Courting Disaster

by Joanne Pence

  He headed toward the main street. He’d taken less than a dozen steps when he stopped. How much of an idiot was he? She was obviously hurting. That obnoxious waiter had been rotten to her about something, poor woman, upsetting her terribly, yet when she saw Stan, she’d smiled. Shouldn’t he at least try to talk to her? Offer help? Consolation? Maybe he could cheer her up a bit.

  He should give her a friendly hello and see how she responded. If she ignored him, okay, he’d understand. If she answered, who knew where it might lead?

  With that thought, he hurried back to the wharf.

  The bench was empty.

  Chapter 2

  On sunny days, sunbathers and swimmers filled Aquatic Park, a public area with a broad lawn, concrete bleachers, and a small beach on the north shore near Fisherman’s Wharf. On cold, windy, fog-filled days like this one, people strolled along that beach or walked out onto Municipal Pier, which circled and protected the shoreline, or simply sat on the bleachers watching the curious mix of humanity that made up the city. Always it seemed, day and night, the area attracted those seeking rest and relaxation.

  But not today.

  Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the beach. A crowd had gathered to watch the police at work. They all knew what had happened. Something like that couldn’t be kept a secret in this busy part of the city, and especially not when the person who made the discovery stood in the middle of the crowd and talked about it, repeating his story over and over to newcomers as they approached to check out the commotion.

  The bushy-haired, big-bellied fellow told how he swam each morning in the cold salt water, convinced of its beneficial effects on the circulation, spiritual well-being, and blood cholesterol. He’d been standing in the water at mid-chest level when he saw something with a pinkish gray cast on the beach under the pier closest to Fisherman’s Wharf. The tide was low and when the water ebbed, he could see the object clearly.

  It was fairly large. At first he feared it was a shark, but he soon realized it was no fish—it had limbs. Curious, he waded toward it. As he neared, he told himself it was a mannequin, a department store dummy. Soon, though, he had to accept that it wasn’t a mannequin at all, but a human. A male. And he looked very dead.

  The man let out a small shriek. He knew he needed to contact the police. First, though, he pulled the body farther up onto the beach, afraid a big wave might come along, catch it in the under-tow, and suck it out to sea. He described to the mesmerized listeners how the shirt, shoes, and socks were gone—probably sucked off by the churning waves, how white and jellylike the skin appeared, and how distended the stomach.

  In fact, he expounded on this with more authority than any coroner San Francisco Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield had ever heard. She tried to ignore the know-it-all, but couldn’t. The loud, authoritative voice kept breaking her concentration.

  Rebecca was in her thirties, single, and so physically fit most of the other Homicide inspectors looked weak and flaccid in comparison. She wore black slacks and a black-leather jacket over a cream-colored turtleneck. Her shoulder bag had a special compartment where she kept her service revolver secure under a Velcro band, but easy to pull out if needed. She wore little makeup and her shoulder-length blond hair was held back in a barrette at the nape of her neck. She managed to look competent and professional—although that may have been as much because of the square-shouldered, long-legged way she walked and her take-charge, brook-no-nonsense demeanor than anything else.

  She was the only female Homicide inspector on the force.

  Her irritation grew as speculation about the death bounced back and forth between members of the crowd. One person opined that a shark had killed the victim. Since more and more sharks were spotted in the ocean off San Francisco Bay, why not inside the bay as well? Another said it was the work of the devil.

  Rebecca caught the eye of her partner, Bill Never-Take-a-Chance Sutter, on the road to retirement and more interested in the scenery along the way than in any of their cases. As a result, Rebecca handled on her own just about everything the “team” got. Loyal, she defended her partner even though she’d love to wring his lazy neck.

  She was sure he’d immediately come along with her on this case, rather than waiting an hour or two, simply because of its location. Sutter loved the beach, despite the day’s chilling breeze. He often said he might retire to one, if he could find beachfront property cheap enough. Rebecca suggested Tierra del Fuego off the southern tip of South America.

