Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (36 page)

“What are you talking about?” Ji said, anger building with every word.

“I knew you wouldn’t stand for Min seeing her. I understand why you did it—you were protecting our family, as was I.”

Ji was quiet, his eyebrows furrowing, then lifting, then furrowing again as he thought through what Lin Yang had said.

Sadie watched them closely, her entire body tight in anticipation of what was unfolding before her and with anxiety about what might be coming next.

“You think I killed my mother?” Ji finally said.

“As I said, you were only doing what was best for our family. For Min.”

“Min?” he said, sounding more confused than ever. “What does Min have to do with any of this?”

Sadie waited for Lin Yang to say something, but she suddenly looked confused and kept her mouth closed. Had Lin Yang thought Ji found out about Min and Wendy and had killed his mother because of it? Did Lin Yang, then, burn the body to cover for him and then place the anonymous call to the fire department?

“Min met Wendy last year,” Sadie said, looking at Ji when she spoke. “Wendy had come to see you here at the restaurant but met Min instead. They struck up a friendship, and Min would go see her sometimes. You really didn’t know?”

“I’d have never allowed it if I’d known,” Ji said, his voice little more than a growl. “My mother was a terrible influence, but . . .” He turned to Lin Yang. “You think I would kill my mother?”

“She was horrible,” Lin Yang said, her tone justifying her accusation.

“But you think I would
kill
her?” His eyebrows went up, and he took a step away from Lin Yang. “You went to her apartment? You—”

Lin Yang began to speak in Chinese again, pleading.

“English!” Ji shouted at her, causing her to jump.

Sadie watched Lin Yang’s small hands clench into fists and felt herself tensing all over again in response. She knew better than to underestimate Lin Yang again. She was brutal when she wanted to be.

“I did it for you,” she said in a cold voice.

“You have
never
done anything for me,” Ji spat back. They glowered at one another, and Sadie took the silence as her chance to throw out another question. She looked at Lin Yang.

“Did
you
kill Wendy?”

Lin Yang waved that away as though annoyed. “She was long dead by the time I—” She caught herself mid-confession and pursed her tiny lips.

“You were seen at the apartment a few days before the fire,” Sadie said. “Maybe you’d gone there a month earlier, too.”

Lin Yang glared at her, and then turned to Ji as though looking for his support. He had his arms folded over his chest and stared at a spot on the floor; he said nothing. When Lin Yang realized he was not going to speak, she looked at Sadie with abject hatred in her eyes. “Of course I didn’t kill her. I didn’t know about Min seeing her until a few weeks ago.”

“How did you find out?” Sadie asked.

Lin Yang looked between Ji and Sadie, then lifted her chin slightly. “Someone called the restaurant asking for Wendy Penrose’s son. I asked to take a message. They said that they hadn’t heard from Wendy for some time and wondered if Ji or our daughter had spoken to her recently. I couldn’t understand why anyone would think one of our daughters would know anything about Wendy. And then I found a picture of Wendy on Min’s phone.”

Sadie felt her heartbeat racing. Someone had tipped off Lin Yang!

Lin Yang glanced at Ji again. “I didn’t want to upset you so I went to talk to Wendy myself, to tell her to leave us alone.” Sadie wondered if Lin Yang had planned to beat Wendy up too, but she didn’t say as much out loud. “Wendy was already dead,” Lin Yang finished.

“How did you get in the building?” Ji asked with skepticism. He wasn’t convinced that Lin Yang’s involvement was limited to the fire. “You have to be buzzed in.”

“When she didn’t answer my requests on the intercom, I waited until someone left, then caught the door before it closed. I didn’t break in.”

What impressive morality,
Sadie thought to herself. Breaking in was wrong, but burning a corpse could be justified.

“And her apartment?” Ji asked.

“Was unlocked. When she didn’t answer, I tried the door and it was open.”

“Someone called you,” Sadie said. “Who?”

“They did not say and I did not care. I wanted none of Wendy in our life.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

“Was it a man or a woman?”

