[SS01] Assault and Pepper Read online

  “Why the reluctance?” I asked, but Keyra shrugged.

  This vivid joy and wild bliss from the woman who dressed year-round in tans and grays. Who wore the black-and-white shop apron like a mask. Was the limited color palette of her clothing a disguise? Did she see herself as muted and bland? Or simply save color for the canvas?

  A twinge of guilt speared my jaw. Invading the privacy of a very private woman felt like a sin. But I wasn’t the first—and unlike the searchers before me, I was here for her sake.

  Tory’s bedroom continued the tone-on-tone color scheme. On top of the antique oak dresser stood three photographs—the only personal touches other than the paintings.

  In the first, a young girl sat on one of the marble camels at the Volunteer Park Art Museum. Every Seattle child has a similar picture, although the original statues are now protected inside the museum while modern kids ride concrete replicas outside. Even at three or four, Tory had radiated self-possession. She reveled in pure joy—no “Say Cheese!” smile for the camera.

  The second photo was of Tory and Zak at the foot of a giant willow. He beamed at her and why not? Her head thrown back, her eyes dancing, her features were transformed.

  In the third, Tory stood between a man and a woman. Doc in his late forties, a full head of hair the same color as Tory’s. This past Wednesday morning on the street, Doc had refused to look at me, but I’d glimpsed the worry in his eyes. Now I knew why they had seemed so familiar.

  But it was the woman who drew me in. She bore that same self-contained look as her daughter, and yet it was impossible not to see utter love and devotion in her eyes and the way her slim hand rested on the girl’s shoulder.

  I picked up the frame and opened the back. “Tory, age 7,” written in fine black felt-tip. A woman’s hand.

  “Do you know her parents? Or where they live?”

  Keyra’s braids twirled as she shook her head. “I asked about the furniture once and she said it had been her mother’s, in a way that made me think her mother had died. She never mentioned her father.”

  She pointed to a small desk that held cords and a printer. “They must have taken her laptop.”

  In the bathroom, I peered into the medicine cabinet and under the sink. Did the same in the tiny kitchen, but it’s hard to know what you’re looking for when it isn’t there.

  “How long were they here?” I asked.

  “Not long.”

  Searching for something specific, quickly, without leaving a mess—or that nasty black fingerprint powder.

  A rickety staircase out back led to the third-floor studio the four renters shared.

  “They searched upstairs, too, but they didn’t take anything,” Keyra said, hugging herself.

  Tory occupied the south dormer, lit by a single uncurtained window. The patterns of light shining through the diamond-shaped, multipaned glass echoed the abstracts she’d sketched in the shop.

  Her brushes lay neatly on a paint-spattered table next to her wooden easel. On the easel itself stood a canvas, eighteen by twenty-four. If I read the underpainting right, we were gazing through a mullioned window onto a wooded ravine, shapes between the trees suggesting future shrubs, a distant view still blank. A more traditional landscape than the evocative-but-playful pieces I’d seen downstairs. Sadder. Deeper.

  Keyra’s puzzled expression said she knew no more about the place than I did.

  A landscape of the memory, or of the heart?

  • • •

  JANE sat across from me, her back to the window. She’d told me once that the view of Puget Sound from her island home brightened every day. “Like Johnson said of London. When you’re tired of looking at water and mountains, you’re tired of life.”

  So here we sat at Maximilien in the Market, at a table for two set with white linen napkins and gleaming silver. But she had turned her back on the panoramic views, not even glancing at their reflection in the antique mirrors that lined the bistro’s dark walls.

  “Thank you for meeting me, dear. I know how hectic Saturdays are.”

  Jane’s call had come as I was promising damp-eyed Keyra I’d do everything I could for Tory. She was calling from the shop, disturbed to find me not there. I’d hustled to meet her at her favorite table in her favorite restaurant. She’d already ordered oysters—untouched—and a bottle of her favorite white wine—half gone.

