Murder by Devil's Food

by Joanne Pence

  "Not any one in particular, just in general," Angie explained. She made a funny face at her nephew and nearly had her eardrums explode with his next cry. "How do you keep your friends?"

  "Whatever are you talking about?" Frannie had to shout even louder.

  "You must have someone to talk to, don't you?" Angie shrieked.

  Frannie turned the baby sideways in her arms and rocked him from side to side, which he hated even more than being on her shoulder. His tones were earsplitting. She rocked harder. "Of course, when I so choose, which isn't often." She flopped into a chair and began bouncing her son on her lap to see if that would stop him. It didn't. "I'm self-contained. I don't dawdle."

  "You don't what?"

  "Dawdle. Dawdle!"

  "Whatever. How do you deal with all this?" Angie tried to hide how appalled she was.

  "He'll learn that I have no patience with a brat."

  "But he's too young to learn anything. Don't you need someone to talk to? About being a new mother, if nothing else. The constant responsibility?"

  The baby's cry turned strident. "No, I don't," Frannie yelled. "Before little Seth, I was busy with my new job, then my new husband, then my new apartment, then my new car. When I got pregnant I was always sick. The last thing I want is telling other people my woes or hearing about theirs. As if I care!" Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you asking me this? You aren't already pregnant, are you?"

  Frannie suddenly stuck little Seth in Angie's arms. He was so outraged his face started turning bright red as he'd hold in breath in between hiccups and screams. Angie turned him upside down, hoping to startle him into breathing, but when she put him upright again, he could have filled in for a fire engine on its way to a five alarmer.

  Angie joined Frannie in the kitchen where she was warming a bottle of formula. To say that Frannie was a bit self-centered and lacking compassion was like saying the moon was round. "No, I'm not."

  "What? Cold feet? Thinking you don't want the joy of motherhood?"

  The baby bobbed his head and wildly flung his arms around, smacking Angie in the nose. She literally saw stars.

  "I'm having trouble with a friend," Angie said, "and I wanted to talk to someone about it."

  "You? You have no business having trouble with anyone. You need to be choosier about who you associate with and talk to. That's the way I am." The bottle warmed, Frannie took Seth and crammed the nipple into his mouth. Finally, he was quiet. "I can't believe you, Angie. You just don't know how to deal with people. They'll bleed you dry if you let them."

  Angie bit her tongue. "That's why I'm asking."

  "Precision and organization, those are the keys."

  I'm out of here. Angie got up to leave when Frannie suddenly again plopped Seth into her arms and hurried from the room. He promptly spit a mouthful of formula onto Angie's favorite DKNY dress.

  "Before you go," Frannie called from the bedroom, "I've got a book you need. It's old, but considered a classic. And it should help you straighten up and fly right."

  With little Seth hanging over her arm, Angie dabbed at her dress with a clean diaper. "What book is it?"

  Frannie could have written the book in the time it took her to find it, but eventually she returned and handed it to Angie. Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A pale young man, dressed in baggy black pants, a black "Kiss" tee-shirt, black spiked hair, black eyeliner, and three silver studs in one ear walked up to Angie and Kylie as they placed a cupcake at each setting at a Theta Phi Delta sorority alumni meeting. Each cake was festooned with the sorority's colors and a little ΘΦΔ symbol.

  "Where's the punch bowl?" He carried a large sack of ice on his shoulders. To say he looked out of place at this meeting hall was an understatement.

  "This is a nice place." Kylie marched toward him, arms folded. "What's trash doing in here?"

  Angie, who'd been ready to answer, stared at Kylie in astonishment.

  "If you mean me," the fellow said, eying her frilly blue apron with a smirk, "I'm delivering ice. What does it look like?" He shifted the ice to rest on one hip.

  "Go deliver it someplace else," Kylie ordered. "We're setting out cupcakes, in case you haven't noticed."

  "So you're doing your job, but I can't do mine?" he asked petulantly.

  "If it is your job!"

