Cook's Christmas Capers (The Angie Amalfi Mysteries) Read online

  Cook’s Christmas Capers

  Cook’s Curious Christmas

  (An Angie Amalfi Mystery Novella)

  &

  The Thirteenth Santa

  (A Rebecca Mayfield Mystery Novella)

  By Joanne Pence

  Quail Hill Publishing

  Copyright 2013 by Joanne Pence

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © Can Stock Photo Inc. / RTimages : artshock : PerfectLazybones

  “Cook’s Curious Christmas” – Copyright 2013 Joanne Pence

  “The Thirteenth Santa” - Copyright 2004 Joanne Pence; Revised by author 2013

  First E-Book Edition, December 2013

  First Paperback Printing (Quail Hill Publishing), December 2013

  Cook’s Curious

  Christmas

  by

  Joanne Pence

  CHAPTER ONE

  As Angelina Amalfi entered San Francisco’s Washington Square, something felt wrong. Usually, even in winter, birds sang, seagulls soared, and flocks of pigeons pecked at the scraps people tossed their way. Now, none were present. While snow and freezing temperatures blanketed most of the country, the weather here was pleasantly cool and crisp. Yet the air was eerily still.

  In five days it would be Christmas, and she was rushing to the post office to mail presents. Yes, she should have sent them off a week ago, but planning for her wedding was so time-consuming that everything else in her life seemed to be shunted aside, including Christmas.

  The Christmas spirit wasn't even a flicker in her heart. This year, the holiday did nothing but create more hubbub and bother than she wanted to deal with.

  On top of everything else, she couldn’t even find a nearby parking space. Could the parking situation in San Francisco get any worse?

  From the corner of her eye she saw a blur. It took a moment to realize it was her friend, Nona Farraday, running by. Truth be told, she and Nona weren't really friends. They had more of a mutual admiration-and-disdain relationship. Angie envied Nona's job as restaurant reviewer and writer for Haute Cuisine magazine, and Nona envied Angie's comfortable life and handsome fiancé, San Francisco Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith.

  But why, Angie wondered, was Nona in such a hurry?

  Angie scanned the direction Nona ran toward. The North Beach park had several areas with trees and bushes. She saw a young man with thick black hair crouching behind an elm. Was Nona looking for him? Who was he? And why, Angie wondered, was he hiding?

  Then the trees began to sway.

  The earth jolted in sharp side-to-side motions. Angie could barely stay on her feet, and staggered towards a park bench to hold onto the back so she wouldn’t fall off her four-inch high heels. A roar filled her head, although she couldn't say if she heard an actual sound or if her eardrums were reacting to power and force and pressure.

  The quake didn't stop.

  Angie spun around to see some people drop to the ground while mothers captured their children in their arms, holding them close. People's screams matched the sound of the earth.

  She was used to sudden rolling tremblers that rattled nerves and little else, and then ended almost as soon as they started. The bad quakes were the ones that went on and on, that continued long enough for a person to wonder, "What will I do if it doesn't stop?" Long enough to see, hear, and feel, the certainties of life crumbling all around.

  Angie was young when the last big quake, the Loma Prieta, hit the Bay Area. Only because most people had left work early and were home turning on their TVs to watch baseball's "Bay Bridge World Series," was there relatively little loss of life despite a major freeway collapse and a chunk of the Bay Bridge's upper deck falling to the lower.

  That quake seemed to go on forever.

  So did this one.

  Angie's prayers went immediately to the safety of her family and friends, as well as those around her.

  Only a few feet away, two teenage girls huddled together, frozen to the spot, and above them, a tree limb swayed precariously.

  "Get away!" The Christmas presents fell from her arms as she grabbed their wrists and pulled. The blond girl cooperated, but the brunette rebelled, and pulled back.

  "Let go!" she yelled, twisting away from Angie's hold.

  "A branch is about to fall!" Angie screamed. "You've got to run!"

  "Leave me alone!"

  The girl wouldn't stop fighting. Angie feared she would have to let go for her own safety. "Please," she said, and gave one last, mighty tug.

  o0o

  On the opposite side of San Francisco, Connie Rogers leaned against a counter in her gift shop, Everyone's Fancy. In her thirties, divorced, with blue eyes, short blond hair that curled and fluffed around her face, she didn't see herself so much overweight as "well rounded."

  Her store was empty as usual. She had decked the store with Christmas cheer—tinsel, festive lights, a wreath on the door, and even a small tree—but it hadn't helped.

  Unless things quickly turned around, she was going to have to sell the business. She hated the thought. She loved her little shop. Each item, be it kitschy knickknacks, pottery, collectibles, or greeting cards, had been chosen with great care. And bought with credit. The interest on the charges was eating her alive. Connie had to be careful with her dollars since she had two mouths to feed—hers and her pound puppy Lily’s, who actually wasn't a puppy at all but a five-year old medium-size female with a shaggy cream-colored coat and melt-your-heart big brown eyes.

  She went to the door of her shop and opened it wide.

