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Authors: Josi S. Kilpack

Tags: #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction

Lemon Tart (9 page)

BOOK: Lemon Tart
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Sadie froze, holding her hands so tight she worried that she’d
cut off the circulation. “I’m so sorry,” she said, not knowing what to do.
She’d been told not to touch anything and so she simply stood there and looked
at the paper on the floor. It was nothing more than the Garrison community
newsletter that arrived with everyone’s water bill.

She blinked and looked back at Detective Cunningham. “I’m so
sorry,” she said again. “That partner of yours has me a bit frazzled.”

“It’s okay,” he said, but she knew it wasn’t. At least Madsen
hadn’t witnessed it. “We’ll take care of it.” He turned toward the door again
and she glanced back at the paper.

It would be so easy to pick it up and put it back on the
fridge. Couldn’t it be considered a hazard to have the magnet and paper on the
floor like that? Suppose someone slipped. She looked to the space it had left
on the fridge and her eyes were drawn to another note held in place by an Oreo
magnet: “Library books due FRIDAY the 21st!” It was another reminder of how
normal life had been yesterday. Anne had gone to work, come home, taken care of
her son—and then everything changed.

Sadie saw the books on the kitchen table and she had an idea.
She cleared her throat. “There is a note on the fridge about Anne’s library
books being due,” Sadie said, keeping to herself that they weren’t due for
another week. “I was planning to head over there later—could I
possibly return them for her?”

“Absolutely not.”

She and Detective Cunningham both turned at the sound of
Detective Madsen’s voice again. He was back in the kitchen, his hands on his
hips and his jaw tight. “It is completely inappropriate for her to be in here
and she will not remove any items from the premises.”

Detective Cunningham turned on his partner in an instant. “Get
out of here, Madsen,” he said like a frustrated parent. “I asked Mrs.
Hoffmiller to come here and she’s been a great deal of help. You, on the other
hand, are being a royal pain in the butt. Shut up and let me do my job.”

Sadie nodded sharply in agreement. Cunningham didn’t notice,
but Madsen did. His neck turned red, and he took two huge steps forward,
suddenly inches away from Detective Cunningham. The younger man may have been
taller, but Detective Cunningham’s presence was much more imposing. Sadie took
a step away from the confrontation and looked at the front door—should
she make a run for it? Would Detective Madsen shoot her if she tried?

“If you’d just do your job, I wouldn’t have to babysit you,”
Detective Madsen said.

Detective Cunningham gave a rueful laugh, but in the next
instant his hand shot out, grabbing and twisting Madsen’s tie as he pulled him
closer. Madsen tried hard to hide his fear, but his Adam’s apple bobbed as he
swallowed and his tuft of chin hair trembled.

“I’ve been doing my job since you were in diapers, Madsen. The
silver spoon in your mouth might give you the feeling of superiority, but that
is nothing compared to instinct and gut reactions. Mrs. Hoffmiller isn’t going
to return the library books—nothing is being removed from the
crime scene. However, I am
going to escort her home and thank her for the help she’s been, and you’re
going to go outside and work very hard to stay out of my way until you have to
leave for that hearing.”

He let go of Madsen, who stumbled backward until his back hit
the kitchen counter, knocking Sadie’s smiley-face key ring from the
counter to the floor in the process. It skittered across the linoleum, coming
to a stop as everyone in the room went silent again. Sadie stared at the
keys—her keys—and nearly leaned down to pick
them up while every set of eyes watched Madsen straighten up and try to smooth
the wrinkles out of his shirt. Sadie noticed that many of the people in the
room seemed to be trying hard to conceal a smile at witnessing Madsen’s
comeuppance. Clearly, most people felt toward Detective Madsen the same way
Detective Cunningham did. She looked back at the keys on the floor.

“I’m calling the captain,” Madsen said loudly, turning on his
heel and storming toward the back door.

“And your daddy, I suppose,” Detective Cunningham said back,
his tone lowered to a normal range which made Madsen’s echoes seem even louder
and more out of place.

Daddy? Sadie
wondered. She’d give her entire Seinfeld
DVD collection to know what that
meant.

