Cook's Big Day

by Joanne Pence

  Spare me, please, Angie thought, but kept her mouth shut.

  “It tore at my heart,” Maria said, “reading of how, in Bangladesh, a pack of wild dogs ran through a wedding party and made off with all the food. The wedding may have been ruined, but the hungry dogs were able to eat, so it was good after all. Your problems are nothing compared to the troubles in less fortunate parts of the world.”

  Angie held her head in her hands and ground her teeth.

  Frannie looked at her sisters with disgust. Frannie was nearest to Angie in age, which was probably why she and Angie were the least close of the sisters. Angie remembered far too well how Frannie used to steal her toys and pinch her arm when their parents weren’t watching. “There are no wild dogs or tornadoes in San Francisco, Angie’s wedding is indoors, and the food ... well, nobody has to worry about it spoiling.”

  “Very funny,” Angie muttered.

  “Remember Angie,” Frannie continued, “Seth and I had a very simple wedding ceremony.”

  And look at how well that turned out, Angie thought, but again didn’t say anything. Seth and Frannie’s marriage was notoriously fraught.

  “Look on the bright side,” Bianca said. “If all this had to happen, at least it happened before Saturday. We have time to come up with a decent wedding reception for you.”

  “Aaaarrrgh,” Angie wailed. Sometimes her oldest sister’s eternally optimistic nature was nauseating. “All I wanted was one special day. That's all. Was that really too much to ask?”

  “What's important is that the two of you get married,” Serefina said. “Not all the frills that go along with it.”

  “But it's my wedding day!”

  Serefina just shook her head. “Capisco. Okay, we'll see what we can do.”

  One by one her sisters hugged her and left the house. Only after they were gone did Angie sit down with her head on her mother's shoulder and let the tears flow. Serefina put her arms around her youngest daughter and thought.

  Chapter 11

  Friday, Noon – 1 day, 3 hours before the wedding

  “You’ve got to hear these kids,” Yosh said as Paavo watched him lead two teenage boys in his direction. They both wore baseball caps backwards, baggy pants, baggy sweatshirts, and holey tennis shoes.

  Yesterday, through the afternoon and into the night, the two inspectors had managed to speak to all the tenants in the apartment building where the bride’s body was found. Not one of them admitted to seeing anything or anyone strange in the building, and no one claimed to have reported anything to the building manager. Both those statements confirmed Paavo and Yosh’s working theory about the case. But they still had no physical evidence.

  The inspectors decided to spend this day talking to people who lived in neighboring flats and apartments.

  The medical examiner had succeeded in pulling fingerprints from the corpse. The woman’s name was Shawnita Hickman, African-American, twenty-two years old.

  Paavo quickly found a missing person’s report filed on her in Los Angeles. He called the detective who had the case. The detective filled him in on the details.

  Shawnita Hickman had been arrested several times in Los Angeles on drug charges, and was known to hang around with the “899” gang there. When last seen, she was on the way to her outdoor wedding in a park with Latrell Cruz, a gang member, when the two got into a fight. She slugged him, he slugged her back, and she ran off in her wedding dress. She was never seen again.

  Her friends looked for her, but couldn’t find her. Four days later, a sister went to the police and filed a missing person’s report. The sister believed the 899s had killed Shawnita for dissing Latrell by leaving him at the altar, such as it was. The police investigated, but could find no evidence of a murder or anything else. Not that they tried particularly hard, and not that the people they interviewed were particularly cooperative. The LAPD concluded that Shawnita must have realized her life was in danger and had run away. They assumed she would eventually be picked up on another drug arrest, and that’s how they’d find her. That was usually the way these cases went, the detective said. But that “next drug arrest” never came.

  Shawnita’s disappearance had taken place six months earlier, and the M.E. believed Shawnita had been dead at least six months.

  Now, Yosh turned to the two teenagers. “Tell Inspector Smith what you told me.”

  The taller boy began. “I was curious about the black window in that apartment building.” As he spoke, he pointed at the building where the body had been found. “So, I decided to see what it was hiding. I didn’t want to steal nothing, just look, you know? So one night, I worked on pulling out the nails and then stuck a slim jim through the frame to open the lock. It took a while, but I did it.”

  The boy stopped then, and looked up at Yosh. “Go on,” Yosh said. “You’re not in trouble with us. Just tell the Inspector what you saw.”

  The boy bit his bottom lip, then spoke. “I looked inside. I saw … I saw a woman dressed like a bride on the bed. It was creepy, so I shut the window and ran. I told my bro, but he didn’t believe me. Also, it was night and the only light was from a street lamp near the window. I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was just a dress, or some rags. Digs—that’s my bro here—said he wanted to see her, so we went back the next day.” At that, the shorter boy nodded in agreement.

  “Then what?” Paavo urged.

  The tall boy continued. “I pushed the window open and we was gonna try to squeeze through and go inside, but we saw that the light in the room was on. And then we saw the woman. It was like I thought. She was dressed in white and had a veil around her head—like a bride. But her face was all squashed and ugly. I never seen any face so bad, man. And she wasn’t alone. A guy was laying on the bed with her.”

