Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “Um, yes,” Sadie said. She’d look it up on her phone to make sure, but since her hotel was called Galleria Park, and the mall where the restaurant was located was right next to it, it seemed likely they were talking about the same place. “I’ve heard good things about it.” Which was totally untrue, but Sadie did love soup.

  “I can meet you there in about twenty minutes, but I only have forty minutes after that. I have a very busy schedule.”

  By the time she finished the call, Sadie was mildly panicked. She didn’t have a car and, while she knew the area she was going to, she had no idea how to get there. She turned to Ji, who had listened to her side of the conversation while he gathered up the hangers and put them in their own box. “Is there any way you can drive me?” she asked.

  “I didn’t bring a car, but you can get a taxi or take the muni. That’s how I got here, and it’s faster than driving, anyway.”

  Sadie had no idea what the muni was. “Taxi,” she said with a nod. “Do I need to call one or can I just hail one from the street?”

  “I’ll help you get one.”

  “That would be great.” Sadie pulled out her phone to text Pete about the change of plans.

  “Why is it so important to have lunch with Rodger?” Ji asked while he stuffed more hangers into the box.

  “I think he’s hiding something,” Sadie said bluntly. She finished the text and then opened the Internet browser on her phone, searching for “Soup Kitchen Galleria San Francisco.”

  “What do you mean?” Ji asked.

  Sadie looked up, realizing how cryptic she sounded. “If someone killed Wendy, they had to have a motive to do it.” A list of links came up on her phone, and she clicked on a map that showed her how to get to the restaurant. “And whatever that motive is will be something whoever killed her doesn’t want anyone to know. Rodger said Wendy wasn’t in his life, but she called his office twenty-one times in April. I want to know why.”

  Ji frowned. “You think Rodger might have killed her? Even the police can’t say for sure that she was murdered.”

  “And, so far, they can’t say that she wasn’t, but I think circumstances are strange enough to keep that possibility open.”

  Ji went back to the hangers, but he looked thoughtful—the heavy kind of thinking—about what she’d said.

  She tried to explain it better so it would be less upsetting to Ji, who wasn’t as familiar as she was with cases like these. “If someone killed her, they deserve to be accountable for it. I’m good at talking to people, and I want to make my own assessment of Rodger Penrose to see if he might have a motive for murder. If nothing else, maybe he was tired of paying the alimony—but maybe there’s another motive in there somewhere, too.”

  Ji seemed to accept that, but he remained thoughtful as he picked up the last of the hangers. “Are you ready to get a taxi?”

  Sadie nodded and followed him to the common area, said good-bye to Mario, who was measuring out some baseboard on the kitchen counter, and exited the apartment. She’d seen plenty of the brightly colored cars that seemed to make up the majority of the taxi fleet scurrying around the city, but of course there were none readily available once they reached the curb. She had less than fifteen minutes to get to the Galleria, and although the map she’d pulled up on her phone confirmed that the restaurant wasn’t geographically far away, she had low expectations of the traffic in this city. Hopefully a cab driver would know a shortcut.

  Ji stepped off the curb and waved his hand until the lime green taxi coming their direction changed lanes towards them. The car pulled to the curb a few seconds later.

  “Thank you for your help,” Sadie said. She moved toward the taxi but then turned back to Ji. “Oh, you’ll need the keys to get back in.” She reached into her purse and dug around for the keys to the apartment. The taxi honked at her, and she held up her index finger, indicating she needed a minute. She found the keys and handed them to Ji. When he took them, she gave his hand a little squeeze. “Wish me luck.”

  Ji smiled, at least as much as he ever did. “Luck.”

  Chapter 17

  Sadie’s nerves relaxed somewhat during the taxi ride to the restaurant as she mentally listed what she wanted to learn from Wendy’s ex-husband. Besides the official questions regarding their relationship and Wendy’s death, Sadie hoped she would learn something redeeming about her sister. That Rodger and Wendy were divorced didn’t seem to encourage her to think that he would have a lot of good to say, but if they had been talking every day, Sadie was willing to entertain the possibility. He seemed to be the only person with whom Wendy had had regular contact.

  The cab driver dropped her off around the corner from her ­hotel—at least she thought that was where she was—and she headed into the entrance of the small shopping mall called the Galleria.

  The San Francisco Soup Company turned out to be more like a sandwich shop than the restaurant she was expecting, but it smelled delicious. She took in the bright colors and big windows as she pulled open the glass door and scanned the patrons for Rodger. There were two men sitting by themselves—the one in the green polo shirt was far too young, mid-thirties was Sadie’s guess, and the second man looked way too old until Sadie did a double take. She realized the photo of Rodger on his website was apparently out of date by at least ten years. And possibly Photoshopped.

  Rodger had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, rather than the sandy blond from the photo, and shoulders that confirmed that, although he had to be in his mid-sixties, he obviously made it a priority to stay fit. He was an attractive man and exuded a level of class and professionalism. Once again, it was another spot of normal in Wendy’s life that Sadie had always assumed to be anything but.

