Lemon Tart (16 page)

“You went to see her last night,” Sadie spat back, hating being
lied to, hating that he thought her such a fool. She’d talked to the attorney,
she’d read the e-mail. She was not the idiot he had taken her for.
“You were supposed to be in Denver but you weren’t, you were with her. And now
she’s dead and your son is gone.”

“I didn’t kill her and I’m not the father of her kid!” he
nearly shouted. “If you’d just shut up long enough to hear what I have to say,
I could explain.”

Sadie was flabbergasted. She couldn’t remember the last time
someone had told her to shut up.

“Sir!”

Sadie and Ron looked up to meet the eyes a very tall, very
black, man. The tag on his vest said Jerome—Manager, and his
black licorice eyes bored into Ron’s. To Sadie he was Superman,
Spider-man, and her personal favorite, Captain America, all wrapped
up into one. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” Sadie said at the same time Ron said, “Everything’s fine.”

Ron took a breath and spoke again, his eyes on Sadie. “Please
leave us alone,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I think it would be better if you
left her alone,” the manager
said as he grasped Ron’s arm in what looked like a pretty strong grip. Sadie
took advantage of the distraction to slip out of the booth and run for the
door. She heard Ron call for her to stop.

“I think it best to let the lady leave,” she heard the manager
say behind her. Sadie wished she dared pause long enough to thank her superhero
for stepping in. Ron said something, but her heart was pounding in her ears too
loudly for her to hear it. She was almost to the door when she heard the sound
of a fist hitting flesh. She turned to see the manager reel backward, knocking
over a table, sending a vase and four sets of silverware to the floor. Sadie
gasped, a waitress screamed, and someone else yelled for someone to call the
police. Sadie didn’t waste a single second. She ran for her car, jumped in, and
squealed out of the parking lot without even putting her seat belt on.

A few blocks from the restaurant she stopped at a red light,
her hands still shaking and tears on her cheeks. She hoped they did call the
police, she hoped Ron was arrested. Maybe they could get him to confess to
Anne’s murder once he was in custody. And yet, it still broke her heart to feel
this way. She took deep breaths and then noticed the papers from the library on
the passenger seat. Detective Cunningham had left his card with her; where had
she put it?

Before she reached the next red light—when she
could search her purse—she looked at the clock on the
dashboard. It was 3:09—why did she feel like she was late for
something?

Chapter 16

The Bailey kids! Sadie’s
heart sank. Baxter’s was on the opposite side of town and she was still ten
minutes from home. She imagined the kids waiting on her front porch, alone,
scared. And Mindy would be home any minute. She pulled out her phone and dialed
Carrie’s number.

“Carrie, I’m so glad you’re home,” she said when her
sister-in-law answered.

“Sadie?” Carrie asked.

“Yes, I need a favor. Can you go outside and have the Bailey
kids come over to your house? I’ll be right there.”

“You’re too late,” Carrie said. “Mindy showed up just a couple
minutes ago and flipped her lid to find the kids sitting on your porch.”

“Oh, no,” Sadie breathed.

“She came over here wanting to know if I knew where you were.
She was mad as a hornet and said you’d promised to watch her kids for her. Is
that true?”

“They were supposed to come over to my house after school—she
couldn’t get home in time and didn’t want them home alone.” Sadie felt horrible
and couldn’t help but put herself in Mindy’s position. If her children were
still small and all this had happened, she’d be irate too.

“Can you blame her?” Carrie asked with a determined lack of
sympathy.

“It’s been a very hard day,” Sadie said. “I got . . .
held up . . . with some things and—”

“It’s been a hard day for all of us, Sadie,” Carrie said, her
words patronizing whether she intended them to be or not. “But the kids are
safe now—Mindy took them home.”

Safe—since Sadie had made them unsafe. “Okay,” Sadie
said, suddenly eager to get off the phone. Carrie had no idea how awful this
day had been for her and Sadie wasn’t about to explain it—but
was a little sympathy too much to ask? Carrie knew that Sadie and Anne had been
friends. Surely she could imagine this would be difficult. “I’ll call her when
I get back,” Sadie said, more thinking out loud than anything else.

