Killing Thyme (18 page)

“You get a pain in your ankle, it doesn't stop you from walking. It's a pain in your heart, but you keep living. You got to.”

“If your daughters and your other grandchildren are as lovely as Cayenne . . .”

“They are.” He ran his gnarled fingers over Arf's ears. “Now that we're all friends, don't be strangers.”

Avoid traffic problems. Move to Albuquerque.

—Emmett Watson, legendary Seattle reporter and curmudgeon

Oh, to hop a ferry and sail away, gliding across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula. Take my dog for a drive in the ancient rain forest. Browse the lavender farms at Sequim. Ogle the historic homes of Port Townsend. Stroll along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, gaze across the waters to Canada, and pretend I was a sea captain, exploring the New World.

Oh, brave new world!

Fat chance.

Nobody tells you when you buy a shop that you can never take a vacation. That you're on, even on your days off. You feel like you've married a building and an inventory and your staff, not to mention your vendors and your customers and your neighbors and Market management.

I'd waited for the detectives to stop and share their secrets with me over cookies and cappuccino, but they'd sped on by without so much as a wave. I sat in the Mustang and glared at my phone. Three texts from the staff, all semi-urgent. Two from Tag, which I ignored.

A text from Ben saying he finally had some time between meetings to research Russell and would e-mail me the results later today.
Good. Maybe then I can get somewhere.
I tossed the phone in my bag and stuck the key in the ignition. Time to get back to work. I didn't really want to indulge my running-away-from-it-all fantasy. I am reminded daily that chucking the corporate world for a life of spice is a very special kind of living the dream.

Besides, the shop needed me. Customers and employees needed me. I had pounds of hibiscus on its way and no plan.

All that, I could handle. What gave me the fire-alarm-from-a-dead-sleep-at-two-
A.M.
willies was the thought of telling Kristen the true history of her stolen bracelet.

And of forcing her to admit she knew more about the past—and Bonnie-Peggy's role in it—than she was telling me.

We crept up First Avenue South at a pace that would have bored a snail. When we finally reached Safeco Field, I saw that the Mariners were home, playing an afternoon game. Once we cleared the stadium traffic hangover, I zoomed up to the loft to park, then headed to the Market. Along the way, Arf and I stopped to visit a few vendors. I wasn't procrastinating; I was being social.

At least, that's what I told myself.

“Boss, this registry—”

“Sandra, no. Don't tell me the computer's on the blink or we have another Momzilla on our hands.” I was barely in the door when my second-in-command charged me.

“No. That's what I wanted to tell you. The registry is a hit. Wherever you got that idea, go back and get more brilliant ideas.”

I kissed her.

I set my sights on Kristen. My BFF and most congenial employee had given me the slip all day, but her time was up.

“I need to make a delivery and wet my whistle. Walk with me.”

Her chin dipped, and she gave me a hard look. “Don't suppose I have a choice.”

“Nope.” I faked a sunny smile and picked up a bag of spices Sandra had packed.

Part of the Market's charm is its history. Another is the nooks and crannies, the half-hidden places. My mission was Emmett Watson's Oyster Bar, a nook and cranny if there ever was one. The late founder and namesake had been a notorious grouch who'd used his newspaper column to advocate for Lesser Seattle. Tongue-in-cheek or not, he'd made an art of urban skepticism.

I handed the bartender his order—a black pepper he favored for his Bloody Marys, and dried chiles to flavor his vodka. He grunted his thanks. Kristen turned to leave, but I steered her toward a booth, and we squeezed in. Too grouchy to enjoy real food, I ordered a beer and deep-fried zucchini.

“Just iced tea,” Kristen said, her mouth tight, expression wary.

I'd learned, in fifteen years of solving personnel problems, that no matter what approach you take—and the options are legion—always, always leave out the emotion.

Trouble was, this problem wasn't personnel—it was personal. And I didn't know whether I was confronting Kristen, or protecting her.

The waiter slid our drinks onto the table.

