Guilty as Cinnamon

by Leslie Budewitz

  “Stop him!” someone yelled.

  The crowd parted, a natural reaction to the chaos as bystanders tried to suss out what was happening. Patel spotted the opening and sprinted toward the Armory.

  “Are you hurt?”

  A hand touched my shoulder, and I looked up into the concerned eyes of the Indian drummer.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

  A furry muzzle poked me in the neck, and I struggled to rise.

  The drummer held out a hand. “Are you able—?”

  Arf barked once.

  I unhooked his leash. “Cain!” I said, and patted him firmly on the rump. His brown eyes searched my face, as if to be sure I meant the command. “Cain!”

  And off he went, darting and weaving silently through the crowd, making his way more easily than any human could, a terrier in pursuit of a rat.

  I got to my feet and pushed after him. People moved out of the way, and one or two grabbed for him. Silently, I urged him on.

  Tall enough to stand out as he ran, Patel glanced back. At one point, I thought he saw me, and at another instant, he noticed the dog. Panic filled his eyes and he stumbled, then recovered and pushed forward.

  “Pepper!” Ben yelled from somewhere in the distance.

  And then I lost sight of our quarry. There were too many people, too many men who could have been Patel. I slowed, gasping for breath, sending mental messages to my dog to keep the scent, to keep up the chase.

  There he was. To the left, a dark head moved quickly, raggedly. His pace faltered. The limp, or years of eating rice and chapatis, catching up with him.

  He veered toward the International Fountain.

  “Son of a borage.” On a day this gorgeous, the lawn around the fountain would be jammed with lunchers, festivalgoers strolling casually, kids with painted faces carrying balloons twisted into shapes of puppies and kitties and elephants, kids high on sugar and sunshine and the pure joy of play.

  Behind me, Ben shouted my name again. Off to my right, I heard footsteps pounding. Through a break in the crowd, I spied Patel, his leg dragging as he ran along the ledge surrounding the fountain. Voices commanded “Stop! Police!” It’s instinct—at least, for most of us—to stop at those words, but I plowed on, knowing they weren’t meant for me.

  The woman I’d seen earlier showing off her Chihuly find drifted into view. Patel pushed her out of his way. She shrieked, and the sounds of breaking glass shattered the air. Colored shards flew in all directions.

  Patel jumped over the ledge. Behind him, a tan-and-gray streak made the same jump, far more gracefully.

  “Doggie!” a child cried.

  I darted through an opening and ran into the shallow bowl that held the fountain, angling down its sloping sides. Dodged a trio of boys oblivious to the chaos. Wove past older kids and adults who’d noticed man and dog and paused to watch. Patel kept going, slowed by that bad leg.

  Ten feet in front of me, Arf leaped into the air. His big jaw grabbed the seat of Patel’s pants. Down the man went, tumbling, rolling toward the giant silver dome, the dog so close he almost appeared to be pushing him. Patel came to a rest, and Arf stood guard, barking like I had never heard him bark.

  Before I could decide how to corral the man, two Center police officers grabbed Patel’s arms and yanked the sputtering chef to his feet.

  “Arf, hush. It’s okay now.” I snapped the leash onto his collar and started up the side of the bowl, my bloody hand throbbing.

  And then the music—the music I hadn’t even heard, over the pounding of my heart—the music changed. “The Ode to Joy” rang off the stone and glass and concrete, and the water spouted far and high and drenched the officers and their captive, the soaring notes a triumph of good over evil.

  Or, at least, of dog over man.

  “Good boy.” I sank to the stone ledge and wrapped my arms around my panting, soaking, wet dog. “Good boy.”

  * * *

  “I knew you wouldn’t have taken off without good reason. When I saw him shove that mother and then you chasing after him, I grabbed the nearest cops.” Ben sat beside me on the ledge.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Patel repeated, water puddling around his feet. He tried to cover his backside where the terrier had torn his pants, but the handcuffs made it impossible. “Whatever else I did, I didn’t kill her.”

  “Save it for the detectives,” one of the officers told him. A patrol car rolled up to the intersection between the fountain and the Armory, followed by an unmarked vehicle, and the officers loaded him into the back of the patrol car.

