Guilty as Cinnamon

by Leslie Budewitz

  “Pepper. Do. Not. Do. It. Do not get involved with him again.” She set her empty dish on the crate and leaned forward, hands in prayer position. “Nothing wrong with having dinner with your ex. Better to be friends than enemies. But don’t let it go any further. Please.”

  “I won’t. I swear.” I ran a hand through my funky hair, not improved by the day under a ball cap. “But thirteen years means something.”

  “Not to him. He already proved that. The man does not know the meaning of commitment.”

  “Wait. Are you talking about Tag, or Alex?” I warmed my hands on the mug. “Why do I have such rotten judgment about men? I love my life, but it gets a little lonely.”

  “Your judgment is perfectly fine. You left Tag. You broke it off with Alex. You just need confidence.” She stood. “Go bowling with Ben. Have fun. But don’t be desperate. That’s what leads to bad judgment.”

  After Kristen left, I took Arf for a spin around the block, then climbed into my jammies. Made another cup of decaf, said no to a second dessert, and opened Callie’s finds on my laptop—easier to read the tiny legal print there than on my phone.

  Over the years, Ashley Brown and Ashwani Patel had left a rubble of trouble, blazing a maze of deceit. I simply hadn’t known where to look. Once she had Ashley’s name, Callie had uncovered business licenses for three separate restaurants. Collections suits by unpaid vendors—meat, produce, and spices. If I could whistle, I would have—how on earth had Jane let them run up a bill that high? For all her customer savvy, Jane was a hippie at heart, uninterested in the financial side of the business. That’s why I’d had to install an inventory system when I took over, and why it had been fairly easy to turn a profit, once we turned the organizational corner.

  But she wasn’t, apparently, the only soft touch. Eviction notices from two landlords claimed months of unpaid rent. I dug out a notepad and jotted down the dates and addresses, making a rough chronology of their business history. Claims by the state for unpaid overtime and stolen tips. Suits by linen services, a janitorial supply company, and an electrician.

  That one gave me pause.

  But the real shocker was that Ashwani Patel’s name was nowhere to be seen. After his wife left, he’d hidden transactions behind half a dozen corporate names, no doubt counting on superficial credit checks or suave explanations.

  The scum had even continued to rack up debt in her name. Callie had dug up her credit score—how, I didn’t know; Callie never crosses an ethical line, but she knows how to tap-dance them. It looked like my last bowling score.

  Good for you, Seetha. I may have rotten taste in men, but you knew a stinker when you met one.

  I kept scrolling. Callie had found inspection records from the Health Department—his places had always squeaked by—and announcements of the new restaurants. The first incarnation, the Blue Poppy, had been profiled by a hipster blog shortly after it opened. I recognized the location from the photograph, a hole-in-the-wall off Madison, on the edge of super-trendy, super-expensive Capitol Hill.

  But that wasn’t all I recognized.

  I zoomed in on the photo of the smiling couple, arm in arm beneath the vivid blue sign. Ashwani, tall, dark, and self-satisfied. And wearing a chef’s coat in her signature green, Tamara Langston.

  I inhaled sharply. Arf raised his head. “It’s okay, boy.”

  But it wasn’t okay. If my eyes weren’t fooling me, Ashley Brown had disappeared and returned as Tamara Langston. Risen from the ashes, so to speak.

  So why on earth open a restaurant next door to her once-and-former husband? Or whatever he was.

  I tried to blow up the photograph for closer inspection, but no luck. I toggled to the daily paper’s website. Ponied up to get the archived story pairing Tamara’s picture with Alex’s, already behind the paywall. Chalked it up as a business expense. Split the screen and put the two shots side by side.

  Changing hair style and color is easy, as I can attest. Disposable contacts make new eye color a cinch. Eyebrows can be pretty distinctive, but I recalled reading an article ages ago that said earlobes are our most distinctive facial feature. Unless you hide them behind hair or under a hat, they can give you away.

  I pulled up the magnifying glass app on my phone and peered closely. Reached over and switched off the lamp. I had to squint, and I couldn’t be positive without showing the pictures to someone who knew both women. But I’d bet my bottom dollar that the missing had been found.