  I gave the waiter my lunch order and sipped the crisp, dry Bordeaux that Jane had chosen, notes of citrus and flowers opening beautifully.

  “I couldn’t sleep a wink, wondering what to do.” Jane’s voice quavered. “What to say. I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest with you.”

  No surprise there.

  “It’s about when I hired Tory. Do you remember—I imagine she still comes in—Marianne is her name. About your height, a little fuller-figured. Always impeccably dressed. High cheekbones. Expensive highlights.” She gestured, expressive fingers drawing a full, poofy bob ending in a point near the chin.

  I squinted, trying to picture the woman. No luck. “What’s she got to do with Tory?”

  Jane fiddled with her fork, shuffling it from one side of her plate to the other, her knuckles swollen. “I’ve never been sorry I hired Tory. Excellent employee. Reliable. Keeps herself to herself, but nothing wrong with that.”

  I reached over and stilled her hand with mine.

  “So I suppose I didn’t check her out as fully as I should have.”

  A sudden chill struck me, and not from the air or wine. “Jane—”

  Our waiter appeared at my elbow and I paused while he slid Jane’s oysters aside and replaced them with her entrée.

  “Le confit de canard pour Madame.” Duck. Jane is a creature of good habits.

  “And for you, the tartine. Herbed goat cheese, Yukon gold potatoes, sliced Anjou pears, and fresh arugula on pastry.” A rectangular French pizza, of sorts.

  The service chez Maximilien is never rushed, and I’ve never minded—not in this atmosphere, with these views, or this wine list. But, knowing Jane needed the semblance of privacy, I sent our waiter mental “hurry up” messages as he refilled our wineglasses, clasped his hands, and smiled before turning away.

  I leaned forward. “Jane, what does this woman Marianne have to do with Tory?”

  Anguish filled her blue eyes and the fork trembled in her crooked fingers.

  “I think she’s her mother.”

  • • •

  IN a flash, I’d pulled out my phone to see what I could find online about Marianne Finch, but the waiter’s apparition at my elbow put the kibosh on any lunchtime research. I should have known it was a phone-free zone.

  So here I was, tromping down Fifth Ave toward James, punching the tiny buttons.

  Holy cow.

  If Google was right, Tory and I had a lot to talk about.

  If you didn’t know better, you might think the King County Correctional Facility a low-rise office building. Home to lawyers and accountants. Or a nice, safe insurance company.

  Not hardly.

  “Oh, Tory. Help me help you,” I muttered after wending my way through the security checkpoints, keenly aware that I was not the only person in the waiting room talking to myself.

  Finally, a guard ushered me into the visiting area. Tory sat on the other side of a Plexiglas window. She did not rock a red jumpsuit the way she did her usual outfits. But while she looked a darned sight better than the other inmates, time inside had eroded her usual serene expression. The vee of her left hand massaged the front of her throat.

  We picked up our handsets. A sign reminded me that calls could be recorded. Wasn’t that a violation of privacy laws? Or did privacy vanish once you were arrested for murder?

  “Everyone at the shop is worried about you. Jane, too. Has Zak been here yet?”

  “I didn’t want to
see him.”

  “Tory, honey.” The wall between us might as well have been solid brick. “He told me about the two of you. I should have guessed. He cares about you. He believes in you. We all do.”

  Phone to her ear, she stared at her lap.

  “They’ll appoint a lawyer to represent you. Monday, probably,” I said. Her head bobbed slightly. “Unless your mother hires one for you.”

  That got her attention. “I don’t have a mother. I mean, she’s dead. Fifteen years.”

  Then who, what? “So who is Marianne? The woman who got Jane to give you the job?”

  Tory’s brown bob spun. “She didn’t get me the job. She told me Jane had an opening, but I’m the one who went in and applied. I got that job on my own.”

  I wanted to shake her. To ask why she was so stubborn, so foolishly insistent on doing things for herself. On pushing people away.

