Lemon Tart

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Sadie nodded as she stared at the bed pushed against the wall—no filing cabinet in sight.

  “It was one of those two-drawer cabinets. It was between the bed and the wall so she could use it like a nightstand. The bed wasn’t against the wall like that.” She scanned the carpet and could just make out the indentations from the wheels of the bed frame a couple feet closer to them. She released her hands long enough to point to the floor. “That’s where the bed used to be.”

  Detective Cunningham stepped into the room and surveyed the area she’d pointed to. The indentation was faint—it would be hard to see if someone didn’t know it was there.

  He walked around the bed, looking at the one-inch gap between the bed and the wall. “Malloy,” he called out. As if by magic Malloy was suddenly in the doorway. “Is CSU here yet?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I expect them any minute.”

  Detective Cunningham shook his head. “Will you get working on photos and measurements of the bed until they get here? We need to move the bed out from the wall about three feet—I’m looking for evidence of a filing cabinet being there.” Then he turned his attention back to the almost imperceptible mark in the carpet. It would have been made by the lower leg of the bed and Sadie followed his eyes toward where the head of the bed would have been. There was a similar mark about two feet out from the edge of the bed. Malloy left the room.

  “Would she have moved the bed?” he asked.

  “I suppose,” Sadie said. “But where would she have put the filing cabinet? I haven’t seen it in any of the other rooms.”

  “Yeah, me neither,” the detective said. “But I would expect a bed to make a deeper impression in the carpet if it had been moved just hours ago.”

  “Is it wet?” Sadie asked, taking a step closer just as Malloy returned with a measuring tape.

  Detective Cunningham looked up at her with a questioning expression. He did have very nice eyebrows. “Wet?”

  “This is a thick plush carpet. If you put an ice cube in the indented area and let it melt, it fluffs the carpet back up.”

  “This well?”

  “On a high-quality carpet like this—maybe. With mine I have to use my hand or the vacuum hose to fluff it up when it’s mostly dried, but my carpet isn’t this nice. This carpet was new when Anne moved in.” She stepped back so Malloy could measure the distance of the carpet marks with the wall at the head of the bed.

  “How long would it take for the carpet to spring back up?”

  “However long it takes to melt an ice cube and have the moisture begin to evaporate, restoring the air into the carpet fibers and therefore expanding its overall shape—I would guess two or three hours.”

  Detective Cunningham looked at her in surprise. “Really?” he asked. “My daughter would love to know that.” Then his expression turned serious. He stepped forward and put his hand on the carpet. Sadie held her breath, thrilled at his positive reaction and hoping she’d been right. He looked up at her. “It’s damp,” he said, looking pleased. “But just barely.”

  Sadie tried to contain her excitement about having helped, even in a small way. She wondered if he was no longer regarding her with suspicion. She hoped so.

  Just then two men entered the room. They were in street clothes, but each carried a bag and wore latex gloves. The lost CSU people, Sadie suspected. Malloy handed over the measurements he’d already made on a pad of paper and left the room. Detective Cunningham gave them some instructions on what he wanted them to do and then he and Sadie got out of their way. The men immediately went to work.

  “Is there anything else different in there?” he asked Sadie once they were in the hallway looking back into the bedroom.

  Sadie searched her memory and frowned. “I really don’t know. I’m not very familiar with her bedroom. We’re usually in the kitchen, or on the back porch.” At least, they used to be in those places. Not anymore.

  “When did you last see the cabinet?”

  “Maybe last month,” Sadie said without confidence.

  They were silent for a moment, watching the techs. It gave Sadie the creeps—people going through Anne’s house trying to figure out how her life ended. As much as she wanted to help, she was feeling the heaviness of the day press upon her. And Trevor was still out there. “Can I go now?” she asked, her voice sounding timid.

  He nodded. “I’ll show you out.”

