[SS01] Assault and Pepper Read online

  Don’t even try, Tag had said.

  What would Cadfael say? No medieval proverbs came to mind, just the wisdom of Yoda.

  Do or do not. There is no try.

  • • •

  SATURDAY mornings, my mother shops and my dad golfs. Or fishes. Or drops by the dojo to spar with other ex-pat retirees and local kids. Or he stays home puttering with an extra cup of coffee.

  In short, my father loves retirement. I dialed the number.

  “Chuck Reece,” a deep baritone said. Took me a minute to realize the voice was live, not prerecorded for playback in a later time zone. Costa Rica’s an hour ahead of Seattle, or as he puts it, an hour ahead and a light-year behind.

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  “How’s my baby?”

  “Running fine,” I said, knowing he meant both me and the 1967 Mustang he’d left in my care. Costa Rican roads require sturdier transportation.

  Don’t ask me what else we talked about. I only knew I needed to hear him. But I did not tell him about the murder or Tory’s arrest.

  And when we hung up ten minutes later, calm reigned. Like I’d been blessed by monks and warriors, and sent out into the world to wage peace.

  The image was apt, as a host of winged things battled in my stomach on my approach to the shop. But all was quiet on the western front. No detectives, no CSI techs, no dead bodies. One or two bouquets, smelling not so sweet. I scooped them up and glanced around for a green waste bin. One stood open across Pike Place, where the day’s featured farmers were setting up their tables and canopies on the cobbles, sorting potatoes, kale, and the first winter squash: the familiar deep green acorn, dark orange mini Hubbards, and warty gourd-like varieties that resembled lab accidents.

  The frilly red-tinged kale tempted me, but it signaled a change of seasons I wasn’t quite ready to concede. So I picked out a pint of blueberries, popping a few in my mouth as I crossed the street and unlocked my shop door.

  Inside, the scents greeted me like old friends—sharp mingling with sweet, pungent paired with musk. My heart swelled with fondness for the glass display cases showing off antique spice gear, teapots, and other treasures. My eyes brimmed with joy at the sight of the open shelves, jars of all sizes mixed with colorful tins, new and old. In the grocery stores, uniform jars stand side by side like soldiers ready for inspection. Standardization has its value, but part of our shop’s appeal is its funk and charm. I’d worked hard, with help from Kristen and the rest of the staff, to accentuate that over the last few months. My spice shop might not have the same century-long history in the Market as our competitor, but it has been here more than forty years. My whole life.

  When I left Tag, I vowed to do only what I wanted to do, to surround myself only with things I loved, as I’d done here in the shop. To never again deny myself because of someone else.

  But that didn’t mean refusing to help others. I’d gone into HR to be of use, to put my skills to work protecting the people who did the real work.

  In the law firm, as in most of the corporate world, that meant keeping a distance from the support staff I was responsible for. Make sure they got their regular evaluations, that their chairs fit and their keyboards didn’t cause carpal tunnel, that they knew what their health insurance covered and what was excluded, that the vegan legal assistant got a cubicle far away from the carnivore who ate her daily hot roast beast sandwich at her desk.

  And stay out of their personal lives.

  But I ran the show now, and we weren’t going to do it that way. Not anymore.

  I set my latte on my chipboard desk and punched on the computer. Outside IT whizzes had scoured the law firm’s databases during the embezzlement investigation, but computer forensics were Greek to me. The object: Spot what shouldn’t be there.

  After twenty minutes of fruitless clicking and scrolling, it dawned on me that Reed would breeze through this stuff. Why not wait till he arrived? I sighed in relief, then checked the shop’s e-mail and posted a Facebook update showing off the squash at the farmers’ stalls—with suggestions for tasty seasonings.

  My phone signaled a text: I’m at the front door—open up!

  “So I told Eric the whole story,” Kristen said, skipping “Hello” and “How are you?” “And he says you were absolutely right to withhold the files until they get a warrant. They can’t charge you with obstruction or whatever because you did what the law required you to do, as an employer.”

