Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (14 page)

Sadie set the painted box she’d purchased earlier on the dresser, glad to have a memento of Ji to take home with her. She wondered about the box in Wendy’s apartment. Ji had seemed confused by it being there and said Wendy hadn’t been to the restaurant in years. Had Ji been selling them back then? If not, how had Wendy come to own it? Perhaps Sadie could explore the topic with Ji tomorrow.

Once they’d freshened up in their respective rooms—Sadie was on the third floor and Pete on the fifth—they walked through the towering buildings and crowded streets of the financial district to the Palace Hotel, a landmark of San Francisco. The hotel featured two famous restaurants: The Garden Court, which served breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea, and The Pied Piper Bar and Grill, which was open for lunch and dinner.

Sadie couldn’t deny her disappointment that they wouldn’t get to eat in the elaborate dining room of the Garden Court, though they did peek in at the ornate columns and glass ceiling. Amazing. Pete suggested they try to come back for the breakfast buffet, and Sadie agreed to such a fabulous plan.

The Pied Piper Bar and Grill was nothing to sneeze at either, however, with its rich wood paneling, dark color palette, and painted mural behind the bar. The overall atmosphere was one of class and elegance, which made Sadie worry they were underdressed. A quick glance at their fellow diners eased her mind, however. Everyone was dressed just like they were—jeans and sweatshirts—with perhaps an occasional skirt or suit mixed in.

Pete ordered the pork chops without reading through most of the menu, and Sadie went with the salmon. She always ordered seafood when she was in coastal locations. As much as she enjoyed the “Fresh Daily” offerings at her local supermarket in landlocked Colorado, fish really did taste better when an ocean was within ten miles. Never mind that salmon wasn’t found in local waters.

While they waited for their meals, Sadie showed off a bit more of her foodie knowledge by telling Pete about the
other
recipe invented at the Palace: Green Goddess salad dressing, a tribute to anchovy paste and fresh herbs. She finished off with the riveting history of Lobster Newberg, which had been originally called Lobster Wenberg in tribute to Ben Wenberg, a sea captain at the turn of the twentieth century. When the chef who had created the dish had a falling out with Ben Wenberg, he changed the letters of his signature dish around in retribution.

Pete tried to trump her trivia with the fact that fortune cookies weren’t really Chinese, but rather a gimmick created as a draw for tourists to come to Chinatown when the neighborhood was trying to lose their red-light district reputation.

“Everyone knows that,” Sadie said with a wave of her hand, dismissing his attempts to best her and glad that the mood had improved since the call from the realtor.

“I’d visited this city three times before I learned that,” Pete said with a slight whine in his voice. “I was quite disappointed to learn it hadn’t been an ancient Chinese secret.”

Their meals arrived, and for a few minutes they enjoyed their food and only said things like “Pass the salt” and “This is really great.”

Halfway through her meal, Sadie noticed that Pete was eating a little slower than usual. She glanced at Pete’s face and after a couple more glances admitted that it wasn’t her imagination that he seemed a little subdued. Something was wrong, and with all the other stress and pressure going on around them, she didn’t want to add to her own anxieties by ignoring it.

She took a delectable bite of her salmon to prepare herself, then set her fork down on the edge of her plate. “Are you okay, Pete?”

“I’m fine,” he said, concentrating on cutting another bite of his pork.

“Can I propose a theory on why you’re not ‘fine’?”

He looked up at her but said nothing. She took it as an agreement to hear her out.

“I’m guessing that being here in San Francisco has brought a lot of memories of Pat to the surface and—”

Pete put down his fork as well. “Sadie—”

“I’m not done,” she cut in, though she smiled so he would know she wasn’t angry. “And then you learn that there’s someone interested in buying the house you shared with your wife. All of that piled together has got to be a lot to process.”

Pete looked down at his food and said nothing.

“Did I get it about right?”

He took a breath. “Pretty much.” He smiled at her, but it was a sad one, apologetic.