  She backed into the hallway in order for him to pass—her hands still tightly clenched behind her back. They had reached the kitchen when Sadie remembered her earlier ponderings about the lemon tart. She quickly looked around the kitchen, her eyes resting on the stove. It was off and she felt a little thrill of discovery rush through her.

  “Detective Cunningham?” Sadie asked quickly. The other heads in the room turned toward her as well and she swallowed, not wanting to make a scene. She had the distinct impression that she was now slowing the detective down.

  “I wonder if anyone turned off the oven,” she said, shifting her weight uneasily from one foot to another. Every head in the room turned to look at the oven, which showed no lighted display or indication it was still on. Then, as if watching a tennis match in slow motion, they all turned back to look at her.

  “Why do you ask?”

  She felt as if she were on stage and straightened her spine just a little. Her shoulders were beginning to ache from holding her hands behind her back. “Well, I was thinking about my lemon tart recipe, which was the first thing I ever taught Anne to cook.” She looked at the people watching her and smiled. “It was my mother’s recipe—and Anne wanted it to become her signature dessert,” she explained, not wanting to sound arrogant but feeling it necessary to explain why she believed it was hers. She looked at Detective Cunningham. “Anyway, the timer went off at exactly 9:40, which means Anne must have set it at exactly 9:00. But Anne’s rarely awake before ten.”

  No one said anything, which she took to mean they had no idea where she was going with this. “So I wondered if maybe she had the oven on time cook.”

  “Time cook?” Cunningham asked.

  “Yeah, you put something in a cold oven and then set the oven to turn on at a certain time. I showed Anne how to do it months ago so that she could put a frozen dinner in the oven before she went to work and come home to a hot meal. She was eating a lot of fast food before then.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous to leave the oven on when you’re not home?” Malloy broke in. “Suppose she didn’t come home on time.”

  Sadie smiled at him as if he were a student and she was teaching him something of great importance. “Well, see, that’s the thing. You can do a stop time as well, so the oven shuts off after a certain period of time. And the food stays warm as the oven cools off. If no one turned off the oven this morning, maybe it was set to start at 9:00 am with a stop time exactly forty minutes later. Normally you cook the filling for about thirty minutes, but she could have added ten minutes to account for the crust not being hot and to preheat the oven. But anyway, if she got up at her usual time of ten or eleven the tart would be done. Although I’d never do that with a tart.” She looked at the detective. “Tarts require more supervision than a frozen lasagna.” She paused for a moment. “And I’m not sure why she’d go to the trouble. I mean, what did she need the tart for at ten in the morning?”

  The room was silent, seeming to consider the question.

  “So time cook sets the timer as well?” Detective Cunningham asked as he stepped over to the oven and looked at the digital display.

  The lemon tart was still on the stove top, and Sadie wondered for a moment what would happen to it. It needed to be dusted with powdered sugar soon, and it would be a shame for it to go to waste but it didn’t seem appropriate to ask for it. “Mine does—and someone set the timer for the tart. It’s the fact that it was set at exactly 9:00 that seems odd.”

  “Hmmm,” Detective Cunningham said, then he looked at Malloy. “Find out if anyone turned off the sto
ve.” He turned to Sadie again while Malloy went out through the back door, leaving two other officers still in the kitchen. “So she could have put it in the oven at any time?”

  “I think there’s a limit—mine is ten hours. But the tart has eggs in it so it would be irresponsible for her to leave it sitting in the oven for too long. You know, salmonella and all that.” They were all watching her, nonplussed. “Once, at a family reunion, my cousin Pam—she’s named after our maternal great-grandmother—she drove all the way from Durango to Boulder with a potato salad and no air conditioning. It was in July, mind you, and every person who ate that salad was throwing up for the next two days. Pam felt horrible about it, of course, but it just goes to show that eggs are to be respected, and since mayonnaise is made from—”

  “Cunningham,” Detective Madsen suddenly said from the back door, causing all the heads to turn in his direction this time. “What is she doing in here?” he asked, cocking his head to the side and narrowing his gaze.