  The two detectives surveyed the scene and waited for the CSI to complete their work. The ME had already come and gone. She’d be doing an autopsy, no doubt about it.

  The fog thickened, making the air colder and damper, but it didn’t deter the crowd from continuing to offer strident opinions, each more outrageous than the last, and to argue with each other about them.

  Rebecca could stand no more. Coming face-to-face with death brought out strong feelings in people, and the way things were going, she was going to be faced with another homicide if they didn’t disperse. She marched into the crowd. “Go home, everyone. There’s nothing more here for you to see.”

  “You got no right to tell us to leave,” one pontificator yelled. “What happened here is an abomination! What’s wrong with the police? People getting killed on a public beach! Why can’t you keep us safe?”

  Rebecca just stared, hard, at the man. He swallowed the rest of his words and faded away. The others soon followed, and the beach grew quiet except for an occasional foghorn or the clang of a cable car bell at the nearby end-of-the-line turntable.

  Once the crowd left, she pushed aside the sheet that covered the body and crouched down. The deceased was a white male, probably in his late thirties, early forties, with a mustache, beard, and long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Something about him seemed eerily familiar.

  She asked her partner, but Sutter had no idea. He was busy studying the sand—looking for evidence, he said. The fact that the CSI team was there doing the same thing didn’t faze him.

  Once back in Homicide, she’d ask Paavo Smith, who was clearly the best inspector on the force. Not to mention the best-looking. All right, she might be a cop, but she was also a woman—healthy, single, and unattached. Unfortunately, Paavo was engaged to someone else. Of course, if his love life ever went south…

  She turned back to the victim. Wearing rubber gloves, she lifted his shoulder to inspect a small entry wound in the man’s back. It had created a large exit wound on his chest. The CSI would do what it could to canvass the area for the bullet, but she didn’t give them much of a chance for success.

  Standing again, she covered the body. This was actually a very clever setting for a crime. Most of the evidence had been washed out to sea.

  Angie buttoned her MaxMara cherry-red jacket and leaned into the sudden harsh wind as she made her way toward the marbled grandeur of the Fairmont Hotel high atop Nob Hill. The wind whipped her hair from one side to the other, and the fog stripped away the curl and turned it to frizz. Bursting through the hotel’s heavy front doors, she took a deep breath, ready to readjust her jacket and attempt to smooth her hair, when a voice called, “Angie!”

  Startled, she turned to find herself face-to-face with her nemesis.

  It wasn’t that she hated Nona Farraday, not even that she was jealous of her…well, maybe just a little of her tall, slim, blond, patrician good looks and her job as restaurant reviewer for Haute Cuisine magazine. The fact that she made Angie feel like the product of short, dumpy peasant stock with a do-nothing, going-nowhere job (when she even had a job) wasn’t pleasant. That’s all.

  “Hello, Nona,” she said through gritted teeth as the two air-kissed. “What a surprise to see you here!”

  Nona flicked back her long silky hair. She looked stunning, not a thread out of place, while Angie felt as if she’d just gone ten rounds with an eggbeater. “I had lunch with a Gourmet magazine editor,” Nona said. “He’s only in the city two days, but f
ound time for me…of course.”

  Angie’s gritted teeth started to grind, her smile more forced. “Of course,” she repeated. “I won’t keep you.”

  “Lunch is over, though I do have to get back to the office. Deadlines, you know. But what are you doing here?” Nona’s lashes fluttered.

  “Oh, I’m just…um…”

  Nona’s eyes suddenly bored into her. “This doesn’t have anything to do with your engagement party, does it?”

  Angie feigned shock. “My mother is handling the whole thing.”

  “Right.” Nona folded her arms. “Your mother’s invitations were so darling telling us how she wanted to keep everything except the time and date of the party a surprise to you. She won’t even let the guests know where the party will be held until the day before! It’s such a…cute idea.”

