[SS01] Assault and Pepper

by Leslie Budewitz

  The mourners bowed their heads and the priest began to speak, though I was too far away to hear clearly. The service was short, and when it ended, everyone drifted away, speaking in low tones.

  I approached the mausoleum and read the names on the plaques. Several generations of Finches were buried here. Damien’s name and date of birth had been engraved on a plaque that bore his first wife’s name and dates. I’d never understood why people do that, but it wasn’t uncommon. How creepy it must have been for him to visit her—assuming he did—and see his own name already in place. And how strange for Marianne, when she visited her friend. Where would she be buried when the time came?

  But none of that mattered right now. I stretched out a hand and brushed my fingers over Carolyn Finch’s name. How often had Tory come here?

  “Your daughter is a lovely young woman. You’d be proud of her—her big heart, her artistic talent. Her determination. You don’t know me; there’s no reason for you to believe me. But I’m doing everything I can for her.”

  And then the sky broke open and the deluge began.

  Twenty-seven

  Rule No. 2,119: Never speak ill of the dead. Save your venom for the living.

  —Steve Brewer, Rules for Successful Living

  “You going to the reception at the house?” Stephanie said when we climbed inside the Mustang, her tone hoping I’d say no and let her off the hook.

  “For a bit,” I said. “For the family.” Not a pretense, really—Tory was still part of Doc’s family.

  I put the Mustang in gear, looked left, then slammed on the brake, killing the engine in the process. Dang. Not getting enough sleep—my eyes were playing tricks on me.

  “Sorry,” I muttered to Stephanie, and restarted the engine.

  She didn’t respond, instead leaning forward, staring past me.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I just thought I saw—no.” She sat back, brow furrowed.

  Something was wrong, but what?

  • • •

  “HE lived here?” My new pal’s voice rose in amazement. “It’s like, straight outta Disneyland.”

  On the drive north, I’d pressed, but it was clear that Stephanie not only didn’t know who Damien Finch planned to sell his practice to, she didn’t have a clue why he had decided to retire. Had Dr. Griffey known the real reason?

  Impossible to say. Nothing anyone had said suggested that Finch made a habit of lying—except maybe those broken promises to doctors that both Tory and Stephanie had alluded to. But he certainly had made a habit of withholding the truth when it suited him.

  I parked and hesitated, feeling guilty about crashing a funeral lunch. Though Marianne had spoken to me willingly. In private.

  “Come on,” Stephanie said, car door already open. “It’s pouring.”

  The picture of Tory rotting in jail for a murder she didn’t commit lodged in my mind and my promise to her dead mother rang in my ears. We dashed to the house.

  Inside, Marianne Finch stood in the dining room, pointing out features of the soggy backyard to Mrs. Griffey. No surprise that the clinic receptionist hadn’t been to the good doctor’s home, but his partner—or whatever the relationship—and spouse?

  I took refuge in the living room. No charm spared here. Oriental carpets lay scattered on the oak floors, and a chair and sideboard were either genuine Stickley or excellent reproductions.

  Arched niches built into the plaster walls, a classic Craftsman touch, held a striking collection of antique American art pottery. I recognized a Roseville pitcher and a blue apple blossom wall pocket, a graceful Rookwood vase, and a white ringware vase. I’d whistle if I knew how.

  A niche next to the tiled fireplace held a small oil painting in a pale gilt frame that drew me like—well, like forbidden sweets drew the mayor in Chocolat.

  A close-up of a red brick building, a single window lit for the evening. A lace curtain draped to one side. A small boy at a piano. The rich color, the moody contrast between light and dark, the artist’s obvious tenderness toward the boy all marked it as an exceptionally fine slice of life.

  In the lower-right corner were the initials VF.

  I tried to picture Tory’s personnel file. Her paychecks were made out to Tory Finch, and I didn’t recall seeing Victoria on the few documents in her file.

  And this exquisite oil bore no resemblance to the work I’d seen in her apartment.

