Cooking Spirits: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries) (9 page)

Angie pursed her lips. “Maybe the investigators simply
weren’t looking in the right places.”

“There’s not much more to be done. Maybe they didn’t perform
the most complete investigation, but it happened thirty years ago.” Just then
his cell phone rang, and he took the call. He wasn’t on it long. “More
forensics results are in. I’ve got to get going.”

She nodded. “Okay. I appreciate the information you found.”

He put money on the table for the bill and tip,
then
helped her with her coat. “Now that you know what
happened, you’re going to decide about the house on its own merits, right?”

She didn’t look happy, but she agreed. “I can do that.”

o0o

“How is it you have a key to this place?” Stan asked Angie
as they stood on the front porch of the 51 Clover Lane house. “Don’t you need
to be a realtor to have one?”

After learning about the Flemings and their death, plus
Paavo’s opinion that a murder near the house wasn’t a game changer as far as he
was concerned, she wanted to see the house one more time. Since Paavo had to
return to Homicide, she called Stan.

“My sister’s a realtor,” Angie said as she unlocked the
front door.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Stan pointed out.

“Some things you don’t want to know,” Angie said as she
slipped the original house key back into the lock box, then put the copy she
had made into her purse. It took her all of a minute to have the front door key
duplicated at a hardware store. If Angie told Cat what she had done, Cat would
have thrown a fit. But that was just for show. She was sure Cat left her with the
key so she could copy it. After all, Cat knew she wouldn’t steal anything from
the house, and also knew she would want to visit it about three dozen times
before making up her mind about the place. The last thing Cat wanted was to
drive back and forth from Tiburon to escort her on all those visits.

“Anyway, Cat talked to the owner, and she’s so happy that
someone is serious about possibly buying the house, she told Cat I should feel
free to come and go as often as I like. She’s even willing to give me a lease-option
if I wish. Here we go.” Angie swung open the door and let Stan enter.

“This place has style, doesn’t it?” he said as he wandered
through the large living and dining room, inspecting the woodwork and hardwood
floors.
“An older home that has been beautifully remodeled to
take advantage of the setting.”

Angie put the candy dish she’d bought to replace the broken
one on the coffee table,
then
followed him as he
strolled into the kitchen. “You’ll have to gut this,” he said with a frown.

“Not immediately. If I change out the old appliances, the
rest can wait.”

He turned on a burner on the range. “At least it’s gas, not
electric. That helps.”

Angie led him to the bedrooms, starting with the two
upstairs, and ending with the master.

“Large. Nice view,” he said,
then
walked into the master bath. “It should be much
more plush
.”

Stan opened the sliding glass door in the master bedroom and
stepped out to a private deck overlooking the ocean. “As much as I love my
apartment, I miss being able to step outside and be surrounded by nature. This
is quite nice, and in the back yard you have room to put in a little garden,
maybe herbs, or even a few flowers. People always told me I have a green
thumb.”

“I didn’t know that about you,” Angie said.

“Yes. I used to grow a lot of houseplants. Talk to them and
mist them daily, that’s the trick.” He leaned back against the banister
surrounding the deck and looked at the house. “Pleasant house, this.”

“That’s what I told you.”

“A good deal, you said?”

“An excellent deal.”

“Well, if you don’t want it, let me know,” Stan said, his
expression a portrait of sorrow. “My apartment won’t be the same without you
living across the hall. And if you’re still there after you’re married, it’ll
mean I’ve got that big cop watching my every step.” He reached out and took her
hand. “I know he’s jealous of me because of our relationship, Angie. For that
reason, I know I won’t be comfortable staying there.”

She could scarcely believe she heard right.
Paavo, jealous of Stan?
He was even more delusional than she
imagined. She pulled her hand free and then patted his shoulder. “Stan, don’t
be ridiculous. If I leave, I’ll make sure to tell my father to only rent to
someone who’s a good cook.”

