“Thanks. How’s Zak? And the gallery? I miss you guys.”
“We miss you. And the Spice Shop. We’re having a big opening end of the month, including pieces inspired by my grandmother’s work. Zak’s band’s playing. Say you’ll come.”
“I’ll come. Anytime—you know that.”
A few minutes later, I hoisted my overloaded tote higher on my shoulder, switched Arf’s leash to my left hand, and unlocked the door to my building. We climbed the wide staircase, greeted by the odor of stale popcorn mixed with eau d’ancient sawdust, a smell that would probably never go away completely, and a touch of bacon.
Ever since my neighbor Glenn’s husband had gone back east to care for his ailing, elderly mother, Glenn had been indulging in comfort food. Not that I blamed him. In the month that I’d camped at Kristen’s house after leaving Tag, I created roughly two dozen varieties of mac and cheese, my routine broken by the occasional baked potato extravaganza and regular doses of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Only nervous energy had kept me from gaining fifteen pounds.
Inside the apartment, I gave Arf fresh water, then started on an appetizer.
“So,” I asked my dog over the ka-thunking of the food processor. “Why would you sublet your studio and your apartment, then demand them back early?”
Plans change, heaven knows. I stepped through the window and snipped a handful of chives from the happy green jungle on my narrow deck.
How had Hannah’s plans changed? More trouble with the boyfriend? A new job that didn’t pan out?
The whir of the food processor matched the whir in my mind as I added herbs, seasoning, and oil.
Other reasons were possible, but romance and career cover most of life’s disappointments and dilemmas.
But Hannah’s change in direction had created problems for Bonnie. Deadly problems, or merely inconvenient ones?
The intercom sounded, and I buzzed Ben in. Put the bowl of cheese spread on a pressed tin tray, and laid out crackers and smoked salmon.
I kissed him and carried our appetizers to the round cedar picnic table, a gift from my former mother-in-law. She’d salvaged the table and one bench from a neighbor’s trash after a windstorm, and I’d added mismatched chairs.
Ben set a bottle of rosé on the kitchen counter. “Crawling around in the past is dirty, messy business. Wine will make it easier.”
Just when I thought this guy wasn’t right for me, he said something that made me relax and laugh. And that’s always a good thing.
He sat on the cedar bench and fired up his trusty laptop while I opened the wine. “We’ll start local. Seattle had two dailies back then, right?”
I handed him a glass and perched on the pink iron chair that looked like a refugee from an ice cream shop, disguised by a fluffy tropical print pillow. “Yes, but I don’t know what we’re hoping to find.”
“Neither do I. That’s the fun part.”
I held out my hand, surprised to see my fingers tremble. “Ben, I’m not sure I want this to be a story for your paper. I mean, any murder is news. But this one involves my family. And Kristen’s.” An invisible ice pick stabbed me in the jaw. I hadn’t shared my fear that if Bonnie had been killed to protect a secret from the past, my mother might be in danger, too.
“No worries.” Eyes on the screen, he scrolled and clicked. “We investigate all kinds of stories that don’t pan out.”
“What I’m saying is, we might uncover things I’m not willing to see in print.”
He took his hands off the keyboard and faced me. “Pepper, you called me because I’m a reporter. I’d like to think you also called because we’re friends. Maybe not as close as I’d hoped—I kinda sense that you’re holding back—but I would never do anything that would hurt you or your family.”
He sensed . . . My chin rose and my jaw clenched. “Even for a story?”
“Even for a story. I will not publish a word without your one hundred percent approval. And if my editor asks me, I’ll tell her I didn’t find anything that works for us. We’re not general news—it’s gotta speak to our audience in some way. If someone else finds the story I didn’t, I’ll take my lumps.”
Oh my. Was he honestly this generous? And this interested in my well-being?
I studied his open face. He didn’t know all the details about Tag, or the hard-luck love stories that had dogged me (sorry, Arf) since my divorce. In my opinion, a new love doesn’t need to know all the down-and-dirty of the past. It just gets in the way.