  Exactly what I’d told Tracy.

  “But he thinks Tory’s in real trouble. Bail will be high and she won’t be able to make it. Plus she told the lawyer he sent that what’s going to happen is going to happen, and there isn’t any point trying to change the path of a wave. Whatever that means. Sounds like some goofy homemade Zen koan.”

  I stared at her. “Why?” Was Tory that naive?

  Or that guilty?

  Kristen shrugged, her eyes warmly sympathetic.

  No doubt Tracy would arrive with that new warrant at the least convenient moment. We had to be prepared. “So here’s what I want you to do,” I said and set her to work copying every page in our personnel files, starting with Tory’s. And in case his warrant stretched to our computer, I made sure our cloud-based backup was current and downloaded a copy of all our files to a flash drive.

  Then I dashed to the newsstand for the morning paper and scanned it for Doc’s obituary.

  Nothing. Only the briefest news account of the death on my doorstep and an arrest. No names mentioned.

  “Pepper, I just heard.” Misty the Baker bounded onto the street, her chestnut braid partially protected by a flour-covered shower cap, her ticking stripe apron permanently stained with splotches of gluey residue. “When I saw Sam’s beret fall out of the old guy’s coat, I thought it had to be him. But Tory? I can’t believe it.”

  Nothing to say to that. We hugged wordlessly.

  I was brushing flour off my pants, staring at the phone in my other hand, when a bicycle pulled up beside me. “Go away, Tag,” I said, not raising my head.

  “I only want what’s best for you,” he said.

  “No.” I stopped brushing and reading, and looked straight at him. “You want what you think is best for me. But what’s best for me is for me to decide what’s best for me.”

  At the moment, of course, I was trying to decide what was best for Tory. I pushed the contradiction away.

  “Pepper, wait.” He dismounted and pushed his bike beside me, wheels and shoes clattering. The Market buzz starts early on Saturdays. I detoured around a young couple debating whether to shop or eat first and a chef I knew by sight carrying a large wicker basket chock-full of farm-fresh chard.

  I glanced at my watch and broke into a trot.

  “Pepper!” Tag called behind me.

  “Pepper!” Another voice caught my attention and I stopped. Angie—or Sylvie? Hard to tell the orchard sisters apart.

  “Tory didn’t kill that old man, did she? She couldn’t.”

  The girl’s eyes were wide and worried, her olive skin blanched to the color of unripe wheat.

  “She was so kind to all the street folks,” she said, meaning the downtown residents and the homeless wanderers. Her sister appeared behind her. “She took one of them to the doctor once, and helped hand out Christmas gifts last year.”

  More details I hadn’t known. Tory had also distributed hot tea with me on cold mornings. But past generosity didn’t mean she hadn’t slipped something poisonous into another cup of tea.

  But I had no idea what that poison might have been.

  A few feet away, wearing her usual haggard expression, Yvonne stood at the weathered wooden table in her stall tying up mixed bouquets and bundles of sunflowers.

  I hoped the sunshine and foot traffic would burn through the pall hanging over us. Gloom and despair did no one any good—least of all Tor
y.

  I dropped my phone in my pocket and squeezed the sisters’ hands. “I’m sure it’s all a mistake. Think of her every time you sell a jar of jam, and she’ll be back here before you know it.”

  The first customers of the day were Detectives Tracy and Spencer. Tracy handed me the warrant, not quite suppressing his satisfaction. Spencer studied the makeshift tea service we’d put together, using Laurel’s BrewMeister and vacuum pumps. I skimmed the warrant, then read it again slowly.

  “The only personnel file listed is Tory’s.”

  “Judge agreed with you that the others aren’t relevant,” Spencer replied. “Since you keep them under lock and key, and no one else had access.”

  “Maybe she’s not a model employee after all,” Tracy said. “Disciplinary notices, warnings.”

  They’d be disappointed on that front. The paper in my hand shook as I read further. “But why the computer? We need it.”

