The Solace of Bay Leaves

by Leslie Budewitz

  Oh, cardamom. I’d completely forgotten. Eric and Kristen had been with Tim and Maddie at their island place that evening. How could Maddie have been with Pat? Unless she’d been there some other time.

  Silence. Then Clark spoke to Laurel. “My patrol car’s parked on Calhoun. I’ll follow you. Take Boyer to Roanoke, cross the freeway, and drop down to Fairview. Wait for me at the entrance to the docks.”

  Laurel nodded.

  Tracy aimed an irritated look at me and I raised my hands. “I just found out, not five minutes ago.”

  He grunted. “We’ll talk soon.” Then he and Armstrong headed for the parking lot and Clark for the street.

  “They won’t charge me, will they?” Laurel asked. “I mean, I withheld evidence, but I didn’t think it was relevant. Eight thirty. That’s right in the middle of morning rush.”

  “Take cookies,” I said. “When dealing with Detective Tracy, it’s always a good idea to take cookies.”

  Twenty-Two

  Foods often spark our memories. When I taste what my aunts used to cook, I am tasting time.

  — Mary Pipher, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age

  I WOKE UP THURSDAY MISSING NATE. AND NOT JUST BECAUSE he’s the one who usually takes Arf out for a morning pee. I missed him because my life is better with him. Because I’m better with him.

  Because while you might not ever truly know someone, the effort of trying is part of what makes life so exquisitely beautiful. Try putting all that in a text.

  “Pepper! Hi!”

  I turned, delighted to see Jamie Ackerman behind me in the coffee line. I introduced her to Arf, who was instantly smitten.

  “I’m trying a different spot every day,” she told me in a conspiratorial tone. “How can you stand all this fabulous food? Greek, Italian, Thai.”

  It was our turn to order and I reached into my tote for my wallet. The photos Greer had given me came out, too, falling onto the Arcade floor.

  “I’ll get them,” Jamie said, and bent down while I paid for the coffee. I tucked my wallet away and she stood, pictures in hand. “Thanks. You didn’t have to buy. I’ve seen them.”

  “Seen who? Oh, them?” I took the pictures. “She might work in the Market.”

  Jamie’s brow creased. “Yeah, maybe. But somewhere else . . . where?”

  “If you think of it, let me know.”

  Before she could ask why, the barista called my name and handed us our lattes. We headed up the Arcade, Jamie waving and calling hellos to a dozen vendors.

  “So, you’re liking it here,” I said when we reached the spot where our ways parted. She’d been assigned a stall on the Joe DeSi-mone Bridge today.

  “Pepper,” she said, her voice dropping. “I have never felt more at home anywhere than I do in Seattle. In the Market.”

  What could I do, but throw my arms around her.

  As I unlocked the shop door, I pictured Laurel trekking down to SPD, as she’d promised Detective Tracy. I’d filled Eric in when I stopped to pick up Arf, and he’d arranged for a criminal lawyer he knew to sit in on the interview. He doubted they’d charge a murder victim’s wife with obstruction unless they had good reason. Only if filing charges would help them shake loose info critical to an arrest and conviction. But they would use the lipstick case to pressure Maddie as well—she hadn’t mentioned being in the Halloran house that day. Though if she had been, Eric assured me, it was earlier. Maddie had been tied up on business, and met the rest of them at the ferry terminal for the six o’clock boat.

  This new evidence would mean every alibi would be checked and rechecked. But not by me. The cops had the resources for detailed investigations like that—comparing witness statements, checking ferry schedules and drive times. Minutiae were them. People were me.

  The shop welcomed me with its usual cascade of sights and smells, and I had to agree with Jamie about the Market.

  Midmorning, the sun was shining brightly, and I stepped outside to listen to a busker fiddling old-timey tunes on the other side of Pine. Bicycle tires whizzed by, then stopped. Bike cleats clattered on the sidewalk as Tag approached.

  “Got a moment?” he said.

  “What’s up?”

  He cleared his throat. “I hear you’ve met Kim.”

  “I’ll admit, I almost didn’t recognize her with all her clothes on.”

  “Pepper,” he said, half chiding, half pleading.

  “I know, it’s been three years. Past time to give it a rest. Truth is . . .” I glanced at the pavement, unsure whether to say what I’d been thinking, but it had been nagging at me ever since my conversation with Laurel in the playground last night. I met his gaze. “Your affair was not my fault. It was a stupid thing to do, and it was only a matter of time before I caught on. But”—I raised a hand to forestall his interruption—“it was your response to a bad situation. We’d stopped being open and honest with each other a long time before that night. And no, I’m not just now figuring that out, but I am just now realizing it’s important to acknowledge to you that I’m as much to blame for our marriage failing as you.”

  It was an odd conversation for a street corner, I admit, but even odder was Tag’s reaction. Was Mr. Tough Guy Bike Cop crying?

  Or had a stray raindrop dripped off the dark green overhang of my building and smacked him in the face?

