Between a Wok and a Dead Place: A Spice Shop Mystery

Australian spice wizard Ian Hemphill says cloves are believed to have been introduced to China during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when courtiers held them in their mouths to sweeten their breath while addressing the emperor. That makes cloves among the first reported breath fresheners.

As if the dark interior hadn’t been proof enough, the red-and-white sign in the window made it clear. The costume shop was not open. I should go mind my own business.

But first, I wanted a better look. What I hoped to see, I couldn’t say. The shop was close enough to the CID to do a good business at the Lunar New Year, or so I imagined. I am not a costume girl. Not after the Halloween when I was ten and an older boy deliberately stepped on my sari, made from my grandmother’s lace tablecloth, leaving me standing on the sidewalk, blocks from home, half-naked and crying while he and his bully buddies mocked my long skinny legs. Between them, my mother and grandmother had been able to repair the lace, but the damage was done. Thirty-three years ago, and I haven’t worn a costume since.

I peered at the lions and dragons and other regalia. The lights came on and I stepped back, startled. Had I triggered a sensor? Summoned the Imperial Guard?

“Hello, young lady.” An older man, seventy and well-padded, stood in the doorway. The bushy white beard and ring of white hair around his pale pink skull, along with the belly, suggested he’d come to the costume business through his resemblance to the chief denizen of the North Pole. And yes, his eyes twinkled.

“I never knew this was here.” Everywhere I turned, I spotted a different holiday, sports motif, or movie wardrobe. Center stage— quite literally, on a slowly rotating platform built to show off the latest, shiniest new car—was devoted to Valentine’s Day. Long strings of hearts hung from overhead pipes and huge Mylar heart balloons fluttered as I walked by. And the costumes. Romeo and Juliet, Taylor and Burton. Han and Leia.

“People do that?” I said, tilting my head at a pair of male and female mannequins dressed—if you could call it that—in nothing but hearts, pasted in strategic places and combinations.

“Oh, pretty lady, you’d be surprised what people do.” he said, and I saw that it was true. Animals of all kinds. Bob Ross get-ups, with wig and palette. Every Star Wars figure I could remember and some I couldn’t. I stroked a Chewbacca costume, the fake fur remarkably like Arf’s very real fur.

“Cosplay’s booming,” he continued, noticing my interest, “and costume parties for the New Year will never go out of style. Santa and the elves—my personal favorite—are always popular and we do a good business in Easter Bunnies. But a costume shop lives and dies for Halloween.”

As I could see by the way Harry Potter, Dumbledore, and Professor Trelawney watched me from one corner of the showroom, next to a display of wands and other wizarding paraphernalia.

“Ah, yes. ’Bout time for that to rotate out. Leprechaun season is approaching.”

Never once in my life had I thought about leprechauns having a season. “What I’m hoping you can tell me . . .”

I hadn’t planned to stop at the costume shop. Hadn’t ever noticed the place and didn’t have a good excuse worked up. Or even a bad one.

So I told Mr. S. Claus, retired, the truth. If he truly was the old man, he’d know it anyway, wouldn’t he?

“Hmm,” he said after hearing me out. “Not sure I can be much help. We do have the big critter in the window, for parties and school events. Dragons are more popular—we’ve got a few rented out right now. Most of the dancers belong to regular troupes so they’ve got their own kit. At my age, it pays to double-check my memory, but I’m thinking we haven’t stocked those small masks for quite a while.” He strode toward the back, me on his heels, passing racks of tableware, party favors, and assorted paper goods. I ducked underneath a bevy of brightly colored piñatas, and as the shopkeeper paused to open his office door, I peered into the vast storeroom. Rows and rows of shelves filled with wig-topped heads and all manner of hats and helmets. Racks of vintage uniforms, clown costumes, and Elvis’s spangled jumpsuits.

In this barn of a building crammed with a funky mix of new and vintage, I would not have been surprised to see my spirited guide open drawers of a wooden card catalog, sending puffs of mid-last-century dust into the air as he searched his records. Instead, he moved to a modern standing desk and began clicking keys on a shiny laptop.

He pressed his lips together and blew out a breath. “No luck, I’m afraid. Now, I’m not the only costume shop in town, though I think I’m the best.” His pink cheeks glowed as he said this. “Another shop might carry the kind of gear you’re talking about.”

But those other shops weren’t on my way to the warehouse, and I had to get going. I thanked him. He wished me luck and we walked back through the showroom.

“You remember me next time you need a mermaid outfit or a dress for a flapper party.”

The world is such an odd and interesting place, I thought as I drove down First.