Hanging up without saying good-bye, Sadie started
thinking of what she could whip up as an apology for Mindy. Baked goods were
her best bet for mending fences.

A few minutes later, the vibration of the phone still in her
hand caught her attention. She looked at the caller ID. It was from her house.
She answered it, wondering who it would be.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Mom?”

“Breanna,” she said in surprise. “What are you doing at the
house?”

“Trina called me,” Breanna said, referring to Jack and Carrie’s
youngest daughter. The cousins both attended Colorado State University in Fort
Collins; Breanna was a senior, but Trina hadn’t yet gotten enough credits to be
officially called a sophomore. “She told me what happened,” Breanna said. “She
wondered if I could drive her home—she was really upset. What
happened?”

“It’s just horrible,” Sadie said, anxious to get home. “But you
missed your afternoon classes.”

“Mom,” Breanna said, “come on. Anne’s dead! There’s some freak
on the loose and you’re worried about my classes?”

“I’m still your mother,” Sadie said weakly.

“Well, forget about that stuff for a minute—where
have you been? I tried calling before I left school and you didn’t answer here
or on your cell. Then I get home and you’re not here at all—I
about had a heart attack! I thought something happened to you.”

“I’m sorry to have worried you, and I’m sorry I didn’t answer,
I had my phone off.”

“Your friend gets murdered and you turn off your phone?”
Breanna asked, obviously unimpressed.

Sadie wasn’t ready to try to explain that she suspected her
fiancé, the man she’d told her kids would be their stepfather, had murdered
Anne and she didn’t want to take his calls. “It’s been a trying day on many
levels,” Sadie said, wishing Breanna had arrived just twenty minutes
earlier—then she could have covered for her with the Baileys.

“I’ll bet. Are you coming home now?”

“Yeah,” Sadie said, making a left-hand turn. “I’ll be
there in about two minutes.”

“I’ll start the fettuccine,” Breanna said resolutely. “You need
comfort food.”

“That I do,” Sadie said with a laugh, remembering all the times
she’d made her daughter’s favorite meal to help her through hard moments. No
matter that fettuccine was Breanna’s favorite dinner, not Sadie’s; having her
daughter come to her aid was a priceless commodity. “Did Trina go to Carrie’s?”
she asked.

“Yeah, we just got here. Trina’s really upset about this, you
know how emotional she gets. See you soon,” Breanna said before hanging
up.

Sadie pulled onto her street a few minutes later and couldn’t
take her eyes off the yellow tape surrounding Anne’s house. It gave her the
creeps, casting a pall over the entire
circle. There was one police cruiser still in the driveway but Sadie couldn’t
see anyone else around. Mr. Henry wouldn’t be home from work yet since he
worked twelve-hour shifts. She had little doubt the Baileys’ doors
were locked and her stomach knotted up again at how she had failed her friend.
Mindy was a chocolate lover—maybe Sadie had time to whip up
some apology brownies.

“Oh, I’m glad you’re here,” Sadie said when she entered the
house a minute later. She locked the door behind her, wanting very much to feel
safe and secure in her cozy little home. She put the papers from the library on
the kitchen counter.

Breanna looked up from the amassed Alfredo sauce ingredients
next to the stove and smiled. Her long brown hair was darker, straighter, and
thicker than Sadie’s had ever been and Breanna had pulled it into a ponytail at
the base of her neck. As usual, she didn’t have any makeup on; she was a
zoology major and didn’t bother with much fanfare when it came to looks. It
helped that she was a natural beauty, having inherited all the most beautiful
features of her birth mother’s Polynesian heritage.

“So tell me what happened,” Breanna said as Sadie pulled a head
of broccoli out of the fridge and started chopping. They never had
fettuccine without broccoli.

Sadie took a breath and told her the whole story—sans
Ron’s part in it. She wasn’t ready to put that information out there yet. She
did, however, mentally commit to call Detective Cunningham as soon as she had a
free minute. She couldn’t keep what she knew to herself any longer—but
that didn’t mean Breanna should be the person to hear the details.

