by Joanne Pence
“I was never into ships,” Stan said. “I get seasick.” He picked up a brochure that advertised renting out the entire museum for large parties and was going to hand it to Angie, but she had already stepped out onto the balcony. He put it back and followed.
She stood beside a statue created by San Francisco artist Beniamino Bufano. “What am I going to do, Stan? I’m making myself crazy.”
“You need to ignore it. You made a deal with your mother, now forget about it. Just be thankful it’s your mother and not your father who’s planning the party.”
“Very funny,” she said. She had to agree, though. To say her father wasn’t happy about this marriage was like saying Bill Gates had a little money.
“Maybe you need a job to distract you,” Stan suggested.
She shook her head. “How can I concentrate on a job when the one and only engagement party I’ll ever have in my entire life is in my goofy mother’s hands?” Angie clutched the railing tight. “I haven’t given serious thought to a job since I became engaged, except for that stint with a TV soap opera not long ago. Too bad it didn’t pan out, as they say. It might have made me famous.”
The two exchanged looks, recalling all too well Angie’s recent brief and unsuccessful foray into television and, as one, turned to stare glumly out at the bay.
San Francisco Homicide Inspector Paavo Smith was a big man, six-foot-two, with broad shoulders and a hard face with icy blue eyes known for making tough guys cower, known for making just about anyone cower, in fact, except his fiancée.
He was at his desk, Rebecca Mayfield in the guest chair at its side. The desks in the Homicide bureau were set in two rows and surrounded by overflowing file cabinets and cluttered bookshelves. Homicide was a part of the Bureau of Inspections, located in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice building. The homicide inspectors’ beat covered the entire city and county—all forty-nine square miles of it, minuscule by most city standards.
“I thought I had a floater,” Rebecca said, as she told Paavo about her case that morning. “But now it’s pretty clear he was shot on the pier—we found blood spatter—pushed off, and then the body didn’t travel far at all.”
“What do you mean by ‘travel’?” Paavo asked.
“I’m figuring that if the tide was high when he hit the water, whoever did it might have seen him sink and hoped he’d get pulled out to sea. He didn’t, though.”
Paavo nodded. Now it made sense. “Any ID yet?”
“Nothing. I’m running his fingerprints, but in the meantime, something about the guy is familiar to me. Never-Take-a-Chance disagrees, but I’d like you to take a look a him.”
“Sure.” Paavo had heard a bit about Rebecca’s journey to Aquatic Park that morning already. It was the most interesting new case in the bureau at the moment. He’d been doing paperwork for the DA’s office on one of his cases that was going to trial, and he was more than happy for the interruption.
She placed four photos of the corpse, one by one, across his desk. They’d been taken that morning. The first photo startled him, and the later ones only confirmed that his initial reaction was correct. “It’s Sherlock Farnsworth III.”
“Is that his name, or a joke?” Rebecca asked.
“His name. You probably know him as Shelly Farms—it’s what he liked to call himself, and what the press called him.”
“Shelly Farms—the homeless advocate?” she asked. Paavo nodded. “If I’m remembering right, wasn’t he educated as a lawyer, and spent all his time fighting city hall to help the poor?”
“That’s pretty much true, but also keep in mind that Farnsworth belonged to a law firm that specialized in class-action suits, so he had his share of enemies. He kept pretty quiet about it, and you had to dig to find out. The press was on his side in most of his fights, so they weren’t about to blow the whistle on his big moneymaking sideline.”
Rebecca frowned as she gathered up the pictures. “If he was a lawyer, I’m going to have my hands full.” As one, she and Paavo both glanced up at Bill Sutter, who was sitting at his desk, feet up, eating Cheetos and flipping through the pages of Travel and Leisure magazine.
“He must be taking a break,” Paavo said.
“If you’ve got some free time now and then…” Rebecca began.
She didn’t have to ask twice. “Anytime, Rebecca. In fact, I’ll call a couple of guys who worked with Farnsworth right now. I’ll ask what he was up to.”
