Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Half an hour later, the last of the kitchen items were boxed up, and she shifted her attention to the office. She scanned the room from the doorway and looked over her shoulder at the document boxes still sitting on the kitchen counter filled with personal papers, contracts, and other remnants of Wendy’s life. She was tempted to start reading through those files first but talked herself out of it; it was more important to get the apartment packed. The files were already boxed—she could look through them another time—but there was a deadline for everything else.

  Sadie picked up an empty box while eyeing the bookshelf. Pete laughed in the other room, and she wondered what on earth they could be talking about that had him laughing, but then she forced herself to move again. It was Ji’s chuckle that stopped her in her tracks the second time. She hated feeling left out but took comfort in the fact that if Pete was building a bridge with Ji, she might be able to cross it later.

  She started with packing the books—interior design, mostly, and a few racy romance novels she may have read a couple pages from before remembering the task at hand. She’d finished the top shelf and had moved on to the second when she pulled out what she thought was a book only to realize it was a box of stationery. The box was black and stored between a book about Audrey Hepburn and Feng Shui for Dummies.

  Sadie moved the box to the desk, where she lifted off the lid. Half of the box was filled with pale pink envelopes and the other half held stationery of the same color, half-sheet size. It was a disappointing discovery—she’d hoped for something more personal—and was going to put the top back on when she realized that the envelope on top of the stack was sealed.

  She set the top of the box back down on the desk, picked up the sealed envelope, and turned it over. Nothing was written on the front. It was obvious, however, that there was something inside.

  Sadie considered her options for .03 seconds, before sliding her finger beneath the seal and tearing it open. Inside was a piece of the pink stationery. She pulled it out and unfolded it. The words were written in large, flowery letters with looping circles—artistic and dramatic.

  He came again last night. Ecstasy!

  Sadie read the words again and felt her cheeks heat up in embarrassment. It wasn’t hard to guess what this note was in regards to. She looked for a date or a signature, something to give these six words some context or chronology, but found nothing. She refolded the letter and put it back in the envelope, which she then took into the kitchen and slid under the lid of one of the file boxes. She wondered what it meant exactly, why it was written but not sent, and who it was intended for as she continued packing up the office.

  After another forty minutes—and far too much obsessive thinking—her stomach growled, and although she didn’t necessarily want to stop her momentum, she could swear those cookies were beginning to call her name from the kitchen.

  She set a goal to finish packing the last of the bookshelf—full of office supplies—before she allowed herself to return to the kitchen. She looked in on the cookies again and then shut the bag and pushed it away. Pete had purchased them and had not yet issued her an invitation to have one. Besides, she felt anxious enough that she worried that if she ate one, she’d end up eating all six without a second thought. It wouldn’t be the first time. Better not tempt such possibilities.

  However, when she breathed in the scent of the cookies she would swear had been baked fresh that morning, the rich chocolate compelled her to consider her options, which then further compelled her to poke her head into the bedroom. Both Pete and Ji looked up from where they were emptying out the dresser contents into garbage sacks. The room looked quite different than it had earlier: the closet was empty, and the bed stripped. Even the curtains were taken down.

  Sadie noted that the earlier hardness in Ji’s face was gone, but she still didn’t make eye contact with him, embarrassed by their earlier exchange.

  “Hey,” Pete said, holding a bag open while Ji used his hand to scoop out what looked like underthings from a drawer. Pink, black, lacy, and completely impractical things Sadie was embarrassed for him to see let alone touch. She should have thought about that when she was alone in the apartment and saved them all from the awkwardness.

  The picture Sadie and Pete had taken down had been moved to lean against the wall, and Sadie hoped Ji hadn’t seen it. The only thing worse than seeing your sister naked had to be seeing your mother that way.

  “I was going to run to that little market on the street and get some milk to go with the cookies. Can I get you guys anything else?”

  “I’m good,” Pete said, then turned toward Ji.

  “A Coke would be nice,” he said.

  Sadie liked that Ji was letting her do something for him and nodded with a cautious smile in his direction. He wasn’t looking at her, so she didn’t know if he saw it. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  It took about ten minutes before Sadie returned with a quart of milk and a Coke. On the way back, she took the stairs and loved the romance of it, even though her quads were burning by the time she got to the top.

  The men were in the kitchen when she returned. Ji sat on one of the two bar stools tucked under the lip of the counter, and Pete stood between the counter and the sink, telling Ji about the deep-sea fishing trip he’d taken a couple weeks earlier.

  Sadie entered the kitchen, hopeful that sharing some yummy cookies would make some headway toward building a better relationship with Ji. Food had that power sometimes. She tore some paper towels from the roll she’d left out for cleaning purposes and passed them out before realizing that she’d packed up all the cups and glasses. “I’ll go down and get some paper ones from the store,” Sadie said, turning toward the door.

  “I don’t need any milk,” Ji said, waving toward the carton Pete was already opening. “You two can share it.”

  For a moment Sadie didn’t know what he meant, then Pete took a swig from the carton before setting it down in front of her. Sadie pursed her lips together and got a teasing smile in return. She was not a drink-from-the-carton kind of girl.