  Dead, but found.

  “Oh, Tamara. What were you doing, playing with fire?”

  Ashley and Ashwani. Tamara starting Tamarack, next door to Tamarind.

  All her hopes and plans, whatever they’d been, up in smoke.

  * * *

  NO bhuts disturbed my sleep. I hoped they’d been equally kind to Seetha.

  Despite the late night, I was rarin’ to go Wednesday morning, bolstered by the discoveries that could help identify Tamara’s killer. Or Ashley’s, if my theory was correct.

  Buoyed by optimism, Arf and I jogged up the Market steps. The air smelled of a coming rain. At the top, near the bakery, I glanced toward the North Arcade. I saw no one unusual, but a jolt zipped up and down my spine, as though I’d touched a hot wire.

  As I’ve said, if the Market had a middle name, it would be some version of wondrous strange. The Shakespeare quote jumped into my brain unbidden, triggered by what Reed had dubbed “the Hamlet note.”

  I ordered hot drinks for my staff and a box of cinnamon rolls, and asked for a candle in one. No reason cupcakes should have all the fun.

  A few minutes later, I picked my way down the cobbles to the shop, juggling leash, bakery box, and drink holder. Sandra had already turned on the lights—working fine, thank you—and both Reed and Kristen had arrived.

  “Hey, I know my watch has been acting funny lately, but is yours running fast?” I handed Kristen her cappuccino.

  “Ha-ha. I wouldn’t be late for Zak’s last staff meeting. Besides, after last night, you and I have lots to talk about.”

  Sandra’s eyebrows shot up, and Reed, fiddling with the sugar, looked up. The front door opened. Zak strode toward us.

  “My last Wednesday. My last week.”

  “Hey, man. Don’t be down. You landed your dream job,” Reed said, and I knew that in the not-too-distant future, Reed would leave us for his own dream job, whatever it might be.

  “Yeah, but you guys have been so great. Tory and I will never forget any of you.”

  “Forget us and I’ll haunt you,” Sandra said. She dealt out napkins and opened the bakery box. I picked up my latte and frowned, reading the note scribbled on my cup.

  NF2L. Never the same woman twice.

  Nonfat double latte, I understood. But what did the silent, pale-faced barista mean by the rest? My appearance and my outfit didn’t change much day to day. My mood, on the other hand, could be a little shaky before coffee.

  I took a long sip and pushed the questions aside.

  “So Eric made coffee for me this morning,” Kristen said, her fingertips on my arm. “He always does when he gets up first. But instead of dusting cinnamon on top, he grabbed the cumin by mistake.”

  Sandra gasped. She has a more developed palate than Kristen and makes the occasional snide comments about Kristen’s taste. (Impeccable in everything else, but then, having tweens at home can downgrade one’s food choices.)

  “I didn’t want him to know it was awful,” Kristen continued, “because he was being sweet, so I pretended I was in Casablanca.”

  “Remember who started the trend when Starbucks features it,” I said.

  After our meeting—short on substance, long on reminiscing with Zak—we got ready to open, then I retreated to my office. Caught Callie on the first ring.

  “Hey, thanks. I owe you. But you raised more questions than you answered.”


  “Welcome to a researcher’s life.”

  “Am I reading this right? You found absolutely nothing on Tamara Langston before two years ago?”

  “Right. It’s as if the woman sprung into life when she moved to Seattle,” Callie said.

  “The flip side is, everything you found about Ashley Brown ends at exactly the same time, except for the credit record.”

  “Also right. Until then, I found her all over online. She shared recipes, entered baking contests, ran 10Ks and half marathons, and then, poof! Nothing. Ohmygosh, Pepper! Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Yep. One more search, if you have time. You sent me a photo of Ashley and Ashwani at the opening of Blue Poppy. See if you can find more pictures of her—at races, charity cook-offs, whatever. I know the name might hold you back—”

  She snorted. “And I thought Caroline Carter was a common name.”