Maybe this push-and-pull, this uncertainty, this questioning was not a warning, but a natural phase in developing a stable relationship.
Truth was, I hadn’t dated enough in recent years to know. Truth is, you never know—until you know.
I slid off the chair and onto the bench, and wrapped my arms around him. Kissed him lightly, then again, more deeply. Because you never know, until you risk the answer you aren’t ready for.
Eleven
Be careful what you wish for.
—Every grandmother’s advice
“She was tight with your mom way back, right? Any chance their projects made the newspapers?”
“What would we learn from a photo op on the opening of a preschool or a yoga studio?”
“Reporter’s credo: Follow every trail.” Ben spread cheesy goop on a cracker. “This stuff is fabulous.”
“You only love me for my cooking. Let’s start dinner. I’m starving.” I swung my leg over the bench, feeling antsy.
The sun had begun to slide behind the Olympics, flinging fractured rays of colored light into the loft. Why the original builders had installed twelve-foot-tall windows on the fifth floor of a trackside warehouse, I had no idea, but on evenings like this, I was grateful.
“The light is the same color as the wine.” Ben twirled his glass and sat at the butcher-block counter dividing the kitchen and main living area. The only walls in the place surround the bed and bath, and the plank floors, high ceilings, and exposed beams and pipes give it classic loft style. I’d played that up, adding mismatched furniture and bright and funky finds for a look I hope is both welcoming and intriguing.
“Vinny would spin some theory about how the French discovered that leaving the skin on the grapes until the wine reaches the same shade as the sunset over the Rhone Valley on the first day of summer creates the perfect blend of sweetness and acidity.” I tossed chopped romaine in a big wooden bowl and reached for the salami.
“Vinny believes in ghosts.”
“Don’t you?” He knew my theories about had what happened in April, about the mysterious little lady who’d pointed me in the direction of a very bad man. “I feel like we’re chasing ghosts. Make yourself useful and scrub this cucumber.”
Ben scrubbed while I mixed the dressing for my version of the Pink Door’s Italian chopped salad, adding a generous pinch of Celtic sea salt from Bonnie’s pig, a piece that had become even more special in the past hours.
My chest felt heavy, and I forced myself to take a deep breath.
We carried our dinner out to the veranda and the round bistro table.
“I always feel like I’m stepping through the looking glass,” Ben said. “Sliding down the rabbit hole. Choosing the red pill.”
“It’s not that different out here from elsewhere in the city.”
“To continue mangling the movie metaphors, the Emerald City is on a completely different planet from where I grew up. Your family, the commune, the causes and projects—might as well be Mars.”
“It wasn’t a commune.” I twisted a strip of salami around my fork. “Although we did have chickens, but the neighbors complained, so we ate them.”
He gestured with an open hand. “See? That’s what I mean. You were hippies. We were—conventional.”
Conventional or not, it was lovely to relax on the veranda amid the herbs and flower
s, in the rosé light, conversation weaving in and out of the various corners of our lives.
But I couldn’t forget that a woman was dead, and I wanted answers.
Ben reached out a hand. “Pepper, can we talk? Seriously, about us.”
“Nineteen eighty-five. The year we moved.” The startled look on his face barely registered as I shoved my chair back and gathered plates. “Bonnie didn’t live her life the way the rest of us do. The clues are not online.”
“So where are they?”
“With any luck, downstairs.”
Ten minutes later, we hauled a dusty wicker trunk out of the service elevator and into my loft. I began unloading the scrapbooks and photo albums my mother had boxed up before the move south. Andrea, bless her, had other plans for their basement than housing family archives, so they’d landed in my storage locker. I set aside two shoe boxes wrapped in newspaper comics. The books covered the picnic table.
Ben let out a low whistle. “I’d never have figured your mother for the sentimental type.”
