Pete lifted his eyebrows, and Sadie shuddered at the idea of the people in Wendy’s life being matters of convenience. It was an interesting way to say it, but Sadie could see the truth of it—hadn’t Wendy discarded everyone once they were no longer convenient for her to have close by?
“Well, she hated dogs too,” Shasta added, dropping her head to kiss her pink poodle’s fluffy pompadour. She looked up again. “She told Stephen that my Annie piddled in the hallway, which was a complete fabrication, of course. Tried to get a no-pet policy in the building until she realized that I would be grandfathered in regardless of whether the rest of the building agreed to her petition. Then she left chocolate bars out on the grass strip—knowing that chocolate would make my Annie sick if she ate any of it. Basically, she was a nightmare.” She looked toward Sadie and gave another of her insulting grins. “No offense, dear.”
“Oh, Sadie didn’t have anything to do with her sister,” Pete said casually. “She understands better than most how hard she was to deal with.”
“Oh, really?” Shasta said, appraising Sadie in a new way. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Like I said, she hated everyone—and it seems I was right that everyone hated her back.” She turned to take another look out the front windows and bent down to whisper something to her dog in the process.
With the woman’s back turned, Sadie narrowed her eyes at Pete as playfully as she could before jumping back into the conversation.
“Did Wendy ever have any visitors that you know of?” Sadie asked.
Shasta turned and lifted one penciled-in eyebrow. “I did not keep track of who came and went from her place.” There was a touch of indignation in her voice, as though the idea of knowing who came to visit Wendy was beneath her.
Pete was unfazed by her response and pushed forward with a question of his own. “The prior tenant in number six saw a Chinese girl coming to see Wendy a few times. Do you know anything about that?”
“A Chinese girl coming to see Wendy? Was she bringing takeout?” Shasta laughed at her own joke, and Sadie and Pete both kept their smiles on, though Sadie could tell that Pete’s enjoyment of this conversation was waning, too.
“So you didn’t see her?” Sadie asked.
Shasta scratched her dog’s head. “I may have,” she said, looking thoughtful. “Like I said, I’m not one to track the comings and goings of the other people in this building. Not like Wendy, who loved to keep track of people so she could cause trouble, like her terrible treatment of my Annie.” She nuzzled the dog’s head again.
“You must have been excited when the apartment became available.” Pete asked, surprising Sadie with his candid question and the fact that he wasn’t pursuing the Chinese granddaughter angle a bit longer.
“Oh my, yes,” Shasta said with a smile, lifting her chin. “After exercising such patience for so long, I finally attained my goal. Two bedrooms is hard to come by, did I mention that already?”
“It doesn’t bother you that Wendy died here?” Sadie couldn’t help but ask.
Shasta blinked at her, leading Sadie to believe that she was just now thinking about that. “Well, of course, that is unfortunate, but, well, no one lives forever.”
“She may have been murdered,” Sadie added, ignoring the look Pete shot at her. “Does that bother you?”
“Murdered? No, no, no,” Shasta said emphatically, shaking her head so that her baby pink hair shifted slightly, but not much. Hairspray. “She died of natural causes.”
“And what do you think of the fire?” Sadie asked. “Seems an odd coincidence, doesn’t it?”
Shasta looked away from them, but took her time formulating an answer, which made Sadie wonder if she were looking for the perfect words. “The police said it was a burglary. The robbers must have found her in the tub and thought they’d get blamed for that, right? So they tried to burn the whole building down. It’s a wonder we all didn’t go up in smoke.” She shuddered and stroked her dog again. “It was absolutely terrifying.”
“I’ll bet,” Pete said while Sadie clenched her jaw to keep from saying something rude. This was all about Shasta; no consideration for Wendy’s death. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary the night of the fire?”
“I didn’t see anything or anyone,” she said, then let out a dramatic sigh. “The police asked me all about that already, you know. Whoever did it was in and out before the rest of us even knew what was happening.”
