Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (24 page)

“Her type?” Pete asked before Sadie could say it herself.

Shasta gave another knowing smile. “Bohemian.”

“What do you mean by that, exactly?” Pete folded his arms across his chest before leaning against the counter. Was it just Sadie’s imagination or was he holding his shoulders a little higher than usual? He cocked his head slightly to the side and had a casual look of curiosity on his face. Sadie looked between him and Shasta, who was walking toward him and looking very pleased by his attention.

“She was flighty but had lived well enough to want nice things. I know she’d relied on men for her security, but upon losing her looks she was being forced to settle down and stake a claim. I felt sure she’d spend whatever money she’d managed to squirrel away soon enough and, without a new sugar daddy, she’d have to scramble over the bridge to Sausalito for something more
affordable.
” She said “affordable” under her breath, like it was a dirty word. She twirled her hand through the air again. “But like I said, she surprised all of us. I couldn’t believe Stephen didn’t force her out with increases in rent, but then I learned about the addendum to her contract. What a fool he made himself out to be with that.”

“A rental addendum?” Pete said. “What kind?”

“Oh, it is so ridiculous.” Shasta rolled her eyes and scratched her dog’s head again. Sadie felt sure the dog was medicated; it was too tranquil. “He agreed to raise her rent only one-half a percent a year, regardless of how long she stayed in the apartment.” She let out a disgusted sigh and shook her head before eyeing the kitchen with a disapproving expression.

“But that wasn’t the same agreement the rest of you had?” Pete asked.

“The rest of us have whatever the allowable increase is from year to year—assessed on the anniversary of our move-in month. From my calculations, Wendy was paying nearly eight hundred dollars
less
a month for her two-bedroom than I was for my single.” Shasta huffed through her nose and shook her head indignantly. “Ridiculous.”

Pete stole her attention back. “Why would the landlord make a different agreement with her than with anyone else?”

“He said it was because the apartment had been hard to rent—housing was in a slump at the time or something like that. However, I’m sure he learned his lesson and will never do that again, seeing as how ungracious Wendy was about his accommodations and how long she stayed.”

Shasta wandered into the kitchen, running her hand over the tiled countertop. From her frown, there was something about it she didn’t approve of. Or maybe it was a reaction to the drywall dust covering everything. She rubbed her manicured fingers together.

“Can I ask how you knew about the rental agreement?” Pete said, confirming to Sadie that he was absolutely playing a role in order to garner new information. Sadie had told him that Jason claimed Shasta and Wendy had been friends at some point. Pete was playing up his ignorance of that in order to build trust and make Shasta feel important. No way Stephen Pilings told Shasta about that deal—though she’d obviously confronted him about it at some point. The only other person who could have told her about the agreement was Wendy herself.

Shasta didn’t respond right away. Instead, she let her eyes travel up the wall as though measuring its height. “Well, there was a time when you could have said that Wendy and I were friends, but, well, in time I simply couldn’t abide it any longer. We’re of a different class of people, she and I.” She glanced at Sadie. “No offense.”

Sadie smiled to imply that she wasn’t offended, even though she was.

“And it was during that time that she told you about the agreement?” Pete asked, keeping them all on track.

Shasta nodded.

“What brought your friendship to an end?” Pete asked.

Shasta shrugged. “I’m sure I can’t remember the final straw. She tended to make petty comments about people and things; she criticized my sense of style and taste in art more than once. Sometimes we’d get lunch or go to a show; other times she’d stand me up for an event and then act put out when I asked her why she hadn’t bothered to tell me. Eventually I came to realize that the root of Wendy’s problems was that she simply hated people. She didn’t care how she made people feel, and she didn’t mind when she inconvenienced them. I was a matter of convenience to her, that’s all. Like everyone else in her life, I suppose.”

Pete lifted his eyebrows, and Sadie shuddered at the idea of the people in Wendy’s life being matters of convenience. It was an interesting way to say it, but Sadie could see the truth of it—hadn’t Wendy discarded everyone once they were no longer convenient for her to have close by?

