The Solace of Bay Leaves

by Leslie Budewitz

  Then a baby, round-cheeked, smiling, blond. On the back, “Elizabeth, 1946.” Two Elizabeths? Mother and daughter; Haig’s family.

  But no more pictures of the baby or her parents. I flipped through photos of young Rose. Rose and Aram Petrosian on their wedding day in 1947. Their son David through the years, then David with Miriam, and finally, baby Madeleine.

  Where had the other family gone? This album had come to Maddie from her grandmother, who would naturally have focused on herself and her husband, their child and grandchild. But had Haig and Elizabeth and the baby never come for Christmas or Easter? Had they not come to the wedding of Miriam and David, the younger Elizabeth’s only cousin on the Gregorian side of the family?

  Haig had died at some point, but I didn’t know when. Or where. Tim had said the loss of the building had torn the family apart. They might have gone anywhere.

  The crack of a bat drew my attention back to the game and I realized I’d missed two innings. A line drive took a bad bounce in front of the left fielder. I cheered as the runner beat the throw from left with a slide into second base, and put the album aside. Bottom of the sixth, runners in scoring position with one out. By the time the inning ended, my team had scored three times and led five to two.

  After a dash to the bathroom, I sank onto the couch. Heard a thunk as the forgotten album slid to the floor. Reached down to retrieve it. My fingers grazed a sheet of yellow paper that had fallen out. I picked it up and unfolded it. The handwriting was different from what I’d seen on the back of the photographs. My mind flashed on the legal pad on Maddie’s desk. The same writing, and no easier to read.

  The pitcher retired the side, and my team came to bat. Yellow sheet in hand, I leaned closer to the floor lamp, squinting. In high school, we’d had to map out our family trees. That’s what these notes were, but more recent—this tree included Maddie’s marriage to Tim, and the names and birth dates of their two children.

  At the top of the tree were names I didn’t know, some incomplete, all with a small d. and a date between 1915 and 1918. Killed in Armenia, no doubt. My mother’s parents had come from Hungary after World War II, and our family tree, too, showed a rash of deaths in a short time. I traced Maddie’s line up to her parents, David and Miriam, bypassing Miriam’s family, though I noted those names, too, ended in the telltale Armenian suffix -ian, meaning “son of.”

  The leadoff hitter reached first, and the second fell behind on the count. David had no siblings; nor had his mother, Rose Gregorian. David’s father, Aram Petrosian, had a brother who died in infancy, and a sister who had married and left several children. I glanced up; the hitter was still battling the pitcher. My finger reached Rose’s parents, Jacob and Tamar Gregorian, then started down another branch, that of their son, Haig. He’d married Elizabeth in October 1945. After he returned from the war, I guessed. If I was making out the date right, he died in 1952.

  1952. He’d been twenty-eight, his daughter six.

  What had happened to her? The tree did not tell me.

  I turned the pages of the album slowly, looking for more clues. Tucked in the back, in a manila pocket, were three square envelopes, each addressed to Tamar Gregorian, bearing a return address in Oakland, California, but no name, postmarked in December 1952, 1953, and 1954. They’d been slit open, the cards left inside. I slid out the first, but the noise of a TV crowd caught my ear. The second batter had reached first when I wasn’t watching, and now a double play ended the inning.

  The first envelope held a simple card showing a nativity scene. Inside, beneath a generic printed message, was the signature “Betty and Lizzie.” A small photo showed a smiling blond girl in a plaid jumper. A school uniform? On the back, the same handwriting read “Lizzie, 6, first grade.”

  The second and third envelopes held the next two years’ cards, likewise signed by the mother for herself and the child, a school photo tucked inside.

  The eighth inning ended, scoreless, and the opposing team came to bat, trailing by three. I slipped two fingers into the photo sleeve and pulled out one more envelope addressed to Tamar. Same return address and postmark, years later.

