Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (39 page)

Rodger’s nostrils flared as he stared into Mario’s rage-filled eyes, but he wisely said nothing.

Sadie’s heart was pounding after the confession she’d just heard. She cautiously lifted her phone, opened up a text message, and glanced at the screen only long enough to hit
reply
to her last text. The glow of the screen worried her, so she turned to her side to block it from the gap in the doorway.

You better send help.

She was no longer hiding behind a door to overhear a curious conversation; she was ten feet away from a murderer. Mario undid his tool belt and laid it on the counter as though announcing that he was done with the remodeling project.

Rodger frowned. “I will make sure that you are treated fairly from here on out. We’ll work out a monthly payment to ensure a better life for you and your family wherever you end up.”

Mario grunted. “You and Mr. Pilings will stay out of prison, but I am going back to a country that is a prison for me all the same.”

“At least you’ll be with your family there, and you’ll be taken care of financially. If the police catch up to you, none of us get that luxury.”

The two men faced off, and then Rodger reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “I have two grand right now. I can have the rest for you tonight. How soon can you leave?”

“So that’s it?” Mario asked.

“None of us wanted it to happen this way. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get worse.” Rodger sounded tired as he pulled the bills from his wallet and handed them toward Mario, who put them in the back pocket of his carpenter jeans. Rodger’s phone rang but he ignored it. “Find a way to contact me in a few weeks. It would be best to contact me through my business rather than my personal phone. We’ll make arrangements. Be careful.”

They were leaving, which was both a relief and a concern. She was anxious to get out of there with what she’d learned, but the police needed to catch Mario before he disappeared. Pete was her only resource for getting backup, and he wasn’t replying. If she could text 911 she would.

“You’ll call me tonight when you have the rest of the money?” Mario asked.

“I can’t
call
you!” Rodger snapped, then seemed to catch himself. “Do you think I’d have dared to come here if I could
call
you? The police can’t know we know each other.” He stopped, took a deep breath, and let it out with puffed cheeks. Forced calm. “Okay, uh, let’s meet at Pier 39 tonight, across from the wax museum. There are enough tourists that no one will remember us there. I’ll have the rest of the money.”

“In cash?” Mario asked.

“Of course it will be in cash,” Rodger said. “Steve and I made arrangements, just in case. I just have to get it.”

Mario nodded. “I will meet you at Pier 39 at eight o’clock tonight. I’ll leave from there and be across the border by morning.” There was a solemnity to his voice, a resigned acceptance.

Sadie wondered if he regretted having left Wendy in the tub as blackmail for the landlord or if he took some kind of satisfaction from having caused the turmoil that Rodger and Stephen now had to deal with. How did a man who could do such things think it all through?

Sadie’s phone vibrated in her hand—finally!—and she lifted it closer to her face so she could read the text message.

We’re coming! Hold tight.

Thank goodness. She hit
reply
and then glanced out the gap in the doorway, not connecting the light from her phone and the men’s silence until she saw Mario staring right into her hiding place. She pressed the phone against her chest even though she knew it was too late.

Oh, biscuits.

Chapter 36

Sadie dropped her phone and then slammed her heel into the glass face when Mario’s pounding footsteps started toward her. She didn’t want them to know the police were coming. A moment later a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly out from behind the door, throwing her toward a wall.

She stumbled in an attempt to keep her feet before catching herself. She turned to the doorway of the office, her only escape, and sank into a crouch, preparing to defend herself.

Mario’s shoulder rammed her back against the wall, knocking the air from her lungs and preventing the scream which had been bubbling up. He wasn’t taking any chances and, though she got a good elbow into his ribs when he threw his arm around her neck, he immediately pulled so tight that she feared he was going to snap her neck right there and then.

She gasped for air while going up on her toes, elbowing him in the side again, and scratching at his arm around her neck.

He pulled her backward, keeping her off balance and dragging her into the common area of the apartment. He threw her to the floor before she could plant her feet.

Popping lights sparked in her peripheral vision when her head hit the hard wood. She coughed for air but managed to sweep her foot against Mario’s leg, knocking him off balance—but not enough.

An instant later, Mario straddled her chest, pinning her arms with his knees in the process. He slapped a hand over her mouth before she’d had the chance to get enough air to scream.

She drew deep breaths through her nose, kicked her knees into his back and squirmed beneath him, but she may as well have been wrestling stone for all the good it did her. Mario was small, but he was solid and ruthless.

Realizing she wasn’t going to get away through her own physical attempts, Sadie looked to Rodger. He was standing a few feet away from them, his eyes wide and his mouth open in shock. Sadie tried to plead with her eyes—eyes that were like Wendy’s—but then remembered that he was part of having Wendy killed. He hadn’t killed her himself, however. Could he really watch Mario kill her, now? Was Mario really going to
kill
her?

As soon as she dared hope that wasn’t his intent, she realized how much he had to lose if she survived. She’d heard the confession, she knew Rodger and Stephen were involved, and she knew that Mario’s motivation in killing and leaving Wendy’s body behind was because of his family. She knew too much for them to let her go. The panic that had been building began to crumble into a cacophony of fear, regret, and, scariest of all, hopelessness.

