Seven

The China Day parade in the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition, Seattle’s first World’s Fair, included a 150-foot-long dragon carried by 50 people, and members of the Chinese community wearing ancient warrior costumes marching on foot and riding on horseback.

IT’S NOT EVERY DAY THAT YOU WALK BACK INTO YOUR HAPPY place to find homicide detectives waiting for you.

I sent Arf to his bed. Stashed the cheese and joined my friends—I use the word loosely—in the nook, where Spencer was scrolling on her phone and Tracy was scowling. Probably because no one had offered him any cookies, although they did have tea.

“You brought good news, right? It was all a mistake. The dead man’s alive and well. The pharmacy’s intact and everyone’s playing nice.”

Spencer raised her eyebrows and Tracy glared like I’d been smoking in the boys’ room.

“Well, a girl can hope.” I slid in across from them. “At least tell me you know who he is. You’ve found his family, and you’re sure you know who killed him.”

At the sight of their blank faces, I slumped against my seat.

“One thing we can usually be sure of in the Chinatown-

International District,” Detective Spencer said, “is that everyone knows everyone.”

“Doesn’t mean they’ll tell us,” Tracy said. “But someone knows.”

“Officer Ohno and another of our Asian officers are making the rounds.” Spencer scrolled through her phone again. “They’ve got good community rapport. We’d hoped the Wus or a tenant could identify the victim, but so far, no luck. Take another look.”

She held out her phone and showed me the morgue photo. The lion dancer’s face had been cleaned up. No blood. Cuts and scrapes. Dark hair, cut short on one side. Sad brown eyes—or did they look that way to me because I knew he was dead? Because I was looking at him through my own sad brown eyes?

“No. I’m sorry. Not familiar at all.” The truth of it made me even sadder and I wished I’d poured myself a cup of tea before joining the detectives. “The other dancers, the festival organizers?”

“No joy,” Tracy said.

Why was the dead man in costume, if he hadn’t been part of the entertainment? This wasn’t one of those events where attendees dress up. When the annual Comic Con takes over the convention center downtown, superheroes and demon slayers flood the streets, and I remembered vividly the day Sandra and I stood on the sidewalk and watched the entire cast of Batman traipse down Pike Place.

“So what was he doing inside the hotel? The pharmacy in particular?” I asked.

“We were hoping you had some insight. From your new best friend, Dr. Davidson.”

“She’s hardly that.” I was glad Tracy had said “doctor” this time, so I didn’t have to correct him.

“You let a stranger spend the night at your place?”

How did he know?

“It’s hard to explain.” But I did, and then asked the question that had been bothering me all day. And all night. “You think this was murder, don’t you?”

“Pepper, you know it’s too soon to say.” Spencer slid her phone into her jacket pocket. “We’re gathering facts. Waiting for the ME and the forensics. Scouting out witnesses.”

“Which brings us back to your friend-not friend,” Tracy said. “You pour a little wine in her, she spill a little gossip? Talk in her sleep and tell you all about it?”

“Seriously, Detective. You don’t suspect Roxanne? She’s an art historian. A museum curator. I can’t fathom her killing a man, and she would never intentionally break historic artifacts, no matter how small.” Like the tiny glass vials and bottles that had crunched beneath my feet when I checked on the dead man. I pushed the memory away.

Tracy grunted. “Ask your boyfriend.” Then, to Spencer, “You were right. She doesn’t know anything, and she doesn’t have anything to eat. Let’s get out of here.”

He slid out of the booth and stalked to the door. Spencer put a hand on my arm. “You know how grumpy dead bodies make him.”

“He should check his blood sugar,” I said, and she fought off a smile.

They left, leaving me thinking about Roxanne. They’d implied something negative in her past, something I didn’t know that Nate did. My phone was in my apron pocket, but now was not the time.

“Do they have any idea who he is?” I hadn’t noticed Reed approach.

“The victim? Not yet.”

“’Course, even if the locals know him, they might not want to say,” he said, unconsciously echoing the detectives. “If they think he’s not legal or might be in trouble.”

“In trouble? He’s dead.”

“Yeah, but they might have their reasons.”

“What? Why? What reason could you have for not identifying a dead man? For not helping the police find his family and get justice?”

Unless identifying the victim somehow pointed at the killer, someone they wanted to protect. Or there was some other secret that people in the know wanted to keep.

I knew the neighborhood was concerned about increasing violence, especially hate-driven crime. And that rising crime feels like both an attack on the community and a failure of it.

“You ever hear rumors about Bruce Lee haunting the Gold Rush? Or any place nearby?”

Reed snorted. “Everybody likes a good ghost story, but no. No way anybody would ever have kept that quiet. Bruce Lee’s practically a god in Seattle. Everything about his life here’s been dug up and documented. You served him tea once, you brag about it forever.”

I made a framing gesture with my hands, indicating a sign. “‘George Washington slept here’?” “ Exactly.”

Hmm. My turn to grunt. Detective Michael Tracy had that effect on me.

SMOKED cheddar, I’m happy to report, goes well with apples and homemade seed crackers. And red wine. I took another sip and stared out the windows of my loft. The evening skies were still gray, the lights of the harbor and Alki barely piercing the mist outside. Or the fog in my brain.