  The envelope contained a folded card, the cover illustration a drawing of a smiling infant in a sea of blue blankets. I took a deep breath and opened it. Inside was a color snapshot of a sleeping baby, one tiny fist on the pillow beside his head.

  I was vaguely aware of the noise of distant cheering as I read the message, in the same hand as the Christmas cards.

  “Your first great-grandchild,” Betty had written. I turned over the photo, knowing before I read it what Lizzie had named her son.

  Jacob.

  ARF and I left the building on Western, me checking the door behind us to make sure it latched. We both think better when we’re moving. Well, I do; I couldn’t speak for my dog.

  A light mist hung in the air, mimicking the fog in my brain.

  We followed Arf’s nose down to Alaskan Way, where the lights of the waterfront glowed like eerie sentinels.

  Though Maddie’s side of the family tree she’d sketched was current, the Haig branch ended with his marriage to Elizabeth— Betty. Had she found the cards in her grandmother’s album, and reached the same conclusion I had, but not yet updated the tree? If Betty had sent Tamar a wedding invitation for Lizzie, neither it or a photo had made it into this album. But despite their apparent estrangement, she’d wanted her mother-in-law to know of Jacob’s arrival. There was no hint, on the envelopes, the backs of the photos, or in Maddie’s notes, of Lizzie Gregorian’s married name.

  But I had no doubt that the baby boy born three years before Maddie was Jacob Byrd.

  How much had Maddie figured out? Arf’s leash in my left hand, I drew the imaginary family tree in the air with my right. Elizabeth the elder, Betty, had been Haig’s wife, making their daughter, Lizzie, cousin to David, Maddie’s father. That made Lizzie’s child, or children, Maddie’s second cousins.

  Jake. Jacob, for the great-grandfather he had never known. I’d met a few Jakes in our age range over the years, but it had not been a trendy name back then.

  Arf set a good pace, and before I knew it we’d reached our usual turn-around. On the way back, we slowed for cars leaving the ferry terminal. This time of year, tourist traffic wanes, but it was Friday night and people were spilling in and out of the waterfront restaurants. I found the sounds of laughter and footsteps comforting, a reminder that life carried on despite the grim mystery I’d stumbled into. I passed Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, one of Seattle’s oldest and oddest businesses, and Elliott’s Oyster House, a regular spice customer with crab cakes almost as good as Edgar’s, and kept going, north by northwest.

  Maddie desperately wanted to regain the property her family had lost—through Haig’s shady dealings, if Tim had the story right. To restore the family legacy. Had Jake been trying to get control of it for the same reasons? And yet, his plans differed vastly from hers.

  What did that difference tell me?

  At Union, I turned away from the waterfront, and crossed the area once covered by the viaduct. Though the shadows were gone and I had left the crowds behind, I had the sense that I was not alone. I paused midstride, listening. Footsteps? Greer again? Or my overactive imagination, spurred by reading too many mysteries? I’d already been too stupid to live once this week. I was not going to be TSTL a second time.

  I pulled my keys out of my pocket and found the key for the basement door. (Forget that tired advice to thread the keys between your fingers so you can jab an attacker with the pointy ends. Tag says you can’t do any real damage that way, except to your own hand. And you’ll probably drop your keys.)

  Real or imagined, the sound of footsteps behind me continued, intermingled with the medieval harmonies I sometimes hear at moments of danger. I glanced over my shoulder but saw no one. Moths had weevilled their way into the light fixture by the back door, nearly blackening the glass. Digging
out my phone and clicking on the flashlight app, while juggling Arf’s leash, would slow me down. I reached the steel door, thrust my key in the lock, and turned it. Yanked the door open and slid my hand around to grab the handle on the inside and shut the door tight.

  It didn’t budge. Someone had grabbed the edge of the door and held it, sticking a foot out to keep me from closing it.

  The light in the garage is one of those sensor things that turn on slowly, giving your eyes time to adjust. By the time it reached full brightness, my mind had considered and discarded a handful of possibilities, including the FBI and Jake Byrd.