  Pete handed her a chocolate cookie with what looked like big sugar crystals on top. She took it, but was still considering the idea of going back to the market and getting an individually sized bottle of milk.

  “I was telling Ji about my visit with Detective Lopez. Maybe you’d like an update too. The forensics report came in.”

  In an instant, Sadie knew she wasn’t going to leave to buy more milk.

  Chapter 10

  Really?” Sadie asked. “What did it say?”

  “It’s more what it didn’t say,” Pete said, giving each of them a serious look. “It ruled cause of death as inconclusive. The . . .” He paused to look at Ji, a small furrow showing between his eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re okay hearing about these details? Sadie’s used to it, but this is your mother.”

  “I’m okay,” Ji said. He attempted a smile, though it didn’t look natural on his face. “When I get off work and can’t sleep, I watch reruns of CSI.”

  “So do I,” Sadie said, the connection overriding her caution. “Do you like Vegas best? Because I find the Vegas series to be the most interesting.”

  Ji gave her a strange look, making her aware of how overeager she’d sounded. “Sorry,” she said, looking down at the counter and brushing away imaginary crumbs.

  “Ji, are you sure?” Pete asked again.

  “I’m sure, Pete,” Ji said as though they were old friends. “If it becomes too much for me, I’ll say so.”

  “Okay,” Pete said. “The body was so badly decomposed that the police were unable to determine cause of death. They were able to conclusively rule out traumatic injury—there was nothing like broken bones or evidence of a weapon being used—and tissue samples were clear of things like toxins or drugs.”

  “Like from a poisoning?” Ji said.

  Pete nodded. “But they can’t be certain of how she died. Possibly a heart attack or stroke, or maybe drownin
g. Because there’s nothing that specifically indicates foul play, she could have died of natural causes.”

  “Really?” Sadie said, trying to determine why this was so surprising to her. Probably because so many of the cases she’d worked had been homicide and the circumstances with Wendy’s death were so bizarre.

  “Every indication seems to point to the probability that she was taking a bath at the time of her death, and nothing within that part of the investigation indicates foul play.”

  “It’s a relief to think she wasn’t murdered,” Ji said. “How do they explain the . . . fire?”

  “Well, they can’t really explain that part. At least they can’t explain the motive for it or the delay in time between her death and the fire itself. Up until the forensics report came in, it seemed likely to assume that Wendy was killed and the killer returned four weeks later, but now there’s nothing that suggests homicide as cause of death. The fire didn’t cause any serious damage to the apartment, and the anonymous phone call was probably made within minutes of the fire being set; the police think that perhaps the lack of damage could have been intentional and the anonymous caller was the person who’d set the fire.”

  “Why would the arsonist call the fire department?” Sadie asked.

  Pete shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t want to burn down the whole building. Maybe they had second thoughts—the department doesn’t have any really great theories either. The fire did further compromise the condition of the body, so perhaps the intent was to compound confusion of cause of death.”

  Sadie pondered that information.

  “Where did the person call from?” Ji asked.

  “A pay phone a couple of blocks west of here. The caller said they saw smoke from an apartment at the corner of Mission and 22nd Street, then hung up. A first responder was at the building within four minutes and saw smoke coming from the open bathroom window. The fire was already smoldering by the time they got into Wendy’s apartment, which was unlocked. Nothing in the bathroom had caught fire . . . well, except Wendy. The body had been doused with some kind of accelerant, which is why it burned at all. The fan in the bathroom was also on, like we thought, and it drafted most of the smoke out of the building, leaving minimal damage behind.”

  “That’s why the apartment didn’t reek of smoke,” Sadie said. “Do they know if the fan was on in the weeks between Wendy’s death and the fire?”

  “They only know that it was on at the time of the fire,” Pete said. “But they agreed that if it had been left on it would account for the lack of other . . . smells.”

  Sadie furrowed her brow for a moment as she considered all the odd details. “Could they tell from the 911 call if it was a male or female caller?”

  “Female.”

  “Maybe someone killed Wendy, thought the body would be found sooner, and when it wasn’t, they had to speed up the process,” Sadie suggested.

  “If it was just discovery they were worried about, why light the fire rather than just call in about the body?” Pete asked.

  “And if they had reason to want to destroy evidence,” Ji added, “why wait a month to do it?”

  “Exactly,” Pete said, nodding toward Ji.

  Sadie tried not to feel jealous of their friendliness as she pressed on. “And how is it that no one reported her missing or thought to check up on her until that fire? A month is such a long time.”

  “From all accounts, she had harassed everyone in the building to the point where everyone avoided her,” Pete said.

  Sadie nodded. Lopez had pretty much told her that during their first phone call.

  Pete continued, “The police think that she rarely went anywhere the last year or so. She had a laundry service and grocery delivery that came about once a week. Most of the tenants hadn’t seen Wendy for weeks before she died so they didn’t notice when she wasn’t around.”

  “But an entire month? What about the apartment next door?”

  Ji chimed in. “Mr. Pilings told me that the tenant in number six moved out in May—before Wendy died. Wendy was the only person on the floor.”

