Ten

L’arzento va dove e il piper. (Silver goes where the pepper is.)

—Piero Zen, Venetian ambassador to Constantinople, 1530, quoted in Charles Corn, The Scents of Eden: A History of the Spice Trade

I strolled up First Ave, drinking in the rain-rinsed air and midmorning calm. Fabiola had gleaned few details about Tamara’s personal life. Their friendship had been too new. But the pain of loss does not run a logical course, and the effect of the murder on Fabiola made me more determined to find the killer. Not just to save my good name, but for Tamara. For justice.

How did one kill with ghost peppers? Who would ever conjure up such a thing? I mean, I sell them, I pack them—I know the pain. Intentionally inflict it on someone else? Never.

I wrapped my arms around myself. Poor Tamara, dead so young. Her dream so close, destroyed.

Is there anything more inspiring than a passionate woman? A woman who throws heart, mind, and body into everything she does, whether it’s Fabiola with her brilliant designs and crazy outfits, or the contemplative and fictional Sister Frevisse cocooned in her woolens and wimple. Seems to me the world needs more women like that. Too often, it squelches them.

Or outright kills them.

Half a block from the Market entrance at Pike, inspiration struck, and I stayed the course on First.

Even in my brief time in the spice biz, I’d witnessed fads and trends. Medicinal queries and purchases had exploded. While I don’t mind selling turmeric in bulk to a woman I suspect is using it for her blood pressure and not her curry, I send customers seeking medical advice to Ron Locke or the herb-and-incense shop in the Economy Market.

Another trend: more African and Indian spices. It’s gratifying when immigrant customers believe we’ve got the freshest, highest quality ingredients for their ethnic dishes, like the Lebanese chef at the Middle Eastern restaurant on the Hillclimb who buys his sumac and Aleppo pepper from me. (After the incident last fall, he offered me free falafel for life. It’s a sin to refuse generosity, so I begged him for the recipe instead.)

On one of her recent forays into Seattle, Jane had eyed the jars we’d added since my takeover. “Used to be I sold more cinnamon, vanilla, and oregano than anything else. Kosher salt was exotic. Now it’s pink salt, truffle salt, flake salt. And all the peppers—the hotter, the better.” She was right about that. Foodies talk about Scoville units like they get what that means. Heck, even I barely know.

But I know ghost peppers burn up the charts. So who had mustered the creative cruelty needed to kill with them?

“Five minutes. I promise.” I held up my hand, fingers extended. Dr. Ron Locke’s clinic manager rolled her eyes and pointed toward his office. When my employee Reed’s dad, a veteran acupuncturist and font of arcane medical knowledge, gets going, five minutes easily becomes ten or twenty, leaving his staff to placate impatient patients.

Across the book-and-paper-strewn desk, Ron raised his eyebrows at my questions, but his expression quickly turned serious. “This is about the customer you found. So sorry, Pepper.”

I described what I’d seen at the building site. Ron swiveled his chair toward a bookcase and hooked one brown forefinger on the gold-lettered spine of a fat blue volume. Flip, flip, flip. “Could make a powder into an aerosol for ease of delivery,” he mused.

“Like bear spray.”

“Exactly. That would cause temporary blinding, or chemical burns. You said no visible injuries, but her eyes were swollen and she’d been reaching out.”

Or clawing for air.

Flip, flip, flip. “There’s a kind of mushroom that expands when ground,” he said. “Maybe the peppers emit a toxic substance when they’re cut.”

“No. Alex and I chopped a few dried peppers and extracted the capsicum in oil. The pieces softened as they rehydrated—or re-oiledrated—but nothing happened when we chopped them.”

He held one finger in the air, putting me on pause, while the other raced down the page. Then he snapped the book shut. “My best guess is the autopsy revealed an inflammatory response in the lungs, sending the ME searching for other evidence that a hostile substance had entered the lungs. They may have found residue in her throat and lungs. Or particles trapped in the nose hairs—their function is to filter the air we breathe. Then they examined those particles by microscope and determined they were capsicum of some sort.”

“How could they tell it’s the ghost pepper?”

“I doubt they’d have a plant DNA analysis completed already, so it may be an educated guess. They’d ask what kind of capsicum would trigger an immediate immune response, severe enough to kill. Fluid fills up the lungs. It’s essentially asphyxiation.”

