Three

Chaos never picks a good time.

—Anonymous, that wise old philosopher

BY THE TIME WE GOT BACK TO THE GOLD RUSH, THERE WAS no question that it had become a crime scene. More lights, more patrol officers, more yellow tape.

Seetha and I followed Oliver inside. A uniformed officer asked Oliver for his ID, then spoke into his radio. The small lobby was overrun, and Roxanne had taken refuge in a chair in the corner, next to the windows with their view of the comings and goings in the street below.

“Tea,” I said. “The oldest medicine known to man. Or woman.”

She took the cup and sniffed the steam. “Thank you, Pepper. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

My usual wisecrack—“lie in the gutter and weep”—was completely inappropriate under the circumstances, and I resisted the urge to spit it out. Roxanne and I didn’t know each other well enough for my sense of humor. She was my boyfriend Nate Seward’s ex-wife’s younger sister, if you follow all that. We’d met last summer when a stone-studded silver trousse set, a sheath holding a knife and chopsticks, dating from eighteenth-century China became evidence in a murder in a vintage shop in the building where Seetha lives. Roxanne is an assistant curator at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, and Nate had sent me to her for help. Since then, we’d become friendly, if not quite friends.

And she mattered to Nate. A lot. That meant she mattered to me.

“Where’s Nate?” she said. “He didn’t come with you to the festival?”

“Alaska. Fishing.” I took the chair next to her and popped the lid off my tea. “Seetha and I came down for the food walk. We were going to meet Reed, who works for me, to watch—oh, parsley poop.”

I thumbed Reed a quick text. Sorry. Got held up. Wrong words; I x’d it out. Something came up. I’ll explain tomorrow. Good luck to your sister! Although her performance was probably long over. Outside, the light was fading. The afternoon had plumb slipped away. A white medical examiner’s van pulled up.

“I don’t understand why you went downstairs,” I told Roxanne, pent-up emotion spilling out. “You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt. You don’t have any idea who that poor man is?”

“No. Like I told the officer, I consult with private owners sometimes. Oliver hired me to catalog the artifacts in the building. But the real find is that pharmacy. I told him he needs to bring in an expert to evaluate it and help the family decide how to preserve it, but his parents—”

“Well, if it isn’t our good friend, Ms. Pepper Reece. Why did it not occur to me, when we got a call about a body in the basement of a rundown hotel in the International District, that I would run into you?”

“Detective Tracy,” I said. “I can explain.” The detectives had just come up the basement stairs. I’d encountered Tracy, a short Black man, and his partner, a tall blond woman, several times in recent years. They were good cops, even if they didn’t always have much patience for me.

“I’m sure you can. Meanwhile, tell me who your friends are and what you’re all doing here. Ms. Sharma, we know,” he said, glancing at Seetha, standing between Oliver and Officer Ohno.

I introduced Detectives Tracy and Spencer—yes, they’ve heard the jokes, and no, they’re not amused—to Oliver and Roxanne, who explained her project. The forensics team arrived, and Spencer took them downstairs.

“You own this building?” Tracy said to Oliver, and I heard his skepticism. Oliver was around thirty-five, his hair in a trendy cut. His bright yellow outfit, on the other hand—well, I suppose the king of the jungle look is always in style. Though I hadn’t spent a lot of time in the CID, I did know that most of the property down here is owned by families, some by family associations who manage the group assets. The street-level businesses, like the tea house and the barber shop and grocery store I’d passed, were rentals, though the hotel itself didn’t appear to have been active for decades. It was remarkably clean, though, and I detected a hint of incense.

Wait. Hadn’t Roxanne said the owner lived upstairs? Did Oliver live here?

“Yes,” Oliver said. “No. Actually, well, it’s in the family.”

“Your parents? Grandparents? Where are they?” Tracy surveyed the room with his usual sharp eye, as if expecting the elder Wus to materialize out of the woodwork or the faded rugs.

“I’ll call my parents,” Oliver said. “But I’d like to know more first.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” Tracy said.

