Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (42 page)

Sadie’s Test Kitchen: Annie, Danyelle, Laree, Lisa, Megan, Sandra, and Whit (Gyoza). They are the force behind the recipes. They share great ones with me, hone the ones posted on our private blog, and are absolutely essential to this process. I simply could not have done this series without them, and I so appreciate all the time and talents they have lent these last five years.

Shadow Mountain: Jana Erickson keeps everything going smoothly as my product director; Shauna Gibby creates the delicious covers; Malina Grigg does the typesetting, and Lisa Mangum is my editor extraordinaire. I seem to be making it a habit that each book is requiring more rewrite suggestions from her, and I am grateful beyond words for her patience, brilliance, and continual encouragement. Lisa’s intern, Alannah Autrey, gave some great feedback on
Fortune Cookie
as well, playing an integral part in the final version.

My friends and family: I have come to realize that amid this journey I am on, the greatest blessing is the people I have met along the way. This includes readers, other writers, business associates, and people who would be in my journey regardless but play a part in this portion of my life as well. My sisters, Crystal White and Jenifer Johnson, beta read this book for me, as did my dear friend Jenny Moore. Lending their abilities to my endeavors is both a professional and emotional service to me, and I so appreciate all that they have done to help this book along. Margo Hovely (
The End Begins: Glimmering Light,
Covenant, 2012) unknowingly contributed the Cheater Sourdough Bread recipe, but I shall always call it the “bread of shame,” though it never was that. ☺

My sweethearts: For this book, my husband, Lee, and three of our children were able to spend a weekend in San Francisco—one of my husband’s very favorite cities. We ate and walked and mapped and photographed and visited and brainstormed and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It truly is a city of diversity, character, culture, and really great food. It was fun to experience it with them and then morph some of our experiences into this story.

The reason I have been able to develop this career is because of my husband’s support and my children’s patience. I have always tried to be a mom first, and while I have not always succeeded at that, I feel greatly blessed to have been able to have my family and my writing and make them all work together, but I certainly don’t make it work by myself. I love these guys more than I can say, more than I can express, more than I can believe sometimes, and will always cherish them as my greatest blessings from the Father in Heaven who has given me so much.

About the Author

Josi S. Kilpack began her first novel in 1998. Her seventh novel,
Sheep’s Clothing,
won the 2007 Whitney Award for Mystery/Suspense.
Fortune Cookie
is Josi’s twentieth novel and the eleventh book in the Sadie Hoffmiller Culinary Mystery Series.

Josi currently lives in Willard, Utah, with her husband and children.

For more information about Josi, you can visit her website at www.josiskilpack.com, read her blog at www.josikilpack.blogspot.com, or contact her via e-mail at [email protected].

Sneak Peek

Sneak Peek of Wedding Cake

Enjoy this sneak peek of
Wedding Cake
Coming Fall 2014

Author’s Warning

Wedding Cake
is the final book in the Sadie Hoffmiller Culinary Mystery series. As such, storylines and characters from earlier volumes will be revisited that may give away details of those earlier books. If you have not yet read the other books in the series, you may want to do so.

Chapter 1

Dead birds were the antithesis of a wedding day, which should be all about hope and goodness. That’s why Sadie was making tiny tulle bags of birdseed for her wedding guests to throw instead of rice.
Two days,
she thought as she finished tying a gossamer bow on one of the favors.
Two days and I will be Mrs. Peter Cunningham.

Sadie’s phone rang and she pivoted from the kitchen counter to the kitchen table, where her phone vibrated against the lacquered tabletop.

She glanced at the caller ID before smiling and putting the phone to her ear. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hey, Mom,” her daughter, Breanna, replied. There was a lot of noise in the background, and Sadie imagined her daughter—tall, dark, and beautiful—plugging one ear while standing in a corner of the Heathrow airport in London. “We’re checked in and will board in about twenty minutes.”

“Wonderful.” Sadie allowed herself to take a break from the myriad wedding details and sat in the worn brown recliner in her living room. It was her favorite place in the house, and she settled into the squishy softness of its embrace with a sigh indicative of her long day. Forty-eight hours—well, forty-one, really—and she would be Pete’s
wife.
She could hardly believe that after three years of what could only be classified as a tumultuous dating relationship, they were finally getting married. “What time do you land in Minneapolis?”

“Around four o’clock in the morning your time,” Breanna said. She stifled a yawn, reminding Sadie that it was about 3:30 a.m. in London right now—8:30 p.m. here in Colorado, though. Since it was July, the sun was just setting, casting orange shadows through the big front window. The red-eye flight from London to Denver wasn’t the best itinerary available—in fact, it might have been the very worst—but it had allowed Liam, Breanna’s husband of only six weeks, to attend an important event that evening.

“I hope you’ll be able to sleep on the plane,” Sadie said.

“I’m not worried about that,” Breanna said. “I’m
so
tired. The flight is nine hours, which will give me plenty of time to rest before the layover. We should be to Garrison by noon or so tomorrow.”