  He wiped his cheek with a gloved hand. Then his radio barked. He clicked it on, barked back, and was gone.

  Just another day in the Market.

  Inside, I placed a few orders, then called a chef who’d fallen behind on his account. Got a text from Nate saying the salmon were running well and they’d probably hit their quota in time to return Saturday. Laurel texted, too, saying: I survived. Thanks for suggesting cookies.

  Ha. Like Mike Tracy could be bought off that easily. Buttered up, maybe, but bought off, no.

  Then Edgar called, and I told him where Sandra and I had lunch yesterday. “The food is nice enough”—that prompted a sound I couldn’t decipher, in Spanish, and probably not one I’d repeat, even if I did understand it. “But you’re right. The spicing on the crab cakes is very similar to yours.”

  “What you are going to do?”

  “I’m still thinking.”

  “You think too long, I lose business.”

  “Edgar, give me time, okay?” He agreed, though not happily, and I changed the subject. “Heard from your old boss Alex lately?” “An email. He’s in New Zealand. Wanted to know if I could put him in touch with that waitress from the old place who came from there and went back.”

  Ah, same old Alex. Still chasing the good-looking women.

  “His crew’s scattered to the winds, hasn’t it?”

  “When I was a sous, I work four years for one chef. Now I’m lucky they stay four months. Everybody got itchy feet. Bartenders is the worst. They move around like flies on a hot wall.”

  I asked him about a couple of other ex-coworkers, then about Tariq. If he had any suspicions, he’d voice them now. Loudly. But no.

  “I lost track. Great cook, bad attitude.”

  Maybe the talented young cook could redeem himself, by serving up some reliable spice intel.

  IN THE afternoon, I headed up to Capitol Hill to call on a young pastry chef, a friend of Cayenne’s from culinary school, who was opening her own bakery and dessert catering company in a space near the old Harvard Exit theater. Talk about a great example of both historic renovation and the city’s evolution. Once a women’s club, when such spaces were influential, it had been converted into a popular movie theater showing foreign films in the days before streaming was a glint in a tech wizard’s eye. My mother swears they used to serve free samples of Seattle Spice tea, back in the day. Now, it houses the Mexican Consulate. I encouraged the baker to include a few south-of-the-border treats on her daily menu.

  An order in hand
that ran from allspice to za’atar, I wound my way over to Maddie’s office. Her building was classic, but without any particular historic significance that would keep it from the wrecking ball, like, say, the Harvard Exit. The door was on the side. A small brass sign read “Petrosian Properties, LLC.” I pushed the intercom button and announced myself, then headed up the narrow stairs.

  The reception area could have been a backdrop for a magazine shoot. Original redbrick walls, richly colored Persian rugs on gleaming plank floors. The furniture looked inviting but not so inviting that an unwanted visitor would linger. A bouquet of creamy white roses and spiky purple flowers graced the front desk. The scent of orange oil and beeswax polish, tinged with coffee, hung in the air.

  “I know you,” the receptionist said. “Well, we’ve never met, but I’m Jess, Jen’s sister.”

  “Jen at the mystery bookshop?” Had she ever mentioned a sister? We’d met at my old law firm. We mostly talked work back then, and mostly talked books now.

  “Yes. You run the spice shop. Maddie raves about you. I can’t believe what’s happened.” Her dark eyeliner was smudged, the skin under her eyes puffy. “Why would someone shoot her?”

  That, I couldn’t answer. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? Can you help me piece together the history of the Montlake project? Oh, I brought cookies. Samples from a new bakery opening in a few weeks, down on Tenth.” I pulled a bag out of my tote. It isn’t just major crimes detectives who speak more freely with a sweet treat in hand.

  “Those look fabulous. Back in a sec.” She bounced up and stepped into a small kitchenette. A moment later, I heard the faint gurgling of a coffee maker. I glanced around. The door to the corner office stood open. Maddie’s inner sanctum. From the reception area, I could see an antique wood desk, brass planters filled with rolls of what I assumed were building plans and blueprints, and an oak library table. Another Persian rug lay on the floor, deep purple with golden yellow flowers and twining greenery.

  Next to Maddie’s office was a formal conference room, the table bare. Several smaller offices ran along the interior wall, all empty. Last came a file room. We appeared to be alone.

  Jess returned with two forest green mugs and a plate of cookies. She led me to a pair of wing chairs, upholstered in deep red, at a low oval table.

  “It’s just me here today,” she said. “The property manager and maintenance crew are out on site. The builder, too, though he isn’t an employee. He’s the one who found her. Got there late, and there she was.”

  “How awful.”

  “They all came in last week when the police interviewed us. That short detective is kind of a bear, but the tall one is nice. Cute, too,” she said, with a lift of her eyebrows.

  “Married.” I took a mug and we sat.

  “The good ones always are. Tim said I should tell you everything. They mostly wanted to know about the other developer and Neighbors United. I kept telling them it was his plans that caused the problems, not Maddie’s, but I’m not sure I was very clear.”