Uggh. Maybe I wouldn’t replenish my stock after all.

And I certainly wasn’t going to eat hot Thai curry anytime soon.

At the sound of my footsteps entering the shop, Arf barked once—a rare sound, the canine equivalent of “Where have you been? I missed you.” I crouched behind the counter, giving him a good rub and an air-kiss. The employees take charge of him in my absence, and he’s as fond of them as they are of him, but he clearly considers me his best bud. Besides, dogs have their needy moments, too.

“I could never work here.” A chubby black woman with flawless skin pointed to the HIRING sign. “Just walking in makes me hungry.”

“Occupational hazard,” I admitted. One more reason to run around chasing a killer—exercise.

“But my sister would love it. And she’s looking.”

I handed her my card.

Kristen emerged from the back room, her nose turned up in distaste. “I’ve called everywhere. No replacement samovar.”

“So we buy a big stainless coffee urn and fake it.”

She fixed me a determined glare. “I am not giving up.”

I sent Reed off to make a copy of the sales records we’d compiled, and retreated to the office to review the payroll and sign checks. Slipped Lynette’s into an envelope. Hesitated, then added a note card sporting the shop’s saltshaker logo. Thank you for your work. Wishing you all the best in your future endeavors. Better a boring cliché than a glowing fib—you never know what a disgruntled ex-employee will tell the unemployment office.

Losing Zak, on the other hand, set off a good pout. No one else on staff is tall enough to dust the chandeliers, even with the rolling ladder.

Time for a task I’d put off long enough. Over a day-old croissant and a bruised banana lunch—easy on the tummy, a little unsettled after Ron’s hypothesis of death by bhut C—I studied the shop’s tax return. Decent numbers. No room for emergencies—or for a staffing screwup. Your average employee doesn’t have a clue about the costs of hiring. Hard costs like advertising, fees to headhunters and job services, expenses for uniforms and equipment. But the biggie is the cost of time and stress. All those hours recruiting, interviewing, and training. The time the rest of your staff spends picking up the slack and helping the newbie get up to speed.

And in my shop, wasted product when she measures out blue poppy seed instead of white or fenugreek when the customer wanted fennel. Staff take mistakes home, but it’s money lost.

I still steam at the memory of the legal secretary who accepted the law firm opening I’d offered her only to quit a week later when the local FBI office made her the offer she’d been waiting for. When the personnel specialist called for a reference a week after she’d left me in the lurch, I answered the standard question “Would you rehire?” honestly.

Or as honestly as I could without swearing.

After a string of support staff mishaps, the law firm administrator had brought in a consultant to help us improve hiring and retention. One presentation focused on first impressions, teaching “Seven Ways to Make Those Seven Seconds Count.” So at one fifty-seven that afternoon, when I was cleaning up a spill by the tea cart and Jen’s applicant walked in for our two o’clock interview, I adjusted my attitude, straightened my posture, smiled, practiced my eyebrow flash, and leaned forward, extending my hand.

That’s six, I know. You can’t accomplish the seventh step—making eye contact—alone.

And she wasn’t having it. We’d been taught to improve our eye contact by making a habit of noticing the eye color of everyone we meet. Eyelids lowered, she touched my fingers lightly, as though my hygiene wasn’t up to snuff. Mud brown, I finally decided as we finished our brief tour of the shop and settled into the nook for a chat.

You can’t just say, “I don’t think this is the job for you.” It’s bad karma. Plus they might surprise you.

Not this woman. She brushed sugar—or spice—off the bench before smoothing her pencil skirt and sitting, her spine not touching the seat back. Unusual posture for a woman not yet thirty. She ignored the tea Reed placed in front of her and trained her eyes on the table, barely moving a facial muscle as she answered my questions. She asked none of her own. An interview ought to be a conversation—about the business, the job duties, the applicant’s experience and her goals. There’s a certain degree of puffing involved, both interviewer and interviewee emphasizing the upside. If you’ve developed a reasonable amount of emotional intuition, though, you’ll learn what you need to know. You may not find out that she’s a single mother with dicey childcare—the law says you don’t get to ask. She may not discover that you’ve had a revolving door the last few months; it’s none of her business. But you get a feeling.

