The Solace of Bay Leaves

by Leslie Budewitz

  A young couple came into view, she in a bright yellow slicker, the hood back, her blond hair in a French braid, he wearing the same kind of navy outdoor jacket as the man at the hospital, though the coat was the only resemblance.

  They caught sight of me and stopped. She found her tongue first. “Were we disturbing you? Sorry.”

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I had never seen them before. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the entrance. “The door—” I said.

  “Oh, geez. Did we leave it open again?” She turned to him. “I told you I didn’t hear it shut.”

  “Sorry,” the man said. He looked about thirty, clean-shaven, his dark hair in a short fade. “We’ll be more careful, I promise.”

  “Oh-kay. Thanks.” I glanced between them, aware that my heart was beating too fast. “But who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Turned out that the owner of the unit below mine, a man who used it a few weeks a year when business brought him to Seattle, had decided to rent the place on Airbnb. I think I’d seen him twice, maybe three times. This couple had taken the train up from Portland for a few days. They were quite sweet, actually, and felt terrible about having scared me. Sadly, that made me feel like an old lady in need of coddling.

  But whatever our age, we all need a little coddling now and then, I thought as I headed up the stairs after they left, the door firmly shut behind them.

  Inside my loft, I double-checked my own door. It was a silly incident with an innocent explanation. Short-term rentals were hot downtown. I didn’t know if our building rules allowed them, but at the moment, the idea of strangers coming in and out was unnerving.

  I stripped off my damp clothes and pulled on fleecy pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. Wool socks. In Seattle, in October. If you’d told me last August, when the mercury rose past ninety for so long we all thought it was stuck, that October would feel like an ice bath, I’d have said “bring it on.” But now that the rainy season was here, I was less impressed.

  In the kitchen, I brewed a cup of Earl Grey. Normally, I’m a coffee drinker, and I’d recently become quite fond of chai. But when you need to warm up in a hurry, nothing works quite like hot tea.

  Nate had taken Arf and gone to visit a fishing buddy. He wouldn’t be home until evening. When we started seeing each other and I’d fretted to my mother about his here again–gone again work schedule, she’d pointed out that time apart is good for a couple. Now that Nate planned to stay in Seattle until spring, we were working out our own schedule. At the moment, half of me wished he were here to wrap his strong arms around me, and half was relieved that he couldn’t see how I’d overreacted. Twice.

  I was starving. Breakfast had long worn off. I put together a small antipasto platter, with chunks of cantaloupe, sliced prosciutto, marinated asparagus, and fresh mozzarella, all from the Market. Found some crackers and perched on a bar stool to eat my Italian snack and sip my English tea. Perfect.

  The unlatched door had me rethinking my assumptions about other things as well. What if the man outside the hospital was just a man sneaking a cigarette outside a hospital? The FBI hardly needed a man at the door—and hospitals have many doors—if the SPD had an officer outside a patient’s room. If they did—I didn’t know that, either. Even if he was the same man Laurel had seen downtown, so what? Despite my misgivings about coincidence, Seattle’s not so big that you can’t run into the same person in more than one place.

  My blood had begun to warm and my blood sugar to rise, clearing my head. I clicked on my iPad. I knew Pat only through Laurel’s stories and the yearly updates the news media ran. For the next hour, I followed the trail Patrick Halloran had left behind. We all leave one, I suppose, but the trails a federal prosecutor and community activist leaves can wend, wind, criss, cross, jump off, meander, and dead-end. As Laurel had said, the investigation was multi-pronged, probing his cases, the neighbors, known burglars, and more. At one point, I grabbed the notebook where I jot ideas for the shop and recipes—the closest paper—and began scribbling. Names, arrows, question marks—the result looked like a map drawn by a blind woman.

  In other words, it led me nowhere. Except to the conclusion that for a guy everyone seemed to love and admire, Patrick Halloran sure had a lot of potential enemies.

  Time to shake off my murderous musings and get busy. The Flick Chicks were meeting Tuesday at Kristen’s. This week’s movie was Tampopo, a noodle Western, the menu a soup exchange. It’s a ritual I relish. Once or twice during the cooler seasons, each of us brings enough soup to share. After dinner, we divvy up the leftovers. For one stint in the kitchen, you end up with four varieties to freeze for a day when you’re in the mood to eat soup but not in the mood to make it. Only once have two of us brought the same dish—tomato, if I recall correctly, and you can almost never have too much tomato soup.

  Tomato soup would hit the spot right now—a cup and a grilled cheese sandwich are my definition of comfort food. Instead, I’d planned a carrot soup redolent with toasted pecans and spices. It’s a Spice Shop fave, in part for the spices—duh—but also because it’s easy, quick, and doesn’t require much shopping. The only thing you might not have in your pantry—and why not; it’s so flexible— is a can of coconut milk. I’ve learned to keep a couple cans on hand and stash what I don’t use in the freezer.

