The Solace of Bay Leaves

by Leslie Budewitz

  Outside, I stopped at the produce stall, then found a nice flank steak at the butcher. Back in my shop, I greeted my dog and staff, and dealt with a few office matters before closing. The giant sunflowers I’d bought last weekend were looking bedraggled, and I tossed them in the compost bin, reminding myself to pick up a fresh bouquet in the morning. We wouldn’t have too many more chances.

  Then I took my dog and my full shopping bag home. I sliced the beef and marinated it with soy sauce and chili-garlic paste, adding a good glug of sesame oil from each bottle. Made the noodles. Popped the cork on an Oregon pinot noir, and let the first sip roll down the back of my throat, fruity and earthy, the perfect taste for the season.

  I turned on the pregame show, volume low, so I wouldn’t miss the first pitch. My grandfather Reece had nicknamed me for his favorite ballplayer, the fiery St. Louis Cardinal Pepper Martin. He’d given me the love of baseball, too, and though he’d been gone many years, I enjoy thinking of him when I watch a game.

  Much the way soccer united Gabe and Pat Halloran, despite Pat’s death. I suspected the corner grocery had the same effect for Maddie’s father, David Petrosian, reminding him of the grandfather who’d stood so proudly with his produce and his delivery truck. Maddie’s determination to honor the family legacy made sense, when I thought of it that way.

  I plopped on the couch, the dog at my feet, and texted Nate about the day. Home Saturday, he answered. Can’t wait! I replied.

  I was still smiling at the phone when it rang. No name or number, but I had a feeling.

  “You didn’t leave me a message,” Detective Tracy said.

  “You’re a detective. I knew you’d figure out who called.”

  “But the question is why.”

  I told him what I’d learned at Maddie’s office, and my theory about her buying up the other properties in order to finance the purchase of the corner property. I could hear him making notes. So much for getting my dinner ready before the first pitch—the lineups were being announced.

  “We copied the hard drive of their computer system,” he said. “Going over it bit by bit. You learned a lot more from that receptionist than we did.”

  Take cookies. “She’s upset, but she wants to help. And you didn’t have the album. I presume you’re looking at Jake Byrd.”

  Tracy grunted. “Again. He and the alibi I can’t prove or disprove, despite half the force crawling all over it.”

  Which crime was he talking about? Didn’t matter, I supposed. Not my circus.

  “Even so, I don’t know what Byrd would have to do with Patrick Halloran’s death,” I said. “Maddie had tried to buy the property, but lost out to Byrd, so no reason for Pat or Neighbors United to be worried about her. She didn’t start buying up the block until after Pat died. That’s the only link between them. That, and a love of soccer.”

  “What?” Tracy said sharply. The home team was taking the field. I talked fast.

  “Her husband, Tim Peterson, works for the Sounders. Gabe Halloran played soccer in high school and now plays for Notre Dame. Pat played as a kid and coached Gabe until high school.” But it was too faint a connection to mean a thing.

  We hung up just as the pitcher went into his windup.

  Strike one.

  Broccoli beef cooks fast, and by the time we got to the second inning, scoreless, I had a plate of the fragrant combo paired with a healthy dose of deliciously seasoned noodles. Baseball, good food and wine, and a soft rain falling outside. My sweetie on his way home, my dog happy with a bone.

  All should have been well with the world, but it was not. Maddie had a long road to recovery. A neighborhood was anxious. A killer was on the loose. And Laurel was bearing a burden I could hardly fathom.

  No, all was not right. But I was going to do everything I could to change that.

  Tomorrow.

  Twenty-Four

  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

  Old Time is still a-flying.

  And this same flower that smiles to-day

  To-morrow will be dying.

  — Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

  THE RAIN HAD STOPPED BY THE TIME ARF AND I LEFT THE loft Friday morning. We took the Market elevator from Western to the main level and headed for the flower stalls. The season was changing—had changed—and while I could not hold on to the past, I could enjoy a few more days of bright scented color. The opening bell hadn’t rung yet, and the Hmong flower ladies were still filling buckets with water and counting out stems.

  “Sunflowers,” I said, thinking of the front counter. “And dahlias. Oh, gosh. That one.” I pointed to a bouquet of pinks and yellows, whites and apricots, and a deep red stunner.

  “I wanted that one,” a baritone broke in. Jamie, a bakery bag in hand. “I swear, between the lattes and the pastries, I’m going to be fat as that pig by spring.” She gestured toward Rachel, the bronze Market mascot and piggy bank, standing guard near the entrance.

  “There are no calories in the Market,” I said. If only that were true.

  She laughed, a joyful, rumbling sound. “I want flowers for the stall, then I’ll take them home to paint. These are my colors.”

  We found her a bouquet as pretty as the one I’d chosen, and wound our way down the North Arcade.

  “I wanted to tell you,” she said, lowering her voice. “I saw the people in the picture you dropped.”