“You’re mocking me now.” He turned around to face the water
and, bending at the waist, rested his forearms on the railing as he stared out
at the ocean. “I can’t imagine living there without you nearby. I’ll have to
move. If you don’t take this house, I may have to buy it.”

“Now you’re being melodramatic!” Angie mimicked his pose,
enjoying the ocean view herself. “Did I tell you there’s something strange
about this place? That many people have attempted to buy it, but the deal
always fell through?”

“You never mentioned that. What’s the problem with it?”

“It might be…” Angie
paused
a beat,
and then hit him with: “because there was a murder.”

“A what?”
His eyes widened and he
stood up straight.

Angie relayed all she had learned from Paavo.

“That story gives me goose bumps. I think I’ve just changed
my mind about wanting to live here,” Stan said.

“Good, because I’ve decided I don’t care,” Angie announced.
“I like this house, in fact, I love it! I mean, it’s not as if their ghosts are
haunting the place.”

Just then, they heard a crash from the living room.

They gawked at each other, and then rushed inside. The vase
that had been on the small round table now lay broken on the hardwood floor,
its silk flowers spread around it. The vase was the one that seemed to
re-center itself on the table the last time Angie visited.

“What happened?” Stan asked, his eyes bulging.

“Why don’t you shut the bedroom’s sliding glass door?” Angie
said uneasily. “It must have caused some sort of a draft.”

 
“A damned strong draft!”
Stan
muttered as he stepped into the bedroom to shut the door.

Angie picked up the pieces of the white porcelain vase and
the silk flowers. “I guess I’ll be looking for a replacement.”

 “That gave me a bit of a start.” Stan chuckled. Back
in the living room, he sat on the green and gold sofa, his hands clasped behind
his head, elbows out, feet crossed on the coffee table as he studied the room,
the view, the setting. “This house is definitely not right for you and Paavo.
He works with murders. Living here would be too much like work for him.
Besides, you’d have to completely redecorate it. Get rid of all the frou-frou,
use sleeker lines in the furniture to open the place up. Add color to the
walls. I think my interior decorator friend, Ernesto, would either laugh
himself to death or die of shock if he saw this place.”

The candy dish Angie had just replaced rose up off the
coffee table. Stan watched it in horror. “What?”

He jumped to his feet. Angie froze. The two stared
slack-jawed as the dish hovered, then moved back from Stan a moment before it
rocketed towards him as if hurled from a sling-shot. Stan ducked just in time.
The dish sailed past him and hit a wall.

Stan let out a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream, and ran
behind Angie. A book slid out of the bookshelf and now it too floated in mid-air:
Umberto Eco’s
The Name of the Rose,
probably the biggest book on the
shelf.

“Run!” Angie cried. But she needn’t have bothered. Stan
pushed her out of the way and was the first one out the door. Angie followed
close behind.

Behind them, the door slammed shut, and then the deadbolt
clicked into place.

Chapter 10

LATE THAT NIGHT when Paavo arrived
home, he found Angie in his living room, asleep on the couch. His cat Hercules
lay curled up asleep beside her, a half-eaten bowl of popcorn on the floor and
the TV on. “What’s this?” he asked, going to her. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said groggily as she opened her eyes and sat up.
“I just didn’t want to be alone.”

Despite her words that nothing was wrong, he knew her better
than that. He sat and held her.

She said she had been stressing too much over the wedding
and their living arrangements, and that she was “practically seeing
things”—with emphasis on the word practically.

He had no idea what was really bothering her, but if he was
patient, eventually she would explain. For the moment, simply having her turn
to him when she needed comfort meant a lot to him.

o0o

The next morning, as Paavo headed out the door, he found it
even more difficult to leave Angie sleeping in his bed, in his house, than in
her apartment. He wondered if he would feel this way after they were married,
as well. He did know one thing, though. Seeing her in his home made him feel
better about himself than leaving her in her father’s building. He supposed, in
these modern time, such thinking was old-fashioned, backward, and macho, but
nonetheless, he felt more like a man, a provider, with her there.