  “And if she wasn’t coming and going much, someone on her floor would be the only person really aware of her,” Pete said, nodding. “One of her downstairs neighbors put a cardboard box under her mail slot to hold the excess when it was no longer fitting in her slot. They went to great lengths to avoid having to deal with her.”

  “Which brings us back to why someone would light her on fire,” Sadie said. “It’s in the murderer’s best interest to let as much time go by as possible before an investigation begins, so why would they return and, in essence, alert the police?”

  “Why is it in their best interest to let more time go by?” Ji asked.

  “Details get forgotten by witnesses,” Pete said. “Especially if they don’t realize they witnessed anything related to a crime. Evidence breaks down; video camera footage is erased.” Pete looked at Sadie and then Ji. “The police are checking pawnshops for the items missing from the apartment. If they were pawned prior to her body being discovered, it could indicate that a robbery had occurred closer to her time of death. But the prevailing theory is that the robbery is probably connected to the fire, not Wendy’s death.”

  “But they ruled the death to have been natural causes,” Sadie reminded him, trying to keep everything straight.

  “Inconclusive,” Pete said. “But still suspicious.”

  Sadie furrowed her brow again, trying to make the pieces fit. However, they didn’t fit. If whoever killed Wendy was afraid of being discovered, why not destroy the evidence immediately? If, on the other hand, Wendy’s death and the fire were somehow separate, then . . . well, what possible reason was there to burn the body unless it was to alert the police or destroy evidence?

  “Huh,” Sadie said, glancing at Ji, who seemed to be just as deep in thought. He took another bite of his cookie, reminding Sadie that she hadn’t even tried hers.

  Sadie took a bite, expecting a basic chocolate cookie with Ghirardelli chips in it, but froze when the level of chocolate contained in this cookie exploded into something far different than she’d anticipated. She pulled the cookie back to look at it and then chewed ever so slowly, ever so deliberately. It was rich like a brownie, chewy like a cookie, but it also melted in her mouth like a truffle. The crystals on top weren’t sugar, but salt, amplifying the flavor even more. She swallowed the bite with a satisfied sigh before remembering that she wasn’t alone. She looked up at Pete and Ji, both of whom were looking at her with smiles on their faces, though Ji’s was more guarded.

  Pete glanced at Ji. “Told ya,” he said softly. Ji’s smile widened slightly.

  “Told him what?” Sadie demanded.

  “That these cookies were going to make you cry.”

  “I didn’t cry.” Her attention was captured by the rest of the cookie in her hand. She took another bite, managing to keep from making any more appreciative sounds out loud, but just barely. By the time she finished her first cookie, she was eyeing the milk and trying to ignore Pete’s knowing smirk. She wouldn’t cave and drink from the carton. She would be strong!

  She picked up her second cookie, even though the first one was rich enough that she was satisfied. What if the cookies didn’t keep well? It was her duty as a food connoisseur to ensure that none of this deliciousness went to waste.

  After the first bite, however, she needed milk. The cookie was so rich. Pete laughed when he caught her trying to sneak some milk without him noticing, but he turned his attention back to Ji. That she didn’t care how trashy it was to drink right out of the carton said more about the quality of the cookie than anything else could. She wondered if she could find the recipe online. It was one she’d definitely put in her Little Black Recipe Book if she could recreate such magnificence!

  “That was amazing,” Sadie said after she finished the second cookie and drank from the carton again. It took another moment before she realized she’d interrupted their conversation.
“Sorry, what were we talking about?”

  “Ji was telling me about Wendy’s ex-husbands—I was asking him about one of them.”

  “She had more than one ex-husband?”

  “She had four,” Ji said.

  Sadie lifted her eyebrows. “Four?”

  Ji explained that Wendy had technically been married when she met Ji’s father, Kai, though she hadn’t seen her husband in a couple of years—Ji called it a “hippie thing.” Her divorce was final in time for Kai and Wendy to get married a month before Ji was born, but before Ji was even two, Wendy left Kai for someone named Dan or Darin or Darryl. Ji barely remembered Husband Number Three; they divorced when Ji was four.

  “She had a few boyfriends over the next several years, but she left me with my dad in order to marry her fourth husband, Rodger.”

  She left me, Sadie repeated in her mind. She didn’t ask him to elaborate and simply nodded her understanding. Woven within his account were the other things Ji had told her about his childhood: living with friends, panhandling at the beach. What a sad childhood.

  “The police talked to Rodger Penrose, the last husband, and cleared him as a suspect. They said that he and Wendy had remained on good terms, and that he had an alibi,” Pete said. “They haven’t located the other husbands yet.”

  “My dad was sent back to Hong Kong a few years ago. His papers were fake, so when immigration laws started being more heavily enforced, he was found out,” Ji said without much emotion. “I think the first husband’s dead, and the guy whose name starts with a D could be anywhere. I told all this to the police.”

  Pete nodded. “They said as much.”

  “So, where are things with the investigation now that the forensics are back?” Sadie asked, worried that without solid leads to follow—which they didn’t seem to have—the police wouldn’t keep working the case.