Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (2 page)

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
double 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.

Pete sat next to her, placing the plate behind them. She didn’t watch but knew each motion he made due to the swish of the papers as he unfolded them. The minutes, which couldn’t have been more than two, stretched into the night as she waited for him to finish. She knew he was done reading when she heard him refolding the papers.

“You’ve never told me much about your sister,” Pete commented. His tone was casual but Sadie knew better. He seemed to be avoiding a direct question regarding her out-of-character actions tonight, and she sensed it was because he was leaving the direction of the conversation up to her. If she said “Never mind, good night,” he would probably let her leave. She appreciated the consideration but needed to talk about this; she should have told him about Wendy before now. She rubbed her upper arms, though it wasn’t cold, and then, unable to find the words to explain, she shrugged as though it was perfectly acceptable not to talk about someone who shared your DNA to the person you were about to marry.

“But Jack did.”

Sadie whipped her head around to look at Pete. “What?”

“I’d asked you about her a couple of times but you always managed to change the subject, so when Jack and I went fishing last summer up at Big T, I asked him to fill me in.”

Sadie looked across the neighborhood again, smoothing her hair behind her ear and unsure whether she was annoyed that Pete had gone behind her back to learn about this part of her life—though she did that kind of thing all the time—or relieved that he already knew. “What did Jack tell you?”

“That she was terrible to you, well, to everyone in your family, but you especially.”

Me especially,
Sadie thought. Her chest tightened.
Me especially.
For Pete’s benefit she nodded to make sure he knew she’d heard him. “I’m sure she was mentally ill,” Sadie said after a few more seconds of silence ate up more of the night. “Borderline personality disorder, possibly, though I wouldn’t rule out bipolar, schizophrenic, and maybe histrionic as well.”

“Diagnosed?”

Sadie shook her head. “I’ve read enough and met enough people with similarities to her that I’ve made my armchair-psychiatrist determinations. It helps me feel a bit more peace with how she treated me—us—to know she had limitations.”

“Jack said she left home young.”

“She was seventeen; I was twelve.” Sadie appreciated the cautious push of Pete’s questions that allowed her to remain as unemotional as possible. As a former police detective, Pete was well-trained in gathering information, and she was glad for the almost formal feel of the conversation—it made it easier for her somehow, kept things distant.

A car turned down Pete’s street, and they both raised their hands to wave at whomever was returning home.

Sadie wrapped her arms around herself again and continued, “I never asked what the final fight was about. It happened when I was at school, and Mom was still crying when I got home. I was
so
relieved that Wendy was gone, though it took almost a year for me to believe she wasn’t coming back.”

“Jack said your parents wouldn’t let you talk badly about her.”

Sadie shook her head. “She was still their daughter, and they didn’t want us creating an air of negativity about her while she was gone in case she came back. Since we didn’t discuss the
hard
parts about Wendy, we simply didn’t talk about her at all. When she did come up, we spoke of her the way you might talk about a great-aunt who lives too far away to visit.”

“Did your parents know how she treated you?” Pete asked. “Jack said he’d never been sure, probably because, like you said, no one talked about her much.”

“They knew some of the things she did and suspected other things that no one could prove.” An owl hooted in the distance, and the sound made her shiver. Or maybe she just wanted Pete to put his arm around her shoulders, which he did. Sadie leaned into him, comforted by his warmth and the now-familiar, lingering scent of his cologne. “They tried to keep the two of us separate as much as possible. It helped, I think.”