“It's time to stop hiding the truth. Tell me everything you know about Bonnie. Peggy. Roger Russell.” I gripped the frosty glass and took a tiny, careful sip.

Her head jerked as if on a string, and her eyes narrowed. “Don't you push me.”

I leaned in, both hands and forearms on the table. “I need to know. What happened in June of 1985? We got to St. Louis, and my mother got a call. She flew home alone.” We made the long, sweaty trip to my grandparents' house every summer, hitting the road the day after school let out.

Kristen stared into the past. From the TV above the bar came the crack of a bat, followed by an anxious silence, then the staff and patrons cheered.

“And when Dad and Carl and I got home two weeks later,” I continued, “my mother had found the house in Ravenna and we moved.”

Kristen clenched her icy glass. The waiter set the fritters between us without a word.

I pressed on. “My parents always said we moved because it was time, we needed more space, especially with a growing boy. But it was more than that, wasn't it?”

A tear formed on the inner corner of her eye. “I couldn't tell you. I wasn't supposed to know. They argued and argued. They couldn't agree on what to do.”

I reached for her cold, damp fingers. “It had to do with Peggy, didn't it? And the tragedy.”

She looked up, baffled. “How did you find out?”

Suddenly I felt colder than the beer, than her iced tea. “They didn't know, did they? Your parents and mine? Tell me they didn't know what Roger and Peggy were planning.”

Tell me
, I meant,
that our entire childhood wasn't a lie. That our parents really did work and pray for peace and justice.

Tell me we were who I thought we were.

She shook her head slightly. “No. They didn't know until afterward. And I'm not sure they ever learned everything.” Her fingers tightened on mine. “Aja had a nightmare and woke up crying. She'd left her doll in the playroom, so I crept down to get it, and I hid behind the door to listen. Terry told the group what had happened. Roger had been killed. Peggy had disappeared. They thought . . . That's when my mother called yours.”

That's what my mother meant, last week in the Market.
“They thought she'd been part of the attack at the Strasburgs' house. They thought she'd been killed, too.”

“I'm certain none of them—your parents or mine—knew about the plan. The police came—several times—but the adults were careful to get the kids out of the house. I never did find out exactly what happened, or what Roger and Peggy expected to accomplish. But—but—” Her voice grew urgent. “Our house was the focal point of the community. Meetings, dinners. Everyone shared the van, the garden, the meditation room.”

“They crashed in the guest room and stored their stuff in your basement.”

“Right. So I always thought they—we—were the center of the community. In charge.”

“There were a lot of people doing a lot of projects in the name of Grace House. By then, it had lost its cohesiveness.” Not that I'd realized any of that as a kid. Not until now, when I could see that our parents had still been young themselves. Trying to figure out a new way to live, and raise their kids, and change the world.

But when it comes to people, some things never change.

“Right. And I think our parents were badly hurt when people started projects on their own, without consulting the others.”

“Without consensus.” Part of their credo.

“So when your mom came back, there were all these hush-hush meetings. Everything changed. When your family moved out, that was the beginning of the end for the whole community.”

With the self-centeredness of a twelve-year-old, I had not given much thought to the changes in our mothers' friendship.

But now that I saw that time through older eyes—we were older than they had been then—I could see the rift that never healed.

“All these years and you never said a word.”

“Nothing to say.” Kristen swished a zucchini fritter through the cucumber sauce. “Our lives didn't change much.
We were still friends. We were still in the same class and activities.”

“But the truth,” I said. “I would have known the truth.”

“Do any of us know the truth? I just knew a few more details.”

When I discovered that Tag had betrayed me with another woman, the details of our lives had realigned themselves. Shirts that came back from the cleaners that I didn't remember taking in, his last-minute schedule changes—they made a different picture. I questioned every good thing he'd ever done, every declaration of love, the essence of our lives together. The essence of my own life.

Details lose their power to hurt us over time, but like Mr. Adams had said, you don't forget the pain.