  “Stunning, isn’t it?”

  I hadn’t heard Marianne approach.

  Seeing my consternation, she raised a graceful hand. “My son said you were a spy and I should toss you out, but I’m glad you’re here. As Tory’s representative.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s more you should see.” She beckoned and I followed her up the curving staircase to a second-floor sitting room. On a corner table beneath the slanted ceiling, a hand-blown glass lamp glowed. Modern art glass is popular in these parts, inspired by Dale Chihuly and his Pilchuck School, though this piece could have been genuine Tiffany. Another Oriental rug, in soft reds and golds with blue accents, lay on the floor. A loveseat twin to the one in Tory’s apartment and two matching chairs had been upholstered in cranberry velvet.

  “Carolyn’s?” I asked.

  “Tory didn’t have room for all the pieces, so I promised to hang on to them for her. I told Damien they had belonged to my friend and we were keeping them. He didn’t like it. But I know he snuck in here from time to time.”

  She was braver than I had suspected. And Damien—had he been that callous, or that wrecked by his first wife’s death and his daughter’s estrangement?

  Marianne gestured at the walls, at oils and watercolors by the same sure hand I’d witnessed downstairs. “This is why my husband became a doctor, and why he was so determined that Tory choose something else—anything else—but art.”

  More cropped landscapes, several portraits, a few tentative abstracts. I studied the landscapes on the nearest wall, then turned to Marianne, filled with questions.

  “VF. Victoria Finch,” she said. “Damien’s mother. Widowed young, with one child. She struggled constantly to make a living, working for minimum wage as a waitress and a hotel maid. Day jobs. And every night she painted. She’s buried in the same mausoleum where he is.”

  “I always thought those belonged to wealthy families.”

  “The burial rights were paid for decades ago, back when the Finches had money. Money they later lost. Victoria had to make it on her own.”

  “Like Tory.” I took a closer look at the portrait of a boy with golden brown eyes—the same boy as in the piece downstairs. Damien, at seven or eight. Beside it hung the image of a young woman in her early thirties with the same eyes, though hers held a deep weariness. A self-portrait? “She never mentioned a grandmother.”

  “She never knew her. Victoria died when Damien was a junior in high school. He managed to win a scholarship and put himself through college and med school. Then he created the life he hadn’t had.”

  I faced her. “He resented the sacrifices his mother made so she could paint.”

  Marianne nodded, lips tight.

  “Okay, so Victoria struggled,” I said, “but who can deny her talent? Or Tory’s? Have you seen her work?”

  “She had a gift.” Marianne spoke softly. “And so does Tory.”

  “You never told her? Tory never knew why her father was so opposed to her plans, her dreams?” Marianne had been between a rock and a hard place, but I couldn’t understand why she’d helped her husband keep such a terrible secret. “She managed, you know. Beautifully.” And had enough money to help her friends on the street.

  “Damien didn’t see it that way. Better for her to give up art altogether than suffer in its clutches, especially if she had children. I’m not saying he was right, but that’s how he felt.”


  I sat on the antique walnut chair, processing it all.

  She perched on the settee across from me. “I found out a couple of years ago, when I cleaned out the attic and discovered all these paintings.”

  My heart ached, and that was no metaphor. “Such pain, all because he insisted on keeping the past hidden.”

  “Because he loved his daughter. He wanted to spare her.”

  What had Laurel said last night? You can only trust that you’ve taught your children to make good choices, then let them make those choices. From the outside, it looked like Damien, Carolyn, and Marianne had taught their daughter well. But Tory’s father, scarred by his own childhood, didn’t trust her. Or more likely, himself.

  “There you are, Mom.” A tall man in his late thirties, in dark suit pants, a white shirt, and a sky blue tie stood in the doorway. He glowered at me. “People are asking for you.”

  Where had I seen him before?

  “Pepper,” she said. “My son, Dr. Kevin Ripken.”