  A sudden inexplicable uneasiness gave her the strangest urge to lock the doors, take Lily, and go home. She ignored it and stepped onto the sidewalk. A few cars zipped past. A well-dress man dashed down the street, focused inward, not even noticing her.

  The sky seemed unnaturally bright, startlingly so. San Francisco was almost perpetually in a haze of some sort, usually from the cold and fog, rarely from a shimmering heat, and always interlaced with smog of exhaust and industry.

  Connie shaded her eyes. A strange energy was in the air. She could almost taste it.

  "Lily, come here," she called, suddenly wanting company.

  Lily, usually happy to step outside the shop, didn't come.

  Connie turned. "Lily?"

  The dog stood, but her eyes were wide and questioning. At Connie's urging she took a couple of steps toward the front door, then whimpered and backed away.

  At that moment, the building began to sway. The creaking of the wooden walls and floor made a high squeal that was all but drowned out by the clatter of knickknacks knocking about.

  Connie spun toward her shop to see Lily crawl under a counter. At the same time some beautiful pottery pieces began to fall. Teetering like a drunken sailor from the force of the quake, she stumbled towards them, hoping to grab the most expensive pieces before they hit the floor and shattered. She would no sooner grab one piece than three more would fall. It was as if some gigantic hand of God shook the shelves. Or considering the damage being done, the Devil.

 
; A shelf unit sprang from the wall, tilting toward Connie. She managed to jump out of the way at the last second as the heavy case crashed to the floor.

  Horrified, scared, and heartsick by all that was happening, Connie followed her dog under the counter and hugged Lily tight.

  o0o

  Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith inspected the shriveled, decaying body of an elderly man who had apparently slipped in the bathtub, hit his head, and died.

  His partner, Toshiro Yoshiwara, tried not to gag. Yosh was tall for a Japanese with a broad, powerful build. He had recently shaved off all his thick black hair, saying he was sick of his receding hairline and mass of cowlicks.

  Paavo looked for bruises or any other sign that the old man's death had not been as natural as the family insisted. No one in that family—a mother, father, their four young children, and the father's two brothers—had noticed that the old man, an uncle to the adult males, was not underfoot. They didn't look for him until he had been dead for five days and the small house, lacking air conditioning, began to smell.

  "I've got to get out of here," Yosh said, one hand holding a handkerchief over his nose, the other pressed to his stomach.

  "Go," Paavo told him. "I'll be out in a minute."

  Alone now, Paavo looked around the house. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with short brown hair, pale blue eyes, pronounced cheekbones and a slight bend to his nose from a long ago break.

  The first thing that struck him was that too many people were crammed together in the small three bedroom, two bath house. They claimed that only when they realized none of them had used the smaller bathroom for days—and that no one had seen Uncle Henry—did they find him.

  The death was beyond gross incompetency, but was it murder? The family members all said they were simply grateful that Uncle Henry wasn't complaining, causing trouble, or being incontinent.

  It wasn't the first time Paavo had seen an old person who had made life difficult for young relatives suddenly become disposable.

  A small Christmas tree stood in a corner of the living room. Beneath it were what looked like a truckload of wrapped presents. Paavo wondered if even one was for Uncle Henry.

  As soon as the coroner's team bagged the body, Paavo joined Yosh outside.

  Despite Paavo's tough cop image, he was glad to get out into the open, to get the taste of death and neglect from his mouth. For some reason, the outside wasn't much better.

  The air felt close, heavy, not like San Francisco at all. Usually breezes, if not freezing winds from the ocean, whipped between buildings and nearly blew people out of their shoes.

  Not today.

  Today, all was still. Unnaturally so. Paavo felt it and looked at Yosh whose wary expression said he, too, was unnerved.

  A few cars drove by, but normally adults and children in poorer neighborhoods like this gathered in front of any house with activity, especially if it involved the law. The neighborhood reeked of boredom and despair, but now people stayed indoors.

  "Earthquake weather," Paavo said.

  Yosh nodded.

  Paavo turned to watch as the coroner’s team carried the body from the house, followed by the family.

  The ground sharply undulated, then shifted to quick side-to-side motions.

  Uncle Henry's corpse slid off the gurney onto the street.

  The family screamed. The wife began to swoon. Her husband grabbed her arm as he shouted about clumsy city workers, then both stopped in their tracks clutching each other as they felt the quake…and waited for it to stop.

  Power lines swayed, and the telephone poles looked like they were made of Jell-O.

  Paavo and Yosh pulled the children away from the house into the middle of the street moments before the garage buckled, and the main floor of the house dropped with a sickening crunch.

  o0o

  Stanfield Bonnette opened the door to his refrigerator and his face fell. Stan lived across the hall from Angie. His apartment was smaller; it had a view of the city rather than San Francisco Bay, the bridges and Alcatraz; and his refrigerator was a whole lot emptier.

  A slim, somewhat delicate man with the good-fortune of being given a job in a bank through his father's influence, he was often home...and bored...which usually translated into him bothering Angie rather than finding something to do on his own.

