with cars? Although, if it was good at fixing them or at heisting them, Richie couldn’t remember.

  He rubbed his forehead, then disgusted, flung himself into the truck and directed the mechanic which way to go. Then he directed him another way, and another, until they ended up driving all over the neighborhood, up and down side streets, checking out driveways, back alleys, even along the freeway.

  Nothing. No van. No passengers. Only a snickering mechanic.

  A small bead of perspiration broke out on Richie’s brow. This isn’t happening to me.

  They returned to the gas station and he peeled a fifty off his roll of greenbacks for the driver, the whole time trying to figure out what the hell to do next. He checked the time on the platinum Rolex on his arm. It was a little after noon. He had plenty of time. All day, in fact. No reason to panic.

  He paced. He would call a cab, go home and get his car. Yeah, that would work. And while he was at it, he’d make a few phone calls. Just call to say hello, right? And for sure, somebody would say to him, "'Ey, Richie, you won’t believe what I just saw."

  It wasn’t as if he could actually tell anyone what had happened, not if he wanted to see Christmas Day. San Francisco Bay was too close by, and he was allergic to concrete overshoes.

  o0o

  Homicide was completely, painstakingly empty. Space-vacuum kind of empty. No telephone rang. No important memos waited to be read. Not even an impersonal interoffice e-mail arrived wishing her a "happy winter season."

  A little sad, a little lonely, maybe a little sorry for herself for being stuck here at work instead of with her family for Christmas, Rebecca leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on her desk. She had always wanted to do that. She tapped the eraser end of her pencil against her desk, and watched it bounce. Even the new man in her life, Greg Horning from Vice, had gone back to Cleveland to spend the week with his family.

  She sighed. "Jingle Bell Rock" went through her head although she didn't like the song. Then a Snickers bar called her name, and she made her third trip to the candy machine. She slid in a dollar bill.

  The machine burped, and the bill slithered out again. She shoved it in; the device up-chucked and spit it back. The junky contraption looked like it was sticking its tongue out at her, daring her to try once more.

  She did; same result.

  Grabbing the dollar, she returned to Homicide to check her e-mail yet again to see if CSI or anyone else had contacted her. They hadn’t.

  Not only was Homicide a barren wind tunnel, so was the entire fourth floor of the Hall of Justice. Even the women’s bathroom. Heck, she could have used the men’s room if she’d wanted. No thank you.

  Lieutenant Eastwood, head of the d
ivision, had given everyone the day off except for Rebecca and her partner. It wasn’t that Eastwood was being generous; he knew nothing got done on Christmas Eve. Past years, when the staff came in, they fretted about last minute shopping yet unfinished, then went down to the third floor to drown their sorrows with Christmas cheer in the district attorney’s office. The punch was so strong, Rebecca was sure the only fruit in it was an orange dipped twice then discarded. Christmas wasn’t the time of year a lot of homicides occurred anyway. That was New Year’s. All of Homicide would be on duty next week.

  She glanced over at her partner’s empty desk. Good ol’ Bill Never-Take-A-Chance Sutter. He was a snail on the slow road to retirement. With enough time in to collect a pension, he was merely hanging around until he felt "ready" to officially leave. He’d probably show up around three o’clock today, leave at three-thirty. Or sooner. Rebecca wondered if he ever would retire. Generally, a person needed something to retire from.

  Frankly, it didn’t matter if Sutter was here or not. Except for the weird death this morning, all was quiet. Too quiet. She tried to rouse someone from the Coroner’s office to do the autopsy on Santa Claus right away, before they went home or visited the DAs, but so far her calls went unanswered. If no one was willing to do the autopsy today, she’d have to wait until December 26th for the results. Not even the coroner was ghoulish enough to do such a procedure and then go home and carve up a Christmas goose.

  She rifled through the reports of the few eyewitnesses at the mall. Everyone denied seeing or hearing anything. No one even knew how long the body lay in the parking lot before a harried shopper bothered to report it. The security camera covering that part of the lot had been awaiting repair for the past six weeks.

  All she could do now was wait.

  Wait for the fingerprints to run through the system, wait for photos of the victim, wait to use them to scan criminal records for digitized matches. She was tired of waiting, and couldn't help but wonder if the dead Santa had a family who was also waiting—waiting for him to return home.

  He looked old, like he could be someone's grandpa. What kind of Christmas would his family have once they learned he was dead?

  She'd never forget the first time she had to inform a family on Christmas that the husband and father wasn't coming home again. It was horrible. She shook off the memory. She was a cop; she knew death didn't stop for holy days.

  The multi-volume California Penal Code lined the bookshelves behind the secretary's desk in the reception area, kept there both because it was huge and also so it wouldn’t get lost in the piles of papers around the inspectors’ desks. The way the mall's management had pushed her to shut down the crime scene as quickly as possible had rankled badly. She hurried, and didn't believe she had compromised the investigation by doing so, but she wanted to be able to quote back chapter and verse of the Code if she ever again found herself in a similar situation.

  Somehow, she didn’t think the managers would have been so bossy if the inspector-in-charge had been one of the guys—Paavo Smith or Luis Calderon, in particular. Nobody told either of them what to do. Then there was Bo Benson, who would have worked out a give-and-take deal, or "Yosh" Yoshiwara, who would have found a way to get what he wanted and had the managers think it was their idea. Bill Sutter would have been a no-show. Only she could be pushed around. It was because she was a woman, she was sure—the only female homicide inspector in San Francisco.

  She’d often been told that she was tough enough for the job. Well, boys, she was about to get even tougher.

  Citing the Penal Code was one way to do it.