Something like that had happened to my mother in 1985. Part of me thought I should spare Kristen those details now, but this was no time for holding back.

Trust her strength. Trust your own
.

“Peggy wasn't killed. Obviously. She took off, but first she came back to the house. For how long, or who knew, I don't know. But long enough to hide the bracelet in your basement.”

Kristen's hand flew to her mouth, her barely pink nail polish the same shade as her cheeks.

I told her about my visit to Detective Washington and the picture he'd shown me. “No question. It's the same bracelet.”

She pressed her hands together, thumbs beneath her jaw, steepled fingers against her lips.

I did the same. When it comes to justice, I believe in work. But praying never hurts.

Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.

—Ellis Peters,
The Raven in the Foregate

“Do you know how much I love working down here?” Kristen said as we strolled out of the Soames-Dunn Building, arm in arm, as much to stick together on the crowded sidewalk as to reaffirm our best-friendship. “It's like, in the Market, anything can happen.”

“And does.” Across Pike Place, in the craft stalls, Bonnie's absence created no visible gap.

But those invisible gaps are a whole other story.

A familiar figure wearing Seahawks number 12—the fans' number—sauntered out of Starbucks. The staff know Hot Dog's love of cappuccino and occasionally buy him one from the tip jar.

“Summon your persuasive powers,” I told Kristen.

She gave me a conspiratorial wink, and we flanked him.

“Uh-oh. Two pretty women picking up a dude like me, somethin' ain't right.”

“Ah, Mr. Dog, a man of great taste,” Kristen said. “Not to mention talent and wisdom. You know, there's an espresso
bar at Changing Courses. And when you graduate, you can find a job with all the cappuccino you want, all day long.”

“Yes, ma'am.” The three of us sidestepped a couple, the woman using a motorized scooter.

“Now if you're worried about not being able to do the work—” Kristen said.

“Oh no, ma'am. I want to do it, real bad, but—”

“Is it your health?” I asked. “That new medication—”

We'd reached the corner across from the Spice Shop, and he stopped. It was impossible to tell from his face whether he was worried about the program or about disappointing us.

“Been a long time since I've spent the day inside. And I'd miss”—he waved a hand—“all this.”

From where we stood, I could see half a dozen takeout spots and smell a dozen more. Then there were the butchers and bakers and specialty grocers who open every morning by rolling up giant aluminum doors or pushing collapsible gates aside. Not to mention the food trucks and street vendors that dot the city much of the year, places of business not marked by four walls.

“Then you, my friend, have identified your first job requirement. That gives you a leg up.”

“Make that two job requirements,” Kristen said. “Fresh air and fresh coffee.”

Hot Dog's laugh rumbled up from the soles of his faded black Converse sneakers, a caffeinated burst that enveloped us all. After we'd stopped howling, and he'd promised to fill out an application the next day, Kristen and I headed for the shop.

“I'm gonna run down to the PDA,” I said at our door. The Public Development Authority, our landlord. “See if they'll tell me when Bonnie applied for a permit and when she started selling here.”

“Pepper.” Kristen grabbed my arm, her face serious. “Thank you for being a nosy, pushy, naggy little you-know-
what. I hated feeling a wall between us. I don't ever want to not be best friends with you.”

We hugged, and as I wove my way down the cobbled street, my throat felt full and the day looked a little brighter.

“He drove out to Carnation to see a flower grower,” the Market Master's assistant told me five minutes later. “I'm not sure I can give you vendor information. Since she's—dead.”

Exactly. She's dead—what difference does it make to you?
“Could you call him? Since I'm here?”

“If he's in the car or with a potential vendor, he won't answer,” she warned. “You know what a stickler he is about the rules.”

Sure enough, no answer. The assistant left a message, and I left irritated. Didn't help that the busker plying the customers near Rachel the Pig, at the Market's main entrance, was an elderly man playing a Chinese instrument that Ben—a font of arcane musical knowledge—had called an
urhu
. A small barrel-shaped body with a stringed neck, played with a bow, its sound was both haunting and irritating, depending on my mood.