Since my attack in this very parking lot, outside the warehouse and production facility where the Spice Shop rents space, management had upgraded the lighting and installed exterior security cameras. I locked the car and gave the camera an automatic glance, though it was broad daylight. Well, what passes for daylight in Seattle in January. The early afternoon gray gloom is a touch paler than the late afternoon gray gloom, but not by much.

Inside, operations were in full swing. Thanks to great ventilation, I couldn’t smell the salsas, pickles, and pastries being made here, but my imagination filled in. Most tenants sold their wares through retailers, mainly groceries and specialty shops like ours. Some sold to the trade, that is, other food and beverage producers. And a few were ghost kitchens, specializing in catering or ready-to-eat goods.

A bouquet of scents and a thumping bass greeted me at our production space. Reed immediately silenced his phone, a guilty look on his face.

“Hey. Didn’t mean to startle you. I need to pack up an order for the Changs and grab a few things for the shop.”

The major package carriers make a daily pickup at the warehouse. All we had to do was get our shipments boxed and labeled, and haul them up front before the witching hour.

“I’ll stay out of your way then. How’s our Five Spice supply? I need a boatload.”

“Good. Sandra mixed a couple of weeks’ worth.” Sandra and I did most of the mixing and blending, and kept the retail shop supplied. Reed handled the web traffic and the regular restaurant orders, though we all pitched in at busy times. The pandemic had done a serious number on the restaurant business, but the explosion of interest in home cooking had been a boon, with no signs of slowing. We needed a full-time manager and an employee or two to keep up, especially when better weather brought more customers to the Market.

I set up my station at the worktable, out of Reed’s way. Printed out the orders, then got the supplies I needed. When I’m here by myself, I listen to the local jazz or classical stations, but we follow an unwritten rule not to force our favorite music on anyone else, and Reed left his playlist silent. A few minutes later, I’d packed up what I needed and carried the bucket of Szechuan pepper back to its shelf.

Where I found Reed slumped against a worktable, his face as grim as the weather.

“Reed, what’s wrong?” It’s always a judgment call, whether to ask an employee a personal question. But the clock was ticking and the shipments weren’t finished, and that made his mood my business. Unless he told me to butt out, which he had every right to do.

“Oh. That’s big.” And entirely understandable for a twenty-two-year-old about to finish school. “Let’s get these orders boxed while we talk.”

We each carried a gray rubber tray full of orders and packing slips to the shipping station. I grabbed a stack of small boxes and started packing.

“I’d pretty much decided to ask you to consider hiring me as the production and shipping manager. I can’t work full-time until after graduation and I know you need somebody sooner, but I thought maybe . . .”

“And then, you introduced me to Roxanne, and it was like, here was the thing I’d been waiting for and I hadn’t even known it. Jobs for history majors are hard to come by, and grad school is expensive. But her asking for my family’s expertise on the secret pharmacy, it was a sign. I mean, it’s my family that has personal knowledge, not me, but digging that stuff up, learning about it, sharing it—it’s all so unbelievably cool.”

I’d seen it often. People need to vent or think out loud, but they aren’t necessarily asking for advice. Male people, in particular. I was almost twice his age, his boss as well as his friend. He knew I’d worked HR for years before buying the shop. I was happy to help, if he asked.

“Let me text Roxanne and ask if she’s got time to talk. One on one. Not with me or your family. About what she does in a day, and what the options are. Graduate degrees, internships, volunteer work.”

I could, I would, and I did. I reached Roxanne at the Gold Rush, working on the inventory of the upstairs rooms. I pitched her my plan. She agreed and I relayed it to Reed.

“Let’s focus on what we need to ship today. Then we’ll go to the Gold Rush. One of us can come back later and finish up here.”

I remembered how my Hungarian immigrant grandparents insisted on the traditional dishes for family gatherings. My mother had been influenced by the vegetarian and whole wheat movement of the 1970s, but on Sundays, she and my grandma made goulash and chicken paprikash and insanely good mushroom soup. Sour cream on everything. Once, when my brother was sick, Grandma brought over poppy seed bread pudding—her cure-all—but he couldn’t keep anything down so Mom and I ate it ourselves. She made me promise not to tell and I never had.

“Bobby Wu, Oliver’s dad, is a few years older than my dad,” Reed continued. “He lived with his mom on Beacon Hill, a couple of blocks from my grandparents. A lot of Chinese families lived there, when they moved out of Chinatown and bought their own houses.”

The Lockes still lived on Beacon Hill. “What about his father? Did he have any brothers or sisters?”

“No, he’s an only child. Mr. Wu was quite a bit older than Bobby’s mother. Dad remembers seeing him walking from the bus to the house, probably on Sundays.”

