Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) (27 page)

“He doesn’t approve?”

Min let out a sigh. She shook her head and tears came to her eyes. “He wants me to marry a doctor or an engineer
after
I finish college.”

“Ah,” Sadie said with a sympathetic smile. “Am I to assume your boyfriend isn’t on one of those professional pathways?”

Min frowned and Sadie worried she’d offended the girl. She hurried to repair the mess she was making of this conversation. “I’m not going to tell your dad, Min,” Sadie assured her. “How long have the two of you been dating?”

“We’re not
dating,
” Min said. Her shoulders dropped, and she let out a breath before looking past Sadie and blinking back the tears in her eyes. “My father won’t allow it.”

“So how long have you been sneaking kisses in the alley behind the restaurant?”

Min’s cheeks turned pink, but she looked at the ground in humility. “Forever,” she said quietly, the edge of tragic romance dripping from the single word that said so much. She looked up. “I’m twenty years old, you know. I can make my own decisions. My mother was only seventeen when my parents married.”

Sadie was tempted to point out that Min’s parents didn’t seem that happily married and that was likely influencing them to want to create a different future for her. But that wasn’t why she was here, and she didn’t believe in forbidding kids from relationships unless that relationship was toxic, which Sadie didn’t think was the case here. Not that she could really know after two minutes of observation, but still. “When you say you can make your own decisions, do you mean things like meeting your grandmother Wendy?”

Min paled in the evening light, which was quickly dimming, and when she spoke it was a shaky whisper. “You can’t tell my dad about that, either.”

That was a harder promise to make, but Sadie nodded all the same. She needed Min’s confidence. Min sat back down on the crate and put her hands on her head, elbows on knees.

Sadie sat on a crate across from her and hoped it would support her. “Min?” she said after several seconds had passed. “I’m not here to get you in trouble, I just need to ask you a few questions, okay?”

Min looked up, tears still in her eyes. “How did you find out about Grandma Wendy?”

“Some of her neighbors saw you at her apartment building. When did you start going to see her?”

“She came into the restaurant last fall. I knew about her, but I’d never met her before.” Her expression was hopeful, pleading, and slightly desperate for Sadie’s understanding. “She was
so
cool.”

Cool?

Min continued. “She invited me to visit her at her apartment and said she’d always wanted to know me better but that my dad was mad at her and kept her away from us. She said it would be our secret. And it was. They never found out.”

They. Not just Ji.

“So, you met her here at the restaurant the first time, and then went to see her at her apartment after that?”

Min hesitated, and Sadie searched her mind for a plausible reason for these questions that Min could relate to. She settled on a version of the same excuse she’d given everyone else she’d talked to on this trip. “I didn’t know my sister very well,” Sadie said. “She left Colorado when she was very young and rarely came back to visit. She had a lot of problems, which is why your dad didn’t want her around you guys, but she’s gone now and I want to learn more about her. I’m glad she got to know you before she died.” Sadie smiled sadly at the thought. “It must have made her really happy.”

“It did,” Min said quickly, nodding. “She loved having me come visit and help clean up the apartment. Everyone else she’d ever loved had abandoned her; even
Ba ba
—her own son—had nothing to do with her. It was so sad.”

It didn’t surprise Sadie that Wendy had lied to Min too. She lied to everyone, always making herself the victim, but a lie that damaged Min’s opinion of her father was a different level. “You said she came into the restaurant last fall? Do you know when, exactly?” The bank statements had showed that Wendy’s spending habits changed from September to October. Sadie wanted to know on which side of that change Wendy’s surprise visit to Ji’s restaurant had occurred.

“It was the first part of October. My parents were at a school program for Pengma’s class.”

“And Wendy invited you to come to her place?”

Min nodded. “She had such a great apartment. It’s on the third floor of this
awesome
building in Mission. She had really nice furniture, and you could see all the way out to the ocean through these big windows.” She sighed dramatically. “She hadn’t been feeling well and stuff was really messy when I first started going, but we got it cleaned up really well. Then we would talk and drink wine. She had such great insights about life.”

Sadie clenched her teeth together.
Wine? Really, Wendy?
Min was twenty—almost of age—but it was still irresponsible to be seeing her behind her parents’ back, never mind providing her with alcohol. “How often did you see her?”

“Every couple of weeks,” Min said. “I didn’t dare have her call me because my parents check my bill, so I would just stop in when I could. She was so lonely.” Min frowned, making her look even younger. “I felt so bad for her and wished I could visit more often, but I couldn’t risk my parents figuring things out.”

Sadie considered the fact that Min had been the one keeping Wendy’s apartment straightened up. “Did you by chance put a bunch of papers into a box in the closet?”

Min’s cheeks pinked. “She didn’t like to throw things away, but she’d let me put papers and things in the drawers of her desk or in boxes, but lots of times she’d pull everything out in between our visits. I put a bunch of stuff in that box, thinking she would forget about it and not pull it out. I guess you found it, huh? I know it was such a mess.”

