[SS01] Assault and Pepper (11 page)

She nodded.

“Great. I’ll call Laurel and beg an urn and a couple of vacuum pots until we get our stuff back,” I continued. Assuming we did. Assuming they found nothing incriminating.

“You bet. Mr. Right will help. We’ll get her done if it takes all night.”

“Great. Reed, can you scrounge up some trash and recycling bins? I’ll get paper cups and napkins. I’m sorry, Kristen,” I said, my voice cracking. “I know you’ve got kid stuff all day Saturday and I wouldn’t ask if—”

Her eyes glistened, but there was nothing soft about her tone. “Don’t you dare apologize to me. Of course I’ll be here. Early.”

And with that, a little glimmer of light bathed my heart.

•   •   •

AFTER
the detectives left, I sent Reed and Sandra home, then slumped in the nook wishing a stiff drink would appear by magic. Kristen had refused to leave, though she dashes out of here most days to meet her girls when they get home from their after-school activities.

“They’ll be fine.” She dropped her phone in her apron pocket and shook off my concern for her family routine. “Eric will order pizza and pop and be a hero.”

“I’m responsible for this,” I said. “For Doc being on that corner.”

“No, you’re not. He wanted that corner.” She slid onto the bench beside me.

“The question is, did the killer know about the dispute? It wasn’t his day for the corner, so why was he there?” Plenty of people had heard me lay down the law for alternate days. I’d counted on the Market network to hold Doc and Sam to their word.

No question Tory knew.

The bigger question was why the police had focused on her. That Doc was her father didn’t prove anything. Nor did her early arrival, ostensibly to sketch.

Spencer and I had seen the drawings. But they didn’t prove she’d been sketching the entire time, or even that she’d done the drawings that day.

I wished I’d had time to flip through her sketchbook before it had been spirited away.

And why had her father been in the Market?

She had denied seeing him the morning he was killed, but I wasn’t convinced. If he’d come here to see her, he’d have been waiting by the door when she arrived, or knocked or peeked in. She’d also denied seeing him Wednesday at the bus stop, and I’d witnessed that encounter myself.

Tory would not lie without good reason.

They knew it was poison, and maybe even what poison, explaining the limited search and even more limited seizure. So they’d had time to test Doc’s body. And they’d tested the cup.

The cup from my shop.

In the movies, CSI takes prints off paper—off nearly anything—but real-life forensics faces real-life limitations. I pictured Tory, Wednesday morning at this very table, stamping the cups alongside Reed. Who had unwrapped the roll, set them out, moved them around? They might have found prints from any one of us—even me.

“Who do I call?” I said with a start. “If Doc was Tory’s father, what about her mother?”

Kristen looked at me in horror. Keys in hand, I dashed to the office and unlocked the file drawer.

“But what will you tell her?” Kristen asked from behind me. “You can’t say ‘they’ve arrested your daughter for killing your husband.’ What if she doesn’t know he’s dead? Or that they think—” She wrapped her arms around herself, making a cocoon of her white sweater.

“We don’t even know if her parents are together,” I said, flipping through the files. My breath briefly caught when I got to Tory’s. Jane had never been good with the paper side of the business, and while I’d insisted on formal applications and created real files for Zak and Kristen, I’d overlooked the records for existing employees. Meant to audit the files and beef them up, but the task languished on my list. My bad.

Nothing but a W-4 and an I-9 form inside the manila folder.

“Dang it, Jane,” I said. “Not even the basics.” I reached for the phone and punched in Jane’s number, wondering what to tell her. “There’s been an accident”? An “incident”? Or just spill it?

But no spilling to voice mail. “Jane, it’s Pepper. Call me. It’s—important.”

At least the W-4 had an address on it.

A knock sounded at the front of the shop. “What now? The cops can’t be back already.”

Kristen got there ahead of me and opened the door for Laurel, arms laden with a big brew thingy, two stainless steel insulated pumper pots dangling from her fingers.