Two feet inside the Spice Shop, my irritation turned to puzzlement. To perplexion, if that's a word—or even if it isn't. Hands clasped behind her back, Detective Spencer studied the wall map, pins marking the origins of our spices. (The map also hides a crack in the plaster that no amount of spackle or paint had covered. I am a practical decorator.)

And in the nook, Detective Tracy studied his phone.

“You never read my texts,” Sandra muttered between clenched teeth.

Guilty
.

“What happened?” Spencer missed nothing. “Are you limping? Your elbow's all scraped.”

I'd changed my torn pants earlier, but after all the
running around, my bruised knee had begun to act up. I should have changed into my lucky pink shoes. “Nothing. Not watching where I was going.”

Spencer scowled.

“We actually came to speak with Mrs. Gardiner,” Detective Tracy said. “But she insisted on waiting for you.”

Kristen had taken refuge behind the front counter, arms crossed.

“Ready if you are,” I said.

The nook got mighty tight mighty quick, and not from the head count. Unspoken tensions and unanswered questions take up a lot of room.

Spencer spoke first. “We're grateful to you for finding Ms. Clay's van.”

“Ms. Clay. Ms. Manning.” I snorted. “Or whoever the heck she was. Why was she using my mother's name?” My sympathy for Bonnie-Peggy dwindled as I saw the ripple effect of her actions.

“Without you, we might not have found her van for weeks, until someone in the neighborhood got suspicious.”

“Or tired of seeing it never move,” I said.

“And we would never have found this.” The detective drew a plastic evidence bag out of her pocket and set it on the butcher-block work top.

Nothing in the tales of Brother Cadfael and Sister Frevisse, or in
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Private Investigating
, prepared me for the sight of the Strasburg family jewels.

Kristen spoke first, in disbelief. “She stole the bracelet in 1985. And then, last week, she stole it back.”

“Looks that way,” Spencer said. “We found it hidden in a rusty metal toolbox under the floorboards of her van.”

Tracy opened a slim leather folder and pulled out the 1985 photo Detective Washington had shown me that
morning. He placed Kristen's photo next to it on the table. Between it lay the diamond and sapphire MacGuffin, wrapped in plastic.

There was no question, no doubt. The lost had been found.

Kristen's hooded glance did not escape our detectives' notice.

“Care to share those thoughts?” Spencer said.

Kristen let out a noisy breath. “I thought Bonnie—Peggy, or whoever—was killed because someone wanted the bracelet. But now that we know she stole it—”

“Twice,” Tracy interjected.

“The question is, who else wanted it? Who else knew about it?”

Brian Strasburg.
Though I couldn't work out why he'd steal it. Or kill for it, thirty years later.

“Somehow, she was able to hide the bracelet in the basement of Grace House without being seen,” I said.

“Place like that,” Tracy said, “anybody could have wandered in and out.”

No one ever seemed to get that our lives as kids had not been an undisciplined free-for-all. But he was right. In those simpler, trusting times, Grace House had rarely been locked. Peggy could easily have slipped in, hidden the bracelet, and vanished.

“What about Hannah Hart? Isn't it just as likely that the killer is someone from the present as the past? Hannah wanted Bonnie out of the studio and apartment. And Bonnie didn't want to leave.”

“Too soon to close any doors,” Tracy said. “But it would all be a lot easier if your mother would open up.”

“Is that why you're here?” I leaned forward, hands on the table. “To guilt me to pressure her? To do what? You've interviewed her, more than once. She's told you all she knows.”

Truth was, I didn't completely believe that. Why wasn't she clamoring to find the killer?

“No,” Spencer said. “No guilt, no pressure. But time has a way of highlighting one's priorities. I hear your mother was a fierce advocate for justice. What's changed?”

Good question. I wished I knew the answer.

*   *   *

Kristen and I walked the detectives outside, then watched their unmarked car creep down the cobbled street. We made an odd pair, I knew, the fine-boned blonde and the spiky brunette, both dressed in black, arms crossed, faces guarded.

