“I’m gonna run down to the PDA,” I said at our door. The Public Development Authority, our landlord. “See if they’ll tell me when Bonnie applied for a permit and when she started selling here.”
“Pepper.” Kristen grabbed my arm, her face serious. “Thank you for being a nosy, pushy, naggy little you-know-what. I hated feeling a wall between us. I don’t ever want to not be best friends with you.”
We hugged, and as I wove my way down the cobbled street, my throat felt full and the day looked a little brighter.
“He drove out to Carnation to see a flower grower,” the Market Master’s assistant told me five minutes later. “I’m not sure I can give you vendor information. Since she’s—dead.”
Exactly. She’s dead—what difference does it make to you? “Could you call him? Since I’m here?”
“If he’s in the car or with a potential vendor, he won’t answer,” she warned. “You know what a stickler he is about the rules.”
Sure enough, no answer. The assistant left a message, and I left irritated. Didn’t help that the busker plying the customers near Rachel the Pig, at the Market’s main entrance, was an elderly man playing a Chinese instrument that Ben—a font of arcane musical knowledge—had called an urhu. A small barrel-shaped body with a stringed neck, played with a bow, its sound was both haunting and irritating, depending on my mood.
Two feet inside the Spice Shop, my irritation turned to puzzlement. To perplexion, if that’s a word—or even if it isn’t. Hands clasped behind her back, Detective Spencer studied the wall map, pins marking the origins of our spices. (The map also hides a crack in the plaster that no amount of spackle or paint had covered. I am a practical decorator.)
And in the nook, Detective Tracy studied his phone.
“You never read my texts,” Sandra muttered between clenched teeth.
Guilty.
“What happened?” Spencer missed nothing. “Are you limping? Your elbow’s all scraped.”
I’d changed my torn pants earlier, but after all the running around, my bruised knee had begun to act up. I should have changed into my lucky pink shoes. “Nothing. Not watching where I was going.”
Spencer scowled.
“We actually came to speak with Mrs. Gardiner,” Detective Tracy said. “But she insisted on waiting for you.”
Kristen had taken refuge behind the front counter, arms crossed.
“Ready if you are,” I said.
The nook got mighty tight mighty quick, and not from the head count. Unspoken tensions and unanswered questions take up a lot of room.
Spencer spoke first. “We’re grateful to you for finding Ms. Clay’s van.”
“Ms. Clay. Ms. Manning.” I snorted. “Or whoever the heck she was. Why was she using my mother’s name?” My sympathy for Bonnie-Peggy dwindled as I saw the ripple effect of her actions.
“Without you, we might not have found her van for weeks, until someone in the neighborhood got suspicious.”
“Or tired of seeing it never move,” I said.
“And we would never have found this.” The detective drew a plastic evidence bag out of her pocket and set it on the butcher-block work top.
Nothing in the tales of Brother Cadfael and Sister Frevisse, or in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating, prepared me for the sight of the Strasburg family jewels.
Kristen spoke first, in disbelief. “She stole the bracelet in 1985. And then, last week, she stole it back.”
“Looks that way,” Spencer said. “We found it hidden in a rusty metal toolbox under the floorboards of her van.”
Tracy opened a slim leather folder and pulled out the 1985 photo Detective Washington had shown me that morning. He placed Kristen’s photo next to it on the table. Between it lay the diamond and sapphire MacGuffin, wrapped in plastic.
There was no question, no doubt. The lost had been found.
Kristen’s hooded glance did not escape our detectives’ notice.
“Care to share those thoughts?” Spencer said.
Kristen let out a noisy breath. “I thought Bonnie—Peggy, or whoever—was killed because someone wanted the bracelet. But now that we know she stole it—”
“Twice,” Tracy interjected.
“The question is, who else wanted it? Who else knew about it?”
Brian Strasburg. Though I couldn’t work out why he’d steal it. Or kill for it, thirty years later.
