Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  And yet how much connection could there be to a sister who had shut Sadie out of her life completely? Sadie had always assumed that Wendy had such limitations that she couldn’t live a normal life. What if the real answer was that she simply didn’t want anything to do with her family? The idea that there could be something about them that Wendy hated wasn’t completely foreign—Sadie had thought it before—but it raised her defenses, and she felt the sentimentality pass through her as whatever connection she’d reached for faded away. She wanted to know why Wendy was the way she was, something solid and diagnosed. It was harder to justify Wendy’s actions when Sadie was presented with such a convincing defense of normalcy.

  She took a deep breath of the paint-scented air. This is where Wendy lived, yes, but she didn’t live here anymore. These things had once been hers, but now they were just stuff. She hadn’t taken her stylish apartment or nice furniture or self-portraits with her, and the things she could have had—relationships, love—had not factored into her priorities. She’d died alone, perhaps tragically. What a horrible end.

  Sadie couldn’t push away the emotion completely, but neither was she willing to let it take over. She needed to distract herself with work and headed out of the room, giving one ear to Pete’s side of the conversation while she picked up a couple of the boxes they’d brought and put them in the office. She took the other boxes and the garbage bags—they would work for the clothes—into the bedroom while determining where to start. Sadie had expected that Wendy’s apartment would be full of things easily thrown out and given away but that wasn’t the case. Did Ji really not want any of these things? He’d been here, so he knew the quality of Wendy’s belongings when he said he wanted to arrange to donate them.

  “ . . . you bet. Thank you for making time for me.”

  Pete ended the call and leaned against the kitchen counter.

  “You’re going to meet with Detective Lopez?” she asked.

  “Yeah, he has some time in about an hour. Want to come?”

  Sadie absolutely wanted to go with him—well, rather she absolutely didn’t want to stay here—but Ji would be coming at some point and the work wasn’t going to get done if she didn’t buckle down and do it. “I better get started here.”

  Pete frowned. “I don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”

  All it took was him to act protective to trigger Sadie’s feelings of self-sufficiency. “I’m perfectly fine here.”

  “Sadie,” he said in a concerned tone. “We don’t know exactly how Wendy died, but someone came in last week and lit her remains on fire.”

  “I’ll lock the door after you leave, and Ji will be here eventually. I’ll be fine.” She considered reminding him of her self-defense training—something that had saved her life in the past—but worried it would come across as argumentative.

  “You’re sure?” Pete asked, still looking skeptical.

  Sadie crossed the room to him and put her arms around his neck. She gave him a quick peck on the lips. “Ask your new police buddies where you should take your fiancée for dinner in this town. I will be just fine.”

  Pete relaxed and kissed her back, though it was far more exciting than the chaste kiss she’d given him a moment earlier. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way back.”

  They kissed once more—maybe three more times—and then Sadie locked the apartment door behind him, took a deep breath, and did what she always did—jumped in with both feet. There was work to do, and it was time to get moving.

  Chapter 8

  It was nearly three o’clock when a buzzing sound made Sadie jump from where she was packing up dishes in the kitchen. She looked around in alarm and saw a speaker with buttons near the door to the apartment. Remembering a similar speaker by the outside door of the building, she hurried toward it, took a moment to figure out which button did what, and then pushed the button labeled talk.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “It’s Ji,” the voice said. “Can you buzz me in?”

  “I think so,” Sadie said. She let go of the talk button and pressed the unlock button, hoping it would open the exterior door of the building. She held it for ten seconds, assuming that would be enough time for him to enter, then let go. Anxiety washed over her as she waited for Ji to come up.

  When he knocked on the apartment door a minute later, she took a deep breath and put on a wide smile, ready to meet her nephew for the first time. She pulled open the door to reveal a handsome man, almost six feet tall. His Chinese heritage was obvious in his coloring, but his resemblance to Sadie’s brother, Jack, was there too in his strong jaw and wide forehead, which made him seem familiar. He had light brown eyes and dark hair, cut short.

  She held out her hand. “I’m Sadie,” she said, refraining from referring to herself as Aunt Sadie because it felt presumptuous.

  He took her hand and shook it once before dropping it. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry it took me so long to get away. We stayed pretty busy today.”

  “I’m just glad you were able to come,” Sadie said and stood to the side of the doorway so that he could enter.

  He walked past her into the apartment before coming to a stop and sniffing the air. “It smells better than it did when I was here last week.”

  Sadie grimaced. “Was it horrible?”

  “Not as bad as I expected it to be, but, yeah, you could tell stuff had happened. I’m glad it’s better now, though. I was worried about you coming into that.”

  Sadie was touched by his concern. He turned away from her and his eye caught Wendy’s jewelry box still on the counter. He paused and his eyebrows pulled together as he took a few steps toward it. He picked it up, regarded it for a few moments, and then looked up at her. “You bought this at the restaurant today?”

  “No,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “I did buy one—you’re very talented—but it’s in the car.” She waved toward the box in his hands. “This was Wendy’s. Didn’t you give it to her?”

  “No,” Ji said, sounding confused.

  “Maybe she bought it,” Sadie suggested.