She smiled. “Great, and I’ll start pulling up his vitals.”
Just then, Paavo’s phone rang. Rebecca went back to her desk as he answered.
It was one of those women-from-Venus-men-from-Mars type phone calls from Angie.
After he hung up, he put his head in his hands.
His partner, Inspector Toshiro Yoshiwara, tossed aside his pen and swiveled his chair in Paavo’s direction. Like Paavo, anything that could take him away from report writing was welcome. A big man, nearly six feet tall and stocky with pure muscle, Yosh liked to say his family was from the “sumo wrestler” part of Japan.
“Headache, Paav?” he asked. An aisle separated his desk from Paavo’s.
“A five-foot-two-inch headache.” Paavo groaned.
Yosh didn’t need to ask who. His full, round face broke into a mischievous grin. “What’s Angie up to now?”
“I have no idea. Something about finding a job, ruling out Fisherman’s Wharf, Nona Farraday, and sextants.”
“Nona Farraday?” Luis Calderon’s head popped up over a stack of homicide folders. The piles of papers atop the bookshelf behind his desk practically formed a wall between him and the inspectors behind him. Calderon was in his forties, with a mustache and heavily pomaded black hair worn in an Elvis-style pompadour. For Calderon, men’s hairdos had reached perfection in the days of “Love Me Tender.”
“Did you mention her and sex?” he asked with a shudder. “Talk about a ball-buster!”
In one of the most bizarre episodes in a peculiar string of them, at one time the lithe and sophisticated Nona Farraday decided she had a crush on bellicose, belligerent, and bristly Luis Calderon. Although at first he was flattered by the attention of such a beautiful woman, Calderon soon found her irritation at the long hours he worked, his need to cancel dates when someone had the bad taste to get murdered while he was on duty, his poor choice of places to take her to, and her constant nagging about his clothes and hair more than he could abide.
To Nona’s shock, he dropped her and refused to answer her phone calls. Nona had never been so insulted in her life. What added even more insult to her already injured ego was when Calderon began dating a muscle-bound, Harley-driving female shoe repairperson.
That relationship didn’t last long, either, however. Everyone suspected it was because Calderon didn’t like dating someone who was meaner and tougher than he was.
“She’s not coming here, is she?” Calderon asked nervously, as if expecting Nona to swoop down on him like the wicked Witch of Endor.
“No. Angie ran into her yesterday and now she’s all upset.”
“Gee, Nona has that effect even on women, does she?” Calderon shook his head miserably.
“Look on the bright side,” Yosh said to Calderon with a smirk in Paavo’s direction. “At least you aren’t engaged to her and forced to go to an engagement party planned by your future mother-in-law.”
“The bright side is I’m not engaged to anyone!” Calderon jumped up and put on his jacket. “I’m going down to Nick’s for a beer. Got to calm my nerves. I’d invite you guys along, but since you’re the ones who’ve given me a bellyache, I’d rather not have anything more to do with you.”
“We love you, too, pal,” Yosh said. “Just like Nona.”
Calderon gave a one-fingered salute, then turned to Rebecca. “Want to join me? I can give you pointers on your case. You’ve never had a floater before, have you? Wait till you hear what salt water does to the body, plus all the little creatures that live in the water. They�
��re pure eating machines. It’s gross.”
“Screw that,” she said, and went back to her computer.
Calderon shrugged and left the room.
There was silence as Yosh eyed his friend and partner sympathetically, then Paavo said quietly, “I don’t even want an engagement party. I didn’t know such a thing existed until Angie’s mother mentioned it. I expected Angie would have a zillion bridal showers, but grooms never show up for those. I figured I’d have a stag party for the gang and that’s it.”
“Too bad she won’t elope,” Yosh said, commiserating.
“Elope? Hell. We still haven’t settled on a date or place for the wedding. I know it’ll be more than a year off. She’ll need that much time to prepare.” Paavo looked grimly at his partner. “Yosh, tell me. Is this the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life?”