Detective Madsen scowled over his shoulder, and saw the key
ring. He bent and picked it up—shoving it deep in his pocket
while Detective Cunningham turned to look at Sadie, a polite smile on his face
and an odd light in his eyes, as if his moment with Madsen was terribly
fulfilling to him. “I’ll walk you home,” he said, indicating for her to lead
the way.

“Uh, could I get my keys back from Detective Madsen first?” she
asked, feigning meekness. She was pretty sure they had no grounds to keep her
keys and the truth was she wanted to get her own dig in while she had the
chance.

“What?” Detective Madsen yelled, turning sharply, his hand on
the back door.

“My keys,” she said. “The key ring you’ve got in your pocket
belongs to me.”

He shook his head as if annoyed and pulled the door open. “It’s
part of the investigation,” he said in his demeaning tone.

“I’ve been entrusted with the keys to the homes of my
neighbors,” she said, emboldened by his pompous attitude. She’d have put her
hands on her hips if not for the magnet incident. “You can’t just take them
away from me.” She kept her voice calm and looked at Cunningham. “He can’t keep
the keys to other homes, can he? I mean, what do I tell the neighbors? They’ll
never trust me again, and the only reason I gave them to the police in the
first place was because I was trying to do anything I could to help out.” She turned
back to glare at Madsen with her best angry-teacher expression. “If
I’d have known that—”

“Fine, but we keep the key to this house,” Detective Madsen
said as he stomped over to her and pulled out the ring, fumbling through the
keys as if he knew which was which.

“Of course,” Sadie said as if she’d never considered otherwise.
“Anne’s is the one with the red heart sticker on it,” she offered helpfully,
even though that particular key fit the lock to Jack and Carrie’s house. She
refused to analyze herself enough to figure out why she was lying to an officer
of the law. But she knew why. Suppose she needed to get in Anne’s house,
suppose they continued to treat her like a suspect and she had to prove her own
innocence. Plus, Detective Madsen hadn’t been very nice and tricking him made
her feel better. All was not chocolate sprinkles with Sadie Hoffmiller, but
they didn’t need to know that.

It took several seconds for Detective Madsen to extract the
key, which he promptly pocketed before handing Sadie the supposedly
Anne-free key ring and storming toward the door again. All of which
he did with plenty of dramatic flair, though it fell completely flat.

Sadie nodded at Detective Cunningham, indicating she was ready
to leave. He kept his expression blank but his eyes danced. He’d liked her
little game with Detective Madsen. They didn’t say anything until they reached
the sidewalk. Two police cars were parked by the entrance to the
cul-de-sac, presumably to monitor the people driving in.

“Can you tell me about your neighbors as we walk?” Detective
Cunningham asked. He started walking, and Sadie fell in step next to him.
Instead of cutting across the cul-de-sac like she usually did,
he seemed intent on taking the sidewalk.

“Sure,” Sadie said with a chipper smile. She loved that she
could help him, and without a doubt she was the right woman for the job of
talking about her neighbors. She indicated Mr. Henry’s house as they crossed
his driveway. “Mr. Henry is in his early sixties. He’s from Canada, with two
ex-wives and four children, but I’ve never met any of them. He’s an
engineer and works at the GM plant. He works a lot, likes to travel when he
can, but keeps to himself.” She leaned in to the detective a little bit. “He’s
got a girlfriend,” she whispered. “And he goes to her house every Friday for
dinner. A woman in my yoga class lives just down the road from her. She and I
both think it would be a good match. He’s lonely.”

Cunningham smiled, though she couldn’t tell if it was polite or
sincere, but no matter. She really did hope Mr. Henry married again. It would
be wonderful to have another woman in the neighborhood. She paused until they
passed Mr. Henry’s property and entered the stretch of sidewalk in front of the
Baileys’ house. “The Baileys have five children ages seven to sixteen. Steve
manages a sporting goods store and Mindy’s a medical assistant in a
dermatologist’s office. Steve’s from California, but Mindy is from here. They
met in college and lived in Sacramento for a few years before she demanded he
find a job where she could be closer to her family. The irony is that her
parents moved to Scottsdale a few years back.” She shrugged. “But they seem
happy here anyway. She has three sisters who live within an hour or so.”

Detective Cunningham removed his notebook from his back pocket
and finally began taking notes. They crossed in front of Jack and Carrie’s
driveway. “This is Jack and Carrie Wright’s house,” she began, hesitant this
time. “Jack’s my brother.”

