Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) Read online

  © 2014 Josi S. Kilpack.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain®. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Praise for the Culinary Mystery Series

  Rocky Road

  “Another fabulous installment of the Sadie Hoffmiller series. The further I got into the story, the more complex it became . . . definitely a rocky road of a plot!”

  —Heather Moore, author of Heart of the Ocean and the Timeless Romance anthologies, http://www.hbmoore.com/

  Baked Alaska

  “Sadie is a well-loved character with plenty of genuine issues which add depth to her personality. I love that Josi’s books are clean and well-rounded with a bit of humor, plenty of mystery, and nail-biting suspense.”

  —Rachelle Christensen, author of Wrong Number and Caller ID, http://www.rachellejchristensen.com/

  Tres Leches Cupcakes

  “Kilpack is a capable writer whose works have grown and taken on a life of their own. Tres Leches Cupcakes is an amusing and captivating addition to her creative compilations.”

  —Mike Whitmer, Deseret News

  Banana Split

  “In Banana Split, Josi Kilpack has turned a character that we’ve come to love as an overzealous snoop and given her the breath of someone real so we can love her even more. This is a story with an ocean’s depth’s worth of awesome!”

  —Julie Wright, author of the Hazardous Universe series

  Pumpkin Roll

  “Pumpkin Roll is different from the other books in the series, and while the others have their tense moments, this had me downright nervous and spooked. During the climax, I kept shaking my head, saying, ‘No way this is happening.’ Five out of five stars for this one. I could not stop reading.”

  —Mindy Holt, www.ldswomensbookreview.com

  Blackberry Crumble

  “Josi Kilpack is an absolute master at leading you to believe you have everything figured out, only to have the rug pulled out from under you with the turn of a page. Blackberry Crumble is a delightful mystery with wonderful characters and a white-knuckle ending that’ll leave you begging for more.”

  —Gregg Luke, author of Blink of an Eye

  Key Lime Pie

  “I had a great time following the ever-delightful Sadie as she ate and sleuthed her way through nerve-racking twists and turns and nail-biting suspense.”

  —Melanie Jacobsen, author of The List and Not My Type, http://www.readandwritestuff.blogspot.com/

  Devil’s Food Cake

  “Josi Kilpack whips up another tasty mystery where startling twists and delightful humor mix in a confection as delicious as Sadie Hoffmiller’s devil’s food cake.”

  —Stephanie Black, four-time winner of the Whitney Award for Mystery/Suspense

  English Trifle

  “English Trifle is a delightful combo of mystery and gourmet cooking, highly recommended.”

  —Midwest Review Journal, October 2009

  Lemon Tart

  “The novel has a bit of everything. It’s a mystery, a cookbook, a low-key romance and a dead-on depiction of life. . . . That may sound like a hodgepodge. It’s not. It works. Kilpack blends it all together and cooks it up until it has the taste of, well . . . of a tangy lemon tart.”

  —Jerry Johnston, Deseret News

  “Lemon Tart is an enjoyable mystery with a well-hidden culprit and an unlikely heroine in Sadie Hoffmiller. Kilpack endows Sadie with logical hidden talents that come in handy at just the right moment.”

  —Shelley Glodowski, Midwest Book Review, June 2009

  Culinary Mysteries

  Lemon Tart

  English Trifle

  Devil’s Food Cake

  Key Lime Pie

  Blackberry Crumble

  Pumpkin Roll

  Banana Split

  Tres Leches Cupcakes

  Baked Alaska

  Rocky Road

  Wedding Cake

  (coming Fall 2014)

  Her Good Name

  Sheep’s Clothing

  Unsung Lullaby

  Daisy

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kilpack, Josi S., author.

  Fortune cookie / Josi S. Kilpack.

  pages cm

  Summary: Sadie Hoffmiller is busily adding the final touches to her wedding plans, but the arrival of a mysterious letter that bears a San Francisco postmark and no return address could change everything. The only person Sadie knows in San Francisco is her older sister, Wendy, whom she hasn’t seen or heard from since their mother’s funeral nearly fifteen years ago.

  ISBN 978-1-60907-787-7 (paperbound)

  1. Hoffmiller, Sadie—Fiction. 2. Cooks—Fiction. 3. Weddings—Planning—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.I412F67 2014

  813'.54—dc232013039827

  Printed in the United States of America

  Lake Book Manufacturing, Inc., Melrose Park, IL

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek

  Sneak Peek of Wedding Cake

  Recipes

  Recipes from Fortune Cookie

  Wonderful Jam Bars

  Fresh Peach Pie

  Gyoza

  Ghirardelli Truffle Cookies with Sea Salt

  Chicken Tetrazzini

  Green Goddess Dressing

  Nutella-Stuffed French Toast

  Chicken Corn Chowder

  Cheater Sourdough Bread

  Apple Streusel Cake

  Frittata

  Fortune Cookies

  Dedication

  To Madison

  May your beautiful wings take you everywhere you want to go but never forget their way home.

