Lemon Tart (7 page)

When Sadie and Neil bought their corner lot, Old Man
Tilly owned all the land. He’d lived there for years and grown alfalfa until he
reached his seventies, at which time subdivisions made more money than hay.
Spurred by one of his sons, he’d developed the cul-de-sac,
putting his house on a paved road for the very first time. The land around the
cul-de-sac was divided into eight lots and the remaining acreage
was left for future development that never happened. Tilly lost interested in
developing a subdivision once he had sold the second lot to Jack and Carrie,
leaving two empty lots to the west of them, and three empty lots east of his
house as well.

The lots remained vacant as incentive for his children to move
closer to him. The incentive become an inheritance once Forrest Tilly died
eleven years ago. Now and then, one of the lots would go up for sale—which
is how Mr. Henry and the Baileys had come to join the neighborhood—but
the Tilly kids wanted a premium for the land and there were cheaper, more
modern subdivisions on the other side of town that were more attractive to
potential buyers. No one had knocked on Sadie’s door to ask about the remaining
empty lots directly across from her for more than a year. That suited Sadie
just fine; she loved the neighborhood just the way it was and although everyone
in the circle had their eccentricities, they all got along well enough.

From the sidewalk, once she’d cleared the tree, Sadie looked
toward Anne’s house. There were a few vehicles in front of the house and she
wondered if the detectives had discovered anything new. The low hum of an
approaching car caught her attention and she looked left, hoping it was Ron. It
wasn’t. It was just Carrie coming home again.

Some of the people huddled in front of Anne’s house looked up
when Carrie pulled into her driveway, including Detective Madsen, who
immediately headed toward her.

Sadie stood where she was, not knowing what to do. She’d been
planning to talk to Detective Cunningham and explain what Ron had told her, but
now faced with that decision, she couldn’t make herself do it.

Then she remembered the tart.

Her eyebrows came together as the inconsistencies seemed to
jump out at her. Ron had said he’d been at Anne’s last night. But the tart had
been put in at . . . 9:00 this morning if the timer had been set for
forty minutes. So, if Anne was baking, then she had to have been alive after
Ron left, just like he said.

Sadie felt her heart lifting like a balloon at the discovery.
But then it sunk again. There was still the issue of Ron being there at all.
Sadie hadn’t gone to bed until after eleven—there had been a Gray’s Anatomy marathon on
TLC—she’d have seen Ron in the circle if he’d come while she
was still up. Her TV was situated so that she could see it and the window at
the same time. Anne would have been up earlier than usual, which seemed strange
after a late night, not to mention that she seemed to have put the tart in at exactly 9:00. Not 9:07 or 9:13.
That was odd.

“Mrs. Hoffmiller?”

She jumped, her frazzled nerves too much on edge to show any
restraint. Detective Cunningham blinked at her and she wrapped her arms around
herself as if she were cold. However, it was nearly noon and the morning had
warmed considerably, the air scented with burning corn stalks and the last of
the summer weeds. She usually loved the smell of smoke in the air, the reminder
that the stride of life was moving forward in the most basic of ways, but today
it seemed suffocating.

“Detective,” she said evenly as she felt her cheeks color. He
must think she was some kind of nut job to be standing on her front walk in her
sticky flip-flops doing nothing. And she’d forgotten to check her
hair on her way out the door—how embarrassing. She glanced
toward Carrie and watched her take a few bags of groceries out of her car. It
seemed like a betrayal to Anne’s memory that Carrie would do something so
mundane as grocery shopping on a day like this. And yet, hadn’t Sadie made
applesauce? She felt so guilty all of a sudden.

Detective Madsen stood at Carrie’s elbow and the two women
shared a brief look before Carrie said something to Detective Madsen and then
headed inside, alone. Detective Madsen finished scribbling some notes, looked
over at Sadie and Detective Cunningham, and then walked back to Anne’s house.
She wasn’t sure, but Sadie thought she’d caught a scowl in their direction
before he turned.

Detective Cunningham cleared his throat. “I’d like to confirm
whether or not you have requested legal representation or if I can still talk
with you?”

