Guilty as Cinnamon

by Leslie Budewitz

  To a Big Empty. The interior had already been cleared, and framing for new walls had begun. A thick layer of grit covered the floor.

  “Tamara?” I stepped over the threshold, greeted by a loud mechanical hum from the back. She wouldn’t be able to hear me. I squeezed between a pile of two-by-fours and a stack of Sheetrock. The place had potential—that deceptive, expensive word I knew well from my loft build-out.

  She hadn’t gone far—her green-striped tote sat on top of the lumber.

  I called out again, slowly turning around. The place smelled of sawdust and—what? I shook off a childhood memory that came from nowhere. A slightly musky, barklike scent, with notes of something sharper. I cocked my head. Cinnamon—here?

  I opened my mouth to call Tamara’s name. Stopped, wordless, at the sight of a silver sneaker laced in lime green lying on the clean-swept floor.

  Behind a pile of white plastic pipe, Tamara Langston lay on her back, a panicked expression on her blue-gray face, her eyes red, her fingers flash frozen like the claws of a Dungeness crab.

  The dull humming screamed in my ears.

  Four

  In Indian cooking, cinnamon is considered a sweet spice, used in both curry and garam masala to balance the pungent and hot spices.

  —Ian Hemphill, The Spice and Herb Bible

  A good chunk of my childhood revolved around the Church, or rather, redefining it. My parents believe deeply in God and good works, but my father practiced the zen of hard work and my mother the art of family maintenance. Our extended household, which included Kristen’s family and assorted others who came and went, formed the hub of the Catholic Worker Movement in Seattle, supporting pacifist causes of all types, including the free meal program at the Cathedral.

  As she baked, washed, swept, and weeded, my mother had hummed and chanted chamber music, her medieval harmonies the soundtrack of my young life. Though we chopped and stirred in the Cathedral’s basement kitchen several days a week, we climbed the stairs to the nave only a few times a year, for choral concerts. I’d held my mother’s hand and imagined the angels listening to such songs as they built the heavens.

  And so, when I least expect them, those angelic tones slip into my consciousness, uniting the seen and unseen.

  They surrounded me now, until the dispatcher’s voice jerked me back to reality.

  “Wait for the officers outside,” she said. It didn’t seem right to leave Tamara, but I knew the routine.

  “There you are.” Laurel zoomed toward me the second I emerged. “Pepper, what’s wrong?”

  I dragged myself to the wrought iron bench in front of Tamarind. Rubbed my damp right eye. Told her what I’d found, grateful for a kind ear.

  Minutes later, EMTs and SPD officers swarmed the scene, blocking the sidewalk and half the street. The officers worked out of the same precinct as Tag, and their faces looked familiar, but this was a different sector and shift. I agreed to stay put, wishing the bottled water in my bag was gin. The officer on door duty kept a casual eye on me.

  “Oh cra—cardamom,” I muttered under my breath as a familiar duo stepped out of an unmarked car. Why did Spencer and Tracy have to catch this call? (Yes, they’ve heard the jokes, and no, they’re not amused. In my experience, homicide detectives are rarely amused.) Spencer and I clicked the first time we met, but for reasons I’ve never figured out, Michael Tracy and I rub each other the wrong way.

  “Ms. Reece,” he said, as if my name were sand caught in his teeth. “Ms. Halloran.” Behind him, Detective Cheryl Spencer—model perfect, as always—stepped into the construction site. A white van marked KING COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER joined the virtual parade of official vehicles that blocked traffic, removing any doubt that Tamara Langston, promising chef and restaurateur, had, in police jargon, expired. Like a carton of milk.

  My stomach turned sour.

  “Suppose you tell me,” Tracy said, standing in front of the bench and taking full benefit of his temporary height advantage, “how it is that you found another body?”

  Laurel’s fingers tightened on my arm, and I suppressed the urge to say “Bad luck.” “She—Tamara—the victim.” The words scraped my throat raw. “She was a professional acquaintance. She’s—she was opening a new restaurant here and came to see me about spices. She mentioned the Indian place next door, and that got me in the mood for curry. I got here first and the door was open, so . . .”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “We planned on doing business together. I wanted to see the layout.”