  “Judge agreed since it’s available to any employee, we need to check for evidence. She had a key to the shop, and she did come in early.” Tracy’s voice held a note of triumph.

  Score one for him, Tory had no job-related reason to use the shop computer, but I couldn’t swear she hadn’t used it without my knowledge.

  I glanced at Kristen, who nodded almost imperceptibly. The original personnel files were back in place, the copies safely in her bag. “Follow me,” I said, making a show of finding the special key on my ring and unlocking the drawer.

  “I hope it’s helpful,” I said, extending the slim file to Tracy.

  “You better not have tampered with evidence,” he said. “I don’t think you appreciate the seriousness of this matter.”

  I didn’t give one hoot what Detective Tracy thought. Detective Tracy could go ahead and arrest me for all I cared.

  He slipped the file into an evidence bag, packed up the computer, and nodded curtly before backing out.

  “And I thought we had cramped quarters,” Spencer said.

  “You know what the Market’s like. No space too small to be used for something.”

  She held my gaze. When she spoke, her tone was not unkind. “My partner comes on a little strong sometimes. But he’s a good cop, and he isn’t out for blood. He only wants to see justice done.”

  Me, too. But justice is what justice does.

  Fourteen

  It’s a poor man who can’t see the beauty in the sun and the wind and the rain. And it’s a sad man who can’t love his neighbor and always finds cause to complain.

  —Traditional American folk song

  My staff straggled in, burdened by the same grim, anxious mood that I’d encountered earlier. I sent Reed to the bakery, hoping caffeine and sugar would perk us all up.

  Sandra’s husband made a rare appearance, driving her downtown to haul in the new tea supply. He kissed her tenderly and gave her a big thumbs-up before heading home. Mr. Right, indeed.

  I left the others to manage the shop and dashed home for my personal laptop. I hadn’t dared bring it in earlier, for fear that Tracy would seize it, too. I got it set up and downloaded the backup shop files, so we could access our basic records, including the mailing list for our inaugural Spice Club shipments. A sweet plan: Once a month, we would select a small batch of herbs and spices to be used individually or in combination and send them, with recipes, to club members around the country. We’d already received several hundred subscriptions, and I wanted Sandra to double-check the numbers and confirm that we had enough spices, tins, and mailing supplies on order.

  Our first shipment would include sample-sized packages of our fall blends. If they were going to arrive on time, we needed to hop to it.

  I circled through the Market and environs, dropping off standing orders and last-minute requests. I steeled myself for quizzing about Tory and Doc, but to my surprise, the comments were brief.

  “You think you know your people,” the kitchen manager at the Pink Door said, shaking his head. He stuck his nose in a bag of Saigon cinnamon. “Perfect. I’ll poach the late-season pears we found this morning and sprinkle this on, with roasted pecan syrup and a dollop of mascarpone.”

  “Sucks when an employee goes bad,” said the grill cook at my favorite breakfast joint, a Market institution offering three floors of great food and views with the motto “Almost classy.” “Glad you got my special pepper in. Gotta have it for the Sunday sausage.”

  Then it was a detour Down Under, a shortcut to the Hillclimb. I hopped down to Western, dropping off cinnamon for my Ethiopian baker friend, then swung by the Middle Eastern restaurant. The owner—a doll and a marvelous chef—thanked me profusely. He’d changed his menu recently and hadn’t figured out yet how much spicery to keep on hand.

  No one held the murder or arrest against the shop, thank goodness, contrary to Laurel’s conjecture. But ’twas early days. If the charges went forward, Tory and Doc would be news for months, and my customers might view things differently.

  They were wrong about Tory. I knew it. I rubbed my jaw beneath my right ear.

  They had to be.

  • • •

  AFTER the last delivery, I hopped a bus and chugged up to Capitol Hill.