  “What was I saying about you attracting trouble?” Detective Tracy said a few minutes later after he and Spencer wrapped up a quick chat with the cops on the scene. This morning’s croissant flakes had vanished from his sport coat, replaced by chocolate sprinkles.

  “I prefer to think I’m attentive to details.”

  “Run through them for us,” Spencer said, so I replayed the scene, from recognizing Patel in the food truck and spotting the little lady from his restaurant onstage, to my dog giving chase and catching his man.

  “You trained him to attack at the phrase ‘Cain and—’?” A note of admiration snuck into Tracy’s question, but he stopped when I held up a finger.

  “He came that way. He’d bark, once, at the oddest times. Then last Saturday, we were here at the Center. A little boy named K-A-N-E ran out in traffic. The dog chased him and saved him.” I rubbed behind Arf’s right ear, the fur still damp. “The parents were yelling the boy’s name. It wasn’t until today that I realized he also barked at A-B-L-E, and put two and two together.”

  “This little lady, she’s the one who told you about the bhuts? The floating ghosts?” Spencer said.

  “Right. And she’s the one who got me thinking about Patel.”

  “He says he didn’t kill her,” Ben said.

  “They all say that,” Tracy told him.

  Broken glass glittered. The bowl hadn’t been a genuine Chihuly—the souvenirs sold at the Garden store are made by Northwest artisans based on the great sculptor’s designs and specs—but it had shattered like one.

  A shiver raced up my spine as my conviction that Ashwani Patel had killed Tamara-Ashley shattered, too.

  “Ben, would you take Arf to the shop? Detectives, we need to swing by the First Avenue Café. I’m about to solve your case for you. For real, this time.”

  * * *

  “ALEX is at the Eastside joint today.” My sous chef pal ground out his cigarette in the puffer zone behind the Café.

  “It’s not Alex I’m looking for.”

  Prep hadn’t started yet, and the side door was locked. And I didn’t want to appear at the front door with two detectives close behind me.

  “Thanks again for those bones,” I said as he let us in. “The dog’s in heaven.”

  “Boss was a bit peeved when we didn’t have enough for a stock he’d planned, but hey, plans change.” He winked and headed for the kitchen.

  “Well, well. Look who the cat dragged in.” Scotty Glass’s eyes narrowed as he gazed past me.

  I slid onto a barstool. My companions kept to their feet. The mirror behind the bar reflected Spencer checking out the space. She was not sizing it up for its dining potential.

  “This is Detective Spencer. I believe you know Detective Tracy.”

  “We are acquainted,” Glassy said, his tone wary, the words drawn out.

  “I watch a lot of movies,” I said. “The way I see it, this is a buddy movie gone wrong.”

  “Is that so?” He picked up a bar towel and polished a heavy glass goblet, as bartenders do in the movies.

  “Every friendship is a story. Kristen and I have been friends since before we were born. Our parents shared a house, and we were due on the same day, though I showed up two weeks before she
did.”

  “Sounds kinda kinky,” he said.

  “Laurel and I knew each other casually for years, but we bonded over tragedy. Then there’s you and Alex.”

  Glassy set the goblet on the counter next to a dozen others, ready for service, and tossed the towel over his shoulder. In the mirror, I saw him reach for a half-round mezzaluna and begin cutting limes in half.

  Beside me, Tracy coughed. A hurry-up-and-get-this-going cough.

  “You had a nice gig,” I said. “You worked for a chef-owner who spent most of her time in the kitchen. She hired good people and got out of their way.”

  I forced myself not to watch as Spencer’s mirror image strolled casually to the servers’ station at the end of the bar.

  “Then she decided to expand and hired another chef to run the kitchen while she focused on her new place. That chef, being a bit of a schemer himself, quickly realized that you were running the bar like it was your own, letting the servers make cash sales without ringing them up and splitting the proceeds. He wanted in. You had no way out.”

  A small electric juicer whirred, and citrus scent sparked the air.

