Five

One man’s smelly Polish market is another man’s fragrant reminder of home.

— Emily Badger, “In Praise of Smelly Places”

ARF CAME TO ME A YEAR AGO THROUGH A MARKET RESIDENT named Sam, who’d acquired him under circumstances that I never fully understood. When a series of unfortunate events made clear that Sam would be better off returning to his family in Memphis, I agreed to take the dog. Where he’d gotten his training was part of the mystery, but Arf had a way of knowing what I wanted him to do before I did.

Now, he came to heel without instruction, poised to move on or turn, depending on my signal.

Problem was, I hadn’t a clue.

Had Greer seen me through the steam clouding the window or the clusters of people crowding the narrow sidewalk? She might have spotted me ten minutes earlier, when we first walked by. Why was she in the Market this morning? The FBI office is way down on Third Avenue. She could have found a cup of coffee a lot closer, and without getting wet.

I’d thought, this morning when Nate dropped me off, that she was watching me. But there was no reason for that, was there?

Paranoia is not usually one of my vices.

Don’t be silly, Pep. She’s new in town and taking the day to explore the city.

Right. She’s got a day off the day after new evidence surfaces in a major case the field office she’s just joined has been unable to solve for three years.

No. Special Agent Meg Greer was in the Market on this soggy Saturday for a reason. A reason other than enjoying a taste of Seattle’s famous coffee. Since she had no reason to watch me, she had to be watching someone else. Or meeting someone. Did it have to do with the special operation Tag had mentioned?

That had to be it.

I left the cover of the coffee line, Arf at my side, and glanced at the window. Saw Greer and let a pleasant expression of recognition cross my face. Waved and kept going, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

At the piroshky bakery, I held the door for a woman on her way out, the hot, yeasty aroma kicking my salivary glands into gear. The sweet treats were tempting—their poppy seed cinnamon rolls are simply fab, and when doughnuts die and go to heaven, they hope to come back as cream cheese vatrushka topped with marionberries.

If you still want one later... The stalling tactic usually works. Besides, we had half a tray of cookies back at the shop, although Tag had put a dent in them.

I’d ordered a mix of the classics—potato and cheese, beef and onion—and modern variations with spinach and chicken curry. They were boxed up and ready to go, and Arf and I were back on the street in no time.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to know who Greer was meeting. I detoured back to Starbucks and in my most casual spy manner, glanced inside. She was gone.

No sign of her on the street, either. Didn’t matter. If she wanted to find me, she knew where to look. I opened the box and slipped out an egg and spinach piroshky, eating as I walked. It might not be traditional, but it hit the spot.

The Spice Shop was jammed. I should have guessed the threat of rain wouldn’t slow people down. My first week on the job, two years ago, a near-cyclone hit. Though it rained heavily, we were spared the flooding and power outages the forecasters had predicted, and most Seattleites went about their business, damp but undeterred.

“To your bed,” I told Arf and he wove between the humans to his hideout. I delivered the box of piroshky to the nook, ditched my coat, and grabbed my apron.

“The recipe calls for Turkish bay, absolutely do not use California bay,” a customer asked me. “What’s the difference? Why the dire warning?”

“Cookbook drama,” I replied. “California bay, laurus australas, is more intense. Save it for dishes that cook quickly. For a soup or a stew, you want Turkish bay, laurus nobilis. It gives stock that rich, warm flavor. Our bouquet garni uses crushed Turkish bay for just that reason.”

“Laurus nobilis,” she said. “Sounds so regal.”

I opened two jars and showed her the leaves. “Same color and basic shape, but the California leaves are longer and narrower. I’d offer a sample, but dried bay has about as much flavor as the inside of a cereal box. It needs the heat of cooking to release its potential.”

“Sold,” she said. “I trust you.”

Behind the counter, I weighed and bagged the bay leaves. The customer added a tin of bouquet garni and several other blends to her shopping basket. Inches away, Arf snored softly, one back foot twitching, as if he were running in his dreams.

“That’s a lot of cayenne,” I said when the next customer gave me her order.

