The Solace of Bay Leaves

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues.

—Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

ERIC AND MARIAH, THE YOUNGER OF THE TWO GIRLS, WERE walking down the front steps of the stately gray home when Arf and I arrived. Flick Chicks at their house meant a night out with dad.

“Arf!” Mariah cried. She sank to her knees and threw her arms around my boy, who returned her affection by licking her face. “That tickles.”

“Hey, Eric.” I set the box with my soup pot and containers on the bottom step and we exchanged a quick hug. “Where’s Savannah?”

“We decided she could start wearing blush and mascara, so leaving the house takes an extra ten minutes while she triple-checks the mirror.”

“Got time for a quick question?” He nodded, and I filled him in on Edgar’s complaint about the stolen spice blend. “I told him I didn’t think he had a claim for copyright violation, but what about theft? If the facts add up.”

“If this other chef simply figured out what was in Edgar’s blend, then he’s out of luck,” Eric said. “But Edgar isn’t publishing the recipe, like when you post recipes on your blog or hand out copies in the store. If the other guy actually got ahold of Edgar’s recipe without permission and is using it, then yes, Edgar might have a claim for theft. Hard to show value, though.”

“Oh, Edgar will claim plenty of value, you can count on that. But thanks.” No sign of Savannah yet, and Mariah was happily distracted by the dog. “Another question. This might sound like blasphemy. Laurel adored Pat, everyone admired him, but I never knew him. Were there rumors? Could he have been involved in something—illicit?” Like what, I didn’t know, but ever since the confab in Laurel’s back room, I’d been wondering.

“Pat?” Eric shook his head. “No. No, he really was the guy in the white hat. He didn’t have any secrets.”

That couldn’t be true. We all have secrets. The only question is what we’ll do to keep them.

The front door flew open and Savannah flew out. She was the image of Kristen at that age. She hugged me and headed for the car while Eric sent Mariah to wash her hands. I took my soup and my dog inside.

“Pepper, good news!” Kristen said. “Maddie’s awake. The swelling in her brain has gone way down. Tim says you can see her tomorrow if you have time.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said, and I meant it. I may have inherited my mother’s distrust of the institutional church, but God and I are fine. “I’ll make time.”

Within a few minutes, we’d all arrived and unpacked our soup kettles and Crock-Pots. Wine and conversation flowed.

“What kind of Seattleites are we?” Kristen asked as she surveyed the bounty on her stove and kitchen island. “All this soup and no clam chowder.”

“Who has time to make it?” I said. “And why bother when you can swing by Ivar’s or the chowder shop in the Market?”

One rule for soup exchanges is no takeout, Laurel excepted, since she’s in the takeout business. And the homemade rule doesn’t apply to the dishes the hostess provides, thank goodness. Kristen had sliced up a rustic loaf of bread from Three Girls and scored a dozen truffles from our favorite chocolatier. Add salad for the perfect meal.

“I smell peppers and bay. That Tony’s black bean chili, Aimee?” I asked. Our newest addition, Aimee McGillvray, had joined us in August, not long after I’d helped solve a murder in her vintage retail and design shop, the place where I’d found the tansu and neon lips. She’d just taken a sip of wine, and wiggled her eyebrows in a “yes.” Her brother, who shared her apartment, was the family cook.

“Soup conjures up home,” Seetha Sharma said. Laurel had invited the massage therapist to Flick Chicks a year ago, shortly after she moved to Seattle. Though she’s over thirty, she avoided learning to cook until this past summer, after resolving tensions with her Indian-born mother. The results were improving. “I always thought I hated Indian food, but it turns out I kinda like it.”

“You were probably just trying to differentiate yourself from your parents,” Laurel said. She gave her tomato-basil soup a stir. “Like when I was in my vegetarian phase, before I opened the restaurant, and thought that was the only healthy food. Gabe rebelled by demanding McDonalds.”

“Is this your mother’s recipe?” I asked as Seetha ladled out small bowls of lentil, potato, and cauliflower curry, rich with spices, and we all snickered. My quest last summer for Seetha’s mother’s chai recipe had nearly led to disaster, but it had also prompted some great taste-testing. Seetha didn’t know the full story, a secret Sandra and I had vowed to keep to ourselves.

After dinner, we migrated to the elegant home theater in the basement, a product of the recent remodel. The wine and truffles came with us. Tonight’s offering was Tampopo, the Japanese classic that spoofs both Westerns and Samurai movies.

“Why do they call it a noodle western?” Seetha asked as we settled into the comfy chairs.

