Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  She updated her notes and reviewed the information, knowing that she could keep herself busy for a few more hours if she chose to delve deeper into each particular detail of Wendy’s past. But the day was catching up with her, and what she’d wanted from the outset was a better view of her sister. She had that now, and she’d made progress toward catching up with what the police already knew. Tomorrow she would ask more questions and perhaps insert herself more into the police part of the investigation. Pete had said he’d make room for her if she wanted a more official position; she trusted that he meant it.

  It was after eleven o’clock when she closed her computer, exhausted on more levels than one. She checked her phone to see if Pete had texted her, frowning when there was no message. She took off her earrings and stored them in the jewelry box Ji had painted, running her hand over the lid after she closed it.

  Ji had been surprised that Wendy had owned one of his jewelry boxes. Was he also pleased by it? Sadie hoped so. From what she’d seen through her packing today, the jewelry box might be the only connection Wendy had kept of her relationship to Ji. There had been no pictures of her son in her home and nothing that, unless someone knew she had a son, showed it. Nothing but that jewelry box that Ji didn’t even know she’d bought.

  Sadie wanted to wait up for Pete, but she knew it would increase her anxiety now that she was tired and out of things to keep her brain occupied. Instead, she texted to tell him she was turning in. He texted back to tell her good night and that he was on his way back to the hotel. Immediately following that text he sent another one:

  I love you. See you in the morning.

  She read the text three times, letting the words seep into her bones. Then she turned off the light and crawled into bed. Amazing what three little words could do sometimes.

  Chapter 14

  Sadie awoke the next morning determined to live above any tension that might be left over from the night before. She couldn’t help but wonder if Pete had decided the same thing since he seemed lighter and brighter when they met in the lobby. They had breakfast at a little Scottish-themed pub up the street from their hotel. Sadie had Nutella-stuffed French toast with strawberries and bananas—divine and easy to replicate at home—though she thought a strawberry syrup would make it even more delicious. Pete had a salmon and spinach omelet, and when he offered her a bite, she couldn’t refuse it. It was also delicious. Neither of them brought up their conversation from the night before or that their time to accept, counter, or refuse the offer on Pete’s house was ticking away.

  Instead, Sadie told Pete about the files she’d gone through and, specifically, about the bank statements and phone bills that had helped her establish a pattern of behavior. The papers were in her purse in case Pete wanted to see them for himself, but she was glad he didn’t ask for them over breakfast.

  “Lopez didn’t say anything about the repetitive calls to Rodger’s business, just that, according to Rodger, the two of them had maintained a good relationship. Lopez did mention that Wendy hadn’t been paying her bills regularly, despite having plenty of money in the bank.”

  Sadie nodded her understanding and then went on to explain the background check and timeline she’d put together of Wendy’s life. Some of the information Pete already knew, but other parts were new. Sadie felt validated in doing the work, and her confidence increased.

  After breakfast they drove to the Mission District and found a parking spot about a block from Wendy’s apartment. As they walked to the building, Sadie wondered where the people who lived around here parked—surely not blocks away from their apartments. Maybe, like Wendy, they didn’t have cars either.

  They stopped at a nearby market for some more boxes. The only ones available were for Wild Turkey Whiskey, and Sadie tried not to feel self-conscious as she walked the last half of a block to the exterior door of Wendy’s building. After a few feet, however, she realized no one was even looking at her. Instead the other people were talking on phones, texting, or moving too fast to notice. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Wendy had been dead for a month without anyone noticing—people moved so fast in this city that maybe there wasn’t time to pay attention to anyone else’s business.

  Pete unlocked the exterior door and held it open for Sadie. A minute later, the elevator clanged as the pulley lifted them to the third floor.

  When they entered Wendy’s apartment, they were brought up short by the sound of Latino music. They looked at one another, and then Pete walked inside first and put down his boxes. Sadie followed. There was a drop cloth on the floor of the living room area and a miter saw placed on a metal table in the center of it. The air smelled like drywall and dust.

  “Hello?” Pete called out.

  “Hola?” a voice called back from the direction of the bathroom. The music was turned down and, a minute later, a short, middle-aged Hispanic man came out of the bedroom. He smiled and explained in a heavily accented voice that he was working on the bathroom. Pete responded in Spanish, reminding Sadie that he spoke the language.

  The Hispanic man relaxed and introduced himself as Mario—Sadie caught that much—and smiled when Pete introduced her. Mario motioned them to follow him to the bathroom. He pointed at the new Sheetrock in place on what had been exposed framework when they’d left yesterday afternoon. Some of the mudding and taping was done as well. Pete asked Mario a question.

  “Sí, sí, mañana.” That was as much as Sadie understood.

  Pete turned to translate their conversation for Sadie. “He’s the maintenance man for the building and came in after we left last night. He plans on finishing up the walls today. Tomorrow and Friday he’ll work on the tile and install the new fixtures. Saturday he’ll paint.”

  “The landlord told Ji we had until the tenth to get Wendy’s things out.” Sadie looked over her shoulder at the thin layer of plaster dust that now coated the furniture still in the bedroom. It was unsettling to feel as though they were being pushed out sooner than expected. Plus Mario was making a mess.

