Blackberry Crumble (21 page)

She bought a Belgian waffle from a food cart on her way back to the hotel—it was delicious—and was crossing the lobby when the desk clerk called out to her.

“Mrs. Sadie Hoffmiller?” The man was tall and thin, with a smile too big for his face.

“Yes?”

He held out a small, manila-colored bubble mailer. “A package came for you in this morning’s mail.”

Intrigued, Sadie took the package and headed to her room, where she quickly opened it. Maybe it was a clue, like some voice tapes Jim had made about what to do if he died suddenly. Or maybe the key to a locker at a bus station! Unfortunately, it wasn’t either of those things. When Sadie dumped it upside down on the bed, a slim, black wallet fell out, along with a folded-up piece of lined paper. She picked up the paper and opened it.

Sadie chuckled and shook her head as she opened the wallet with trepidation. What would he have gone to all the trouble to send her? As it turned out, it wasn’t a wallet at all, but a badge holder. And right where an ID was supposed to be was something that looked a little bit like a driver’s license, only with the words “Private Investigator” printed in big blue letters. It had a photo of Sadie, her home address, and some type of phony—but still official-looking—seal in the bottom corner. Sadie shook her head and pulled her phone out of her purse, pressing number 3 to speed dial her son.

He answered on the second ring.

“You made me a bogus ID and mailed it all the way to Portland?”

Shawn laughed. “It looks awesome, doesn’t it? I spent hours getting it just right.”

“Yes, it does look awesome, but it’s still a fake.”

“I know, but you have to admit I have skills.”

“Have I ever doubted how highly skilled you are?”

Shawn didn’t answer right away and a split second before he spoke, Sadie knew where this conversation was headed.

“Please let me come, Mom,” Shawn begged. “I can tell my work it’s a family emergency. They’ll give me the time off. I’ll even pay for my own ticket.”

Sadie took a breath and sat on the edge of the bed, where, for the next fifteen minutes, she explained frontward and backward why Shawn couldn’t come. School started in two weeks, this wasn’t a family emergency, he couldn’t afford a ticket, and Sadie was already pushing things by doing an investigation in a state where she wasn’t licensed. She let him argue for awhile and then ended the discussion as only a mother can do sometimes. He was not happy, but she thanked him a final time for the badge before they hung up. She hoped he’d let it drop now. There was no way around the fact that it was not a good idea for him to come.

After ending the call, Sadie went to put the badge in her suitcase when she paused. She opened up the leather cover again and smiled. It was a very sweet gesture on Shawn’s part, and since she’d never seen a real investigator’s license, it looked legitimate to her. After considering it for a few more seconds, she put the badge in her purse instead. Just in case.

It was a quarter to 11:00 when Sadie parked in front of the light-gray rambler with white trim and a real estate sign in the front yard. She double-checked the address she’d typed into Dora fifteen minutes earlier. Yes, she was at the right place.

Jim Sanderson’s house was tucked into a sprawling and beautiful neighborhood; kids were riding their bikes, a man was mowing his lawn, and a pair of women were speed walking around the block. She loved how many people always seemed to be out and about.

Sadie let herself out of the car and took a deep breath, inhaling the earthy smell. No wonder Oregonians were so environmentally conscious; they had a lot to lose. As she headed for the front door, she slipped her keys in her pocket as Pete had taught her to do. She hoped she’d be able to manage this meeting without revealing all the things she’d learned since she’d spoken to May on the phone yesterday, but the words seemed to be bursting inside of her. She worried about her ability to keep them to herself. It was imperative, however, that she didn’t give things up before she heard back from Richard about his father’s whereabouts the day Jim Sanderson died.

Her foot was on the first step when the front door opened and May slipped out, pulling the door shut behind her. Her hair was twisted up into a crude French knot, a few tendrils of hair framing her face. She gave Sadie a nervous smile while twisting the hem of her oversized T-shirt in her hands.

“Good morning,” she said.

Sadie stopped at the top of the stairs. “Good morning,” she said back. “What’s wrong?”

May bit her lip. “Jolene stayed here last night,” she said in a low voice. “She had a treatment yesterday, and Gary had a lot to do today; she didn’t want to be alone.”

“A treatment?” Sadie asked. “Is she sick?”

May blinked at her, her expression confused. “Did I not tell you about Jolene?”

Sadie shook her head. “She’s your older sister and does the books for S&S. That’s all I know.”

“Oh,” May said in a dull voice. She looked back at the house, then headed down the stairs. “Let’s take a walk. I don’t want her to overhear us.”

Sadie fell in step beside May and adjusted her purse on her shoulder as they reached the sidewalk that followed the curling streets. Most of the sidewalk was covered in blessed shade. May waited until they had crossed the property line before she spoke.

“Jolene has cancer,” she said simply.

Sadie’s heart sank. “I’m so sorry,” she said sympathetically, looking to the side, trying to read May’s expression. She was watching the sidewalk and not looking at Sadie at all. “What kind?”

“Breast,” May said simply, then took a breath—the kind Sadie imagined soldiers took before going into battle—and looked up. “She’s beating it, but the treatments take a lot out of her.”

“Does she have a family?”

Another pained expression flitted across May’s face. “Her son, Bryce, is at the University of Washington in Seattle. She and her husband, Gary, live in Hillsboro, which is about half an hour from here.” May paused. “Dad would help take care of her when she didn’t feel up to making the trip home after her treatments at Providence, and, well, now I’m here instead.”

Sadie put her hand on May’s arm, causing her to stop. She turned to Sadie, her expression cautious. “I’m so sorry, May,” she said. “Losing your father at a time like this must be even more devastating.” Thanks to Richard relaying some of May’s family history, Sadie knew just how horrible this really was.