  He nodded curtly and extended his arm, a wedding ring glinting on his hand. At the top of the stairs, Marianne paused. “Please tell Tory I will visit, but it’s still too soon. Give her my love.”

  The clinic, Monday afternoon. Kevin Ripken had emerged from his stepfather’s office and kissed his mother tenderly, but radiated tension toward Ken Griffey.

  Rivals for the clinic ownership?

  Recognition must have shown on my face. Ripken’s eyes narrowed. In warning, or worry?

  Twenty-eight

  SEATTLE RAIN FESTIVAL—SEPTEMBER TO MAY ANNUALLY.

  —Bumper sticker

  I glanced out the window at the top of the stairs before following Marianne and her son down. The rain had stopped and the gray gloom had lifted. Dare I hope for brighter days to come?

  In Seattle in September? Nah.

  In the kitchen, Stephanie chatted with a nurse from the clinic, who promised her a ride home. I handed her my card—still the old design, but not for long.

  She read the card, then raised her wide eyes. Obviously, she had not connected me to her employer’s daughter, the suspect in custody. They’d be whispering before I cleared the threshold.

  I paused on the front steps to check my phone. No messages from the shop, but one text from Fabiola. Looking good, girlfriend! she wrote. The designs in progress, I presumed. I smiled at the screen.

  A text from Callie the librarian read, No recent partnerships on record. I’ll keep digging.

  That made sense, after Stephanie’s comment that Finch preferred clinic arrangements that he could change at will. I dropped the phone back in my bag.

  “You have to talk to her. Sooner, not later. There’s too much at stake.” A woman’s voice.

  “She isn’t going to want to talk to me. She’s going to want to help the kid,” a man replied. Dr. Griffey? Or Dr. Ripken?

  “Tell her if she won’t honor his promises, you won’t keep yours. You’ll take the patients and the staff and start over on your own.”

  I peeked around the hedge. A pregnant blonde and a man with sandy graying hair. Griffey.

  “Marianne, I’m showing Kenny your garden,” Mrs. Griffey called out in a perky voice, although I hadn’t heard her mention the plants or the view. “So lovely.”

  Marianne Finch came into view, careful to stay on the turtle paving stones. Her heels would sink right in to the ground.

  What promises did Mrs. Griffey mean? Promises made on Monday, when Marianne and her son dropped in to see Griffey, promises relating to a deal Finch had reneged on?

  Did that make the son a suspect—and cast Marianne in a different light?

  Did I need to rethink my assumption that no one would kill a dying man?

  Did I need to get out of here before I charged back in and asked more questions that got me tossed out on my keister?

  Three maybes and a definite yes.

  • • •

  I’D driven three blocks when I remembered why Dr. Kevin Ripken had looked familiar when I saw him in the clinic. Last week in the shop, I’d taken him for a tourist and sold him spice tea for his wife. But he was the stepson of a murdered man, visiting the scene of the crime. Wondering how his stepsister, enough younger that he didn’t know her well, could have done such a thing.

  I pulled the Mustang over and fished out my phone. Google said Dr. Ripken was a cardiologist and surgeon, in a group practice in Seattle. Photos on the group website showed the same man I’d just met.

  Had Kevin Ripken hoped to take over his stepfather’s practice?

  But what did any of this have to do with Tory?

  Talk about complicated.

  • • •

  SINCE my first taste of teenage freedom, whenever I need to get away and think—or just get away—I hop a ferry. Used to be, you could buy a one-way walk-on ticket for seventy-five cents and ride as long as you wanted. I’d buy a cup of cocoa and lean on the railing, letting my worries drift away in the ferry’s roiling wake. No matter that they were usually waiting for me back at the dock.

  But 9/11 changed security permanently, so now you have to get off on the other end and buy another ticket before getting back on. Fares rose, too. But what could be more comforting on a gray day, post-funeral, than riding the waves of an old habit? I dropped the car at my loft and headed for Pier 52.

  Along with my black pantsuit and heels, I’d donned a black wool gabardine raincoat, my favorite coat ever. I cinched the belt tight across the double-breasted front and carried my cocoa out to the rails.