  “So who was he? And what was it about his plans that the neighbors didn’t like?” I took a sip. The same rich, dark roast I’d had in the coffee house on Twenty-Fourth.

  “You know, mostly you know the other people in the business, right? You’re looking at the same jobs, hiring the same subs. But this guy was new on the scene. His name was Jake Byrd, with a Y, doing business as Byrd’s Nest, LLC. With a Y.”

  “Cute,” I said. Finally, a first name for the man.

  “I thought it was dumb.” She bit into a lemon coriander crescent. “Oh, wow.”

  Wait until the baker started using my spices.

  “Isn’t that common, though?” I asked. “When I bought my loft, I dealt with an LLC named for the location, Western and Union. All it did was that project—the construction work, the legal stuff, sales. I assume the owners form a new entity for every project, so if one fails or gets into trouble, it won’t take everything else they’re working on down with it.”

  “You’re right, that is common, especially if you work on a lot of projects at a time. Maddie never did it that way, though. She says the Petrosian name is her selling point, and she wants it front and center. Except this one time.” Her hand shook as she picked up her mug. “They shot her. How messed up is that?”

  “What do you mean, except this one time?”

  She exhaled and set her mug back on the stone coaster without having taken a sip. “Okay, so his project was called Byrd’s Nest. Giving you this cozy sense, right, except that his designs weren’t cozy at all.” She reached for another cookie. “When is this bakery opening?”

  “Halloween. That’s the goal, anyway.” I had my doubts. This was the baker’s first business venture and her ducks were all over the pond. “You were saying, Byrd’s Nest. With a Y.”

  “Yeah, so Maddie decided to try to buy the rest of the build-ings—you know she owns most of the block, right? Except the coffeehouse, which she might as well own, she goes there so often.”

  Jess might not look like her sister, but they shared one trait. They took their sweet time getting to the point.

  “Let me get the file. You’ll see.” A minute later, she returned with two manila folders, one thick, one thin. She handed me the fat file and sat.

  I opened the folder. An entity called Bird’s Nest, LLC, with an I, had signed a buy-sell for the corner property. The transaction had closed a few weeks ago.

  I felt my brain tilt. No doubt it showed. “I saw Bird’s Nest, with an I, listed on the state website. But—ohhh. You’re Jessica Somers, the registered agent.” I hadn’t made the connection; her sister uses a married name.

  Jess cocked her head toward Maddie’s office. “But the company owns everything.”

  “Didn’t Byrd already own the place?”

  “No. Maddie discovered that he only had an option. He was working on financing, putting his plans together. He had a real estate agent on board—you’ve gotta think about marketing right from the start. Although she acted like she was in charge, from what I heard. I guess this was his first big project.”

  “Was the agent Deanna Ellingson?”

  “Yeah. Lining stuff up in advance was smart. That way, when the owner was finally ready to sell, they’d be ready to go.”

  I leaned forward. “Then Maddie came in with a more attractive offer and outbid him. But why form an LLC with a similar name? She bought the other buildings as Petrosian Properties. Or at least, that’s how she bought the insurance agency building—I saw the name when I looked up the sale. Why the subterfuge?”

  Jess gave me a patient look, and the pieces began to fall into place.

  Why, though, had Maddie needed to hide her identity from the seller?

  “The neighbors hated Byrd’s project because it was so out of scale,” Jess said. “Not neighborhood-y at all, if you know what I mean.”

  “Too big? Modern architecture instead of the traditional style?”

  “Which is okay in a built-up area. You put a building like that on a major commercial street, it fits right in. There’s more going on, more variety. But in a single block where everything evokes a certain era . . .”

  I knew what she meant. Last summer, my mother and I visited a cohousing community a few blocks off Broadway. It was the modern, boxy, mixed-material style, but all super-groovy, eco-friendly, with communal dining and a rooftop garden. We’d both loved it. It didn’t seem out of place, because the area around it had become so delightfully mixed. But put that same four-story building on the corner where Gregorian and Son once stood, the only commercial block for miles, and you might as well put a Taco Bell on the moon.

  Jess opened the slender file and shuffled through a short stack of color renderings. All appeared to show similar images, though some had more text and others included photos of faces I couldn’t see well. She handed me a page labeled “The Byrd’s Nest, Contemporary Mixed-use
in a Traditional Setting.” Tradition, shmission. The sketch looked like a Taco Bell with too much hot sauce, minus the good taste. Five stories, gray and orange, with red-railed balconies so narrow my veranda was a ballroom in comparison. It filled the corner—zero lot line, if I remembered the builder-speak. As Jess had said, in the right location, you wouldn’t give it a second glance. Here, you’d be so distracted, you’d run off the road.

  She picked up a raspberry macaron. “Maddie called it his bargaining chip. No matter what he proposed, the neighbors and the city were going to insist he scale back, so by starting outrageous, he could bargain down to what he really wanted.”