“You’ll know in about two minutes,” Kristen said. She picked up the remote and off we went, to the land of truck drivers who wear cowboy hats and single mothers who run noodle parlors. The effort of reading subtitles muted the possibility of conversation, until Kristen hit pause for a potty break.

I refilled wine glasses. “I’m convinced the building is the link between Maddie’s shooting and Pat’s. But why now? The redevelopment’s been under consideration for years. Why try to stop it by stopping her now?”

“Why do you suppose,” I continued, still on my feet, “the project changed so dramatically? Part of it seems to have been the neighbors—they wanted that wreck on the corner gone, but they wanted the right replacement.”

“It isn’t unusual for commercial projects to take a long time,” Aimee said. “Or change along the way. When I was doing interior design, the final plans rarely looked anything like the initial concept.”

“Like your loft,” Kristen said. “How many times did we rework the kitchen plans? You were living in my guest room and we laid it out on the floor right here, with colored tape and cardboard.”

“And it turned out perfectly, thanks to you,” I said. “But who is this Byrd guy who upset everybody? I Googled my eyes out and I couldn’t find him. Were he and Maddie partners?”

“So she bought up the other buildings, then I guess she bought him out.” I’d been too tired last night to try to remember what Glenn had showed me, about looking up purchases and sales. I hadn’t thought it mattered. But I was getting more and more curious.

Nobody had any answers. Kristen dimmed the lights and we went back to the movie. Arf lay at my feet. Gun, the trucker determined to rescue the noodle parlor, was taking Tampopo, the owner, to visit other shops. They tasted and compared notes. A master noodle maker came in to teach her. A construction crew arrived to rebuild the kitchen, and a designer to give her shop a new look.

I bit into a ginger truffle and thought about Carl’s explanation of how bonds work. How much had financing influenced Maddie’s plans? Who would know? Tim had an MBA, too, but he always made it a point of pride to say that Petrosian Properties was Maddie’s baby, not his.

But even Maddie wasn’t made of money. What if she’d brought in Byrd as a partner to help foot the bill, but then when they couldn’t agree, she worked out another plan? She bought up the other buildings in the block, and then what? I’d seen the sales price for the insurance agency’s building and it had been substantial though not outrageous, but that was just one building. Borrowing the bond analogy, I wondered if she’d used the buildings and their future income as collateral for a loan, not just to pay for the property, but to buy out the partner, or whatever he was.

I kept coming back to why. If we were talking about other people—faceless, anonymous developers—making money or doing deals might be motive enough. But not Maddie. According to the stylist, she’d promised to update the buildings without raising rents. Just talk—puffing—to mollify the tenants? Stories like that run rampant, new landlords making promises they broke as soon as the ink on the deal was dry.

“Do you remember when Maddie started coming to the meetings about the corner grocery?” I whispered to Laurel.

The permit files would name the key players, wouldn’t they? But I couldn’t waste a day digging in city archives and poring over dusty drawings and applications.

I decided to go to the public meeting tomorrow night. Its purpose was to update the community on the criminal investigation and answer questions. Surely people who’d worked with Pat on neighborhood issues would be there. But I didn’t live in Mont-lake. I’d be less like the proverbial sore thumb if Laurel went with me.

Then, I promised myself, I’d tell Tracy and Greer everything I was thinking. Let them look into this mysterious partner, financing, and other details that took time and computer databases I didn’t have.

IN THE loft, I stashed the soup containers in the freezer and changed my shoes. I was still dressed for work, but no matter. Arf and I headed out to stretch our legs. Clear skies for the first time in days. An orange glow touched the tops of the Olympics, and the air smelled clean.

Some friends and relatives think I’m crazy to walk alone at night downtown. But I wasn’t scared, and not just because of the fifty-pound dog beside me. Although he does have good guard dog skills.

If you project a sense of belonging—this was a trick I’d learned from Tag—a sense that this is your turf, people generally leave you alone.

It was easy. Grace House had been a terrific place to be a kid, and our family’s Montlake cottage the perfect next step. When Tag and I got married, we bought his great-aunt’s run-down bungalow in Greenwood and we’d worked hard to make it into a sweet home.

But living downtown felt right. Too soon to tell what all the changes in the city and in my life would mean. Whether downtown would still feel like home in five years.

As we walked, Arf pausing every so often to sniff something, I ran through the possible links between the two shootings. The same gun, but one shooter or two? The burglary gone wrong theory Detective Armstrong mentioned was one I’d leave to them. Again, they had the manpower. Or person power. The joint task force had kept busy over the years, checking every burglary suspect for a connection to Pat, but found nothing.

Why had Pat, a committed soccer dad, changed his mind and stayed home from Gabe’s tournament?