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

They would know where her apartment was, however, because they had her car registration!

  She only lived a few blocks away at the very top of Russian Hill. To walk there, however, meant hiking up some very steep streets. Still, the thought that someone may have already broken into her apartment, and was stealing her things at that very moment spurred her to dash up the hill in record time.

  The front door of the apartment building remained unlocked until late night, and she hurried in, then took the elevator to the manager's apartment on the second floor.

  An elderly woman opened the door.

  "Mrs. Calamatti!" Angie cried, surprised. Mrs. Calamatti lived on three, not two. She was senile and worried so much about money she often hung around the apartment building's garbage shoot to see if anything valuable was being thrown away. "Is Mr. Anderson in?" Angie asked. "I've lost my key and I need him to let me in my apartment."

  "Mr. Anderson?" Mrs. Calamatti repeated. "I don't know any Mr. Anderson. I don't think you live in this building. I know all my tenants."

  "Your tenants?" The poor woman was even more confused than usual, Angie thought. "They're my father's tenants. He owns the building. You know me, Mrs. Calamatti. Angie Amalfi, apartment 12A. If Mr. Anderson left you in charge, that's fine, but I'd like you to let me into my apartment. I'm afraid someone might try to break into it, or already did!"

  "I think you should leave." Mrs. Calamatti looked scared. "You don't live here, and if you persist in disturbing me or my tenants, I'm going to call the police!"

  She shut the door. Angie heard the chain snap into place.

  She took the elevator up to her apartment.

  Before she stepped out, she double-checked that she was on the right floor. The walls were still white, but the carpet had been changed. How odd. She hadn't known it was going be. The hallway was small and probably didn't take long to recarpet, but why in the world did her father pick a rust color? It seemed so dated.

  Her apartment door was locked, as it should have been, and there was no sign that anyone was there. Maybe she was in time to save her belongings.

  She knocked several times on the door of her neighbor, Stan Bonnette, but he didn't answer.

  She paced. If only she had her cell phone, she could call Paavo and tell him what was going on, and then wait in the hallway protecting her apartment.

  Just then, the elevator bonged and out stepped Mrs. Calamatti with a police officer.

  "I told you to leave the premises," Mrs. Calamatti said. "If you don't go, I'll have you arrested."

  Angie looked the young officer in the eye and pointed at her apartment door. "I live there! I don't know what she's told you, but the woman has early Alzheimer's. She's not the building manager. His name is George Anderson. My father owns this building."

  "She's crazy," Mrs. Calamatti folded her arms. "And I don't know what she's talking about. I have Alzheimer's what? I’m no thief! She has no business here!"

  "I live here! You can ask my neighbor, Stan Bonnette, as soon as he gets back." Angie pointed at Stan's door.

  "I don't know who you're talking about!" Mrs. Calamatti shouted.

  "Who lives there, then?" Angie shouted back.

  Mrs. Calamatti lifted her chin. "That is none of your business!"

  "Ladies, stop," the officer said, then faced Angie. "I'm sorry, Miss. I've known Mrs. Calamatti for years and she owns this building. I'm afraid you'll have to leave."

  "She's got you fooled!" Angie couldn't believe that the officer had been so easily taken in by the woman. "Call my fiancé, Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith. He'll tell you."

  The officer took Angie's arm. "Let's step outside the building, and you can call anyone you like." He nodded at Mrs. Calamatti as he led Angie onto the elevator. Outside, he told her in no uncertain terms to beat it. Now.

  She did, angry and baffled.

  o0o

  Angie “beat it” as far as the corner of the twelve-story apartment building and watched the police officer drive away. Behind her, a narrow walkway along the side of the building led to an area with garbage cans and unfamiliar dumpsters as well as the door to the underground garage.

  To her relief, the door was unlocked. Once inside, she took the elevator and then the stairs up to the roof. A separate set of stairs led to her apartment's back door. She had the only apartment in the building with a private roof access. She should get some benefit being daughter to the owner, after all. Strangely, someone had removed the pots of fresh herbs she kept out there. Since she loved cooking, she grew her own basil, parsley, mint, and oregano.