“So, tell me what you like to cook,” I said. “Your favorite recipes.”

“Is that—a dog?”

I followed her shell-shocked gaze to the front counter, where a furry brown snout poked out.

She grabbed her bag—black patent leather in a style the Queen might carry; it matched her low-heeled sling-backs—and slid out of the booth like a greased pig.

“She might be allergic,” Reed said as she disappeared out the front door.

“Or going on an interview to prove she’s job hunting so she can keep her unemployment benefits.” I sighed and sent the Universe a silent prayer. One great candidate and I’ll be happy. Two would be ideal, but I’ll count my blessings if you’ll please pretty please send me one perfect employee.

Hey, how will the Powers That Be know what you want if you don’t tell them?

*   *   *

LIKE most Seattleites, I’d had little reason to explore the halls of the new SPD HQ. Tag worked patrol most of our time together, based in the West Precinct that runs from SoDo and the International District north to Queen Anne Hill. Not that HQ is all that new anymore—ten years maybe, a super-eco-green building, both modern sleek and a good fit with its historic neighbors.

I passed through security and reclaimed my bag, pleased that the computer system Reed and I had worked hard to implement had made the shop records so easy to compile.

But I am the daughter of activists—a Vietnam vet turned dove and a hippie chick who’d been arrested a dozen times or more at marches, protests, and sit-ins. Our house mantra had been “Question authority.”

My folks had raised their eyebrows when I married a cop. But they’d accepted Tag, who was a bit of an anomaly in his own well-heeled, suburban family. And they’d been quietly relieved when I left him.

Their voices murmured in my head. Should I be so quick to hand over my records?

Yes, I decided. The cops had a warrant. I had no legal grounds to withhold my customers’ identities from the police. And if it helped flush out a killer . . .

But I could at least insist on getting something in exchange.

“This is everything?” Tracy said a few minutes later in the homicide detectives’ office. He flipped through the half-inch stack of records like a ten-cent garage sale paperback that might give him cooties.

“I brought you everything that warrant asks for. Look, I know you and Tag don’t like each other. But I’ve never given you any reason to distrust me.”

Tracy’s eyes, so dark the pupils nearly merged with the irises, bore into me. Wherever Spencer was, I missed her.

“Is that true now, Mrs. Buhner? Oh, that’s right, you prefer Ms. Reece.”

My cheeks burned. I hadn’t told him everything I knew last fall as soon as I knew it. But eventually, I’d spilled it all—including a few details he should have rooted out for himself without an amateur’s help. Apparently the insult still rankled.

“And of course,” he said, as if about to pronounce a truth universally acknowledged, “there is the matter of your judgment. A food expert with such questionable taste . . .”

His words trailed off but left no doubt that he was referring not to my taste in food but to my taste in men. To Tag, and Alex.

“I’ve given you all the information you asked for. And if you think I sold the murder weapon”—using the term loosely—“don’t you think you should tell me more about what happened? Who might have wanted to kill Tamara?”

“Besides your ex-boyfriend? No, I don’t think we need to tell you anything, Ms. Reece. You didn’t kill her. You don’t have any stake in this.”

How did they know that? Police aren’t fans of the obvious conclusions the rest of us draw every day. (Arguing with a cop or a lawyer can be so frustrating. They cross-examine you and demand your “evidence.”) Then it dawned on me. “You’ve already investigated me.”

He smiled, eyelids lowered partway, deciding what I deserved to know. “Your employees confirm you were in your shop all afternoon. Surveillance cameras from the ATM up the block show you park your Mustang and start down the street. Barely a minute later, you called 911. Killers don’t normally call us.”

The temperature in the room seemed to plummet. “You saw the killer? On the video?”

His expression turned bitter, one of the five primary tastes. But he wasn’t going to tell me what the video showed. He thwacked my sales records with his fingers. “We’ll go over these with a fine-tooth comb.”

As I walked back to the front entry, the chill seeped deeper into my bones. Had the killer been hiding in Tamarack while I was up front? Had I barely escaped being his next victim, before he—or she—escaped out the back?

You don’t have any stake in this, Tracy had said. Maybe he believed that. But to me, it looked like someone was doing his—or her—best to make this crime very personal.