Yosh laughed. “The secret is, pal, try to ignore it. Nancy loved it when we got married—all the planning and the decorating. The biggest problem came when she had to decide who was invited to the wedding and who wasn’t. That’s when things got really vicious. The trick, I learned, is to just say, ‘Yes.’ Whatever Angie comes up with, whatever she says, you respond, ‘Yes.’ That way, you don’t get in trouble if anything goes wrong; you don’t get irritated when she changes her mind; and you don’t think about it. Period. Got it?”
“Just say, ‘Yes’?” Paavo sounded skeptical.
“Exactly.”
“Maybe we need to get a beer at Nick’s, too,” Paavo said.
“Yes,” Yosh replied. “There. See how easy it is?”
Paavo grinned. Neither of them ever drank while on the job.
Just then, his phone rang. When he answered, all thoughts of parties, laughter, and fun flew from his head.
The caller was the man who detested him more than anyone he’d ever known, including hardened criminals he’d sent to the big house for murder. Paavo had no idea why he was calling. He never had before; the two barely talked when in a room together.
With more than a little trepidation he listened to the voice of Salvatore Amalfi, Angie’s father.
“Paavo was no help at all.” Angie dropped her cell phone into her purse as she walked beside the beach at Aquatic Park toward Fisherman’s Wharf for Stan’s long-overdue lunch.
“He knows it’s in good hands,” Stan said. “Why should he get involved?”
“Why?” Angie couldn’t believe the question. “He should be enthusiastic and curious about his party. He’s engaged, too!”
“I know a good spot for lunch,” Stan said, clearly not wanting to comment on Paavo and engagements. “A Greek place called Athina. I just discovered it yesterday. The owners are fishermen and the fish is the freshest in the city…or so they say.”
“Don’t they all?” Angie murmured. “But I love trying out new restaurants.”
As they walked, Angie continued to plot and scheme about ways to discover more about the engagement party. She had only eighteen days left.
Stan tuned her out as they neared the restaurant. He didn’t know why, but his steps grew lighter. It couldn’t be the beautiful woman who—he hoped—worked there, could it? He wondered if she was still troubled and upset. He understood feeling that way. He could offer help, advice, sympathy—whatever she wanted, come to think of it.
Angie didn’t look thrilled as they turned down the ugly side street. “No wonder I never noticed the restaurant.”
Not only was the building small and dingy, but Stan now realized the windows could use a good scrubbing. Of course, the area’s constant barrage of fog, car exhaust, and seagull droppings meant that keeping the windows clean required almost constant vigilance. Maybe that was why the owners had apparently given up and stopped washing them some years ago. Why bother?
Stan could appreciate that.
Inside were two other customers.
The waiter, the same young mustachioed fellow who had served Stan the day before, led them to a booth. Stan glared at him. What kind of monster was he, treating a woman so badly?
The waiter basically ignored him and gave Angie a long discourse on Greek wine. She opted for ouzo at the end of the meal, served Greek-style over ice with a splash of water. The waiter looked well pleased.
Stan ordered a Bud Light.
Angie studied the menu. “If the food is good, I should write a review of it. Maybe Haute Cuisine will publish it as a change of pace from Nona’s vitriol. She never met a meal that pleased her. No wonder she’s so skinny.”
The waiter brought Stan his beer, and Angie a San Pellegrino. “I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said with a cocky waggle of his head. “You’re a restaurant reviewer?”
“Yes.” She flashed him a wide smile. “Freelance.”
“How great.” He sounded impressed. “What’s your name? Maybe I’ve read some of your columns.”
“Angelina Amalfi,” she said. “It’s been a while since I wrote anything, however.”
“Too bad. Will you critique this restaurant?”
Angie tried to look woeful. “Now that you know me, I can’t. It would give the cook an unfair advantage.”
He threw up his hands. “Pretend I never said a word!”
“Don’t worry about it.” She laughed. “I’m not sure I’ll go back to reviewing, anyway. It can get rather tedious.”
“I’d read any review you wrote,” he said, ogling Angie and doing all he could to ooze charm. “Just observing you here for a moment, I can tell you’re a person of good taste.”
