The Solace of Bay Leaves

by Leslie Budewitz

  “You always said the police were convinced it was related to his work,” I said. “That the killer wanted revenge, or to destroy evidence.”

  “Right. They combed through his case files, and his home computer. Pat worked on white collar stuff—embezzlement, money laundering, corporate crimes. Not that those kinds of cases can’t turn violent.”

  “You never know what people will do to protect their money and keep it flowing,” Nate said.

  Conversation stopped while an employee scooped up our plates, and I wondered what crazy schemes Nate had encountered in the wilds of Alaska.

  “We should probably get going,” I said, conscious of my dog outside and the caffeine-starved humans clustered by the door.

  “They even interviewed friends and relatives in Chicago,” Laurel said. She reached down for her bag. “He left there ages ago.”

  I started to push back my chair when she grabbed my hand. “Go with me. To the hospital.”

  “They won’t let us see her. I told you Kristen talked to Tim. He said maybe in a few days.”

  “You know him. I don’t. I at least want to tell him how sorry I am.”

  I wanted to see Tim, too, to offer my sympathy. To find out what I could and reassure myself that Maddie would recover. There was no reason I couldn’t go—the shop was in good hands today with Matt and Reed.

  I glanced at Nate. If I said yes, if I went with her, I was all in, committed to finding out everything we could about Maddie’s involvement with the property, her shooting, and its link to Patrick Halloran. And he knew it.

  “Laurel?” a man said.

  Laurel jolted upright, her head snapping toward a man a few feet away. He took a step closer, momentarily hesitant, then a woman swept in.

  “Laurel, how good to see you!” She was on the short side, trim with short, dark hair, in black pants and a cashmere sweater. Early fifties, like her husband. Laurel rose instinctively, the way you do when someone is intent on an embrace. In normal circumstances, Laurel is a hugger, but her stiff posture told me this wasn’t a normal circumstance. The other woman knew it, too, and the hug turned into one of those awkward things where you touch each other’s upper arms and lean in, but avoid actual body contact.

  “How are you?” the woman said, stepping back and letting her hands fall away, her nails a pinky-beige, her diamonds bright. “We’ve missed you and Gabe. At Notre Dame, I heard. You must be so proud. What brings you to the old neighborhood?” Her gaze swept over Nate and me, then returned to Laurel.

  “Coffee with friends,” Laurel replied, then to us, “next door neighbors.” She made no introductions.

  “You heard about the shooting down the block,” the woman said, her voice low, as if speaking quietly would lessen the tragedy.

  I scooped up my jacket and stood. “We’re just leaving. Take our table.”

  “Thank you,” the man said. He unsnapped his dark rain jacket and reached for the back of my chair, then held it for his wife.

  She extended a hand. “Seriously, Laurel, you know we wish you nothing but the best.”

  “I appreciate that.” Laurel gave a tight-lipped nod and we headed out, wriggling into our coats as we wove our way to the door.

  On the sidewalk, I untied Arf and glanced in the window. The woman leaned across the table and spoke to her husband, her eyes flicking toward us, then back to him. “They seemed nice enough.”

  “They only wanted our table.”

  There was a prickliness to her voice, beyond the smart-aleck remark, that surprised me. “Is that the guy? The neighbor who was pissed at Pat, the one they suspected?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s also the man who found Pat. Spotted him from his office upstairs. It looks down on our old backyard.”

  “Ohhhh.” I forced myself not to turn for another look.

  “Bruce and Deanna Ellingson,” she continued. “She’s a real estate agent. Condos. He’s—retired.”

  “Young for that, isn’t he? I should have guessed about her. Real estate ladies have a distinctive personality.” We headed for our cars, in the next block. “So what about this argument between him and Pat?”

  “Bruce is super anal about their yard. We had a compost pile in the alley next to the fence. Yard waste, no food scraps, perfectly legal. Bruce thought it was a blot on the block and wanted it moved. They got loud over it, but that’s hardly a motive for murder.”

  Maybe so, but cops and prosecutors and very special agents had crawled over every inch of the neighborhood. They’d strip-searched his life. And from the wary look he’d given Laurel, I was certain: He still resented it.

  At the car, Nate reached for the leash. Kissed my cheek. “Text me later.”

  I nodded and watched him drive away with my car, my dog, and a piece of my heart.

  “Let’s swing by Tim and Maddie’s house,” I said when we were tucked inside Laurel’s SUV, bought when she was hauling half the soccer team and their gear around town. “On the other side of Boyer, overlooking Interlaken Park.”

  She headed toward the Montlake Bridge, its Gothic sandstone tower a defining landmark. In last summer’s heat, the drawbridge had gotten stuck open for more than an hour when the steel swelled, so road crews had started giving the century-old bridges cold water baths during hot spells. Some residents find the drawbridges a nuisance, and I admit, when you’re running late and the span opens to let a cruiser packed with tourists sipping wine drift by, it’s easy to get a little steamed. But the wait is never more than a few minutes, and the bridges are quite charming, especially this one.