“They still think we know more about the 1985 incident than we're admitting,” she said.

“All we have is conjecture. Theories aren't evidence, especially since we haven't actually got one that works.”

Kristen scooped a discarded sample cup out of the gutter. “True. I always knew there had been an upheaval and that it involved Roger and Peggy. But the bracelet—that's a shocker. I wonder why she didn't take it with her.”

“She intended to come back.”

Terry Stinson had said Peggy finally understood they were no threat to each other. If Kristen remembered right who was involved in all the discussions, then he had known about Peggy's role in the Strasburg incident. So had my mother. Neither had known she survived.

Why did Peggy no longer fear him? What had changed?

“My dad wouldn't be any help,” Kristen said. “He stayed out of it. When tempers flared, he took the dog for a walk.”

“And all my dad knows is what my mother told him.” Not that Detective Tracy believed our dads' absence anything but a convenient coincidence.

Now there was a man who didn't trust the Universe.

“Do you work here?” a thin woman in a sleeveless red
blouse asked. “Where's the best place for a late lunch? With a view?”

“And a bar,” her husband added.

“The deck at the Pink Door,” I said at the same moment as Kristen said “outside at Maximilien.” I slipped an arm around her waist. We were back in sync, but that didn't mean we agreed on everything.

Kristen took off early to pick up the girls for a special last-day-of-school outing. The boxes of books she'd been unpacking when first I, then the detectives, had interrupted her blocked one narrow aisle.

Never the same day twice, in retail.

“Oh, good. We've been waiting for this one.” I shelved two copies of
World Spice at Home
, featuring new flavors for classic dishes, then stacked the rest amid a display of spice blends. Maybe Laurel and I should write our own cookbook.

I slit open the next box and reconsidered my working theories about Bonnie's murder and the no-longer-missing bracelet. She had seized the opportunity, in Kristen's bedroom, to take the bracelet, but she had not dared leave it in her own apartment or studio.

She'd been afraid of someone connected to that bracelet.

But her apartment and studio had been undisturbed. The killer wasn't prowling for jewels.

The killer wasn't the person Bonnie had feared.

That gave me two mysteries to solve. And it put the elusive Hannah back on top of the list of suspects.

I made room for two of my favorite food memoirs—
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen
, by the late novelist Laurie Colwin, and
The Art of Eating
, by M. F. K. Fisher, which had the added advantage of being thick enough to crush a garlic clove. As I shuffled books, I decided Brian
Strasburg warranted a closer look. He had a powerful motive for wanting to know who else to blame for his father's murder. And if the bracelet had sentimental value—the insurance company would have paid its dollar value ages ago—he might have wanted it back, too.

I flattened an empty box—always satisfying—and slit open the next one. Had his mother kept a scrapbook of ancient clippings, like mine had? Had he asked Callie to do any unusual research recently, to use the people-finder databases that professional investigators—and lawyers—sometimes use to track down missing heirs and witnesses?

If Strasburg had found Bonnie, née Peggy, I had to believe he'd have told Detective Washington. He would not have gone rogue.

Hold on, Pepper
. That day he'd come to the Market, in early May, he and his son had been searching for a Mother's Day gift for his ex-wife. They'd chosen a gift box—our Middle Eastern spice blends, if I remembered right. We'd chatted a bit. The boy had been polite and curious, our spice tea too strong for him.

If they had wandered through the craft stalls, they might have seen Bonnie-Peggy. Though whether either lawyer or potter would have recognized the other, I had no idea.

Wait.
He'd been ten. He'd seen his father killed. Had he seen her?

He would not have forgotten those eyes.

I shivered and shelved a new foodie mystery by an author who wrote under both her own name, Daryl Wood Gerber, and a pen name, Avery Aames. What if Peggy Manning was itself a made-up name? Ever since its founding, folks had flocked to Seattle to escape the strictures of life elsewhere. No doubt more than a few had left their names behind, alongside their histories.