  “She hasn’t been to my restaurant in years,” Ji said, shaking his head and putting the box back on the counter.

  “Did you come here? To Wendy’s apartment?”

  “No,” Ji said simply.

  “But you both lived right here in San Francisco?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Sadie said, not wanting to be pushy but confused all the same.

  Ji faced her and blessedly gave her more information. “If either of us had wanted to see the other, we could have. The landlord told me she’d lived here for twelve years. I had no idea. As it was, we were two people amid 800,000 who live in this city; it’s easy to avoid people if you wish. I live in Chinatown. I work and raise my children there. She always knew where I was. When she wanted to find me she did, but it was rare that she would come by, and when she did, it would be because she needed money—which I never gave her. I had no interest in pursuing a relationship with her. She stayed in her community; I stayed in mine. It wasn’t as though we would accidentally meet.”

  “That makes sense,” Sadie said, focusing on the logistics he’d mentioned rather than the sadness of their relationship. Wendy didn’t have a car, so it stood to reason that she’d stay close to home. “It seems most neighborhoods around here are quite self-sufficient, with grocery stores and restaurants that are accessible to those who live there.”

  “Exactly,” Ji said.

  He let his eyes run along the apartment again before they met Sadie’s. “So, what would you like me to do?” he asked. “I’d started on the stuff in the living room, but then the detective showed up with those boxes”—he waved toward the document boxes still on the counter—“and I answered his questions until I had to get back to the restaurant.”

  Sadie nodded. “Well, I’ve packed up most of the cabinets in the kitchen. She has some really nice sets of dishes, and I wondered if you wanted to keep them. One
is from Williams-Sonoma and—”

  “I don’t want anything,” Ji cut in, his voice brisk.

  “Nothing?” Sadie asked, glancing at the TV on the wall. It was a really nice TV, and she figured that if he wanted anything at all, he’d want that. She also wondered why the robbers hadn’t taken it. Maybe because it was too big to get out easily?

  “She gave me nothing while she was alive, and I won’t take anything now.”

  Sadie was struck by the intensity of his words and by the obviously deep-seated pain he still felt about his mother. “We could probably sell some of this. She has some very nice things.”

  He shook his head again. “I want nothing from her.”

  Sadie nodded sadly. “I’m sorry for all the hurt she caused you, Ji.”

  He simply looked at her, and she wondered if his distrust for his mother had spread to include Sadie too. She’d sensed it when she talked to him on the phone but hoped meeting him in person would change things. She wanted him to see her as an ally, even if accepting her as family was too difficult right now. He finally looked away, scanning the apartment again.

  “My friend works with a charity organization that helps new immigrants get settled here in San Francisco. He said he can send a truck tomorrow afternoon. Do you think we can get everything packed up before then? They’ll take everything—furniture, kitchen supplies, and clothes. They’ll even take nonperishable food and cleaning supplies.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Sadie said with a smile she hoped communicated that she was trying to understand how he was feeling about all of this. “I think we could get everything packed up if we worked hard at it. Pete, my fiancé, will be back in a little while, and between the three of us, I think we can make really good progress.” She was as eager as Ji seemed to be to get this job over with, but suddenly wondered why either of them was here if neither of them wanted to be. Surely the police had dealt with other murder victims who had no one to claim their things; there had to be a procedure for what to do in that situation.

  “She never told me she had a sister.” Ji’s flat tone caught Sadie off guard, but he continued before she could comment. “She never talked about any of her family. I assumed she didn’t have anyone, let alone anyone like you.”

  Like me? Sadie repeated in her mind. Did he mean that in a good way or a bad way?

  “How did you find my address to contact me?”

  “I looked through her desk and found an envelope with your return address. Your father’s obituary was inside, which is how I made the connection.”

  “She hadn’t come to his funeral so I’d sent her the clipping. She kept it?” Sadie felt a wisp of gratitude that she’d sent it even though she’d been frustrated with Wendy for not acknowledging their father’s death. That Wendy had kept it all these years meant something, didn’t it?

  Ji’s expression showed a hint of regret that caused Sadie to brace herself. “It hadn’t been opened when I found it,” he said.

  Wendy never even opened the letter Sadie had sent? She’d never even read the final tribute to their father? Sadie swallowed the hurt and reminded herself that this detail was in perfect accordance with the Wendy Sadie did know. A nice apartment and beautiful things hadn’t apparently changed her much.

  “Wendy cut us out of her life entirely,” Sadie explained. “But I’m glad she kept the letter if only so that you could find me. I’m glad you contacted me.”

  “When did my mother cut you off?”

  Sadie gave him a brief version of the history and ended with, “It was very hard on my parents.”

  “But not on you,” Ji added, picking through the subtleties of what she’d said.

  If not for having already promised herself to be honest with him when the hard questions came up, she’d have lied. There was obvious difficulty between Ji and his mother, and Sadie felt guilty adding to it with her own negative experience. But she wouldn’t lie to him. If this man deserved anything from her, he deserved the truth. Still, she proceeded with caution, not wanting to give more than he wanted to hear. “Wendy didn’t treat me well when we were young, and we never had a chance to form a bond later in life.”