“Am I losing it? I meant to call you. Did I?”

“Kristen called. We’re keeping you company tonight.”

My gaze swept from one of my best friends to the other. “I’m okay. Really.”

“Yeah, you are,” Laurel said. “But it’s gotta be rough, worrying about Tory, wondering . . .”

“I’m not wondering,” I said sharply. “She didn’t do it.”

“We know that,” Laurel said in a soothing tone. “We know there’s a terrible injustice being done—”

“In the name of justice,” I said, despite my fear of where this was leading.

“And you’ve got to get her out,” Laurel continued.

“But we can’t help her if she won’t let us,” Kristen said.

“Hold on. You’re both right. She’s innocent.” Of murder anyway. Guilty of poor judgment and perhaps of fueling a family feud. “But she did shake us off.”

“Before she knew how much trouble she was in,” Laurel said.

Before she’d been hauled down to police headquarters, left to steep in a tiny, blank room, subjected to repeated attempts at interrogation, then, I imagined, marched across the street to the King County Jail. I’d never been to the jail—by all accounts, a decent institution.

But when it came to certain institutions, aren’t we all, like Mae West,
Not ready?

Some say variety is the spice of life.

“I need dinner and a drink,” Laurel said. “If we’re going to work out a plan.”

“Wait a sec. Yesterday, you badgered me to find Doc’s family and offer condolences. Now we know his family is Tory, and you want me to help her.”

“Don’t you want to help her?” Kristen said.

“Help them both,” Laurel said. “By figuring out what really happened.”

“Whoa.” I held up my hands. I’d already started asking questions, but Tory’s arrest changed everything. Or did it? “If she didn’t want a lawyer, she won’t want my help.”

“But she trusts you,” Kristen said.

Tory had lied to me, at least once. Not your typical sign of trust.

But it might be a sign of someone in pain, reluctant to disappoint someone else. Of Tory not wanting to tarnish my trust in her.

I was sunk. In up over my pink shoes and my spiky brown hair.

“You have to tell Zak,” Kristen said. “Dating or not, we know they’re close.”

“Sooner, not later,” Laurel added. “He deserves to know.”

“But he’s working tonight—” My phone rattled on the wooden table. I glanced at the name and number. “Decide on dinner while I get this. Walking distance.”

“Hey, Jane. I hate to call with bad news, but . . .” Back in my office, I sank onto the chair and told her the story.

A raspy intake of breath.

“Jane, are you okay?”

“Where is she?” Well past seventy-five, Jane walks with a cane, but she had never sounded old or tired until now.

“King County Jail. I don’t know if they’ll let me visit her, since I’m not family or a lawyer, but I’ll find out tomorrow.”

“I always knew I could count on her.”

The non sequitur pricked my ears. I could almost see Jane tilting her crown of feather white braids and squinting her island blue eyes, but I’d lost track of her train of thought.

“Jane, what’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

Silence. Then she cleared her throat and spoke, her voice both soft and firm. “One reason I sold the shop to you was your background, taking care of employees.”

I waited.

“The other reason was you see this as more than a business. You see with your heart, dear. You’ll know what to do.”

Much as I value Jane’s faith in me, I really wished she hadn’t said that.

Almost as badly as I wished for a margarita.

•   •   •

“THE
citrus glaze on the pork carnitas,” Laurel asked our server, “is that orange or lemon? And how’s it spiced?”

“Chef uses
Sanguinello
blood oranges, ma’am, with a touch of lime and a dash of his own chile blend.”

I knew that blend, had helped him source it.

“Hmm. Make sure that grilled asparagus is well charred. Brings out the earthiness. And I hope those chipotle mashed potatoes were made this evening—reheated potatoes taste like wallpaper paste.” She’d donned purple-rimmed readers, and her eyes darted over the menu. “But I can’t quite wrap my tongue around the idea of pickled vegetables with citrus-glazed pork. Let’s substitute this tropical fruit relish you serve with the scallops.” She pointed. He made a note.