  “Cute? Well, yes….” Actually, Angie had another word for it, but she wasn’t about to let Nona know how much her mother’s “surprise” irritated her. It was her engagement party, for pity’s sake! She had a right to know the details of it.

  “I can understand why your mother is doing it this way,” Nona said smugly.

  Angie’s lips stretched into a fake smile. “You do?”

  “If your mother told us, you’d find out for sure. Then you wouldn’t be surprised.” Nona began to chuckle.

  Angie joined in, but her strained laughter was even more fake than her smile.

  “Lots of people will come just to see if Serefina can pull it off.” The more Nona talked about it, the harder she laughed. Angie, on the other hand, no longer even pretended amusement. She fumed.

  Her laughter over, Nona’s gaze traveled over the lobby’s high ceilings, the dark mahogany and red velvet furniture. “You don’t think she’d…No, of course not. No way!”

  “What are you talking about?” Angie asked, pouncing on the implication.

  “I’m wondering if you’re here because you found out she was planning on using one of the banquet halls in the Fairmont. Someplace like…oh, the Crown Room, for instance.” Nona shuddered. “She wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “What do you mean?” As a matter of fact, Angie’s first choice for her party would have been the Crown Room. Reached by an outside glass elevator to the top floor, it was elegant, romantic, and offered a panorama of the entire city. “It’s a beautiful space,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as thin and hysterical to Nona’s ear as it did to her own.

  Nona gave her a piteous look. “True…”

  Angie waited, then couldn’t stand the suspense. “But?”

  After a long, anguished sigh, as if she were a martyr being tortured by an Inquisitor, Nona said, “It’s just that the last engagement parties I went to were all either at the Top of the Mark or the Fairmont’s Crown Room. I thought your party would be more original than that.”

  “They were?” Angie wracked her brain. She hadn’t been invited to any engagement parties in the Fairmont. The Mark Hopkins, yes. Who did Nona know that hadn’t invited Angie? Who was stiffing her? She swallowed.

  “Don’t you remember?” Nona’s eyes went wide with surprise, then softened with sympathy. “Oh…you weren’t there, were you?”

  Angie bristled. What an actress! “I remember now,” she cried jovially. She, too, could act. “I had other plans. Sometimes it’s difficult to juggle one’s social calendar.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Speaking of which, I’ve got to run,” Nona said. “Take care. And if your party is at the Crown Room, I’m sure it’ll be lovely. They have lots of experience.”

  As Angie marched toward the special elevator to the top of the hotel, she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the ends of her wind-tossed hair had singed from the hot steam pouring from her ears.

  Chapter 3

  Chin in hand, Stan sat hunched over Angie’s kitchen table early the next morning, glum, hungry, and once again uninspired about going to work. He held the dubious title of Assistant Director of Supply Maintenance at Colonial Bank, where his father was one of the largest stockholders. Stan figured that as long as the bank had a hefty supply of pens, forms, and paper, he had no reason to sit at his desk waiting for someone to run out. Every so often, he went to the office and looked at the supply database on the computer. Occasionally, he even stuck his head into a supply cabinet. Then, job done, he’d leave.

  As Angie gave him some coffee, she’d railed about her encounter the day before with Nona.

  The sad part was that she’d actually been relieved to learn her mother had not booked the Crown Room for the party. What was wrong with her?

  Her experiences had taught her one thing: that although banquet halls and restaurants wouldn’t give you the names of the parties who had booked them by phone, when you went there in person it was easy to stand close and read the names on the reservation calendar yourself.

  Now all she had to do was go to those few of her mother’s favorite restaurants capable of handling a huge party, and check for Serefina’s reservation. Nothing to it.

  Normally, Angie’s best friend, Connie Rogers, would accompany her on such a search, but Connie had a gift shop to run. Besides, she thought Serefina’s approach was correct, and said that if Angie were to learn anything at all about the party, she’d monopolize planning the whole affair.