  “What do you mean she didn’t treat you well?”

  It was easier to tell Ji than it had been to tell Pete, maybe because she’d had practice, or maybe because she’d had a few days to relive the experiences and reaffirm to herself that she hadn’t been to blame for Wendy’s bad behavior. Or maybe because she sensed that Ji hadn’t been treated well by Wendy either. Those things didn’t make the telling of it painless, however.

  “I forgave her a long time ago,” Sadie said after divulging the details of her childhood experiences. “I believe she was mentally ill and didn’t always understand what she was doing.”

  “Perhaps you give her too much credit. Perhaps she was just a bad person and always had been.”

  His dark sentiment surprised her, but she was careful not to react. She had no idea what his life with Wendy had been like and didn’t want to come across as dismissive or judgmental. “I’m not sure I believe that people are just bad.” Yet even as she said it, she thought of some of the people she’d met in recent years who could fit that description.

  Ji looked away from her to the canvas prints of Wendy on the living room wall. Sadie watched him, wondering what he felt when he looked at the portraits of his mother and wondering what Wendy had done to cause such disdain in her only child.

  Several seconds passed before he looked back at her. “Did you know about me?”

  Sadie had been dreading that question but took a deep breath before she answered. “My parents begged for contact when she told us about you; she called you Eddie.”

  Ji nodded but didn’t comment.

  Sadie continued. “They sent money when Wendy faced different crises and asked for help. More than once, they sent money specifically to pay for the two of you to come out and visit, but she never came. She would go for months and sometimes years between contacting Mom and Dad. And then at some point she said you were living with your dad.”

  “None of you ever looked for me,” Ji said matter-of-factly.

  There was a question in his statement, a “Why didn’t you find me?”

  “When my parents gave her money it was their expectation that they were helping you.” Even as she said it, though, she wondered why they hadn’t tried harder to find him. Why not hire a private investigator? Why had Sadie followed the passive lead of her parents instead of doing something herself? She tried to explain about the uncertainty of whether or not Ji had existed because Wendy seemed to have used him only as an excuse to get money from her parents, but he cut her off.

  “You knew she wasn’t well—you said so yourself. Did you consider that she wasn’t well enough to be a mother? Knowing she might have a child should have spurred you to at least try.” His expression was hardening, and Sadie felt herself tensing in response.

  “We worried about that all the time, even when we weren’t sure if you were real or not. When we learned you were with your father—”

  “My father is a drunk. I was ten years old when Wendy dropped me off at his nasty apartment and told him he could be the parent for the next ten years. I didn’t see her for almost five years. By then, I was living with Lin Yang’s family and working at their restaurant so that I could eat and stay in school. I had nowhere else to go.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sadie said softly, feeling terrible about all he’d gone through. “We had no idea.”

  “And you didn’t check,” Ji said. His eyes and expression were cold and stony. He turned away and took a breath. “Before she took me to my dad’s, we lived all over Southern California. She’d shack up with someone for a few months, then after he’d kick her out for stealing, we’d live with another friend of hers. One time we lived in our car for an entire summer. I panhandled on the beach so we could eat at the end of the day. Growing up with her was a nightmare, and all along you guys . . .” He stopped hims
elf and took another breath, a deeper one. “Never mind,” he suddenly said, straightening his shoulders. “I’m going to get started in the bedroom.” He crossed the room and shut the door behind him.

  Sadie blinked, trying to keep the tears down while swallowing the lump in her throat. Why hadn’t they tried harder to confirm Ji’s existence? Couldn’t she have done something to help him? Was there anything she could do now to make it right? She pictured him as a little boy, begging for money, and had to close her eyes against the image that made her physically sick.

  After several seconds, she went back to packing the kitchen, heartsick and wishing she could say something to ease Ji’s hurt. The hopes she had of having a relationship with him after they finished closing out Wendy’s life seemed slim, and yet she couldn’t hold it against him. If she’d been in that situation and learned that there were people who could have helped her but didn’t, she wasn’t sure she could forgive them either.

  She also wondered, as she wrapped a crystal bowl in newspaper before putting it in a box, how Wendy had gone from the woman Ji had just told her about to someone with crystal bowls and Williams-Sonoma dish sets. What had happened between then and now? Did it even matter?

  Chapter 9

  When the buzzer sounded for the second time that day, Sadie was startled all over again. It was Pete this time. She buzzed him up, then opened the apartment door and waited in the doorway for him, relieved that he was back. Ji stayed in the bedroom, allowing Sadie to give Pete a whispered update of what had happened in his absence. She heard the pleading tone in her voice and was glad when Pete said he’d try to talk to Ji. She didn’t notice the white paper bag until he handed it to her and said they’d eat the “treats” in a little while.

  He kissed her quickly before disappearing into the bedroom. She heard him introduce himself and immediately begin asking about Ji’s work and family. Pete was a master with people, and Sadie was glad when she heard Ji answering Pete’s questions. The bag Pete had handed her was from Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, and there were cookies inside. Sadie’s stomach was too twisted to be tempted at the moment, so she set the bag aside and went back to work packing up the kitchen.