Thirteen

The Pekin Noodle Parlor in Butte, Montana, established in 1911, is believed to be the oldest operating Chinese restaurant in America.

I PAID FOR MY OIL AND COOKIES AND FLED. STOPPED AT THE Chinese pastry shop down the block and ordered crispy buns and egg rolls for tonight. I’d pick them up on my way home. With this wealth of food around me, from so many cultures, I didn’t need to cook everything myself to appreciate it. That’s what taste buds are for.

Then I asked for a triple order of pot stickers and another batch of buns for staff lunch. This time, I kept my questions to myself.

The afternoon’s interviews went smoothly. Both candidates showed up on time, dressed like suitably free spirits, and had good interpersonal skills. Sadly, one was allergic to dogs, a question I should have asked when we set up the appointment.

“No dogs at the warehouse and production facility,” I said. “But I’m not sure yet what the hours will be. Can I keep you in mind and call you, see if you’re available when we’re ready?” I held up my hands, fingers crossed.

“I need something pretty soon,” came the reply, and my heart sank.

Next came an applicant for the warehouse manager spot, a response to my listing at an online hiring site for the food biz. Good food knowledge and work history, no experience in production, eager to learn. He said all the right things, but something wasn’t right. Finally, I asked where else he was applying, and he admitted he had an offer to work as a private chef for a couple on San Juan Island.

“Why on earth would you want to work for a living instead of cooking in paradise?” I asked.

Turned out he was concerned about being a long ferry ride away from his friends. The islands are remote, sure, but hardly the outback. Was he steady enough for the job? I needed to make a few phone calls and hope his references were honest with me.

Mr. Private Chef left, and I leaned back, eyes closed. Had hiring always been this difficult, or was I just being crabby?

I kept thinking about Terence Leong and the Gold Rush. Who was he? If he wasn’t local, as Spencer guessed, why had he come to Seattle? What was he doing in the pharmacy? Rummaging for valuables or ancient wisdom?

The image of that fortune cookie pendant flashed in my mind. A gift, I imagined. Who was missing him?

Then there was Roxanne. I was rethinking every conversation I’d had with her since she burst out of the hotel last Saturday afternoon. But nothing about the shoplifting incident affected her credibility as a witness. And it had no connection to the murder.

Or did it? It was clear now that the detectives had known about her juvenile record, hence Tracy’s taunt that I should ask my boyfriend about her. What else did they know that I—and maybe Nate—didn’t?

Could she be more than a witness? A suspect?

Ridiculous. The entire mess had been ages ago. Nate said he’d never had any reason to doubt her in the years since. She’d finished college, gotten a graduate degree, and worked steadily in her field. Surely the museum had done a full background check. The Wing Luke kept her on a list of trusted experts. All that ought to be good enough.

Normally I know when to trust my gut. That’s what told me the last job applicant wasn’t telling me everything.

And it told me Roxanne and I needed to have a serious talk.

Later. Tonight was all about food and fun and the Flick Chicks.

***

THE buzzer rang and Arf didn’t even lift his head.

“Some alarm system you are,” I said as I pushed the button to let my friends in.

They came bearing gifts, mostly Chinese takeout. We were never short on food at Flick Chicks.

“We saw your invisible neighbor at the mailboxes,” Kristen said as she unwrapped a platter of fortune cookies she and her girls had made. “I almost invited her to join us. But what if we didn’t like her? Awkward!”

“Isn’t it funny?” Laurel popped the cork on a bottle of Pinot Gris, which she swears pairs beautifully with any Chinese food. “I have a neighbor like that. I see his lights on. His kayak comes and goes. He waters his planters. But I hardly ever see him. He gave me a big hello at the grocery store and I literally had no idea who he was.”

“You see hundreds of people every day,” Seetha said. “You can’t know them all.”

“Some customers, I know by their orders.” Laurel handed Seetha a glass of wine, then pointed at imaginary people as she talked. “That guy is a turkey panino. That woman is tomato-basil soup and a side salad with champagne vinaigrette. Names don’t matter.”

