Cooking Spirits: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (Angie Amalfi Mysteries) (7 page)

“Definitely,” she said. “If a murder happened in the house,
I wouldn’t want anything to do with it.”

Now he sat upright.
“Really?
If
it’s a good deal, who cares what took place thirty years ago?”

“I’d want to know!”

“Afraid of bad juju?
Ghosts?” he
asked with a grin. “It’s a house.
Walls, window, doors.
What people have or haven’t done near the house means
nothing.”

“You are so logical, Paavo,” she said. “What would I do
without you? Are you saying if we both like the house and everything else about
it seems fine, maybe we’ll want to buy it?”

“That’s right.”

“Interesting,” she exclaimed.
“And
sensible.
Okay, I feel much better now! And I’ll be even better when you
find out what happened out there, who the people were that were murdered, and
why. Cat assures me the murders had nothing to do with the house.”

She was protesting too much. It troubled him. Sensible and
logical were not usually part of Angie’s vocabulary. “Look,” he said, “if you
would be bothered by what happened—”

“No, no, no! I can put it out of my mind. Whatever happened
to them won’t have anything to do with how I feel about buying the property.
It’s simply idle curiosity.”

He had dealt with those “idle curiosity” requests of Angie’s
before, and pretty much reached the conclusion that as long as what she wanted
to know wasn’t illegal, it saved time to simply comply rather than have her
wear him down bit by bit. “Give me the address and anything else you might
have, and I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Wonderful!” She stood up. “Dinner will be ready in a little
while!”

He caught her hand and drew her back down to his side. “I’ve
missed you,” he said softly as he took her into his arms. “Would it be so bad
to start with dessert?”

Chapter 7

WHEN PAAVO LEFT FOR work the next
morning, Angie woke up long enough for him to kiss her good-bye, and he was
pretty sure she had gone back to sleep before he left her apartment. Since
their engagement, he had moved some clothes, toiletries and shaving supplies to
her house. He could imagine living here. It was convenient, it was a beautiful
place, the rent Angie paid was miniscule…but it wasn’t his and wasn’t hers. She
had been right about that. If she found a good house at the right price,
personally, he wouldn’t care if the Manson family had lived there. But he could
see that Angie might.

In Homicide, he went through Taylor Bedford’s appointment
book and credit card expenditures. It showed that he had been at the Masco Tool
and Supply in Sacramento on the Friday before his death.

Strangely, Bedford’s credit card didn’t show any hotel
charges for Friday or Saturday nights. Although Bedford had been killed on
Saturday, he wasn’t expected home until Sunday, so he should have been staying
somewhere those two nights…unless
Larina
Bedford
lied, and Bedford had, in fact, come home after his last meeting in Sacramento.

Paavo looked over several months of credit card charges and
a clear pattern emerged. For one week, Monday through Thursday, there would be
a string of hotel bills throughout northern California, then a three night stay
at the Mountain Shadows Resort in Healdsburg, followed by another string of
Monday through Thursday hotel bills all over the area. For the next two weeks,
there would be no hotel charges. This agreed with what
Larina
Bedford said about Taylor being home two weeks, and then two weeks on the road.

But she also said he spent weekends with clients. No charges
were put on his business credit card for those expenses, however—except for the
weekends in Healdsburg. Paavo would need to check Bedford’s personal credit
cards to see if he covered all those expenses himself.

Now, while
Yosh
went back to Zygog
Software to continue discussions with Bedford’s boss, secretary, and
co-workers, Paavo decided to head north.

Sacramento was about two hours from San Francisco. It should
have taken longer to drive there, but anyone who stuck to the 65 mile per hour
speed limit along the multilane Highway 80 would get run over by every other
car on the road. Slow drivers, not speeders, were the cause of road rage on
California highways.

Talking to the owner of Masco, Paavo learned that Bedford
had spent only two hours with him on Friday morning going over updates and
add-ons to the software packages, plus arranging for a trainer to come in and
give some advanced lessons to the accounting staff. Paavo asked other key
people if they had any dealings with Bedford on Friday. None had, and the owner
had never been taken out to dinner or anywhere else by Bedford in all the time
they had worked together. And, he didn’t even play golf.

So, if Bedford didn’t spent time with his client on Friday
evening or Saturday, where had he gone?

Paavo had photocopied a number of other pages from Bedford’s
appointment book and decided to check on some other clients near Sacramento.
None of them had seen Bedford for over a month. None ever went to dinner, golf
games, or anything else with the salesman.

Going through Bedford’s business charges, he spent Monday
night in Redding, Tuesday in Shasta, Wednesday in Marysville, and Thursday in
Sacramento.

Before that, he had spent the weekend in Healdsburg…Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday nights, just as he had every fourth week for the five
months’ worth of statements Paavo had copied. Why there? The small town in
northern Sonoma County was hardly a hotbed of anything, let alone the tool and
die trade.

Bedford had only one client in Healdsburg, Steelhead Tool
and Die.

Paavo drove to Healdsburg where he met with the owner of
Steelhead, a small family-run business. He learned Bedford showed up on that
Friday afternoon for no more than twenty or so minutes to check on how things
were going. He did that like clockwork, about once a month. While the owner
appreciated the attention, he hadn’t asked for it and frankly rarely needed it.
As with the Sacramento client, the owner had never gone to dinner or attended
any kind of social outing with Bedford.

Paavo saw a pattern. He saved himself some travel by phoning
Bedford’s clients in Ukiah, Eureka and Shasta.
Same story in
all three places.
Bedford was not the
winer
-and-diner
his wife thought.

While in Healdsburg, he went to the
Mountain Shadows Resort, where Bedford booked rooms every fourth Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday nights.

