Lemon Tart

by Josi S. Kilpack

  When the floors were vacuumed, the counters scrubbed, and the second batch of applesauce finished, Sadie took a deep breath and looked at the clock—something she’d determined not to do once Ron had shut the door behind him.

  It was 11:53. Ron’s hour was up.

  “What do I do now?” she said out loud. Then she took a deep breath to get extra oxygen to her brain. She needed to think—something she’d been trying to avoid. In order to better facilitate her concentration, she went into the living room and sat in her favorite chair—an armchair she’d given to Neil on their last Father’s Day. Three months later, when she’d come back from the hospital alone, she’d curled up in that chair and just smelled him. Later that night, after getting the kids to sleep, she’d gone back to the chair, crying, sobbing, letting her heart break into a million pieces. Sometimes she felt like her heart was still in this chair, still connected to Neil in some weird, metaphysical way. But whatever her romantic notions, the chair was the furniture version of comfort food. She needed anything she could get, so she curled into the soft, brown suede-type material—rubbed smooth on the seat and the arms—closed her eyes and just thought.

  Ron and Anne—what possible reason would he have to go see her? Sadie knew the obvious suspicion but the thought made her sick. Anne was young and beautiful. Ron wasn’t either one, but he had a certain appeal; Sadie had certainly fallen for him. She shook her head. Surely there were perfectly reasonable explanations for Ron to be at Anne’s house . . . late at night . . . without Sadie’s knowledge.

  She’d introduced Anne and Ron a couple weeks after Anne had moved in, and they’d run into each other at Sadie’s house often enough to be considered acquaintances. She’d never noticed anything between them. Had she been so lovesick over Ron that she’d missed something? She shook her head again. It wasn’t possible. She’d have known. She might be a romantic, but she wasn’t an idiot.

  Wouldn’t she have known?

  Growling out loud, she lost patience with her pondering, got up and went to the phone, dialing Ron’s cell-phone number by memory. She’d given him his hour and now she needed answers before she made herself crazy. The phone rang four times before his chipper voice asked her to leave a message. She slammed down the phone and stared out the front window. It would be foolish to withhold information from the police—that would only put her at risk of further suspicion. And yet as she grabbed her jacket from the back of the couch, the heaviness in her heart slowed her hands. Tears came to her eyes and she took a deep breath, willing herself to do what she knew had to be done.

  “You’re stronger than this, Sadie Hoffmiller,” she said to herself, the whisper sounding loud in the silent house. “And you know what the right thing to do is.”

  With that, she put on her jacket, said a little prayer, and headed out the front door.

  Chapter 7

  When Sadie and Neil bought their corner lot, Old Man Tilly owned all the land. He’d lived there for years and grown alfalfa until he reached his seventies, at which time subdivisions made more money than hay. Spurred by one of his sons, he’d developed the cul-de-sac, putting his house on a paved road for the very first time. The land around the cul-de-sac was divided into eight lots and the remaining acreage was left for future development that never happened. Tilly lost interested in developing a subdivision once he had sold the second lot to Jack and Carrie, leaving two empty lots to the west of them, and three empty lots east of his house as well.

  The lots remained vacant as incentive for his children to move closer to him. The incentive become an inheritance once Forrest Tilly died eleven years ago. Now and then, one of the lots would go up for sale—which is how Mr. Henry and the Baileys had come to join the neighborhood—but the Tilly kids wanted a premium for the land and there were cheaper, more modern subdivisions on the other side of town that were more attractive to potential buyers. No one had knocked on Sadie’s door to ask about the remaining empty lots directly across from her for more than a year. That suited Sadie just fine; she loved the neighborhood just the way it was and although everyone in the circle had their eccentricities, they all got along well enough.

  From the sidewalk, once she’d cleared the tree, Sadie looked toward Anne’s house. There were a few vehicles in front of the house and she wondered if the detectives had discovered anything new. The low hum of an approaching car caught her attention and she looked left, hoping it was Ron. It wasn’t. It was just Carrie coming home again.