  Chapter 1

  Sadie Hoffmiller had always liked things to be just so. “A place for everything and everything in its place” was efficient, consistent, and reduced both stress and loss. Certainly the investigations she’d been involved in over the last few years had shaken up some of her confidence in being able to keep things as they should be, but for the most part, she felt the changes that the disruptions had caused were for the better. She felt more capable of recovering from difficulties, more aware of what went on around her, and increasingly confident in her ability to take life as it came and respond accordingly. Even the li
ngering threat on her life was something she had come to terms with, knowing she might one day face it but hoping that perhaps the threat had disappeared.

  Despite her confidence at being able to fix things gone wrong, however, she still preferred order to chaos when she had any say in the matter, and of all things Sadie should be able to control, her own wedding was it. Which is why the four-by-nine-inch envelope sitting in the middle of her kitchen table terrified her.

  The wedding invitations she’d spent the last two days preparing were stacked on the entry table of her living room waiting for her to take them to the post office in the morning so they would go out before the Fourth of July holiday. She hoped the post office would have a wedding-specific stamp that would be the perfect final touch. Even if the people living out of state couldn’t be there, she wanted them to celebrate the occasion with her, and completing all the invitations before the festivities of the national holiday had been a goal she took great pride in accomplishing.

  And yet the lone envelope on the table had been sent to her. Sadie had discovered it in today’s mail this afternoon and had been working up the courage to open it for hours. Was it mocking her? Egging her on? Or simply staring back at her as a reminder that not everything in her life could be controlled and anticipated?

  There was a return address in San Francisco along with the name Doang in the upper left-hand corner. While the name was unfamiliar, Sadie only knew one person who lived in San Francisco: her older sister, Wendy, whom she hadn’t seen for years. Perhaps Doang was Wendy’s current last name. Sadie worried that Wendy had somehow learned about the wedding, and though some of Sadie’s chronic curiosity was certainly triggered by the unexpected letter, it hadn’t been enough to overcome her reluctance to invite her sister back into her life. Especially now.

  The timer on the stove buzzed, and Sadie pulled the final pan of jam bars from the oven; she’d managed to come up with a dozen tasks around the house to delay the inevitable opening of that envelope. She’d been trying not to bake after six o’clock in the evening—she had a size twelve wedding dress to fit into, after all, and at the age of fifty-eight, she couldn’t simply eat salads for a week to drop a few pounds before the big day—but the letter had knocked her off the proverbial wagon, and so she got a start on the variety of cookies she’d promised for the Garrison Fourth of July bake sale. That Wendy disliked their mother’s jam bar recipe was purely coincidental.

  The digital time display on her microwave read 9:44 p.m. Tomorrow would be a full day of both wedding and holiday preparations now that she was home and sufficiently recovered from her vacation-turned-investigation in Utah last week. Pete’s daughters and their families were coming up for the Fourth, giving Sadie the chance to continue building those relationships. The wedding was only three and a half weeks away, and there was still so much to do. Mrs. Peter Cunningham. Wow.

  Her eyes strayed back to the envelope on the table, and now that she had nothing left to distract her, she felt ridiculous for having put this off for the better part of the day. Resolved, Sadie grabbed her letter opener from the drawer of the desk in her living room and then picked up the envelope with her other hand. The handwriting looked different from what she expected—that is, if she’d expected this at all, which she hadn’t.

  “Wendy,” Sadie said out loud. Her sister’s name sounded strange on her tongue. It was sad that they were so disconnected, and yet Sadie had little motivation to reach out to change what had always been a difficult relationship. Wendy was five years older than Sadie and the source of many frightening memories from Sadie’s childhood, including broken and missing toys, finding dead spiders in her oatmeal, and on more than one occasion being locked in a closet for hours while their parents were gone.

  Wendy left home at seventeen, creating a void in the lives of Sadie’s parents that was never remedied. Despite all the chaos and difficulty she’d brought into the family, Wendy was still their daughter, and they’d always hoped to be a part of her life. Now and then, she’d contact them to ask for money or to throw a tantrum about one issue or another, but for the most part she stayed out of their lives.