  First, though, music to chop, stir, and simmer by. I cued up a jazzy playlist, heavy on local musicians—Quincy Jones, Ernestine Anderson, Bill Frisell, and of course, Diane Schuur, since we’d missed her performance Friday night. Jazz has a long history in Seattle, dating back to the clubs on Jackson Street where Jelly Roll Morton played in 1919 and where Ray Charles hit the scene thirty years later.

  I danced my way back to the kitchen, swaying to the warm notes and phrases of Frisell’s jazz guitar. Strange, though, not to have my canine companion underfoot.

  I took a bag of focaccia dough out of the fridge and turned on the oven, then started the soup. If I’m making soup for one or two, I don’t bother with a recipe, but I’ve learned the hard way that when making a double batch, it pays to pay attention. I brought up a copy, then lined out the ingredients on the counter. The habit amuses my mother, Lena, who cooks by instinct, but I’d adopted it after grabbing the garlic instead of the ginger while baking cookies. The dangers of alphabetizing the spices—and yes, she laughs at that, too.

  I melted butter in a large stock pot and threw in chopped onion and garlic. Scrubbed the carrots I’d nabbed from a farm stall, then sliced them with the food processor. Thought about Laurel and Patrick and Maddie.

  Was there some connection other than the tenuous link of the proposed development? If Laurel knew, she’d have told me.

  I tossed the pecans into a hot pan, eyes and sniffer on alert. Maybe—and here I swung back to the theory of Smoking Man as FBI agent—the cops were watching both Maddie and Laurel for exactly that reason. Hoping a connection they had never suspected would emerge.

  What was the character on that old show, The X-Files? Cigarette Smoking Man, the mysterious government agent who sometimes helped Fox Mulder and sometimes frustrated him.

  Great. An alien conspiracy. That’s all we needed.

  I did wonder if the FBI was watching me, as a woman connected to both victims. Although I’d never met Pat—I only knew his wife. Widow. What about Kristen, who was helping Tim with the kids?

  No need to worry. Kristen is far more sensible than I. If she saw anyone lurking around her home and family, she’d call the cops in a nanosecond.

  I shook the pan. A fragrant aroma was beginning to perfume the air.

  The cops and agents would do everything they could to trace the gun, but that was an iffy proposition. I slid the pecans onto the butcher block counter to cool and added the spices to the hot pan.

  Tag had been right about one thing: I could trust Mike Tracy to do his job. What about Meg Greer, with her new perspective?


  If a new perspective was needed, I’d give them mine. Tracy had as much as invited it.

  Let them rehash the old investigations—they had the resources and the badges. I turned off the heat and poured the toasted spices into an electric grinder, one that never touches a coffee bean. Pulsed a few times, lifted the lid, and savored the earthy combo of toasted cumin, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and celery seed. Threw them into the soup, then gave the mixture a quick puree with the whizzy-uppy thing, a.k.a. the immersion blender.

  Naturally, the whirring and grinding brought my brain to Lovely Rita. Officer Clark. I had to admit, it was a shock to discover she’d joined the police department. Had she and Tag gotten back together? I didn’t know, and I shouldn’t care. It had been three years. I’d left him. He was free to move on, though as far as I knew, he’d had no serious relationships since our divorce. He’d tried hard to win me back, and I had briefly wavered last winter. Instead, we’d settled on being friends.

  And I loved the turns my life had taken since then.

  When the soup was ready, I poured a couple of servings into a glass bowl, found the lid, and cut a wedge of focaccia. Carried my offering out to the landing and rapped on Glenn’s door. The Grateful Dead was playing in the background. With him, you never know what the soundtrack will be—Pink Floyd or Wagner, Jimi or Emmy Lou.

  “A thank you for keeping Arf Friday night,” I said when he opened the door.

  “Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime. You know that.” He took the dish and stepped back. “Come in. We got the final plans for the remodel—come see.”

  Glenn’s loft is the same size as mine and we’d both kept the industrial feel, but the layouts were completely different. And while my design sense is generously described as rustic eclectic, Glenn’s is midcentury modern. Eames chairs, white leather chaises, walls the colors of a Rubik’s cube.

  “How’s your Nate?” I asked. “And his mother?” A year ago, Glenn married a lovely man named Nate Webster who’d left his journalism job to marry a city councilman and start the long-dreamed of novel. Then Nate’s mother’s health took a turn and he went back East to help her. When I started seeing Nate Seward, Glenn’s and my conversations had become a tangle of references to “your Nate” and “my Nate.”

  Glenn sighed. “It won’t be long, I’m afraid. Though we’ve been saying that for months.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded, then turned to the roll of blueprints on the sleek teak dining table. “Floor plans, detail drawings, materials lists. We’re actually going to do this.”

  “So exciting,” I said. The unit below Glenn’s had been sold a couple of times since the century-old warehouse was converted to housing a few years ago, but it had never been finished. He and his Nate bought it to combine with their existing one-bedroom and make a two-story haven.

  Now he unrolled the prints and pointed out the main features. The steps would be located near the entry. His office would move from a corner of the living room into the current bedroom. Downstairs, they planned a luxurious master suite, including a bath any spa aficionado would envy. Writing space for his Nate and a relaxing family slash media room would fill the remaining square footage.