“Somehow, she was able to hide the bracelet in the basement of Grace House without being seen,” I said.
“Place like that,” Tracy said, “anybody could have wandered in and out.”
No one ever seemed to get that our lives as kids had not been an undisciplined free-for-all. But he was right. In those simpler, trusting times, Grace House had rarely been locked. Peggy could easily have slipped in, hidden the bracelet, and vanished.
“What about Hannah Hart? Isn’t it just as likely that the killer is someone from the present as the past? Hannah wanted Bonnie out of the studio and apartment. And Bonnie didn’t want to leave.”
“Too soon to close any doors,” Tracy said. “But it would all be a lot easier if your mother would open up.”
“Is that why you’re here?” I leaned forward, hands on the table. “To guilt me to pressure her? To do what? You’ve interviewed her, more than once. She’s told you all she knows.”
Truth was, I didn’t completely believe that. Why wasn’t she clamoring to find the killer?
“No,” Spencer said. “No guilt, no pressure. But time has a way of highlighting one’s priorities. I hear your mother was a fierce advocate for justice. What’s changed?”
Good question. I wished I knew the answer.
* * *
Kristen and I walked the detectives outside, then watched their unmarked car creep down the cobbled street. We made an odd pair, I knew, the fine-boned blonde and the spiky brunette, both dressed in black, arms crossed, faces guarded.
“They still think we know more about the 1985 incident than we’re admitting,” she said.
“All we have is conjecture. Theories aren’t evidence, especially since we haven’t actually got one that works.”
Kristen scooped a discarded sample cup out of the gutter. “True. I always knew there had been an upheaval and that it involved Roger and Peggy. But the bracelet—that’s a shocker. I wonder why she didn’t take it with her.”
“She intended to come back.”
Terry Stinson had said Peggy finally understood they were no threat to each other. If Kristen remembered right who was involved in all the discussions, then he had known about Peggy’s role in the Strasburg incident. So had my mother. Neither had known she survived.
Why did Peggy no longer fear him? What had changed?
“My dad wouldn’t be any help,” Kristen said. “He stayed out of it. When tempers flared, he took the dog for a walk.”
“And all my dad knows is what my mother told him.” Not that Detective Tracy believed our dads’ absence anything but a convenient coincidence.
Now there was a man who didn’t trust the Universe.
“Do you work here?” a thin woman in a sleeveless red blouse asked. “Where’s the best place for a late lunch? With a view?”
“And a bar,” her husband added.
“The deck at the Pink Door,” I said at the same moment as Kristen said “outside at Maximilien.” I slipped an arm around her waist. We were back in sync, but that didn’t mean we agreed on everything.
Kristen took off early to pick up the girls for a special last-day-of-school outing. The boxes of books she’d been unpacking when first I, then the detectives, had interrupted her blocked one narrow aisle.
Never the same day twice, in retail.
“Oh, good. We’ve been waiting for this one.” I shelved two copies of World Spice at Home
, featuring new flavors for classic dishes, then stacked the rest amid a display of spice blends. Maybe Laurel and I should write our own cookbook.
I slit open the next box and reconsidered my working theories about Bonnie’s murder and the no-longer-missing bracelet. She had seized the opportunity, in Kristen’s bedroom, to take the bracelet, but she had not dared leave it in her own apartment or studio.
She’d been afraid of someone connected to that bracelet.
But her apartment and studio had been undisturbed. The killer wasn’t prowling for jewels.
The killer wasn’t the person Bonnie had feared.
That gave me two mysteries to solve. And it put the elusive Hannah back on top of the list of suspects.
I made room for two of my favorite food memoirs—Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, by the late novelist Laurie Colwin, and The Art of Eating, by M. F. K. Fisher, which had the added advantage of being thick enough to crush a garlic clove. As I shuffled books, I decided Brian Strasburg warranted a closer look. He had a powerful motive for wanting to know who else to blame for his father’s murder. And if the bracelet had sentimental value—the insurance company would have paid its dollar value ages ago—he might have wanted it back, too.
