Blackberry Crumble

by Josi S. Kilpack

  May nodded and took another bite as she finished sorting.

  “Is Jolene still doing the books?”

  May shook her head. “Dad hired a gal last year when Jolene was diagnosed. She does all the books and office management stuff. Hugh does the rest.”

  “Quite a lot on Hugh’s shoulders all of a sudden,” Sadie said. “Is he doing okay having to do it all himself?”

  May looked up at Sadie and held her eyes for a moment. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said in a hesitant tone. “But I really prefer not to talk so much about my family.”

  She might not have meant to be rude, but Sadie was a little stung by the comment nonetheless. There were soft parts to May’s personality, but she had an edge to her as well, and Sadie didn’t like that part. Sadie shrugged and looked away. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy, but knowing about your family helps me get a better feel for your dad and his life.”

  “I can see that,” May said. “I just want to make sure we both keep our focus. Quite frankly, my family is dealing with so much that I don’t want to violate their privacy right now. I also want to get things figured out as quick as possible, and spending time investigating my family isn’t what I hired you to do.”

  “Of course,” Sadie said, forcing a smile that wouldn’t show her hurt feelings. Hurt or not, May was right; Sadie wasn’t here to learn about May’s family. If Sadie would stay on track, she wouldn’t need reminders. “Speaking of which, I’d better get back to work until it’s time to make the ice cream.” She glanced at the bacon and decided it would be fine on the counter for a little while.

  “The salad was wonderful,” May said again, standing as Sadie headed out of the kitchen.

  “I’m glad you liked it,” Sadie said. She could hear the clip in her own words but doubted May would pick it up. She didn’t know Sadie well enough to translate her tones.

  Sadie picked up the stack of original files she’d made copies off—the copies were in her car—and headed toward the study. As she methodically sorted and stored, her thoughts kept returning to Hugh Sanderson. What had last night’s dinner been about? Was it possible May knew about the meeting? She had seemed so incensed by the letter from Keith, it was hard to imagine she wouldn’t care about Hugh meeting with him. What about the felonious mail theft? Maybe Hugh received some of his mail at the house. It was possible, but then why tuck it away like he did? The more she thought about things, she more she realized she needed to know. Things weren’t lining up.

  But May didn’t want Sadie digging into family matters. As hard as it was to admit, May’s resistance simply equated to increased curiosity on Sadie’s part. Was May trying to hide something? It didn’t make much sense for her to hire Sadie to investigate Keith Kelly if there was something suspect within May’s own family. That line of thinking only brought Sadie back to needing to take May at her word—she wanted Sadie’s focus on Keith Kelly and no one else. Not talking about her family was simply part of keeping Sadie from becoming too distracted. Still, it didn’t settle right in Sadie’s mind, though she tried to tell herself it was fine.

  Nearly an hour passed before Sadie took a break from the files to work on the ice cream some more. May was on a stepladder, emptying the top cabinets. When she saw Sadie enter the kitchen, she offered a smile. “I was rude, wasn’t I? About not wanting to talk about my family.”

  Sadie looked away and headed for the ice cream freezer parts she’d laid out. “I understand—you want me to focus. It’s okay.”

  “I get a little sharp sometimes,” May said, focusing on the cupboards and giving Sadie the impression that she didn’t apologize easily and wanted to keep her hands busy.

  “No big deal,” Sadie said, committing to let it go since she was acting as though she was far less bothered than she had been.

  She pulled a paper towel off the roll and wiped it along the inside of the ice cream canister, hoping to accelerate the drying process. She hadn’t considered that the humidity made drying dishes on the counter less effective than she was used to.

  “My parents lived here for almost thirty years,” May said, lifting a stack of plates from a high cupboard and taking careful steps down the ladder. She set them on the counter. “It makes for a lot of years to pack up.”

  “Yes, it does,” Sadie said, putting the canister back on the counter and heading to the refrigerator for the milk and cream.

  “What is it you do back in Ohio?”

  “I’m a receptionist,” May said. “For a research and development company.”

  “And you don’t want to move back to Portland?” Sadie asked, hoping that asking questions about May wasn’t as touchy as asking questions about her family.

  “I’m not sure there’s enough to come back to,” she said, climbing the ladder again. “Now that Dad’s gone, and with Jolene sick, I just . . . I don’t know that there’s more here than there is in Cleveland.”

  Sadie wanted to ask more questions, but didn’t since the questions were about Jolene and Hugh and whether May would have much of a relationship with them once she left. It was sad to think she wouldn’t.

  “So, have you found anything else out about Keith? I haven’t even asked you about yesterday’s surveillance.”

  “It was pretty boring,” Sadie said, and that was true . . . for the first eight hours. The last two hours, however, had been pretty interesting. She wasn’t ready to tell May about that, yet. Sadie doubted May would take Hugh’s dinner with the Kellys well right now. She chose to focus on something else. “From what I’ve read in your dad’s files, I don’t think he trusted Keith, even when they were partners. The contracts were so fastidious and to the letter; they don’t read like an agreement between friends.” Yet even as Sadie talked about Keith, her thoughts were on Hugh and his secrets. The fact was that right now, Hugh was far more interesting than Keith.

