Courting Disaster (3 page)

Chin in hand, Stan sat hunched over Angie's kitchen table early the next morning, glum, hungry, and once again uninspired about going to work. He held the dubious title of Assistant Director of Supply Maintenance at Colonial Bank, where his father was one of the largest stockholders. Stan figured that as long as the bank had a hefty supply of pens, forms, and paper, he had no reason to sit at his desk waiting for someone to run out. Every so often, he went to the office and looked at the supply database on the computer. Occasionally, he even stuck his head into a supply cabinet. Then, job done, he'd leave.

As Angie gave him some coffee, she'd railed about her encounter the day before with Nona.

The sad part was that she'd actually been relieved to learn her mother had
not
booked the Crown Room for the party. What was wrong with her?

Her experiences had taught her one thing: that although banquet halls and restaurants wouldn't give you the names of the parties who had booked
them by phone, when you went there in person it was easy to stand close and read the names on the reservation calendar yourself.

Now all she had to do was go to those few of her mother's favorite restaurants capable of handling a huge party, and check for Serefina's reservation. Nothing to it.

Normally, Angie's best friend, Connie Rogers, would accompany her on such a search, but Connie had a gift shop to run. Besides, she thought Serefina's approach was correct, and said that if Angie were to learn anything at all about the party, she'd monopolize planning the whole affair.

Angie had no idea why anyone would think such a thing. All she wanted was to make sure the restaurant was one that both she and Paavo liked. He was the groom, after all, and should have some say in this. She also wanted to make sure the food was prepared the way she preferred, since, as a Cordon Bleu–trained gourmet cook, she had the right to expect perfection in the food at her very own engagement party.

Besides that, she'd like to know that the party favors were something she could be proud of, the decorations done in colors she liked and that wouldn't clash with her dress, that parking was plentiful in the area, that seating arrangements were such that people who hated each other wouldn't be placed side by side, that the band would play music she enjoyed—if there
was
a band, which she hoped there would be—and that all the myriad little details so easy to forget about would be taken care of.

What was so bad about that?

Sheesh! Connie had sounded as if Angie went
around acting like her mother or something. A shudder went through her. She couldn't possibly…no, she was nothing like Serefina.

Stan offered to join her on her quest to Fisherman's Wharf, an area filled with a number of Serefina's favorite restaurants. Angie was glad for the company and even offered to buy him lunch as a thank-you. Although he could drive her crazy with his lackadaisical attitude about work, career, and making something out of himself, he was always there when she needed a friend or a shoulder to cry on—both before she met Paavo and after as she'd struggled to convince Paavo the two of them were meant for each other. As a result, she always tried to be a helpful friend to Stan as well.

Not that he ever took her advice, but that was another story.

They started out at Alioto's Restaurant. No Amalfi party was being held there. Fisherman's Grotto Number 9 was next.

“It isn't like you,” Stan said, “to let your mother take over this way.”

“How was I to know she'd be so sneaky?”

“Sneaky?”

“I thought she'd simply handle the arrangements—not keep them a secret from me!”

“Maybe she thought that was the only way she
could
handle them.”

Shades of Connie.
Angie scowled. “That's not true!”

“The invitations were clever,” he began.

If he laughs, I'm taking him back to his apartment right now.

Stan smirked. “Serefina knew that if the invita
tions told where the party was, you'd figure out a way to get Connie to tell you. She's never been able to keep a secret from you.”

Angie put her hands on her hips. “Why should I go all the way across town to see Connie? One sniff of my lasagna and you'd sing like a bird!”

“Why get pissed off at me?” he asked, hurt. “It was your mother's idea, not mine.” He grinned. “And the day before the party, when I get the special-delivery letter telling me the location, you can come over with lasagna. No problem.”

“You wouldn't find it so funny if the fate of your party was in the hands of the U.S. Post Office! It's going to be a disaster. I just know it.”

After Fisherman's Grotto they worked their way through other large restaurants along the wharf until it ended at Aquatic Park. They found no Amalfi party.

“Now what?” Stan asked.

Angie paused a moment, arms folded, peering down Jefferson Street at the shops, restaurants, and milling tourists. “I was sure she'd pick Fisherman's Wharf. I suppose I can just forget about it,” Angie said stoically.

“Sure, like Columbus could forget about discovering America, or Einstein forget about the theory of relativity, or—”

“Oh, shut up!”

The two walked past the cable car turntable. Up ahead was Ghirardelli Square, the red-brick onetime chocolate factory, now a tourist mecca.

“I wonder if she could have rented Ghirardelli Square,” Angie mused. “All of it.”

“It takes up an entire city block,” Stan pointed out. “I'd say it's a little large, even for your family.”

“I wouldn't be so sure about that.”

They went into the Maritime Museum to warm up from the chilling wind and fog, and to use the public restrooms that were few and far between in the area.

Outside, the museum looked like an ocean liner with curved ends, portholes, and decks. Inside, painted ship figureheads, mast sections, jutting spars, artifacts, photos, and documents from the early days of West Coast seafaring were spread over the three floors. Colorful WPA murals adorned the walls.

“I've always loved this place,” Angie said as she studied a sextant. It was an oddly shaped one, and she couldn't figure out how it worked. “Remember when I was becoming quite the expert on San Francisco history?” She moved on to a model of a schooner. “I always enjoyed that. I should go back to studying it again.”

“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 con
stant 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.”