  “No guest room?” I asked.

  “Nope. When I’m home, I want to be home, not running a makeshift B&B.” Though serving on the city council was demanding, and occasionally frustrating, Glenn planned to run for another term. He had my vote.

  “That reminds me.” I told him about the young couple I’d met earlier—I admit, I called them “kids.” “Are short-term rentals allowed? Is this one legal? Not that I want to create a problem, but . . .”

  “If it’s put you on edge, it already is a problem. I’ve never had any trouble with that door. You?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t heard any complaints, either, but while my neighbors and I exchange greetings, take in the mail when someone is away, and occasionally walk a dog or feed a cat, we weren’t close. When my mother announced last summer that she and my father wanted to return to Seattle for part of the year, she’d enlisted me as her house-hunting partner. We’d toured half a dozen cohousing collectives and condo complexes, and even a tiny-house village up north. What she wanted above all was community. Though I have great personal friends and tons of friends in the Market, a city within the city, Glenn was my only real friend in the building. And that might have been because our doors were four feet apart and our verandas were conjoined twins.

  But now, I wondered. With only eight units, one never occupied, shouldn’t we all be better friends? Shouldn’t we have known what our downstairs neighbor was planning?

  “I don’t mean to put you in a tough spot. City councilman pointing a finger at a neighbor . . .”

  “No, no.” He held up a hand. “I’ve got the covenants handy, so I’ll check. If it looks like there’s a violation, you can invite everyone in the building over for wine and a chat.”

  That, I could do. Convene an informal meeting of the HOA. The original docs set one up, but we’d only met twice in my time here, once to make sure everyone knew the city’s plans for removing the viaduct outside our windows, and a few weeks ago, to review and approve Glenn’s proposal to consolidate the two units. It would be a good excuse to socialize with my neighbors.

  Back in my own cozy space, I sat at my picnic table with a bowl of soup, a plate of bread and butter, and a glass of a classic, unoaked Chardonnay. This building started life as a warehouse for nearby canneries, and later for other goods—some legal, some not. It stood empty for years. Now, with the demolition of the viaduct that ran along Alaskan Way and the relocation of the elevated highway to a tunnel under downtown, the area was transforming again, from the city’s back alley to its front yard.

  And it was the perfect home for me.

  All I needed at the moment was a good book. A year ago, I’d found a box of historical mysteries my parents had stashed in my storage locker and gotten hooked. I’d read my way through the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters, and a former law firm staffer now working at the Mystery Bookshop had fed my growing addiction with the Sister Fidelma and Dame Frevisse mysteries. I’d stumbled across the Crispin Guest Medieval Mysteries by Jeri Westerson on my own, and was nearing the end of the first, Veil of Lies, when I heard a clicking noise and sat bolt upright, heart racing.

  And rolled my eyes at myself. The moody mystery, dicey lock, and gloomy weather had me spooked at the sound of my Nate unlocking the door.

  I greeted the canine with a pat on the head and the human with a long, deep kiss.

  “Mmm,” Nate said, and came back for seconds.

  “What time is it?” I asked a little while later. “Dog walk?”

  “No need. I think he sniffed every tree in Discovery Park, then he chased Aaron’s kids around their back yard. He peed before we came up.”

  Over wine, I gave Nate the short version of our failed attempt to see Maddie. I told him about the man we’d seen at the door, the one who might or might not be FBI. I downplayed that speculation. My suspicions could easily have been my imagination. Fear and anxiety can mess with the mind.

  Lordy, can they.

  But I kept my mouth shut about my encounter with Officer Kimberly Clark. You have to be judicious, talking about past relationships. Besides, I’d had enough embarrassment for the day.

  He filled me in on the visit with Aaron, a former crew member on the Seward brothers’ Alaska boat, whom I hadn’t met yet. “He’s liking life off the water,” Nate summed up, “and it’s liking him. Though I talked him into making the trip up to the San Juans with me this week.”

  Was there a message in his tone? Nate was forty-four, a year older than I. Hardly an ancient mariner. He’d spent his adult life fishing. If he was thinking of giving it up, he hadn’t said, or hinted at what he might do instead. But life had changed for both of us since Arf and I took a stroll
along Fisherman’s Terminal last June, and I had a hunch the changes were just beginning.

  “Sounds like you had a great time. Clearly Arf approved.” I sank to the floor to rub my dog’s belly, and his happy sounds gave way to a soft snore. “I’m glad you’ll have an extra pair of hands on board.”

  “Their house is a few blocks from my old place. Aaron said it’s back on the market.” Nate’s ex, a nurse, had kept the house for a while, until she remarried and moved. We hadn’t met, though I’d met her sister last summer when Nate called her for info that helped identify the weapon in a murder case. I could only imagine the mix of emotions I’d feel if Tag sold our former home.

  “Do you want to own a house again?” Arf would love a yard. I stood.

  “Maybe. Someday.” He wrapped his arms around me. “Every phase of life has its own places. Right now”—he gave the side of my neck a tickling kiss and I suppressed an involuntary giggle— “this is the place.”