“Well, she hated dogs too,” Shasta added, dropping her head to kiss her pink poodle’s fluffy pompadour. She looked up again. “She told Stephen that my Annie piddled in the hallway, which was a complete fabrication, of course. Tried to get a no-pet policy in the building until she realized that I would be grandfathered in regardless of whether the rest of the building agreed to her petition. Then she left chocolate bars out on the grass strip—knowing that chocolate would make my Annie sick if she ate any of it. Basically, she was a nightmare.” She looked toward Sadie and gave another of her insulting grins. “No offense, dear.”

“Oh, Sadie didn’t have anything to do with her sister,” Pete said casually. “She understands better than most how hard she was to deal with.”

“Oh, really?” Shasta said, appraising Sadie in a new way. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Like I said, she hated everyone—and it seems I was right that
everyone
hated her back.” She turned to take another look out the front windows and bent down to whisper something to her dog in the process.

With the woman’s back turned, Sadie narrowed her eyes at Pete as playfully as she could before jumping back into the conversation.

“Did Wendy ever have any visitors that you know of?” Sadie asked.

Shasta turned and lifted one penciled-in eyebrow. “I did not keep track of who came and went from her place.” There was a touch of indignation in her voice, as though the idea of knowing who came to visit Wendy was beneath her.

Pete was unfazed by her response and pushed forward with a question of his own. “The prior tenant in number six saw a Chinese girl coming to see Wendy a few times. Do you know anything about that?”

“A Chinese girl coming to see Wendy? Was she bringing takeout?” Shasta laughed at her own joke, and Sadie and Pete both kept their smiles on, though Sadie could tell that Pete’s enjoyment of this conversation was waning, too.

“So you didn’t see her?” Sadie asked.

Shasta scratched her dog’s head. “I may have,” she said, looking thoughtful. “Like I said, I’m not one to track the comings and goings of the other people in this building. Not like Wendy, who loved to keep track of people so she could cause trouble, like her terrible treatment of my Annie.” She nuzzled the dog’s head again.

“You must have been excited when the apartment became available.” Pete asked, surprising Sadie with his candid question and the fact that he wasn’t pursuing the Chinese granddaughter angle a bit longer.

“Oh my, yes,” Shasta said with a smile, lifting her chin. “After exercising such patience for so long, I finally attained my goal. Two bedrooms is hard to come by, did I mention that already?”

“It doesn’t bother you that Wendy died here?” Sadie couldn’t help but ask.

Shasta blinked at her, leading Sadie to believe that she was just now thinking about that. “Well, of course, that is unfortunate, but, well, no one lives forever.”

“She may have been murdered,” Sadie added, ignoring the look Pete shot at her. “Does that bother you?”

“Murdered? No, no, no,” Shasta said emphatically, shaking her head so that her baby pink hair shifted slightly, but not much. Hairspray. “She died of natural causes.”

“And what do you think of the fire?” Sadie asked. “Seems an odd coincidence, doesn’t it?”

Shasta looked away from them, but took her time formulating an answer, which made Sadie wonder if she were looking for the perfect words. “The police said it was a burglary. The robbers must have found her in the tub and thought they’d get blamed for that, right? So they tried to burn the whole building down. It’s a wonder we all didn’t go up in smoke.” She shuddered and stroked her dog again. “It was absolutely terrifying.”

“I’ll bet,” Pete said while Sadie clenched her jaw to keep from saying something rude. This was all about Shasta; no consideration for Wendy’s death. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary the night of the fire?”

“I didn’t see anything or anyone,” she said, then let out a dramatic sigh. “The police asked me all about that already, you know. Whoever did it was in and out before the rest of us even knew what was happening.”

Mario returned from lunch and quickly ducked into the bedroom after they all exchanged hellos—except for Shasta, who just watched him as though suspicious of his being there. He closed the bedroom door behind him.

Sadie’s phone chimed a text message, and she was surprised at how relieved she felt to have an excuse to leave the room. She made her apologies and returned to the office. The text was from Jack, asking how things were going.