Mario returned from lunch and quickly ducked into the bedroom after they all exchanged hellos—except for Shasta, who just watched him as though suspicious of his being there. He closed the bedroom door behind him.
Sadie’s phone chimed a text message, and she was surprised at how relieved she felt to have an excuse to leave the room. She made her apologies and returned to the office. The text was from Jack, asking how things were going.
She replied simply that things were fine, and she’d give him a call later that night with a more detailed update, but that she could use his help in deciding what to do about Wendy’s body. He said he’d look into some funeral homes in the area, and they could talk about it that night. Sadie was relieved to have at least one thing taken off her list and thanked him for the help.
After finishing the texted conversation, Sadie turned back to the box still in need of being sorted but only stared into it for minute, increasingly annoyed that no one had noticed Wendy was gone. No one cared enough to check on her and, though Sadie had cycled through those thoughts a dozen times, they still bothered her—redundant or not. Rodger had been relieved that Wendy wasn’t calling anymore. Shasta was excited to get the bigger apartment. Surely Mr. Pilings was relieved to not have to deal with Wendy’s complaints.
And Sadie? Was Sadie also relieved not to worry about what she could do to have a relationship with her sister? In the back of her mind she’d always hoped to have a relationship with Wendy—maybe through resolving some personality defect in herself or discovering some kind of support she could offer to open the possibility of having a real sister. Was she relieved that she no longer had to wonder what she could do because any chance of progress was no longer possible? Sadie hated that thought, hated how true it might be. And yet she wasn’t feeling relieved about anything right now. She was as steeped in the stress caused by her sister as she’d ever been.
She shook herself out of yet another train of convoluted thought and forced herself to focus on the new information they’d learned from Shasta: the rental addendum. She wished she had the police files here so she could verify the terms, but since the files weren’t here, she had to add it to a growing mental list of all she would need to look into back at the hotel.
She began sorting the final contents of the box and could see the bottom of the tub in some places when Pete finished talking to Shasta and showed her out.
“She is somethin’,” Pete said when he came into the office.
“Something as in ‘something awesome’ or ‘something weird’?” Sadie asked.
Pete laughed. “I don’t think there’s room in Shasta’s life for a relationship with anyone other than Annie. But she’s interesting to talk to all the same.”
“Did you learn anything new?”
“Only that Shasta is indeed an heiress. Her grandfather held stock in the company that became Xerox, and she receives payments from a trust. She’s quite proud of the fact that she’s never worked a day in her life, other than some movie sets she worked on when she was younger. ‘Glorious days,’ she called them. ‘Magnificent!’”
Sadie shook her head and picked up another stack of paper. “That woman epitomizes the word diva.”
“Yes, she does,” Pete said. “How are things going?”
“I’m almost done here,” Sadie said. “There’s really nothing left to do other than clean it up.” She threw some more junk mail into the garbage but added a charge card receipt from Neiman Marcus to the stack of them she’d been growing. That’s probably where Wendy bought all those fantasti
c shoes that part of Sadie still wanted to keep for herself. “Oh, we might want to bring the boxes I stacked by the living room window in here so they don’t accidentally get donated. They’re items I want to take back to the hotel.”
“Okay,” Pete said. A chime from his pocket indicated that he’d received a text message. He busied himself with his phone while Sadie finished sorting the last of the papers in the bin: a grocery store receipt, a magazine advertisement for a pair of boots, and a partially completed credit card application. Sadie looked at her sister’s handwriting for a few seconds—she had beautiful penmanship—then put the application on a stack of other miscellaneous financials. Pete continued his text conversation while Sadie paper clipped the different stacks of paper together, then put them in a whiskey box.
Pete slid the phone into his pocket at the same moment that Sadie closed the top of the box. She brushed her hand across the cardboard and scanned the nearly empty room. “I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I’ve just managed to condense someone’s entire life into half a dozen boxes. Her whole life—sixty-odd years—and this is what’s left. It feels so wrong.”