“Detective,” Roxanne interjected, “can we talk about the artifacts in the basement? I’m very concerned—”

“We’ll get to that, Ms. Davidson,” Tracy said. “Meanwhile, I have a dead body to identify.” He held out his phone. There are times when the screen is more humane than the real thing, and asking someone to identify a dead man is one of those times.

Oliver stared at the screen. “No. No.”

“So he wasn’t part of your dance troupe?” I asked. “The lion dancers who were at the food walk earlier? Where you saw Seetha and me.”

“No,” he repeated. “It’s the Lunar New Year. There are lion dancers all over the place.”

As I’d seen myself. But if my doppelgänger were killed in my building . . .

“So you don’t have any idea what he was doing in your hotel, in that basement that Ms. Davidson is so concerned about?” Tracy asked. “Who has keys, besides the two of you? Your parents and who else?”

“It’s Dr. Davidson,” Oliver said. “To the hotel, no one. As you can see, we haven’t rented rooms in decades. I moved in a few weeks ago. That’s when I decided we needed a professional assessment. We—the family. We’re considering the options.”

Officer Ohno spoke up. “What can you tell us about the pharmacy? I’ve been around the CID most of my life and I’ve never heard a word about it.”

“Hmph,” Tracy grunted. He grunts a lot, and it’s rarely a pretty sound. Whether he was displeased by the young officer’s interruption or the thought of a crime scene complicated by historical status, I couldn’t guess.

Oliver rubbed the back of his neck.

“Not that I want you to take all day,” Tracy said, dropping into a leather chair that groaned with his weight, “but if you’re going to, I might as well sit.”

Oliver perched on the couch opposite him, forearms on his thighs, hands tightly clasped. “I’ve always loved the hotel, though I never spent much time here. It belonged to my grandfather, on my dad’s side. He died decades ago. The first-floor businesses all have separate street-front entrances.” A lock of hair fell over one eye and he flipped it out of the way. “When I moved in—”

“What prompted that?” Tracy asked.

“I broke up with my girlfriend and needed a place.” Oliver shot Seetha a quick look. “But it was time.”

How much did she know of all this? We see each other most Tuesday evenings at Flick Chicks, a group of five woman who talk as much about our personal lives as about the movie of the week, but Seetha doesn’t say a lot. She doesn’t get much chance, chatty as the rest of us are. She had mentioned having lunch with a new employee at a downtown hotel where she sometimes works as a massage therapist, and her cheeks had gotten bright. But that was all she’d said, and it hadn’t occurred to me until she recognized him during the lion dance that she, not by any means a foodie, had harbored an ulterior motive for joining my mother and me on the Lunar New Year food walk.

I sipped my tea and Oliver continued.

“The Changs were redoing their tearoom and ran into trouble with the plumbing. The access is through our basement, and when I took the plumber downstairs—”

Tracy made a twirling motion with one finger, telling him to speed it up.

“Turns out a couple of old doors had been blocked by false walls. One led to the passage with the plumbing access, and the other to the pharmacy. Clinic. Herb shop—whatever you want to call it.”

That explained the piles of construction debris.

“When were these false walls put up?” Tracy said.

“No idea. I’d already hired Roxanne to inventory all this stuff”—he gestured toward the lobby cabinets—“and the things in the rooms upstairs, so I asked her to take a look. That’s all I know about it.”

How had the lion dancer gotten into the hotel? I was sure he’d been searching for something.

Had the killer found it, or was it still downstairs, hidden by the mystery of time?

AFTER THE ME’s crew carried out the body, the crime scene detective came up to brief Tracy. Spencer was still in the basement. In Seattle, crime scene investigations are conducted by officers, not lay technicians. They focus on the physical evidence, freeing the major crimes detectives like Spencer and Tracy to focus on the victim and witnesses. The CSI detective explained their procedure. First, a structural engineer would be called, to ensure short-term safety. Then, they’d photograph the scene and use 3D scanners before evidentiary items were collected, so someone who hadn’t been at the scene could see it in all its detail.

