Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (20 page)

“Because she didn’t have anyone else,” Rodger said. He held her eyes, and Sadie felt sure he was making the point that since her
family
wasn’t helping, he’d had to step up.

“She left us too, just like she left you,” Sadie couldn’t keep from saying. “My parents tried to keep in contact with her.”

“Well, sure, but you can hardly blame her for not inviting them back into her life. Not after the way they treated her.”

Sadie blinked and felt her chest fill with heat. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, your dad’s alcoholism and your mother’s depression; you have to know that her problems stemmed a great deal from the abuse she suffered as a child. It left some pretty deep scars.”

The heat in Sadie’s chest got stronger and hotter. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “It wasn’t like that,” she said as calmly as she possibly could. She wanted to ask
exactly
what Wendy had said, get details and facts she could dispute, but she worried it would take the conversation off track. Still, she felt she owed it to her parents to say something in their defense. “Wendy was the source of chaos in our home. My parents were kind and loving. She wasn’t mistreated.”

Rodger nodded, as though pretending to believe her. “You should try the soup before it’s cold. It’s really quite good.”

Sadie didn’t like his blatant dismissal but decided to take a few moments in order to rein in her emotions and regain her focus. The soup
was
good and tasted like it was made with fresh corn, just like her own corn chowder recipe. She’d have to try her chowder with chicken some time; she liked the density it added to the soup. After a few bites, and some substantial calming on her part, she got back to the point of the discussion.

“What happened to the relationship Wendy left you for?”

Sadie worried she was being
too
pointed—she hadn’t expected them to talk in so much personal detail—but he wasn’t putting a stop to it. This man had loved Wendy, perhaps still did, which made the potential scope of information he could give Sadie very important.

“I don’t know what happened with the guy she left me for. We didn’t keep in contact those first couple of years after the divorce; in fact, I didn’t hear from her until she was working on getting her own place.”

“Why did she get in touch after all that time?”

“She needed first and last month’s rent. She was lousy with money and asked if I would help her out.”

“Did you?”

“I wanted her to be stable, and I thought that her getting a place of her own was a good sign that she was becoming more independent. I’d come to realize by then that Wendy always seemed to have a man in her life. For the first time, she didn’t, and I wanted that to work out.”

He was certainly generous. Too generous? “I assume that’s the same apartment she died in,” Sadie said after doing the math in her head. Ji had said Wendy had lived in the same apartment for twelve years.

Rodger nodded, his expression remorseful.

“How did you feel when you heard about her death?”

“Terrible, of course. But not that surprised. It was like Wendy to go out with some drama.”

“Do you think she was murdered?”

Rodger furrowed his eyebrows. “Is that what the police think?”

“I’m not sure what the police think,” Sadie hedged, “but I know it’s a consideration.”

“I told them I thought it was far more likely that she committed suicide and the robbery was connected to the fire.”

“Really?” Sadie asked, surprised. She thought of the new pajamas Wendy had purchased two days before the estimated day of her death. It was a small thing to be sure—pajamas were just pajamas, after all—but it seemed to indicate an expected continuation of her life, right? Plus, the police didn’t suspect suicide.

Rodger continued. “Seems the most likely scenario to me. Like I said, she had highs and lows, and she was definitely in a low spot—had been for months.”

“Doesn’t it seem odd, though, that the robbery and fire could be purely coincidental? Regardless of how Wendy died, what are the chances that a burglar chose a third-level apartment in a locked building that just happened to have a dead body in it, and, instead of just robbing the place and getting out of there, lit the body on fire and placed an anonymous call alerting the police about it?”

“The tip was from the burglar?”

“No,” Sadie said, worried she’d said too much. “I mean, the police don’t know who made the call, that’s just one way of looking at it—but it makes the assumptions about it all being coincidental feel far-fetched, don’t you think?”

“That kind of thing does happen, though. The drug culture is rampant all over the city. There are some neighborhoods where people would kill their own grandmothers if it meant ensuring another week’s worth of hits.”

“And they break into third-level apartments in locked buildings? Wouldn’t they go for an easier target?”

“I guess I hadn’t thought about that,” Rodger said. “I was under the impression that the police weren’t putting their money on foul play, so I’m surprised that you seem so convinced otherwise.”

Sadie worried she’d betrayed too much of her true motivation in talking to Rodger and focused her attention on her bowl of soup. “I’m just trying to consider all the angles. It was shocking to hear what happened to her and then realize how long she’d been dead before the fire was set. I’m trying to make sense of it in my own mind, if nothing else.”

“I can imagine this has been very difficult,” Rodger said sympathetically. “Wendy had drug issues in the past, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she had gotten back into that lifestyle. But I sure hope the police can confirm that her hard living had simply caught up with her, and then a seemingly empty apartment had attracted a burglar who panicked when he found her and tried to burn the place down.” He tore off a piece of his bread bowl. “I don’t think anyone had it out for Wendy.”

“She didn’t have many friends.”

Rodger shook his head in agreement. “No, she didn’t, but she wasn’t a bad person. Just not entirely well.”

Sadie took another bite of soup while determining how she wanted to address the next topic. Head-on or round about? She decided on the head-on approach; the clock was ticking on the time Rodger had allotted for them to visit. “I understand she was calling your office nearly every day in the months before she died.”

A flicker of guilt crossed his expression. “She needed someone to talk to. Like I said, I was about the only friend she had.”