Sadie picked up her fork and took another bite in order to avoid looking into his face. His expression was making it harder and harder for her to retain her objective stance. She spoke without looking at him. “Mourning doesn’t happen in a week or a month, Pete. I understand that as well as anyone. Did you and Pat eat here?” He’d known exactly where to find the restaurant upon entering the front doors of the hotel, and he’d been familiar with the menu. It wasn’t rocket science.

He went back to his meal as well. Now they were both avoiding looking at one another. “Yeah, we ate here a few times.”

“Is it hard for you to be here with me?”

He didn’t answer for a few seconds, and Sadie looked up at him. “I’m asking as a friend, not your fiancée.” Even as she said it, though, she wondered if it were true. Could she separate those roles enough to truly be objective? She hoped so. Pete needed a friend right now. She would put everything she had toward filling that role and hope it would be enough.

He cut another bite. “I didn’t think it would be this hard, but there’s just so many memories of her in this city—of experiencing new things together and enjoying old favorites. We stayed here at the Palace a few different times, including the last time we came.”

Sadie tightened her grip on her fork. “I didn’t know.”

“I know that.”

She allowed another silence for as long as she could stand it, which was about thirteen seconds. It was rather masochistic to continue this conversation, but maybe talking about it would help her work through her complicated feelings as well as help him make peace with his thoughts, too. “When did you guys last visit?”

Pete took a sip of his water and cast a quick glance in Sadie’s direction before scanning the room as though looking for a distraction. There was plenty of distraction amid the décor, but he eventually looked back at his plate and cut a sliver of meat from the edge of his pork chop.

“We came for our thirtieth wedding anniversary. She was diagnosed a couple of months later.”

Sadie’s heart hitched in her chest. She didn’t know what to say. No wonder the memories were so heavy for him now. She already knew that Pat had died less than a year after her cancer had been discovered. It had been too far advanced for anything other than treatments to postpone the inevitable.

Sadie imagined Pete sitting across from the auburn-haired and elegant woman Sadie had only seen in photographs, reflecting on three decades of marriage, memories, trials, children, grandchildren. Sadie suddenly felt like an intruder and wished she’d never brought it up. How had she chosen this restaurant amid the hundreds, perhaps thousands, that existed in this city? What lousy luck. Though if Pete had communicated the significance, she’d have gladly made another suggestion. Even without having traveled here before, she was aware of two or three other acclaimed restaurants in this city which could have offered not only a great meal, but far less discomfort than had come included with this one.

“Did you and Neil travel?” Pete asked when Sadie said nothing in response.

She sensed he was trying to even the score somehow by bringing Neil into the conversation, but she was game to try it. “Not a lot. We always said we’d travel later, when the kids were grown.” The pall that had been cast by talking about Pat only got heavier thanks to Sadie’s answer. Neil had died when their children were little. They never had the freedom they’d planned on when their kids grew up. Prior to adopting their two children, they’d been focused on
having
that family to the point where there was little time or money for extras. “I traveled with the kids quite a bit though,” Sadie added, hoping to shift the focus from their dead spouses.

“Where was your favorite place to go?” Pete asked.

They talked for a few minutes about different places Sadie had visited with her kids. San Diego and Yellowstone were at the top of her list. “How about you? Did you travel a lot when your family was young?”

“Actually, other than camping trips, we didn’t do a lot of family vacations. We went back to New Mexico a fair amount, I guess. We both had family there.” The tension fell like another blanket over the table. So San Francisco was really the only destination place he’d visited? And, from what he’d said earlier, he’d only gone with his family one time. Every other trip had been just him and Pat. “We used to talk about retiring on a sailboat and anchoring it at one of the piers.”

Fabulous. Sadie cut another bite and wondered if Pete regretted having encouraged her to come to this city. He was obviously taken by surprise by the impact his memories were making on the trip.

“I’m really excited for Costa Rica, though,” Pete said, referring to their chosen honeymoon destination and pasting a smile on his face. “I’ve heard great things about it.”

“Me too,” Sadie agreed, glad they’d chosen a place neither of them had been to before. The mood, however, was not saved entirely, and they both returned to their dinner.