  “A guy,” Paavo repeated. “Do you know who he is?”

  The boys nodded. “He’s the white guy lives in the building. Not too old, brown hair, kind of small.”

  Paavo met Yosh’s gaze. “Simms,” he said.

  “We knew it.” Yosh smiled.

  Paavo took out his notebook, reviewed the information he’d gotten when he talked to Benny Simms, then phoned Evelyn Ramirez. She was in her office.

  After explaining which case he was calling about, he said, “You found some cloth fibers in the victim’s throat. Could you see if those fibers match material used in a 1988 Toyota Corona?”

  She said she’d call back soon. Paavo and Yosh took more detail from the boys, including their full names and where they lived. They didn’t want to use the young boys’ testimony, but hoped to use the information to find physical evidence of Simms’ guilt.

  In a few minutes, Ramirez called back. “The fibers match material Toyota used in the trunk compartments of their cars back in the 1980s.”

  Paavo nodded at Yosh. “Got him.”

  “Oh, one more thing,” Ramirez said. “We were able to pull some DNA off the corpse, and I’m certain it came from the killer. The lab’s backed up, but we should have those results in about a week for you.”

  “Good. What kind of DNA?”

  “Let’s just say the sick bastard went in for necrophilia. A whole lot, from the looks of it.” With that, she hung up.

  Paavo shook his head at the image her words caused. Now, he just needed to find Simms to make the arrest.

  Chapter 12

  Friday, 1 p.m. – 1 day, 2 hours before the wedding

  It only took a couple of hours before Maria, of all people, found a space for Angie’s rehearsal dinner that very night. Maria might talk and act like a nun on a good day, but her husband was a dashing, formerly wild-living jazz musician, Dominic Klee. One of his biggest fans was the owner of the 100 Lusk Street Restaurant, a trendy place near the Giants Ballpark. It had a private dining room that could fit up to forty people, and he was able to make it available to Angie’s wedding party.

  As Maria gave her the news, Angie was speechless. The restaurant was beautiful. It might not be as much fun as
cruising San Francisco Bay might have been, but at this point, its ambiance and the quality of its food was much more than she’d imagined being able to find.

  Now, if only she could find a caterer to prepare the dinner for her wedding reception, and if she could get La Belle Maison turned over to her on time, all would be well once more. She had dreamed of having a “La Belle Maison wedding reception” for a long, long time.

  She was making phone calls trying to find a caterer, but soon realized that her sisters had already made contact with every place she called. Not only was she getting nowhere, she was irritating people, several of whom snapped, “I already told you I was busy!”

  Finally, she stopped, and sat back on her sofa.

  Her nerves were completely frayed, she was falling apart, and felt nothing but anxiety and disappointment on the day before what should have been the happiest day of her life.

  But she knew one place that could repair her mood.

  She got into her car and drove to the house she and Paavo would soon call home. She loved her apartment, but even more, she loved the house that they had found and were buying.

  It did, however, have a controversial history. A young couple who had owned it some thirty years earlier had been murdered there. The house had been a rental for a while, but when renters learned of the murders, most quickly moved. As a result, it had stood empty for years.

  Normally, that sort of history was a deal breaker in real estate. Who would want to live in a home where someone had been murdered? But, when one of the potential buyers was a homicide detective, the thought of a dead body or two wasn't all that scary. Besides, the young couple had been killed outdoors, not inside the house.

  There were also rumors that the house was haunted. Of course, Angie didn't believe in ghosts, and neither did Paavo, but he did want to be sure Angie loved the place and would feel comfortable living there. To her surprise, not only did the potential “ghostly” nature of the house not bother her, it made her feel safe and welcome.

  She had no idea why because, as she explained to Paavo, she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  Bottom line, because of murders and spiritual innuendos, she and Paavo got a fantastic deal on the place. They were able to buy a much more beautiful home in a much more sensational setting than she ever dreamed possible. Number 51 Clover Lane was in one of San Francisco's prime locations, just off Sea Cliff Avenue and overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The down-payment came from the sale of Paavo's small home in the Richmond district. Murder and ghost-free as it was, it brought an excellent price because of its location and the fact that Google and Twitter employees were flooding San Francisco with so much money that they didn't much care what they bought since they had enough money to do a complete renovation or even a tear-down.

  Paavo found such a buyer only one day after the house was offered for sale. He built into the negotiations being able to continue to live in the home until the week after the wedding.

  For the mortgage, they got a loan at the bank where the father of Angie’s long-time neighbor and good friend, Stanfield Bonnette, was president.

  As Paavo put it, for the first time ever, he found a reason to like Stan Bonnette. Angie had to chuckle at that. Paavo wasn't jealous of Stan—no one would be—but he knew that Stan was forever suggesting Angie drop Paavo and marry him. Not that Stan was in love with her; he was in love with her cooking.

  The day after their wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Smith would fly to a honeymoon cottage far off the beaten path in Kauai. All Angie wanted was a place with no telephones, no crime, and where no one would interrupt their honeymoon. For once in her life, she wanted Paavo all to herself. She could hardly wait.

