Lemon Tart (8 page)

“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?”

Sadie nodded as she stared at the bed pushed against the
wall—no filing cabinet in sight.

“It was one of those two-drawer cabinets. It was
between the bed and the wall so she could use it like a nightstand. The bed
wasn’t against the wall like that.” She scanned the carpet and could just make
out the indentations from the wheels of the bed frame a couple feet closer to
them. She released her hands long enough to point to the floor. “That’s where
the bed used to be.”

Detective Cunningham stepped into the room and surveyed the
area she’d pointed to. The indentation was faint—it would be
hard to see if someone didn’t know it was there.

He walked around the bed, looking at the one-inch gap
between the bed and the wall. “Malloy,” he called out. As if by magic Malloy
was suddenly in the doorway. “Is CSU here yet?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But I expect them any minute.”

Detective Cunningham shook his head. “Will you get working on
photos and measurements of the bed until they get here? We need to move the bed
out from the wall about three feet—I’m looking for evidence of
a filing cabinet being there.” Then he turned his attention back to the almost
imperceptible mark in the carpet. It would have been made by the lower leg of
the bed and Sadie followed his eyes toward where the head of the bed would have
been. There was a similar mark about two feet out from the edge of the bed.
Malloy left the room.

“Would she have moved the bed?” he asked.

“I suppose,” Sadie said. “But where would she have put the
filing cabinet? I haven’t seen it in any of the other rooms.”

“Yeah, me neither,” the detective said. “But I would expect a
bed to make a deeper impression in the carpet if it had been moved just hours
ago.”

“Is it wet?” Sadie asked, taking a step closer just as Malloy
returned with a measuring tape.

Detective Cunningham looked up at her with a questioning
expression. He did have very nice eyebrows. “Wet?”

“This is a thick plush carpet. If you put an ice cube in the
indented area and let it melt, it fluffs the carpet back up.”

“This well?”

“On a high-quality carpet like this—maybe.
With mine I have to use my hand or the vacuum hose to fluff it up when it’s
mostly dried, but my carpet isn’t this nice. This carpet was new when Anne
moved in.” She stepped back so Malloy could measure the distance of the carpet
marks with the wall at the head of the bed.

“How long would it take for the carpet to spring back up?”

“However long it takes to melt an ice cube and have the
moisture begin to evaporate, restoring the air into the carpet fibers and
therefore expanding its overall shape—I would guess two or
three hours.”

Detective Cunningham looked at her in surprise. “Really?” he
asked. “My daughter would love to know that.” Then his expression turned
serious. He stepped forward and put his hand on the carpet. Sadie held her
breath, thrilled at his positive reaction and hoping she’d been right. He
looked up at her. “It’s damp,” he said, looking pleased. “But just barely.”

Sadie tried to contain her excitement about having helped, even
in a small way. She wondered if he was no longer regarding her with suspicion.
She hoped so.

Just then two men entered the room. They were in street
clothes, but each carried a bag and wore latex gloves. The lost CSU people,
Sadie suspected. Malloy handed over the measurements he’d already made on
a pad of paper and left the room. Detective Cunningham gave them some
instructions on what he wanted them to do and then he and Sadie got out of
their way. The men immediately went to work.

“Is there anything else different in there?” he asked Sadie
once they were in the hallway looking back into the bedroom.

Sadie searched her memory and frowned. “I really don’t know.
I’m not very familiar with her bedroom. We’re usually in the kitchen, or on the
back porch.” At least, they used to be in those places. Not anymore.

“When did you last see the cabinet?”

“Maybe last month,” Sadie said without confidence.

They were silent for a moment, watching the techs. It gave
Sadie the creeps—people going through Anne’s house trying to
figure out how her life ended. As much as she wanted to help, she was feeling
the heaviness of the day press upon her. And Trevor was still out there. “Can I
go now?” she asked, her voice sounding timid.

He nodded. “I’ll show you out.”

She backed into the hallway in order for him to pass—her
hands still tightly clenched behind her back. They had reached the kitchen when
Sadie remembered her earlier ponderings about the lemon tart. She quickly
looked around the kitchen, her eyes resting on the stove. It was off and she
felt a little thrill of discovery rush through her.

“Detective Cunningham?” Sadie asked quickly. The other heads in
the room turned toward her as well and she swallowed, not wanting to make a
scene. She had the distinct impression that she was now slowing the detective
down.

“I wonder if anyone turned off the oven,” she said, shifting
her weight uneasily from one foot to another. Every head in the room turned to
look at the oven, which showed no lighted display or indication it was still
on. Then, as if watching a tennis match in slow motion, they all turned back to
look at her.

“Why do you ask?”

She felt as if she were on stage and straightened her spine
just a little. Her shoulders were beginning to ache from holding her hands
behind her back. “Well, I was thinking about my lemon tart recipe, which was
the first thing I ever taught Anne to cook.” She looked at the people watching
her and smiled. “It was my mother’s recipe—and Anne wanted it
to become her signature dessert,” she explained, not wanting to sound arrogant
but feeling it necessary to explain why she believed it was hers. She looked at
Detective Cunningham. “Anyway, the timer went off at exactly 9:40, which means
Anne must have set it at exactly 9:00. But Anne’s rarely awake before ten.”