  She had hidden an extra key under the basil. It, too, was missing.

  She wanted to bang her head against a wall. The bizarreness of her apartment key, cell phone, even her car, all missing, had seemed like a bad joke at first. But when the building manager was also missing, and the police forced her to leave, she got scared. Now, she was just plain angry.

  A doormat lay by the back door. It wasn't hers, but it gave her an idea. She peeked under it and sure enough, found her back door key. She unlocked the door.

  Relief filled her. Home at last! Finally, all the madness would come to an end.

  From the back porch she entered the kitchen.

  Only it wasn't her kitchen.

  The room began to spin.

  Instead of her fire engine red Lacanche professional grade gas range, she eyed a green Kenmore with electric coil burners. She shrank back in horror.

  The hanging rack with her All-Clad pots, the wood block that held her Henckels knives, even her Kohler pull-out faucet had vanished.

  The dishwasher was no longer a stainless steel Miele, but a Whirlpool. Also green. Why not? It matched the ugly green Frigidaire looking lonely in the spot that once held her large stainless steel freezer-on-the-bottom French-door style Kitchenaid.

  She felt as if she was in the middle of an avocado, and she was the pit.

  A white generic box, unopened, had "Macaroni & Cheese" in bold black letters. Beside it was a half-eaten bowl of some bizarre concoction that was lumpy and green. She wouldn't feed it to a dog.

  Why were these strange foods on her counter...and why was it green Formica when just a few years ago she had installed a beautiful ochre granite?

  Was she dreaming? Was she insane? Or was she suddenly a participant in a wildly improbable reality TV show? Rather than Trading Spaces, it was Vanishing Spaces? Or American Suic-idol? Or Survivor—The "I Lost My Home" Adventure?

  She didn't know what to think, what to do.

  On wobbly legs, she stumbled out to the living room. The eight-foot tall, beautiful Douglas fir she had decorated in gold and red ornaments and ribbons was gone, as were all her other Christmas decorations, from the wooden nutcrackers to the stuffed Santa Claus bears to the hand-crafted crèche. Nothing replaced them.

  Instead of her beautiful yellow petit point sofa and gorgeous antique Hepplewhite chair, someone had put an L-shaped black Naugahyde monstrosity. It sat on a mustard colored shag rug, and in front of it was a chrome and glass coffee table. A strangled cry fell from her lips.

  And the horror got worse.

  As she neared the dining area with a black plastic-looking dinette set instead of her solid cherry wood table and chairs, she saw shoes on the ground. Men's shoes.

  But they weren't lying flat. They were back on their heels, the toes splayed outward and upward, as if they were still on someone's feet.

  She froze. Whose feet? She lived alone. What man would be in her house, lying on her dining room floor, and wearing tastelessly pointy shiny black shoes?

  She panted faster than a victim in a slasher movie.

  If she thought her legs were wobbly before, they were nothing compared to their state now, as she tiptoed toward the body. It was amazing she could walk at all.

  The man was fairly heavy, with receding gray hair. She had no idea who he was.

  Her fingers gripped the back of one of the chairs tight. As much as she hated to, she had no choi
ce but to try to find a pulse.

  Her hand shook as she slowly reached forward and touched his face. He was cold. Icy cold. No one could be that cold and not be....

  She swallowed hard.

  She tried to wriggle his finger. It was stiff as a board.

  She yanked back her hand and folded her arms tight against her ribs. Who was he? Why was he in her apartment?

  And why did he have bright green foam oozing from the side of his mouth?

  Somehow, she managed to cross the room to the end table where she kept her phone, but instead of her such-a-high-gigahertz-number-she-couldn't-even-remember-what-it-was cordless, on the table sat a white "princess" style instrument. One like her mother kept in the bedroom years ago. One with a rotary dial that lit up when the receiver was lifted. One with a short, coiled cord…like a deformed snake…

  That did it.

  Angelina Rosaria Maria Amalfi ran from her apartment in a complete panic.