  “Watch where you’re going, you idiot!” a man yelled, and we both stopped, unsure what we’d done. But the man wasn’t yelling at us. His target was another man, struggling with a balky hand truck.

  “Dude, cool it,” Jamie said, and we stepped out of the Arcade on to the cobbles, where it wasn’t quieter, but was easier to talk.

  “This morning, on the bus. I knew I’d seen them somewhere else. They all got on together, the man in the photo, along with the woman and the little girl from the other photo, and an old lady. It was crowded, but somebody in back offered the old woman his seat, so she took it and the younger woman stood in the aisle next to her. The man in the picture stayed up front with the girl, right next to me. She’s so cute, in her purple jacket and the pink unicorn backpack.”

  “That’s her.”

  “I was wearing my purple coat, so I smiled and she smiled back, and we started talking about our favorite colors. I told her I liked her braids. She said her dad did her hair, and looked up at him and he looked back at her, and I—I’d have given anything to have a father who adored me like that.” She broke off and I had to wonder what family trauma she’d gone through. “They got off on First and Pike, same as me. She held his hand the whole time. But I got slowed down, lugging a portfolio of new paintings, and I lost track of them. Anyway, I don’t know if that’s helpful, but it was definitely him.”

  “That,” I said, “is more helpful than you can imagine. And when you paint those dahlias, let me know. My walls would love a fresh bouquet.”

  First thing I did inside the shop was call Detective Tracy and tell him what Jamie Ackerman had seen. “From what you said, sounds like Joe Huang works with people who had a beef with Patrick Halloran, but you can’t tie him, or them, to Maddie Petrosian, despite Special Agent Greer’s very special efforts.”

  Tracy grunted. I took that for yes and went on. “I know you won’t rule him out because I said so. I don’t know his immigration status, though I assume he’s not an American citizen.”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “But no man that devoted to his daughter is going to do anything to risk deportation. I’m just saying, keep that in mind.”

  Another grunt. “You may be right. I’ll pass that on. By the way, good thinking last night on Ms. Petrosian. We’ll be flying a little closer to Mr. Byrd.”

  “Tell me about that alibi of his. Maybe I can help.”

  “Don’t press your luck,” Tracy said. “Although with your love of movies,
maybe I should. ’Course if you broke his alibi, I’d have to give you an honorary badge.” Before I could ask what he meant by that, he clicked off.

  Then it was time to put my nose to the grindstone, metaphorically speaking. I could not leave work today. The weather was clearing and the weekend was upon us. And I still had to solve the Edgar problem. Kristen was off today, helping chaperone a school field trip, so my questions about our own school days would have to wait.

  But the customers could not wait. “Good heavens, did you see what they want for a vanilla bean?” I heard one woman say to another. “Raising the prices right before people start their holiday baking.”

  “The culprit is weather,” I said. “Vanilla is native to Mexico, but these days, the bulk of it is grown in Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa. A cyclone hit the island a couple of years ago and destroyed most of the vines. They’ve been replanted, but it takes three or four years for a plant to produce a crop. Plus it’s very labor intensive. It’s basically an orchid.”

  “Oh,” the woman said, her irritation at being overheard turning to mild interest.

  “Our vanilla may be pricy, but it’s the real thing. You will not find any artificial flavors or substitutes on our shelves.” Thanks to the solid relationships the shop’s founder had established with farmers and suppliers worldwide. But watching for fakes is a constant challenge.

  “You know,” the friend said, “I’ve got an extra bottle, from when we cleaned out my mother’s kitchen. It’s nearly full. You can take it.”

  The complainer agreed. They sampled our tea and left empty-handed. You can’t win them all.

  Cody Ellingson arrived right on time. His black polo was a little big, and I wondered if he’d borrowed it from his dad. We found him a spare apron. Turned out he’d had a psych class with Reed, who flashed me a thumb’s up. Matt showed him the new delivery system he and Reed had devised, moving from a clipboard with a list of the day’s stops and a stack of paper invoices to an electronic version we could run on our phones.

  “So, you played soccer with Gabe Halloran?” I asked as we guided the loaded hand truck out the door and onto the cobbles, away from foot traffic.

  “Same team,” Cody replied, “but I was never in his league. He was two years younger, but always better.”

  “That must have been hard. Here’s our first stop.”

  “No. Gabe loves the game. I played for fun. Though my dad could never understand that. He and my mom, they do everything to win.”

  “Must make Monopoly a hoot.”

  “You have no idea,” he said.

  He caught on quickly. A few customers knew him from morning bread deliveries, and he chatted easily, showing no sign of the nerves I’d detected in his interview.

  Back in the shop, my phone buzzed with a pair of texts. From Tariq, the line cook working for Edgar’s rival: Hot on the trail.

  Just what I needed. A hot-headed rogue chef who fancied himself my detective sergeant.

  The second came from Tim Peterson. Maddie had been asking for me. Could I come up to the hospital? He couldn’t be sure how long she’d be awake and alert enough to talk.