“Like the neighborhood dogs.” I put a mason jar filled with serving spoons and another holding my chopstick collection on the counter. “I know the goldendoodle and the corgi, and the yappy Pekinese, but the owners? Nah.”

Seetha carried a plate of mini spring rolls and a bowl of peanut sauce into the living room and I followed her.

“So, how you doing? Any bhuts?” We hadn’t talked or seen each other since the fateful food walk, and our texts had been the briefest of check-ins. Encountering death face-to-face was hard enough, but with Seetha’s history, I’d been worried.

“Not a sign of them. I think we banished the nasty little devils.”

After Seetha’s grandmother in Delhi died years ago, both she and her mother had begun seeing bhuts, the strange Indian ghosts that sometimes appear wearing white, often with their feet pointing backward. When a woman died in Seetha’s building, she feared they’d come back to haunt her. But then she confronted another fear, and it was as if proving her courage had satisfied the spirits.

“Good to hear. Hey,” I said as we drifted back toward the kitchen. “Tell us more about Oliver. Have you talked to him since Saturday?”

Laurel was standing at my stove frying up a batch of crab rangoons in a wok she’d brought. The crab-and-cream cheese puffs are best served hot, and while I consider myself a reasonably fearless cook, frying in hot oil on the kitchen stove does ratchet up the nerves. But Laurel is a pro.

“I met him at the hotel where I’ve been filling in at the spa,” Seetha said. “We had coffee a couple of times and talked about a real date. And yes, Pepper. I knew he was dancing Saturday and I was hoping to run into him.”

When he’d been wearing the same costume as the dead man. Had the killer confused one lion dancer for another? Had Oliver been the target?

Kristen’s green eyes sparkled. “You gonna see him again?”

“Friday night. Dinner and the symphony.”

“Ooh,” we all chorused.

“Now that’s a serious date,” Aimee said. While she and Kristen quizzed Seetha, I focused on dinner, mainly to hide my wariness. Something about Oliver Wu and his family bothered me, but I had no idea what or why.

You’re full of the questions today, Pepper Reece. I got out a bowl and opened the jar of sweet-and-sour sauce. Keep them in your mouth.

“I should try to meet someone,” Aimee mused. “But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Work, friends, friends of friends,” I said.

“Work? When’s the last time you heard of an unattached, straight man shopping in a vintage store?” she replied. “But if you or Nate have a guy in mind, I’m game.”

I shook my head, unable to conjure any good options. I poured some of that Pinot Gris for myself and took a sip.

“What about you?” Kristen asked Laurel.

“I have no interest in dating.” Laurel lifted the last wontons out of the oil and spread them on a plate lined with a paper towel. She’s a few years older than Kristen and I, tall, with wild gray-brown curls and a wicked wit. “Besides, who’d be attracted to an old kitchen hag like me?”

“Oh, come on.” Kristen said. “You’re too young to live like a hermit. What about your neighbor, the one stalking you in the grocery store?”

“He wasn’t stalking me. And I do not need a man to complete my life,” Laurel said in a tone that brooked no protest.

They say it takes a year after a breakup to be ready for another relationship. A year from the end-end, when all his things are out of your house or the ink on the divorce decree is dry. They say a lot of things, but it had been true for me. I’d tried dating too soon and gotten nothing but heartache in exchange. What was the rule when a marriage ended in death? Patrick Halloran’s murder had gone unsolved for three years, until last October. Would Laurel feel differently this fall than she did now? Or was she simply stating the truth? None of us needed a man to complete our lives.

But need had nothing to do with my feelings. I didn’t love Nate because I needed him. I needed him because I loved him.

And I wondered again who needed Terence Leong. Who loved and missed him. I wiped away a tear. I was sure Kristen noticed, but bless her, she didn’t say a thing.

We carried our chatter and our plates into the living room. I refilled wine glasses and started the movie.

