Lemon Tart (24 page)

She was still looking at the list, trying to think of anything
she’d missed, when the phone rang, making her jump. She took a deep breath and
read the caller ID. It was a blocked number. Did she dare answer it?

Unfortunately, she didn’t know what else she had to lose.

“Mrs. Hoffmiller?” Detective Cunningham said into the
phone.

“Yes?”

“Could you come down to the station? We have some questions and
we need to ask you for an official statement.”

Sadie nodded, even though he couldn’t see her, but her stomach
sank. They’d never asked her to come into the station for questions and it
validated the changes that had taken place since yesterday. Everything was
worse now. “I’ll be right there,” she said. “Is there any particular reason I’m
coming down?”

“We have the coroner report back from the autopsy, and you were
right about the time cook on the oven. Anne was killed sometime between 2:00
and 5:00 am. And the body was
moved. We need to ask some specific questions in regards to some other things
we found . . . and we’ve . . . had a confession.”

Chapter 25

It took exactly eight minutes for Sadie to reach the
police station and run inside. Detective Cunningham and Detective Madsen
were waiting for her and led her to an office rather than the mirrored rooms
she’d seen on cop shows. The office was on the small side, with a window
running the length of one wall, allowing them to look into the inner workings
of the police station.

“Did you find Trevor?” she asked, choosing her focus.

Cunningham shook his head but said nothing. She tried not to
give Detective Madsen a dirty look, but it was hard not to. He just rubbed her
wrong at every turn. Detective Cunningham sat down in the chair behind the
desk, and Detective Madsen stood by the side of the desk near the door as if
making sure she didn’t run out. As if she would do something so undignified!

Cunningham began by asking her if he could record the
conversation. She agreed, at which point he turned on a tape recorder and began
with many of the same questions they had asked her yesterday. She answered with
absolute honesty and tried to ignore her growing curiosity about the confession
he’d told her about on the phone. She wondered for a moment if he’d only said
that to get her down here.

“The coroner has made some determinations in regard to the
murder weapon,” Detective Cunningham said.

Sadie swallowed. Ron and Jack’s faces appeared in her mind, but
she forced Jack’s away. She knew she was ignoring facts, that she was being
completely subjective, but her mind would not allow anything different.

“I wonder if you could describe the missing tieback for me? In
detail,” Cunningham asked.

“Um, like I told you before, the pattern was floral. I’d
actually used it for a quilt we made for a young woman at church—she
was getting married. When Anne lamented being able to find a suitable tieback
in the store, I went through my fabric—I’ve got quite a
collection you know—and found it. I was thrilled to—”

Detective Madsen cut her off from where he stood with his back
against the wall. “We need size and shape. We don’t care what it looked like or
how you found it.” He gave the impression that he had no interest being there
at all and was simply waiting for permission to leave.

She scowled at Detective Madsen. She did not like him one
little bit, but did as he said and got right to the details. “It was just under
a yard long—36 inches of fabric—but you lose some length
when you sew the seams. It was about three inches wide, with a pressed seam on
the interior.”

“A pressed seam?” Detective Madsen asked. She noticed a look
pass between the two men.

“Yeah, I made the tieback by sewing a six-inch wide
piece of fabric in half the long way, then I pressed it so the seam was on the
inside. It’s very unflattering to have the seam on the outside, where people
can see it. If people would understand the part that seams play in the finished
product, they would realize how imperative an iron is to the overall process of
getting the right lines when it comes to even basic sewing.”

Detective Madsen pulled out a notebook and began making furious
notes; she wondered if he was a closet seamstress at heart. Cunningham just
looked at her oddly. Then he nodded and let out a breath. It took a few seconds
before she registered his expression. She thought back to yesterday, when she’d
wondered if Anne had been strangled. Sadie clenched her eyes shut, but that
just put the imagined scene in her head. She forced them open. “She was
murdered with my tieback?”

“Your
tieback?” Madsen repeated, leaning forward slightly, pen poised above his
paper.

Detective Cunningham glowered at the other man before looking
at her again. “We’re not sure,” he said. “But there are other considerations we
need to understand. Did you see Anne on Monday?”

“I watched Trevor while she was working,” Sadie said.

“And she was okay? Uninjured?”

“Uninjured?” Sadie repeated. “What do you mean?”

Cunningham continued to stare at her. “Her body showed signs of
trauma, a bad fall maybe, or someone having been violent with her.”

“Don’t tell her that!” Madsen spat, shaking his head and
turning away from them as if trying to get control of himself. He put his hands
on his hips, and the sides of his suit jacket fanned out like wings. He let out
a deep breath. Both Cunningham and Sadie ignored him completely.

“No,” Sadie said slowly, picturing Anne’s body in the field
again. Twisted and contorted. “She was fine when I saw her. She borrowed a
lemon. . . . I guess for the lemon tart she made that night. She’d forgotten to
pick one up from the produce section after work.” She wondered again what that
tart was for. “Lemon zest makes all the difference.”

Madsen turned back toward them and they all went quiet as Sadie
swallowed and looked at her hands. “You said there was a confession,” she
continued, steeling herself to hear it. Please
let it be Ron, she said to herself.

“Yes,” Detective Cunningham said. “I’m very sorry. The man who
confessed to the murder of Anne Lemmon is Jack Wright.”

Sadie remained frozen and tested out the words in her mind. “The man who confessed to the murder of
Anne Lemmon is Jack Wright.”

Nope, it didn’t take.

There wasn’t one part of her that could even consider such a
thing. Madsen’s eyes were dancing, as if he loved every minute of this. She
refused to look at him anymore.