  Sadie hadn’t seen Wendy since their mother’s funeral almost fifteen years earlier. Wendy had only stayed in town for four hours, long enough to put her rose on the casket and rifle through Mom’s jewelry box. When their father died just four years ago, Sadie had tracked her sister down—still living in San Francisco—only to have Wendy say she couldn’t get away for the funeral but she’d send flowers. She didn’t send any flowers, and Sadie and her brother, Jack, followed their father’s casket from the church without even a whisper about Wendy’s absence. After that, Sadie had stopped sending Christmas cards that had never been reciprocated, she stopped marking Wendy’s birthday on her calendar at the start of each new year, and each time she thought about her sister, she forced herself to think of something else. For all intents and purposes, Sadie didn’t have a sister and never really had. She hadn’t even told Pete about her, other than admitting Wendy existed.

  Sadie inhaled deeply, hoping to control the growing anxiety that thoughts of Wendy induced. The scent of baking in the air didn’t relax her like it usually did. No doubt she would eat a dozen bars herself before finally going to bed tonight. She’d faced off with murderers and psychopaths during the last few years, but her sister could send her into a panic with just a simple letter Sadie hadn’t even read yet.

  Sadie slid the letter opener into the corner of the envelope. The thin blade sliced smoothly through the paper with barely a whisper. She pulled out a sheet of lined paper that revealed a newspaper article enfolded within it. Intrigued yet hesitant, she unfolded the newsprint and was a bit confused by the partial coupon for Fourth of July flower arrangements until she realized that must be the back side. She turned the article over and read the heading.

  Woman found dead in Mission District apartment

  Sadie’s heart rate increased as she read the opening lines about a burned and badly decomposed body being found after an anonymous call to 911 about an apartment fire. Sadie clenched her eyes shut as the house seemed to shift beneath her, but when she opened them, they wouldn’t focus on the rest of the words, as though they were unwilling to read more. Unable to process it, she put the article down and pushed it away from her, her head tingling. After catching her breath, she turned her attention to the lined paper she still held in her shaky hand.

  Ms. Hoffmiller,

  My name is Ji Edward Doang. My natural mother was your sister, Wendy Wright Penrose, and I found your address among her possessions. Her body was found in her apartment June 25th, and I thought you would want to know. I am working to clear her apartment before the tenth of the month and determine what to do with her remains when the autopsy is complete. If you are available, I would appreciate your help as it is a big job and I am quite busy with family and work. If I don’t hear from you, I will understand. I was not close with her either.

  Chapter 2

  After reading the letter three times, Sadie texted Pete that she was coming over, and although he replied to ask her what was wrong, she simply told him she’d explain when she got there. What she needed to talk about wasn’t text-message material.

  The porch light was on when she pulled into the driveway, and upon reaching his front door with a plate of jam bars in hand, she took a breath and knocked three times. The decision to come at all hadn’t been an entirely conscious one; she’d just known she needed to talk to him, needed his advice and support, and so here she was, banging on his door long after the sun had set.

  A night breeze made the realty sign planted in Pete’s front yard sway back and forth, adding a creaking sound to the chirp of crickets that accompanied the summer night. Both Pete and Sadie had put their homes up for sale a week earlier with the idea that they would buy something new together—a symbol of their new start. Potential buyers had even come through both homes—one for Sadie and three for Pete, who had a two-car garage and doubl
e ovens—but no offers had been made on either home so far.

  The click of the lock drew Sadie’s attention, and she straightened as Pete pulled the door open, shrugging his shoulder into a flannel shirt; he had on a T-shirt underneath. His salt-and-pepper hair was mussed, as though he’d already been in bed. His beard was perfectly trimmed, and his hazel eyes were clear and searching. She felt exposed beneath his gaze. Sadie’s hair had a little more pepper than his did and was currently styled in a sleek A-line stacked bob that showed off the different shades of gray she’d come to terms with.

  “I brought you some jam bars,” she said, holding out the plastic-covered plate while he began buttoning up his shirt. There had been twelve bars on the plate when she left home, but it was a seven-minute drive to his house, and Sadie had managed to eat two in that time. She’d need to vacuum her car tomorrow; jam bars were crumbly and not the kind of treat one should typically eat while driving.

  Pete stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him, watching her closely as he took the plate. “You didn’t come over to give me cookies.”

  Sadie attempted a smile but knew it looked false when Pete pulled his eyebrows together.

  “Sadie,” he said with a mixture of reprimand, fatigue, and concern. “What’s going on?”

  Sadie held his eyes, relieved that he knew her so well. Why she couldn’t come clean on her own, she didn’t know, but this situation had become a blur of emotion and frozen feelings. Wishes and remembrances were twisted together like those parasitical vines that choked entire trees to death in the rain forests.

  She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and withdrew the folded envelope. She held it out to him, and he transferred the plate of cookies to one hand so he could take the letter with the other. Sadie turned and sat on the top step of Pete’s porch, looking out across the darkened neighborhood and wrapping her arms around herself.