  “Hmmph.” Tracy’s rumpled camel jacket stretched a tad less tightly across his chest and stomach than during our regular encounters last fall.

  “I was late,” Laurel said, “or I’d have gone in, too.”

  He ignored her, his small, dark eyes intense, perpetual sags beneath them. “So you decided it was okay to just march right in.”

  I sighed. “I called to her, but some mechanical thing was making a ton of noise. She’d left her bag, so I knew she hadn’t gone far. And then—”

  And then it was too awful and my throat clamped shut. My eyes stung. I felt Laurel’s hand on my back, her stricken gaze on my face.

  Spencer emerged from the no-longer-empty shell, and Tracy joined her for a whispered conversation. He strode inside, and she crouched in front of me, her manicured but unpolished fingertips on my knee. “Pepper. Sorry to see you under these circumstances. Tell me what happened.”

  I told her, bit by excruciating bit. Cheryl Spencer’s vibe, to borrow a word from my mother’s tongue, is as different from her partner’s as her appearance. The tall, slim blonde is cool as a 1940s movie star, while Tag describes her short, stocky black partner as a fireplug who doesn’t get pissed on often enough.

  But, far as I can tell, they are solid with each other.

  Behind her, the crime scene crew went in. The body came out.

  Heels rapped on the concrete. The air hushed and I looked up. A graceful woman of about fifty with artfully colored hair and a stylish teal raincoat stopped before the open door, eyes and features stone-still. She was one of those people who command a space, who fill it up with their energy. Like them or not, you can’t help notice them and be impressed. And I had no idea who she was.

  Laurel charged forward. “Danielle.” She took the woman’s hands in hers. So this was Danielle Bordeaux, a legend of the local food scene. “I’m so sorry, but there’s been an accident or—well, we don’t know what happened. Tamara’s—gone. Dead.”

  Danielle Bordeaux stiffened. She stared. She surveyed the crowd—Detective Spencer, me, the EMTs repacking their unused gear, the ME’s crew stowing theirs, patrol officers guarding the perimeter, neighbors and after-work gawkers on the other side of the yellow tape. Detective Tracy blocking the doorway. And finally, her attention landed on Laurel.

  “What are you doing here? And what do you mean, dead?” Underneath the question, her voice held that same command note her posture conveyed. A voice used to being in charge. Used to the hurried, hassled minions responding in unison, “Yes, Chef,” “Firing two filet, one sea bass, Chef,” “Sorry, Chef.”

  She let Laurel lead her to the bench, and I gave up my spot. Spencer ignored the rapid-fire questions and sat beside her. The detective has that matter-of-fact empathy that lets you know she’s ready for any reaction, any demand, anything you throw back at her, all the while maintaining the sharp watchfulness of the veteran cop.

  Danielle did not fall apart. She let the news sink in about as long as she would pause to reflect on simultaneous orders from two six-tops, a four-top, and a VIP two-top.

  Spencer’s tone was kind as she said Tamara had probably been dead before I found her, that there were no visible injuries, that we’d have to wait for the ME’s preliminary opinion. “Did she have any illnesses that you know of?”

  Danielle’s features—long, straight nose, full lips,
slightly hooded eyes—darkened briefly, and she shook her head. “She called me an hour ago and asked me to come down. We’d noticed odd sounds and flickering lights a few times, but no one could find the cause. Tamara thought she had an answer. Chefs learn how to fix things,” she said, answering the unasked question why Tamara would poke around with the wiring. “One service call can kill your profit margin.”

  A man in a long white apron pushed his way into the circle, forcing me to step aside.

  “What’s going on? I’ve got a restaurant to run here.”

  We’d never met. I vaguely recalled seeing Tamarind’s name on a list of former Spice Shop customers, though why or when we’d lost that one, I had no idea. A handful had departed when I took over, lacking confidence in an owner who had no experience in spice, retail, or even in the food business. Others had seen the change of guard as a chance to change their loyalties. No surprise, and I hadn’t let it bother me.