Quick tears rose in May’s eyes, but she took another of those strengthening breaths and faced forward, walking again. Sadie quickly matched her pace. They didn’t speak for nearly a minute.

“You said she’s beating it,” Sadie said. “That’s good news.”

“She looks awful, though,” May admitted, her gaze on the sidewalk. They had looped around to the point where Sadie had no idea where they were in relation to the house. “I mean, I know the treatments are designed to get you as close to death as possible without killing you in an attempt to kill off the cancer cells, but it’s hard to watch, hard to believe she’ll get better.”

“Hard to believe doesn’t equal hopeless,” Sadie pointed out.

May shrugged. “You can see why I don’t want to upset her, why it’s important that you’re just a friend helping me get Dad’s house ready to sell and not someone who is going to give her any reason to worry about anything at all.”

“I understand,” Sadie said, nodding. “I’ll be careful.”

“Thank you,” May said with a smile. “I appreciate your understanding.”

She stopped, and Sadie realized they’d looped back to the house. The sidewalk was a full circle; they hadn’t crossed any streets. May continued. “I’ll show you to the study. Her room is on the opposite side of the house, so I don’t think we’ll disturb her too much; I just didn’t want her to overhear us.”

Sadie followed May through a living room decorated in the soft pinks and blues of the early eighties. She’d always liked that color scheme herself; too bad it hadn’t remained popular. The floor plan of the house was such that the living room was the center of the home, with the kitchen off to the side. A hallway stretched toward the back of the house and another one stretched to the right of the living room. May led Sadie down the back one, but Sadie looked over her shoulder at the one they hadn’t taken, counting three closed doors. Bedrooms, she assumed. Maybe a bathroom as well. Jolene was behind one of the doors.

“Here it is,” May said, standing to the side of an open doorway.

Sadie walked past her and took in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on one wall and the white-painted paneling on the other walls. There was a large desk flanked by bone-colored filing cabinets. The desk was quite tidy, with a computer taking up most of the desk space. There were no pictures on the wall or plants or anything that would be called decorative, attesting to the fact that this had been a man’s office for a long time. A shrink-wrapped stack of flattened file boxes lay in the middle of the floor.

“The filing cabinet on the right of the desk is business related,” May said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. “I’m pretty sure all the original contracts between Dad and Keith are in there. If you don’t mind boxing them up while you go through them, that would be great.” She waved toward the file boxes on the floor. “To, you know, keep up appearances.”

“Sure,” Sadie said. She faced May and ignored most of what she wanted to talk about, which was Richard and cancer and the holes left in May’s life by both of them. “Do you happen to have a copy machine?” she asked, looking around the office but seeing only a small printer. “I don’t want to hold on to originals, but I might want to take some papers back to the hotel to look over later.”

May frowned. “I didn’t think about that,” she said. “There’s a copy shop a few blocks over, though. I’ve got some errands to run, so I can make whatever copies you need.”

“That will be great,” Sadie said with a smile. They both stood there, looking around.

“Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” May said.

Sadie nodded. “Sounds good.”

May left the room, closing the door behind her, and Sadie got down to business. May had said the cabinet on the right was business related, which meant the cabinet on the left was likely personal. She glanced at the door, and then moved to the left side of the desk. It was reasonable to want a glimpse at the man who was the reason she was here, and May hadn’t told her
not
to look. Besides, she would only spend a few minutes before she moved on to the business contracts.

Chapter 26

The top drawer of the filing cabinet was full of household information—home repair invoices, old bank statements, and personal files. Sadie fingered through the alphabetized files and pulled out the one marked “Leena.” Richard had said Leena had died when May was fifteen years old, and the death certificate from 1990 seemed to confirm that. Behind the death certificate were pages and pages of what looked like test results, medical reports, and the like. Sadie wondered why they were all still here; it had been twenty years since Leena had died. But she knew that sometimes it was hard to let go of people, of proof they were once alive. She wondered if she might still have similar things of Neil’s tucked away back home.

Sadie reverently placed the file back in the cabinet drawer and moved on through home warranties and tax files that held years’ worth of receipts.

When she came upon a file titled “Will—Legal Trust,” she pulled it out and opened it. There were five thin, professional-looking folders, each labeled “Will and Testament” with a date printed on the front and a notarized seal. The first folder was dated 1982, with the other folders dated roughly every four or five years after that. The last file was dated just a few years ago and the title had changed to “Living Trust.”

Smart man
, Sadie thought as she extracted the trust documents. Her brother, Jack, managed her financial affairs, and he had recently suggested she consider replacing her will with a legal trust. Per Jack’s explanation, Sadie would essentially create a trust which would then hold all her assets: home, stocks, bonds, certificates, and so on. She’d already decided that she’d probably appoint Jack as her trustee since he handled such things already.

The trustee, under the supervision of an attorney, would manage the trust, and upon Sadie’s death, which she expected would be a long time from now—knock on wood—the trustee would then execute whatever wishes she had stipulated to happen when she died.

Her late husband, Neil, had had a will, but because they owned everything in joint, she was able to avoid probate, and settling his will was fairly simply. When Sadie’s father was first diagnosed with colon cancer, Jack had him draft his own living trust, and due to Jack’s insight, they had avoided a lot of the legal and emotional toll of settling his estate as well. She was relieved to know that despite the heavy loss Jim Sanderson’s children were shouldering, he had taken care of so many details, saving them what could be months of trying to put his affairs in order without him there to help.

Sadie skimmed through the first parts of the trust, which explained the way assets would be managed while he was alive, until she finally came to the “On Death” portion of the document. She was surprised to see it was written in first person, as though Jim himself were speaking to his heirs. It was a nice touch.