Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (21 page)

She pulled out her phone and took a picture of him, ignoring the confused look of patrons in the coffee shop who had picked up on the fact that she wasn’t there to order anything. She enlarged the picture on her phone, but it made his face blurry.

He was still talking on the phone when the crosswalk signal flashed and, along with a dozen other people, he crossed Powell, heading back the way he’d come.

Sadie moved toward the front door and, after he passed, slipped out the door and hurried to catch up. One benefit of being in such a crowded city was that he didn’t seem to notice anything odd about the fact that someone was following close enough behind him to hear at least part of what he said.

“—see what I can find out, but I lost her after just a few blocks. . . . Older, not particularly attractive.”

Sadie tried to ignore her offense at what must be a description of her.

“I got some pictures. . . . Wasn’t spicy. . . . Okay . . .”

His legs were longer than Sadie’s, and she was jogging a couple of steps to keep up when he suddenly turned his head and saw her. She came to a stop as he startled and pulled his phone from his ear. Sadie wasn’t prepared to be discovered, but she had enough experience with lack of preparation to react quickly. She lifted her phone, which was still open to the camera, and snapped a picture of his shocked expression, then turned and headed up Sutter in a quick walk, dodging between people in hopes of losing him.

Several people were talking outside a small café, creating a kind of shield. Once she passed the group, she ducked behind them, through the front door of the café, and then stepped to the side of the door while Mr. Green Shirt hurried past. She wondered what his intention was if he caught up with her. Destroy the camera? Something worse?

“Hello?”

Sadie looked at a woman dressed in a starched white shirt with a name tag that said Naomi.

“Can I help you?”

“Um, yes, do you have a back door, Naomi?”

“Do you mean the patio? It’s a bit cool today—are you sure?”

Sadie smiled. “Yes, the patio would be perfect.”

The hostess showed her outside, and though Sadie had intended to use the patio as an escape, it was fully enclosed by surrounding buildings and wooden trellis meant to disguise the urban setting. Not wanting to run into the man who’d been following her, and unwilling to climb the trellis in order to find another way out, she sat down and accepted the menu Naomi handed her. It
was
too cool outside to be comfortable—the sun was covered in fog, again—but Sadie didn’t feel she had much of a choice except to wait this out.

“Our specials today are the bleu cheese mahi-mahi sandwich, the pumpkin and mushroom bisque, and our hot apple streusel cake. I’ll be right back with a water. Would you like anything else to drink?”

“Water will be fine,” Sadie said as she skimmed the menu and tried to calm her racing heart. What would happen if Mr. Green Shirt found her back here, alone and with no way out? She refused to give into the dramatic possibilities. If he’d known she’d entered the restaurant, he’d have followed her immediately, right?

The waitress arrived and asked for Sadie’s order. She wasn’t hungry but ordered the hot streusel cake all the same. She hadn’t had a dessert for two days and nothing else sounded good. Plus it was
hot,
which meant it might warm her up a bit. She didn’t want to go back onto the street until she was certain Mr. Green Shirt was gone.

Once her breathing had returned to normal, and the waitress had returned inside, she texted Pete the picture she’d taken and an explanation.

Her phone rang mere seconds after the text went through.

“What do you mean you were followed?”

Sadie filled him in on the details, waiting for him to express concern for her safety or insist that she stay put until he could come to her. But he didn’t. Instead he asked question after question. As the conversation progressed, rather than be hurt by his focus on the event and not her feelings, an unexpected sense of accomplishment settled over her. She kind of liked that he was more concerned about the implications of her being followed than the fear that she couldn’t take care of herself.

“If he was there before you arrived, was he with Rodger?” Pete asked.

“Maybe,” Sadie said. “Can the police identify the photo?”

“I’ll ask them about it when I get off the phone. Do you feel safe?”

“I’m fine.” The waitress brought the cake, and Sadie transferred her phone to the other ear so she could talk and eat at the same time. “I’m taking some time for him to disappear before I go back out. He knows I got his picture.” She took a bite—it was
really
good and deliciously warm. Could it have bananas in it? She couldn’t taste any but it would account for the smooth and moist texture. She’d have to see if she could find a similar recipe—or perhaps adapt the one in her Little Black Recipe Book and see how the banana affected the texture of her recipe, which was delicious but, in all honesty, a touch on the dry side.