  A vague feeling surfaced that I ought to call on him and solicit his business, followed by an equally vague feeling that I shouldn’t.

  Detective Spencer stood and flashed her badge. “We’re investigating a suspicious death, Mr.—?”

  His head jerked back, and his wide mouth fell open. “Pa-Patel. Ashwani Patel. Chef and owner of Tamarind. Death? Suspicious? Who? Where?” He glanced at the boarded-up building, and when he spoke, I had to lean in to hear the low, raspy words. “No—not in there? I told her to stay away.” He noticed Danielle. “I told you it was haunted.”

  Danielle pursed her lips and waved a hand. “Patel, everyone knows you’ve been spreading rumors for years to drive off the competition. Why you think a trash heap next door is better for business than a bustling hot spot, I can’t imagine.”

  They locked eyes, hers hard and clear, his red rimmed and puffy. I suspected he’d once been handsome, with his burnished skin and black hair flecked with silver, but he now looked both a little doughy and a little overbaked.

  Behind him I glimpsed a blonde in a white apron—one of his cooks?—and a tiny Indian woman in a deep red sari who stared straight at me. I swear, she winked.

  “The rising tide theory,” Patel said. “Well, we’ll never know, will we?”

  The theory that a little competition improves business all around. After seeing close-up how the two spice shops in the Market boost each other’s bottom line, I’m a believer.

  “Let’s talk inside, Mr. Patel,” Detective Tracy said, ducking out from behind the yellow tape and leading the man toward his own front door.

  Was that distrust or disgust on Danielle Bordeaux’s striking face?

  Or neither? I shivered. Nothing like finding a body to fire up the imagination.

  Five

  In the Middle Ages a pound of ginger was worth a sheep, while a similar weight of mace could buy three sheep or half a cow.

  —Charles Corn, The Scents of Eden: A History of the Spice Trade

  “How can you call yourself a foodie? Look at the state of your fridge.”

  Spencer had cut us loose a few minutes after Patel’s interruption. We’d given Danielle our sympathies, climbed into my Mustang, and zipped back to my loft on Western Ave, a few blocks south of the Market.

  “I shop for a day or two at a time. And we were eating out.” I peered over Laurel’s shoulder. “Oh, I spy appetizer potential.”

  She backed away from the fridge, leaving it to me. “Just give me comfort food. And red wine.”

  Laurel’s husband, Patrick, an assistant U.S. attorney, had been shot and killed in the backyard of their home on Queen Anne Hill three years ago, when Laurel and their son, Gabe, were away on a school field trip. Unsolved to this day, and I knew by her strained tone that Tamara’s death had reopened the wound that might never fully heal.

  Laurel had called Gabe, just to hear his voice, while I took the dog out. Now, I piled a few vegetables on the salvaged butcher block that tops the peninsula and opened the freezer. “How about a ready-to-bake vegetarian lasagna from Ripe? I hear their food’s pretty good.”

  She grinned at the reference to her own place, a breakfast and lunch favorite that also provides takeout for the downtown working crowd, then plucked a Washington-grown Sangiovese blend from the wine rack. “Hand me that corkscrew.”

  I did as instructed. Laurel perched on a tole-painted wooden stool Kristen and I had found on one of the junk shop tours she calls “antiquing.” We’d been hunting treasures for her top-to-bottom redo of the Capitol Hill house, but I’d scored a few prizes of my own. Arf padded across the loft’s wood floors to the kitchen corner and lapped water from his stainless steel bowl. I punched on the oven, then sliced a day-old baguette and brushed on olive oil. “These can toast while we’re preheating.”

  “And drinking.” She slid a glass toward me. “To the memory of Tamara Langston.”

  Shame on me, but I would have liked to forget Tamara lying on the floor of the construction site a little while longer. I raised my glass but didn’t drink. Didn’t trust my throat to work right.

  Instead, I rinsed beans and greens. My place is classic loft, the west wall a bank of twelve-foot-high windows—why, on the fifth floor of a 1920s warehouse, I’ve never known, but they bring in a ton of light. And when the old double-layer viaduct that carries the highway above the waterfront comes down, they’ll give me killer views.