  Sadie headed in his direction, and when he looked up at her, she saw recognition in the frozen moment before he stood. Sadie hadn’t thought much about whether she and Wendy looked alike, but from the expression on Rodger’s face suspected that they shared at least some features.

  “You must be Sadie,” he said, giving her a firm handshake once she reached the table. “You and Wendy have the same eyes.”

  It was strange to hear that. They had the same eyes? Really? She cleared her throat and smiled. “Thank you for meeting with me. I really appreciate it.”

  His teeth were amazingly white when he smiled, his eyebrows perfectly shaped, and his hands soft. Rodger Penrose was a man who could afford luxuries. “What good is being the boss if you can’t sneak in a lunch break now and then?” His eyes crinkled as his smile deepened. He motioned toward the cafeteria-style counter. “I haven’t ordered yet—shall we?”

  Sadie followed him to the counter, where he ordered a bowl of chicken corn chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. Chowder sounded good, but Sadie skipped the bread—she had a wedding dress to think of. Besides, she had a super easy cheater sourdough recipe she could make after the wedding pictures. Sometimes the only way she could accept missing out on something delicious was to promise it to herself later.

  They picked up the plastic trays holding their bowls of soup at the end of the counter, but when Sadie tried to pay for hers, Rodger waved her off. She thanked him, and he told her it was his pleasure. Charming indeed. Her eagerness to learn about Wendy from his perspective was growing, and she hoped they wouldn’t waste too much time with small talk. As it was, she hadn’t expected him to be so open and gracious.

  They returned to the table and got their meals situated. Rodger smiled at her over their steaming bowls of soup and asked her what it was she hoped to learn from him. Sadie took his directness at face value.

  “Mostly I’m just trying to rebuild my sister’s history,” she said. “She left home when she very young and pretty much cut us off. I know so little about her life after that—and then it ended so tragically. I’d appreciate anything you can tell me about her.”

  Rodger accepted her explanation with a nod. “Well, she and I met back in, oh boy, the mid-80s, I guess, when she contracted with my modeling
agency.”

  “She worked as a model?” Sadie already knew this, of course, but asking questions she already knew the answers to would help her determine if he were being honest with her. You could never be too careful.

  Rodger nodded. “Local advertisers mostly. She was in her thirties and did a lot of what we call mom-spots. We’d really hoped to get her into some TV, but it never quite worked out. When things didn’t stay consistent enough, we hired her to help in the office. After a little while, she and I started dating. She was a real spitfire; we had a great time together.”

  Sadie found it both sad and ironic that Wendy could play the mom in advertisements but couldn’t do it in real life.

  “When did the two of you get married?”

  “In 1989. We’d been living together for a year or so and decided to make it official.” He took a bite of his soup, reminding Sadie of her own, which she stirred.

  “And how long were you married?”

  “Eight years.”

  “Can I ask why you split up?”

  His smile faltered, and he looked into his soup for a moment before meeting Sadie’s eyes. “I’m not sure how much you want to know about Wendy. I have no desire to sully her memory.”

  “I want to know the truth,” Sadie said with sincerity. “I know she wasn’t what you would call well.”

  He seemed to relax slightly once he knew she wasn’t expecting a pretty story. She still hoped for something good, however.

  “No, Wendy wasn’t well, though I didn’t realize the extent of things until after we were married. I found out later she’d been on medication that had evened her out up until then, but then she stopped taking it after we’d been together for a while. She said she didn’t like the side effects, but without those meds . . .” He looked at his soup again and took a breath. “Well, we had some pretty intense moments.”

  Rodger went on to describe Wendy’s mood swings, out-of-­control spending, and arguments that would sometimes last for days on end. “There was this one night, a few years into our marriage, when we’d had some friends over for dinner. She was in one of her moods, sulky and drinking way too much. Eventually, she started picking a fight with me. Our friends were there but she wouldn’t let off.

  “She started bringing up things from our past, issues I thought we had resolved a long time ago, and no matter what I said to try to deflect her, she kept going and going and going. Finally, she ran upstairs and locked herself in our room. I was so embarrassed and made apologies to our friends while assuring everyone we were okay.

  “After our guests left, I went upstairs to talk to her and found that she had taken a nail file and destroyed every piece of art we had upstairs—which was a substantial collection and even included some of her own work—then gone to bed as though it were any other night. I woke her up and she freaked out over the damage, acting as though she knew nothing about it. I told her I knew she’d done it, and she broke into tears, pointing out that she would never destroy her own paintings. She swore up and down that it wasn’t her, that it must have been one of the people at the party. She used it as an excuse to remind me how much she’d always hated my friends.

  “I think about it now and wonder why I didn’t leave her right that minute, but the more we talked about it, the more confused I was, until I finally just called my insurance adjuster and went with her story—someone had gone upstairs during a party and ruined the art. They did an investigation and everything, but I didn’t share my suspicions and they couldn’t prove anything specific. She never did fess up to it.”

  He talked about other instances where their fighting had resulted in the cops coming to their home in Pacific Heights and threatening them both with arrest. “It’s not something I’m proud of, and I take my share of accountability for setting her off on occasion, but she could bring out the devil in me like no one else I’ve ever known.” He looked into his soup as he filled his spoon with the next bite.