“So then I was late getting home and now Mindy’s mad at me and
I’m sick to my stomach over Trevor.”

The big pot of water on the stove had come to a boil and
Breanna put the dry noodles into the pot, pushing them down into the water as
they softened while the Alfredo simmered on another burner. “Have you told
Shawn?”

“Not yet—I better call him right now,” Sadie
said, thinking of her twenty-year-old baby boy. He was studying
to be a professional sports trainer at the University of Michigan. Why he chose
Michigan, Sadie would never know. They spoke on the phone once a week or so but
he was pretty caught up in college life. She put the broccoli in the microwave
and headed for the phone. He didn’t answer so she left a message for him to
call as soon as possible.

“Should I set the table?” she asked when she hung up the
phone.

Within a few minutes, Breanna had finished the noodles and
Alfredo, and Sadie had successfully sautéed the steamed broccoli in brown butter
and topped it with grated Mizithra cheese. They had a nice meal, despite the
fact that it wasn’t yet five o’clock in the afternoon.

Sadie was grateful to have someone with her—especially
Breanna. She’d always been solid, such a great support. Though she didn’t know
how she’d been so lucky, Sadie was eternally grateful that her kids didn’t seem
to suffer the bouts of rebellion and anger that she saw in so many other children
of single mothers. So many
children, period, she thought, amending her judgment. Jack and Carrie’s
girls had put them through the trenches many times and they had two parents who
loved them. Sadie knew she was greatly blessed.

After dinner they did the dishes together and Breanna finally
asked if Sadie had talked to Ron. Sadie paused, but she couldn’t hold it back
any longer and wasn’t willing to lie about it. She took a breath and told
Breanna everything she’d learned about Ron today—down to her
flight from the restaurant.

“Are you going to turn him in?” Breanna asked, levelheaded
until the end. Through Sadie’s explanation, she’d only made noises of surprise
with an “oh my gosh” now and then.

“I’m going to tell the detective what happened. They’ll take it
from there.” The knot in her stomach had returned and she blinked back the
threatening tears.

“Wow,” Breanna said as she closed the dishwasher door. She
turned and looked sympathetically at her mom. “I’m so sorry. What a day you’ve
had.”

Sadie nodded. What a day indeed.

“So what’s next?” Breanna asked.

Sadie lifted her eyebrows in a gesture of innocence. “What do
you mean?”

Breanna rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’re not giving up now.”

Sadie smiled. Breanna knew her so well it made trying to hide
her plans a waste of time. “I need to figure out where Anne came from—I
mean I know she lived in Boston.” She paused, picturing for a moment a pregnant
Anne opening her apartment door and smiling at Ron, the father of the child she
was carrying. It brought bile to Sadie’s throat and she pushed the image away.
“I’d like to find her parents, friends—something.”

“Aren’t the cops already doing that stuff?”

“Probably,” Sadie said with a shrug. “But I doubt very much
they’ll tell me anything, and I think I’ve already proven that I can get an
awful lot accomplished by being sweet and naïve.”

She flashed her daughter an innocent smile and batted her
eyelashes. Breanna laughed. “Right now, however, I need to make some brownies
for Mindy. I feel so bad about not following through.”

“It’s probably the first time in your whole life you’ve not
done exactly what you said you’d do,” Breanna said by way of justification.
“And if you ask me, the circle relies on you too much already. If she had any
idea what this day has been like for you then I’m sure she’d understand.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to tell her everything I’ve learned,”
Sadie said, moving to the drawer next to the stove and opening her little black
book—a rather ordinary journal she’d used to record her
favorite recipes over the years. Most people used recipe boxes, but Sadie liked
something more portable. No recipe went into the little black book without
having been tried three or four times so she knew it was worthy of the honor.
She ran her finger down the nonalphabetical contents, hovering over
Sadie’s Better Brownies—a recipe she’d perfected several years
ago. “Sometimes baked goods say it all.” She paused. “Do you think brownies are
the right thing for a death in the neighborhood?”