[SS01] Assault and Pepper Read online

  “Nope. Those are for you,” Kristen said, a glint in her gray-green eyes.

  I reached for the flowers. No card.

  “Mr. Howard brought them by,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows and her hips at the same time. “Hoping to catch you.”

  A faint warmth crawled up my cheeks.

  “Go sell something,” I said, waving my hand. Embarrassed about a boy in front of my BFF, at forty-two? Heck, yeah. Never too old for that. I slid into the nook to admire the flowers before retreating to the office to make a quick call. Or rather, to leave Alex a quick happy voice mail.

  Back on the floor, I tended to customers. “That’s going to be a spicy dish,” I told a twenty-something in a splashy red-and-yellow print dress carrying a recipe torn from a magazine. I grabbed a book on Indian cooking and flipped to a page showing bowls of creamy, herbed yogurt. “Cool it down by pairing it with a raita, a dipping sauce for fresh pita bread or pita chips. It’s easy: grated cucumber, yogurt, chopped mint, and a touch of cayenne and cumin.”

  “Won’t the spices make it hot?” Her long blond hair brushed her upper arm as she tilted her head.

  “Use just enough for flavor, not enough for heat. With so much cayenne and cumin in the stew, putting a little in the raita will tie the two dishes together. You can get fresh mint from Herb the Herb Man across the street.” Herb, another Market regular.

  “Lord love the new cooks,” Sandra said a few minutes later as our customer left through the side door, the raita recipe scribbled on a card tucked inside her shopping bag.

  “First meal for her boyfriend’s parents,” I said. “If they like it, we’ll be heroes.”

  The deli manager at DeLaurenti’s had delivered a mouthwatering assortment of sandwiches, meats, and cheeses, refusing to let me pay. Tragedy evokes generosity. I poured a tall glass of iced tea, returned to the mixing booth, and pondered my choices.

  Not for long, though. I was starving.

  I’d finished a mini roasted pepper, basil, and mozzarella panini and was contemplating a second when Reed pointed out that the CSI unit had returned to the corner outside.

  What now? And what about the makeshift memorial? By this time of day, the street men would have scattered to the park or their favorite panhandling corners. I doubted Sam would want this one today.

  Sam. The hat.

  Whoa, Pepper. You’ve got enough to do without asking questions here. Let it go.

  But I got all fired up again when I saw the bike patrol officer standing guard over the CSI unit. They could do the job themselves without the ever-watchful eyes of one Officer Thomas Allen “Tag” Buhner.

  He was there to watch over me and I was tired of it.

  But snapping at him wouldn’t make him behave. It would only convince him I’d gone over the edge and needed his intervention.

  So I flashed him the smile I use to mollify difficult customers. “Hello, officers. Can I help you with anything?”

  “Stay out of their way, Pepper.”

  I wasn’t in their way. “Aren’t the flowers lovely? Doc hadn’t been part of the Market community long, but . . .”

  A CSI detective brushing print powder on the door frame turned her head toward me. “They’re no trouble, ma’am. We just need to redust a few prints.”

  I peered a little closer and noticed several other spots she’d redone on the front and side walls of the building.

  “Does that rough finish interfere with your impressions?” The salmon pink stucco is one of my favorite features of the building. Art Deco with a Northwestern flair.

  “Pepper—” Tag said, his tone a warning.

  “Yes, ma’am, it does. The more uneven the surface, the harder it is to get a clear print. We’re redoing all of these, then we’ll take them back to the lab. We should be able to get you back to normal soon.”

  “Thanks.” I could practically feel Tag breathing down my neck. “And when will I get my keys back?”

  “Not my call,” she said. “But I can’t imagine it will be too long.”

  “Thank you. This has been a pain in the—an ordeal. I appreciate how helpful you’ve been.” Unlike you, Officer Buhner. I walked past said Officer Buhner and strolled up Pine Street to my back door.