“What did you talk about?”

“I don’t know—stuff. I was trying to get her to see a doctor; it seemed obvious that things were getting worse. But she didn’t want to go and so mostly we talked about day-to-day stuff.”

“What kind of day-to-day stuff?” Other than laundry service and grocery delivery, what day-to-day stuff did Wendy have going on?

He looked annoyed for the first time, and Sadie wondered if she was being too pushy. “Like telemarketers and TV shows and things we’d done together years earlier.” He paused for a breath. “Look, I was with her long enough to know that whatever was off balance in her brain was worse from about Christmastime until the spring. She was getting older and didn’t have people to support her through the bad times. She was too volatile for long-term relationships with most people, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Wendy and I truly wanted to help her. So, I told my secretary to put her through when she called. I talked to her about her day, commiserated about the hard things, and told her to hang in there. I was her friend—quite possibly the only one she had. We would talk for a few minutes and that seemed to be enough for her.”

“And when she stopped calling?” Sadie asked. “What did you think of that?”

“I was out of town the last two weeks of May. I had told her I was leaving, and she left me seven messages from the sixteenth through the twenty-second expressing her annoyance at my not being in town. When I got back, I thought she might start calling again but she didn’t. Then again, it was spring, and she usually improved in the spring. She wasn’t stable but she could be relatively predictable.” He looked at his watch and straightened. “I need to be getting back to the office. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Sadie’s mind whirred through the possibilities, hating that their conversation was ending. She’d thought he was hiding something when she’d spoken to him on the phone, but now she wondered if it was simply the complexities of his relationship with Wendy that had given her that impression. What else could she learn from him?

“Oh, yes, there’s one last thing,” she said. “What about her son? Did you ever meet him?”

“Oh right,” Rodger said with a nod. “The police told me about him—crazy that she’d never once told me she had a son.”

Chapter 18

Sadie still had half a bowl of soup when Rodger stood to go back to the office. She thanked him for his time and then finished her soup while writing down everything she could remember from their conversation in the notebook she kept in her purse. The information he’d shared fit into the growing picture of Wendy as a mentally ill, manipulative, smart, and selfish woman. And yet there was something admirable in the fact that Rodger had loved Wendy despite those things. Even if Sadie didn’t understand why he did, she was grateful for it all the same.

The two hardest parts of the conversation had been learning what Wendy had said about Sadie’s parents and what she
hadn’t
said about Ji. It was unreal that Rodger hadn’t known about him until the police asked last week, yet Sadie could find no reason to doubt Rodger’s assertion of ignorance. At one point, she asked him why he thought Wendy wouldn’t tell him about her son, and he’d answered honestly: he’d never wanted children. He’d told Wendy that when they first began dating.

Sadie’s heart was heavy with that information, and she hoped that she could tell Ji about this meeting without having to divulge to him that Wendy had spent ten years with a man who never knew of Ji’s existence.

She finished her notes and took the last bites of her soup—cold but still good—before heading out of the restaurant. Her hotel was around the corner, and she’d seen lots of taxis pick up and drop off near the entrance, so it seemed a natural place to find one that would take her back to Wendy’s apartment.

Her phone chimed with a text message, and she moved closer to the building so she wouldn’t be in anyone else’s way. The sidewalks always seemed to be packed. In the process of trying to fish her phone from her purse, she dropped her notebook. She bent down to pick it up and caught sight of a man stepping quickly into a parking garage exit. Another woman on the street glanced toward where he disappeared, then continued walking toward Sadie, passing her without a smile or a greeting.

There was something familiar about the man—though Sadie had only seen a flash of him. And why had he jumped into the parking lot exit? He’d moved as though getting out of the way. Or hiding. She continued searching for her phone, keeping an eye on the area where the man had disappeared. Had she seen him before, or was her imagination running wild?

The text message was from Ji. He was needed at the restaurant and would call her later. He’d left the building keys with the man who lived in apartment two. Sadie typed her response slowly, asking if everything was okay, her attention still focused on the parking garage.

A few seconds later, the man stepped out from his hiding place. Sadie noted the hitch in his step that happened when he saw her still leaning against the building, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, she pretended to send another text, forcing the man to do something—they couldn’t both just stand there.

He began walking in her direction but didn’t look at her. When he passed her, she casually fell into step behind him, studying his back until recognition dawned. He was the man from the soup café—the only person, other than Rodger—who had been sitting alone when she entered. Mid-thirties in a green polo shirt. Was he following her? Not now, of course. She was the one doing the following now. But had he been following her from the restaurant?

He continued up Sutter Street with Sadie a couple of yards behind him. When they reached Powell—one of the roads that had a cable car track down the middle—he crossed at the light and entered a Walgreens. He didn’t glance toward her even though she was certain he knew she was there.

Sadie didn’t follow him inside, but turned and hurried back across Powell before the light changed, and then ducked into the Starbucks on the corner. She could watch the door of the Walgreens through the window. If Mr. Green Shirt
was
following her, he wouldn’t wait long to come out once he realized she was no longer behind him.

He didn’t disappoint, and when he came out onto the street and looked around, she stepped back to make sure he wouldn’t see her through the glass. After a few more seconds, he seemed to curse, then pulled a phone out of his pocket. He
had
been following her, and now he was calling whoever it was he was in league with to tell them he’d lost her.