Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) Page 3

  She could feel the regret within the sigh Jack let out before he spoke. “Oh, gosh, Sadie, I feel like the worst brother in the world to say I can’t, but . . . I can’t. I’m presenting at a seminar in Miami on Monday, and Carrie agreed to fly out there with me on Friday morning so we can have a few days together before the seminar.”

  Sadie raised her eyebrows. Jack and Carrie had had a difficult few years—very difficult. Sadie hadn’t known from one month to the next whether they were getting divorced or going to counseling or courting all over again, and she had stopped asking for fear that her questions made her baby brother uncomfortable. She did know that Jack was still living in an apartment across town while Carrie lived next door to Sadie, though they didn’t associate with each other much—things were awkward.

  “She’s going with you?” Sadie repeated—it was that hard to believe.

  Jack gave her an update about the state of his marriage: a breakthrough that had taken place in counseling and the support of their children toward a reconciliation. “It’s like when we were dating, Sadie,” Jack said, excitement and optimism thick in his words. “But better—more real. I think we’re going to make this work.”

  “I couldn’t be more happy for you,” Sadie said, meaning every word. Though Carrie and Sadie had never been close, that was no reason to question the potential happiness Jack and Carrie could find together, and Sadie would never begrudge him that.

  “I feel terrible leaving you to deal with this alone, though,” Jack said.

  “Don’t,” Sadie said. “Pete will be there with me.”

  “If it were just the seminar, I’d cancel,” Jack added.

  “Jack,” Sadie said with a small laugh. “It’s okay. And don’t feel bad, alright?”

  He apologized at least three more times, second-guessing and wondering out loud if he could change his plans, but Sadie responded each time with more insistence that his marriage was more important. He offered to help with any of Wendy’s final expenses, and Sadie promised to hold him to that. They ended the call when his 10:15 appointment showed up, but only after she promised to call him with daily updates.

  Sadie hung up, refusing to dwell on her disappointment at not having Jack go with her. Instead, she immediately called Wendy’s son before she let her anxiety level rise any higher than it already was.

  A man answered after the second ring. “Ni hao.”

  Hearing the Chinese greeting threw her, but just for a moment. She cleared her throat and regained her focus. “Hello, I’m calling for Gee or Jye—or maybe Eddie . . .”

  “Jee,” the man said. “This is me.”

  Ji, Sadie repeated to herself. My nephew. “Um, hi, my name is Sadie Hoffmiller. You wrote me a letter about my . . . about your . . . about Wendy.” She hated how hard it was to talk about her sister and wished she’d asked Pete to be here when she made this call. Surely she’d feel more confident if he were here.

  “Oh,” Ji said, sounding equally surprised to have her on the phone. He didn’t speak with an accent. “Yes. Hello.”

  “Hi,” Sadie said simply. “Um, thank you for writing to me, and for the article. I’m so sorry. What a horrible thing to deal with.”

  “Yes, it is horrible.”

  They both remained silent, waiting for the other person to speak. Sadie decided to get to the point rather than prolong the awkwardness. “Uh, you’d asked about me coming out to help with the apartment, and I wondered if it would be okay if we came on the fifth—after the holiday.”

  “We?”

  “Oh, my fiancé, Pete, will be coming to help as well.”

  “With three of us, the work should go quickly,” Ji said in a businesslike tone. “I visited the apartment on Friday and got the keys from Mr. Pilings, the landlord. I don’t think it will take us very long to pack everything up. I had considered giving most of her belongings to a Goodwill-type organization my friend is a part of, is that okay with you?”

  “That’s totally your decision,” Sadie said. “But sure, it’s fine with me.” She imagined Wendy had lived a rather desolate life and suspected she hadn’t acquired much of anything of value. Ji’s plan to donate her belongings seemed to emphasize that theory.

  Another awkward silence descended and though Sadie had a hundred questions to ask, Ji was reserved, and she was hesitant to be too pushy. “So, you live in San Francisco?”

  “Above our restaurant, yes.”