“I mix it into honey and warm water every morning,” she replied. “Keeps my blood pressure down.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said. We stay away from medical advice, since none of us has any formal training, but we happily sell cayenne, turmeric, and garlic to customers with medicinal purposes in mind.

Late afternoon, a lull hit. I settled into the nook with the last of the piroshky, and wondered if Kristen and Eric had succeeded in storming the hospital’s gates. I slid my phone out of my apron pocket and sent Kristen a text asking about Maddie. Other questions ricocheted around my brain. Who found her? Who called the police? The Montlake business district is only a block long; surely people would be worried; surely they’d be talking. No matter what their opinion on the redevelopment Maddie proposed, they had to be worried. When anything happens in the Market, we all rally around each other.

My phone buzzed with Kristen’s reply. ICU. Family only.

I thumbed back. Would they tell you anything? Did you see Tim?

Dot dot dot, as she read and answered. Saw Tim for a minute. No visitors. Still in a coma but he’s optimistic.

Though Kristen and I had spoken nearly every day of our lives—forty-three years and counting—we also had our own circles of friends. She was a lot closer to Maddie than I was—they lived in the same neighborhood, and their kids’ activities intersected. Both she and Maddie lived a more financially comfortable life than I’d ever known. Not that Kristen’s parents hadn’t been deeply committed to the peace and justice community in which she and I were raised—they’d made the grand home Kristen’s mother had inherited its center for years. My parents had come to the communal life from the working class, and if my brother and I had strayed from our hippie roots, they did at least show.

But in this rare moment of late-afternoon quiet, the shock of everything I’d learned in the last twenty-four hours had me disoriented. Mentally dizzy. I knew, from life with Tag and my own recent encounters with crime, that tragedy doesn’t always happen to “other people.”

Sometimes it happens to people we know and love. People we employ or work with. People we may not see every day but who are part of our lives. I’d been raised to believe we’re obligated to help those around us when they’re in trouble.

And this was big trouble.

Thank God, I replied. Keep me posted. Pat had been shot in his home, Maddie in a vacant building she owned. One in the evening; the other in the morning. Seattle averages less than twenty homicides a year, making it one of the safer big cities. But shootings occur for other reasons, too. Over the years, the police had investigated numerous incidents for a possible tie to Pat’s murder and found nothing.

Both cases were initially described as an interrupted burglary, but I thought that was just cop talk. Nothing had been taken from the Hallorans’ house. And what would a burglar have hoped to find in the corner grocery that had sold its last Slim Jim and quart of milk ages ago?

Tracy had said the task force was taking another look at everyone they’d questioned in Pat’s case, reconsidering every lead. They were scouring his case files again, searching for someone carrying a grudge. I’d been on the receiving end of several interrogations over the years. It’s no fun.

Though he’d mentioned another canvass, I wasn’t sure Tracy would pay enough attention to the neighbors’ concerns, especially the owners of the nearby businesses. He’d ask who they’d seen and what they’d heard, sure, but would he ask what worried them? What they feared and what kept them up at night? What their customers were saying. How business had been affected. What they knew that might shed light on the connection between Maddie and Pat. Questions like that were my forte.

I hesitated to call Tim. He needed to focus on Maddie and the kids. Who else could I talk to?

Almost time to close. First, though, I wanted to check on Laurel.

“Aimee and Seetha are here,” she said when I asked how she was. “We took a long walk and now I’m cooking.”

Flick Chicks pals. Good company and good eaters. They’d keep Laurel occupied.

“Perfect. If I know them, they brought lots of wine.”

“They did. I’ll need extra coffee tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Sunday. “We’re still on then? You choose.”

She named the place, and while I wondered about the wisdom of returning to the old neighborhood, I kept my mouth shut. For the moment.

I clicked off the line and locked the doors, then joined Matt and Sandra behind the counter. He was cleaning out the samovar and she was restocking spice bags.

“The food tour could not have gone better,” I said. “Thanks for all your work.”