  A few minutes later, the CSI detectives came in to print all the employees, me included, “for elimination purposes.” I watched as they rolled each finger and palm, and noted every staffer’s contact info. Happily, it didn’t take long and customer traffic was light.

  “I’m taking spice samples up to Laurel. Meanwhile, take a gander.” I laid the fuchsia folder on the mixing table, next to the empty sandwich tray. “From Ms. Fabiola. Labels, and a whole lot more.”

  “Oo-ooh,” Kristen said. “You finally said yes?”

  She made it sound like a marriage proposal. “I haven’t said yes to anything yet. Just tell me what you think.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, smirking.

  “Smart-ass.”

  I left the shop and had almost reached First when I heard the wheels behind me.

  “We need to talk,” Tag said, handlebars wobbling as he kept the bike in balance.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, we do.” He was on foot now, wheeling beside me as the light changed and I crossed the street. “Alex Howard came by while you were out.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew. That flush returned to my cheeks.

  “He’s trouble, Pepper. Stay away from him.”

  “What do you know about it?” I whipped my head toward him before he could respond. “That was a rhetorical question. Don’t answer.”

  “I know some things you don’t. And it’s not good, Pepper. You’ll only get hurt.”

  And he knew all about hurting me. His wide rubber bike tires made a soft whirring sound on the concrete sidewalk. A young couple coming toward us dropped hands and stepped apart to let us through.

  “Is lecturing me really a good use of the taxpayers’ money, Tag? Shouldn’t you be out doing something productive? Like solving crime?”

  “Spencer and Tracy are on it. And don’t harass the CSI. They’ll release your crime scene when they’re good and ready.”

  I stopped on a dime. “My crime scene? You do think it was a crime, don’t you? Doc’s death, I mean.”

  Dang, I hated that self-satisfied look on his face.

  “Why?” I went on. “He wasn’t shot or stabbed. There would have been blood. Yeah, there are other methods, but what about the scene makes you think—”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. Police business.”

  For half a second, I had actually taken him seriously. For a nano-blink, I had thought he was expressing genuine concern for me. But Tag Buhner wouldn’t know genuine if it bit him in the extremely fine, tight ass.

  “Why did I even imagine you cared? I haven’t owned the shop a year but you want me to be a failure. Will that make you feel better about cheating on me?” I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and marched forward.

  “Pepper, wait,” he said. “It’s not like that.”

  It was exactly like that. And I wasn’t going to wait around for him to prove it once again.

  • • •

  “SO nobody knows who he is?”

  I swigged my strawberry lime soda, the sharp fizz striking my nostrils and threatening a sneeze. “Somebody, somewhere. But not in the Market.” Laurel and I sat in the front window of Ripe, her gourmet deli on the Fourth Avenue side of the former bank building still known as “the box the Space Needle came in.” In the nine years I’d worked in its upper reaches, I’d probably drunk or eaten something of hers, eat-in or take-out, three or four days a week.

  “It’s an injustice,” she said. “In our so-called civilization, how can people fall through the cracks?”

  “SPD will figure out wh
o he is. Homeless doesn’t necessarily mean anonymous.”

  “I’m sure you’re right and he died of natural causes.” Her voice said she wasn’t sure at all. “But the family deserves to hear from someone who knew him.”

  Laurel’s husband, Patrick, had been shot and killed two years ago when he heard a noise and stepped outside to check on it. Laurel and their teenage son, Gabe, had been away on a school field trip. A neighbor found the body. No arrests were ever made, but officials seemed to think the murder was linked to a corruption case Pat had handled as an assistant federal prosecutor. Laurel sold their Montlake jewel box and bought a houseboat on Lake Union, desperately needing change but not wanting to completely uproot Gabe. He’d taken to the boat like, well, a duck to water. So had she.

  People tell you not to make a major change right after a major loss, but Laurel and I were both proof that conventional wisdom isn’t one size fits all.