  They would spend a week there. When they returned, they would go to their new house. It was already furnished with a quite a few things, such as the new master bedroom set with a California king-size bed. Her queen-sized one, a bed she must admit had served her and Paavo well, would be relegated to the guest room.

  The day following that, the movers would pick up all her possessions plus Paavo's few belongings from his house—which he would then turn over to the new owners—and deliver everything to Clover Street.

  And so she headed for her soon-to-be home. She wanted to just sit for a while and try not stress over the disaster her Big Day had become. Even before this latest string of disasters, the house had come to feel like a talisman to her as the pressures of the wedding mounted.

  As soon as she walked in the front door and opened the living room drapes, she began to feel more at peace.

  A week earlier she had bought an automatic espresso maker for the house—a wedding present to herself and Paavo. She set it up and made herself an Americano, then took the drink into the living room where she’d put a couple of folding director’s chairs and a little plastic table—all items that would probably end up out on the deck or in a closet when her “real” furniture arrived.

  The windows overlooked a deck and small lawn area that led to a back fence. Beyond it were a few cypress trees and then a cliff that dropped to China Beach. She couldn't see the cliff. All she saw past her fence, past the trees, was the ocean. When all was quiet, with the sliding glass doors or windows open, she could hear the gentle murmur of waves meeting the shore far below.

  On a clear day, she could see the Farallon Islands out in the water, chunks of weathered rock that were no more than landing and nesting spots for seabirds, seals, and sea lions. It also had an automated lighthouse, and, she'd heard, a gazillion mice. The islands weren't open to the public.

  As she sat, she turned away from the windows to stare at the walls and try to decide what color she should have them painted. They were all off white at the moment, and she'd like a little more warmth.

  Movement in the backyard caught her eye. The four-legged visitor who had come to call several times before, a little white “Scottie” dog—a West Highland Terrier she believed it was—sat at the sliding glass door and looked in at her.

  “Hello, again,” she said as she opened the door. He ran inside and straight to the kitchen where, he’d learned, she kept a supply of dog food. He was a strange little creature. Whenever she tried to pet him, he ran from her, but at the same time, he seemed to enjoy sitting and watching at her. She would have loved to pick him up or at least pet him, but if he didn't want to be touched, she wasn't going to force herself on him and scare him away.

  He seemed well cared for, but she had no idea where he lived. She had asked neighbors if they knew where his home was, but none had ever seen him, which struck her as odd.

  She did know, however, that the couple who had been murdered on the grounds had owned this type of dog. She wondered if the one she saw was a descendant of that dog, and this one had some kind of doggie ESP that caused him to come and visit. Since he was out in the yard each time she visited, she knew his home had to be nearby. For sure, with his coat shiny and mat-free, and looking well-fed and healthy even as he came to the house and begged for food, he was no stray.

  She opened a can of Castor & Pollux Organic dog food for him. Never having owned a dog, when she went shopping for dog food, she bought what sounded, basically, good enough to eat.

  He wagged his little tail as she dished out a half can—that was as much as he ever ate at one sitting—and put the cute porcelain doggy bowl she bought for him on the floor along with a bowl of fresh water. He waited until she backed away, then ran over and daintily ate.

  When he finished, he drank some water, and then went into the living room to lie down on the carpet, his front paws crossed, and expectantly watched her. Unfortunately, she had no idea what he was watching her for.

  Angie loved to talk, and so she talked to him about her upcoming nuptials, the problems she was having, and even her ideas about painting and otherwise remodeling the house.

  As she kept talking, he placed his head down atop his paws and watched her every movement, every wave of her hands, with his big, brown eyes. He seemed to follow her every word.


  Suddenly, to her surprise, he growled and trotted over to the sliding glass door.

  When she opened it, he barked and raced across the lawn.

  o0o

  Serefina Amalfi made herself a cup of coffee and then ate the cookies her daughters didn’t touch as she sat at the kitchen table and tried to think of what to do about Angie’s reception. Her heart ached to see her daughter so unhappy the day before her wedding. She wished Angie could understand that what made a wedding wasn’t all the surrounding falderal—she loved the word that was close to fardello in Italian which meant “baggage”—but it was the happiness of two people in love deciding to spend their lives together, and even about the children, God willing, who might come to be as a result of that union.

  But she also recognized that as the bride who had planned and looked forward to her wedding day for such a long time, Angie couldn’t help but feel horribly disappointed that all the plans she and her sisters had developed were turning to nothing before her very eyes.

  Still, a part of Serefina didn’t like the idea at all of her youngest daughter, her baby, having her reception in the hall where the last bride had been murdered. It was bad enough Angie was marrying a cop. Serefina had seen first-hand the danger his job caused him, and saw how Angie couldn’t stay clear of much of that danger herself.

  Even worse, the two testa-dura’s wouldn’t listen to reason and bought a house where the prior owners had been murdered. Madonna mia! She didn’t care how beautiful the house was, there was no way on this earth she would live where someone had died.

  She’d never understand her daughter.

  At least now, without her needing to say a word, she had the chance to do something about Angie’s wedding reception. To make it wonderful.