Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Pete sat next to her, placing the plate behind them. She didn’t watch but knew each motion he made due to the swish of the papers as he unfolded them. The minutes, which couldn’t have been more than two, stretched into the night as she waited for him to finish. She knew he was done reading when she heard him refolding the papers.

  “You’ve never told me much about your sister,” Pete commented. His tone was casual but Sadie knew better. He seemed to be avoiding a direct question regarding her out-of-character actions tonight, and she sensed it was because he was leaving the direction of the conversation up to her. If she said “Never mind, good night,” he would probably let her leave. She appreciated the consideration but needed to talk about this; she should have told him about Wendy before now. She rubbed her upper arms, though it wasn’t cold, and then, unable to find the words to explain, she shrugged as though it was perfectly acceptable not to talk about someone who shared your DNA to the person you were about to marry.

  “But Jack did.”

  Sadie whipped her head around to look at Pete. “What?”

  “I’d asked you about her a couple of times but you always managed to change the subject, so when Jack and I went fishing last summer up at Big T, I asked him to fill me in.”

  Sadie looked across the neighborhood again, smoothing her hair behind her ear and unsure whether she was annoyed that Pete had gone behind her back to learn about this part of her life—though she did that kind of thing all the time—or relieved that he already knew. “What did Jack tell you?”

  “That she was terrible to you, well, to everyone in your family, but you especially.”

  Me especially, Sadie thought. Her chest tightened. Me especially. For Pete’s benefit she nodded to make sure he knew she’d heard him. “I’m sure she was mentally ill,” Sadie said after a few more seconds of silence ate up more of the night. “Borderline personality disorder, possibly, though I wouldn’t rule out bipolar, schizophrenic, and maybe histrionic as well.”

  “Diagnosed?”

  Sadie shook her head. “I’ve read enough and met enough people with similarities to her that I’ve made my armchair-psychiatrist determinations. It helps me feel a bit more peace with how she treated me—us—to know she had limitations.”

  “Jack said she left home young.”

  “She was seventeen; I was twelve.” Sadie appreciated the cautious push of Pete’s questions that allowed her to remain as unemotional as possible. As a former police detective, Pete was well-trained in gathering information, and she was glad for the almost formal feel of the conversation—it made it easier for her somehow, kept things distant.

  A car turned down Pete’s street, and they both raised their hands to wave at whomever was returning home.

  Sadie wrapped her arms around herself again and continued, “I never asked what the final fight was about. It happened when I was at school, and Mom was still crying when I got home. I was so relieved that Wendy was gone, though it took almost a year for me to believe she wasn’t coming back.”

  “Jack said your parents wouldn’t let you talk badly about her.”

  Sadie shook her head. “She was still their daughter, and they didn’t want us creating an air of negativity about her while she was gone in case she came back. Since we didn’t discuss the hard parts about Wendy, we simply didn’t talk about her at all. When she did come up, we spoke of her the way you might talk about a great-aunt who lives too far away to visit.”

  “Did your parents know how she treated you?” Pete asked. “Jack said he’d never been sure, probably because, like you said, no one talked about her much.”

  “They knew some of the things she did and suspected other things that no one could prove.” An owl hooted in the distance, and the sound made her shiver. Or maybe she just wanted Pete to put his arm around her shoulders, which he did. Sadie leaned into him, comforted by his warmth and the now-familiar, lingering scent of his cologne. “They tried to keep the two of us separate as much as possible. It helped, I think.”

  “Any idea why she singled you out?”

  “She was my parent’s first child, and the only one for five years. My parents didn’t think they’d have any other children due to some complications of Wendy’s birth. From what I’ve heard, Wendy was always difficult, even as an infant. She had digestive issues that required hospital stays and things—not that any of that is her fault, but it made her early years difficult ones and her temperament, as my mother described it, was one of perpetual discomfort. Then I came along—a surprise child my parents never thought they’d have. I was a good baby.” She shrugged, hating how braggy she felt but, well, it was what had happened. “I was healthy and smiled a lot. I slept through the night after six weeks, and as I got older, I liked to make people happy.”

  “Everything she didn’t do,” Pete said.

  “I guess so,” Sadie said, feeling guilty all over again, as though it was her fault that adults had doted on her, that she was affectionate and precocious and obedient while Wendy was combative and intolerant and whiney. Sadie joined Brownies when she was seven and earned badges faster than most girls in her troop. She’d loved to learn and accomplish goals, which equated to her excelling at most things she put her mind to. She sang solos in church, won art contests at school, was a good softball player on her pony league team, and always had a lot of friends.

  Every triumph of her childhood, however, was punctuated with the memories of Wendy’s retaliation: paint in her shoes, shredded homework, a dozen cupcakes she’d baked thrown against the kitchen wall. One time, Wendy had “accidentally” spilled hot wax from a candle on Sadie’s leg, resulting in second-degree burns that prevented Sadie from going on a camping trip with their church youth group. Another time, she slammed the car door on Sadie’s foot the day before Sadie’s softball tournament.