  Some of the people huddled in front of Anne’s house looked up when Carrie pulled into her driveway, including Detective Madsen, who immediately headed toward her.

  Sadie stood where she was, not knowing what to do. She’d been planning to talk to Detective Cunningham and explain what Ron had told her, but now faced with that decision, she couldn’t make herself do it.

  Then she remembered the tart.

  Her eyebrows came together as the inconsistencies seemed to jump out at her. Ron had said he’d been at Anne’s last night. But the tart had been put in at . . . 9:00 this morning if the timer had been set for forty minutes. So, if Anne was baking, then she had to have been alive after Ron left, just like he said.

  Sadie felt her heart lifting like a balloon at the discovery. But then it sunk again. There was still the issue of Ron being there at all. Sadie hadn’t gone to bed until after eleven—there had been a Gray’s Anatomy marathon on TLC—she’d have seen Ron in the circle if he’d come while she was still up. Her TV was situated so that she could see it and the window at the same time. Anne would have been up earlier than usual, which seemed strange after a late night, not to mention that she seemed to have put the tart in at exactly 9:00. Not 9:07 or 9:13. That was odd.

  “Mrs. Hoffmiller?”

  She jumped, her frazzled nerves too much on edge to show any restraint. Detective Cunningham blinked at her and she wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. However, it was nearly noon and the morning had warmed considerably, the air scented with burning corn stalks and the last of the summer weeds. She usually loved the smell of smoke in the air, the reminder that the stride of life was moving forward in the most basic of ways, but today it seemed suffocating.

  “Detective,” she said evenly as she felt her cheeks color. He must think she was some kind of nut job to be standing on her front walk in her sticky flip-flops doing nothing. And she’d forgotten to check her hair on her way out the door—how embarrassing. She glanced toward Carrie and watched her take a few bags of groceries out of her car. It seemed like a betrayal to Anne’s memory that Carrie would do something so mundane as grocery shopping on a day like this. And yet, hadn’t Sadie made applesauce? She felt so guilty all of a sudden.

  Detective Madsen stood at Carrie’s elbow and the two women shared a brief look before Carrie said something to Detective Madsen and then headed inside, alone. Detective Madsen finished scribbling some notes, looked over at Sadie and Detective Cunningham, and then walked back to Anne’s house. She wasn’t sure, but Sadie thought she’d caught a scowl in their direction before he turned.

  Detective Cunningham cleared his throat. “I’d like to confirm whether or not you have requested legal representation or if I can still talk with you?”

  Sadie shook her head, embarrassed at the man’s formality and wanting to return to the casual exchanges they had shared that morning over applesauce. “Ron said that, not me,” she said sadly, hating to relive those moments again.

  “So you are comfortable with continued questions?”

  Sadie just shrugged and looked at a crack in the sidewalk at her feet.

  “Is that a yes?” Detective Cunningham asked. “It would be very helpful if you would continue answering questions for us. You knew Ms. Lemmon and so far you’re the only person with any intimate knowledge of her life. We would appreciate your assistance.”

  Sadie had always been a sucker for people needing her help—it’s why she served on half a dozen volunteer committees and was the first person ever
yone called when someone was in need of a casserole. She just had a genetic disposition to help, and people knew it.

  “Any word on Trevor?” she asked.

  Detective Cunningham shook his head. “We’ve issued an Amber Alert and there is a separate team working on his disappearance. What we need from you is help figuring out who Anne Lemmon is and who could have done this.”

  Sadie nodded. “I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  “Did Anne have a phone? We haven’t found one in the house.”

  “Yes,” Sadie said. “But only a cell phone. I told her she should get a landline, but she didn’t seem to understand how important it is to be listed in the phone book and she didn’t want to pay two phone bills.” She shrugged. “Her cell was small and silver. She took it everywhere with her. Why?”

  “We’d like to check it for personal numbers and things,” Detective Cunningham said.