I was restless and not because of the mist and murder—I was sure the death in the Gold Rush was murder, despite Spencer and Tracy’s noncommittal responses.

Quite simply, I did not know what to do with myself, and the weekend trauma underscored that undeniable truth.

I worked. I walked the dog. I read a bit and watched a movie with my friends every week or two. Occasionally, I hit up a festival with a friend or my visiting parents.

But I was feeling stagnant. Like my life was missing something.

And it wasn’t just Nate’s absence that had brought this on. My parents were looking for a place to live, yes, but part-time. New digs or no, they’d be heading back to Costa Rica soon. I see my brother regularly and talk to him often, but he has his own life and family. It had been months since Kristen and I had gone antiquing. It’s great fun to come across a cool old chair or quilt, find a match for the vintage wine glass that broke, or score the perfect addition to the salt and pepper shaker collection my grandmother Reece started for me not long after my grandfather bestowed my nickname. My cupboards were crammed with vintage kitchen wares—the brightly colored Fiestaware Tag and I hunted down when we were first married, my Hungarian grandmother’s wooden rolling pin, and the stack of Pyrex mixing bowls from a second-hand shop on Whidbey Island. But it’s not a collection if you use them, is it?

I loved seeing those reminders of other times around me now, and I missed my jaunts with girlfriends. Not that any of us needed more stuff. Our homes—and Kristen’s house dwarfed my loft— were full.

Besides, her girls were young teenagers now and she took every chance they’d give her for an outing together, sometimes with their friends.

Heck, even Seetha had a friend I hadn’t known about—Oliver Wu.

I needed a hobby. But what?

My melancholy was pierced by questions from the weekend. Who was the man in the basement rubble? Why had he been there? What was Oliver Wu hiding?

And what had Detective Tracy meant by his comments about Roxanne?

I texted Seetha to see how she was holding up. No reply. I didn’t want to bother Laurel. Most weekdays, she’s up before the crack of dawn to bake, and Sunday evenings were her quiet-before-the-storm time.

Nate and I talked almost every night and texted regularly. If I called him this early, he’d know something was up. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to inflict my sour mood on him. And I didn’t want to ask him to dish dirt about Roxanne. I wasn’t sure what I’d be asking, or if I really wanted to know.

While I was dithering, my phone pinged with a message from Reed. His grandfather knew nothing about a Chinese doctor who’d worked in the Gold Rush. But his interest was piqued. For a sight like that, he’d brave the steep stairs.

I’ll tell Roxanne, I texted back. Maybe one of the other businesses had a service elevator Henry Locke could use. Although now that I thought about it, I hadn’t noticed any doors other than the one to the pharmacy. Did the basement not run under the entire building? Is that why access to the plumbing had been so tricky?

I thumbed a note to Roxanne, not sure she would reply. Something had shifted in her attitude toward me over brunch, and it wasn’t from the Bloody Mary or the apple cake. So then what?

To my surprise, she replied almost instantly saying she was thrilled and would tell Oliver that the Lockes were on board. Great, I texted back. Not unusual for an adult child, especially a son, to take over a family business and manage property. If it was family property, wouldn’t he consult them before making major decisions like letting an outsider see a room that had obviously been hidden intentionally? Of course, as I was learning, there was Family with a big F and family with a small f.

The Gold Rush, though, did not seem to fit the usual patterns in the CID, even aside from the historic horde in the basement. And the Lockes were part of the Chinese community, which Roxanne and I were not.

No matter how tasty, smoked cheddar and crackers do not a dinner make. I put together a chef’s salad with hard-boiled eggs, sliced turkey and salami, and a few cubes of that yummy cheese. Gave Arf a chew bone he took to his bed in the corner. Sat at my dining table reading a National Geographic article about harvesting black cardamom in a Vietnamese national park. The cultural and historical impact of the spice trade was huge and complicated, and as I read, I replayed my conversation with Roxanne. Things had gotten strange after she’d asked about food and cultural appropriation. I wondered how the conversations went in the museum world. Certainly, I’d heard news reports of countries and tribes requesting the return of stolen artifacts. And it had been headlines when two Seattle carvers pled guilty to federal crimes for falsely claiming tribal heritage to sell their work.

In fact, some Seattleites wanted to remove the totem poles that have presided over Victor Steinbrueck Park for more than forty years. Totem poles are often associated with Seattle, but they don’t represent the Native peoples of the Puget Sound. Historically, they’re the work of tribes further up the coast, from Vancouver Island north into Alaska. No one doubted these poles had been planned and created in the spirit of compassion, and visitors love them. But were they a sign of the ties between the peoples of the larger region, or a failure to acknowledge the local culture? The issue was undecided. I’d managed to avoid being forced to take a stand. It wasn’t up to the merchants, and I always try to see both sides, even when it gives me a crick in the neck.

Which, in a roundabout path that only the truly weary brain can take, brought me back to Roxanne and Nate, and Detective Tracy’s veiled suggestion that the curator wasn’t all she seemed to be and that Nate knew all about it. He hadn’t said a word.

Actually, he had, last night. He’d told me to be careful.

A lover’s reflexive response to my proximity to crime, or a warning from the voice of experience?