“All mothers are sentimental. They just show it in different ways.” As a preschool teacher, my mother had been a big believer in projects involving round-tipped scissors and glue sticks. She’d loved those albums with self-adhesive pages covered in flimsy plastic. The stickum had loosened over time, and a Wonder Woman Valentine’s card fluttered to the floor. I picked it up—the pencil scribble on the back had faded, but I made out the name of a boy in my second grade class—and started searching for the page it had come from.
A damp nose poked my leg. “Go back to bed, Arf.” Flip, flip, flip.
“I’ll take him out,” Ben said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, boy,” I told the dog, embarrassed. “Thanks,” I told the man.
I refilled my wineglass and carried it and a thick black album, the binding embossed in gold, to the couch. When I moved out of the Greenwood bungalow Tag and I had bought from his elderly aunt, I’d taken my books and clothes, some kitchen collectibles, and a few treasured pieces of furniture. He’d been deeply hurt that I left our wedding album behind, but it, like so much else in the house, belonged to the past. To a time gone by—a time that had perhaps never really existed.
The things we save illustrate the choices we make. What matters to us.
My mother’s collection included baby books, school record books, and the scrapbooks Carl and I had made, our childish handwriting as dated as the cards and photos. But this album had been hers.
I sipped and flipped. My parents’ wedding photo, he in a dark suit, she in a yellow mini-dress, a matching ribbon in her long, straight hair. So young.
A shot of my mother and Kristen’s parents standing on the front porch of Grace House, each woman cradling a baby. Kristen’s and my first joint appearance. My father must have been behind the camera, as usual.
Several pages later, I found a solo shot of him, blurry enough to make me think I’d taken it. He’d been a fun dad, but he always looked serious in photographs.
I turned the pages. More photos of the two families as they grew. Carl and me with our Hungarian grandparents, looking old and stodgy, though by the date printed on the photo, they hadn’t been much more than fifty. My first day of school, and three years later, Carl’s. The two of us with Grandpa Reece at a Cardinals game, Carl clutching his glove. Over the years, he’d collected enough foul balls to fill a shelf in his office.
A newspaper clipping of opening day at Jimmy’s Pantry. In one photo, a row of eager adults posed at the kitchen window, ready to serve the first meals. Another showed a long line of men, women, and children outside the Cathedral’s side door, as Terry Stinson studied his watch and waited for the five o’clock dinner bell.
Terry, tall and thin, a grin on his homely face. Next to him stood a small woman, her hair long, straight, and blond.
The caption confirmed what her eyes told mine: Peggy Manning.
Other pages told of the free clinics the Grace House community had worked to establish in the Central District, with partner groups, including the local chapter of the Black Panthers; a grant to expand the Montessori school; and later, a national award for work with the HIV/AIDS foundation. An editorial about the Archbishop of Seattle’s decision to withhold half his income tax to protest the country’s nuclear deterrence policy, symbolized by weapons stockpiled in Puget Sound. For his pastoral leadership, the bishop had his wages garnished by the IRS and suffered through a years-long Vatican investigation.
I browsed pages of clippings and photos, rallies for this cause, that protest, this candidate.
But no more mention of Peggy.
Then, as the headlights whizzed by on the soon-to-be-demolished Viaduct, I came across a page I couldn’t explain.
Holy coriander.
In 1985, a man named Roger Russell was killed in a shoot-out in a wealthy neighborhood north of the university. Apparently the homeowner—Walter Strasburg, a computer whiz consulting with the government on code for its nuclear subs—had come home unexpectedly to find Russell destroying his computers. Strasburg had dug a gun out of the bedroom closet. Russell had pulled one, too. An explosion created a cloud of debris and confusion, and the two men shot each other to death.
According, at least, to the sole eyewitness, Strasburg’s ten-year-old son.
My hand flew to my mouth.
The door opened. “Honey, we’re home!” Ben called, his tone light and teasing. Dog claws tapped across the floor, and Arf gave me the “time for treats” look.