  “Oh, you own a restaurant? What kind?”

  “Chinese.”

  Duh, Sadie thought, shaking her head at her own stupidity.

  Ji continued. “We’re located on Sacramento Street in China­town. It’s called Choy’s.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Sadie said, trying to improve the impression she was making. “Maybe Pete and I will stop in for lunch while we’re there.”

  “Sure,” Ji said, but he didn’t sound excited about it like she’d hoped he would. “Perhaps you would like the number for Detective Lopez. He’s the investigator.”

  Sadie couldn’t help but wonder if Ji was trying to get off the phone with her. She hoped they would be more comfortable with one another in person. “That would be helpful,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He gave her the number and asked her to call him when she got into town on the fifth so they could make plans to clear the apartment. In the meantime Ji would set up a pickup time for the charity. They ended the call—it hadn’t even lasted two minutes—and Sadie went online to make flight reservations before she could change her mind.

  In the back of her mind was the continuing disbelief that this was happening. She was making plans to clean out the apartment where her sister—whom she hadn’t seen in fifteen years—had died. It was almost too much to think about, and while she knew she would have to accept the enormity of the situation eventually, for now she decided to treat this like any other case she’d been involved in. Whatever emotional journey she needed to take because of her connection to Wendy could come later.

  After she confirmed the two tickets from the Denver Inter­national Airport to Oakland on the morning of July fifth, Sadie looked at the number for Detective Lopez, reluctant to make the call for a number of reasons. She still needed to make two more batches of cookies, a potato salad, and two peach pies. Plus she needed to buy some fireworks. Not to mention figuring out what to wear tomorrow; she had multiple outfits of the patriotic variety so it could take some time to determine which one was just right this year. Pete was also coming over later to work on some minor repairs around the house that the realtor had suggested. How she wished all she had to do today was cook delicious food and hang out with Pete.

  Afraid of delaying so long that she’d talk herself out of it entirely, she dialed the number, feeling anxious and tense, and then let out a breath of relief when the call went to Detective Lopez’s voice mail. She left a message, explaining who she was and why she was calling, then asked that he call her back at his earliest convenience, which she secretly hoped would be two days from now. She hung up, feeling grateful for the reprieve, and then dove into her work with increased focus. She turned up the radio far louder than she usually would so as to better shield her from her own thoughts.

  Pete showed up around one o’clock with lunch—sandwiches from their favorite deli in town—and his toolbox. Sadie turned down the radio after he had to shout “Hello” to get her attention. After lunch, she returned to her pie making and Pete got going on his honey-do list. He was replacing a hinge on one of the kitchen cabinets when Sadie’s phone rang. Sadie glanced at the area code—San Francisco—before lifting the phone to her ear. She gave Pete a pointed look that kept his attention on her while he tightened the screws.

  “Hello,” she said into the phone. She continued to roll out the pie crust while holding the phone uncomfortably against her ­shoulder.

  “Hello, this is Detective Lopez with the San Francisco Police Department. I’m calling for Katie Hoffmiller?”

  “Sadie Hoffmiller,”
she said, correcting him. “Thank you for calling me back.”

  “Thank you for calling. I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you before now. When Mr. Doang said he was going to write you a letter, I moved you further down my list of people to talk to, but I fully expected to get back to you before this much time had passed.”

  “It’s fine,” Sadie said, hoping that his not having contacted her wasn’t a reflection to the attention that was being given to Wendy’s case.

  “What can I help you with?”

  “Well, my fiancé and I will be coming to San Francisco in a couple of days, and I thought it would be good to let you know I’d be in town and also to see what the status of the case is.”

  “Sure,” Detective Lopez said. There was a gruffness to his voice that didn’t quite match the upbeat nature of his speech, and she wondered if he were a smoker. “The case is active, and we’ve managed to talk to the tenants in her building as well as to a few associates. We’ve finished going through some paperwork we took from her apartment, but nothing has stood out. I’m afraid the state of the body was quite . . . poor, and so forensics hasn’t given us their final report yet.”