  Seattle adores its neighborhoods. Each has its own distinct character. Even so, there are always pockets between communities, blocks that seem out of place, like this stretch of Twelfth Ave. Too far from Seattle University for the coffeehouses and funky shops that crop up near colleges, and too far from the Pike-Pine corridor to share in its recent hip revival. The neglected rental properties had not benefitted from their proximity to streets where classic older homes, small and large, testified to the Hill’s history as one of Seattle’s oldest and best-loved enclaves.

  As I stood on the spidered sidewalk, staring at the sagging concrete steps and the bare bulb dangling between two front doors, their white paint peeling, I had a hard time imagining my put-together, casual-chic employee living here. But for young artists, low rent and studio space make a few creature discomforts tolerable.

  An embroidered dish towel curtain fluttered in an open window. My kind of place.

  “Hello,” I called. “I’m Tory’s friend.” No response.

  I picked my way up the steps. A few decorative tiles stuck to the risers, gray mortar exposed where pieces had gone missing. Choosing the left-hand door at random, I pushed the bell. Silence. I reached for the knocker, then noticed it was painted on—shadows, flaking gilt, and all. Tromp l’oeil. I rapped my knuckles on the peeling wood and called out again.

  The other door opened a crack. A slim woman of about twenty with dark brown skin and a dozen waist-length cinnamon braids threaded with brass, copper, and silver beads peered up at me.

  “I’m Pepper Reece. Tory Finch works in my spice shop.”

  The steely edge in her eyes softened. “The police have already been here. They had a warrant.”

  “Are you her roommate?”

  Her braids clattered like pipes on a wind chime as she opened her door wider and motioned me in. “Neighbors. We traded spare keys, just in case. But I never imagined this. My name’s Keyra Jackson.”

  And I never imagined that an apartment in this decrepit manse could be so astonishing. Keyra worked with found objects. Trash. Bits and pieces scavenged from backyard scrap heaps and the industrial recycling center. She didn’t look big enough to lift the truck fenders she’d made into bird wings, let alone wield a welding torch with precision.

  “Are those bike parts?” I said, nodding at a pipe-and-board shelf unit crammed with odd clocks and lamps.

  She handed me a bottle of ginger beer, brewed in the Market. “Yep. My specialty.”

  “A box grand?” The piano’s surface gleamed, but when I pushed a chipped, dingy key, a painful twang sent the room’s metal artwork into a discordant series of echoes.

  “Rosewood. Biggest found
object ever. Still trying to figure out what to do with it that won’t forfeit my security deposit.” Once a duplex, the building had been reconfigured so each side held separate first- and second-floor units. The doors had been relocated, stranding the piano.

  Keyra had watched officers carry bags of evidence down from Tory’s second-floor apartment, but had no idea what they’d found. “They said they were looking for evidence of poisoning. But even if Tory were a killer—which I don’t believe—she’s too smart to leave stuff lying around.”

  My thoughts exactly.

  I followed her up the narrow stairs to Tory’s place. Yellow tape warned, DO NOT ENTER. I brushed aside a wisp of hesitation. After all, Keyra had a key, and Tory needed our help—whether she was willing to admit it or not. Keyra opened the door and we scrambled underneath the tape.

  As in Keyra’s rooms, age-burnished woodwork set off plaster walls the color of antique crocheted lace. There, the resemblance ended. The younger artist had filled every nook, corner, and cranny with curiosities and, when those were full, hung bike wheels from the ceiling and dangled metal bits and gadgets from the spokes. “Visible storage,” she called it.

  Tory’s place, in contrast, was almost minimalist. Jute rugs anchored each room. Classic carved walnut chairs and a matching loveseat slip-covered in creamy muslin created a tone-on-tone feel.

  Except for the walls, a virtual crayon box. The abstracts I’d glimpsed in Tory’s sketchbook had been studies of form and line. These pieces were the finished product, the real deal. Dozens of canvases—some framed, some flat, others wrapped—leaned against the walls. Recognizable objects or vistas were less about themselves and more about the play of color, line, and shape.

  “I had her half convinced she was ready for a show,” Keyra said. “In quality and quantity. She’ll be the new artist of the year someday.”