  Her meaning took a moment to sink in. “But I didn’t know him,” I said. “Not really. Besides, SPD has a team that notifies the family. If they’re in another city, the police request a notification by local authorities. It’s routine.”

  “‘We’re so sorry about your father/your brother/your son. He was a bum, he had it coming.’” Laurel’s long, curly, gray-brown hair was tied back, as always when she worked, but a tendril had escaped. She shoved it behind her ear.

  “They didn’t treat you like that. They won’t treat Doc’s family like that.” Laurel and I had known each other casually for years, but after her husband’s murder, I’d offered her an unjudging ear. She’d ranted and raved—still does, occasionally—but despite her freewheeling opinionating, I could scarcely imagine her pain. She’d hinted a time or two that someone higher up might not want the case solved, might not want a trial and all that it could expose, but I’d been married to a cop when it happened and she hadn’t spilled the details of her doubts. In truth, I didn’t want to know. I like believing that most people are good at heart and do the right thing.

  “My bad luck he died on my doorstep, but that doesn’t make me responsible for bearing bad news.”

  Her dark brown eyes glistened and she wrapped her strong fingers around my wrist. “Don’t leave justice to the system, Pepper. It’s too important.”

  We locked eyes and I sighed, hoping I wouldn’t regret what amounted to a solemn promise. “Change of subject. Dish the dirt on Alex Howard.” She knew I’d had dinner with him a couple of times and gotten all starry.

  “He’s big time. His restaurants are booked weeks out. He gets the celebrity photo shoots and the rave reviews.” She gave me a crooked grin. “He’s wickedly good-looking. But I can’t say we run in the same circles.”

  “So why is Tag warning me off him?”

  “It’s Tag. Do you need a reason?”

  I picked up my bottle. “Seems like more than not wanting me to date. But maybe you’re right.”

  Someone called her name from the kitchen and she slid off her stool. “Trust me, I’m right. About Tag, and about Doc. You make sure those detectives tell you when they find out who his family is so you can get in touch. Nobody ever regretted going out of their way to be kind.”

  Famous last words.

  Seven

  Egyptian morticians stuffed pepper up Ramses’ nose to guarantee him eternal life.

  Laurel’s words followed me back to the Market. Did I honestly have a responsibility to the family I’d never met of a man I barely knew, just because he’d had the misfortune to die on my doorstop?

  But I take seriously the point of view of people who’ve been where I haven’t. Laurel knows what it’s like to lose someone you love unexpectedly and get no resolution. No justice. No closure, in modern terms.

  The haunting harmonies of my mother’s beloved chants began to play in my head, a sure sign that I’d made up my mind.

  The early-afternoon lull had settled on the shop by the time I returned. I made a few phone calls, updated our Facebook status, twipped through our Tweets, and flipped through Fabiola’s fuchsia folder.

  The more I saw, the more her ideas grew on me. But they also made me nervous. They screamed “Hip! Modern! Eat this, love this!” And that was great. But they were a looong step away from our image. Our tradition.

  The flip side of classic is boring, and the dark side of tradition is stuck-in-a-rut. Which side you land on depends on your point of view.

  And I wasn’t so sure about upending our customers’ view of us. Or my own.

  “They’re good,” Reed said, shrugging one narrow shoulder when I asked the staff for their opinions. “But they don’t, really, like, rock.”

  “Do-o-o it,” Sandra said, drawing out the words in an urging tone. My face showed my reluctance. She tucked her hands in her armpits, flapped her wings, and clucked her way to the front counter.

  “What do you two think?” I asked Zak and Tory, busy refilling the spices on the wall. The job goes faster with two—one to climb the rolling wooden ladder and fetch extra inventory off the upper shelves, and one to refill the jar, note the date, and confirm the records generated by our point-of-sale inventory software. With bulk supplies, you’ve got to have an idea how much you sell over a period of time, so we were developing a baseline. A total pain, but Jane had tracked inventory on a yellow pad no one else could read, so anything was a vast improvement over nothing. We hoped to have all the info we needed after a full year. Soon. Soon.