“Oh, yes, I know Mr. Bedford,” the desk clerk said solemnly,
his black eyes wide as he looked from Paavo’s badge to the stern detective.

“He’s a regular guest here, I understand. Once every month
or so, he stayed the entire weekend,” Paavo said.

“Well, um.” The clerk cleared his throat. “I’m not sure you
could say that. He comes here once every four weeks, and he always pays for
three nights. But”—
cough, cough
—“he doesn’t stay the whole time. He
comes by, signs his credit card statement as if he’s staying, but then he goes
to the room, showers, and changes his clothes to something much more casual.
His wife meets him in the parking lot. He leaves his car here and the two
drive
away. I don’t know where, of course. He comes back
Sunday night, spends the night, and leaves early Monday morning.”

“He would pay for three nights, but stay one?” Paavo wanted
to make sure he heard correctly.

“That’s right. The maids started to talk about the guest who
rarely slept in his bed. I was curious about it, and watched. They were right!
As I said, on Sunday evening, he returns.”

“Are you sure his wife was the person with him?” Paavo
asked.

The clerk looked even more uncomfortable. “Um, maybe I
shouldn’t have said that, but the woman…she wasn’t the type that looks like a
girlfriend. She was kind of, I don’t know…frumpy?”

“I see,” Paavo said, even more confused. “Did you see the
woman more than once?”

“I did.
Every time.”

Paavo nodded, then thanked the clerk as he handed him his
card and explained that he was investigating Taylor Bedford’s murder.

As he left, he wondered who the woman was. He couldn’t
imagine anyone ever describing Mrs.
Larina
Bedford as
frumpy.

o0o

Angie was in a
house-hunting mood after her talk with Paavo the night before, but she wasn’t
one to settle on the first place she liked and could afford. When she learned
Paavo would be out of town and probably not return to the city until quite
late, she called Cat and informed her she wanted to spend the entire day—as
long as it took—to check out every house that she could afford in the city,
regardless of neighborhood, condition or anything else.

The hour was late
when Angie stumbled back to her apartment and flopped down, exhausted, on the
bed.

She had seen more
houses than she thought possible, but refused to stop until she viewed them
all. Caterina was ready to kill her before they reached the last one.

But now she knew.
The house at 51 Clover Lane was more of a buy than she ever dreamed.

She wanted it.

Somehow, she
would get it.

Chapter 8

GAIA WYNDOM HAD left a message on
her bosses’ phone early Monday morning saying she was ill and would need to take
sick leave. Her boss thought it odd when she didn’t show up or call on Tuesday,
Wednesday, or Thursday, but hesitated to do anything because she was such a
private person.
Strangely private, in fact.
He knew
she lived alone and had no family. Finally he got up the nerve to phone her
house on Thursday to see how she felt.

No one answer his call. The only emergency contact number in
her personnel file listed a neighbor who sounded completely shocked that Ms.
Wyndom
would have given anyone her number as a ‘contact.’
The two never said more than “Hello” to each other.

The neighbor did say, however, that she had noticed Gaia’s
living room lights remained on all night for the past few days, which wasn’t
like Gaia at all. She normally shut off all lights by ten p.m. at the latest.

The supervisor thought and thought about it, and finally
called the police. They sent someone who knocked on the door, but received no
answer. On Friday, when she still hadn’t shown up or answered any phone calls,
the police entered her small, Sunset district home to investigate.
And then called Homicide.

Officer Murphy, who secured the scene, let
Paavo and
Yosh
into the apartment.
The first
thing he pointed out was a piece of notepaper in plain sight on the coffee
table. They read it.

To
Nobody:

You,
nobody, cared about me.

You,
nobody, loved me.

When
I needed you, nobody was there;

When
I cried alone at night, nobody comforted me.

I
cannot go on sharing my life with nobody.

And
so, I have decided to become nobody, too.

Gaia,
no more

Officer Murphy then showed them the way to the bathroom.
Gaia
Wyndom
, wearing a plain white nightgown, lay in
a tub filled with water. No visible signs of how she had died were evident.
Judging from the condition of the body, she had not been dead long.

It certainly looked like suicide, but homicide detectives
were taught to never leap to conclusions. Clever murderers could fake a suicide
and a suicide note. On the other hand, sometimes people did kill themselves.

Findings from the crime scene investigators and the
forensics unit would tell quite a bit.

As Paavo and
Yosh
looked over the
house to learn about the victim, the M.E. and her team arrived.

Gaia
Wyndom
was 43 years old, and
had owned her house for twenty-two years. Paavo and
Yosh
could not find a single photo of her or anyone else in it. Both detectives
looked through drawers and closets to find any bit of information about her.
They found bank statements, utility bills and such, but nothing else—no
diaries, journals, or anything similarly personal.

Even her medicine cabinet didn’t have a single prescription
in it. They started to wonder if she ever really lived in that house, but food
filled the refrigerator as well as the pantry, clean dishes were ready to be
put away in the dishwasher, and a few pieces of clothing were in a laundry
basket.

“I can’t remember seeing a house so empty of personality,”
Paavo said to
Yosh
as he went through drawers in
Gaia’s bedroom. “Nothing here indicates she had any contact with anyone else.
Her mail was all bills, and her laptop had no e-mail except a couple pieces of
spam. She may have wiped it clean. I’ll get CSI to look into it.”

Yosh
checked her phone and saw it
had no caller I.D., not even a last number redial feature. He then went out to
the garage to look for boxes of memorabilia—old school yearbooks, anything at
all to show Gaia
Wyndom
had a life. He came up empty.

“Does this make sense?” Paavo asked as the two stood in the
living room of the eerily sterile house. The heat was on, but it felt cold.

Paavo walked back towards the bathroom where Officer Murphy
stood watching the medical team working. He asked, “Who called in the death?”