  We hung up, and I followed a train of thought that occurred to me as I drifted off last night. It was remotely possible that Ashley-now-known-as-Tamara had gone along with what Ashwani was doing in her name. A twisty-turny type of fraud. But why? The real puzzle was the location. Why give her restaurant a similar name to his and open next door? She’d insisted on that location, despite Danielle’s doubts.

  The light dawned. Her motive had been revenge. His had been rage.

  First, I called Jane. “Pick your brain? I’m going over a list I found of former customers, wondering if I might bring them back in the fold.”

  She gave me the scoop on a Madison Park bistro and an upscale joint in Lake City. Then I asked about Ashwani Patel.

  A long pause. Then, “Oh, my dear.” Said ambiguously, as both endearment and exclamation of concern.

  “I’m afraid I may have made things worse for her.” She paused. I waited. “They came to me when they opened their first restaurant—a flower name.”

  “The Blue Poppy?”

  “That was it. They’d used their cash on the build-out, so I carried them for a while. They’d let the account build up for a few months, then bring in a check for the full balance and a wonderful take-out meal for the staff. It became a routine.”

  Depending on the size of the bill—and the skills of the chef—that might not be such a bad deal.

  “He’s one of those overbearing men with sweet wives. You wonder how they stand it, if their husbands treat them privately the way they treat them—and everyone else—in public. But you try to stay out of it.” She paused, and I pictured her in her island paradise, staring out at the ever-changing winds upon the ever-changing waves. “She went from being a vibrant, confident blonde to a mousy thing you barely noticed. After Blue Poppy came Mon—not Montlake . . .”

  “Mantra?” One of the corporate names Callie had uncovered.

  “That’s it. They went upscale but kept the take-out service. For financial security, I imagine, but I thought it was a mistake. Blurring their identity. What your generation would call diluting their brand.”

  An evil to be avoided. Thanks to Jane’s sketchy bookkeeping, none of this showed in the few financial records she’d left behind. “What happened?”

  “That failed, too, so they started a third place, Tamarind. One day, they brought in a check to pay off a big tab, and a huge feast of a spread. He asked my opinion, and I gave it to him. The butter chicken was tough, and the spicing was off—he’d let his curry go bitter. The samosas, on the other hand, were delectable. Perfect pastry. And she made a carrot cake using Indian spicing, a cross between a halvah and a cake, with cardamom and nuts and an edible silver star on top. Divine.”

  Bring in a recipe once, and forever after, Jane would recall what you’d made. She couldn’t remember to update personnel files, but she knew what spices you’d needed for which dish for your book club two years ago.

  “I’m afraid I’m too blunt sometimes,” she continued. “He was the cook; she was the baker. When I gushed over the cake, he scowled and dismissed it as not traditional. Acted as if it were her fault that I praised her dish and not his.”

  “Like she was showing him up.” I bit my lower lip.

  “Exactly. They left, and I saw them outside—him yelling, her cowering. I wanted to intervene, but what could I say that wouldn’t have made things worse?” She paused, and I heard her sipping tea. “Not long after, I heard she’d left him. Left town. I felt guilty—I never saw him hit her, though I suspect he did. If his ego was too fragile for honest criticism, he shouldn’t have asked for it. And he certainly shouldn’t have blamed her.”

  “Straws and camels’ backs,” I said. “Sounds like your compliment gave her the courage to leave. Check your e-mail in about five minutes and call me.”

  I sent her the two photographs—Ashley and Ashwani outside the Blue Poppy, and Tamara Langston from last week’s newspaper. She wouldn’t have seen the story—her indifference to business extended to the daily news as well.

  Then I called the electrician who’d sued Patel for nonpayment.

  “Deadbeat. First he wouldn’t pay, then he had the nerve to say my work was substandard. I’ve been wiring commercial kitchens and restaurants in this city for twenty-five years. My work is second to none.”

  Why was I not surprised? “Were you working on the build-out next door? For the new restaurant called Tamarack?”

  “Yeah. Screwy deal. We scoured that place from top to bottom. Couldn’t recreate the problems, couldn’t find the cause. With these old buildings, you don’t always know what’s in the walls—”

  As I was discovering, myself.