  “Go for it,” Zak said, tucking the caraway back in place. He almost didn’t need a ladder to reach the shelf.

  “Follow your heart,” Tory said, voice soft, eyes carefully trained on the iPad inventory screen.

  What message was she sending me?

  “Back in a flash.” Zak headed for the restroom.

  “What’s next?” I asked Tory, my foot on the bottom rung.

  “Brown cardamom.”

  She still wasn’t looking at me, and that wasn’t like her. Not a lot of call for brown, also known as “bastard cardamom,” except in the Indian community. Even there, green cardamom outsells brown. Jane introduced me to the spice through her Indian Butter Chicken, and I love grinding the rough, ribbed pods in my flea market brass mortar and pestle to release the smoky, woodsy flavor.

  I handed Tory the dark brown jar, Jane’s spidery script on the red-trimmed white label yellowed with age. Those labels we would never modernize, except when we couldn’t read them anymore.

  “You told the detective you didn’t see Doc this morning. Did you see Sam?”

  Her eyes widened, then quickly narrowed.

  “He was here,” I continued. “His beret fell out of Doc’s coat when they picked up his body.”

  Tory stared at me, speechless. As if the shock of the death had just hit her.

  “But—Sam,” she said. “He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—”

  “Brown cardamom,” Zak said, taking the jar from my hands. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever sold that to anyone.”

  Eyes still on Tory, I said, “You can count on us.”

  “Boss,” Sandra called, and I headed to the front counter. She clutched the phone in both hands against her chest, muffling our conversation. “It’s Callie Carter. You used to work with her. Her toddler used her grandmother’s antique nutmeg grinder to make rocks into gravel, and her mother’s coming to visit next week. This is your department.”

  I glanced at the spice grinders in the glass-front display case and took the phone. Five minutes later, I’d sent Callie, a librarian at my old firm, pictures of two possibles and one likely replacement, and she’d promised to come down on Friday to check them out. We spent a few minutes catching up—she still worked part-time with several of our colleagues. I also suggested she take the original grinder to the cutlery shop up the street; the wizards there can mend all manner of abused kitchen toolery.

  A deep masc
uline grunt at the side door caught my attention and I trotted over to check it out. Before I reached the top of the landing, a broad-shouldered brown-clad back popped into view, jerking a heavily laden hand truck up the outside step and over the threshold.

  “Figures,” the UPS man said, a teasing tone in his rough bass. “Biggest shipment of the year and your front door is blocked and I gotta haul it all uphill. Backwards.”

  “Like Ginger Rogers, but without the heels,” I said.

  His blank look said the joke went over his head. Too young, or too male? Or not a fan of old movies.

  A few minutes later, stacks of boxes crowded the shop. I started unpacking a shipment of newly released cookbooks, resisting the temptation to cart the lot to the nook and drool.

  “We can unveil the new designs for your anniversary,” Kristen said.

  “I’m beginning to feel like you’re all ganging up on me.”

  She was sitting on the floor, dusting and realphabetizing the bookshelves. You’d think books would pretty much stay where you put them, but no. They travel. An Italian cookbook ends up next to the oregano and a book on French bistro style cozies up with tarragon. In high school, Kristen clerked in a now-closed bookstore on Broadway a few blocks from our house, and always says the adventures of our cookbooks don’t hold a candle to the travels of The Joy of Sex.

  Expanding our once-slim book selection had boosted the bottom line. Plus books make great displays. This shipment included Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky, and Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes, by Mark Bitterman. September’s Spice of the Month: salt. We’d pair books, shakers, cellars, and grinders with fleur de sel from the Camargue region of France, Maldon Sea Salt from Britain—both smoked salt and the very popular flakes—and of course, salts handcrafted from the icy waters of the San Juan Islands.

  Head tilted, Kristen looked up. “For somebody who makes major decisions in an instant, you can move like a glacier on the small stuff.”