I flattened an empty box—always satisfying—and slit open the next one. Had his mother kept a scrapbook of ancient clippings, like mine had? Had he asked Callie to do any unusual research recently, to use the people-finder databases that professional investigators—and lawyers—sometimes use to track down missing heirs and witnesses?
If Strasburg had found Bonnie, née Peggy, I had to believe he’d have told Detective Washington. He would not have gone rogue.
Hold on, Pepper. That day he’d come to the Market, in early May, he and his son had been searching for a Mother’s Day gift for his ex-wife. They’d chosen a gift box—our Middle Eastern spice blends, if I remembered right. We’d chatted a bit. The boy had been polite and curious, our spice tea too strong for him.
If they had wandered through the craft stalls, they might have seen Bonnie-Peggy. Though whether either lawyer or potter would have recognized the other, I had no idea.
Wait. He’d been ten. He’d seen his father killed. Had he seen her?
He would not have forgotten those eyes.
I shivered and shelved a new foodie mystery by an author who wrote under both her own name, Daryl Wood Gerber, and a pen name, Avery Aames. What if Peggy Manning was itself a made-up name? Ever since its founding, folks had flocked to Seattle to escape the strictures of life elsewhere. No doubt more than a few had left their names behind, alongside their histories.
In mainstream culture, no one changes her name over and over without a darned good reason—like fear of being found. Of course, few people who’d circled through Grace House back then swam in the mainstream.
My frustration with the late Bonnie Clay turned darker, bitter. She’d been on the run. She’d come back to the place where it started. She’d been keeping an eye on me.
Why, why, why?
“Hey, boss. What about a hibiscus spice rub on ribs?” Cayenne’s interruption brought me back to the present.
In the memoir section, I slid a copy of Day of Honey into the Cs, for Ciezadlo, and leaned against the shelves. “Sounds delish. Go for it. Hey, I saw your grandfather this morning. He’s so proud of you.”
“I was hoping the police would have good news. He’s so stubborn. He and Grandmama bought that house when they moved here in 1950, and he insists he’s going to die in his own home.”
“Anybody tried to hurt him, he’d smack ’em with his three-iron. Why does he use a golf club instead of a cane?”
“He wanted to play, but most courses in Louisiana were whites-only back then. Black men could caddy, and he did. One of the members gave him that club—an old one of his, I suppose—and Pops hung on to it.”
“Did he ever pick up the game? When they moved out here—”
“He was busy, working at Boeing, raising kids. Raising a garden. Pepper, do you think he’s in danger? If Bonnie was killed by a gang or a burglar—he’s up all hours of the night. But he’s harmless. Just a neighborhood busybody.”
Neighborhood busybodies. Me and Louis Adams.
Home. Was that why Bonnie had wanted to return to Seattle? To die in the city where she, a wandering soul, had most belonged?
Truth was, Mr. Adams had seen something, right out that window and through the opening in the hedge. Nothing useful—an unidentified car speeding away. But the killer might not know that. The killer might think the old man a threat.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said. “The police have pretty much ruled out a neighborhood criminal.”
Truth was, I didn’t have a clue. And until the killer was caught, we might all be in danger.
Twenty-four
Every 3.5 seconds, someone in America loses a cell phone—usually in a coffee shop. So, it makes sense that Seattle, first in the country for number of coffee shops, also ranks high for lost cell phones.
—NW Lawyer, the Washington State Bar Association blog
Where had she been, all those years? That was the question dogging me as Arf and I closed up the shop.
And another: What had Detective Washington told Brian Strasburg about the cold case and other suspects, besides the late and apparently not-much-lamented Roger Russell? You’d never think a grieving family member would take the info police gave him, to keep him informed, to keep him satisfied that they were doing their job, and use it for vigilante justice.
The average person wouldn’t think that. A cold case detective, on the other hand . . .
I dropped Arf at the loft and took off.