Sadie looked up to see a pained expression cross Pete’s face, confusing her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, but then he turned and walked out of the room.
Sadie paused a moment before following him into the kitchen. She put a hand on his arm, and he stopped, then looked at her over his shoulder.
“What did I say?” she asked. She recognized this tension—it was very similar to what she’d felt from him last night in regard to his memories of Pat and the hesitation about selling his house.
“Nothing, really. No big deal.” Pete took a breath, but when Sadie didn’t let him off the hook, his shoulders slumped slightly and he explained his reaction. “I told Brooke about the offer on the house, and she’s kind of upset about it.”
“Upset as in angry?” Sadie dropped her hand but kept looking at him.
“No,” Pete said, shaking his head. “Just . . . sad, I guess. She understands why I’m selling it, but her mother took her final breaths in that house and then . . .” He glanced past Sadie into the office, and she put two and two together.
“And then I commented on boxing up someone’s life.” If they accepted the offer on Pete’s house, everything left of Pat’s life would be packed up and stored, or given or thrown away.
Pete glanced at Sadie, then at the floor as he pushed his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know why this is getting so hard now.”
“For Brooke or for you?” Sadie tried not to let her hurt feelings show in her tone. She understood why he felt this way—she really did—but she hated it. She wanted to think about the future—their future—and he continued to get into the past—his past.
He didn’t answer her right away, but she waited him out. “Things are changing,” he said, as though it were that simple.
“In big ways,” she added. When he didn’t comment, she pushed forward, watching him closely as she spoke. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He gave her a questioning look. “Is this really something we can discuss?”
Sadie thought about that and, though she wanted to say yes, was she really prepared to talk to him about his dead wife, about how much he missed her, and how conflicted he was feeling about moving on with his life in a way he never imagined?
He’d told Sadie before that he’d had no expectation of dating or marrying again after Pat died; he was almost sixty years old at the time and could not imagine a life with anyone but her. Sadie was the first and only woman he’d felt attracted to or connected to since Pat’s death, and he was surprised by how natural and right everything had felt between them. Up until this trip, that was the singular impression Sadie had of Pete’s thoughts on the matter: he hadn’t expected to love again and was happy to have been wrong.
But now they were in this city and someone wanted to buy the last home he’d shared with Pat. Sadie couldn’t lie—to Pete or to herself—about the fact that this was uncomfortable or that she might even feel threatened, as much as she hated the idea that she could be. Pete needed a friend, he needed to talk things out, and though she wanted to be everything for him—could she be? Could she handle it?
They held each other’s gaze, and Sadie saw the growing look of disappointed understanding take over Pete’s expression. Though she’d said nothing out loud, just as he’d tried to keep his thoughts to himself, both of their internal processes were loud enough for the other to hear. He was struggling with memories of his wife. Sadie was unprepared to help him deal with them. They found themselves at a proverbial impasse that brought with it a river’s worth of insecurity and a thimble’s worth of resolution.
The intercom buzzed; Sadie was the first to break eye contact and accept the fortuitous change of topic. She lightened her tone as further indication that they were talking about something new as she moved toward the intercom. “That must be Ji’s friend. His name is Shots, can you believe that?” She said hello through the speaker.
It was indeed the Chinese share house that would clear out the last of Wendy’s things. She buzzed them in, then turned back to Pete, who, she could tell, was trying to find an explanation that would make her feel better about what he’d just admitted. She wasn’t sure which of them she was rescuing by not allowing him to attempt it. “Will you help me move the boxes I want to keep into the office?”
Pete looked at her, regret in his eyes, but finally turned away and looked at the boxes still by the window. “Sure.”