  “Oh,” Sadie said. That made sense.

  He looked back at his notebook, then met her eyes again. He had hazel eyes with dark lashes—the kind of lashes women would kill for. “Do you know where Anne kept her personal papers, bills, documents?” he asked. “We’re still waiting for the crime scene unit to arrive but upon our initial inspection we’ve found almost nothing of that sort in the house.”

  “Well, she kept almost everything in the filing cabinet next to her bed. I’ve been there when she’s opened her mail and she puts it all right into the appropriate files. She mentioned that she used to work as a receptionist and she liked organizing things like the office—everything in its place.”

  “By the bed,” he muttered, writing it down.

  “I was wondering,” Sadie said. Cunningham looked up from his notes. “About the purse in the field. Trevor’s shoes were in the house, and Anne was in quite a state of . . . disarray, and yet it looks as if she’d taken her purse outside with her.”

  “And this strikes you as odd?”

  Sadie nodded. “Yes, it does. I wonder if perhaps someone took Trevor and she was going after them. It’s the only scenario I can think of that would excuse her forgetting his shoes.”

  “It is something to consider,” Cunningham said. “But that would mean someone attacked her after she left the house and then killed her in the field.”

  “Well, of course,” Sadie said, nodding, but her thoughts were still spinning. “But that would be rather risky, wouldn’t it? Killing her outside when she has neighbors.”

  Cunningham nodded, still watching her carefully.

  “You think someone moved the body?” Sadie asked, her heart racing again. For some reason the possibility made it all the more sinister. “And then . . . the purse would be there as a decoy.” The thought gave her chills. “So calculated,” she said under her breath.

  He held her eyes for another moment and then wrote some more before closing his notebook. “It’s not typical for us to bring people into a crime scene, but if you don’t mind, I’d like you to come inside and verify some things I believe have been altered inside Ms. Lemmon’s house.”

  Sadie hesitated. She didn’t want to appear too eager, but she wanted to help in any way she could and she knew she had nothing to hide. The trick was to convince the detective of that. Helping him would not only make her feel better, but it would also show him she was not an enemy. She wished he wouldn’t talk so cryptically though.

  After a few moments, Sadie nodded, hoping the hesitation would keep her from looking too anxious. All through school she’d been accused of being a teacher’s pet, a people pleaser who was always trying to get into her superiors’ good graces. She hadn’t done that at all; she just liked to do well at things and if it made people happy in the process, well, that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Detective Cunningham smiled and it made her feel better.

  “Aren’t there supposed to be a lot more people here?” she asked as they approached the house. On TV there were always all kinds of cars, bystanders, people running around, women crying.

  “We’re not a large jurisdiction,” Detective Cunningham said as he nodded at the two officers by the front steps. Sadie was half a step behind him. “We have a couple crime scene officers on their way and the coroner has been called, but they’re all coming from Fort Collins so it will be a while. When we enter the house, please clasp your hands behind your back and don’t touch anything.”

  Sadie nodded and did as she was told, holding her hands tightly together and hoping she didn’t touch anything on accident. Entering the house, she thought it looked the same as it had this morning. Sadie took a deep breath; she could still smell the lemon tart.

  “I’d like to start downstairs,” he said without looking at her.

  She followed Detective Cunningham to the top of the stairs just off the kitchen that led to the basement. Sadie’s skin bristled as she thought of Anne being killed in this house, and then someone moving her dead body outside. Sadie blinked back more tears and tried to keep her emotions in check.

  When they reached the basement, Detective Cunningham motioned for Sadie to stand next to him in the doorway of the family room. She stepped closer to him, their shoulders nearly touching. The room was long and narrow, with a TV and a couch at one end, and a washer and dryer at the other. The area around the washer and dryer had been tiled, whereas the rest of the room was carpeted. On the wall across from the doorway where they stood was a large window, allowing the room to be fairly light, despite it being a basement.

