The Solace of Bay Leaves Read online

  “I’m going, too,” Matt said. “I’ve never been there.”

  I would have loved to see his reaction to the place, although I doubted they’d stay late enough for the cabaret show or the aerialists’ performance. But not tonight. “It’s tempting, but I am otherwise engaged.”

  Sandra gave me a wicked grin. “‘Lord, lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself.’ That kind of temptation?”

  I felt the heat rise up my neck and cheeks and she laughed. “Good to see you happy, boss. You and Nate are perfect together.”

  “Let’s send some of those leftovers home with Matt,” I called as she headed toward the back of the shop.

  “Already on it,” she called.

  Matt lived up north, not far from Sandra, and they often rode the same bus. If he had a girlfriend or nearby family, he’d never mentioned them in my hearing.

  “Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised. He set the samovar’s insert upside down to drain, wiped his hands, and turned to me. “Pepper, can I ask? What’s going on with Cayenne? Is she okay?”

  The question I’d been dreading. It had been Matt’s impatience with Cayenne’s clumsiness last summer that led her to tell me she’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She’d asked me to keep it to myself for now, and I’d agreed. She was still able to do the major functions of the job, which was what the law counted. And she did a great job, which counted to me.

  I bit my lower lip, then exhaled. “All I can say is that I appreciate how you’ve all been willing to shuffle the schedule to accommodate her. But you don’t need to worry.”

  “Ahh, I was right,” he said in a knowing voice. “Pregnant. That’s awesome.” Grinning, he pulled the wheeled bucket out from under the industrial sink and began filling it. While he mopped, I ran the till and counted the change. Cayenne’s medical condition was her business and no one else’s, but keeping the secret was putting me in a difficult position. I hadn’t actually misled my other employees— they were managing that on their own—but I’d let them draw the wrong conclusions, and that made me uncomfortable.

  But it was still a relief to dodge that bullet. So to speak. For the moment, anyway.

  Then Sandra’s husband arrived and the three of them headed out to dinner. I bundled up for the walk home. It was funny to see my regal dog—Airedales are known as the King of Terriers for a reason—in the yellow slicker that reminded me of the Morton Salt girl. I grabbed my tote, a baguette and a bottle of Viognier poking out.

  No sign of Meg Greer on our way through the Market. I hoped she’d found who she was looking for.

  The aroma of fish stew simmering in a tangy sauce—our lemon-dill seafood blend, if my nose wasn’t mistaken—filled the wide stairwell leading to my loft. I half expected to see the neighbors clustered outside my door, clutching bowls and begging, “Please, sir. Might I have some more?”

  Food, glorious food! started playing in my head.

  Great. I’d given myself an earworm. From Oliver Twist, no less. Oh, well. It could have been worse. It could have been the theme from The Mickey Mouse Club, which hit all the wrong notes in my brain, over and over and over.

  “Smells like heaven,” I said after Arf and I had fought our way through the imaginary crowd of hungry children and were safely inside the loft.

  “Looks like heaven, now that you’re here,” Nate replied and I nearly swooned. Is there anything so gorgeous as a man standing in your kitchen wearing an apron and brandishing a spoon?

  Well, yes, there is. And I was reasonably sure of getting that sight later.

  I fed Arf, then slipped into the bedroom for a quick change. By the end of the day, my comfy shop clothes tend to reek of paprika and other spicery. Friends say their noses tell them when I’ve arrived—I carry the shop aromas with me like Pigpen in the old Peanuts comic strip carried a cloud of dust.

  In the bedroom, the trio of neon lips I’d bought at Aimee’s shop last summer glowed against the original redbrick wall. Beneath them sat the beautiful cypress tansu, a Japanese step chest I’d fallen for, also in her shop. Not long, coincidentally, after I’d fallen for the fisherman now tossing a salad in my kitchen. I’d hoped he’d leave a few things in the drawers, and they were filling up. His green cargo pants lay on the floor and I draped them over the low-back wooden chair in the corner, a find from an antiquing trip with Kristen.

  I pulled on navy leggings and a pink cotton tunic and padded, barefoot, out to the main room.

  “Sit,” Nate told me and slid a glass of wine across the butcher block counter. I sat, as directed, on a barstool scored on a different junking jaunt.

  “You get the whatever it was fixed?”

  He glowered, but not at me. “Needs a part we couldn’t make or scrounge up on a Saturday. On a better note, got the catch report from Bron. Going strong. He figures they’ve got another two or three weeks. He should be home early next month.”

  Bronson Seward, his younger brother and fishing partner, whom I hadn’t met yet. They co-owned one boat for Puget Sound, the increasingly troublesome Thalassa, and another, The Kenai Princess, based in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. A larger boat, the Princess required a crew, which meant they fished as late in the season as they could to make sure the men got a decent share. “You’ll like my little brother, I promise.”

  “But will he return the favor?” My friends and family had taken to Nate immediately. Even Tag liked him, which made me nervous at first.