  It always feels about ten degrees colder on the water. I closed my eyes and let the breeze spritz salt air on me—though with all the goo in my hair, only a gale could blow it free.

  What a day. What a week. Everyone I had talked to seemed to think Tory had killed Damien Finch, but no one seemed to blame her. Not even Marianne, who’d loved him.

  I opened my eyes and sipped my cocoa. The ferry system had gone green and switched from insulating white foam to paper cups like we use in the shop. Cold stung the backs of my hands; heat stung the palms.

  Nearly fifty years after his mother’s death, Damien Finch had still resented her choices. I expect every child feels like a part of his parent is outside his grasp. But that distance had wounded him, and he blamed it—and her early death—on her need to paint.

  Had his rigid dictates been an effort to protect his daughter, or an attempt to keep her, too, from falling prey to the evils of artistic ambition?

  We might never know.

  Damien Finch had been dying. Was that a key fact, or a red herring? (Never mind that the herring in the Market fishmongers’ stalls are a bright, shiny, slithery silver.)

  So who knew? I ticked off the names. Marianne and, presumably, her son Kevin and his anonymous brother. And their wives.

  Tory. Though she may not have believed him.

  Ken Griffey and his wife? I couldn’t be sure. Griffey had known of the retirement, but not necessarily the reason. Finch might have enjoyed keeping that bit to himself.

  Clinic staff? The receptionist had been clueless. What about the nurses and the office manager?

  Patients? Mr. Franklin had said Finch was retiring, but I suspected that if he knew why, he’d have said so.

  Robbie the cabbie? He’d said one puzzling thing: Dr. Finch didn’t like to drive, “not since months.” And then he’d described the argument between father and daughter. Months since the fight, or the diagnosis? Robbie was easy to talk to. Finch might have told him.

  Wait a sec. I shivered inside my coat and moved closer to the observation deck, where banks of windows on each side offered wind protection but didn’t block the view of Bainbridge Island and the Winslow docks. Griffey’s wife had mentioned Finch’s broken promises. What if Griffey thought that he could pull an end run? That if Finch died before he sold the cl
inic to someone else, his estate would have to carry out his contractual obligations and sell to Griffey?

  If there was a contract.

  Marianne would hardly tell me, and Tory wouldn’t know. Stephanie?

  Could I convince her to let me prowl through her dead boss’s office? Talk about violating confidentiality six ways to Sunday.

  And hadn’t I heard, back at the law firm, that contracts don’t have to be written to be enforceable? You just had to be able to prove their terms. Not so easy, when one party was dead.

  Beneath us, the big engines shifted gears and the decks vibrated as we slowed our approach. Once home to many farmers who supplied the Market—the prewar Japanese farmers’ strawberry fields were legendary—Bainbridge Island had gradually become a wealthy bedroom community. Midafternoon on a Wednesday, commuter traffic was light. A dozen or so cars and a few delivery trucks had driven on in Seattle.

  Okay, so the hypothetical contract obliging Finch to sell to Griffey might have given him a motive for murder. That still left the question of means. How could Griffey have gotten poison into the tea, or the cup?

  The engines downshifted again and I moved up to the foredeck, pausing to watch a bald eagle bank above the harbor.

  I headed through the empty viewing area to the stairs down to the car deck. We were a few minutes from the dock, but walk-ons are first off.

  Halfway down the long flight, the heavy steel door slammed above me. The sound echoed in the craterlike space. Footsteps thudded on the metal treads.

  Between steps, I heard a woman say, “She’ll figure it out.”

  I froze, one foot suspended, one hand on the rail. No. Impossible.

  “Don’t worry,” her companion replied. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect our future. For all of us.” The engine noise drowned out the rest of his words.

  The Griffeys, or the Ripkens?

  They were following me. They had plans, they wanted Tory to stay in jail and take the blame for her father’s murder, and they were following me.