“Granddad said the old man lived alone in the Gold Rush, long after the hotel closed. He kept the ground floor tenants—probably lived off the income. Granddad used to visit some of the family associations to pay his respects, and he doesn’t remember Mr. Wu or Bobby being part of any of that.”

I double-checked the label in my hand and pressed it on the box. “Any idea what Bobby’s involvement with the hotel is? Looks like Oliver’s taken over now.”

“Dad says in high school, everyone knew Bobby as the kid who liked to draw. Everybody wanted him to sign their yearbook, because he’d draw them instead of writing something stupid like other kids.”

“Comics,” I said, popping the last flat box into shape. Almost done, for now. “Wonder what the old man thought of that.”

“Dad thinks Bobby moved to LA after high school to try to get a job in animation. Years later, the old man got sick. Bobby showed up with a wife no one knew he had.”

Reed nodded and went on. “They moved into the house and Bobby opened his shop. Apparently, Abigail spent quite a bit of time at the hotel—doing what, no one knows. Then Oliver was born, the old man died, and life went on.”

Until a dead body showed up in the basement of the hotel, in the pharmacy Bobby may never have known was there.

Whatever the rift between old Mr. Wu and his son, the property had been the family legacy. I couldn’t help thinking of my friend Maddie Petrosian. For years, I’d believed her family’s business, managing small commercial properties scattered across the city, had been thrust upon her unwillingly, only to learn that Maddie herself did not see it that way. Keith Chang had left Seattle but when his parents decided their restaurant was too much, he’d come back to give it his own flavor. But the Wus’ relationship to the Gold Rush baffled me.

“You come from a family of Chinese doctors. The Lockes have lived in Seattle for generations. Your grandfather grew up in the CID. Did they know anything about the pharmacy?”

“No, but the education system for Chinese medicine has changed.” Reed stacked the empty trays on the shelf beneath the table. “It used to be a family thing. You trained as an apprentice, with your own father or grandfather, or an uncle. Men only, to protect the lineage. That’s what Granddad did, up in Vancouver because there was no one here who could train him. By the time my dad graduated and switched gears from premed, acupuncture and herbalism had been combined, and there were regular schools for Oriental medicine. Now it’s called Eastern medicine. So, they didn’t necessarily know all the old-timers or hear the stories.”

Parking in the CID is almost as crazy as driving in the Market. The handful of free spots for delivery vehicles are good for thirty minutes, but the way my day had gone so far, I couldn’t risk it and found a lot instead. Mortgaged my life at the meter, and we headed for the Gold Rush.

My plan was to take Reed inside to meet Roxanne, sneak another peek at the pharmacy if the crime scene tape was down, then swing by the Fortunate Sun.

I had not been prepared for the scene outside the hotel’s front door. It had become a shrine, even though—according to Spencer and Tracy not twenty-four hours ago—no one professed to know the dead man. Flowers. Candles. Paper cranes and tiny stuffed animals. Red envelopes stuffed with good wishes.

Roxanne had been keeping an eye out for us. We picked our way around the memorial and entered the building.

“It’s like a time capsule,” Reed said. “Or a dumpling. You think you know what you’re biting into, but inside, it’s completely different.”

I hadn’t gotten a good look on Saturday, focused as I was on Roxanne and the tragedy downstairs. It really was an astonishing place. On the wall behind the desk, cubbies held leather key fobs, stamped with faded gold numbers. Yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed the basement door. So much for seeing the pharmacy again.

While Reed took it all in, Roxanne turned to me. Back in professional dress today, she’d recovered her poise, unlike when we parted after brunch.

“I was a bit abrupt yesterday,” she said. “You’ve been nothing but generous to me, and I apologize.”

“No worries. You had a bad shock and it threw you off.” But Detective Tracy had known something I didn’t, and suggested I ask Nate. What can of worms might I be opening? “I’ll leave the two of you to talk, while I go do some business.”

On my way to the door, I heard Roxanne offer to give Reed a tour and his enthusiastic reply. No sign or sound of Oliver Wu.

Bobby Wu had apparently wanted nothing to do with the Gold Rush. His son had made the hotel business his profession, although an upscale downtown hotel was a whole different kettle of fish. Now he’d moved in upstairs. Curious. I frowned, remembering. I was sure he’d said we are making plans. Meaning the family, or he and someone else?

On the sidewalk next to the makeshift memorial, I glanced up at the dark brick facade. Reed’s dumpling metaphor had been cute, but it wasn’t too far off. The Gold Rush, one thing on the outside, and inside, a mystery.