  "Hold it." Angie looked from one to the other, the tension so thick she could almost taste it. "What's going on here?"

  "This creep seems to have lost his way." Kylie flicked her thumb at him.

  "Don't listen to her." He put the ice at his feet, surprisingly at ease despite the venom Kylie was hurling at him.

  Kylie's eyes narrowed to anger. "How did you end up here? Are you following me?"

  "Don't you wish, sweetheart." The man grinned, a straight, shiny-toothed smile that reached his eyes, quite at odds with his otherwise dark, old-style Goth looks. "I will admit, though, when I saw you with a beautiful woman, I decided I'd come here to look for the punch bowl instead of asking one of the fat old broads who run this place."

  He turned to Angie and extended his hand. "My name's Danger."

  "Angie Amalfi." She shook his hand. He was stronger than she'd expected. "Danger is an interesting name. Are you?"

  "Nope. I'm as safe as they come."

  "Don't listen to him," Kylie warned, hands on hips.

  "Looks like my friend here's hustled you for a job," Danger said. "What's the matter, Kylie? Afraid I'll cut in on the action? I could always use another job. Hauling ice isn't exactly a challenge."

  Angie was all ears and eyes watching these two, and she was interested to meet someone who might shed some light on Kylie. The woman was surprisingly close-mouthed about herself. She always answered Angie's questions, but her answers were short and with no details. In other words, probably lies. Where could Kylie have met Danger? The bristling hostility between them intrigued her. She wanted to know more about them both.

  "I don't know which I'm more pissed off at," Kylie said. "You calling me a friend or your delusions that Angie would want to hire you for anything!"

  Danger turned to Angie. "I saw you two lugging around those big cupcake boxes. They might not be heavy, but they're awkward and bulky. What if you dropped one? I'd save you time and worry by doing the deliveries for you. And I'll work for only fifteen bucks an hour. Plus, I'm an independent contractor, so you don't have to worry about payroll taxes or anything."

  She knew what he meant. He wanted to be paid under the table.

  Nearly spitting, Kylie glared at Danger. "Nobody needs to pay someone to carry cupcakes."

  Danger spoke up quickly. "I could use the work. And if Kylie ever stopped being so angry, she'd tell you I can be trusted."

  "Right, about as far as you can throw him," Kylie commented before Angie could reply. "Ignore him, Angie. He's bad news."

  "Don't listen to her, Angie. She hardly knows me...yet." He winked at Kylie, and as she sputtered in outrage, he gave Angie a boyish grin.

  Amused, Angie now had second thoughts about what was really going on between those two. Also, it was in fact getting more and more difficult for her to deliver the cupcakes, especially big orders, and at the same time to take new orders and prepare the ones already scheduled.

  "Give me your phone number and a couple references and I'll keep you in mind," she told Danger. "Now, you'd better take that ice to the table in front of the sorority banner before it all melts."

  o0o

  Yosh shut his notebook and put it in his breast pocket. "Well, I'm convinced. It was suicide or a really stupid stunt."

  Paavo didn't reply. He felt bone-chilling cold and for some reason, was finding it hard to breath, as if the air had been drained of oxygen. Yosh felt none of that, and Paavo wondered if he'd caught a flu bug. He hadn't felt this cold and miserable since he'd been in Tiburon.

  They stood in an alley off Sansome Street, peering up at the three-story high walkway that linked two Financ
ial District office buildings. Around one a.m., Homicide's dispatch had phoned the two inspectors that were the on-call team that week. A young man had apparently fallen from a great height onto the street and died.

  When they arrived at the scene, Paavo was saddened and dismayed to discover that he recognized the victim—Ted Colton. The boy had practically begged for protection, and all Paavo had done was to take a report. Colton had been frightened and nervous, but not suicidal.

  Paavo studied the bridge between the buildings. All of its windows were sealed. To fall from it, it appeared Colton had gone to the floor above, lowered himself to the top of the structure, crawled to the middle, and then either jumped, or fell, or was pushed.