  My walk-and-scroll session on the way here had not started out well—Google knew next to nothing about Tory or Marianne Finch. But then I’d hit pay dirt, sort of. With a name like Damien, it had to be him.

  I hadn’t had time for in-depth research. First came those annoying pseudo-directories that crop up on any name search. They rarely list any info other than a name and address, a school or professional license, and invite you to “Be the first!” to rank and review the subject.

  Still, they provided an explanation for Doc’s street name, and an office address on Pill Hill. And an unexpected opening into Tory’s secrets.

  “Tory, was your father actually a medical doctor? And if Marianne’s not your mother, who is she?”

  Her face slammed shut like a bank vault. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She stared at the wall behind me. I stared at her.

  “Look, I know your father came to the Market to see you. I saw him following you, and Zak said he kept trying to talk to you. What did he want?”

  “He wanted . . .” She shook her head. “It’s no use, Pepper. I didn’t kill him, but no one will ever believe me. Even Marianne. She’s known me my whole life, raised me half of it, but I’m the only one who ever had the courage to stand up to him.”

  “I believe you.” Tory was too intent on her career, on her life, to take someone else’s. And now that I’d seen her art and her studio, I was even more certain.

  Doc had been hassling her, but not enough to lead to deliberate poisoning. And the murder had to have been deliberate, planned in advance—there were no convenient poisons at Seattle Spice, the last place father and daughter had been before his death.

  “Tory, tell me more about Doc. Your father. What was the conflict between you?”

  A slow ragged breath escaped her. Her tongue flicked out over a dry spot on her lower lip, and she caught the lip in her teeth before the quivering became too obvious. “People think doctors only want to help them. They trust them. Sometimes they shouldn’t.”

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  She pursed her pale lips and said nothing.

  I leaned forward, gripping the handset. “Look, I get that your father was controlling, and you wanted to live your life on your own terms, but I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

  “It’s no use,” she repeated, her honey brown eyes hooded. “He always said he would do everything he could to stop me. I guess he finally did.”

  Fifteen

  Seattle is to coffee as Alaska is to snow, New York to bagels, New Jersey to bad reality TV.

  —Amy Rolph, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  After leaving Tory and the jail, I crossed James and drifted up Fifth, drinking in the cool air. The jail had reeked of despair, of fear mingled with innocence and guilt.

  Inadvertently or not, Tory’s last comment had revealed a killer motive.

  But at twenty-eight, she was no kid. If the heart of the conflict was her art—my best guess—why care if her father approved or considered her a talent-free hack? She was doin’. No one gets rich working retail, and paints, brushes, and canvas are pricey. But while her building might have been hiding from the wrecking ball, she had clearly laid a good foundation.

  At University, I veered under the marquee of the Fifth Avenue Theater. Its hand-painted carvings of dragons and lotus blossoms and the brass-knobbed red doors were as close to Beijing as I was likely to get. I stared at the posters for upcoming musicals, not quite seeing them. Why would Doc follow his daughter, in disguise? Surely not just to criticize her career choice.

  An artist, she was, to the core. Might as well ask her to change the color of her eyes—a color he shared. Did he not realize the depth of her commitment? Had he not seen her work?

  A dead-end line of thinking. The better question: Who else might have killed Doc?

  And that thought was equally disheartening. Because Sam was so obvious, and to those of us who knew him, so obviously incapable of such horror.

  The midafternoon sun broke between buildings, reflected off the window of a men’s clothing shop, and stabbed me in the eye. I blinked against the staggering light. Did I really know Sam any better than I’d known Tory?

  At the corner, a weight as gray and heavy as the stone blocks of the buildings fell on me. But in Seattle, there’s always a coffee shop nearby. Like many Seattleites, I have a love-hate relationship with Starbucks. Love how it’s made coffee into community.