  Wendy never accepted responsibility—she either denied she’d done those things or explained them away as accidents—but she took a dark kind of satisfaction in seeing Sadie hurt, embarrassed, scared, or upset and was quite skilled at creating those situations.

  “It was such a relief when she left home,” Sadie admitted quietly, as though her parents could still overhear and remind her not to dwell on things that couldn’t be changed. “I don’t like to think about her.”

  “I can see why,” Pete said, rubbing his hand against her arm, which had broken out in goose bumps. “She didn’t treat Jack the same way?”

  Sadie shook her head slowly. “I’ve never been sure why not. Maybe because he was the youngest or because he was a boy, or maybe as a girl I was more threatening to her position or something, but she didn’t target him the way she did me, though she wasn’t nice to him either.” There was a time when Sadie had been jealous of the way Jack seemed to exist below Wendy’s radar. It made her wonder what was wrong with her, why Wendy hated her so much. But she was also grateful that Jack hadn’t been through the same things she’d endured.

  Sadie waited for Pete to say something more, ask her a question or lead the conversation, but he remained silent. After several seconds had passed, she said, “I know I should go to San Francisco and help her son, but I really don’t want to.”

  “Why not? She won’t be there.”

  Sadie knew he’d meant to give her some kind of comfort, perhaps help her acknowledge that going to San Francisco wouldn’t put her at risk. Wendy was dead. But crossing into Wendy’s world made Sadie feel the same vulnerability she remembered from her childhood. “But your family is coming in for the Fourth of July, and I still have cookies to make for the bake sale and wedding plans to finalize and a house to sell and . . . a lot of things to do.”

  She liked the normalcy of her life right now; she liked her relationship with Pete, which had started when Sadie’s neighbor had been found dead behind her home and Sadie had involved herself in finding answers. They’d been through a lot since then and had found this good, comfortable, and assuring place together. Sadie looked forward to becoming Pete�
��s wife. Wendy’s interference with that happiness was unwelcome, though Sadie felt guilty for feeling that way too. Shouldn’t Sadie feel so terrible about Wendy’s death that she would want to do right by her? Or at least by her son?

  “Then don’t go,” Pete said. “This Jee or Jye or however you say his name said he’d understand if you didn’t want to help. Did you know about her son?”

  Another wave of guilt washed over her. “We were never certain if he was real or not. She didn’t tell my parents about him until he was three. She claimed he’d been bitten by a neighbor’s dog, and she needed money for the medical bills. My parents gave her five thousand dollars and asked if they could come out and help. She said she’d let them know, but then she didn’t call for two years until she was behind on her rent and she and her son would be evicted if my parents didn’t help her out again. Once again they sent money and extracted a promise that Wendy would bring him to visit. She’d called him Eddie though.”

  “His letter said his middle name was Edward,” Pete commented.

  Sadie nodded; she’d noticed that too. “She didn’t come and the number she’d given my parents was disconnected soon after that. The next time we heard from her she said Eddie was living with his father—his father is Vietnamese or Chinese or something. She never sent pictures, and in time I became all but convinced that he was something she’d made up.”

  Pete nodded as though he understood, but Sadie wondered how that could even be possible. She wasn’t sure she understood. “You could send her son money to help with the funeral costs and be done with it. You’d still be doing something to help, and it sounds like the financial situation is a concern for him. It’s probably the main reason he contacted you, for help with the expenses.”

  Sadie was quiet. She could just send money and explain that was all she could do; the idea had certainly crossed her mind. But . . . “He’s reaching out to me, and he is family. My parents would want me to at least try to establish a relationship with him. Wendy never gave them the chance to have one.”

  “And maybe helping pack up her apartment will help you find some understanding for Wendy’s behavior. You’ve lived with a child’s impression of a cruel person, and maybe seeing her through her things and talking to the people in her life will give you a new grown-up perspective.”

  Sadie had gotten so good at living in the moment after her first husband had died two decades ago and left her a widow with years of life to recalculate that she rarely allowed the past to overwhelm her like it was doing tonight. She was surprised that even decades after Wendy’s abuse, the memories were still so raw. She appreciated everything Pete was saying, but didn’t think he understood the level of trauma Wendy had brought into Sadie’s childhood.

  “When I was four years old, Wendy tricked me into eating some laxatives by telling me they were candy. I ended up in the hospital for almost a week with severe dehydration and an intestinal blockage. It’s one of my earliest memories—being alone in a dark hospital room, wishing my mother was there while worrying that when she came the next day she’d bring Wendy with her. I was really little, but I understood that Wendy could have killed me. To this day I’m not sure if that was her goal, but in the back of my mind it seems as though it was.”

  Pete pulled Sadie closer and kissed the top of her head. “She sounds like a nightmare.”

  “She was certainly the source of a lot of them.”

  They sat in silence for nearly a minute, Sadie reliving the many fears Wendy had induced, things Sadie hadn’t thought about for years and wished she wasn’t thinking about now.

  Pete’s voice broke through the quiet. “It also sounds like her life after she left your family wasn’t a happy one, and it ended dramatically.”