I pointed to the laptop, unsure if I could speak. “I need you to find an obituary. Walter Strasburg. June 1985.” I spelled the name, then grabbed Arf’s treat jar off the counter. The lid finally popped off, and a pawful of liver chews fell on the floor. I didn’t bother to pick up the extras, instead stumbling past man and dog into the bathroom. I threw cold water on my face. Buried my damp face in my damp hands, pressed the heels into my eyes. Raised my face to the mirror, spread my fingers, and stared at my horrified self.
My mother had mentioned Roger last night, and he’d obviously been close to Peggy. Had he killed the man in some kind of protest? Why had she kept the clipping all these years?
After a few moments, my heartbeat slowed and I returned to the living room, a towel around my neck. Ben had settled on the couch, and I sat next to him, one leg tucked under me. Wordlessly, he handed me the laptop, then picked up the album lying on my packing crate coffee table, open to the clipping that had stunned me.
The obituary shed no light on Walter Strasburg’s death. It described his childhood in Seattle and his passion for electronics, extolling his achievements as a computer genius of the type Seattle is famous for—bits and bytes of code that changed the world. He’d been a Little League coach, a budding philanthropist, a son, a husband, a father.
Survived, it read, by his wife, Elizabeth, and two sons, Brian and David.
My mother’s clipping had not named the young eyewitness.
But I knew Brian Strasburg. As the HR manager responsible for staff, I’d been the one to console legal assistants left in tears after his tirades. The one who’d counseled him on adopting milder manners, often ending up close to tears myself.
Ben studied me, questions on his face.
“Brian Strasburg was a lawyer at my old firm. Hard-nosed, difficult. Some of the staff loved him, others hated him.”
“Was he part of the downfall?” Ben scratched Arf behind the ears.
“Surprisingly, no. Two senior partners deliberately withheld information in a med mal case, and the court levied huge sanctions on the firm—half a million dollars. Then it came out that the IT director had embezzled two and a half million. Almost overnight, the firm dissolved, and the lawyers started teaming up. Strasburg offered me a job, but I’d already decided to buy the Spice Shop.”
“No regrets?”
“Not one.” I sipped my
water. “He’d been married to another partner. They had a kid. She divorced him and left the firm, long before it blew up. I always thought she was too nice for him. Now I’m wondering whether it doesn’t all trace back to Grace House. To 1985.”
“Pepper, you can’t say—”
“Yes, I can. I don’t remember Roger Russell, but my mother referred to Peggy and Roger, and she kept this clipping. It’s gotta be the same guy. Maybe Roger went off the rails. Maybe no one knew what he had planned. But if they didn’t know, then they failed him and themselves. Not to mention the Strasburgs. By not living up to their own code of making the world a better, safer place through nonviolence and community.”
“I think you’re being too hard on them. And on yourself.”
I sank onto the bench in front of the middle window, made of reclaimed wood found in the building. Below the seats, bookcases held my treasured volumes: Anne of Green Gables. The Little House books. Remnants of an innocent time.
“So what does this have to do with Peggy?” I mused.
“Why do you think it has anything to do with her? The article doesn’t mention anyone but Russell.” Ben clicked off the laptop and slid it into its case. “I hate to leave you alone with all this running through your head, but it’s getting late, and I’ve got to be in Olympia at eight o’clock. Fact-finding hearing on highway infrastructure.” He rolled his eyes.
“You? You’re the food and fun guy.”
“Except when the government reporter goes on vacation and the editor drafts me. If I get a chance, I’ll dig a little deeper into all this, but Pepper . . .”
I cupped his cheek and jaw in my hand. He’d wanted to talk about our relationship, and instead I’d stumbled deeper into a family crisis. “Thank you. All this work and you might not even get a story out of it.”
“I got a great dinner and an evening with a woman I’m very fond of. How about a kiss for dessert?”
Dessert. I’d left the Turkish delight in the kitchen. I kissed him. Seattle delight.
The door closed. Back on the couch, I tossed the damp towel on the floor and pulled the heavy album onto my lap. My mother had not saved any other articles about the incident—maybe it didn’t mean that much after all.
Killing Thyme Page 10