  But I had not considered Bruce Ellingson. He was roughly the same height and build as Smoking Man, and wore a similar dark rain jacket. A ball cap kept the mist off his face.

  “Why are you following me? How did you find out where I live?”

  “You’re not hard to find—your name is all over the Internet. I followed you home from your shop,” he said. “Figured you’d have to take the dog out sooner or later.”

  The dog’s wiry coat brushed my leg, the touch enough to tell me he was on high alert. Me, too.

  “You pushed your way into my house,” he went on. “Pretending you love roses when you’ve been a friend of Laurel Halloran for ages.”

  “You knew we were friends.”

  “Continuing her family’s vendetta against mine. What did we ever do to them? Now you’re using my son against us. If hiring him is part of your ploy—”

  “That’s crazy. Cody heard I needed help with deliveries. He’s already working in the Market and wanted more hours, so he can gain some independence.” How did he think I was using Cody against them?

  “BS,” Ellingson replied. “My son would never betray us.”

  I was trapped in a basement with an angry, unstable man. Did he have a gun? The gun that had killed Pat Halloran and injured my old friend? I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t squeeze past him. The Saab was too far away for me to take refuge in it or speed out of the garage to safety, and too old for one of those battery-powered key fobs that sets off an alarm.

  “Cody’s terrified,” I said. “Someone saw the killer in the alley behind the grocery, and he’s terrified that it was you.” Ellingson’s brow furrowed and he started to protest, but I kept going. “He hasn’t connected you to Patrick Halloran’s murder, but the police will. He doesn’t know the truth about your brokerage firm, does he?”

  “No, I—” In the distance, something electronic beeped and Ellingson stopped. After a long pause, he went on. “My wife worked her tail off to promote the Byrd’s Nest. She sank all our savings into that project, and Pat fought her at every turn. Then Maddie Petrosian conned a sick old man into selling her the property instead, for some pipe dream of restoring the glory days. Do you know how much we lost?”

  That stopped me. “You think Deanna shot Maddie. But you don’t dare go to the police, so you’ve come here to stop me from asking questions. Did she shoot Pat, too?”

  “I—I don’t know. I had some trades pending to look over. My personal finances—my license was already gone.”

  Thanks to Pat.

  Ellingson continued. “She’d gone for a walk. She hadn’t said anything about dropping in next door. I noticed a movement outside and saw her leaving the Hallorans’ house.”

  “The hedge didn’t block your view?”

  “I could see the top of her head. We’ve let the hedge grow since then. She didn’t come straight home—took her walk, I assumed. Then—” He stopped, his eyes briefly unfocused as he shook his head slightly.

  “Then what?” I asked, my voice low but urgent. Had the lipstick been Deanna’s? I thought I heard another beep, but Ellingson didn’t seem to notice.

  “Then I went upstairs to my office. Half an hour later, more or less, I heard someone calling. I ignored it—thought it was kids messing around. Finally, I looked out and saw Pat crawling across the little deck outside their back door. Bleeding.” Ellingson’s face was pale, drained by the memory. “He’d called and called. The words hadn’t really registered. When they finally did . . .”

  When they did, he’d done everything he could, according to the accounts in the paper, but it was too late. The guilt he felt, if I was sizing things up right, came in triplicate: He’d been slow to grasp his neighbor’s distress. He suspected his wife of murder but had kept his mouth shut.

  Now, he feared that if she’d been desperate enough to shoot Pat, she must have shot Maddie, too.

  He couldn’t know that the same gun had been used in both shootings. The police had kept that detail quiet while they tried to trace it. But I understood why he assumed the two crimes were connected, and that the connection was his wife.

  And why the tensions between Bruce and Deanna Ellingson were driving their son out of the house, and why Bruce had moved into the room with the pink-and-orange flowered bedspread.