“You did an excellent job of taking care of her,” Sadie said, wanting to reassure her that Sadie wasn’t judging her for the contents of the box. She was just glad to know why it was there in the first place. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Fresh tears filled the girl’s eyes. She swallowed and looked at the ground again. “She got really mad at me. I felt so bad and apologized, but when I went to see her next she wouldn’t let me in the building. The next time I went she didn’t even answer the buzzer. And then I found out she’d died and
then
Lok showed me an article about the fire in the paper.” She wiped at her eyes and sniffled.

“What did she get mad at you for?”

Min took a breath, her shoulders rising in the process, and then let it out. “I didn’t want to mail the letters anymore. But if I’d known how important it was to her I would have done it. I didn’t realize what a big deal it was.”

Sadie pulled her eyebrows together as the pink sealed envelope she’d found yesterday came to mind. “Letters?” she asked. “What letters?”

Chapter 23

Min wiped at her eyes again. “It was so dumb, I should have just kept doing it.”

“Doing what? Mailing letters?”

Min nodded.

Sadie tensed in anticipation of what Min might say next. “Why did you mail letters for her? She had a mailbox in the lobby of her building.”

“She said she liked them to be sent from Chinatown.”

“Why?”

Min shrugged. “It was part of this thing she was doing with a friend—I didn’t really get it. On the days I would go to her apartment, she’d have me take a letter back with me and I’d drop it in this mailbox by my house. This one time, though—the second to last time I saw her—I’d forgotten to put it in the mailbox right away, and my mom saw it in my bag. It really freaked me out so the next time I went, I told Wendy I couldn’t mail them anymore. She got really,
really
mad and told me not to come back.”

“When did this happen?”

“The first part of May. It was before my computer science project was due, and that was turned in on the twelfth.”

“When did you go back to see her? The time she wouldn’t let you into the building?”

“About a week later. I don’t know the exact day. She answered her buzzer, but when she found out it was me, she told me to leave her alone. It was awful.”

Sadie gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m so sorry.”

Min looked at the ground and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“What kind of letters were you mailing for her?” Sadie worried that if she asked if they were in pink envelopes that Min would think she knew more than she did.

“Just . . . letters.”

“To whom?”

“Wendy’s friend.”

“What friend?”

Min shrugged but didn’t answer.

“What did your mom say when she found the letter?”

“She just asked what it was,” Min said, a dramatically defeated expression on her face. “I told her it was for a school project, and then I mailed it as soon as I could get out of the apartment.”

“It must have stood out somehow for your mom to notice it like that. Was there something unique about it?” Sadie said, aching for confirmation.

“Well, it was pink.”

Sadie had to consciously not feel too triumphant about the detail, but she enjoyed the rush of success through her chest before she moved on to the next detail. “Did the letter have Wendy’s return address on it?” If it did, could Lin Yang have seen it?

“She put the same address it was being sent to as the return address,” Min said. “She said it was part of the game.”

On a letter to a friend? “Did your mom believe you about the project?”

“I never lie, so she had no reason to think I would,” Min said, sounding miserable. “I feel terrible that I did, and then it didn’t matter anyway because I only saw Wendy that one time after that—the day she got so mad and told me not to come back.”

Sadie almost brought up the secret boyfriend Min had been making out with in the alley as another lie, but that didn’t seem like it would work in Sadie’s favor much. “Do you think your parents knew you were seeing Wendy?”

Min shook her head with confidence.

“You’re sure?”

“If my parents knew, they’d have killed me.”

The back door started to open, and Sadie startled, then darted to the section of wall right behind the door. It was the quickest cover she could think of. Min watched her hide, then stepped toward the door and out of Sadie’s view. Sadie held her breath as the door was pushed open. She hoped whoever was coming through didn’t fling the door all the way open. It was a heavy door.

Lin Yang said something in Chinese, and Sadie held her breath.

“Um, just taking my break.”

Chinese again.

“Sorry, I was texting Gwen. I lost track of time.” She didn’t say anything else but the door started to close, fitting into the frame a second later and leaving Sadie alone with the crates and the muted sounds of the street coming from the other side of the building.

She took a breath and quickly returned to where Pete was still hiding. If he wasn’t using a Dumpster as his cover, she’d have pressed her back against it and given herself a minute to gather her bearings, but instead she simply made eye contact with him. Pete nodded in silent agreement that they should go. They headed out of the alley, passing a group of men who had been smoking and talking until Pete and Sadie appeared. The men went silent and watched them. They increased their pace. The men’s chatter started back up as soon as Sadie and Pete turned the corner out of the alleyway. A minute later they were back on the street.

“That was interesting,” Pete said, walking fast toward their hotel. They’d had the valet park their car at the hotel for the night before walking to Choy’s. The sun was setting, making Sadie wish she’d taken the time to retrieve her jacket from her hotel room, though adrenaline was keeping her pretty warm and her head was spinning. “I’d like to make a suspect list, a list of possible motives, and a list of questions we need to find answers for.” She’d been taking notes all along, but making a list of suspects was different—these were actual accusations, even if no one other than she and Pete were aware of it. But they’d now met enough people and learned enough about Wendy’s interactions with them that this step felt necessary.

Pete looked at her while they waited for a light to allow them to cross the street. “I think that’s a good idea.”

Chapter 24