  CHAPTER THREE

  An upset and scared Angie took a remarkably aged taxicab to the Hall of Justice. The driver, when she questioned him, said he heard an earthquake reported as a tiny 2.5 on the Richter scale hit earlier, but nobody felt it. Well, she certainly had!

  Angie was accustomed to news delays—everything seemed fine on first report, but only as time went on did the truth come out. The quake was far stronger than reported.

  She guessed something strange had happened during the quake. Something that made everything around her feel a little…warped. She shuddered. She was going to find Paavo. He would explain it. He would make everything right again.

  The taxi driver never used his cell phone, which was odd. Most cabbies seemed to spend all their time on the phones between talking—hands free, of course—to dispatchers and girlfriends or wives. She asked if she could borrow his phone for a local call, and he acted as if he didn't know what she was talking about.

  That was most likely easier for him than out and out refusing. Afraid he wouldn't get a tip, perhaps.

  The streets seemed quieter than normal with much less traffic. Only older cars were on the road for some reason, and even the people looked odd. It was as if the street fair that surrounded the performers in Washington Square had spread into a city-wide celebration of ugly old clothes.

  She did her best to ignore it. She had bigger things to worry about, like…

  No! She refused to think about her apartment or the dead man in it. It must have been a hallucination, a manifestation of her confusion after the earthquake and Mrs. Calamatti's strange behavior.

  She wondered if she needed to go to a hospital. But she felt fine…except for seeing things.

  She concentrated instead on her missing car, and where in the world poor Mr. Anderson was. Mrs. Calamatti was senile, but she had never been dangerous before. Angie hoped she hadn't gone psycho and hurt the real building manager in her version of the Bates Motel.

  Paavo, the most capable, rational man she had ever met in her life, would help her straighten it all out. She felt good just looking at him.

  She blinked hard, several times. The George Moscone convention center that took up an entire city block wasn't there. Gone. Vanished. Nada.

  Impossible! Angie rubbed her forehead. Even if the Moscone Center had been destroyed by the quake, debris would be strewn around. Instead, the space held some old, dilapidated buildings.

  Her stomach roiled. Ah! She had it now. She had become confused about the streets, that's all.

  She double checked the street signs as they drove by. Okay...someone had moved the signs around. That explained it.

  She had been more disoriented by the quake than she realized. It had knocked her over, made her pass out. No wonder everything seemed a little...skewed. What could be more normal?

  Her head didn't hurt anywhere. She felt around. She found no bumps.

  The taxi stopped and the driver said, "That'll be five-fifty."

  She was surprised at how inexpensive the trip was. She handed him a ten.

  "Hey! What kind of funny money is this?" He flipped it back and forth, looking at the bill.

  What? She looked in her wallet. An old twenty was in there, but everything else had the new hard-to-counterfeit look. The idea that a cab driver didn't recognize her money made something ripple along her back. "Here." She thrust a twenty at him, and jumped out of the cab. "Keep the change!"

  She ran into the Hall of Justice. Right in. No one stopped her.

  That, also, was too strange for words. Not only were no guards at the entrance, but the metal detectors had been removed. How could that be? Courts were in session. Judges met here. They had to be protected, not to mention the District Attorney and his staff, and even the inspectors like Paavo. They couldn't allow just anyone to walk into the building! What was wrong with these people? She would have complained except she saw no one to complain to.

  How weird was this?

  Before her, in a corner of the lobby, stood a huge Christmas tree filled with old-fashioned ornaments, lights, and a manger scene at the bottom. How nice, she thought. Last she had heard, the city wasn't allowing any 'religious' symbols in city buildings. Soft music played "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." If she were a crazy woman, she would think she had traveled through time. But that was impossible.

  Still, she felt like a criminal as she walked straight to the bank of elevators without being questioned or having her purse x-rayed to prove she wasn't a terrorist or an assassin. Her heart pounded.

  The elevator bonged and the doors opened.

  Angie gawked at the short, short skirts of women getting off. And those shoulder pads! Football linemen would be envious. The men's clothes were equally strange. Men working here normally dressed in suits or sports jackets with nice slacks, white shirts and ties, not tie-less leisure suits. What was with all the cheap polyester?

