Killing Thyme (19 page)

In mainstream culture, no one changes her name over and over without a darned good reason—like fear of being
found. Of course, few people who'd circled through Grace House back then swam in the mainstream.

My frustration with the late Bonnie Clay turned darker, bitter. She'd been on the run. She'd come back to the place where it started. She'd been keeping an eye on me.

Why, why, why?

“Hey, boss. What about a hibiscus spice rub on ribs?” Cayenne's interruption brought me back to the present.

In the memoir section, I slid a copy of
Day of Honey
into the Cs, for Ciezadlo, and leaned against the shelves. “Sounds delish. Go for it. Hey, I saw your grandfather this morning. He's so proud of you.”

“I was hoping the police would have good news. He's so stubborn. He and Grandmama bought that house when they moved here in 1950, and he insists he's going to die in his own home.”

“Anybody tried to hurt him, he'd smack 'em with his three-iron. Why does he use a golf club instead of a cane?”

“He wanted to play, but most courses in Louisiana were whites-only back then. Black men could caddy, and he did. One of the members gave him that club—an old one of his, I suppose—and Pops hung on to it.”

“Did he ever pick up the game? When they moved out here—”

“He was busy, working at Boeing, raising kids. Raising a garden. Pepper, do you think he's in danger? If Bonnie was killed by a gang or a burglar—he's up all hours of the night. But he's harmless. Just a neighborhood busybody.”

Neighborhood busybodies
. Me and Louis Adams.

Home
. Was that why Bonnie had wanted to return to Seattle? To die in the city where she, a wandering soul, had most belonged?

Truth was, Mr. Adams had seen something, right out that window and through the opening in the hedge. Nothing useful—an unidentified car speeding away. But the killer
might not know that. The killer might think the old man a threat.

“Don't worry about him,” I said. “The police have pretty much ruled out a neighborhood criminal.”

Truth was, I didn't have a clue. And until the killer was caught, we might all be in danger.

Every 3.5 seconds, someone in America loses a cell phone—usually in a coffee shop. So, it makes sense that Seattle, first in the country for number of coffee shops, also ranks high for lost cell phones.

—NW Lawyer, the Washington State Bar Association blog

Where had she been, all those years?
That was the question dogging me as Arf and I closed up the shop.

And another: What had Detective Washington told Brian Strasburg about the cold case and other suspects, besides the late and apparently not-much-lamented Roger Russell? You'd never think a grieving family member would take the info police gave him, to keep him informed, to keep him satisfied that they were doing their job, and use it for vigilante justice.

The average person wouldn't think that. A cold case detective, on the other hand . . .

I dropped Arf at the loft and took off.

And spotted my target just in time. The big man crossed Cherry, an after-work pick-me-up from Starbucks in one hand, a battered brown leather briefcase in the other, and started up the hill.

“
Come on, light.
” Not smart to tempt fate by jaywalking in front of police headquarters. Red became green, and I sprinted across Fifth.

“Detective,” I called.

Washington stopped and turned toward me. “Ms. Reece. I'd say it's a pleasure, but I suspect I should reserve judgment on that.”

“Working overtime on a cold case. Must mean you got a break.” I paused to catch my breath. This block of Cherry might be flatter than the lower stretches, but that didn't say much, in this city of hills. “Did your office keep tabs on Bonnie Clay? Or Peggy Manning, or whoever she was?”

“Why would we do that, and why does it matter so much that you came all the way down here to ask me?”

“I want to know if she's been hiding behind my mother's name all these years. And I imagine you wanted to quiz her about the Strasburg incident. To find out if she knew who else was there, the night of the murder.”
To get her to admit she was the one who got away.

Washington set his briefcase on the sidewalk. “My office, as you generously put it, is me. Certainly we did quiz Mr. Russell's large circle of friends and associates. The detectives worked long, hard hours tracking down everyone they could, but mouths were pretty tight. And cold cases don't get the attention you might think from watching TV and reading books.”

A dark sedan emerged from the police parking garage, and the driver rolled down the window, sizing up the situation. Washington raised a hand in an “it's okay” gesture, and the car turned up Cherry.

I folded my arms, feet wide. “You kept your suspicions about another person out of the news. Makes sense. But if you thought Roger Russell acted alone, you'd have closed the case way back when. So when you couldn't crack anyone at Grace House—and I know you tried—you concluded that
the other person had disappeared.”
You
—and I meant it in the generic sense, his bosses and predecessors—
had pushed my mother and her friends. You drove a wedge into the community that broke it apart
.