Sadie shook her head, embarrassed at the man’s formality and
wanting to return to the casual exchanges they had shared that morning over
applesauce. “Ron said that, not me,” she said sadly, hating to relive those
moments again.

“So you are comfortable with continued questions?”

Sadie just shrugged and looked at a crack in the sidewalk at
her feet.

“Is that a yes?” Detective Cunningham asked. “It would be very
helpful if you would continue answering questions for us. You knew Ms. Lemmon
and so far you’re the only person with any intimate knowledge of her life. We
would appreciate your assistance.”

Sadie had always been a sucker for people needing her help—it’s
why she served on half a dozen volunteer committees and was the first person
everyone called when someone was in need of a casserole. She just had a genetic
disposition to help, and people knew it.

“Any word on Trevor?” she asked.

Detective Cunningham shook his head. “We’ve issued an Amber
Alert and there is a separate team working on his disappearance. What we
need from you is help figuring out who Anne Lemmon is and who could have done
this.”

Sadie nodded. “I’ll do anything I can to help.”

“Did Anne have a phone? We haven’t found one in the house.”

“Yes,” Sadie said. “But only a cell phone. I told her she
should get a landline, but she didn’t seem to understand how important it is to
be listed in the phone book and she didn’t want to pay two phone bills.” She
shrugged. “Her cell was small and silver. She took it everywhere with her. Why?”

“We’d like to check it for personal numbers and things,”
Detective Cunningham said.

“Oh,” Sadie said. That made sense.

He looked back at his notebook, then met her eyes again. He had
hazel eyes with dark lashes—the kind of lashes women would kill
for. “Do you know where Anne kept her personal papers, bills, documents?” he
asked. “We’re still waiting for the crime scene unit to arrive but upon our
initial inspection we’ve found almost nothing of that sort in the house.”

“Well, she kept almost everything in the filing cabinet next to
her bed. I’ve been there when she’s opened her mail and she puts it all right
into the appropriate files. She mentioned that she used to work as a
receptionist and she liked organizing things like the office—everything
in its place.”

“By the bed,” he muttered, writing it down.

“I was wondering,” Sadie said. Cunningham looked up from his
notes. “About the purse in the field. Trevor’s shoes were in the house, and
Anne was in quite a state of . . . disarray, and yet it looks as if
she’d taken her purse outside with her.”

“And this strikes you as odd?”

Sadie nodded. “Yes, it does. I wonder if perhaps someone took
Trevor and she was going after them. It’s the only scenario I can think of that
would excuse her forgetting his shoes.”

“It is something to consider,” Cunningham said. “But that would
mean someone attacked her after she left the house and then killed her in the
field.”

“Well, of course,” Sadie said, nodding, but her thoughts were
still spinning. “But that would be rather risky, wouldn’t it? Killing her
outside when she has neighbors.”

Cunningham nodded, still watching her carefully.

“You think someone moved the body?” Sadie asked, her heart
racing again. For some reason the possibility made it all the more sinister.
“And then . . . the purse would be there as a decoy.” The thought
gave her chills. “So calculated,” she said under her breath.

He held her eyes for another moment and then wrote some more
before closing his notebook. “It’s not typical for us to bring people into a
crime scene, but if you don’t mind, I’d like you to come inside and verify some
things I believe have been altered inside Ms. Lemmon’s house.”

Sadie hesitated. She didn’t want to appear too eager, but she
wanted to help in any way she could and she
knew she had nothing to hide. The trick was to convince the detective of that.
Helping him would not only make her feel better, but it would also show him she
was not an enemy. She wished he wouldn’t talk so cryptically though.

After a few moments, Sadie nodded, hoping the hesitation would
keep her from looking too anxious. All through school she’d been accused of
being a teacher’s pet, a people pleaser who was always trying to get into her
superiors’ good graces. She hadn’t done that at all; she just liked to do well
at things and if it made people happy in the process, well, that wasn’t such a
bad thing.

Detective Cunningham smiled and it made her feel better.