  “Really?” May said. Sadie could see her mentally picking apart the comment as though searching for some kind of validation in it.

  “Just a gut reaction on my part, of course,” Sadie said. She reached for the cutting board propped up against the wall behind the sink and put it on the counter before transferring the bacon to it and extracting a chef’s knife from the butcher block.

  “I wish I’d paid more attention,” May said. “I didn’t until things fell apart, and, of course, everything seemed suspect after that.”

  She asked for details from the files, and Sadie relayed what she could remember while she finished mixing the ice cream, then put the base in the freezer to chill.

  May’s Blackberry rang with those chirping birds again, and she stepped outside to talk to whoever was on the other end. After the side door closed, Sadie wondered if Lois might be a good resource for family information. She’d known the Sanderson family for a long time, after all. Maybe Sadie could find a way to talk to her at the picnic tonight. And then Sadie remembered the personal filing cabinet. There might be information about Hugh in one of the files.

  The ice cream was chilling, May was distracted, and there were drawers full of information only a few yards away. It couldn’t hurt to read up on what parts of Hugh’s life Jim had held on to. Maybe she could get more of a feel for him that way.

  She walked quietly to the side door and leaned close enough to hear May talking, though the words didn’t come through. Whoever she was talking to was getting an earful, though. Sadie had the perfect opportunity. She hurried toward the study and closed the door quietly; she’d only need a minute to swap Hugh’s file with a business one that she could then take to the hotel with her. May wouldn’t miss it until tomorrow—if at all.

  She headed directly for the family filing cabinet. She wrapped her fingers around the slender silver handle and pulled. Nothing happened. She pulled again and only then did her eyes drift to the lock at the top of the cabinet. Between now and the time she’d first looked at the contents of this cabinet, someone had locked her out.

  Chapter 30

  Sadie immediate
ly thought of her lock pick set. She knew from her research that filing cabinet locks were pretty easy to pick because they used a wafer system to raise and lower the single pin. Sadie hurried to the kitchen and retrieved her purse. May was just coming inside, so Sadie pretended she was looking for gum.

  “I better get a shower before the picnic,” May said, still holding her phone. “I’ve been packing up stuff all day. Are you okay for a minute?”

  “Absolutely,” Sadie said, finding a lone piece of Trident in the bottom of her purse. She unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth. It was rock hard. “I’ll jus be in du stuhy,” she said, trying to bite through the gum. Rather than attempt talking again, she smiled instead.

  “Okay,” May said. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  Sadie tucked the petrified gum into her cheek. “No rush,” she said innocently. “Take your time.” She headed back to the study while May headed down the other hall, but slowed her steps as she neared the door. As soon as she heard a door shut in the other hall, she turned and tiptoed quickly back to the kitchen and grabbed her whole purse.

  Once back in the study, with the door shut, she spit out the gum, removed her lock pick set, and went to work. She pulled open one of the business cabinet drawers so that it would look like she was working on those files, then went to the other cabinet and took a breath. This was the first lock she’d picked for real rather than for practice. It was a little intense. She hoped filing cabinet locks were as easy as the website promised.

  After two minutes, she was sweating bullets and getting more and more anxious. How on earth would Sadie explain why she was digging metal sticks into the filing cabinet lock? She could feel the pressure she needed to lift, but felt as though she was already pushing too hard. She knew from experience that pin locks jammed rather easily, but the only thing she could think of to do was apply more pressure. She wondered why she’d never practiced on her own filing cabinets at home.

  She pushed a little harder, then harder still, and was about to give up for the sake of her blood pressure when she finally felt the snap. For an instant, she thought she’d broken the pick, but when she pulled the handle, the drawer slid open. She smiled to herself and then looked quickly at the door.

  No way could she risk May coming in now. She closed the drawer and opened the study door a crack.

  “May?” she called.

  There was no answer, so she closed the door and ran for the cabinet. Bingo. A file marked “Hugh” was right between “Homestead Insurance” and “Internet Info.” Sadie shut the drawer and swapped the contents of Hugh’s file with the contents of one of the business files she’d already put in a storage box. She quickly grabbed a couple more business files and stacked them on top of Hugh’s. Then she took a deep breath, checked the hallway again by calling for May, and returned to the filing cabinet to relock it.

  She came up short. She knew how to pick a lock, but unpicking it? How did that work? Her heart immediately started racing. If the filing cabinet wasn’t locked, May would be suspicious. Why hadn’t Sadie thought of that earlier?

  Desperate for her own self-preservation, she put Hugh’s file folder—now holding commercial tax rate information—back in its place in the personal file and shut the drawer. Maybe May wouldn’t remember locking it, but it was pretty obvious she’d locked it to specifically keep Sadie out.

  Maybe she wouldn’t check for a couple of days, but that seemed too much to hope for. Where did they keep the key? Sadie went to the desk drawer and fumbled through the contents. It wasn’t there. Next she looked through a pottery dish that held an assortment of odds and ends—nothing there either. She could sense she was running out of time. May had been in the shower for at least ten full minutes.