“It can’t be Jack,” she said resolutely with a sharp shaking of
her head to emphasize the implausibility. “It’s just not possible.”

“Why not?” Detective Cunningham asked, leaning forward and
seemingly genuine in his interest.

“Because . . .” She stopped. “Because I love him and
trust him and he just wouldn’t do this!” It sounded naïve and brimming with
nepotism, but it was true. Jack couldn’t have killed
Anne.

Detective Madsen rolled his eyes. “Oh, please,” he said in a
long-drawn-out grunting voice. “This is so ridiculous!” He
turned to look at his partner. “Get her out of here, we’re finished with her
anyway.”

Cunningham slowly met his partner’s gaze. “We’re not finished.”

Madsen groaned again. “Well, do what you want. I’m going to
file the paperwork on this thing.” He stomped to the door—really,
he stomped like a child—and left the room.

Detective Cunningham made no reaction to his partner’s tantrum,
but his face seemed to relax just a little bit once he’d left. He leaned back
in his chair. “Mr. Wright confessed, Mrs. Hoffmiller. There isn’t much argument
in that.” But his voice wasn’t hard and militant as it had been last night. In
fact, Sadie sensed a kind of challenge behind his words.

“Let me talk to him,” she said with a crisp nod. “I’ll get the
truth from him. He didn’t do this.”

There was a tapping on the glass to their left. Sadie looked
toward it and saw Madsen and another man gesturing to Cunningham.

“Just a minute,” Cunningham said as he stood up and left the
room. Once alone she put her fingers to her temples. Think, she told herself. There had to be a way to
prove Jack didn’t do this. There had to be something she could do.

Larue! She fumbled in her coat pocket for her cell phone and
was almost surprised to find it, but although the police had taken her purse
they hadn’t searched her before leading her into this room. She quickly dialed
directory assistance. She usually called a free service since she was charged
seventy-five cents for every directory assistance call, but the free
service was full of ads and she didn’t have time to be frugal.

“I need the Garrison office of Riggs and Barker.”

They transferred her and she asked for Larue Adams.

“Larue,” she breathed, grateful that though their acquaintance
was limited, she had made it a point to get to know Jack’s receptionist. “I
need to ask you a few questions about the convention this week—questions
about Jack.”

“What for?” Larue asked, trying to laugh it off.

“Something . . . horrible happened Monday night and I
need to know if you know anything about where Jack was that night.”

Detective Cunningham came in and scowled at her. She held up
one finger and listened, asked a few more questions, and then nodded. “Thank
you, Larue, now I need you to tell that exact same information to Detective
Cunningham. Here he is.”

It only took a minute for Detective Cunningham to learn what
Sadie had just found out. He finished by asking Larue to come into the office
and make an official statement. Then he hung up the phone and handed it back to
Sadie.

“You can’t stay out of this, can you?” he nearly growled.

She ignored his question. “Jack couldn’t have done this, and
she just verified it.”

Detective Cunningham shook his head. “He confessed.”

“Then why were you asking me so many questions about how Anne
looked, and what the tieback was like? Surely a confession would make all those
points moot. Please let me talk to him. I can get the truth out of him, I swear
it.”

He clamped his lips together, telling her without any words
that he wasn’t as convinced by the confession as he wanted her to believe. He
held her eyes for a long time but she refused to blink. Finally he stood up.
“I’ll be back.”

More waiting. She wished she’d had her purse and the book
hiding in it, but then she looked at the giant window on the wall and realized
she wouldn’t want anyone to see her reading it. The waiting, however, was
horrendous.

Finally Cunningham entered the room.

“Did you get permission for me to talk to him?” she asked,
standing up, her nerves making her completely on edge.

“Yes,” Cunningham said, leading her out of the room. “But we’ll
be watching and listening to everything. He’s being brought up right now, and
he’s been told that it’s all being recorded. Only his legal counsel gets to
talk to him privately.”

Sadie thanked Cunningham before following him further down the
hall. They stopped in front of a very ugly door. It’d had at least two shades
of gray paint slapped on it sometime in the last forty years. It looked awful.
She turned to look at the detective.

“I owe you an apology,” she said nervously. She licked her lips
though her whole mouth had suddenly gone dry as she imagined Jack on the other
side of that door. Why was he doing this?

“You already apologized for e-mailing the Boston
office and poking your nose in too many places.”

She shook her head. “That was for what you knew I’d found.” She swallowed and
forced herself to hold his eyes. “There’s more.” It came out as more of a
squeak. “And when I’m in there I might say stuff that gives it away so I want
you to know first of all, that I’m really sorry—I really,
really am. And that I’ll explain everything when I get out. Okay?”

His face was hard and she had no doubt he wanted to bop her on
the head for doing this to him. Finally, he nodded. A female officer stepped
forward and told Sadie to remove her coat and put her arms out.

“Why?” Sadie asked though she did as requested, her coat
hanging from one hand.

“You’re meeting with a confessed murderer,” Cunningham said,
taking the coat. “We need to make sure you’re not giving him anything.”

She held her arms out. “What, like a weapon? You think I’m . . .
packing?”

The left side of Cunningham’s mouth pulled up in a grin, and
Sadie flinched as the woman patted her in places that made Sadie blush. She
felt horribly violated, even more so to go through this with Cunningham
watching, but she told herself it was the woman’s job and that not everyone who
came into a police station was the kind of upstanding citizen Sadie was.

The woman finished and stepped back. “She’s clean,” she told
Cunningham and headed back down the hallway. For a moment Sadie thought the
woman meant she had showered, then realized it meant she didn’t have any
switchblades hiding in the waistband of her underwear.