He peeled the lid off his coffee and blew on it, his gaze never leaving my face. “Certainly we wondered. Disappearing was easier back then. And once the trail grew cold, the resources got pretty slim.”

“But if someone else had the resources . . .”

“What are you saying, Ms. Reece?” His tone got a notch gruffer and a hair demanding.

“Two things. The bracelet proves someone else was there. And you have an eyewitness. He was only ten, and he didn't know what he'd seen, let alone who.” I stepped back to let a passerby through. “You never met Bonnie Clay, Detective. But no one who did, no matter what name she was using, ever forgot her eyes.”

He said nothing.

“You knew she'd been close to Roger Russell. If there was a third person, who more likely than Peggy? And she'd gone missing. Then, thirty years later, Brian Strasburg is all grown up. He's raging and vengeful, and he has the money and the ability to track her down. Funny thing is, after all that effort, he ran into her right here in the Emerald City. Because, it turns out, there really is no place like home.”

The detective's jaw rose slightly. I'd hit the mark. Brian Strasburg
had
seen Bonnie—Peggy Manning. He
had
seen those eyes. Sympathy pains for the boy whose family had been destroyed warred with my anger over what he might have done.

“We had no evidence directly linking her to the Strasburg tragedy. Not until today.” He pulled keys from his jacket pocket, then picked up his briefcase and started down the ramp into the parking garage.

I trotted after him. “You can convict on circumstantial evidence.” Not for nothing had I been a cop's wife and a veteran law firm staffer.

“We didn't even have that. She was a person of interest, nothing more.”

“But her return to Seattle after all these years must have made her more interesting. Especially to Brian Strasburg.”

He clicked his key chain, and a tan Camry blinked its lights. “To all of us. For years, Strasburg called me every three months. One day a month or two ago, I realized I hadn't heard from him in ages. So I called him.” He slowed his steps and sipped his coffee. “That's when he told me he'd seen her selling pottery in the Market. He said seeing her changed everything. He realized his therapist was right: His obsession with his father's murder was killing him. His mother had died, and it was time to let it go.”

“And you believed him?”

“I did. I do. But my job is to not let it go. I strolled through the Market, saw her myself. Tasked the patrol officers, including your ex, with keeping an eye on her.”

Tag knew?

I swallowed that sharp surprise. “Not close enough, apparently, or she wouldn't be dead. So let me get this straight. Through a combination of therapy and a chance sighting, Brian Strasburg claims a change of heart and you let him off the hook?” Washington opened the back door and set his briefcase on the floor behind the driver's seat. “Maybe he stopped calling because he didn't need you anymore. He'd found her. He could get revenge on his own.”

The detective opened the driver's door and took another sip of coffee. “And you wonder why I haven't been sleeping.”

“Wait.” I grabbed the edge of his door. “You went to the Market. You saw her. You bought a piece of her pottery, didn't you, for the fingerprints?”

His eyebrows rose. He slid into the car and reached for the door handle. “Detective Spencer is right. You have great instincts. But I wish you'd stay out of my case.”

I let go of the door and stepped back, watching as he started the Camry and drove away.

I can't stay out of it. I'm too deep in it.

*   *   *

Ah, home.
Shoes off, I headed for the kitchen. Punched on the oven, put the butcher's gift in the fridge, and gave my ever-patient dog the bone. Changed my clothes and cued up my sit-stay-think-cook-pout playlist—Ani DiFranco, Emily Elbert, Madeleine Peyroux. And Brett Dennen, so I could dance while pouting. The oven beeped, and I popped in a pan of ziti with mushrooms and zucchini—a Ripe takeout special—and got out the big mixing bowl.

The first batch of gingersnaps was ready to go in when the ziti finished baking. I poured a glass of Chianti, and put my feet up.

As investigations go, this one was about as thick as cookie dough. Only two suspects had surfaced, and neither fully solved the mystery.

What was I missing?

Washington as much as admitted that Strasburg's connection to the old case made him a suspect in the current one. He claimed an alibi, but killers always do, don't they? I'd let Spencer and Tracy run that one down—they had those “resources.”

If Callie were in town, I might be able to weasel a tidbit or two out of her. But over the phone or by text? No way. She would not disclose a boss's private project unless she were convinced it was absolutely necessary to avoid an injustice. Even for an old boss.