  Then I realized it wasn’t the bridge that had prompted Laurel’s detour but the wetlands alongside the cut, as locals call it.

  One of the city’s founders had the bright idea to cut a channel connecting Puget Sound to Lake Union, and another linking Lake Union to the much larger Lake Washington. A set of locks keeps the saltwater from the fresh. Both crazy and brilliant, the channels created enormous possibilities for commerce and later, for recreation. They also necessitated those pesky drawbridges.

  In the distance, the bridge clanked open.

  Laurel pulled over, her hands white-knuckled on the wheel. Gray skies dampened the view, but the place was still stunning, an urban refuge for wildlife and human life alike.

  “He loved coming down here,” she said. “Bringing Gabe and the kayak and binoculars. He worked with Neighbors United to curb the damage to the wetlands from the highway expansion. They didn’t stop the project completely, but they did limit its impact on the neighborhood.”

  “Then when the corner grocery project came along, they turned their attention to stopping it,” I said.

  “They didn’t want to stop it, not completely. They wanted developers to consider the community, not just their own profits. They wanted to be part of the conversation.” Her voice caught and she poked at the corner of her eye with a fingertip. “And boy, could Pat talk.”

  What had he not been telling her?

  Before I could say a word, before I could reach over and touch her arm, she shoved the car into drive. Pulled away from the curb and gunned up the hill.

  Sometimes the only response to a painful memory is to keep moving.

  Seven

  An amateur detective’s approach “must rest mainly on the observation of character, which is of far more interest than forensic detail.”

  — Ellis Peters, author of the Brother Cadfael mysteries

  MADDIE PETROSIAN AND TIM PETERSON LIVED IN AN angular, glass-and-metal, three-story contemporary on the north end of Capitol Hill that should have been everything my vintage-loving heart hated in a house, but the one time I’d been inside, I’d been smitten.

  It was both warm and light-filled, Frank Lloyd Wright meets Bilbo Baggins. A major redo of a 1950s split level, the house was set back from the road, hidden by a hedge-like swath of dense shrubs and lacy trees. The terraced backya
rd led to Interlaken Park, a hilly stretch of urban forest that even some locals don’t know about. At their house rewarming party a year ago, Maddie had taken me into the master suite, cantilevered over the ravine, to show off the expansive views that remained virtually private. You could stand in the bedroom window in your birthday suit and no one but a raven or intrepid chipmunk would ever see you.

  At the moment, though, the house emitted a dark, mournful air, a soccer ball on the front step the only sign that children lived here.

  I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, remembering my yoga teacher’s exhortation to inhale calm, exhale stress. Then I opened Laurel’s car door, straightened my spine, and marched to the front door.

  No answer. I’m ashamed to say I was almost relieved. It’s easy to poke your nose into other people’s business when you barely know them. With old friends, it’s easy on the one hand, but hard on the other—you never know what you’ll find.

  Besides, I liked thinking Maddie Petrosian had the perfect life. She didn’t, of course; I knew that. No one does. But of all the people I knew, she come closest. Seeing her as the flawless Golden Girl—though brunette, and probably salon-assisted—let me imagine perfection possible.

  Not fair, was it? Hence my embarrassment, over my own foolishness, and my distance. She couldn’t possibly live up to my fantasies of her unassailable life.

  Okay, so maybe I was jealous. Just a little.

  I followed the perfectly hewn slate pavers around the corner of the house, pausing to admire an elegant Japanese maple—no scraggly rhodies with spent blossoms waiting in vain to be decapitated here. Picked my way down the slate steps set into the slope and peeked into the living room, where leather furniture and glorious Persian rugs sat on gleaming wood floors.

  No lights, no cameras, no action.

  Well, considering the neighborhood, there probably were cameras, live-streaming my every move to Tim or Maddie’s phone. Neither of them would be watching, at the moment.

  When I hiked back to the car, Laurel had the window down, listening to a woman holding the leash of a handsome German shepherd.

  I held out my hand to let the dog sniff it. “Good boy,” I said, my tone low and steady.

  “You’re Maddie’s friend?” the woman said, giving me a onceover. “How do you know her?” Clearly, she could not imagine someone like me knowing someone like Maddie, despite my shiny plaid rain boots.

  “We went to school together, up the hill.” At the Catholic girls high school. Maddie’s family was Armenian Orthodox, and I’d always assumed her parents chose a Catholic education for her as the next closest thing. “I’m Pepper Reece. You’ve met Laurel.” The hand I extended was not the one I’d just let her dog lick, but she ignored it anyway.

  “Well, you can’t be too careful,” the woman replied. “After everything that’s happened. I’m in the next block.”

  The houses in the next block weren’t in the same stratosphere as Maddie’s, but nothing to sneeze at, either. Or sneeze in—our inquisitor looked like the kind of woman who followed her guests around with a broom and a dust cloth. How did she put up with a dog?