  Love consistency, hate uniformity. Love that the original location, spitting distance from the Spice Shop, still beckons the hordes—they line up outside all day long. Love that it’s made my city synonymous with great java. Hate that it swallows competitors whole instead of celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit that gave the company its start.

  Love that serious coffee people nurture other business models besides the international chain. That there’s room for unique roasteries and divine hole-in-the-wall coffeehouses where folks of all stripes debate blends and single-origin coffees, ethical sourcing, acidity and finish, drip versus French Press versus siphon pot extraction.

  Sometimes you want an experience. Sometimes you just need a jolt.

  I popped into the house of the green mermaid, ordered a grande mocha latte, triple shot, and sank onto a high-backed stool in the window. The range of experience in the world—and our almost primal urge to compare and judge based on those experiences—has always intrigued me. Half the staff in this shop were twenty-somethings like Tory searching for their path.

  At twenty-eight, my mother had been married with two kids. At that age, I was a new homeowner and a bride of one year. My parents hadn’t considered Tag the best catch, but were smart enough to know voicing their opinions would only drive me away and wouldn’t have kept me from the altar.

  I’d been sure I’d found my path, before jumping off it and on to a completely different one at forty. And at sixty, my parents had taken another major turn, starting a new life in another hemisphere.

  As a former supervisor of mine liked to say, it’s a good thing it takes all kinds—because there are all kinds.

  For the second time in two days, a sweep of black fabric caught my eye. Oh, f-f-firetruck.

  “Pepper,” the barista called in the nick of time. I grabbed my coffee, called “thanks” over my shoulder, and dashed out.

  Where had he gone?

  This time, the sight lines were wide open, and I spotted the tall, balding figure ambling down Union, Arf heeling beside him. No cops or cars in sight, so I dashed across Fifth against the light, mindful of the hot cup.

  Where was Sam going? He set a brisk pace for a man well past sixty.

  Hold on. Your dad is well past sixty, and he’s in great shape.

  But my dad hadn’t spent decades on and off the streets, haunted by mental illness.

  Sam crossed Union and headed up Fourth, me trailing.

  We all have our own demons.<
br />
  At Pike, Sam slowed for a white SUV.

  “Hey, handsome. Going my way?”

  He glanced down, startled, then grinned. “Hey, Miz Pepper. Take it easy. You outta breath.”

  “You’ve got longer legs than I do. Sit and keep me company while I drink my espresso.”

  “Nasty stuff. Puts hair on your chest.”

  “A chance I’ll take.” In Westlake Park, we settled on a bench near the granite arch and waterfall, Sam keeping a respectable distance between us. The ring and bell of steel drums on the far corner carried across the plaza.

  “Haven’t seen you around the last couple of days.” I popped the lid off my latte and licked the coffee-tinged foam inside.

  He tugged the lapels of his coat tight across his chest.

  “Pretty upsetting about Doc,” I continued. Lid back on, I took a sip, watching Sam from the corner of my eye. The milky caffeine hit my bloodstream like William Tell’s arrow hit the apple. “Did you argue Thursday because he wouldn’t let you have your spot, like we’d agreed? Or did something else happen?” Such frank talk was risky, but I figured I had to dive in and nab the truth fast. Sam would only sit in a public place so long.

  “He showed up outta nowhere, acting like we should do what he said. Didn’t bother earning respect.” Sam’s words echoed Jim’s complaint about rules, and the resentment those who honor them harbor for those who violate them.

  And they echoed Tory’s veiled comments about her father’s domineering nature.

  “Those fool hobos,” he continued. “Kowtowed to him. For no reason at all. He were like that.”

  If the online directories got it right, Damien Finch had been a cardiovascular surgeon. Not a profession for the weak-willed. My eyes narrowed. Who else, besides his daughter and the men of the street, had bristled at his unspoken expectations?

  “You saw him Thursday morning, didn’t you?” I hadn’t been the only one who’d recognized his beret. And I couldn’t expect Misty to withhold her observation if asked. “Nice weather to go hatless.”