“And what exactly did he say in the part of the phone call you overheard?”

Sadie hurried to swallow and stay tuned into the conversation. “Well, he, uh, commented on my looks.”

“What do you mean? Like comparing you to Wendy? Maybe someone’s watching her apartment.”

“How would they know where I was going and then beat me there?” She didn’t expound on the phone call because she didn’t want to admit to Mr. Green Shirt’s assessment.

“True,” Pete said thoughtfully. “If he was describing you, though, then it seems unlikely he’s connected to Rodger since you’d just sat across the table from him.”

“Good point,” Sadie said between bites. When she remembered her wedding dress, she ate slower.

“Well done, though,” Pete said. “You handled yourself perfectly.”

Sadie smiled at the sincere compliment. “Did you talk to the police about all the calls to Rodger’s business?”

“They said that he claimed she was having a difficult time, that she often struggled with depression in the winter months, and that he was just chatting with her as a friend.”

“That’s what he told me too,” Sadie said, almost disappointed but feeling uncharitable about it.

“Lopez is letting me read over official statements and other documentation in the file,” Pete said. “I haven’t found anything remarkable, but I’m still looking. I’ll be sure to read up on Rodger’s statement. More specific information is supposed to come through this afternoon regarding the synthetic kerosene—they’re hoping to determine the brand. I’m kind of hanging around in hopes of being here when that comes in. I want to stay in the thick of things.”

Pete was also going to lunch with Detective Lopez, so they said their good-byes. After Sadie hung up, she remembered Ji’s text. She checked her phone but he hadn’t responded to her question about whether or not everything was okay. Did that mean things
weren’t
okay? When he’d arrived at Wendy’s apartment he’d said he had double coverage at Choy’s until 5:30. Was he planning to come back? She let the questions flow freely through her brain while she finished the cake—leaving a few bites on the plate though it was hard to do—before composing another text message for Ji.

Will you be coming back?

She was pulling cash out of her wallet to pay the bill when Ji’s response came in.

Ji:
I’m not sure.

Sadie:
What about the share house?

Ji:
I moved most of the stuff to the main area.

What about me?
Sadie wondered. Ji had been the one doing all the coordinating, and Shots was Chinese, right? Would she even be able to communicate with him?

It would be great if you could come back for that.

Ji didn’t respond in the time it took her to go back to the street, assure herself that Mr. Green Shirt wasn’t waiting for her, and wave down a taxi. She gave the cab driver the address of Wendy’s apartment building and settled back against the seat, only then considering the wisdom of her plan. If Mr. Green Shirt
was
linked to Wendy, wouldn’t he go there next? And yet Pete hadn’t expressed any concern about her returning to the apartment, and it was the middle of the day.

She opened her notebook in order to write down notes on her encounter with Mr. Green Shirt—maybe she could assess his threat level, which, off the top of her head, she didn’t feel was very high. He’d seemed to be simply observing her, not trying to hurt her or anything like that. He’d said “Nothing spicy,” on the phone, and in all honesty she’d thought of the soup first, but couldn’t it mean that the encounter Rodger had had with Sadie wasn’t romantic?

If “Nothing spicy” was related to the romance level and Sadie’s physical appearance was important to whomever Mr. Green Shirt had reported to, then perhaps it was
Rodger
who’d been followed, and Sadie had been a secondary target. The only person who would be jealous enough to send someone to spy on Rodger during lunch was either a girlfriend or a wife. Sadie had no idea which of those partnerships Rodger currently had as he hadn’t offered the information at lunch. Perhaps she should have asked.

“This it?”