  She sat scouring the complicated index at the empty secretary’s desk when a guy she’d never seen before swaggered in. He was an inch or two shy of six feet, a hundred ninety or so pounds, and probably in his late thirties or very early forties. His hair was jet black, a little long and wavy on top, and his brown eyes heavy-lidded, down-turned and intense.

  She pegged him right away. He was actually fairly good-looking, and could have been appealing, except for one thing. It wasn't the designer threads, the way he carried himself as if he had no fear, or the expensive hardware like the watch that probably cost half her yearly salary. It was those eyes—dark with a certain knowledge and experience—that told her which side of the law this smooth operator walked on. Her instincts twitched and her back stiffened.

  "Hey, there," he said. His hands were in his pockets, and he looked over his shoulder a couple of times. "How you doing?" His voice was as mellow and buttery as soft, well-tanned leather.

  "Okay," she said in an even tone. His wasn’t the usual greeting for someone coming to this department. "This is Homicide," she pointed out.

  "Yeah, I know." He glanced over his shoulder again. "I’m looking for someone. Paavo Smith."

  She wondered if it was about a case. The guy looked nervous enough to be about to confess to murder. "Inspector Smith isn’t in today. Perhaps I can help you."

  He cocked an eyebrow, his gaze definitely rakish. "I’m sure you can, but not in this. I need a cop. What, is he off today or just out on a case? Can you reach him?"

  What an a-hole. She stood up to her full five-foot ten-inch height and looked him straight in the eye. "I’m a homicide inspector," she said coolly. "Now, what is it you want, sir?"

  He took a step back, hands raised as if to fend off a punch. "Whoa, I didn’t know death cops came like"—he waved a hand toward her then quickly dropped it—"uh, yeah. Sorry. I just need a little info but, as you said, Paavo’s not in today." He stopped; hard eyes studied her, then a half-smile, half-smirk curled his mouth. "Come to think of it, you probably can help. Why not, right?"

  "Right." With cool detachment, she returned the look of scrutiny with one of her own and left him in no doubt that she not only found him wanting, but pictured him in an orange coverall. "Follow me."

  She headed into the bureau. "With pleasure," he murmured, his voice deep, smooth and definitely sexy. Too bad his personality didn’t match it.

  o0o

  If cops looked like her when he was growing up, he might have been more inclined to like them, Richie thought as he followed the attractive woman into a big, messy room. Rows of desks were hard to see because of all the paperwork piled up around them on bookcases, file cabinets, and computers.

  "You read all this stuff?" he asked as she stopped at a desk and motioned him into a folding aluminum chair.

  "No. I use it to cut paper dolls." Her chair tilted, swiveled and rolled. She leaned back in it comfortably.

  He found himself grinning. So, she had a mouth that went along with the face and body. Not that she was his type. Far from it. To begin with, she was a cop. As they say on TV—fuhgetaboutit. And then, she was too tall. If she put on sky-high heels, they’d be like Mutt and Jeff. And he liked women who were soft in all the right places. She didn’t look the least bit soft anywhere … although, she had a body that wouldn’t stop. The kind a man could get his hands around, so to speak.

  She was older than he thought when he first walked in and saw her with one side of her straight blond hair tucked behind an ear, the other side draped down half covering her face as she poured over some thick books. When she looked up at him, her light touch with make-up added to the youthfulness. Her face was shaped like a triangle with widely set smoky-blue eyes and prominent cheekbones tapering down to a small, pointed chin. Most women he knew would give their eyeteeth for a bone structure and big eyes like hers. He was surprised she didn’t doll up a little more—her white blouse, black slacks, and black boots with low one-inch heels looked like a uniform. But then he reminded himself that she was a death cop. Why bother to wow the corpses, right?

  Although he felt a lot more alive now, just looking at her, than he had all morning.

  She opened a spiral notebook. "Name?" she asked, reaching for the green pen at the corner of the desk.

  He gripped the cold metal arms of the chair and shifted, trying to find a comfortable way to sit in t
he hard seat. "Richard Amalfi."

  "Amalfi?" She stilled, a sudden question in her blue eyes. "You're related to Paavo’s fiancée?"

  "Yeah. Angie’s a cousin."

  "I see." She shut the notebook. Angie Amalfi was the bane of Rebecca's life. She had a serious crush on fellow homicide inspector Paavo Smith, but once he met Angie, he no longer even saw any other woman—not even if she sat at a nearby desk. "What can I do for you, Mr. Amalfi?"

  "You can call me Richie,"—he glanced at the nameplate on her desk—"Rebecca."

  "You can call me Inspector Mayfield." She twisted the top back onto the pen.

  "Yes, ma’am, Inspector Mayfield, ma’am."

  She regarded him like a schoolteacher with a truant.

  His voice rumbled over the quiet room. "Look, I need you to help me find some, uh, friends. They’re older ... gentlemen." He wracked his brain, trying to figure out how to best explain this. "They’re in a van. Here’s the license number." He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to her.

  "You want me to find this van?" she asked.

  "Well ... yeah," he replied, palms upturned, open. "Why else would I be here? Call somebody and then tell me where it is. I got to go pick up the guys. They shouldn’t be driving around this city all alone. It’s a dangerous place, you know."

  Her eyes narrowed. "How long has the van been missing?"

  He slid back his sleeve and looked at his watch. "Nearly three goddamn hours." He ran his knuckles against his jaw as thoughts struck of what the guys could have done in that time.

  "Three hours? That’s not very long." She slid the paper with the license number to the corner of her desk. "I’m sure they’ll turn up. They’re probably sight-seeing or something."

  "I called everybody I know." His loud voice echoed through the empty office. "Nobody said nothing about them showing up. This morning, I picked them up at the airport, and I’m supposed to see that they get someplace special this evening. That’s all. But now, they’re gone. And today’s important."