  “Doing a walk-through,” Detective Cunningham answered, his voice controlled but laced with irritation now that Madsen had appeared. He turned toward Sadie and opened his mouth to say something, but Detective Madsen didn’t let him.

  “That’s completely against procedure,” Detective Madsen said. “If this goes to trial, the defense will have a heyday!”

  “Shut up, Madsen,” Cunningham said calmly, but his eyes were on fire.

  Sadie swallowed and shrunk back a little at the same time Detective Cunningham took what could have been interpreted as a protective step forward, putting Sadie further behind him. She was glad to have someone on her side, but she was in no mood to be in the middle of their tension again. However, she was as curious as the proverbial cat as to why things were the way they were between the two men.

  “She’s given us some excellent information,” Detective Cunningham continued.

  “She’s a suspect!” Madsen shot back, causing Sadie’s heart to jump in her chest. He turned to glare at her. “By her own admission she was the only person in the area when the murder was committed!”

  Chapter 8

  “She’s a neighbor!” Detective Cunningham’s voice was on the verge of yelling and it sounded like thunder in the house. “And until the official time of death is properly established, we don’t know when it happened.” Detective Madsen was struck by the power of the older man’s words and shut his mouth—but not for long.

  “Well, while you’ve been strolling around and discussing details of the case, the coroner’s been looking for you. He’s got some questions.” He glanced briefly at Sadie and scowled at her, making her shrink back even more until she was officially in the hallway rather than the kitchen. As Madsen headed back outside, she heard Detective Cunningham mutter “Impertinent snit” under his breath.

  “Excuse me?” Sadie said, wondering if she’d misheard him. Maybe he meant to say “important bit” or something like that.

  “Nothing,” he growled and started leading her to the front door. As she passed the fridge, her shoulder brushed against it, sending a hamburger-shaped magnet and a piece of paper to the floor. The sound of the magnet bouncing across the linoleum sounded as loud as a rocket ship.

  Sadie froze, holding her hands so tight she worried that she’d cut off the circulation. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not knowing what to do. She’d been told not to touch anything and so she simply stood there and looked at the paper on the floor. It was nothing more than the Garrison community newsletter that arrived with everyone’s water bill.

  She blinked and looked back at Detective Cunningham. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “That partner of yours has me a bit frazzled.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, but she knew it wasn’t. At least Madsen hadn’t witnessed it. “We’ll take care of it.” He turned toward the door again and she glanced back at the paper.

  It would be so easy to pick it up and put it back on the fridge. Couldn’t it be considered a hazard to have the magnet and paper on the floor like that? Suppose someone slipped. She looked to the space it had left on the fridge and her eyes were drawn to another note held in place by an Oreo magnet: “Library books due FRIDAY the 21st!” It was another reminder of how normal life had been yesterday. Anne had gone to work, come home, taken care of her son—and then everything changed.

  Sadie saw the books on the kitchen table and she had an idea. She cleared her throat. “There is a note on the fridge about Anne’s library books being due,” Sadie said, keeping to herself that they weren’t due for another week. “I was planning to head over there later—could I possibly return them for her?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She and Detective Cunningham both turned at the sound of Detective Madsen’s voice again. He was back in the kitchen, his hands on his hips and his jaw tight. “It is completely inappropriate for her to be in here and she will not remove any items from the premises.”

  Detective Cunningham turned on his partner in an instant. “Get out of here, Madsen,” he said like a frustrated parent. “I asked Mrs. Hoffmiller to come here and she’s been a great deal of help. You, on the other hand, are being a royal pain in the butt. Shut up and let me do my job.”

  Sadie nodded sharply in agreement. Cunningham didn’t notice, but Madsen did. His neck turned red, and he took two huge steps forward, suddenly inches away from Detective Cunningham. The younger man may have been taller, but Detective Cunningham’s presence was much more imposing. Sadie took a step away from the confrontation and looked at the front door—should she make a run for it? Would Detective Madsen shoot her if she tried?