  “Oh, yes,” he said and I swear, his green eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes.”

  I sipped while he stirred, and told him about the day in the shop, the successful food tour, and what little news Kristen had gleaned about Maddie.

  “I’ve never heard you mention her until all this happened.”

  “Kristen’s closer to her than I am. For lots of reasons.” Friendships change. Sometimes we make choices that trigger those changes. Sometimes we let our envy and regret get in the way. “In college, end of sophomore year, one of our professors recommended several students for internships with a big nonprofit. Maddie and I both worked there, in different divisions. End of summer, they offered me a paid position during the school year.”

  He gave the soup another stir, then put the lid on the pot and stood across the counter from me, listening closely.

  “My parents didn’t have extra money, so the job was a big help.” I paused to sip my wine. “Midyear, I dropped out of school. That meant the end of the job, which was okay. I grew up surrounded by social service work and by then I knew it wasn’t for me. It did give me a taste of HR, and later, a woman I met there helped me get the law firm job. So it worked out, for me.”

  “What does this have to do with Maddie?” he asked.

  “What I didn’t know was that Maddie had applied for the school year job, too, but they hired me. When I quit, she reapplied, but they didn’t want to fill the spot midyear. It was for a junior— they didn’t want someone about to graduate—so she was out of luck for the next year, too. She didn’t need the job—she just really wanted to work in that field.” I tightened my grip on my glass. “So basically, I took the opportunity she’d desperately wanted and wasted it. After graduation, she started working for her dad in the family business, while getting her MBA.”

  Nate studied me. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think she sees it that way. Although she did come in the shop a couple of times this summer. She doesn’t cook much, but she buys gifts. Remember, we’re meeting Laurel for brunch in the morning.” I never wanted to be one of those women who gives up on her girlfriends when a guy comes along, but when I met Nate, Laurel had completely understood that our long-standing Sunday tradition needed an update. If I wasn’t available, she met other friends. Occasionally, Nate joined us, as we’d planned for this weekend well before the Friday night revelations.

  I do have a dining table—a weathered, roun
d cedar picnic table with two benches and a pair of pink wrought iron chairs, refugees from an ice cream parlor. A café table and chairs sit on the veranda, for days when the weather permits. But this felt like a “dinner on the couch with a movie” night. Salads first, then steaming bowls of fish chowder, soaked up with bread and accented with wine.

  With a classic movie I’d seen a dozen times on the TV, my tummy full of good, hot food, and a good, hot man beside me, the dog working on his bone at our feet, I’d had enough of murder. Enough of old horrors coming back to haunt good friends. I didn’t want to think about special agents and shots fired in peaceful neighborhoods. All I wanted was what I had, a quiet evening in a space I adored with the man who’d set his hook and reeled in my heart.

  I picked up the remote and switched off the TV, then leaned close to Nate, holding my face for a kiss. He obliged.

  “Please, sir,” I said. “Might I have some more?”

  Six

  Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.

  —James Beard

  “CUTE HOUSE,” I SAID. THE THREE OF US STOOD IN FRONT A sage green cottage with cream trim and a front door painted a deep plum. Four of us, counting Arf. We were all dressed for rain, a preemptive strike.

  “Surprised to see it up for sale again. They want a hundred grand more than I got for it, three years ago,” Laurel replied, pointing at the FOR SALE sign at the edge of the tiny yard. “Though that was more than double what we paid, the year Gabe was born. All they did was paint it and kill Pat’s favorite rhodie.”

  The landscaping did look a little ragged. The flip side of Seattle’s mild temperatures and long growing season is that some homeowners lose their enthusiasm for yard work long before the yard work is done. That was one of the attractions, and drawbacks, of the ubiquitous rhododendrons.

  “So Pat was the gardener?” Nate asked. I appreciated his tenderness toward Laurel. Though I’d met him on a walk after a Sunday brunch with her, at Fisherman’s Terminal, they’d only seen each other a few times. At our age, a new relationship means stepping into a busy life with its own friendships and routines. For me, the biggest adjustment was to Nate’s schedule—six months here, six months in Alaska, more or less.

  Huddled in her forest green Gore-Tex, hands stuffed in her pockets, Laurel nodded. She’d wanted to see the house again, but I suspected that walking this neighborhood was more bitter than sweet. When I left Tag, he stayed put, and Nate’s ex-wife had kept their house. But those marriages had ended by our own hands, through divorce, not sudden violence.

  I looped one arm through hers and another through Nate’s. “Coffee time.”

  We strolled up the block, headed for a funky neighborhood joint on Twenty-Fourth, Montlake’s main drag. The homes were lovely, most dating back to the 1930s and ’40s. I’d never been in Laurel and Pat’s house, but it was small, one bedroom up, one down, and the price jump sounded modest to me. Seattle’s crazy-hot housing market had cooled lately, but prices had been on the rise for a long time. Laurel hadn’t held out for top dollar, eager for a quick sale. The stigma attached to a “murder house” hadn’t helped. No wonder the buyers had painted everything.