  “—but if there’s something wrong there, we’ll fix it.”

  “One more question. Did you ever talk with the little lady who works out front, at Patel’s place? His grandmother, maybe?”

  “Never saw her.”

  I thanked him and hung up, grabbing the phone a minute later on the first ring.

  “Are they twins? Cousins?” Jane’s voice was tremulous, high and worried. “Pepper, what’s going on?”

  I only wished I knew.

  Twenty-six

  In Tudor England, nutmeg—bought from Venetian merchants who acquired it in Constantinople from traders who got it who knows where—was used to treat colds and flatulence. But when physicians prescribed nutmeg pomanders to treat the plague, the seeds of Myristica fragrans became precious as gold.

  —Giles Milton, in Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History

  The possibilities screamed through my brain. I could take the fuzzy picture to Zu Wang or the house-painting neighbor and ask if Tamara was Ashley Brown reincarnated. Show it to Danielle, to the women in the salon, or if I was ultra, uber brave, to the little woman I thought of as the crazy Indian grandmother. The woman who’d first told me about bhuts.

  But the face in the photo was so small and shadowed.

  And I could think of only one person—besides Patel—who’d known them both.

  * * *

  NOT long before I met him, the local paper ran a feature on Alex, showing the great man posing in the restaurant and in the kitchen. After this ordeal—assuming he came through unscathed—they might want to do another, focusing on his office. If GQ had a design section, he would be the poster boy. Other folks worked here, too—after all that had happened, I’d dared come up only because Ops, her assistant, and the accountant would be close by. But in style, the place was all him. And the decorator.

  He gestured to the dark cherry Windsor chairs paired in front of the very tasteful cherry desk—not too large, but not too small—and glanced briefly at his own padded brown leather chair before taking the seat next to mine. A photo on one of the matching bookcases behind the desk stood out: Chef Alex Howard attending the James Beard Awards dinner, the year he was nominated for Best Chef Northwest. I had never seen him so genuinely hap
py.

  “How’s business?”

  “Good, good,” he said, rapid-fire. “Never thought I’d miss the kitchen so much. Or all the idiots who work for me.” He grinned, but his heart wasn’t in the gibe.

  “According to everything I’ve heard and dug up, Tamara worked in just two restaurants in Seattle, both yours. A bit of a surprise.”

  His face remained neutral, but a vein in his neck throbbed.

  “Alex, did you know when you hired her who she was?”

  I’ll give him credit for this: Most people would have acted astonished, pretending they didn’t know what I was asking. Not Alex.

  “Of course I did. That’s why I hired her. Pepper, you know the restaurant community. Everyone knows everyone. Oh, not the diner or pizza people, or the brand-new prep cooks.” He waved a hand at those unseen worker bees. “But if you’ve cooked in this city at this level for six months or more, I want to know you, so I can steal you away.”

  The heavy double doors opened, and a young woman brought in a coffee tray, the French press working its magic. She set the tray on a cherry buffet along the redbrick wall and left. Alex rose and poured for us both. He handed me a hot cup and sat, cradling his own. Murder is a chilling topic.

  “She couldn’t have reinvented herself without our help,” he said. “She didn’t want to be driven out of town—her town—because her husband turned out to be a creep.”

  “Did you hire her as Ashley Brown, or as Tamara Langston?”

  “Tamara. She changed her name legally, but not in Seattle, because she didn’t want him to find her. She was living in Snohomish County and working in my Eastside bistro. Worked like a fiend, learning every station.” He eyed me over the rim of his cup.

  “But you said everybody knows everybody. He was bound to find out.” Had Danielle known, and not told me? Had Spencer and Tracy discovered the switch? “Especially when she opened up next door. That, I don’t get.”

  “Me, neither.” He squinted, beating his chin with the side of his fist. “Part of the reason I thought she would stay is that we sheltered her—Ops, Glassy, and me. We kept her secret. We didn’t put her picture on our website. We didn’t brag that our new sous had run three Seattle restaurants, that she was a prizewinning pastry chef, that she knew Indian food inside out but could conquer any cuisine.”