  What, he wondered, had happened here in the early morning hours?

  Colton was dressed in a black opera cape with red lining, loose, black slacks, and a white ruffled shirt. On his cape was a patch with Germanic lettering that said "Nosferatu Rules."

  "What's Nosferatu?" Yosh had asked. "Some rock group?"

  "It's the name of a vampire," Paavo had responded. At his partner's look, he explained. "Angie likes old classic movies. We went to see it. It was pretty grotesque. The guy was not your cuddly Bela Lugosi type at all."

  They had searched for any indication that the boy had been forced onto the top of the bridge. The crime scene investigators had dusted for prints on both the window that had been pried open, as well as the fourth-floor ledge that he would have climbed onto before lowering himself to the bridge.

  Eyeballing it, only one set of prints was found. The CSI would have more information after running their tests.

  Officer Varney, who had called in the homicide report and secured the crime scene, walked over to Paavo. "I just remembered something." He hesitated. "It's probably nothing, but I thought I should let you know."

  "What is it?" Paavo asked.

  "Well, this alley is part of my normal patrol. I pass by it two, three, or more times each night, depending on what's going on."

  Paavo nodded; he knew the routine.

  "The time before, an old man was in the alley. A street bum. You know the type."

  "What did he look like?"

  "Tall, shaggy white hair, skinny, dressed all in black. I rolled down my window and called him, told him to get on home. He never even glanced my way. It must have been because of him that I paid close attention to the alley on my next drive by. That could be why I decided to investigate what looked like a mound of old, dark clothes on the ground. I just don't know."

  Again, Paavo felt heartsick that he hadn't taken Colton' fears more seriously. The old man must have gone back near Colton's place of work to wait for the young man and somehow evaded the police patrol. He had found a way to capture the boy, force him out onto that ledge, somehow manage to make him to jump. But how?

  "Are you all right, Inspector?" Varney asked, alarmed at Paavo's expression.

  He didn't answer, but instead asked, "Have you ever seen the old man before this morning's patrol?"

  Varney shook his head. "Never."

  o0o

  "He wouldn't listen to me," Gwen Colton said, trying to control her tears. She lit another cigarette. Her hair was short, straight, and dirty blond, her face tanned and lined with dryness, the area above her upper lip yellow-tinged from tobacco.

  Yosh handed her yet another tissue. He and Paavo sat in the living room of the two-bedroom apartment. The furniture was cheap and worn. Stacks of TV Guides were the only visible reading material.

  The dead boy's mother was coping with the news better than Paavo had imagined she would—almost as if she'd expected it.

  She told them that Ted had dropped out of public high school but now was enrolled in an alternative school to get a GED. Unfortunately, he rarely bothered to go to class, preferring to play video games when he wasn't at work.

  "He had few friends," his mother said, "except for a couple kids at work, also gamers, that he sometimes went out with. At home, he spent all of his time shut in his room. He didn't want me to go in, not even to clean."

  She dried her eyes. "I'd make him go visit his father at times. We've been divorced since Ted was four. I'd tell his father to do something with him, but he couldn't. Ted seemed to hate us, hate everything we ever tried to do for him. All he wanted to do was play those stupid games and listen to that crappy music. I told him to stop it, to clean up himself and his room, to stop wearing black. You know what he said to me?"

  Paavo and Yosh shook their heads. They sat quietly with the woman and let her speak, let her pour out her anger and resentment and deep, deep hurt.

  "He said he was a vampire. A vampire! The damned fool idiot. I wanted to wring his neck. Or laugh." Her tears turned to sobs. "Instead, I slapped him. Nothing, nothing got through to him. Nothing. And now..."

  The two detectives waited until she gained some control.

  "Had he ever been in trouble with the law?" Paavo asked.

  "Never."

  "No record of any kind? Tickets?"

  "Not even a parking ticket." She bowed her head.