  “You put up with it for eight years before you left?”

  His eyes snapped to meet Sadie’s. “I didn’t leave—she did.”

  Sadie pulled her eyebrows together. “She left you?” An attractive, financially stable, normal man?

  “I loved Wendy, and I took our vows seriously—in sickness and in health and all that. I set her up with a therapist on more than one occasion, and she cycled through some different medications now and then, but she eventually admitted that she liked the level of feelings she had and didn’t want to take the medications anymore. She enjoyed the high times enough to deal with the dark spots, and she didn’t really care what kind of impact that made on anyone else.”

  “So she did receive a diagnosis?” Sadie asked, eager to have her suspicions confirmed.

  Rodger shrugged. “One doctor said she was manic depressive, another said it was a personality disorder, and another one said it was due to low thyroid.” He shrugged. “She didn’t agree with any of them, and although I wasn’t sure if I could handle a lifetime of her chaos, I was willing to try. Then she met someone else and just like that moved across town, hired an absolute shark of a divorce attorney, and informed me that she’d only ever married me for my money and she didn’t have to have me to get it. It wasn’t until she was gone that I realized how twisted things had become between us.” He paused. “Maybe the sickest part is that I still miss her sometimes.”

  Sadie was too surprised to comment. Why would anyone miss that kind of dysfunction?

  Rodger took another bite of soup and seemed to notice Sadie’s silence. “Wendy was intense, but a lot of the time it was a good kind of intense. She had such an energy about her. Don’t get me wrong, I know she was a disaster and us splitting up was the best thing that could have happened to me, but the point I guess I’m trying to make is that ending our marriage was her idea, not mine.”

  “But the two of you remained on good terms?” Sadie asked, thinking of the phone calls Wendy had placed to him.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said as though it were completely normal for a couple with so much drama to be friends after a messy divorce.

  “May I ask why? I mean, you knew she had all kinds of problems and believed she’d married you for your money—so why stay connected to her?”

  “Because she didn’t have anyone else,” Rodger said. He held her eyes, and Sadie felt sure he was making the point that since her family wasn’t helping, he’d had to step up.

  “She left us too, just like she left you,” Sadie couldn’t keep from saying. “My parents tried to keep in contact with her.”

  “Well, sure, but you can hardly blame her for not inviting them back into her life. Not after the way they treated her.”

  Sadie blinked and felt her chest fill with heat. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, your dad’s alcoholism and your mother’s depression; you have to know that her problems stemmed a great deal from the abuse she suffered as a child. It left some pretty deep scars.”

  The heat in Sadie’s chest got stronger and hotter. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “It wasn’t like that,” she said as calmly as she possibly could. She wanted to ask exactly what Wendy had said, get details and facts she could dispute, but she worried it would take the conversation off track. Still, she felt she owed it to her parents to say something in their defense. “Wendy was the source of chaos in our home. My parents were kind and loving. She wasn’t mistreated.”

  Rodger nodded, as though pretending to believe her. “You should try the soup before it’s cold. It’s really quite good.”

  Sadie didn’t like his blatant dismissal but decided to take a few moments in order to rein in her emotions and regain her focus. The soup was good and tasted like it was made with fresh corn, just like her own corn chowder recipe. She’d have to try her chowder with chicken some time; she liked the density it added to the soup. After a few bites, and some substantial calming on her part, she got back to the point of the discussion.

  “What happened to the
relationship Wendy left you for?”

  Sadie worried she was being too pointed—she hadn’t expected them to talk in so much personal detail—but he wasn’t putting a stop to it. This man had loved Wendy, perhaps still did, which made the potential scope of information he could give Sadie very important.

  “I don’t know what happened with the guy she left me for. We didn’t keep in contact those first couple of years after the divorce; in fact, I didn’t hear from her until she was working on getting her own place.”

  “Why did she get in touch after all that time?”

  “She needed first and last month’s rent. She was lousy with money and asked if I would help her out.”

  “Did you?”

  “I wanted her to be stable, and I thought that her getting a place of her own was a good sign that she was becoming more independent. I’d come to realize by then that Wendy always seemed to have a man in her life. For the first time, she didn’t, and I wanted that to work out.”

  He was certainly generous. Too generous? “I assume that’s the same apartment she died in,” Sadie said after doing the math in her head. Ji had said Wendy had lived in the same apartment for twelve years.

  Rodger nodded, his expression remorseful.

  “How did you feel when you heard about her death?”

  “Terrible, of course. But not that surprised. It was like Wendy to go out with some drama.”

  “Do you think she was murdered?”

  Rodger furrowed his eyebrows. “Is that what the police think?”

  “I’m not sure what the police think,” Sadie hedged, “but I know it’s a consideration.”

  “I told them I thought it was far more likely that she committed suicide and the robbery was connected to the fire.”

  “Really?” Sadie asked, surprised. She thought of the new pajamas Wendy had purchased two days before the estimated day of her death. It was a small thing to be sure—pajamas were just pajamas, after all—but it seemed to indicate an expected continuation of her life, right? Plus, the police didn’t suspect suicide.