“Aren’t there supposed to be a lot more people here?” she asked
as they approached the house. On TV there were always all kinds of cars,
bystanders, people running around, women crying.

“We’re not a large jurisdiction,” Detective Cunningham said as
he nodded at the two officers by the front steps. Sadie was half a step behind
him. “We have a couple crime scene officers on their way and the coroner has
been called, but they’re all coming from Fort Collins so it will be a while.
When we enter the house, please clasp your hands behind your back and don’t
touch anything.”

Sadie nodded and did as she was told, holding her hands tightly
together and hoping she didn’t touch anything on accident. Entering the house,
she thought it looked the same as it had this morning. Sadie took a deep
breath; she could still smell the lemon tart.

“I’d like to start downstairs,” he said without looking at
her.

She followed Detective Cunningham to the top of the stairs just
off the kitchen that led to the basement. Sadie’s skin bristled as she thought
of Anne being killed in this house, and then someone moving her dead body
outside. Sadie blinked back more tears and tried to keep her emotions in
check.

When they reached the basement, Detective Cunningham motioned
for Sadie to stand next to him in the doorway of the family room. She stepped
closer to him, their shoulders nearly touching. The room was long and narrow,
with a TV and a couch at one end, and a washer and dryer at the other. The area
around the washer and dryer had been tiled, whereas
the rest of the room was carpeted. On the wall across from the doorway where
they stood was a large window, allowing
the room to be fairly light, despite it being a basement.

“The curtains aren’t right,” Sadie said immediately, scanning
the panels of fabric while searching her mind for what was wrong. When she
realized what it was, she felt a rush of excitement. “She always tied the
curtain panels to one side, making a big swag.” But now, instead of the swag,
the panels were separated and pulled to their respective sides. It looked
perfectly ordinary, but it wasn’t the way Anne had kept them. Sadie wondered
what the implications of such a detail might mean.

“When was the last time you saw the curtains tied that way?”

Sadie searched her memory. “About two weeks ago,” she said, her
eyes scanning the room and resting on a framed print above the TV. Her hands
slipped apart and she quickly clasped them behind her back again, fearful she
would mess something up. “I gave Anne that print.” She nodded toward it, afraid
to point. “I found it at a discount store and thought the colors would be good
for this room. I helped her hang it up.”

“Would she have changed it between then and now—the
curtains I mean?”

“Possibly. I always made certain she didn’t feel some
obligation to do things my way, but she had seemed to like the curtains with
the one swag. I even sewed the tieback for her because she couldn’t find one in
the stores that matched.” She couldn’t believe that just hours after Anne had
turned up dead, she was discussing curtain arrangements with a detective.

“Describe the tieback,” he said, pulling out his notebook.

“Well, it was about three feet long, made out of a
floral-patterned, cotton-poly blend. It was just a long
rectangle—like the belt of a bathrobe—with
buttonholes on either end. The pattern was big flowers, peony types, mostly
pink, but with smaller purple flowers—like hyacinths or
something small but puffy like that. And there was also some yellow and—”

“How was the tieback secured to the wall?” Detective Cunningham
asked, interrupting a description Sadie thought could be very important. But he
was the detective. He walked into the room, leaving her in the doorway. With a
pen, he pulled back the left curtain pane. The gold hook that she had helped
Anne install was no longer there. Instead two nail holes stared back at them
like eyes.

“A small gold hook,” Sadie said softly, staring at the holes.
“Do you know . . . how Anne died?” she asked, not wanting to jump to
conclusions.

Detective Cunningham looked at her for a moment before he
answered. “That’s not available to the public and needs to be confirmed by the
coroner.”

Sadie nodded her understanding, but couldn’t help picturing
Anne being strangled with the tieback. She forced the image out of her mind
before she lost control of her emotions.

“Is there anything else that doesn’t look right?” Detective
Cunningham asked.

Sadie looked around the floor, wondering if the hook had rolled
under the couch but the room looked in order—perfect order in
fact. Sadie’s eyes narrowed and she took a longer scan of the room.