Going out for dinner with a chef is always an adventure.

“The
Chile en Nogada
,” I said, handing him my menu. He nodded swiftly, a flicker of relief in his dark eyes at the simple order. Shredded beef, sun-dried fruit, and nuts stuffed in a poblano pepper, pecan cream sauce, pomegranate seeds, and baby
haricots vert
—why mess with a combination like that?

“The sea bass,” Kristen said.

“Bites,” I called. She’d chosen
Lubina al Pistacho
, pistachio-crusted sea bass with a corn, cilantro, and jalapeño relish and a salsa risotto, my second choice.

Café Frida had opened a few months ago, and while I’d helped the chef locate some unusual herbs and spices, I’d only eaten here once. I’d come for drinks and appetizers with Alex and the head chef at his own south-of-the-border restaurant. Where the food was nicely done, but far more traditional.

They’d ordered one of almost everything, sampling and comparing notes. Figuratively speaking—the waitress recognized a spy mission when she saw one, and the chef came out to welcome us, forestalling any actual note-taking.

“Creative,” Alex had said, begrudgingly, as we took our leave. His chef had barely uttered a word, and I wondered if he’d gone back to his own kitchen to revamp his menu. Or to reconsider it over a shot glass and a bottle of Jose Cuervo Reserva.

I sipped my passion fruit margarita. The place buzzed like a Mexican cicada.

At least there were no insects on the menu. “Sophisticated Mexican cuisine,” it declared, beneath a line drawing of Frida Kahlo herself. On either side of the beveled walnut back bar, rumored to have come from a nineteenth-century brothel in Idaho, hung reproductions of her self-portraits. Café Frida was the latest tenant to test its pluck in this Belltown space, a few blocks from the Market. Judging from the crowd—and the noise level—it had struck the right note.

“Did you have to use your name to get us a table?” I asked Laurel, then took a sip of her mango habañero margarita. “Mmm. That’s good.”

“No.” She drew the glass toward her protectively. “I used yours.”

After the long, strange day, laughter felt good.

In addition to an area near the bar filled with tall tables for the drinks and appetizer crowd, Frida’s owners had taken over the adjacent club space, serving up tequila, cerveza, tapas, and music. Some Latin music but mostly a cross-over paradise. The space had once been a haven of grunge, the Seattle Sound of the 1990s. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden had rehearsed in the basement, and I’d been an early fan, pawning my gran’s silver tea service for Pearl Jam tickets. (I got it back before she noticed it was missing. It now holds center stage in my brother and sister-in-law’s dining room. And the show was totally worth the risk.) After those glory days, the building had wasted away, along with much of Belltown. Tag regularly reported drug raids and calls to knife fights, until an influx of Microsoft millionaires and heavy-duty cleaning fluids turned the neighborhood hip again.

I had no idea who topped the bill in the lounge tonight and didn’t care. After this week, I could hardly wait to take my happy belly home to bed.

Kristen tasted our shared appetizer: chicken meatballs, bursting with fresh corn kernels and cilantro, artfully arranged on a lime green plate, crema and molé carefully poured around them.

“Orgasmic,” she said, mouth full.

Laurel wore her “Don’t disturb me, I’m identifying the flavors” expression.

I stuck my fork in a meatball, cut it in half on my small red plate, and swirled the bite in sauce. Took a nibble. Took another, bigger bite.

“Holy molé,” I said, mouth full.

Kristen wrinkled her nose at my bad pun.

Laurel swallowed and lowered her fork, resting it on her plate. Without a word, she pushed back her chair and left the table.

Kristen and I exchanged looks. “If she doesn’t come back,” Kristen said, “that leaves more for us.”

I was reaching for another meatball, contemplating spooning up the extra sauce like a thick soup, when Laurel returned. A nanosecond later, the chef approached, our server close behind.