  She’d have to jam the drawer shut for now—but how? There were several binders in the bookcase, and Sadie grabbed one. She was about to wedge it on top of the files in such a way that when she pushed the drawer closed, the binder would raise up and prevent the drawer from opening, when she noticed another file in the drawer, not far from Hugh’s fake one. “Key duplicates.”

  Could it be that easy? She grabbed the file and opened it to find a piece of cardstock with five keys taped to the page. Scrawling handwriting identified them as house, garage, car door, and car ignition. At the very bottom, looking rather pathetic next to all the real keys, was a small, silver key about two inches long with the words “filing cabinet” written beneath it.

  Bless your heart, Jim Sanderson.

  Sadie took the filing cabinet key off the paper and promptly returned the rest of the keys to the folder before snapping the drawer shut, locking it up, and stashing the key in the desk drawer. May wouldn’t think to check the file to look for the key, would she? Sadie wiped sweat from her forehead; this was a little too much anxiety. She needed to take a break, and maybe have another muffin. Hoping she looked calm, and would feel calm in a few minutes, she picked up the stack of files from the desk. She was halfway across the room when the door opened, causing her to startle.

  “Sorry about that,” May said as she entered. She’d changed into jeans and a black, V-neck T-shirt that was quite flattering. Her hair was wrapped in a pink towel. “Everything okay?” She scanned the office and seemed to let her gaze linger on the personal filing cabinet a little longer than anything else.

  “Everything’s fine,” Sadie said, hoping her breathing appeared normal. She held up the stack of files. “I found a few more papers I needed to make copies of.”

  “Right now?” May asked. She glanced at her watch. “Isn’t it about time to finish up the ice cream?”

  Sadie looked at the clock on Jim’s desk. It was almost six o’clock. Time flew when you were afraid of being caught. “I guess it is,” she said, not sure what to do.

  “You can take the files with you after the dinner and make copies before you come back tomorrow,” May suggested.

  Sadie wondered if the offer was evidence of May feeling a little guilty for locking the personal filing cabinet in the first place. May seemed to make spontaneous decisions she thought better of later.

  “That would be great,” Sadie said. “In that case, let me just finish this one file drawer, and I’ll be right there.”

  “Okay,” May said. “I’m going to look in on Jolene—Gary should be here any minute—and finish getting myself ready.”

  Sadie smiled and nodded like the good girl she was pretending to be, but it was hard for her to meet May’s eyes as the guilt set in. May left, and Sadie reflected on the fact that she was going against May’s wishes. But it felt equally wrong to ignore her concerns about Hugh. She prayed it wouldn’t explode in her face.

  She left the files on the desk and went into the kitchen to work on the ice cream. May returned ten minutes later, her hair still damp but drying into soft waves. She had her makeup on and black flip-flops on her feet. She smiled hello at Sadie before heading back to work on another cupboard.

  Sadie’s phone rang as she was pouring ice and salt into the ice cream freezer. May looked at Sadie’s purse.

  “I’ll call them back,” Sadie said. “I’m not in a good stopping place.” She added a layer of ice, a layer of salt, and than another layer of ice before the bucket was full. Her phone chirped to indicate she had a message. Sadie plugged in the freezer. The sound of the motor was horrible, and she turned it off immediately. “That’s loud,” she said.

  “My dad always ran it in the garage,” May said.

  “Oh, good idea,” Sadie said, though the ice would definitely melt faster out there. “I’ll take it out and check my messages.”

  May nodded, and Sadie slipped her phone in her pocket before picking up the now very heavy ice cream freezer. She took slow and careful steps down the back stairs and into the garage; her arms were shaking by the time she put it down. She plugged in the freezer and then stepped out of the garage, pulling the door closed and effectively muting the horrible grating of the motor.

  She retrieved her phone
to see who’d called, but as soon as she saw the number, her eyes narrowed. Jane Seeley again. This time, however, she’d left a voice mail. For a moment, Sadie considered deleting the message without listening to it, but, no, there was no way she could not listen to what Jane had to say.

  She quickly called her voice mail, bracing herself for the worst.

  “Sadie? It’s Jane. You’ll be pleased to know that I got written up for the article I wrote, and as part of the deal, I’ve been asked to write a retraction. It will be going into tomorrow’s paper.” A long pause atypical for messages ensued. When she spoke again, her voice sounded different. “On a personal note, I would also like to offer you an apology. It really wasn’t my intent to make things difficult for you; in fact, I thought you would be flattered by the attention. If there’s something I can do beyond the retraction to make up for whatever harm I’ve caused, I hope you’ll let me do so.”

  Sadie nearly snorted at the idea of going to Jane for help. The retraction was nice, and she was grateful she’d taken the time to lodge the complaint about it, but she didn’t trust Jane’s assertion that she wanted to make it right. She couldn’t help but reflect on Pete’s comment about a retraction being buried in some obscure section of the paper. How many people would read it? And of those who did read it, how many would be able to pretend they’d never read the original article?