Sadie was already heading toward the boxes of shoes and photographs. She picked up the top box and turned toward the office. “I’ll label everything so we know what’s what. I have a Sharpie in my purse for just this type of situation.” Pete grabbed another box and followed her into the office, where they put the boxes down on the far end of the room, near the window. Sadie began labeling the top and sides while Pete moved the rest of the boxes and the landscape painting Sadie was still unsure about.
“I’m going to move Mario’s saw out of the way,” Pete said when he finished, leaving Sadie alone with her internal pity party.
Wasn’t it enough that she was clearing out her sister’s apartment? Wasn’t it enough that she had discovered very few positive things about this sister she’d never really known? Was it fair that she had to figure out how to navigate through Pete’s complex feelings, too?
Sadie let herself feel sorry for herself until the boxes were labeled and Shots came in—with perfect English and a playful grin. Three Chinese men of various ages came in behind him. Pete introduced Sadie and himself, pointed out the boxes in the office that the men weren’t supposed to take, and then turned them loose.
As soon as the men had left the apartment for their first trip down, Sadie remembered the nude painting of Wendy. She went into the bedroom and looked at it only long enough to determine how she was going to get it to the Dumpster. She angled the canvas against the dresser and brought her foot down on the inner frame, snapping it in the middle. She snapped the other side, folded the painted sides together, and then carried it down the stairs. She felt bad for having destroyed Wendy’s work, but she didn’t want anyone else to stare at her naked sister. She felt better once it was in the Dumpster and she was on her way back upstairs.
Forty-five minutes later, two of the men carried the last piece of Wendy’s furniture—the desk from the office—from the place Wendy had called home for the last twelve years of her life. Pete and Shots had taken down the headboard as well, and hadn’t come back yet. The small elevator had turned out to be a struggle for some of the larger pieces, but they’d eventually made everything fit.
Mario’s music was playing in the bathroom, reminding Sadie of how soon the remodel would be done. Once the apartment was painted to Shasta’s tastes, Wendy would be entirely removed from this building—not even a nail hole left behind to tell the world she was ever here. Sadie looked around the empt
y rooms, finding it impossible not to give into the heartache she felt at the completion of this task. Maybe this feeling was exactly what Pete was afraid of in regard to selling his house—the emptiness, the proof that someone who once mattered was no longer there. Maybe Sadie understood it better than she thought. Better than she wanted to.
Chapter 21
Sadie heard Pete enter the apartment, and before he said anything, she cut him off. She didn’t want another apology. “You said you read the statement from Mr. Pilings earlier?” she asked.
He paused for a beat before shaking his head. “It wasn’t really a statement, just the notes about the conversation the police had with him when he showed up after the fire and then in a follow-up phone call.”
“Did he say anything about the rental addendum Shasta mentioned?”
Pete shook his head again.
“Someone ought to ask him why he left that out,” Sadie said, then let out a breath and felt her shoulders fall. Her mind moved on to the next unsettled item. “What do we do about Ji’s daughter?”
“I was thinking about that and wondered if we ought to go to his restaurant tonight. His daughters were working yesterday, so maybe they’re there again. We might be able to determine which daughter it was, and then maybe we can figure out how to ask Ji about it. Maybe us being there will coax more information from him. We have to remember that he doesn’t have a lot of reason to trust people associated with his mother.”
Sadie considered that and then nodded. She didn’t want to upset Ji with direct questions unless she was sure, but going to his restaurant for dinner was a good cover for learning a bit more about his daughters. “Maybe talking to him in his own space would make him more comfortable,” she said. Plus, she’d liked the dim sum, and she and Pete had been in a good place—relationship-wise—when they’d eaten there yesterday. “But on the phone he made it sound as though he didn’t really want to see me again.”
“If something happened while you were gone today, there might be an explanation for him giving that impression. I think if we act as though nothing has changed, he’ll go along with it—or perhaps give something away. Plus, we can see if his daughters or his wife accidentally gives us information, as well. I think it’s worth the risk.”
Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) Page 18