“I loved doing it. And Cayenne’s cookies—my goodness, that girl can bake. Paul’s picking me up,” Sandra said, referring to her husband, whom she calls Mr. Right to distinguish him from his predecessor, Mr. What Was I Thinking. “We’re going to the Pink Door for a drink and dinner. Join us?”

“I’m going, too,” Matt said. “I’ve never been there.”

I would have loved to see his reaction to the place, although I doubted they’d stay late enough for the cabaret show or the aerialists’ performance. But not tonight. “It’s tempting, but I am otherwise engaged.”

Sandra gave me a wicked grin. “‘Lord, lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself.’ That kind of temptation?”

I felt the heat rise up my neck and cheeks and she laughed. “Good to see you happy, boss. You and Nate are perfect together.”

“Let’s send some of those leftovers home with Matt,” I called as she headed toward the back of the shop.

“Already on it,” she called.

Matt lived up north, not far from Sandra, and they often rode the same bus. If he had a girlfriend or nearby family, he’d never mentioned them in my hearing.

“Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised. He set the samovar’s insert upside down to drain, wiped his hands, and turned to me. “Pepper, can I ask? What’s going on with Cayenne? Is she okay?”

The question I’d been dreading. It had been Matt’s impatience with Cayenne’s clumsiness last summer that led her to tell me she’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She’d asked me to keep it to myself for now, and I’d agreed. She was still able to do the major functions of the job, which was what the law counted. And she did a great job, which counted to me.

I bit my lower lip, then exhaled. “All I can say is that I appreciate how you’ve all been willing to shuffle the schedule to accommodate her. But you don’t need to worry.”

“Ahh, I was right,” he said in a knowing voice. “Pregnant. That’s awesome.” Grinning, he pulled the wheeled bucket out from under the industrial sink and began filling it. While he mopped, I ran the till and counted the change. Cayenne’s medical condition was her business and no one else’s, but keeping the secret was putting me in a difficult position. I hadn’t actually misled my other employees— they were managing that on their own—but I’d let them draw the wrong conclusions, and that made me uncomfortable.

But it was still a relief to dodge that bullet. So to speak. For the moment, anyway.

Then Sandra’s husband arrived and the three of them headed out to dinner. I bundled up for the walk home. It was funny to see my regal dog—Airedales are known as the King of Terriers for a reason—in the yellow slicker that reminded me of the Morton Salt girl. I grabbed my tote, a baguette and a bottle of Viognier poking out.

No sign of Meg Greer on our way through the Market. I hoped she’d found who she was looking for.

The aroma of fish stew simmering in a tangy sauce—our lemon-dill seafood blend, if my nose wasn’t mistaken—filled the wide stairwell leading to my loft. I half expected to see the neighbors clustered outside my door, clutching bowls and begging, “Please, sir. Might I have some more?”

Food, glorious food! started playing in my head.

Great. I’d given myself an earworm. From Oliver Twist, no less. Oh, well. It could have been worse. It could have been the theme from The Mickey Mouse Club, which hit all the wrong notes in my brain, over and over and over.

“Smells like heaven,” I said after Arf and I had fought our way through the imaginary crowd of hungry children and were safely inside the loft.

“Looks like heaven, now that you’re here,” Nate replied and I nearly swooned. Is there anything so gorgeous as a man standing in your kitchen wearing an apron and brandishing a spoon?

Well, yes, there is. And I was reasonably sure of getting that sight later.

I fed Arf, then slipped into the bedroom for a quick change. By the end of the day, my comfy shop clothes tend to reek of paprika and other spicery. Friends say their noses tell them when I’ve arrived—I carry the shop aromas with me like Pigpen in the old Peanuts comic strip carried a cloud of dust.

In the bedroom, the trio of neon lips I’d bought at Aimee’s shop last summer glowed against the original redbrick wall. Beneath them sat the beautiful cypress tansu, a Japanese step chest I’d fallen for, also in her shop. Not long, coincidentally, after I’d fallen for the fisherman now tossing a salad in my kitchen. I’d hoped he’d leave a few things in the drawers, and they were filling up. His green cargo pants lay on the floor and I draped them over the low-back wooden chair in the corner, a find from an antiquing trip with Kristen.