  Paavo again waited. "Do you know where he spent his evenings, or who his friends were, Mrs. Colton?"

  She stared at the wet tissue as if it might hold answers that had eluded her for years. "I suppose I should, shouldn't I? In his room, he had his own computer, TV, stereo, XBox—everything he could want. Why wasn't he happy?"

  "Did he talk about the places he went?"

  She sucked hard on the cigarette, then crushed it. "Not really. I had the impression he hung out in somebody's basement. I just don't know. There was one kid he mentioned a lot. Kal...I don't remember his last name."

  "Would you find his phone number for us, Mrs. Colton?" Yosh asked politely.

  "It would be on his phone," she said.

  "His phone wasn't on him," Paavo explained.

  "Let's look in his room."

  As they walked down the hall, Paavo asked, "Did he ever mention an old man watching him?"

  She seemed puzzled by the question. "No. Why? What about him?"

  "Just someone we're checking on."

  She switched on the lights in Ted's bedroom. "Here you go."

  Paavo stepped into the bedroom and stopped short, as if he'd hit a wall. The smell of damp earth and decay turned his stomach. Morbid was the only word he could think of to describe the room. It was somewhat similar to Anna Gomez's, but much darker, bleaker.

  "I wouldn't let him paint the walls black," Mrs. Colton said, oblivious to the stench. "He did this instead."

  Every inch of open space, including the ceiling and the windows, were covered with posters of the mask-covered rock group Slipknot, as well as Five Finger Death Punch, Cannibal Corpse, and even posters of the British occultist and satanist from the early 1900's, Aleister Crowley. There was a dark, harsh quality to the room; it was a room made for nightmares.

  Paavo turned on the computer. All password protection had been overridden. Colton had either trusted his mother, had nothing to hide, or... "Do you know how to use a computer, Mrs. Colton?" Paavo asked.

  "I never bothered with it," she said. "I've got my phone. It does everything I need."

  So that was it. Colton hadn't needed to trust.

  Gwen Colton left Paavo alone as he read through the e-mails and perused the history file of Internet visits.

  Most of the e-mails were between Ted and a friend, Kal Fender. They showed Colton to be a lonely boy living in delusions of a world filled with evil, a boy expressing a dangerous interest in demons, crypts, and satanic cults.

  It was sickening but also very sad reading.

  Suddenly, Paavo sat up, and reread an e-mail to Kal, in which Ted feared he was in danger. The e-mail had been written one day earlier.

  There were no e-mails after that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After seeing an exhausted Paavo off to work the next morning, baking two dozen cupcakes, and then sending Kylie off to deliver them, Angie headed to the Jazz Worksh
op. As she walked in, Dominic Klee and his quintet cut the song they were practicing and launched into "Sophisticated Lady." She smiled and waved at her handsome, trumpet-playing brother-in-law, then continued through the empty club to a back room.

  Her sister Maria sat at her computer creating a mock-up of a newspaper advertisement. "Good to see you, Angie. What do you think?"

  "Looks great," Angie said. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I just don't know what to do."

  "You're no bother, little sis." Maria was the middle sister, older than Francesca and Angie, and younger than Caterina and Bianca. And she was the sister Angie least understood.

  She could understand Bianca's motherliness since, as the oldest of five girls, she had to take care of her younger siblings while their mother worked long hours at the family's shoe store, selling, ordering stock and keeping the books. Both parents worked hard until the business caught on and did a remarkable turn-around. Part of that turn-around, too, was because Salvatore Amalfi bought the little building in which his first store was located. No one ever would have dreamed property in North Beach would take off the way it did. He didn't sell, but used the appreciation to finance a second store in the Financial District, and more property. He now owned, in San Francisco, an apartment building and five commercial buildings, three of which continued to have shoe stores that he no longer operated, but had leased to other people. He also owned a mansion in Hillsborough and a winter condo in Scottsdale.

  By the time Angie was twelve, her mother had been able to stop working and the Amalfi family began to enjoy the money they'd amassed.