Lin Yang glared at her, withholding her answer until Ji asked her the same thing.

“A woman.”

A woman?
Leann was the first woman to come to Sadie’s mind. The
only
woman to come to mind. Sadie was so caught up trying to determine what in Leann’s hidden agenda would lead to the phone call that she missed the first part of what Lin Yang said next.

“ . . . and I was protecting my family.” She turned a softer look on her husband, who was so tense he looked as though he were carved from stone. “I thought you had killed her, and if it were discovered, we’d have lost everything. I have no regrets.” She said something else in Chinese.

Ji shot her an angry look, his jaw tight. “You had no qualms about my being a murderer?”

“She was a horrible woman,” Lin Yang said.

Something was wrong with Lin Yang. Very, very wrong. Even if their marriage wasn’t a happy one—and Sadie had seen nothing to convince her otherwise—their children were obviously their world, which made their family of utmost importance. Important enough for Ji to kill for, in Lin Yang’s mind. Important enough for Lin Yang to destroy evidence and clean up any proof that might lead the police to Ji, too.

“Did
you
call the fire department that night?” Sadie asked.

Lin Yang looked hesitant, then down at the floor. “I thought the alarm would go off in the building, but I waited across the street for a few minutes and nothing had happened. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Sadie found Lin Yang’s sense of humility disturbing. She was proud of setting the fire, but seemed embarrassed to have made the call.

“Did you stage the burglary?” Sadie said, determined to learn everything she could from this conversation. She was quite sure that after this, Lin Yang would never speak to her again.

“I thought that would help the police,” she said, though it made no sense to Sadie. “If they thought it was for a robbery, they wouldn’t look elsewhere.”

Rather than consider Ji for killing his mother to prevent her from having a relationship with his daughter. Yes, something was very wrong with Lin Yang. She was impulsive and yet contemplative, logical but with distorted thinking.

Sadie was satisfied with what she’d learned about the fire and turned to look at Ji, waiting until he met her eye before she asked the question she had already asked him twice before. “Why did you leave the office yesterday, Ji? I thought it might have been because you’d discovered Min and Wendy’s relationship, but that wasn’t it, was it?”

Ji shook his head, then uncrossed his arms and reached into the wide front pocket of his chef’s jacket. He pulled out some folded papers. “I finished all the packing I could think to do after you left and moved everything to the living room. I thought I could finish sorting the box you’d been working on, but a few minutes into that task, I found this.” He unfolded the papers and held them out toward Sadie.

She stood and crossed the room toward him to retrieve them. She kept her eyes on Lin Yang’s balled fists. She now understood how she herself had gained the upper hand in so many prior altercations with people much bigger and stronger than herself: they’d underestimated her, just as she’d underestimated Lin Yang. Sadie was determined not to make that mistake again.

Sadie scanned the paper enough to verify that it was a life insurance policy. She looked up at Ji. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d found this?”

Ji indicated for her to turn the page, which she did, scanning the second page as he explained what she was reading. “I’m the sole beneficiary. After listening to you and Pete talk about who would have had a reason to kill Wendy, I worried you would see it as motivation.”

Sadie felt her eyebrows go up when she read that the policy was for four hundred thousand dollars. She looked up at him. “You didn’t know about this until yesterday?”

Lin Yang was watching, listening, but seemed as tense as ever and a little confused, leading Sadie to believe this was the first she was hearing of the insurance policy, too.

“No,” Ji said. “And even after I found it, I didn’t believe it. Or at least I didn’t believe it was valid. I wanted to make sure it was real before I told you and Pete about it.”

“Is it valid?” Sadie asked, but she already knew the answer. The insurance company had called the police that morning, and she didn’t imagine they would do that unless it were an active policy.

Ji nodded but he didn’t look like a man who had just inherited nearly half a million dollars. “I called the agent listed on the form and met with him this morning. He’d helped Wendy get it just over a year ago. She paid for two years’ worth of premiums up front.”

The kitchen doors opened, and Min stood there, her eyes red, her face wet with tears. Sadie tried to give her a compassionate look but Min hung her head in humility and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Sadie silently pled that her parents would be soft with her; the girl needed some kindness.