  Meanwhile, there’s a concrete wall forty feet from my living room, traffic whizzing by behind it. The mezzanine above the bed and bath gives a peekaboo view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains that’s stunning this time of evening. But we needed to feed our grief. In minutes, I pulled out the toasts, slid in the lasagna, and assembled a platter of white bean and arugula crostini topped with sun-dried tomatoes.

  We carried our wine and appetizers to the windows, climbed out the one that serves as a door, and sat at the bistro table. Despite the traffic noise, the greenery and new furniture—and the virtual forest on my neighbors’ adjacent veranda—created the sense of a tiny alcove outside a Greek hotel or in the south of France.

  The wine scraped across my throat, raw with unshed tears. The tension in my neck and shoulders heightened momentarily, then began to recede, like the shadows around the edges of an old-time movie.

  “Do you really think it’s homicide?” I said. “I mean, Spencer called it a suspicious death, and they have to treat it as a crime scene until they know what happened. But there wasn’t a mark on her.”

  Laurel put a hand on my leg. My black yoga slash work pants smelled like spice. “You did everything you could, Pepper.”

  “Danielle said she’d called about an hour earlier. That means she was alive not long before I found her.” Police would use phone records to pin it down. The ME would weigh in. And I would never know, because they would never tell me, whether I could have saved her by showing up a few minutes earlier. Whether anyone could have.

  “The detective asked—” I said as Laurel started “I’ve never seen—” We both stopped. I raised my glass to my lips and said, “You first.”

  “I’ve never seen Danielle at a loss before.”

  “How do you know her?” I crunched into a crostini. The slice of sun-dried tomato on top of the beans slid off the bread and landed on my thigh. One more reason to wear black.

  “We were line cooks together ages ago, when I was still doing the cook-all-day-and-never-sleep thing.” She still works long days, but it’s different when it’s your own place.

  “Two women in one kitchen? Unusual, back then.”

  She refilled our glasses. “What made it different was that we were both on the line, not relegated to salads or pastry. Some guys gave us a hard time, but Chef didn’t care as long as we could cook and keep up. And we both did.”

  “And you both left.”

  “I quit to have Gabe, and opened Ripe when he started school. Danielle started her own place,
too, then another and another. My niche is good, fresh, fast. Hers is creating the concept and managing it all.”

  I swirled the wineglass under my nose. Earthy. Hints of cherries, vanilla from the oak barrels, tea leaves, and a touch of cinnamon. “Did you like her?”

  Laurel took the last crostini. “She did her work and stayed out of mine. That was all that mattered.”

  The oven timer buzzed, and I stepped back in through the window, carrying the empty platter. On his occasional visits to the loft, Tag gives me grief about the lack of a real door to the veranda, but that’s one feature I won’t ever change.

  “If she died from natural causes, it was something sudden. A brain aneurysm,” I said when I’d returned with the lasagna and settled into my green metal chair. “Or a heart condition, like those athletes who just drop dead.”

  Laurel served us each a generous piece. “Because she wouldn’t have been planning a new business if she knew she was ill.”

  “Exactly.” I took the first bite. “This is delicious.”

  “I’ll tell the chef.”

  Not easy to laugh with your mouth full.

  Laurel’s longtime baker had fallen in love with a Bainbridge Island brewer and given notice of her intent to head off to other yeasty doings, so we commiserated over staff shortages. Her deli-style setup requires counter staff rather than full-serve waitstaff—easier in some ways, tougher in others.

  “Oh geez. Forgot to tell you. The Cinnamon Challenge is going through the schools again, including Gabe’s.” I told her about Ben Bradley and his questions.

  “I know better than to say Gabe would never do anything so stupid,” she said. “But soccer and school keep him pretty busy. Cramped as we are on the houseboat, it’s going to feel empty when he leaves.”

  “Boat living will be good training for dorm life.” Laurel had bought a houseboat on Lake Union after Patrick’s death. Her soccer-star son had passed up all three local schools in favor of a scholarship to Notre Dame. But encouraging the chick to fledge and watching him fly away are two different things.