“Ms. Halloran,” the chef said, bowing most elegantly. “Ms. Reece.” He nodded acknowledgment to Kristen. “Ma’am. An honor to have you ladies in my restaurant.”

“Chef,” Laurel said. “The honor is ours. This dish is exquisite. The spices are strong but balanced, never overpowering the core flavors. Deft combinations, perfect textures.” Her hands punctuated her words, fingers opening and closing like umbrella spokes.

Laurel freely expresses her pleasure over food, but she rarely raves. And she never gushes. Was it the tequila? Or the emotion of Doc’s death and Tory’s arrest?

No
, I thought, itching for another meatball.
This food is that good.

The chef beamed. He wiggled his fingers at the server, who held out his order-taker dealie and showed him our ticket. “Ah. You’ve chosen well. I hope you will let me buy dessert for the table, as a professional courtesy.” He turned to me for an answer.

I knew already I would be too full for dessert, because I intended to eat every bite on my plate and any scraps my companions dared leave behind. And I didn’t care. I grinned and nodded like a bobblehead doll.

Our main courses went down as smoothly as the meatballs, gliding across our palates like well-aged mezcal. We barely spoke. Not that we shoveled it in—no. We ate respectfully, deliberately, in reverent silence.

“Well,” I said after the server cleared our plates. “I’ll be coming back here. And after your praise, I bet I won’t have to beg for more of his business.”

Laurel’s eyes glinted, from more than the glow of the tin and glass star lights and wrought iron chandeliers hanging from the timbered ceilings. “When the news breaks,” she said, “you’re going to need goodwill in the food community.”

The delicious food in my stomach became a sodden weight. “Tell me you didn’t put on a show worthy of an Oscar.”

“No.” She wagged her head quickly. “This food is fabulous. I don’t normally praise other chefs to their faces. It’s not like we’re competitors—I’m doing breakfast and lunch and everyday take-out with a gourmet flair.”

Ripe’s slogan.

“But why not give an honest rave?” she continued. “It can’t hurt.”

I grabbed my bag and left the table, shaking. Could Tory’s arrest damage my business? The thought had not occurred to me. Why would anyone—commercial or casual customer—lose confidence in me because of accusations against my employee?

Or was Laurel right? Should I be out proactively reinforcing old relationships and building new ones?

I shoved open the red padded door to the women’s room—a vestige of a prior decorating scheme—and entered a shrine.

A montage of Frida Kahlo paintings covered one wall, embellished with stone-studded silver crosses. Another wall bore a mural of her famous calla lilies and dense jungle foliage. Deep pink and red floral headdresses of the style she often wore had been mounted above the gilt-framed mirrors over the sinks, so that I seemed to be wearing one.

It went well enough with the stretchy green-and-purple peasant blouse I’d pulled on over my black yoga pants—a spare top I’d kept at the office—but looked out of place with my dark spikes of hair.

The stakes were bigger than I’d realized.
How hard are you willing to fight for the new life you’ve made?
I asked myself.

Doc’s death and Tory’s involvement could affect more than just my shop and my own livelihood. The recession had cut a lot of HR jobs, though I had connections. I could always find something. But I felt an obligation to the Market and my staff to keep the Spice Shop going.

To make sure Tory had a job to come back to, when we got this mess cleared up.

I took a deep breath and stared at my reflection. Funny how seeing yourself with a fiesta on your head changes things.

Not that I wasn’t peeved at Laurel. When I resisted getting involved, she all but manipulated me into taking action.

Right goal, wrong approach.

“What would Frida do?” I said out loud. Behind me, a toilet flushed and a door unlatched. A woman I didn’t know emerged from a stall.

A slow flush crawled up my neck. Our eyes—mine embarrassed, hers amused—met in the mirror.

“Frida,” she said, dropping her handbag on a gilt chair covered in lush purple velvet, “would order another drink and eat cake.”

I nodded at the mirror.

Sí
.