“It’s old. It’s been closed off,” I said. “How can you tell what’s evidence and what isn’t?”

“Experience and professional judgment,” the detective answered. “We use alternate light sources to identify stains and pick out hairs and fibers. Putting evidence together to help solve a major crime is, frankly, one of the coolest things in the world.”

“It’s not like on TV,” Tracy said, “but it is pretty impressive.”

Roxanne seemed mollified, at least for now. Oliver’s parents hadn’t arrived yet.

“Detective,” I said to Tracy. “The victim was wearing a silver pendant.” My fingers went to my throat.

“Shape of a fortune cookie. I saw it. Any luck, ME’s office will find his name engraved on it, but I’m not holding my breath.”

They hadn’t found a wallet or other ID, then. John Doe, Lion Dancer.

After making sure she had our contact information, Officer Ohno escorted Seetha, Roxanne, and me to the door.

“I’ll tell my grandmother I met you,” the officer said. “She’ll be pleased, despite the circumstances.”

Outside, the crowd had thinned. I was starving—the har gow, memorable as they were, had been hours ago. Back we went to the Fortunate Sun, where the after-parade crowd nursed cups of tea, sake, and other comforts. We found a table upstairs and ordered the Lunar Special—a cabbage pancake with shrimp and a variety of sauces, sized to share, and a red bean cookie sampler. Roxanne protested that she was too upset to eat, but when the plates came, she dove in.

Me, I am rarely too upset to eat. Food is my comfort and joy, as well as my profession, and I was thrilled to see the café so busy on this special night. People in food service are the hardest-working people I know, from the produce sellers to the dishwashers to the line cooks. They do the work because they love food and feeding people, even though the job is hard, the hours long, the pay pitiful, and the people—well, people are difficult sometimes.

“I’m not sure the police understand how important that pharmacy is,” Roxanne said. “Historically and culturally.”

“What do you know about it?” I asked. No surprise that I didn’t know the story, but neither did Paula Ohno, with her deep roots in the CID. Though her family was Japanese. But history is part of the air down here.

“Almost nothing,” Roxanne said. “As Oliver said, it just came to light.”

“Pepper can help,” Seetha said. “She’s great at asking questions and digging up the past.”

Roxanne turned to me. “Would you? Please?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a full plate.” I forestalled entreaties by excusing myself and headed for the restroom. Keith might know a few things about the Gold Rush, the pharmacy, and the Wu family, but he was far too busy for a pop quiz. On the narrow stairs to the basement, I stopped on the landing to let two women by, going up. The elderly woman in front used a cane, a burgundy version of Aki Ohno’s purple stick, her slow progress made slower by her pauses to converse with the younger woman behind her.

“Shen-mo,” the older woman said. SHEE-en moe, to my ears, not used to an inflected language.

“Seriously, Mom? Death by possession? Wandering ghosts? Where do you get these ideas?”

Mom moved up one step, talking over her shoulder. “That building knows. The Wus have not done right by it. They have dishonored the past.”

She was talking about the body in the Gold Rush. I touched the brick wall next to me, the hotel basement on the other side.

“I know,” she continued, and let go of the iron handrail long enough to tap her skull with one bony finger. “The spirits will get their revenge.”

The daughter gave me a “what can you do?” look. I smiled in sympathy, though my bladder wasn’t so understanding, and the moment they passed, I dashed down the last few steps. Oliver had said the Changs needed to upgrade the plumbing. Must have been for the kitchen, because the remodel had not touched the tiny rest-room. Both sink and toilet were rust-stained, and the thick green paint on the walls was peeling in places, revealing shades of red and gold beneath. The effect was not unpleasant, stains aside. Back when faux finishes were the rage in interior design, trendsetters had paid good money for walls like this.

How had word spread so quickly? And what did the old lady mean, when she said the Wus had dishonored the past? Truth is, every community has its secrets, known only to those on the inside.

Which I was not. But I was intrigued. Enough to help Roxanne? Maybe. If I hoped to learn more about the secrets of the Gold Rush, I would have to hope fortune shone on me.