  “When Detective Tracy and Officer Buhner came calling, you and Alex formed a united front. The servers disappeared, after you slipped them extra cash to start over in Portland or Denver or wherever. But one stubborn gal wouldn’t go. She’d had enough small roles in local theater to think she could make a career on the stage if she stayed in Seattle. So you and Alex paid her off, and Lynette—I think she called herself Melissa back then—took a short vacation. Long enough for the cops to lose track of her, but not long enough to lose her theater connections.”

  “You want a drink to wash down that tall tale?”

  “Like that Negroni you poured me last week, to warn me to keep my mouth shut?”

  “She’s got it about right, doesn’t she, Glassy?” Detective Tracy took a step closer. “You and Alex Howard are tied at the hip. You’ve got to keep an eye on each other, or risk losing everything.”

  “I don’t know what you think we did way back when, but you can’t prove any of it.”

  “Oh, but we can, Mr. Glass,” Spencer said from her post at the end of the bar. “You of all people ought to know you can’t trust someone you’re paying to keep quiet. This Lynette, she saw the end of the gravy train and started singing. And you know how actresses love a spotlight and an audience.”

  “Your trouble’s getting deeper,” Tracy said. “Ms. Reece here figured out that when Tamara Langston asked you to join her new operation, you knew she was bound to discover the real reason you would never leave Alex Howard’s company. Not out of loyalty—you don’t have any, not really.”

  Glassy’s jaw tightened, and he rolled one shoulder back and forth. In the mirror, his fingers twitched.

  “You got it wrong,” he said. “Alex is my best friend. He wouldn’t know how to betray me.”

  “You knew Tamara well enough,” I said, “to know she couldn’t be bought. She’d started to unravel Patel’s scheme of using her name and credit to prop up his failing business, and she asked you for advice. You made a big show of helping Alex shelter her, but you had to get rid of her.”

  “What better way,” Tracy said, “than to force your way into the construction site and kill her there, to cast blame on Patel?”

  “How would I do that? She died of some obscure pepper sold by your little storyteller here.” His glance darted nervously around the room.

  “We called Big Al on our way here,” Spencer said. “We knew Howard had an account there, but he insisted he bought all his spices from Ms. Reece. Her records show a regular pattern of sales that supported his claim. Seems you’ve been buying ghost peppers in his name, supposedly for your special hot Bloody Mary. Bought about a decade’s worth in a few weeks.”

  Tracy held up a pair of cuffs. “Scott Glass, we’re here to arrest you for the murder of Tamara Langston, also known as Ashley Brown. Put your hands on the bar where we can see them—”

  The mirror told me he was on the move. Glassy flung the bowl of lime juice at Tracy. He ducked, and it flew over his shoulder, clattering onto a table behind us. Glassy leaned across the bar and reached for me with his left hand, the mezzaluna glinting in his right. I twisted away, and his hand grazed the top of my head, the thick fingers scrabbling for my hair, too short to hold on to.

  I grabbed a goblet from the top of the bar. Threw it at Glassy. He ducked. I grabbed another and another. Threw like the baseball player I was named for, spit and fire, salt and pepper.

  The swinging doors to the kitchen opened. “Hey, I found another bag—”

  “Stop right there,” the two cops shouted in unison, guns out.

  The frozen bones crashed to the floor as the sous chef raised his hands.

  “Down on the floor, you scumbag.” Gun in hand, Spencer dashed behind the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the terrified sous drop to the ground. Spencer grabbed Glassy’s wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor. Tracy joined her, gun trained on the big bartender, as his partner snapped on the cuffs.

  My breath rattled my teeth, and I set the last goblet back on the bar. I slid off my stool and approached the sobbing sous.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said, not yet grasping that the target of the operation was the man behind the bar. “I’m innocent.”

  I reached out and helped him to his feet. “You’re innocent, but he’s guilty, guilty, guilty.”

  Guilty as cinnamon.

  Thirty-one

  There’s rosemary—that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.

  —Ophelia to Laertes, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5

  Spencer and Tracy hauled Scotty Glass off to jail. I asked a patrol officer to drop me off at the Center. I had a little lady to find, and to thank.