“I am so sorry,
Ba ba, Ma ma,
” she said in a shaky voice, still looking at the floor.

Lin Yang began snapping in Chinese until Ji silenced her. He turned to Min, and Sadie watched him consciously relax his expression. “Tell me,” he said simply.

Min sniffled and then recounted much of the same story she’d already told Sadie about meeting Wendy and going to her apartment. “I just wanted to know her, and then I wanted to help her. She was very sad. I would clean her apartment and keep things straight and organized. I thought I could help her feel better. I wanted to make her happy.”

“But you couldn’t, could you?” Ji said, softly enough that Sadie’s breath caught in her throat. He’d wanted to help Wendy feel happy, too, and at some point in his life had had to admit that he was equally incapable.

Min shook her head.

“You were wrong to go against us,” Lin Yang cut in, angry and sharp. “I am embarrassed and—”

“She’s twenty years old,” Sadie couldn’t help but add. “Talk to her like an adult who made a choice to get to know someone she was obviously curious about. You, on the other hand, made a much more serious decision, Lin Yang. Take your own responsibility for that before you browbeat your daughter.”

If Lin Yang thought she could, Sadie felt sure she’d have strangled Sadie with her bare hands right then.

Min looked at her mother, and Sadie could see the tears streaking down her cheeks. Twenty or not, she looked very much like a child. “Did you really do that,
Ma ma?
”

Lin Yang lifted her chin. “I was protecting my family.”

“You burned her up?” The entire room went silent. Lin Yang stared past them at a spot on the wall, her chin still lifted in defiance and self-justification.

Ji put an arm across Min’s shoulders, but it was obvious that neither of them was familiar with such physical affection. After a moment, Min turned into her father’s chest and began to sob. Sadie felt the emotion catch in her throat. Min had loved Wendy, and so had Ji, at least at some point. Perhaps they understood each other better than anyone else could. Lin Yang stood there watching them, isolated and alone. Ji wrapped his arms around Min’s back and patted her head somewhat awkwardly before he turned his head toward the kitchen.

“Lok,” he called out over his shoulder.

Min’s secret boyfriend pushed through the red doors, reminding Sadie that the surprises for Ji and Lin Yang weren’t over. Lok looked scared to death.

“We’re closing for the day,” Ji told him, Min still buried in his shoulder.

“We’re . . . closed?” Lok said in obvious surprise. He looked at Min, and Sadie saw his concern for her. Ji and Lin Yang didn’t seem to notice.

“Yes,” Ji said. “You, Deming, and Fred can close up the restaurant and go home. I’ll pay you for the full day.”

“Will we be open tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Ji said, causing Lok to nod and scurry back to the kitchen, where he began talking to the other workers. Ji looked at Sadie over Min’s head. “Will you please call the police detective that Pete has spoken to and tell him we’ll be in soon?”

“No,” Lin Yang said, shaking her head. “I was doing what was right for my family. I will not go to the police. It was a private matter, and I did nothing wrong.”

Ji turned to her, his expression tight and angry. “You lit my mother on fire!”

The words echoed in the restaurant and everyone was quiet for the space of two beats until Ji continued in a softer but controlled voice. “You will make this right with the police, and only then will we find out if it’s even possible for you to make this right with
us.
”

Chapter 33

Lin Yang transitioned into Chinese after Ji’s ultimatum, which
meant that Sadie could only hear his side of the argument—he spoke in English—that continued until the two of them got into a taxi. Ji carried a white plastic bag the restaurant used for take-out orders with them, but inside was Wendy’s purse, laptop, and phone, which Lin Yang had hidden in the storage closet of the restaurant, apparently unsure how best to dispose of them. Also in that bag were Wendy’s original keys to her apartment, which Lin Yang had taken during her first visit to Wendy’s apartment and then used to get into the building to actually set the fire. That Lin Yang had found Wendy dead, left her there, and then taken two days to plan the fire was mind-boggling.