  “I do miss living here,” she said. “Good people. Environmentally conscious. Lots of activities. Great parks.”

  “A lot like the houseboat community,” Nate observed.

  After my family moved out of Grace House, the co-operative peace-and-justice community headquartered in the big house now home to Kristen’s family, my parents bought a little bungalow a few blocks up the hill. I’d been twelve then, back when a pair of teachers could still afford a small house around here. Although I had an idea my grandmother helped. And my dad was handy with home repair, which the place had badly needed.

  But it had been years since I’d walked these streets, and I found myself reeling a bit from the memories. Did the prosperous folks we passed, walking their dogs or coming back from coffee in their North Face and Patagonia rain jackets and their Hunter wellies, remember that a well-loved man had been murdered a stone’s throw away, in the safety of his own home? Now that a second incident had occurred, were they keeping a closer eye on their kids and double-checking their doors? Though tragedy can strike anywhere, most of us blessedly oblivious.

  I don’t tell many people this, because I like my life and have no desire to be shuffled off to the funny farm, but sometimes, when emotion hits me hard, I hear things. Grace House ran a free meals program for families and older adults in the basement of St. James Cathedral, and occasionally when I helped out, unloading donations, we could hear the choir practicing. Though my mother loved the community and was devoted to its work, she was never crazy about Mass or the trappings of Catholicism, except for those medieval chants. She’d take my hand and lead me to a back stairway where we’d sit and listen.

  I heard those harmonies now. What they told me was to stay alert. To follow my nose and my heart, and take care of the people I love.

  We rounded the corner onto Twenty-Fourth, pausing to stare at the old grocery where Maddie had been shot. It was an ugly building even in my childhood, but the owner—an old man we called Emby—had made it inviting, with baskets of flowers and brightly painted wooden benches. He’d carried staples like milk and potato chips, and the things commonly forgotten until dinner prep, like onions and sugar. He knew his community, so his shelves and coolers also held decent wines, tasty cheese, and boxes of good crackers. Racks near the front door held the local paper, and on Sundays, The New York Times.

  I smiled to myself. Though the Montlake Grocery had mixed the upscale with the utilitarian, Emby had been practical. His candy shelves were filled with kid favorites, but if an adult asked, he’d happily reach behind the counter and slip a copy of Playboy into a brown paper bag.

  Now, though, the glass door was smeared with dirt, the windows covered with newspaper. A swath of yellow tape screaming CRIME SCENE AREA—DO NOT ENTER stretched across the front of the building, between two orange barricades tenciled SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT.

  I shuddered and squeezed my friends’ arms.

  The other buildings in the block dated back as far as the homes, a mix of classic styles and materials. Similar blocks dot the city, each once the commercial center of a neighborhood. Some thrive, while others struggle.

  We reached the coffeehouse, a row of brightly painted Adirondack chairs lining the sidewalk. Empty now, splashed with rain. I looped Arf’s leash around the dog rail, both coffeehouse and rail the modern version of the frontier-day saloon and hitching post, and made sure the water bowl was full. “Don’t you worry, little guy. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

  Busy as the place was, we found a table in the window in dog’s eye view, though Arf didn’t seem concerned. It wasn’t the full-on breakfast joint Laurel and I usually choose, where we sip coffee, savor the latest Northwest flavor experiment, and linger for hours. But the coffee was good and my quiche yummy, the crust crusty and the eggs creamy. Laurel picked at a scone, and I resisted the urge to go all anxious mother on her, as I had yesterday. She was a grown woman with a kid of her own.

  “Have you talked to Gabe?” I asked.

  She pressed her lips together. “He called this morning, so happy. They won Friday and he got to play a few minutes. Then the football team won yesterday. I couldn’t burst his bubble when I don’t have any real news.”

  “You’ll know when to tell him.”

  “I can’t wait long,” she said. “If he finds out from someone else, he’ll never forgive me.”

  Especially if he knew how much his father abhorred secrets, and why.

  “I just wonder,” Nate said, “what the connection between Patrick’s death and Maddie’s shooting could possibly be.”

  For a long moment, Laurel said nothing. Then, “Refills?” She rose and gathered up our mugs. Nate and I exchanged a wordless
glance. She returned a moment later and we gratefully accepted the creamy white mugs. She cradled hers, staring into the black liquid.

  “I know there is a connection. Because of the dreams,” she finally said. “And the gun. But beyond that, I have no idea.”

  “What do you think happened? Back then, I mean.” We’d been casual acquaintances before the murder, but as our friendship grew closer, I had never wanted to ask. Too intrusive. But now was different. Both she and Detective Tracy had pulled me in. I needed to know.

  “None of the theories made any sense. A neighbor Pat had a dispute with, over the compost pile, of all stupid things. Pat got pretty heated, which was so not like him. But the cops couldn’t pin anything on him. The neighbor, I mean. Everybody worried about a random burglar who didn’t expect Pat to be home, but nothing was taken.”