And while lawyers often rely on their assistants for research, I suspected that finding Peggy Manning would have
been too important to delegate. The satisfaction would lie in the hunt, in knowing he was doing everything he could to track down everyone involved in his father's murder. That old wound, that old grudge, might have driven him to his profession in the first place. Tag had briefly worked with a woman bent on pursuing the man she believed had killed her sister. Too focused on the one crime, too bereft to serve and protect anyone else, she'd been unable to crack the case. She'd left the force after a few years, destroyed by grief and failure.

One more victim of the crime.

I could not see the hard-driving, hard-edged, hard-nosed Brian Strasburg as anyone's victim. But those hard shells, those tough crusts people put on can hide some awfully tender spots.

“What do you think, boy?” I stroked Arf's back. He needed a good commercial cleaning, and I made a mental note to call the groomer.

Why had Bonnie-Peggy taken the bracelet, that summer night so long ago? An impulse grab, or a means to finance other protests?

But this bracelet had not been sold. It had been stashed away and left behind.

The intercom interrupted my musings.

“Delivery, for Ms. Pepper Reece.”

I buzzed Tag in and grabbed my phone. Sure enough, the first text I'd ignored had said he had a belated birthday gift from his mother. The second message said he'd swing by tonight.

Be nice, Pepper.

Minutes later, he set a large, bulky shape wrapped in a red-and-white checked picnic cloth on my dining room table. His mother's decorating style runs Danish modern with a hint of Frank Lloyd Wright, where mine tends toward
midcentury Middle America, but Phyllis has a talent for finding the right gift.

“Happy Birthday. Sorry we're late.” Arf padded over to join the fun, and Tag's fingers went automatically to the terrier's floppy ears. “Open it.”

I untied the tablecloth to reveal a vintage picnic basket of woven maple. Inside the hinged lid, elastic bands held silverware, the plastic handles the same sunny yellow as the four plastic plates and cups stacked beside a red-and-yellow plaid thermos. The red-and-white gingham napkins looked new. The bottle of champagne was cold—Tag's contribution.

My thumb and forefinger pinched the skin of my throat, as if to loosen the emotions swelling there. “It's perfect. Tell her it's perfect. Dinner?”

I poured him a glass of Chianti. We put salad and ziti on the picnic plates and climbed out the window.

But the gift hadn't wiped away all my irritation. “I hear you've been on spy duty.”

“Well, that's part of my job.” He speared a cherry tomato with his yellow-handled fork. “Got anything particular in mind?”

“John Washington told me he asked you to keep an eye on Bonnie Clay.”

“He wanted to know her routine, whether we saw anything unusual.”

“Did he want you to find out whether she was in touch with me or Kristen?”

“Wha-a-at?” His eyebrows dipped, and his mouth hung open. “No. Detectives ask us to do stuff all the time. They don't bother telling us why. I didn't even know you knew her.”

“Me, neither. Not until—” The oven timer went off, and I pushed back my willow green bistro chair and squeezed past him. The pungent scent of my secret ingredient made
my mouth water. I slid in the second tray, reset the timer, and stepped back outside.

“Okay, so you brought your mother's gift, and that was sweet, but you're here about the murder, right?”

“Pepper.” He reached over and grabbed my wrist. Not hard, but it was enough to stop me. To catch my attention.

I wrested my hand free, but he'd scooted his chair close to mine, trapping me on my own veranda. No choice but to stay and face the music.

At the moment the only music I could hear was an old Foreigner tune streaming out Glenn's open window, drowning out every sound except the blood pulsing in my brain.

“You want me to back off and leave the investigating to the professionals. Well, let me remind you, Mr. I-never-made-detective-and-it-still-pisses-me-off. I'm a pretty darned good investigator. I found two killers before Spencer and Tracy did, and uncovered a trail of identity theft and fraud that might never have surfaced if not for me. And before you go off on your rant about putting myself in danger, remember I managed to get myself out of danger just fine.” With a sprained ankle and a few scrapes, and help from a dog. I ignored my stiff knee and resisted the urge to rub my skinned elbow. “Besides, if they think my mother had anything to do with Bonnie's death or what happened in 1985—”

“Pepper.” He leaned forward. “I'm not telling you to stay out of this because I don't trust you. I'm not—”

“Everything okay out there, Pepperonella?” The music had stopped, and Glenn's voice filled the silence, an innocent question warning anyone who might be threatening me.