“Wonderful,” Sadie said, hoping the jet lag wouldn’t be too difficult for them. “Pete swapped out the bed in your room for a queen-sized bed from his house. It’s got fresh sheets and everything.” Sadie liked Liam quite a lot, but he’d grown up wealthy and privileged, and she worried that her home wouldn’t meet his expectations. “I even bought new towels.” They matched the bedspread and the new curtains Sadie had put up; she’d been going for an English countryside look and then worried it would look pretentious.

“Don’t stress too much,” Breanna said with a smile in her voice. “We’re looking forward to staying at the house. Shawn’s there already?”

“He flew in this morning,” Sadie said, smiling at the anticipation of having both her children—and Liam—under her roof at the same time. It didn’t happen very often, what with Breanna living on another continent and Shawn finishing up his degree at Michigan State. “He’s at Pete’s bachelor party right now.”

“Oh, a
bachelor
party. And you’re not spying on them?”

They joked for a bit about what the men might be doing. Sadie kept to herself that she knew
exactly
what they were doing: barbecuing Omaha steaks, drinking imported beer, and playing poker until midnight at the home of one of Pete’s police department buddies. It had only taken a quick scroll through Pete’s text messages and eavesdropping on a couple of conversations when he thought she was occupied with something else to assure her that she had nothing to worry about on this last night of “debauchery”—not that her investigation meant she didn’t trust him. It was just a habit, good or bad, depending on the circumstances of its employ.

It had been an intense few weeks: Pete preparing to move out of his home that had just sold, Sadie’s house still having the realty sign in the front yard. After the honeymoon they would step up their efforts to find a new place of their own and then, maybe, she would lower the price on her home to encourage it to sell in the unpredictable market.

“Well, I better go,” Breanna said on the phone. “If I use the restroom now and don’t drink too much water on the flight, I might be able to avoid the horrible bathroom on the plane
and
sleep straight through.”

Sadie said good-bye with a smile that stretched all the way to her toes. Sixteen hours from now she would get to hug her daughter and new son-in-law. And twenty-four hours after
that,
she’d be making vows to the man she had come to love so much. Still grinning, Sadie pushed up from the chair, then flinched slightly at the tugging pain that pulled at her right side, just below her ribs.

Three weeks ago she’d been stitched up following the most harrowing experience of her life, which was saying a lot based on the number of harrowing experiences she’d survived in recent years. She’d healed better than the doctors had expected, but she was still sore and she had to be careful about moving too quickly. Sadie credited the healing to the level of endorphins running through her bloodstream as the wedding plans had picked up speed.

Sadie moved a bit more carefully into the kitchen and finished tying up the rest of the birdseed packets. When the task was finished, she put the tiny bundles into a basket and set it next to the front door so that she’d know right where it was when she was running around crazy in the hours before the ceremony.

She scratched “birdseed favors” off her to-do list and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, pulling the guest list she’d been meaning to get to all day in front of her. There was a purple check mark next to the guests who had responded that they would be in attendance and a black X next to those who had RSVP’d that they couldn’t make it. Sadie had expected that most of her friends from out-of-state wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony, but she’d loved all the phone calls of congratulations and catching up that sending the invitations had garnered. Everyone was so happy for her and Pete, and she loved hearing their well wishes over and over again.

There were a few names unmarked on her list, including Ji, her recently discovered nephew. He wasn’t sure he could get away from his restaurant but hadn’t yet said he
wouldn’t
be there. She still held hope that he, and perhaps his daughters, would be able to attend.

There were half a dozen other guests she hadn’t heard from, and she considered whether or not she should follow up with them. She didn’t want to put anyone on the spot, but what if their invitations were lost in the mail? She’d feel terrible if they learned about the wedding later and believed she hadn’t included them. Or what if they’d tried to get in touch with her but called an old number, not realizing that she’d put her new number on the invitation? If they hadn’t received the invitation at all, they might not have her new number.

There was still time to make a few calls—at least those on the West Coast—but was it worth the possibility of an awkward conversation? She tapped her pen on the paper—
decisions, decisions.
She needed to give Braxton’s—the restaurant where they were holding the wedding luncheon—a final guest count by tomorrow at noon.

Her thoughts were interrupted when her phone chimed with a text message. She picked up the phone and noted that though the texter came up as
unknown
, the area code gave away that it was someone local.

Unknown:
Hi, Sadie.

Sadie:
Hi, who’s this?

Unknown:
You don’t know? I’m hurt.

Sadie:
Your name didn’t come up on my contact list so you’ll have to tell me. ☺

Unknown:
Think about it for a minute. Do you really not know who this is?

Sadie furrowed her brow as she remembered some advice Pete had given her almost two years ago when she’d disconnected her landline, forwarded her mail to a post office box, installed an alarm system on her home, and gotten her first private cell phone number, which she only shared with select people.

“Don’t answer any calls or texts from unknown numbers,” Pete had said. “I’ll look them up, and when you know who it is, you can decide whether you want to call them back. Don’t take any chances.”

As time had moved forward, Sadie had bit by bit given up the protective measures that had felt so necessary at the time. She felt a little silly for thinking about Pete’s advice now since she’d sent her new number out to dozens of people she’d invited to the wedding. It was surely one of them teasing her. But that didn’t sit quite right. Most of the people in her life knew that she’d had some difficult times; they wouldn’t play with her anxieties like this, would they?