I pulled on navy leggings and a pink cotton tunic and padded, barefoot, out to the main room.

“Sit,” Nate told me and slid a glass of wine across the butcher block counter. I sat, as directed, on a barstool scored on a different junking jaunt.

“You get the whatever it was fixed?”

He glowered, but not at me. “Needs a part we couldn’t make or scrounge up on a Saturday. On a better note, got the catch report from Bron. Going strong. He figures they’ve got another two or three weeks. He should be home early next month.”

Bronson Seward, his younger brother and fishing partner, whom I hadn’t met yet. They co-owned one boat for Puget Sound, the increasingly troublesome Thalassa, and another, The Kenai Princess, based in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. A larger boat, the Princess required a crew, which meant they fished as late in the season as they could to make sure the men got a decent share. “You’ll like my little brother, I promise.”

“But will he return the favor?” My friends and family had taken to Nate immediately. Even Tag liked him, which made me nervous at first.

“Oh, yes,” he said and I swear, his green eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes.”

I sipped while he stirred, and told him about the day in the shop, the successful food tour, and what little news Kristen had gleaned about Maddie.

“I’ve never heard you mention her until all this happened.”

“Kristen’s closer to her than I am. For lots of reasons.” Friendships change. Sometimes we make choices that trigger those changes. Sometimes we let our envy and regret get in the way. “In college, end of sophomore year, one of our professors recommended several students for internships with a big nonprofit. Maddie and I both worked there, in different divisions. End of summer, they offered me a paid position during the school year.”

He gave the soup another stir, then put the lid on the pot and stood across the counter from me, listening closely.

“My parents didn’t have extra money, so the job was a big help.” I paused to sip my wine. “Midyear, I dropped out of school. That meant the end of the job, which was okay. I grew up surrounded by social service work and by then I knew it wasn’t for me. It did give me a taste of HR, and later, a woman I met there helped me get the law firm job. So it worked out, for me.”

“What does this have to do with Maddie?” he asked.

“What I didn’t know was that Maddie had applied for the school year job, too, but they hired me. When I quit, she reapplied, but they didn’t want to fill the spot midyear. It was for a junior— they didn’t want someone about to graduate—so she was out of luck for the next year, too. She didn’t need the job—she just really wanted to work in that field.” I tightened my grip on my glass. “So basically, I took the opportunity she’d desperately wanted and wasted it. After graduation, she started working for her dad in the family business, while getting her MBA.”

Nate studied me. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

“Maybe. I don’t think she sees it that way. Although she did come in the shop a couple of times this summer. She doesn’t cook much, but she buys gifts. Remember, we’re meeting Laurel for brunch in the morning.” I never wanted to be one of those women who gives up on her girlfriends when a guy comes along, but when I met Nate, Laurel had completely understood that our long-standing Sunday tradition needed an update. If I wasn’t available, she met other friends. Occasionally, Nate joined us, as we’d planned for this weekend well before the Friday night revelations.

I do have a dining table—a weathered, round cedar picnic table with two benches and a pair of pink wrought iron chairs, refugees from an ice cream parlor. A café table and chairs sit on the veranda, for days when the weather permits. But this felt like a “dinner on the couch with a movie” night. Salads first, then steaming bowls of fish chowder, soaked up with bread and accented with wine.

With a classic movie I’d seen a dozen times on the TV, my tummy full of good, hot food, and a good, hot man beside me, the dog working on his bone at our feet, I’d had enough of murder. Enough of old horrors coming back to haunt good friends. I didn’t want to think about special agents and shots fired in peaceful neighborhoods. All I wanted was what I had, a quiet evening in a space I adored with the man who’d set his hook and reeled in my heart.

I picked up the remote and switched off the TV, then leaned close to Nate, holding my face for a kiss. He obliged.

“Please, sir,” I said. “Might I have some more?”