The streets were as packed as ever on their way back to their hotel, but Sadie admired the way the people and traffic seemed to respect each other, ebbing and flowing appropriately and always respecting the road signs. Without such cooperation this city could never work.

“So, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Pete asked.

Sadie turned her thoughts to the next day and all that it might hold. “We’ll meet Ji at the apartment in the morning and finish packing. Then Ji’s friend is coming in the afternoon to pick everything up for his organization, though I’m not sure what time.”

“Are you going to give them the painting from Wendy’s room?”

“Oh, gosh,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to do about that. It should probably go into the Dumpster, but what if someone finds it? The idea of anyone seeing it again horrifies me.”

Pete genuinely laughed, and Sadie smiled at the sound. She pulled one hand out of her pocket in order to loop it through his arm. “How are you doing with all of this?” he asked after his laughter had died out. “Was it hard to talk about the forensics and the investigation earlier?”

“No,” Sadie said with a shake of her head as she watched the sidewalk at their feet. “I’m glad to know more about what happened, and it makes me want to fill in the rest of the blanks.”

“Detective Lopez said he’d check in with me sometime tomorrow,” Pete said. “He’d sent some questions back to the medical examiner about things he wanted clarified, and he’s hoping to get their response in the morning.” They stopped at another light, and a dozen people quickly lined up behind them. “He also mentioned that with the autopsy complete, we need to choose a funeral home. I wasn’t sure if you or Ji would want to head that up, which is why I didn’t mention it when Ji was there.”

“A funeral home,” Sadie said, feeling the finality of that step and yet finding irony in it as well. The light turned green, and the crowd surged across the intersection. Sadie raised her voice a little to be heard. “No one even noticed she was gone. No one thought to check on her or see what was wrong. Who would come to a funeral?”

“You don’t have to hold an actual funeral. The point is that the police are finished with their part, and so you or Ji need to make arrangements for whatever comes next. You could have her cremated; it’s more cost-effective.”

Cremation seemed so . . . Sadie couldn’t even complete the thought. So, what? Impersonal? Removed? Morbid? She couldn’t help but think that someone had already tried to cremate Wendy’s body. Yuck. “I’ll talk to Ji about it tomorrow,” she said. They turned a corner, and Sadie realized she knew where they were—no small feat in this city that felt like a labyrinth with all its one-way streets and skyscrapers.

“You did a great job choosing this hotel,” Sadie said as the black awning came into view. There was a storefront a few doors down advertising a soup restaurant inside. Maybe she and Pete would eat there on another day. San Francisco, with its cooler temperatures and continual fog, seemed like a perfect place to enjoy a bowl of soup. She wasn’t hungry right now, though, and tuned back to the topic of the hotel Pete had found for them. “I’m glad you got rooms at a local hotel rather than a chain. It makes it more of an experience.”

“I’ve never stayed here before,” Pete said. Sadie wondered if what he was trying to tell her was that he and Pat had never stayed there before. “But it had good reviews online.”

They walked a few more steps in silence. Sadie pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her jacket. She’d noticed that a lot of people on the street wore jackets embroidered with San Francisco. They must not have checked the weather like she had. The tourist shops likely paid their rent through sweatshirt and hoodie sales alone.

Pete pulled open the front door of the hotel for her, and she entered, grateful for the warm interior. Her nose tingled from the cold.

“Would you like to do anything else tonight?” Pete asked once they were in the elevator. It was still early enough for them to take an evening trip to the Wharf like she and Pete had talked about on the plane, but the mood didn’t feel light enough to go sightseeing tonight. Besides, the fact that he’d waited until they were on their way to their rooms seemed to imply that it was an afterthought—otherwise why not bring it up sooner?

“I think I’d just like to go through those file boxes,” Sadie said truthfully. “Did
you
want to do something else?” She suspected his request was only meant to be polite, so she was careful not to sound too hopeful. If, however, he
did
want to do something else, she was agreeable to that too.

He didn’t look at her as he considered her question. They reached the third floor, where Sadie’s room was located, and stepped out into the hallway once the elevator doors opened. “I was thinking about going to Golden Gate Park,” Pete said with an odd hesitation in his voice.