And spotted my target just in time. The big man crossed Cherry, an after-work pick-me-up from Starbucks in one hand, a battered brown leather briefcase in the other, and started up the hill.
“Come on, light.” Not smart to tempt fate by jaywalking in front of police headquarters. Red became green, and I sprinted across Fifth.
“Detective,” I called.
Washington stopped and turned toward me. “Ms. Reece. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but I suspect I should reserve judgment on that.”
“Working overtime on a cold case. Must mean you got a break.” I paused to catch my breath. This block of Cherry might be flatter than the lower stretches, but that didn’t say much, in this city of hills. “Did your office keep tabs on Bonnie Clay? Or Peggy Manning, or whoever she was?”
“Why would we do that, and why does it matter so much that you came all the way down here to ask me?”
“I want to know if she’s been hiding behind my mother’s name all these years. And I imagine you wanted to quiz her about the Strasburg incident. To find out if she knew who else was there, the night of the murder.” To get her to admit she was the one who got away.
Washington set his briefcase on the sidewalk. “My office, as you generously put it, is me. Certainly we did quiz Mr. Russell’s large circle of friends and associates. The detectives worked long, hard hours tracking down everyone they could, but mouths were pretty tight. And cold cases don’t get the attention you might think from watching TV and reading books.”
A dark sedan emerged from the police parking garage, and the driver rolled down the window, sizing up the situation. Washington raised a hand in an “it’s okay” gesture, and the car turned up Cherry.
I folded my arms, feet wide. “You kept your suspicions about another person out of the news. Makes sense. But if you thought Roger Russell acted alone, you’d have closed the case way back when. So when you couldn’t crack anyone at Grace House—and I know you tried—you concluded that the other person had disappeared.” You—and I meant it in the generic sense, his bosses and predecessors—had pushed my mother and her friends. You drove a wedge into the community that broke it apart.
He peeled the lid off
his coffee and blew on it, his gaze never leaving my face. “Certainly we wondered. Disappearing was easier back then. And once the trail grew cold, the resources got pretty slim.”
“But if someone else had the resources . . .”
“What are you saying, Ms. Reece?” His tone got a notch gruffer and a hair demanding.
“Two things. The bracelet proves someone else was there. And you have an eyewitness. He was only ten, and he didn’t know what he’d seen, let alone who.” I stepped back to let a passerby through. “You never met Bonnie Clay, Detective. But no one who did, no matter what name she was using, ever forgot her eyes.”
He said nothing.
“You knew she’d been close to Roger Russell. If there was a third person, who more likely than Peggy? And she’d gone missing. Then, thirty years later, Brian Strasburg is all grown up. He’s raging and vengeful, and he has the money and the ability to track her down. Funny thing is, after all that effort, he ran into her right here in the Emerald City. Because, it turns out, there really is no place like home.”
The detective’s jaw rose slightly. I’d hit the mark. Brian Strasburg had seen Bonnie—Peggy Manning. He had seen those eyes. Sympathy pains for the boy whose family had been destroyed warred with my anger over what he might have done.
“We had no evidence directly linking her to the Strasburg tragedy. Not until today.” He pulled keys from his jacket pocket, then picked up his briefcase and started down the ramp into the parking garage.
I trotted after him. “You can convict on circumstantial evidence.” Not for nothing had I been a cop’s wife and a veteran law firm staffer.
“We didn’t even have that. She was a person of interest, nothing more.”
“But her return to Seattle after all these years must have made her more interesting. Especially to Brian Strasburg.”
He clicked his key chain, and a tan Camry blinked its lights. “To all of us. For years, Strasburg called me every three months. One day a month or two ago, I realized I hadn’t heard from him in ages. So I called him.” He slowed his steps and sipped his coffee. “That’s when he told me he’d seen her selling pottery in the Market. He said seeing her changed everything. He realized his therapist was right: His obsession with his father’s murder was killing him. His mother had died, and it was time to let it go.”
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