  Sadie asked about some of the details from the articles. No one had seen anything strange the night of the fire, and although the police were unsure of the exact day Wendy had died, they were guessing it was May twenty-second. That was the last day her phone and her credit card had been used. There was no note indicating suicide, and it seemed that Wendy had been taking a bath when she died. Neighbors in her building said she didn’t come and go much; they suspected she’d been ill through most of the winter, though there seemed no evidence that she’d been seeking medical treatment for anything specific.

  In turn, Detective Lopez asked if Sadie could add any information about her sister that might be helpful to the investigation, but she had to admit that she didn’t know anything about her sister’s life. Sadie put aside her rolling pin and turned so that she was leaning against the counter.

  “You didn’t speak to her regularly?” the detective asked.

  “I didn’t speak to her at all,” Sadie said, feeling the sadness of that fact. “I haven’t seen her since my mother’s funeral fifteen years ago, and the last time I spoke to her was when our father died four years ago.”

  “I see,” Detective Lopez said. Sadie imagined him making a note in his notebook: “estranged sister.” “So you have no idea if anyone would have targeted her or wanted to harm her?”

  “No,” Sadie said. She vacillated as to whether or not her relationship with Wendy as a child was relevant to the case, but worried it was her discomfort in talking about it that made her hesitate. She took a breath and then told Lopez a condensed version of her childhood. She didn’t go so far as to suggest that perhaps Wendy hadn’t changed and someone else she’d mistreated had gotten back at her, but she felt sure that Detective Lopez picked up on the possibility.

  “That’s consistent with information we got from her neighbors and friends,” he said, though he sounded a bit cautious. “It seems she had a lot of conflicts with people. I appreciate knowing a bit more about her history.”

  Pete had moved on to another cupboard in need of hinge repair, but she could feel him listening.

  “I assume the apartment’s been cleared by the police?” Sadie said, ready to move on to another topic. “We’re okay to move her things out?” The landlord had given Ji the keys, so Sadie felt safe assuming the police were finished with their part.

  “Yeah, we’ve cleared it as a crime scene. Other than the fire, which remained well contained, there’s no evidence of a struggle or anything that would lead us to conclude that she died of anything other than natural causes.”

  “You said there was no sign of a struggle, but one of the articles said there was a robbery involved?”

  “Yes, we can’t find her purse, phone, or laptop computer, but there isn’t any suspicious activity on her bank account or credit cards, so the thief likely only took whatever cash your sister might have had in her wallet—though she seemed to be a charge-card kind of girl.”

  “What about jewelry?” Sadie said, thinking of her mother’s pieces that Wendy had taken after the funeral.

  “We did find a jewelry box with several items—costume jewelry mostly—when we searched her apartment.”

  “It wasn’t stolen?”

  “No, we found it in a dresser drawer, so it wasn’t immediately evident. The thief probably knew that electronics sell fast and easy. It seemed to be a pretty quick job.”

  “Other than the burglar taking the time to light the body on fire,” Sadie added.

  Detective Lopez paused and cleared his throat. “Well, yes, other than that. I’m afraid this is a unique case, and it has provided very few leads for us to follow up on. Once we get the forensics report, we hope to have more to work with.”

  “And when will that be?” Sadie asked.

  “After the holiday. Perhaps not until next week. I’ll check on how much longer we’ll need to wait so I’ll have more specific information for you when you get into town.”

  Pete nudged her shoulder, and she turned to him with a questioning look.

  “Ask him if he knows Cornell Bateman,” Pete whispered, waving toward the phone.

  Sadie scowled at Pete throwing off her groove, but she did as he asked. “Um, Detective Lopez, do you know Cornell Bateman?”

  “Corney?” Detective Lopez said with a laugh. “I absolutely do. How do you know him?”

  Since Sadie had no idea who Cornell Bateman was, she handed the phone to Pete, who had a five-minute discussion with Detective Lopez about the mutual friend that Pete had attended the academy with nearly thirty years ago. He now worked vice out of Oakland.