  I couldn’t possibly go. But I had to.

  As luck would have it, that meant Cody and I were headed in the same direction at the same time, on the same bus, me to the hospital, he to hang out with a friend on campus.

  “We’re hoping to get a place together,” he said as we slipped into seats next to the back door. “Maybe next semester. I need to get away from my parents and all the fighting.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s rough.” Across the aisle sat the young barista from the Montlake coffeehouse, and the three of us acknowledged each other.

  “It’s all about money,” he said. “She blames him for losing his job—a guy who worked for him got in trouble with the feds and Dad had to shut down his company, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  Not how I’d heard the story, but it’s gotta be hard to confess your screw-ups to your kids.

  “So she went back to work, but it’s boom and bust, you know? Everybody thinks real estate agents make boatloads of money, especially since the housing market’s so hot, but half the time, they work their butts off for nothing.”

  Though he wanted to get away, he clearly loved both parents and sympathized with their troubles. We were nearing my stop, but I stayed put. Better to give my new employee a sympathetic ear. “Your mom must have been pretty upset when the plans to develop condos on the corner grocery lot fell through.”

  “Yeah. This other developer, a woman, pulled a fast one and tricked them all. My mom had invested most of their savings into the project and poof! Gone.”

  As I looked at Cody, I noticed the barista eavesdropping.

  “That’s the woman who was shot,” I said, and Cody nodded.

  “I know, man, it was awful,” the barista said. “I just came back from the police station. That’s why I’m late.”

  “The police station?” I said.

  “Yeah. Last Thursday, when it happened, we’d been swamped. Morning rush was over and I was out in the alley, wiping off tables and cleaning up. It was a pretty day—the rain didn’t start until Friday.”

  “Did you see something?” I asked.

  “I heard a loud noise. I thought it was somebody dropping the lid on the metal Dumpster at the end of the alley. I didn’t see anybody, so I just kept working. A couple minutes later, I saw movement.” He raised a hand and waved it alongside his face. “You know, how you know something is moving, but you can’t actually see anything? Anyway, I looked up again and that’s when I saw the guy.”

  “What? You saw the shooter?”

  “They think so, the cops, but all I saw was a guy in a dark rain jacket and a ball cap rushing down the alley away from me. Medium height and build—about your size,” he said to Cody, and I felt him stiffen. The barista blew out his breath and continued. “The cops had me look at a bunch of pictures, but I couldn’t identify anyone. I didn’t even know anything had happened until I heard the ambulance maybe twenty minutes later. They say she’s going to be okay, thank God.”

  No wonder he’d seemed so upset when I stopped in Monday afternoon.

  The bus drew into the curb at Broadway and Madison, the corner of the compact Seattle University campus. Cody stood. “Sorry for running my mouth, Pepper. This is my stop. See you next week.” Then the door opened and he bounded down the steps and out of sight.

  I glanced over at the barista, who’d put in his earbuds and was staring out the window. I got off at the next stop and backtracked the few blocks to the hospital. The barista’s description of the man he saw behind the corner grocery was too vague to be useful. But to Cody, upset by his parents’ bickering, had it come too close to describing his dad? Without a job to go to, Bruce Ellingson was home during the day and could easily have been in the alley at the time Maddie was shot. And you don’t change the locks on a building you plan to tear down. Had Deanna still had keys?

  The Ellingsons were grudge holders, and grudges can lead to murder. Bruce’s beef was with Patrick Halloran, Deanna’s with Maddie Petrosian. Certainly Bruce could have blamed Pat for their current troubles, and Pat’s participation in the protests against the Byrd’s Nest had benefitted Maddie, at Deanna’s expense, but not until long after his death.

  I was back where I started, trying to find a connection between a dead man and a woman who could barely talk. An affair? Laurel claimed not to have suspected one until after Pat’s death. It gave her a motive to go after Maddie, but she had an alibi. Plus, if she’d tried to kill Maddie, she’d have thrown the lipstick in the trash or off her dock into Lake Union and kept her suspicions to herself.

  And if she’d attempted murder on Maddie, who had killed Pat?

  Near the hospital, I scanned the crowded for Smoking Man. He was an expert at blending in. I couldn’t be sure I’d recogn
ize him.

  One of the many things I didn’t know—that apparently no one knew yet—was whether Maddie knew who had shot her. Male or female—any detail would help. Though with her injuries and all the drugs, her account might not be totally reliable.

  I dodged a puddle on the sidewalk and wondered who else had access to the old grocery besides Maddie and Deanna. Her builder, to figure out how best to demolish the place without damaging the adjacent structures. Jake Byrd. Who else?

  A different guard sat outside the ICU today, working a crossword puzzle. He found my name on the list with no trouble. No sign of Officer Clark.

  Maddie was alone, her eyes closed. The curtains had been pulled across both the interior and exterior windows, giving the room an eerie midday darkness, though the door was open. I sat in the chair next to her bed and reached for her hand.