  “The curtains aren’t right,” Sadie said immediately, scanning the panels of fabric while searching her mind for what was wrong. When she realized what it was, she felt a rush of excitement. “She always tied the curtain panels to one side, making a big swag.” But now, instead of the swag, the panels were separated and pulled to their respective sides. It looked perfectly ordinary, but it wasn’t the way Anne had kept them. Sadie wondered what the implications of such a detail might mean.

  “When was the last time you saw the curtains tied that way?”

  Sadie searched her memory. “About two weeks ago,” she said, her eyes scanning the room and resting on a framed print above the TV. Her hands slipped apart and she quickly clasped them behind her back again, fearful she would mess something up. “I gave Anne that print.” She nodded toward it, afraid to point. “I found it at a discount store and thought the colors would be good for this room. I helped her hang it up.”

  “Would she have changed it between then and now—the curtains I mean?”

  “Possibly. I always made certain she didn’t feel some obligation to do things my way, but she had seemed to like the curtains with the one swag. I even sewed the tieback for her because she couldn’t find one in the stores that matched.” She couldn’t believe that just hours after Anne had turned up dead, she was discussing curtain arrangements with a detective.

  “Describe the tieback,” he said, pulling out his notebook.

  “Well, it was about three feet long, made out of a floral-patterned, cotton-poly blend. It was just a long rectangle—like the belt of a bathrobe—with buttonholes on either end. The pattern was big flowers, peony types, mostly pink, but with smaller purple flowers—like hyacinths or something small but puffy like that. And there was also some yellow and—”

  “How was the tieback secured to the wall?” Detective Cunningham asked, interrupting a description Sadie thought could be very important. But he was the detective. He walked into the room, leaving her in the doorway. With a pen, he pulled back the left curtain pane. The gold hook that she had helped Anne install was no longer there. Instead two nail holes stared back at them like eyes.

  “A small gold hook,” Sadie said softly, staring at the holes. “Do you know . . . how Anne died?” she asked, not wanting to jump to conclusions.

  Detective Cunningham looked at her for a moment before he answered. “That’s not available to the public and needs to be confirmed by the coroner.”

  Sadie nodded her understanding, but couldn’t help picturi
ng Anne being strangled with the tieback. She forced the image out of her mind before she lost control of her emotions.

  “Is there anything else that doesn’t look right?” Detective Cunningham asked.

  Sadie looked around the floor, wondering if the hook had rolled under the couch but the room looked in order—perfect order in fact. Sadie’s eyes narrowed and she took a longer scan of the room.

  “What?” Detective Cunningham asked, and she looked up at him, not realizing he was watching her.

  “It’s just that everything is so clean.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, Anne’s a working single mother—that means certain tasks are prioritized. Anne worked hard to keep the upstairs tidy, but when she came down here, it was to do laundry. She’d turn on the TV and let Trevor play while she worked, then she went back upstairs. This room is usually covered with toys. You know, out of sight, out of mind.” As she spoke, her eyes scanned the clean floors, not a toy in sight, and the laundry basket in the corner that served as Trevor’s toy box was near overflowing. There was a basket of clothes on top of the washer, and some miscellaneous bundles of fabric on the dryer. Other than that, the room was pristine.

  “Huh,” Detective Cunningham grunted. He looked past her shoulder and Sadie turned, surprised to see Officer Malloy behind her. She hadn’t heard him and he seemed intent on ignoring her completely. “Have the crime scene techs check all the toys in this room for prints,” Cunningham said. “Tell them to be very thorough here.”

  Malloy nodded and headed back upstairs.

  “Let’s continue the walk-through,” Detective Cunningham said. “Tell me if anything else looks out of place.”

  The downstairs bathroom was a mess—just as it always was. The storage room was only roughly organized. Anne had shown up with nothing and hadn’t accrued much in the nine months of living here. Back upstairs everything looked as Sadie would expect, somewhat orderly but not as detailed and clean as the family room downstairs. They reached Anne’s bedroom and Detective Cunningham turned to her. “You said she kept a filing cabinet in here?”