Blackberry Crumble (34 page)

“Focus,” she said to herself as she pushed through the glass doors. She could think about Pete later—Jane too—but she had a limited amount of time to make sense of the information she’d already learned and couldn’t risk distraction. If May found out what she was doing, it would become even more complicated. There was no room for Sadie to get lost in her personal issues. Professional investigators had to put their personal lives on hold all the time. Unfortunately, Sadie was feeling less and less professional by the minute. She didn’t even have a client anymore. But one thing she couldn’t deny was that when she’d agreed to take this job, she’d felt that it was the right decision. After everything that had happened since then, staying and finishing what she could
still
felt right.

With a heavy sigh, she approached the counter, where a round-faced young man was waiting for her. She was officially changing the game she’d come here to play. Everything would be different now, and it made her feel very vulnerable and out of sorts. Focus was good, but confidence that she was doing the right thing would be even better.

Chapter 39

An hour later, Sadie pulled up to Karri’s—the restaurant where she and May had shared that first meal and where Jim had met Keith Kelly for a secret lunch more than a month ago. It didn’t look like Karri’s was open for breakfast, but there were two cars parked around back. She parked next to them and found the back door unlocked. She let herself in and paused on the landing of a split staircase. She walked up the steps until she entered a relatively small kitchen area, which had been expanded and commercialized since anyone had used this house for a residence.

“Hello?” she called out, taking timid steps toward a large stainless steel island.

“Hello,” a woman called from somewhere to the left. “I’ll be right there.”

Sadie stopped where she was and waited for the woman to appear, which she did shortly, wiping her hands on a paper towel. The woman was tall and lean, with a green bandana tied around her dark hair that hung in one long braid over her left shoulder. She looked as though she might be part Hispanic, or maybe Greek. She had an open expression on her makeup-free face and swirling colors running the length of both arms. At first Sadie thought it was a shirt, then realized they were tattoos. She tried not to stare.

“Sorry,” the woman said. “I thought you were my linen delivery.” She threw the paper towel past Sadie and into the garbage can.

Sadie smiled as she put out her hand. “Are you Karri?”

“Sure am. And you are?” They shook hands briefly.

“My name’s Sadie Hoffmiller. I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if I could ask you—or someone on your wait staff—some questions.”

Karri’s friendly expression didn’t waver. “Questions about what?”

“Um, Jim Sanderson. He was regular patron here, I think.”

The woman nodded. “Sure was,” she said, her smile turning sad. “Who are you?”

Sadie had been prepared for this question, and while she couldn’t believe she was doing it, she pulled the private investigator card Shawn had made for her out of her purse. Hopefully Karri wasn’t familiar enough with a real private investigator license to know Sadie’s ID wasn’t official.

“You’re an investigator?” Karri said after looking at the ID. She handed the card back to Sadie, her eyebrows raised.

Sadie quickly hid the ID in her purse again. She’d never hear the end of it when Shawn learned she’d actually used it. “I am.”

“And you’re investigating Jim?”

“Not Jim, someone else, but it pertains to Jim. I just need to fill in some blanks about a lunch he had here a couple of weeks before he died.”

Karri frowned. “Jim came in a few times a week, but—” She glanced over her shoulder as something dinged behind her. The expression on her face showed her consideration of everything, and finally softened—a decision had been reached. “Um, those are my rolls. I’ll do my best to answer your questions if you don’t mind me working while we talk.”

“Not at all,” Sadie said, relieved that there would be something else to focus on so that the discussion wouldn’t feel so formal.

“Thanks,” Karri said over her shoulder as she headed toward another part of the kitchen. “We open in a couple of hours, and there’s still a lot of prep to be done before then. Follow me.”

They went around the corner and saw a young man with headphones on slicing vegetables, his head moving slightly to the beat of whatever was pulsing in his eardrums. He gave a little chin nod to them both when they passed, but immediately went back to his work. The smell of baking bread got stronger and stronger until they reached a double-door oven.

“You seem young to be the owner of this place,” Sadie said, taking in how well Karri had used the limited space. Pans hung from the ceiling, and every portion of wall had something hanging from it or pushed up against it. “Did you always want to own a restaurant?”

Karri gave Sadie an appreciative smile as she pulled on a pair of oven mitts. “I sure did,” she said. “Owning my own place has been my dream for as long as I can remember. It finally became a reality about four years ago when this place went up for sale. It was a great price but needed some updating in order to be up to code.” She pointed at something on the ceiling with her eyes. Sadie looked up and noted the exposed sprinkler pipe.

Karri put the hot pan of what looked like multigrain rolls into a rolling cooling rack. Sadie could see the tips of sunflower seeds poking out of the rounded domes as well as a smattering of oats along the surface. “Jim gave me a great price on a fire system in exchange for two lunches a week for a year, and he’s never stopped coming in, even when he had to pay. He’s been very good for business too, bringing in friends and associates on a regular basis.”

“I was here with his daughter the other day,” Sadie said.

“Jolene?” Karri said with an excited smile.

“No, May. She lives in Ohio.”

“I haven’t met her,” Karri said. “But Jolene used to come in a few times a month with her dad. How’s she doing?”

“She says she’s doing well,” Sadie said, and though she doubted that was true, she didn’t want to spread gossip.

“Good,” Karri said, removing her oven mitts. She moved toward a big plastic tub of what looked like butter and picked up a scoop that sat next to it. There was already a cookie sheet full of little paper cups set out; Karri started putting a scoop of butter into each cup. Sadie was itching to offer her help, but didn’t want to come across as too forward. Instead she continued talking, “I had the salmon and mushroom pasta. It was wonderful.”