  Angie had no idea why anyone would think such a thing. All she wanted was to make sure the restaurant was one that both she and Paavo liked. He was the groom, after all, and should have some say in this. She also wanted to make sure the food was prepared the way she preferred, since, as a Cordon Bleu–trained gourmet cook, she had the right to expect perfection in the food at her very own engagement party.

  Besides that, she’d like to know that the party favors were something she could be proud of, the decorations done in colors she liked and that wouldn’t clash with her dress, that parking was plentiful in the area, that seating arrangements were such that people who hated each other wouldn’t be placed side by side, that the band would play music she enjoyed—if there was a band, which she hoped there would be—and that all the myriad little details so easy to forget about would be taken care of.

  What was so bad about that?

  Sheesh! Connie had sounded as if Angie went around acting like her mother or something. A shudder went through her. She couldn’t possibly…no, she was nothing like Serefina.

  Stan offered to join her on her quest to Fisherman’s Wharf, an area filled with a number of Serefina’s favorite restaurants. Angie was glad for the company and even offered to buy him lunch as a thank-you. Although he could drive her crazy with his lackadaisical attitude about work, career, and making something out of himself, he was always there when she needed a friend or a shoulder to cry on—both before she met Paavo and after as she’d struggled to convince Paavo the two of them were meant for each other. As a result, she always tried to be a helpful friend to Stan as well.

  Not that he ever took her advice, but that was another story.

  They started out at Alioto’s Restaurant. No Amalfi party was being held there. Fisherman’s Grotto Number 9 was next.

  “It isn’t like you,” Stan said, “to let your mother take over this way.”

  “How was I to know she’d be so sneaky?”

  “Sneaky?”

  “I thought she’d simply handle the arrangements—not keep them a secret from me!”

  “Maybe she thought that was the only way she could handle them.”

  Shades of Connie. Angie scowled. “That’s not true!”

  “The invitations were clever,” he began.

  If he laughs, I’m taking him back to his apartment right now.

  Stan smirked. “Serefina knew that if the invitations told where the party was, you’d figure out a way to get Connie to tell you. She’s never been able to keep a secret from you.”

  Angie put her hands on her hips. “Why should I go all the way across town to see Connie? One sniff of my lasagna and you’d sing like a bird!”<
br />
  “Why get pissed off at me?” he asked, hurt. “It was your mother’s idea, not mine.” He grinned. “And the day before the party, when I get the special-delivery letter telling me the location, you can come over with lasagna. No problem.”

  “You wouldn’t find it so funny if the fate of your party was in the hands of the U.S. Post Office! It’s going to be a disaster. I just know it.”

  After Fisherman’s Grotto they worked their way through other large restaurants along the wharf until it ended at Aquatic Park. They found no Amalfi party.

  “Now what?” Stan asked.

  Angie paused a moment, arms folded, peering down Jefferson Street at the shops, restaurants, and milling tourists. “I was sure she’d pick Fisherman’s Wharf. I suppose I can just forget about it,” Angie said stoically.

  “Sure, like Columbus could forget about discovering America, or Einstein forget about the theory of relativity, or—”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  The two walked past the cable car turntable. Up ahead was Ghirardelli Square, the red-brick onetime chocolate factory, now a tourist mecca.

  “I wonder if she could have rented Ghirardelli Square,” Angie mused. “All of it.”

  “It takes up an entire city block,” Stan pointed out. “I’d say it’s a little large, even for your family.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  They went into the Maritime Museum to warm up from the chilling wind and fog, and to use the public restrooms that were few and far between in the area.

  Outside, the museum looked like an ocean liner with curved ends, portholes, and decks. Inside, painted ship figureheads, mast sections, jutting spars, artifacts, photos, and documents from the early days of West Coast seafaring were spread over the three floors. Colorful WPA murals adorned the walls.

  “I’ve always loved this place,” Angie said as she studied a sextant. It was an oddly shaped one, and she couldn’t figure out how it worked. “Remember when I was becoming quite the expert on San Francisco history?” She moved on to a model of a schooner. “I always enjoyed that. I should go back to studying it again.”