Sadie looked up and realized that the taxi driver had pulled up in front of Wendy’s building. “Yes, thank you.” She paid him and stepped out onto the curb around the corner from the entrance. After the taxi pulled away, she headed for the door and consulted Ji’s text about having left the keys with the tenant from apartment two—an odd thing for him to do since Ji hadn’t met anyone who lived in the building as far as Sadie knew. There seemed to be something covert in the way he’d left the apartment, and yet she felt paranoid thinking that. If she wanted a relationship with him, she needed to take him at his word and accept that there was a problem with his business without trying to read too much into it or take it too personally. She only wished that giving people the benefit of the doubt was easier for her to do.

She pushed the button for apartment two and waited a few seconds before a man’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Yes?”

She leaned in to make sure he’d hear her; she’d never been on this end of the intercom system. “This is Sadie Hoffmiller, Wendy Penrose’s sister. I understand her son left the keys to her apartment with you.”

“He sure did,” the man responded. “I’ll buzz you in and meet you in the foyer.” The intercom clicked off a moment before the buzz indicated that the exterior door had been unlocked. Sadie pulled it open, walked down the hallway, and stepped into the foyer area at the same time the apartment door across from her opened. She smiled at the young man with dark hair and glasses as they met between the mailboxes and the elevator.

He reached into his pocket, pulling out the key ring and handing it to her. “I’m sure sorry about what happened to Wendy,” he said with a sympathetic frown. “Lousy deal, that.”

“Thank you,” Sadie acknowledged with a nod as she slid the keys into her purse. “Did you know my sister?”

“Well,” he said with a cautious tone. “It’s not a large complex.”

The discomfort of his answer spurred Sadie forward, though she tried to keep from sounding too nosy. “I wasn’t close to my sister, but I understand she could be difficult to deal with. The police said she had a lot of conflicts with her neighbors.”

He cast a sidelong, sympathetic look at her. “Still, everything that happened was just terrible.”

“It was,” Sadie said, wishing he would be a bit more forthcoming but sensing his hesitation was an attempt to spare her feelings. That would be very sweet if it were her feelings she was worried about. “Were you here the night of the fire?” she asked, trying a different track.

He put his hands in the pockets of his khaki pants and rocked back on the heels of his Tom’s. “Yeah—it was intense when the fire department was banging on the door at one a.m. The fire didn’t even trigger the smoke alarm. We were evacuated as a precaution and allowed back in pretty quickly. I didn’t know about . . . Wendy until the next morning when the police came by asking questions,” he said with a frown. “I’m Jason, by the way.” He put out his hand and Sadie shook it.

“I’m Sadie. What did the police ask you about?”

“How well I knew Wendy, when I’d last seen her, if I’d seen anything suspicious around the building—that kind of thing. I didn’t have much to tell them.”

“You didn’t know Wendy, then?” Sadie asked as casually as she could.

“Well, I knew her, but we didn’t socialize or anything. All of us keep to ourselves for the most part. We wave at each other in the halls and stuff, but we don’t really know one another.” He paused and turned his head slightly. “I think Wendy and Shasta were pretty good friends at one point, though. Have you talked to Shasta?”

“Not yet,” Sadie said with a shake of her head. She was encouraged by the information that Shasta and Wendy had a closer connection than Jason did. “But my fiancé met her briefly last night. He said she likes the color pink.”

Jason laughed out loud, his wide grin filling his face. “She told me once that a big-time movie producer back in the sixties told her that pink was her color. She’s an heiress and an actress, in that order. I’m not sure he meant to imply it was her
only
color, but she took it to mean that it was part of her identity or something.”

“She sounds fascinating,” Sadie said. “How long has she lived in the building?”

“A while,” Jason said, nodding. “Ten years, maybe? They were both here when I moved in.”

“And they were friends?”

“Oh no,” Jason said with emphasis. “But Shasta mentioned that they
used
to be friends. They had some kind of falling out. I didn’t ask what about.”

“And how long have you lived here?”

“Going on four years. I work just a few blocks away.” He gestured toward the west, or at least the direction Sadie thought was west. She was still rather turned around in this town. “The location couldn’t be more perfect for me.”

“It’s a beautiful location,” Sadie said. “But I understand Wendy had some complaints against the landlord. Were there ongoing issues with the building?”