  “If you’d just do your job, I wouldn’t have to babysit you,” Detective Madsen said.

  Detective Cunningham gave a rueful laugh, but in the next instant his hand shot out, grabbing and twisting Madsen’s tie as he pulled him closer. Madsen tried hard to hide his fear, but his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and his tuft of chin hair trembled.

  “I’ve been doing my job since you were in diapers, Madsen. The silver spoon in your mouth might give you the feeling of superiority, but that is nothing compared to instinct and gut reactions. Mrs. Hoffmiller isn’t going to return the library books—nothing is being removed from the crime scene. However, I am going to escort her home and thank her for the help she’s been, and you’re going to go outside and work very hard to stay out of my way until you have to leave for that hearing.”

  He let go of Madsen, who stumbled backward until his back hit the kitchen counter, knocking Sadie’s smiley-face key ring from the counter to the floor in the process. It skittered across the linoleum, coming to a stop as everyone in the room went silent again. Sadie stared at the keys—her keys—and nearly leaned down to pick them up while every set of eyes watched Madsen straighten up and try to smooth the wrinkles out of his shirt. Sadie noticed that many of the people in the room seemed to be trying hard to conceal a smile at witnessing Madsen’s comeuppance. Clearly, most people felt toward Detective Madsen the same way Detective Cunningham did. She looked back at the keys on the floor.

  “I’m calling the captain,” Madsen said loudly, turning on his heel and storming toward the back door.

  “And your daddy, I suppose,” Detective Cunningham said back, his tone lowered to a normal range which made Madsen’s echoes seem even louder and more out of place.

  Daddy? Sadie wondered. She’d give her entire Seinfeld DVD collection to know what that meant.

  Detective Madsen scowled over his shoulder, and saw the key ring. He bent and picked it up—shoving it deep in his pocket while Detective Cunningham turned to look at Sadie, a polite smile on his face and an odd light in his eyes, as if his moment with Madsen was terribly fulfilling to him. “I’ll walk you home,” he said, indicating for her to lead the way.

  “Uh, could I get my keys back from Detective Madsen first?” she asked, feigning meekness. She was pretty sure they had no grounds to keep her keys and the truth was she wanted to get her own dig in whil
e she had the chance.

  “What?” Detective Madsen yelled, turning sharply, his hand on the back door.

  “My keys,” she said. “The key ring you’ve got in your pocket belongs to me.”

  He shook his head as if annoyed and pulled the door open. “It’s part of the investigation,” he said in his demeaning tone.

  “I’ve been entrusted with the keys to the homes of my neighbors,” she said, emboldened by his pompous attitude. She’d have put her hands on her hips if not for the magnet incident. “You can’t just take them away from me.” She kept her voice calm and looked at Cunningham. “He can’t keep the keys to other homes, can he? I mean, what do I tell the neighbors? They’ll never trust me again, and the only reason I gave them to the police in the first place was because I was trying to do anything I could to help out.” She turned back to glare at Madsen with her best angry-teacher expression. “If I’d have known that—”

  “Fine, but we keep the key to this house,” Detective Madsen said as he stomped over to her and pulled out the ring, fumbling through the keys as if he knew which was which.

  “Of course,” Sadie said as if she’d never considered otherwise. “Anne’s is the one with the red heart sticker on it,” she offered helpfully, even though that particular key fit the lock to Jack and Carrie’s house. She refused to analyze herself enough to figure out why she was lying to an officer of the law. But she knew why. Suppose she needed to get in Anne’s house, suppose they continued to treat her like a suspect and she had to prove her own innocence. Plus, Detective Madsen hadn’t been very nice and tricking him made her feel better. All was not chocolate sprinkles with Sadie Hoffmiller, but they didn’t need to know that.

  It took several seconds for Detective Madsen to extract the key, which he promptly pocketed before handing Sadie the supposedly Anne-free key ring and storming toward the door again. All of which he did with plenty of dramatic flair, though it fell completely flat.