  She got on and pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  o0o

  "No Paavo Smith works here!" the receptionist insisted as Angie’s head began to ache. She had never seen the woman before, and never wanted to again. She had long curly hair and wore a short paisley dress that looked beyond hideous. And, she was lying. "I've never even heard a name like Paavo. You've got the wrong department!"

  "Are you new?" Angie asked. "His partner's name is Toshiro Yoshiwara. Yosh. Surely, you know him."

  "No."

  "That does it!" Angie marched past the idiotic receptionist and into Homicide, a large room where all the detectives had their own desks, computers, files and bookcases.

  A group of strangers looked up at her, startled by her entrance. None of the detectives she knew were there—no Luis Calderon, Bo Benson, Rebecca Mayfield, Bill Sutter, Yosh, or Paavo.

  She backed up. Ah! Of course! This wasn't Homicide. The furniture was all wrong. No computers on desks, nothing. How foolish of her! She obviously had gotten off on the wrong floor and was so focused on all the other weird stuff she was seeing, she hadn't noticed her error.

  "Sorry," she said. "My mistake." She turned around to leave, but as she did, she saw behind her a wall map of the Bay Area with red circles and dates on it. Tacked up beside it were letters printed in a strange hand. The one nearest Angie began with, This is the Zodiac speaking. I like killing people.

  Angie gasped.

  The Zodiac was a serial killer who had terrorized the Bay Area from the late 1960's to the mid-1970s. If Angie was remembering her San Francisco history correctly—she was a bit of a local history buff and had even taught a couple of community courses on it—the Zodiac was never caught, and his identity never determined.

  Most law professionals assumed he had died, moved away, or ended up in an insane asylum. So, Angie wondered, massaging her throbbing temples, why was information about him on the wall now? Had some news broken in the case? But more importantly, it meant this room was Homicide.

  She spun back, her pulse racing.

  "You really must leave, miss," the receptionist said.

  Ju
st then, another woman walked into the room.

  Angie stared in shock. She recognized her best friend, Connie Rogers, who should have been working at her gift shop. Instead, she strolled into Paavo's workplace and boldly sat down at Luis Calderon's desk.

  Angie couldn't believe her eyes. She had never seen her friend that way. First, instead of her short, light blond hair, it was much darker—her natural color, most likely—much longer and worn in layers that flipped outward. It reminded Angie of someone...

  Then she remembered. Not long ago, Hollywood released a movie adapted from "Charlie's Angels," an old TV show. She had read stories about Farrah Fawcett on the original show and how her hairdo had become the style for a nation.

  Connie should not be wearing Farrah Fawcett hair. It looked hideous on her.

  But more remarkable than the hair or the too-thick eyeliner, were her clothes. She was wearing an SFPD uniform. What the hell was going on?

  "Connie!" Angie rushed to her. "Where's Paavo?"

  "I'm sorry," the receptionist said to Connie. "She just burst in here asking for someone named Paavo Smith. I'll call security."

  "It's okay, Georgia. I know Paavo Smith," Connie said, eying Angie as if she were a stranger. "Why are you looking for him here?"

  "He works here!"

  Connie's eyes narrowed. "Did he tell you that? Trying to impress you, I suppose. Paavo Smith definitely does not work here."

  Angie ran her fingers through her hair. "Connie, what the hell is going on? It's as if everyone's in on some kind of joke except me!"

  "How do you know my name?" Connie's expression turned hard and unbelievably forceful…for Connie.

  Instead of answering the foolish question, Angie demanded, "Why are you wearing that uniform?"

  Connie smoothed her shirt. "I'm on detail here, not plainclothes yet. And I'm proud of this uniform!"

  "You're on detail?" The words caught in Angie's throat.

  "What's wrong with that? Women can handle homicide as well as any man, and I'll prove it."

  "Of course they can! Rebecca Mayfield proves it every day," Angie shouted.

  "Who?"

  Angie could stand no more, and ran out of the bureau.