  The electronic beep sounded again, followed by the grinding of gears and pulleys as the garage door opened. I heard the rev of a motor as a car pulled in.

  Arf began barking. I put a hand out to hush him and saw that he was barking not at the approaching vehicle, but at the outside door as it slammed shut. Ellingson was gone.

  I exhaled heavily. The driver parked and shut off the engine. Glenn. A moment later, he climbed out, leather satchel in hand.

  “Howdy, neighbors. Answering the canine call of nature?” He ran a hand over Arf’s head. I was too rattled to reply. “Late meeting up north. Hey, I’ve got another issue for the HOA. Took three tries before the garage door opened.”

  The beeps.

  “I’ve got one, too,” I said and told him about the dirty outside light fixture as we climbed the wide stairs.

  “That’s an easy fix,” he said. We reached our floor. “G’night, Paprika. Sleep tight.” Fat chance. Instead of a date with a second glass of pinot and a twisty-turny fictional mystery, I had a telephone date with Detective Michael Tracy.

  Twewnty-Seven

  Researchers say we categorize foods based on experience of past interaction, so we think of pancakes as breakfast food but not Brussels sprouts or spaghetti. Obviously, cold pizza contradicts the theory.

  THIS TIME I WAS THE ONE TRUDGING DOWN TO POLICE headquarters for a morning meeting. I swung by the shop first, to help Sandra get ready to open and make sure she was okay keeping the dog for a few hours, then whip up a couple of samples that had been simmering in my brain.

  On a Saturday morning, the SPD lobby was eerily silent. Detective Armstrong met me, looking even taller than usual in his skinny jeans, his weekend nod to professional attire a blue-and-white striped dress shirt. Inside a small conference room, Detective Tracy sat at one end of the table, his camel sport coat slung over the back of the chair. Special Agent Greer gave no sign that we’d chatted uncomfortably a few nights ago when she introduced the man at the other end of the table, her partner, Special Agent Javier Navarro.

  Who bore absolutely no resemblance to Smoking Man.

  “I filled them in,” Tracy said. “But we’d all like to hear the whole story in your own words.”

  “Good morning to you, too, Detective.” I pulled out a chair. Armstrong closed the door and took the seat next to me. Step by step, I relayed my Friday night encounter with Bruce Ellingson, punctuated by sips of hot coffee. Though Tag swears they serve only the good stuff in his precinct, I hadn’t trusted the supply here and brought my own. Brother Cadfael might find comfort in an herbal tincture, but dark roast feeds my soul.

  I finished. Tracy glared at me. “Your Nancy Drew routine could have gotten you killed.”

  “Never my favorite fictional detective, though I do love her cars.” That blue Mustang. I sure missed mine. My dad’s.

  “Go back,” Agent Navarro said, twirling a finger in the air. “To when you went to his house earlier in the week.”

  “That hadn’t been my plan,” I said. �
�I was just scouting the neighborhood—it’s a few blocks from where my family lived, and I hadn’t been down that street in ages. Well, since Sunday.” I explained about meeting Laurel for breakfast Sunday morning, taking a walk, then going back on Tuesday. “Ellingson assumed I was house-hunting, and I conned him into showing me his rose garden so I could see what he could see from the house, when he saw Pat crawling across the back deck. If you see what I mean.”

  Navarro looked down the table at Tracy. “We’re still scouring the records, but the Ellingsons are in financial straits. The house isn’t listed, but they might be thinking of selling.”

  “His wife would have been furious that he let me see inside,” I said. “She’s the queen of appearances. Wears fake eyelashes and diamonds to grab coffee on Sunday morning, because you never know who you’ll run into. Even if they couldn’t afford a major remodel—I’m pretty sure you’ll find she sank their savings, including their remodel fund, into the Byrd’s Nest project—she would never put their house on the market until it was professionally staged. But how can they be hurting? She’s got tons of listings. Condos sell like cupcakes in this city.”