  She enjoyed cooking and trying out new recipes, and Stan convinced her some time back that if she ate everything she cooked, she would weigh a ton. He, on the other hand, had the sort of metabolism that allowed him to eat and not gain weight.

  He could hardly wait for Angie to get back home today. He knew she was fretting about her upcoming wedding, and a nervous Angie cooked to calm herself. What would it be this time? Italian comfort food? Fettuccini with pesto would be good. Or ricotta-filled manicotti. His mouth began to water. Or maybe she would turn to chocolate. A nice chocolate-walnut torte. Or dark chocolate mousse. Or chocolate-filled éclairs. He put his hand on the kitchen counter, ready to swoon with hunger and need.

  His eye caught a carton of eggs in the still open refrigerator and he decided to scramble a couple to tide him over for the hour or so it would take Angie to cook up something mouth-watering.

  As he reached for the eggs, the carton scooted away from him. Suddenly, the entire refrigerator began to dance from side to side. A quart of milk toppled off the shelf and bounded onto the floor with a wet crash.

  Stan clutched the refrigerator for only a moment, then ran to the kitchen doorway and held onto the door jamb. He had been told doorways were the strongest spot in a room.

  Tears of fright filled his eyes. "Earthquakes don't go on this long!" he cried, even though no one was there to hear him. The renovated building had already been through a number of quakes. What if it didn't survive this latest one? What if he didn't survive this latest one?

  He whimpered.

  He heard the wrenching sounds of wood and plaster as it twisted and pulled. Being on the twelfth floor, which was high for a San Francisco apartment building, the sway was perceptible.

  The electricity in the apartment crackled then died.

  Stan yelped, curled up into a ball, and covered his head with his arms.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Angie opened her eyes. Somehow she had ended up flat on her back.

  The two girls had gone. The precariously swaying tree limb hadn't broken off from the trunk after all.

  Filled with relief, she sat up.

  An old man stood over her. "You okay, miss? Do you need a doctor?"

  She did feel a bit woozy, but said, "I'm fine. That was quite a quake! I hope there wasn't much damage."

  Children played; mothers huddled in small bunches talking; all seemed unconcerned about what just happened.

  "I was in the quake of o-six," the old fellow said. "It was a doozy! I was just a little shaver, mind you, but it's as clear in my head as anything. The fire burned down the whole blooming city, and we all lived in tents for a few weeks."

  Angie took his hand as he helped her to her feet. The old boy was nice, but nuts—1906? He was not hundred-years-old plus. In fact, he didn't look a day over eighty.

  "Thanks." She picked up her purse. The quake must have been a lot milder than she had thought. "I'm glad everything seems fine."

  "Yes," he smiled in toothless splendor. "You'd better get home now. Too much sun, I guess. Are you sure you're all right?"

  Something seemed strange, but she couldn't put her finger on what. "Yes, thank you."

  Then it struck. Her Christmas packages were gone! Someone must have stolen them while she was passed out. What nerve! What gall! Where was a policeman when you needed one? She would have to report this theft to Paavo, and then go shopping all over again.

  First, before anything else, she needed to make sure her fiancé, family and friends were all right. She looked in her purse for her cell phone. Paavo would know if the quake had done much damage elsewhere. Clearly, in North Beach, life was going on as if nothing
at all had happened.

  Her phone wasn't in her purse. Damn! The thief took that, too. At least her wallet was still there, thank goodness.

  As she headed toward her car, she saw a peculiar gathering in a corner of the park. Nearly all the women had long wavy hair. Most wore peasant blouses with jeans or long skirts with paisley or flowery prints. Many wore head scarves of some kind. The men also wore their hair quite long, with flowing shirts or caftans over jeans, and almost all—men and women—wore flat, brown leather sandals. They looked like pictures Angie used to see of the "hippies" that descended on San Francisco years and years ago. If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…

  She remembered her mother singing the old song, and saying hippies weren't nearly so peace-loving or gentle as the song made them seem.

  The group was watching some performers dressed up as Commedia dell'Arte characters putting on a show. It must be a revival of some kind. Only in San Francisco, Angie thought. Despite an earthquake, the show must go on.

  She hurried back to her car, glad to see no destruction as she went.

  When she reached the spot where she had parked her big, new, Mercedes, in its place stood an old-fashioned yellow VW bug—the kind seen in the old-time "Herbie, the Love Bug" movies. Who drove a car like that anymore?

  Whoever did had kept it up well. It looked almost new.

  Could she be mistaken about where she had parked? She marched up and down the block. Weirdly, all the cars were old. Lots of VWs, lots of tiny little foreign cars, a few behemoth boxy American ones, but not an SUV, Lexus, or even a Ford Taurus in the bunch. How could that be?

  But she was sure of where she had parked. She looked for her car keys. They were gone! And her house keys!

  Damn! Whoever took her cell phone must have taken her car keys and her car! But how in the world did they know where she had parked?