No one said anything, which she took to mean they had no idea
where she was going with this. “So I wondered if maybe she had the oven on time
cook.”

“Time cook?” Cunningham asked.

“Yeah, you put something in a cold oven and then set the oven
to turn on at a certain time. I showed Anne how to do it months ago so that she
could put a frozen dinner in the oven before she went to work and come home to
a hot meal. She was eating a lot of fast food before then.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to leave the oven on when you’re not home?”
Malloy broke in. “Suppose she didn’t come home on time.”

Sadie smiled at him as if he were a student and she was
teaching him something of great importance. “Well, see, that’s the thing. You
can do a stop time as well, so the oven shuts off after a certain period of
time. And the food stays warm as the oven cools off. If no one turned off the
oven this morning, maybe it was set to start at 9:00 am with a stop time exactly forty minutes later. Normally
you cook the filling for about thirty minutes, but she could have added ten
minutes to account for the crust not being hot and to preheat the oven. But
anyway, if she got up at her usual time of ten or eleven the tart would be
done. Although I’d never do that with a tart.” She looked at the detective.
“Tarts require more supervision than a frozen lasagna.” She paused for a
moment. “And I’m not sure why she’d go to the trouble. I mean, what did she need
the tart for at ten in the morning?”

The room was silent, seeming to consider the question.

“So time cook sets the timer as well?” Detective
Cunningham asked as he stepped over to the oven and looked at the digital
display.

The lemon tart was still on the stove top, and Sadie wondered
for a moment what would happen to it. It needed to be dusted with powdered
sugar soon, and it would be a shame for it to go to waste but it didn’t seem
appropriate to ask for it. “Mine does—and someone set the timer for the
tart. It’s the fact that it was set at exactly 9:00 that seems odd.”

“Hmmm,” Detective Cunningham said, then he looked at Malloy.
“Find out if anyone turned off the stove.” He turned to Sadie again while
Malloy went out through the back door, leaving two other officers still in the
kitchen. “So she could have put it in the oven at any time?”

“I think there’s a limit—mine is ten hours. But
the tart has eggs in it so it would be irresponsible for her to leave it
sitting in the oven for too long. You know, salmonella and all that.” They were
all watching her, nonplussed. “Once, at a family reunion, my cousin Pam—she’s
named after our maternal great-grandmother—she drove all
the way from Durango to Boulder with a potato salad and no air conditioning. It
was in July, mind you, and every person who ate that salad was throwing up for
the next two days. Pam felt horrible about it, of course, but it just goes to
show that eggs are to be respected, and since mayonnaise is made from—”

“Cunningham,” Detective Madsen suddenly said from the back
door, causing all the heads to turn in his direction this time. “What is she
doing in here?” he asked, cocking his head to the side and narrowing his
gaze.

“Doing a walk-through,” Detective Cunningham
answered, his voice controlled but laced with irritation now that Madsen had
appeared. He turned toward Sadie and opened his mouth to say something, but
Detective Madsen didn’t let him.

“That’s completely against procedure,” Detective Madsen said.
“If this goes to trial, the defense will have a heyday!”

“Shut up, Madsen,” Cunningham said calmly, but his eyes were on
fire.

Sadie swallowed and shrunk back a little at the same time
Detective Cunningham took what could have been interpreted as a protective step
forward, putting Sadie further behind him. She was glad to have someone on her
side, but she was in no mood to be in the middle of their tension again.
However, she was as curious as the proverbial cat as to why things were the way
they were between the two men.

“She’s given us some excellent information,” Detective
Cunningham continued.

“She’s a suspect!” Madsen shot back, causing Sadie’s heart to
jump in her chest. He turned to glare at her. “By her own admission she was the
only person in the area when the murder was committed!”

Chapter 8

“She’s a neighbor!” Detective Cunningham’s voice was on
the verge of yelling and it sounded like thunder in the house. “And until the
official time of death is properly established, we don’t know when it happened.” Detective
Madsen was struck by the power of the older man’s words and shut his
mouth—but not for long.

“Well, while you’ve been strolling around and discussing
details of the case, the coroner’s been looking for you. He’s got some questions.”
He glanced briefly at Sadie and scowled at her, making her shrink back even
more until she was officially in the hallway rather than the kitchen. As Madsen
headed back outside, she heard Detective Cunningham mutter “Impertinent
snit” under his breath.

“Excuse me?” Sadie said, wondering if she’d misheard him. Maybe
he meant to say “important bit” or something like that.

“Nothing,” he growled and started leading her to the front
door. As she passed the fridge, her shoulder brushed against it, sending a
hamburger-shaped magnet and a piece of paper to the floor. The sound
of the magnet bouncing across the linoleum sounded as loud as a rocket
ship.