She replied simply that things were fine, and she’d give him a call later that night with a more detailed update, but that she could use his help in deciding what to do about Wendy’s body. He said he’d look into some funeral homes in the area, and they could talk about it that night. Sadie was relieved to have at least one thing taken off her list and thanked him for the help.

After finishing the texted conversation, Sadie turned back to the box still in need of being sorted but only stared into it for minute, increasingly annoyed that no one had noticed Wendy was gone. No one cared enough to check on her and, though Sadie had cycled through those thoughts a dozen times, they still bothered her—redundant or not. Rodger had been relieved that Wendy wasn’t calling anymore. Shasta was excited to get the bigger apartment. Surely Mr. Pilings was relieved to not have to deal with Wendy’s complaints.

And Sadie? Was Sadie also relieved not to worry about what she could do to have a relationship with her sister? In the back of her mind she’d always hoped to have a relationship with Wendy—maybe through resolving some personality defect in herself or discovering some kind of support she could offer to open the possibility of having a
real
sister. Was she relieved that she no longer had to wonder what she could do because any chance of progress was no longer possible? Sadie hated that thought, hated how true it might be. And yet she wasn’t feeling relieved about anything right now. She was as steeped in the stress caused by her sister as she’d ever been.

She shook herself out of yet another train of convoluted thought and forced herself to focus on the new information they’d learned from Shasta: the rental addendum. She wished she had the police files here so she could verify the terms, but since the files
weren’t
here, she had to add it to a growing mental list of all she would need to look into back at the hotel.

She began sorting the final contents of the box and could see the bottom of the tub in some places when Pete finished talking to Shasta and showed her out.

“She is somethin’,” Pete said when he came into the office.

“Something as in ‘something awesome’ or ‘something weird’?” Sadie asked.

Pete laughed. “I don’t think there’s room in Shasta’s life for a relationship with anyone other than Annie. But she’s interesting to talk to all the same.”

“Did you learn anything new?”

“Only that Shasta is indeed an heiress. Her grandfather held stock in the company that became Xerox, and she receives payments from a trust. She’s quite proud of the fact that she’s never worked a day in her life, other than some movie sets she worked on when she was younger. ‘Glorious days,’ she called them. ‘Magnificent!’”

Sadie shook her head and picked up another stack of paper. “That woman epitomizes the word
diva.
”

“Yes, she does,” Pete said. “How are things going?”

“I’m almost done here,” Sadie said. “There’s really nothing left to do other than clean it up.” She threw some more junk mail into the garbage but added a charge card receipt from Neiman Marcus to the stack of them she’d been growing. That’s probably where Wendy bought all those fantastic shoes that part of Sadie still wanted to keep for herself. “Oh, we might want to bring the boxes I stacked by the living room window in here so they don’t accidentally get donated. They’re items I want to take back to the hotel.”

“Okay,” Pete said. A chime from his pocket indicated that he’d received a text message. He busied himself with his phone while Sadie finished sorting the last of the papers in the bin: a grocery store receipt, a magazine advertisement for a pair of boots, and a partially completed credit card application. Sadie looked at her sister’s handwriting for a few seconds—she had beautiful penmanship—then put the application on a stack of other miscellaneous financials. Pete continued his text conversation while Sadie paper clipped the different stacks of paper together, then put them in a whiskey box.

Pete slid the phone into his pocket at the same moment that Sadie closed the top of the box. She brushed her hand across the cardboard and scanned the nearly empty room. “I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I’ve just managed to condense someone’s entire life into half a dozen boxes. Her whole life—sixty-odd years—and this is what’s left. It feels so wrong.”

Sadie looked up to see a pained expression cross Pete’s face, confusing her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, but then he turned and walked out of the room.

Sadie paused a moment before following him into the kitchen. She put a hand on his arm, and he stopped, then looked at her over his shoulder.

“What did I say?” she asked. She recognized this tension—it was very similar to what she’d felt from him last night in regard to his memories of Pat and the hesitation about selling his house.

“Nothing, really. No big deal.” Pete took a breath, but when Sadie didn’t let him off the hook, his shoulders slumped slightly and he explained his reaction. “I told Brooke about the offer on the house, and she’s kind of upset about it.”