“How do they do that?” Aimee asked. Neither she nor Seetha had ever seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

“Fly? Wires,” I said. “And other magic.” It’s one of my favorite movies, lush and historic, though it has no connection to the Lunar New Year other than its setting in ancient China. The female characters are smart and independent, though one honors tradition, one defies it, and one subverts it. And can they swing a sword.

If we hadn’t gotten lost on our way from the sword fight demo to the dance performance Saturday afternoon, I wouldn’t be tangled up in the mystery of the Gold Rush Hotel. In the movie, young Jen was fighting off the men in the tea house, and I thought about all the men who’d stayed in the hotel over the years. About the woman who’d taken her baby and fled, leaving her things in the room at the end of the hall. About Terence Leong and the broken bottles that crunched beneath my feet when I checked his body, like the tea bowls shattered in the fight on screen, so perfectly choreographed that we were all entranced.

Now I wished I hadn’t chosen a movie with such a tragic ending.

I got up to pee, then detoured into the kitchen. Kristen joined me, leaving the others in the living room to watch Shu Lien, Mu Bai, and Jen fly through the air.

“I need a hobby,” I said.

“No, you don’t.” She bit into an orphaned rangoon, then perched on a bar stool. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. The only thing I do is work and watch movies with you guys.”

“You solve murders. You don’t have a sudden urge to take up cross stitch. You’re just worried that you won’t know what to do with yourself now that Nate is gone.”

Ouch. “He’s been gone before. That’s been part of the deal since the beginning.”

“But it’s different now. And your parents are about to leave.”

Was that it? Was I afraid of loneliness? I’d been on my own for years before I met Nate. Truth was, I’d been lonely in my marriage, knowing Tag and I had grown apart and not knowing how to fix that. Was I afraid of a repeat romantic disaster? Nate’s ex-wife had tried to change him and lost him, and that was a cautionary tale, but I wasn’t her. And he’d changed too, no doubt.

No. I wasn’t worried about Nate, or about Nate and me. I wasn’t even worried about my parents. I was concerned about the shop, about hiring new staff and taking the business to the next level, but not worried.

I was worried about me.

We rejoined the others in time to see Mu Bai die in Shu Lien’s arms, finally professing his love for her. Then she delivered the Green Destiny, the fateful sword, to his mentor and Jen rode off to join her lover. We watched Jen foolishly ask him to make a wish, and when he told her he wished they could spend their lives together in the desert, she jumped off the bridge into the mist.

“Ohh.” Aimee sank back on the couch as the credits began to roll. “How could she do that?”

“Because she can’t bear to live someone else’s dream,” Laurel said. “Even though she loves him.”

Kristen set the plate of fortune cookies on my packing crate coffee table and plucked one from the pile. “The girls had a blast writing the fortunes.” She broke open a cookie and read. “You are your own North Star.”

Aimee opened hers. “Friendship is the spice of life. I’ll drink to that.”

We all raised our glasses in a toast.

“You’re never too old to learn new tricks,” Laurel read. “Did you plant these?” Kristen denied it, but Laurel wasn’t convinced.

“Embrace your dreams with passion,” Seetha’s read. Classic teenage wisdom.

“I’d suggest we take a day and go antiquing,” Kristen said to me a few minutes later as she put on her coat. “Since you’re looking for something to do. But I’m working extra hours this week and next. My boss is kind of a grind.”

I stuck out my tongue. Arf and I trotted down the stairs behind our friends. The night had turned chilly and a light mist was falling. They drove off, leaving us to take a quick spin around the block.

Back in the loft, I got into my pajamas and stuck the last few plates in the dishwasher. The bowl of fortune cookies I’d bought from Mei sat on the counter. I unwrapped one and broke open the cookie. Pried out the strip of pink paper. There was a reason these things were the butt of many jokes—bland and banal, broadly wise and deeply foolish.

Be careful, it read. Both friends and enemies wear many disguises.