Maybe she was right when she said they should find a home of
their own rather than live in her father’s apartment.

When he arrived at work, he learned the autopsies had been
completed.

Gaia
Wyndom
had ingested a large
number of sleeping pills, enough to kill a woman of her size and weight. No
other signs of struggle or trauma were found. The M.E. said it could have been
suicide, but she couldn’t be certain if Gaia purposefully took the pills, or
someone drugged her. The state of the body, however, was confusing.

She had been found in a bath, so presumably the water would
have been comfortably warm before she got in—not even suicides got into tubs of
cold, uncomfortable water. Warm water should have sped up decomposition. The
small amount of decomposition indicated she had been dead only a day or two,
yet other bodily functions appeared to have ceased much earlier. The reports
were confused. The M.E. said she needed more time to run tests and research
exactly what had happened to the woman. The finding would make more sense if
she had gotten into ice water, but that was hard to imagine.

If she had been alive all week, where had she been prior to
her death? What had she been doing? The time of death inconsistencies made it
difficult to determine what had happened to her.

Taylor Bedford’s autopsy results were much clearer. He had
been killed by a knife at least seven inches long in the shape of a chef’s
carving knife. It entered under the ribcage and jabbed upward, piercing the
heart. A second stab in the same area assured his quick death.

Whoever did it apparently took his wallet and cellphone.
They weren’t found in or near the dumpster or in the garbage truck.

The autopsies were interesting, but didn’t tell Paavo much
he didn’t already know. No matter when Gaia died, she had been alive at the
time of Taylor’s murder. He knew that because Taylor’s death happened Saturday
night, and Gaia called in sick on Monday morning. People at work had indicated
she had a crush on him. Did she try to act on it and he spurned her so she
killed him and then herself out of remorse and guilt?

When he returned from discussing the autopsy results with
the M.E., he decided to look more closely into Thomas Greenburg, founder of
Zygog.

Greenburg bothered him. He seemed uninterested in anything
about his two dead employees, while everyone else in the building worried that
Zygog could be somehow involved, perhaps with a madman targeting its employees
for some crazed reason.

Paavo quickly discovered a slew of online magazine articles
and Internet sites about Greenburg. All talked about Greenburg as cold, nerdy,
and aloof, a man who lived in his own world, unhampered and uninterested in
anyone else. He started out as a game creator and quickly moved into online
hacking. By the time he was twenty, he claimed the ability to hack into any
database, anywhere. Ten years ago, at age twenty-five, an anonymous angel gave
him $300,000 to put his skills to useful purposes and start a business.

He started slow with an innovative inventory system set up
for people whose inventory all looked basically the same to the unskilled eye,
but where the slightest error in calibration could mean the difference between
success and disaster of a project.

In time, he expanded to other products and within three
years, he established Zygog Software. Its profits doubled every year for the
first five years, and now it hummed along at a fine clip.

The information was interesting, but it didn’t bring Paavo
any closer to figuring out who killed Gaia and Taylor.

Chapter 11

YOU’VE TOLD ME many times that Nana
Cirmelli
knew all about ghosts and spirits and
demons,” Angie said as she sat in her mother’s kitchen with a cup of coffee and
some hard, round Italian cookies with white sugary icing on top. The cookies
were Angie’s favorite, but could only be eaten by dunking them into hot coffee
to make them soft enough to avoid breaking a tooth.

“Not only that.”
Serefina
Teresa
Maria
Giuseppina
Amalfi, all 5’1”, 150 pounds of her
shuddered as she said, “She knew about the evil eye!”

Serefina
put her forefinger below
her eye and pulled down the lower lid—her family’s signal for the evil eye, or
malocchio
.
Angie learned on a recent trip to
Italy that old ideas like the evil eye, brought to the US by Italian immigrants
in the early 1900’s and still talked about here, were pretty much laughed at in
Italy. Not around
Serefina
, however, despite her refusal
to say she believed in it.