“He is?” Detective Cunningham asked, looking up. “You didn’t
mention that before.”

“Is it important?”

Cunningham shrugged. “You said before that he left his wife
some time ago.”

“Yeah,” Sadie said sadly. “They’d been married
twenty-seven years and he left about eight months ago—in
March.”

“Why?”

Sadie looked at the house and let out a breath. “I honestly
don’t know. Jack and I have always been close, but our relationship has changed
the last year or so—especially after Dad died last December.
When Jack left, he sort of pulled away from everyone. We’ve talked a few times
but I’m afraid we have one of those proverbial elephants in the room whenever
we do. He wants to believe it’s not any of my business and I want to pretend
nothing has changed.” She smiled at how silly that sounded and shook her
head.

“What would be your guess as to why he left? Surely you have
your suspicions.”

That she did, and she wrestled with the definition of gossip
for a moment. Was it gossip if she told it to a police officer? She decided it
wasn’t. “Carrie’s always taken her mothering very seriously and she had a hard
time when her girls started leaving home.” It was something Sadie had never
understood about her sister-in-law. On the one hand, she and
Neil had tried to have children for several years before adopting Breanna and
then Shawn—those empty years had been so hard and Sadie had had
to fight the temptation to completely lose herself in her children once she had
them in her arms. And yet, she and Neil were a team and she’d have given
anything to have had Neil by her side to help raise their children. That
he’d died when they had only just begun to realize the joy of their family was
a horrible twist of fate.

Sadie sighed and looked at the house. “In some ways, Carrie and
Jack stopped being a couple the day they became parents. She’s a doting, if not
overly-protective mother, and her girls have always come first. Their
youngest, Trina, graduated from high school the same year as my son Shawn. Jack
wanted her to go to college, like their other girls had, but Carrie and Trina
were best friends—they did everything together and Trina
wouldn’t leave. Jack put up with it for two years, and then one day he kinda
snapped. Last winter, he enrolled Trina at Colorado State, got her an apartment
in Fort Collins, drove her there one day, dropped her off, and came home—didn’t
even let her take her car for fear she’d just drive back. Carrie nearly lost
her mind.” Sadie paused and pushed her hands into her pockets. “Jack told
Carrie if she went and got her, he’d leave. Apparently the fear of truly being
on her own was greater than her fear of losing her last hold on motherhood. But
she was so mad. Then Dad died. I think once Jack knew he wouldn’t disappoint
Dad, he tried for a few more months and then left anyway, even though Trina was
doing pretty well at college, thanks to his insistence. It’s been really hard.”

They stopped walking when they reached the black walnut tree.
Sadie scanned Jack and Carrie’s yard, noticing that none of the perennials had
been cut back and the roses needed pruning. She shook her head. Jack had always
taken such pride in their yard. Its lack of care seemed a kind of mourning for
his absence.

“It seems odd he never gave any reason,” Detective Cunningham
said, looking over the yard as well.

“I’m a widow, Detective,” Sadie said, an air of authority in
her voice this time. “I’ve mourned Neil for twenty years. I think Jack’s
embarrassed to admit he couldn’t make his marriage work—whereas
I’d have given anything for the chance to have mine back.”

Detective Cunningham said nothing, just nodded his
understanding and smiled sympathetically, holding her eyes a long time before
looking down at his notebook again.

“You mentioned Carrie does temp work?”

Sadie nodded, and her sympathy for her
sister-in-law returned. “I think she’s pretty intimidated to be
back in the workforce after so many years of being at home. So far it seems to
be working out pretty well. I think Jack’s still paying all the bills. He’s
that kind of man.”

“And what does Jack do for a living?”

Sadie wondered why he wanted so much information on Jack and
Carrie. He hadn’t asked this many questions about Mr. Henry or the Baileys, but
then she’d offered all these same facts without being prodded. “He’s jumped
between several careers, but has been an agent for Riggs and Barker for the
last nine years—you know the real estate company?” She decided
not to tell him that’s where Ron worked; she preferred not to say anything
about Ron at all, even though that’s the reason she’d come outside
earlier.

BOOK: Lemon Tart
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