  Sadie was slightly annoyed by the good-ol’-boys discussion at first, but by the time they stopped talking about Corney, she hoped she’d get the chance to meet him sometime. He sounded like a great guy. Somehow Pete transitioned the conversation to questions about the case—more detailed questions than Sadie had thought to ask, things like procedure, document forensics, and Wendy’s history with the department.

  By the time they’d finished the call Detective Lopez had agreed to talk to his superior about the possibility of Pete coming into the station and talking through the case file with them after he and Sadie arrived in San Francisco. Sadie tried to hide her envy—police had never been that excited when she was involving herself in a case.

  Pete hung up and handed her the phone, grinning with satisfaction.

  “Are you sure you were really ready to retire?” Sadie asked cautiously. It had only been a couple of months since he’d turned in his badge, but talking the lingo seemed to have lit a fire inside him.

  He came closer to her, putting his arms loosely around her waist. “You know I’ve missed it,” he said, sounding meek and a little vulnerable.

  Sadie nodded; she did know. She also knew that he’d put in some applications for different part-time positions within the department that would keep him involved, but not quite so obligated. She supposed she simply hadn’t realized what a big part of him was still a cop. “Detective Lopez sounds pretty open to having you look around.”

  “Does that bother you?” Pete asked.

  “No,” Sadie said. “But it does sound as though you’re taking the case, so to speak. You think it was a homicide?”

  “The San Fran PD doesn’t seem to think so—there were no obvious signs of trauma to the body. But we know that at least two crimes were committed by someone—the theft of the missing items from her apartment and the desecration of a human body.” Sadie suppressed a shudder at the clinical language, and Pete stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If it bothers you to—”

  “No, it doesn’t bother me,” she said, determined not to shy away from things. “It’s just that . . . with all the other cases I’ve worked on, it was someone else, you know? They didn’t belong to me. It’s just shocking when I let myself think that this w
as Wendy. My sister.”

  Pete paused, then spoke with a bit of hesitation. “You said you wanted to know more about her.”

  Sadie nodded. “I guess that’s where my focus is—learning about her life. Thinking so much about her death is harder for me to do—heck, thinking about her life is hard for me. She discarded all of us so long ago.”

  Pete nodded his understanding. “What if I work with Lopez on the cop side of things—the death part. Then you can focus on the life she lived and the people she knew.”

  Sadie cocked her head to the side, considering. It did feel more comfortable to emphasize Wendy’s history, but she didn’t want to be left out. “If I agree, that doesn’t mean you’ll keep information from me, does it?”

  Pete laughed. “I’ll share whatever it is you want to know,” he said. “And if at some point, you want to be the detective, I’ll be more than happy to move out of the way.”

  Sadie put her arms around his neck, careful not to touch his clothes; her hands were still floury from the pie crust that was likely getting dryer by the minute. “Well, maybe just move over so there’s room for both of us . . . if I decide I can handle it.” Her smile faded as the reality of what they were facing moved into the confusing thoughts cycling through her mind. “I couldn’t do this without you, Pete. And I do want answers.”

  Pete leaned in and kissed her. “We’re in this together,” he said quietly, pulling her half an inch closer.

  Sadie nodded and kissed him back, grateful for his confidence since she was still unsure about how she felt. “Thank goodness for that.”

  Chapter 4

  The flight from Denver to Oakland on Thursday landed just after ten o’clock in the morning, Pacific Daylight Time. Pete and Sadie picked up their rental car—a white Chevy Malibu—and put their carry-on luggage in the trunk. Sadie hated traveling with just a carry-on. She preferred to bring enough clothes that she was prepared for a variety of weather conditions and possible events she might need to dress for, but there was an extra baggage fee to bring a checked bag, so she’d picked four coordinating outfits that could be rearranged over seven days, though she had no expectation they would stay so long. According to her research, the temperatures were supposed to be in the low 70s, which seemed impossible for July, but she’d been sure to bring close-toed shoes, jeans, and a jacket in case the evenings were cool. Wasn’t California supposed to be warm?