  For a moment Sadie wasn’t sure what he meant, then remembered the heading of the article: Woman found dead in Mission District apartment. “I didn’t read the whole article,” she admitted, leaving out the part about how her eyes wouldn’t focus on the words. “Did it say how she died?”

  “It said the police were considering a variety of possibilities. Her body was lit on fire several weeks after she died, though, which is strange. The article was written a couple of days after her body was discovered and didn’t have much conclusive information. Maybe the police have established cause of death by now.”

  Sadie shuddered at the grisly details. “Nobody deserves anything like that.” Had Wendy been murdered? she wondered. She’d been involved in too many murder investigations not to consider the possibility. Burning the body could have been about destroying evidence.

  “I bet there are follow-up articles we could look at. And maybe we can talk to the detectives working on the case in San Francisco—I might have an in with the department that could get us some additional information. Her body was discovered just over a week ago, so forensics ought to have more information by now.”

  Sadie would like to know more about what had happened, but did she have to go to San Francisco to get that information? Couldn’t she stay right here, in her own world, and gather information online and over the phone while Wendy’s son closed out her life? Sadie could send money to help with expenses and fulfill her familial obligation that way.

  “If you decide to go, I’ll come with you,” Pete said.

  Sadie looked up at him. “You would?”

  He smiled and tucked the same strand of hair she’d been fussing with behind her ear. “Of course I would.” He brushed the backs of his fingers along her jawline, initiating a new round of goose bumps. “We could take in some of the sights while we’re there. It’s a great city even if the reason we’re going isn’t a happy one. We could make the best of it, and you could meet your nephew.”

  “What about the holiday? Cancelling at the last minute isn’t going to win me any points with your girls.” It had been a slow process building a relationship with Pete’s daughters, both of whom lived about an hour away. Their mother, Pat, had died five years ago, and Sadie’s life must look disturbingly dramatic from where they stood, only seeing bits and pieces of it as Pete hurried from one situation to another helping Sadie out of several dangerous events. It had to be even more difficult for them to see their father in love with someone other than their mother. They were trying, though, and Sadie was grateful for that. She hated the idea that Wendy would be the reason she would cancel their plans at the last minute.

  “We could go after the Fourth.” Pete lifted the letter he still held. “I’m sure . . . Eddie wants to spend the holiday with his family too. If we left on the fifth, for instance, there’d still be plenty of time for us to get things taken care of before the deadline he talks about in his letter. Maybe Jack will come too.”

  Sadie looked at the envelope in his hand. The thought of entering Wendy’s world, even without her in it, was still overwhelming. But she could do it with Pete there beside her. Jack would make it even better.

  “Sadie, she can’t hurt you anymore,” Pete whispered.

  She looked away from those penetrating eyes and watched the realty sign sway in the breeze. Even after all these years, and evidence of Wendy’s death in black and white, Sadie wasn’t sure she believed him.

  Chapter 3

  It was almost midnight before Sadie got home. She was exhausted and went to bed, but she didn’t sleep well. It was a relief when the sun came up, giving her an excuse to stop trying to sleep and start the day instead.

  Because Wendy’s son lived in California, she felt it was only polite to wait until 10:00 a.m. before she called him—9:00 his time. While she waited for the clock to strike that magic hour, she cleaned out her fridge, vacuumed the entire house, reorganized her spice cupboard, went to the post office and mailed the invitations, and ordered a new set of dish towels online.

  When she finished those tasks, she read all the online articles she could find about Wendy’s death. They were all so impersonal, and there wasn’t any significant information other than the exact time the fire was called in—1:2
1 in the morning on June 25—and that several personal items were missing from the apartment.

  At exactly 10:01, Sadie sat down at her kitchen table ready to dial the number Wendy’s son had included at the bottom of his letter. She had already punched in the area code when she remembered Jack. How could she forget to tell Jack what had happened? Dismayed to have not already called him, she canceled the call and dialed her brother’s number instead.

  “Hey, Sadie,” he said cheerily into the phone when he answered. “How are ya?”

  The effect of his words on the fractured feelings left over from last night was powerful, and Sadie had to blink back tears to keep from becoming emotional. His greeting seemed to offer proof that she was loved and that she wouldn’t be alone in the conflict she was feeling over the death of their sister.

  “Hey, Jack,” she replied, glad her voice didn’t shake. “Do you have a minute?” When he said he did, she explained all that had happened in the last twelve hours, then waited as he digested the information through a long pause. It was against her nature to let such pauses stretch very long, but with Jack it was different. The two of them had always bonded together in the wake of the difficulties Wendy had brought into their lives. Jack—though the younger brother—had often stuck up for Sadie and had even physically protected her from Wendy. She’d often wondered if, without Jack’s loyalty, she’d have taken more of the blame for Wendy’s treatment.

  “Wow,” Jack finally said, reverent and thoughtful.

  “I know,” Sadie said, nodding even though he couldn’t see her. While they’d talked, she’d drawn a few dozen little squares on the paper in front of her. She started drawing lines between them in a dot-to-dot pattern. “Pete and I are going to go out on Thursday, and I wanted to know if you’d like to come with us to meet her son, pack up the apartment, and make funeral arrangements.”