  “Apparently the new tenant wants to move in as soon as possible so the landlord asked Mario to fix up the bathroom while we move out,” Pete explained. He turned back to Mario; they talked for another minute before Pete pointed toward the office and explained something to Mario. Mario nodded and smiled before going back to work.

  Pete headed back to the common area of the apartment and Sadie followed. She shut the bedroom door behind them, which muted the music and would hopefully prevent the fine particle dust from infiltrating the rest of the apartment. Would Mario clean up his mess or was that Sadie’s responsibility? On the heels of that thought was wondering why any of this was Sadie’s responsibility. It’s not as though they were going to get a cleaning deposit back, and yet it went against Sadie’s nature to leave a mess behind.

  Pete flipped on the light in the office, and they surveyed the room, much of it already boxed up from yesterday.

  “I’ll finish up the bookshelves and desk,” Sadie said, then scanned the walls, where a variety of different artwork and a rather dark poem by D. H. Lawrence hung. “And clear off the walls.”

  Pete had walked to the closet and pulled back the door, revealing even more clothes. Sadie had seen the charges from different high-end department stores in the file box last night, so it didn’t surprise her to find that her shopaholic sister had an overflow closet in addition to the large one Ji and Pete had cleared out yesterday. Even from where Sadie stood, she could see the tags hanging off a couple of the sleeves—clothes bought but never worn. What a waste.

  “I can work on that when I finish the other things,” Sadie said, waving toward the closet to emphasize how easy that job would be. “Can you move as much of the stuff as you can from the bedroom into the common area? It will make it easier for Ji’s friend to pick up if we can contain everything to one part of the apartment.”

  “I can do that,” Pete agreed. He gave her a quick kiss but hadn’t made it ten feet out of the room before his
phone rang. “Good morning, detective . . .” His voice trailed off as he disappeared into the living room area, which meant Sadie couldn’t overhear his side of the conversation.

  She grabbed a box and began emptying the contents of the desk into it. She thought about her plan from last night to become more involved with the police side of things, but in the light of day she reconsidered it. Did she want to get caught up in the procedures and reports of police work? Would it satisfy her frustrations if she took on that role alongside Pete?

  The two file drawers of the desk were empty, but the other two drawers were brimming with miscellaneous office supplies. Sadie dumped everything into the box, then sifted through the contents to make sure there wasn’t anything personal mixed in with the generic supplies. There wasn’t anything of interest, so Sadie finished filling the box with other office items. Surely there would be some new immigrants who needed paper clips and Post-it Notes. She was replacing the now-empty drawer back into the desk when Pete appeared in the doorway.

  “The morning is off to a good start. The police know what accelerant was used on the body—that’s what Lopez was trying to clarify yesterday afternoon.”

  “Really? What was it?”

  “A synthetic kerosene. Unfortunately, it’s a common fuel and easy to buy.”

  Sadie shuddered at the thought of someone pouring kerosene over Wendy’s body and quickly pushed the image out of her mind.

  Pete continued, “But still, it’s a new lead. And his sergeant agreed to let me go over the official file.”

  “That’s great,” Sadie said.

  “Would you like to come with me to the station this time?”

  Ji would be coming soon, and they had to get the apartment packed up before his friend from the charity arrived. Plus, she no longer felt the same need as she had last night. “I better stay,” she said. “But will you talk to them about the calls to Rodger and find out what his explanation was?”

  “Sure,” Pete said. “You’re okay here alone?”

  Sadie gave him an exaggerated look. “I was fine yesterday, and I’ll be fine again today. Besides, Ji should be here any time. I’ll feel a lot better once we have this place packed up.”

  Pete accepted her confidence without further argument and left her with a kiss and a promise to call if he learned anything new. Last night seemed to be behind them, and Sadie got back to work feeling centered and calm about things, for the most part.

  She finished packing the contents of the bookshelf and the desk, noting that Wendy didn’t own a single book that Sadie had ever read—yet another difference between them—and then took everything down from the walls. She set aside one of the paintings, a landscape scene that looked a lot like the view from their grandparents’ cabin in southern Colorado, and took a minute to try to understand the Lawrence poem. Finally she rolled her eyes and put it in the box. It had a nice frame; hopefully that would have value for someone.

  As for the painting, she took it into the living room and set it against the wall, away from the items waiting to be hauled out by the charity. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it or not. Did she want a reminder of Wendy to hang on her wall at home? Would that bring her joy or remind her of all the negativity associated with her sister?

  She set aside the decision and turned her attention to the closet—the last task in the packing process. It had sliding mirrored doors, with full hanging racks on both sides—and a set of shelves in the middle as well as a long shelf on top. There were numerous storage containers and boxes on the different shelves.

  Sadie started emptying the closet by pulling out all the boxes. She worked top to bottom, finally sliding a Rubbermaid box from the floor of the closet at the very end. She wanted to determine the contents of each box before sorting them—nothing was labeled. One box was full of art supplies, mostly paints that had separated out and paintbrushes that hadn’t been properly cleaned and were now petrified. Another box was full of Christmas decorations. One was full of old tax records and checkbooks.