  “We keep an eye out for each other around here,” she continued. “My next door neighbor has a bad cold, so I’m walking Duke for her.”

  Ah. That explained it.

  “They won’t tell us what’s going on.” By “they,” I assumed she meant the police.

  Duke pushed at my hand with his muzzle. “Duke, sit,” I said, and he sat. I ran my palm over his head, scratching behind one black-and-tan ear. “Good dog.”

  “We have a right to know,” the neighbor said. “We pay their salaries.”

  “I’m sure they’ll tell you what they can, when they can,” I replied.

  “For all we know,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken, “we could be next.”

  “Didn’t it happen down in the old grocery?” I said. “Not up here.”

  “Well, no,” she said. “Not up here. But if we don’t know what happened, we can’t say we’re not in danger, too, can we?”

  Paranoia or a good point? I believed Maddie’s shooting had not been random; the gun tied it to the murder three years ago. But this woman didn’t know that and I wasn’t going to tell her.

  Besides, I could be wrong.

  “Have there been other incidents in the area?” I asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No. But they better have some answers for us at the public meeting Wednesday night.” She tightened her grip on the dog’s leash and he stood. “Give Maddie our best. Come on, Duke. Eight thousand steps to go.”

  I’d have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so horrible. The woman’s fear made some sense, as did holding a public meeting. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the SPD’s community relations officer.

  We zipped over to Madison and down to what some people call Pill Hill. Harborview Medical Center is a hulking gray edifice that lurks above I-5. It did once have a harbor view, but the downtown office towers have all but blocked sight of Elliott Bay. I imagine that from the higher floors, you can still glimpse the industrial end of the bay, where the giant cranes and ships create a Lego-like charm. I’d last been here after Louis Adams, Cayenne’s grandfather, was jumped by a desperate vet hired to silence him. Thank garlic it hadn’t worked. Harborview’s trauma center is top-notch, its burn unit serving the entire Northwest. But it’s also crazy and chaotic—ambulances coming and going, down-and-outers seeking shelter, the walls echoing with pain and anguish and relief.

  Laurel managed to squeeze into a spot in the block behind St. James Cathedral. No chance an hour earlier, but morning Masses had ended.

  The instant the hospital’s electric doors swooshed open, an antiseptic odor attacked my nostrils, trailed by a whiff of something I could only label “fear.” Inside, we were directed up several floors and down a maze of hallways, some crowded, some empty. Finally, we reached a waiting area outside a set of wide swinging doors labeled ICU—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The security station, a boxy faux-wood desk, was vacant. A row of once-comfortable chairs stood against the wall, empty.

  No sign of Tim. No signs of life anywhere.

  “Kinda creepy,” Laurel said.

  Had the guard stepped inside? Could I peek in and get some help? I took a step forward, ready to push open a door.

  “Hey! What are you doing? You can’t go in there!”

  I turned to see a uniformed security guard hustling toward us. “Can’t you read? No unauthorized access.”

  “We’re here to see Maddie Petrosian,” Laurel told him.

  “Name?” The burly man sank onto the chair behind the desk, and it groaned in protest. Laurel identified us. He clicked a few buttons on the keyboard and stared at the top of the desk. The screen must have been hidden beneath a glass insert.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” he said, not sounding sorry. “Access is limited to immediate family. You two aren’t on the list.”

  “Oh. I don’t suppose you can tell us her condition?”

  “No, ma’am. That information is strictly confidential. My apologies, but we gotta be careful. People are always trying to get in—old friends, distant cousins.”

  “But—but I was hoping—I thought we might—”

  One side of the double doors opened. The person standing in the doorway was not the hospital staffer I expected. It was a Seattle police officer, an athletic-looking woman around thirty with a brown pony tail, wearing a navy blue uniform and sturdy black shoes.

  “Something going on, Ramon?” the officer asked. “Need a hand?”

  “No, Officer Clark,” the guard replied. “Under control.”

  Holy shitake, was my first thought. My second? I had to get out of there before she recognized me.

  Because I recognized her in an instant. Even though the last time I’d seen her, she’d been wearing a slinky red dress with spaghe
tti straps, at a table for two in the dimly lit corner of a downtown restaurant, running her bare foot up my husband’s leg.

  Eight

  Directions in Seattle are skewed and street grids collide because the founders argued over whether streets should follow the cardinal directions or the shoreline; when they couldn’t agree, each platted his land grant to his own whims.

  OH, MY GOD. I HAD NO IDEA. TAG HAD NEVER SAID. NO ONE had ever said.

  Why had no one ever said?

  “Pepper, wait!” Laurel called, her footsteps rushing down the hall after me.

  She caught up with me at the elevators. I’d have taken the stairs if I could have found them. Hospitals must have been designed by the same mad scientists who build mazes for lab rats.