  The crew of Curry in a Hurry were hitching their wagon to a battered white pickup when I reached the lawn. Gone the crowds, the children, the music of a happy day. Gone, too, the sunshine, as a pale gray blanket rolled in off the Sound.

  “I had no idea,” the blond woman said after I told her about Tamara-Ashley and Patel’s elaborate schemes. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “If it’s any consolation, at first I thought he’d killed her, but now we know Scotty Glass overpowered her and forced her to breathe a bag of ghost peppers.”

  “You dodged a bullet,” a male employee said. He bent to plug in the trailer’s lights, and I gave her a questioning look.

  Shock and pain flooded the face so much like Tamara-Ashley’s. “We were engaged. We—I just bought this food truck. I’d planned to sign half of it over to him as a wedding present.”

  “I’m so sorry. I was hoping to catch the little Indian woman who sits out front in the restaurant. The woman who played the tambura onstage.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “No little Indian woman works for us.”

  “She’s tiny.” I held a hand below my chin. “Not five feet tall. Dark hair, pulled back. Wears a jeweled bindi, and every time I’ve seen her, she’s worn a deep red sari. I assumed she was his grandmother.”

  “He has no family,” the blonde said. “And I’ve never seen anyone like that in the restaurant.”

  The other employee straightened. “Me, neither. I helped the musicians set up. It was just the three guys. They don’t use a drone player.”

  In a distant corner of my mind, a solo monk began to chant. Other voices joined him, melding together in harmony, and if I were a swearing woman, I would have sworn I heard a tambura join in.

  * * *

  “RUB a little chile pepper into that scrape on your hand and it won’t scar,” Sandra said, a twinkle in her dark eyes.

  “You even think about pouring capsicum in my hard-earned wound and you’ll be out on the street so fast your head will spin right off your neck.” The cuts and scrapes I’d
gotten when Patel shoved me to the ground stung, but were nothing a fresh, fat cinnamon roll couldn’t cure.

  “You wouldn’t dare. You couldn’t run this firetrap without me.”

  She had me there. “Patel’s fiancée says he’s deathly afraid of dogs. Got badly bit as a kid, teasing a neighbor’s Doberman. That’s what gave him the limp.”

  “And the limp slowed him down enough for Arf to catch him?” Reed said.

  “I had no idea Arf could run that fast.” The hero of the story lay beneath the table in the mixing nook working on a bone. Thanks to the sous, we had a year’s supply to stash in the freezer. “Just don’t mention any biblical brothers around him.”

  Outside, the Market carpenters were repairing the burnt plaster. Our electrical system had been given the all clear. I’d get our new signs ordered. The herb seedlings were already selling well, as were the aprons and mugs bearing our logo, delivered this morning. I filled my mug with spice tea and raised it in a toast.

  “Here’s to the little lady in the sari, whoever—whatever—she may be.”

  * * *

  FRIDAY morning, I stopped for coffee at the bakery at the top of the Hillclimb. “How did you know?” I asked the shy barista who’d left clues I hadn’t understood on my coffee cup.

  She pulled the steam arm, and it spit and hissed.

  The counter girl handed me my change, and I dropped it in the tip jar. “Mouth shut, eyes open. That’s her.”

  I looked at my cup. No note this time. The barista had drawn a smiley face. I caught her eye and smiled back.

  My crew and I got the shop ready for the day, then three of us piled in the Mustang and headed north.

  “We’re playing hooky,” Kristen sang, off-key. “Lookie, hooky, cookie.”

  A killer, an arsonist, and a fraud-wreaking identity thief were behind bars. How could I not sing along? Mount Rainier dominated the skyline behind us, and Mount Baker towered in front, their glacial peaks sparkling. Girls on the road. Plus dog.

  “Pepper, look.” Lunch had gone down easy—open-faced Dungeness crab salad sandwiches and glasses of Pinot Grigio on a deck overlooking Padilla Bay. We were ten feet inside the third junk slash antique shop of the day in Anacortes, not far from the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, when Kristen grabbed my arm. Secondhand shops near military bases are jackpots for international prize hunters like us.