Stan was ready to barf.
“Why, thank you.” Angie was pleased by the compliment. “That’s very nice.”
“If you write a review, be sure to mention that Tyler Marsh is the best waiter in all of Fisherman’s Wharf. By the way, you can call me Ty.”
Stan didn’t care what the sleazy, unctuous jerk’s name was. He only wished he’d go away.
“Maybe I should simply write a review of the wait staffs in the area,” Angie said with a smile, “and forget the restaurants.”
Tyler glanced at the stout, gray-haired man sitting on a stool by the cash register and glaring at him. He must be the owner, Stan thought. If so, he should tell his employee to get back to work.
“I know a number of small but excellent restaurants in the city that would do well with a little publicity from someone like you.” Tyler leaned near Angie with a cock of the head toward the scowler. “Just don’t tell my boss that.”
Stan turned away from the mutual admiration society and looked around the restaurant, wondering if the woman he’d seen on the dock the day before was working here now.
“Are you ready to order?” Tyler asked.
Angie ordered a light lunch of dolmades—grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb—and a salad of feta and kalamata olives. She couldn’t pass up baklava for dessert. Stan ordered chicken gyros. Tyler lifted an eyebrow, obviously remembering his same order the day before.
Their lunch was almost ended when Stan looked up and saw a brown-haired woman. Her back was to him, and she was wiping down a recently vacated table to ready it for the next patron. Her hair formed a thick braid down her back, and it seemed to be the same shade as the woman’s on the wharf. Was she the one he’d been waiting for?
He put down his sandwich and stared, his heart doing handsprings.
She’d just about finished when, whether out of curiosity or because she felt his gaze on her, she peered over her shoulder.
It was her. He smiled.
Her returning smile brightened her face, just as it had the day before. He didn’t know when he’d ever seen anyone more radiant. She was breathtaking, with sparkling eyes and full lips spread wide.
He was vaguely aware that Angie’s head swiveled in the waitress’s direction even as she continued chatting to him about possibly writing up some restaurant reviews, but he didn’t care.
This time, he promised himself, this time I’m going to talk to her. Determination filled him, and he felt ready to b
urst with anticipation.
Then she turned around.
The smile dropped from his face when he saw her body. Only because her shoulders, arms, and even legs were thin had he not noticed from behind, or out on the wharf when she was covered with that tentlike parka: she was pregnant.
Considering how slender she was, and how round her belly was, she was not only pregnant, but very pregnant. Like…ready-to-give-birth-any-moment kind of pregnant.
She wore no ring on her left hand, but then, she might not wear one considering the kind of work she was doing.
A frown touched her brow at his shocked reaction, and at the same time, her gaze jumped to Angie, who was still talking. The diamond engagement ring on Angie’s finger sparkled.
Just then, a Mediterranean-looking fellow in his late thirties or early forties, medium height and build, with curly black hair, hazel eyes, and olive skin, stepped out of the kitchen. He wore an apron that reached from his waist to his knees, and was wiping his hands on a blue-striped rag. His dark scowl met that of the waitress. She saw him, and hurried to finish wiping off the table.
One last time, the waitress glanced at Stan, questioning and troubled, before she scooped up the tray of dirty dishes and hustled back into the kitchen. The fierce-looking man in the doorway placed a hand against her back as if to hurry her along, his eyes making a penetrating sweep over the dining room before he followed.
Stan realized she must have thought he was engaged to Angie, yet eyed and smiled at other women. But then, she was pregnant, so where was the man in her life? Was it the waiter she’d argued with? Or maybe the cook who had touched her so possessively? Or someone else? If so, why had she smiled that way at him? She had some kind of nerve, to look disdainfully at him considering her circumstance! What was wrong with the woman?
And what was wrong with him that he felt so disappointed, as if all the sunshine had gone out of his life?
“Stan?” Angie called. “Stan, are you listening? I try to think about other things, but my mind keeps reverting to the engagement party! I just don’t know what to do anymore.”