  Then she opened a box slightly bigger than a shoebox and was surprised to find it full of pictures. Sadie settled herself onto the floor, unable to resist looking through Wendy’s life chronicled in photos. She thought she recognized Rodger Penrose in several pictures, and she found a few pictures of Ji as a child—he had the same serious expression then as he did now—but mostly the photos were of Wendy with numerous strangers who must have been friends at some point in Wendy’s life.

  In some pictures Wendy was laughing; in others she was holding up a drink or looking flirtatiously at the camera. She had been very pretty well into her forties, if Sadie were correctly determining her age in the photos, with a careless air that perhaps made her that much more attractive. But she didn’t age particularly well once she entered her fifties; her lifestyle showed on her face even as she tried to cover it with more makeup and brighter clothes. There didn’t seem to be any photos of the last decade or so.

  When Sadie realized that half an hour had passed while she’d looked through the pictures, she reluctantly reminded herself that she could look through them another time. She put the lid back on and moved the box to the living room, where she placed it next to the landscape painting. She put the box of tax records with it, too; she would need to see about having such personal records shredded.

  She returned to the office and finished going through the boxes. There was nothing of any value or significance, just storage that Wendy herself likely had little use for, so she put them against the wall. The last box standing was the large Rubbermaid container Sadie had slid from the floor of the closet.

  She popped the lid off and was surprised to find it full of papers. She lifted some from the top and identified a letter regarding changes to Wendy’s health insurance, a store mailer, and a letter from the Department of Building Inspection in San Francisco. She scanned the correspondence—apparently Wendy had filed a complaint against her landlord, Stephen Pilings, in early May for not repairing the water heater in her apartment. The letter Sadie held was a confirmation of the department having received her claim and a promise that she would receive a response within forty-five days as to whether or not the department would pursue the matter.

  Sadie looked back at the jumbled contents of the box, then at the floor of the closet where she’d found it. This was a recent letter; the date was just weeks before Wendy died. Why was it in a box in the closet?

  In the next instant she realized that whatever was in this box hadn’t been organized by the police. They probably didn’t even know it existed. Unlike the boxes the police had sterilized, this box was exactly as Wendy had left it. Chaotic. Disorganized. Representative of Wendy herself?

  Sadie felt a naughty kind of rebellion take hold of her as she anticipated learning things from the contents of this box that the police didn’t know about. She immediately cast aside every other task as the anticipation of beating the police to some information took hold of her completely. She pulled the box in front of the desk chair, then settled herself into it—eager to get started, but perhaps even more eager to finish.

  Chapter 15

  By 10 a.m. Sadie had found all the missing phone bills except January’s in the box. She also really wanted to talk to Rodger Penrose after confirming seventeen phone calls to him in March and twenty-one in April. She considered asking Pete his opinion but then wondered why she felt like she needed his permission. She was Wendy’s sister, after all. She didn’t need police authority to call and talk to her ex-brother-in-law, did she? Assuming it was him Wendy was talking to when she made those calls.

  She wasn’t nervous to call, not even anxious, just eager to learn more about Wendy. The line rang three times before going to voice mail, where a female voice thanked her for calling Next Faces and asked her to leave a message after the tone so that one of their representatives could get in touch for them. “Reach for the stars,” the girl said before the message ended and a tone sounded.

  “Hi, my name is
Sadie Hoffmiller. I’m calling in regards to my sister, Wendy Penrose. I would appreciate a call back at your earliest convenience. I have some questions I want to ask whomever it was she was communicating with at your office.” She left her cell phone number and ended the call, hoping someone would call her back. The sooner the better.

  Disappointed not to have been able to talk to a real person, but glad to have planted the seed, Sadie returned to the box full of papers and began sorting once more, using the desk for all the different piles she was making.

  After half an hour, Sadie had to stand up and take a short walk around the apartment. Deciding what to throw out and what to keep was so much harder than she’d expected. There was history amid the credit card receipts and confirmations, and those things might mean . . . something.

  For instance, Wendy had flown to Las Vegas two years ago. Why? With whom? There was a receipt from a café dated over a year ago that showed two meals—with whom had Wendy eaten and why had she picked up the tab? There was a letter from a refugee organization thanking her for her donation. Did Wendy give donations on a regular basis? What criteria did she look for in a charity, and how much money had she given? Thinking of Wendy as a charitable person was another layer Sadie had to add to her sister’s disjointed persona. She felt confused about what she was really looking for—a connection to her sister, or an aspect of her history that might explain her death? Both? Neither?

  The task was giving Sadie a headache because she argued with herself over the significance of almost everything. In the end, she’d set aside far more than she’d thrown out, and it frustrated her to know that everything she kept would have to be looked at again, considered again, stressed over again. And what if she’d thrown away something that ended up being important? Maybe having had the police go through everything first was better than being the one who had to decide. Had the police thrown things away too, she wondered, or had they filed everything they gathered?