Karri’s smile stretched even bigger. “That’s one of my favorites, but I have to admit it was inspired by nothing other than tuna casserole.”

“Well, it was nothing like any tuna casserole I’ve ever had,” Sadie said. “It was delicious. And the blackberry crumble—well, it made this whole trip worthwhile.”

“That recipe belonged to my grandmother,” Karri said, “so I can’t take all the credit, but I’m glad you enjoyed both of them. I try to mix up the more creative fare with some basic home-cooked goodness so as to not pigeonhole myself in any one type of cuisine. Anyway, what did you want to ask about Jim?”

Oh, right—Jim
. Sadie opened her purse and removed the photo she had used to identify Keith Kelly a couple of days earlier. “Do you by chance remember Jim having lunch with this man?” She held the picture out to Karri, who furrowed her brow as she paused in her butter-scooping task to give it a quick look. She frowned slightly. “I don’t spend much time at the tables,” Karri said. “I could ask my wait staff when they come in, but that’s not for another hour.”

Sadie tried to hide her disappointment.

“What’s so important about this guy?” Karri asked. “Like I said, Jim brought people here all the time.”

“Oh, it’s probably a long shot,” Sadie said, tucking the photo back into her purse. “But he was Jim’s former business partner who, according to Jim’s family, hadn’t had contact with Jim for years. However, I recently learned he’d had lunch here with Jim a couple of weeks before Jim died.”

Karri paused, and then leaned forward slightly. “Two weeks before?”

Sadie noticed the slightest narrowing of Karri’s eyes.

“Can I see that photo again?”

Sadie quickly complied, and this time Karri stared at it for several seconds. “I
do
know that guy, then,” she said, not sounding pleased. She handed the photo back to Sadie. “He came in with Jim and ordered the soup of the day, but he sent it back twice because he said it was cold. I made a point to take it out to him personally the second time, to make sure he was happy, and he was really rather rude about the whole thing. He’s much better looking in that photo.”

Sadie was encouraged. “Yes, that sounds just like Keith Kelly. You don’t remember anything else about their meal, do you? Any idea what they were talking about?”

“Jim wasn’t happy,” Karri said. “I can tell you that much. At first I thought he was just embarrassed by his friend sending the soup back, but then I realized there was something else going on. The tension between the two of them was intense, and he had a bunch of papers on the table. I was worried that this guy—Keith, right?—I thought he was an attorney or something and that Jim was having some trouble.”

“Why did you think that?”

“There was a profit and loss statement on the table. I didn’t recognize anything else, but I’d never known Jim to eat with someone he didn’t like, and it was a pretty serious topic, whatever it was they were talking about.”

Sadie opened her mouth to ask another question when she suddenly put two and two together. She’d assumed that Keith had been the one to instigate the lunch, but they’d eaten at Karri’s,
Jim’s
favorite restaurant. Duh! The lunch hadn’t been Keith’s idea at all.

“One other thing,” Karri said, drawing Sadie’s attention again as she continued scooping butter. “The soup wasn’t cold. He was posturing.”

“Posturing?”

“Making a statement,” Karri explained. “Kind of like when a skinny girl orders a salad on a date, I know it’s early in a relationship. When a couple shares a dessert, there’s no doubt that they are comfortable with one another. And when someone makes a big deal about paying for dinner with a hundred-dollar bill, it’s to show off.”

Sadie understood. “And when a man sends hot soup back to the kitchen twice, he’s dominating the situation.”

Karri pointed her butter scoop at Sadie. “Exactly. This Keith guy finally agreed to tolerate the soup, and I left them to their business. I never saw the man again. Jim and I never talked about it.”

“Hello?”

They both looked toward the sound of a man’s voice, then Karri wiped her hands on her apron. “The linen delivery. Can I help you with anything else?”

“No,” Sadie said, fumbling in her purse for the mini-notebook she always kept there. “But thank you for your time; this helps me a great deal. If you remember anything else, could you give me a call? I’ll write my cell phone number down and just leave it here on the counter.” She was already scribbling down the digits.

“You bet, and I hope you’ll come back and eat with us again while you’re in town.”

Sadie smiled. “I don’t even need the invitation, thank you.”

Once back in her car, Sadie turned her key in the ignition in order to get the AC going and jotted down some notes on what she’d learned from Karri. After she’d gotten all the words out of her head, she read them over again, absorbing her discovery. Jim had issued the invitation for Keith to join him at his favorite lunch spot, which suggested that
Jim
had issued some kind of proposal to Keith Kelly; something May insisted never would have happened. Sadie had to repeat it a couple of times to really let it settle. This changed things—a lot of things.

She called Richard. It went to his voice mail, and Sadie reluctantly left him a message about what she’d learned. At the tail end of her recap, she had an idea and hurried to invite him to lunch at Karri’s that afternoon. She didn’t set a time, just asked him to call her as soon as possible. Just before she said good-bye, her phone vibrated slightly, indicating that she’d received a text message. She hung up her phone and then toggled to her inbox.

I’m ready when you are! Give me a call, and you’ll be on your way to the financial independence you’ve always dreamed of. G.T.

It took her a moment to realize G.T. must mean Gary Tracey. She wasn’t looking forward to meeting with him, but with such limited options, she knew she had to take advantage of any opportunity. Plus, if Gary had returned her call, it meant that he must not be aware of the falling out she’d had with May. Without debating too much, she called him back.

“Hello,” she said into the phone. “This is Sadie Hoffmiller; I just got your—”

“Sadie, Sadie, lucky lady, I’m so glad to hear from you.” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “After I got your message, I was able to reschedule some things this morning so that you and I could have a chance to talk about the glorious potential you have through some financial restructuring. I made you a priority and am at your service.”