“I can’t stay here,” Rodger said in desperation, but his voice lacked the mercy Sadie had hoped for. She stared at him, yelling behind Mario’s hand, which seemed to be pressing her harder and harder against the floor. “I shouldn’t have even come.”

“But you will leave
me
to do the work,” Mario said over his shoulder. “Again.” Sadie tried to lift her head, and he shoved it hard against the floor again, initiating more lights in her periphery. “You know why we killed your sister?” Mario suddenly yelled at her, his dark eyes boring into hers. “She was too much trouble. She did not know when to leave things alone. Just like you.”

Sadie moved her eyes to Rodger again; he was her only hope. He narrowed his eyes when he spoke to her. “He’s right, you know,” he said. “Wendy ruined people’s lives. She was writing my wife letters claiming that I was unfaithful, did you know that? At the same time she’s calling me every day with this sob story about her life, she was trying to ruin my marriage. When I found out about those letters, I’d had it. And then she filed yet another complaint against Stephen. She was trying to ruin both of us, and it was working!” He looked at Mario as though tempted to reiterate Mario’s role in why this had all fallen apart, but he must have chosen against it because he looked back at Sadie, glaring. “Take care of this last thing for us, Mario,” he said, his voice terrifying in its sudden calmness. “Do whatever it takes, however you want to do it. I promise to take care of you and your family.”

Mario looked over his shoulder at Rodger. “I will go to the police myself if either of you do not follow through on your promise.”

“I understand. I’ll make it work.” He nodded toward Sadie. “Just take care of her.”

Tears flowed down Sadie’s cheeks. Could this really be happening? Was Rodger really going to abandon her to this psychopath?

Rodger turned his back on them and hurried from the apartment, the door snapping shut behind him.

Mario looked at Sadie, his face hard and his eyes glinting. She wanted to close her eyes against him, block out the sheer hatred and power she saw in his face, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cower.

“I made some mistakes with your sister,” he said in a soft and even voice. “Leaving the body was a risk, and it has not turned out good for me, but that is not the mistake I am talking about. The
first
mistake is the one I made when I chose to kill Wendy Penrose fast and without explanation.”

Sadie’s body shook with fear and anger, but her eyes were still focused on his face. In her mind she was seeing Wendy, the amorphous figure of her sister that had taken shape in her mind these last few days. Sadie realized that she’d never made the arrangements for Wendy’s body. She’d left her there in the morgue all this time, too caught up in rebuilding Wendy’s life to finalize her resting place.

“She was in the bath, her crazy hair up on her head. I pushed her under the water so hard and fast she did not even knew it was me.” His expression fell. “And now I am going back to Mexico forever, and Mr. Pilings has won again. My family will never have the life I promised them. They will never know what it is to have all the luxuries that you take for granted. Because of this, you will suffer. This time, it will be long and slow and horrible.”

He shifted his hand slightly, lining his thumb against the side of her nose, then he pressed his thumb toward the rest of his hand, pinching Sadie’s nose closed and cutting off her ability to breathe.

Sadie’s body reacted and she threw herself back and forth, screaming behind his hand and kicking the floor as hard as she could in hopes of alerting . . . who? Shasta, who’d found Wendy’s body and called Lin Yang?

“You are the only one to blame for this,” he said, unfazed by her attempts to get free. “Too. Much. Trouble.”

The lights in her peripheral vision became a fireworks show as she tried to fight the unwinnable battle. As the oxygen was slowly depleted from her body, her legs stopped kicking. Her senses failed her, and her vision tunneled into black.

Chapter 37

Sadie had heard once that the most alert of the five senses when sleeping or drugged or in some other way unconscious was hearing. It’s why fire alarms made noise. For her, however, it wasn’t sound that awoke her. It was the smell of smoke.

As soon as Sadie’s brain realized what it was she was smelling, her eyes flew open and she blinked at the smoky air. Her brain couldn’t compute where she was or what was happening, but she knew something was very, very wrong. When she tried to sit up, a searing pain ripped through her side and a failed attempt to scream informed her that she was gagged. No, taped?

Mario hadn’t killed her.

Yet.

She breathed through her nose and fell back into the position she’d been in when she regained consciousness: lying down but propped up slightly. She attempted to move her hands but realized that they were bound as well. Carefully, she lifted them—the motion hurt her side, too—but she needed to see what was impeding her movement.

Her hands had been taped palms together, and though her fingers were free, her thumbs were trapped under several layers of thick duct tape. She attempted to use her fingers to pull the tape off her mouth, but without her thumbs, she couldn’t get a strong enough hold.

She tried to take a deep breath in hopes of clearing her mind, but the smoke brought on a coughing fit, which she feared would suffocate her again as she gagged and coughed into her nose. Her side ignited with each shudder of her body. Once she regained a steady breath, she used her fingers to lift the collar of her shirt over her nose, then she looked around. She was in a room, a small room a . . .

She faced forward and saw a shiny new faucet at her feet.

She was in a bathtub.

Just like Wendy.

A new level of dread tugged at her, and she tried to control her panic. She looked at her right side that was causing her so much pain. The blue of her shirt was purple, almost black, and a stream of her own blood trailed down the side of the brilliant white tub toward the drain. She had been stabbed, bound, and left in the bathtub. But there was also a fire.