Free Fortune Cookie (Culinary Mystery) by Josi S. Kilpack

in the narrow room, which was only about twelve feet wide. There was a two-person table in the dining area and a large mirror on the wall over a buffet table painted bright red and decorated with coordinating pottery. The kitchen area divided the dining area from the living room, where a small sectional couch and a large shag rug, red with orange swirls, squared off that space. A flat-screen television was on one wall with five square canvas paintings on the wall opposite.
    Sadie could see areas where light gray graphite was used by the investigators to dust for prints on the wall and on the furniture, but it was minimal and the overall look of the apartment was clean, appealing, and . . . normal. How could it be so normal when Wendy was so not normal?
    “Is this her?” Pete asked from where he stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the canvases.
    Sadie joined him and looked at the oil paintings prominently displayed. It had been so long since Sadie had seen her sister that she couldn’t say for sure that it was Wendy depicted in the paintings, but she suspected that it was.
    The center canvas was a portrait of a middle-aged woman giving a speculative look, her fingers pointed beneath her chin and her long, tight blonde curls wild around her face. The other canvases were like a puzzle piece of that first painting: the fingers, an eye, the mouth, a section of curl, each with a different color of emphasis—green, blue, red, and yellow.
    “I wonder if she painted them herself,” Sadie said, finding it rather narcissistic that Wendy had decorated her home with self-portraits. Wendy’s face staring back at her was disturbing, and she couldn’t help but wonder about the idea of ghosts. Sadie was very aware that she hadn’t been welcomed into Wendy’s space when Wendy was alive.
    “She was an artist?” Pete asked, saving Sadie from her thoughts.
    Sadie turned away from the portraits and nodded. “She first left home to go to art school, and my parents sent her tuition for a while. I don’t know if she ever finished.” She looked back at the jewelry box Ji had painted. What did he think about the talent he and his mother shared?
    “She’s very good,” Pete said.
    She was very good, Sadie clarified in her mind. She moved to the windows and opened the other two blinds. She could feel Pete watching her for a few moments, then he turned his attention to a cardboard box on one end of the couch full of magazines and books.
    “It looks like Ji already started packing things up.” Pete picked up a stack of magazines and shuffled through them.
    The kitchen drew Sadie to it, and she noted the dishes in the sink—a coffee mug, a bowl with what looked like petrified cereal bits in it, and a small plate with a smear of solidified jam. Had those been the last dishes Wendy had used? The thought gave her chills.
    The counters were clear, the cupboards organized, and the fridge full of food that was beginning to smell sour after five weeks of neglect.
    “Let’s check the rest of the apartment,” Pete said.
    Sadie shut the fridge and looked between the two doors that led off the main space, one on the left wall and one directly across from it on the right. Both closed doors were on the living room end.
    Sadie stood on the invisible boundary between the living room and kitchen as Pete twisted the knob of the door to the right. Tension seeped into her shoulders and chest. The door could lead to the bathroom—the room where Wendy had died.
    Pete opened the door slowly as though he were thinking the same thing, then paused, flipped on the light, and opened the door all the way. “It’s an office,” he said as he stepped inside.
    “An office?” Sadie was spurred into motion by the surprising answer; she hadn’t expected anything other than a bedroom since there were only two doors leading off the living room area and one had to be the bathroom, right?
    Sadie entered the room and Pete stepped aside. The door