Killing Thyme

by Leslie Budewitz

  What the fennel . . .

  Changing your name when you marry, fine. Picking your own first name or shedding an outgrown nickname, good on you. I understand cultural traditions, like when a law firm employee changed her name in accordance with her Cheyenne heritage, though it did create a record-keeping challenge.

  But stealing a name? From a woman who’d been your friend?

  “Detective, if you’re thinking my mother bought the van for Bonnie, or registered it for her, using her maiden name, think again. Not a snowball’s chance. I’m unsure about a lot of things right now, but I am positive those two women hadn’t exchanged a word in thirty years.”

  “I’ll send a patrol car,” she replied. “And we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the bakery.”

  Across from Wedding Row, a gaggle of future brides and attendants piled into two BMWs—one black, one white—and I zoomed into the parking spot they left. “You’re my lucky charm, dog.”

  I’d bought cookies twice today but had gotten nothing more than one nibble of a sugar cookie boat, long sacrificed to the pigeons. I wrapped Arf’s leash around a chair leg and popped inside where I ordered a double latte, iced, and half a dozen gingersnaps. No sign of Josh.

  “The Airedale outside is yours, right?” the barista asked. “Can he have a cookie? Pumpkin and almond flour, all organic, made for dogs.”

  I said yes, then took our treats to the sidewalk table, in the partial shade of a red umbrella. Quizzing the neighbors no longer seemed like a bright idea. Not with cops nearby, and detectives about to descend.

  I sipped my coffee and bit into a cookie. A peppery bite took me by surprise. Arf sat up abruptly, facing the street.

  Across the street, framed by the overgrown yews flanking his steps, Mr. Adams waved his golf club at me.

  “Come in, come in,” he said when we approached, swinging his three-iron like a machete.

  Age and arthritis may have slowed him down, but the rhodies and azaleas had been deadheaded, and the junipers and forsythia neatly trimmed. Coleus in their flamboyant reds, pinks, and greens burst out of the brick planters beside the front steps, set off by the three-lobed chartreuse leaves of sweet potato vine.

  Surprisingly cool for the warm day, the house was tidy, a hint of yeast and cinnamon in the air.

  “I brought cookies.” I held out the bag. “But you bake.”

  He settled into a deep maroon recliner next to the big front window. A lace-covered table held a lamp, his reading glasses, and the TV remote. He set my gift next to his coffee mug. I sat on a green ottoman, Arf at my feet.

  “My daughter takes care of me every Sunday. Big family do, like when my wife was alive. She runs the curry—what do you call it? The program that says what teachers gotta teach? Curriculum office, that’s it. And my granddaughter, she coulda been a chef.”

  Family photos covered the walnut sideboard. In the center stood a portrait of a young man in navy dress whites, unsmiling, hair cropped close. A shadow box held ribbons and medals; a triangular box held a folded flag.

  “Vietnam?”

  His eyes glistened. “My boy.”

  I stood and picked up the gold frame, my throat aching for his loss. Next to it, a black-and-white photo showed a barefoot boy sitting on a dock, cypress trees behind him—Mr. Adams as a child. A wedding portrait, circa 1950. His wife could have stepped off the cover of Ebony magazine. He looked like the class nerd who’d caught the brass ring. A photo a few years later, of the couple with two girls and a boy. More recent shots of his daughters and their families.

  I picked up a photo of a shining girl in cap and gown. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Mr. Adams, I’ve never properly introduced myself. I’m Pepper Reece. I own Seattle Spice. Your granddaughter Cayenne works for me.”

  “I know who you are. You were in the paper, right before she hired on. You and your dog.” A wicked grin spread across his wrinkled face. “You think I let just anybody into my house?”

  I smiled and glanced out the window, hoping to see the detectives. The break in the yew hedge, where the crumbling steps led to the sidewalk, gave him a clear view of the tables outside the bakery.

  “Mr. Adams, you remember anything more about the night Bonnie Clay was killed? You saw a car speed away.”

  “Like I said, one of them hot new SUV things. My other daughter drives one. She’s a school principal, over near Spokane. They both started out as teachers, same as their mother.” His gaze flicked back to the sideboard, first to the portrait of his wife, then to the image of that beautiful young man. His jaw quivered, and he picked up his coffee cup.

  A cup in the blue and brown glazes I’d come to recognize as Bonnie’s signature.

  “She gave me this, Bonnie did. She was a tough broad. Didn’t say much about herself. But when she saw that picture . . .”

  Out on the street, a police tow truck passed by, pulling Bonnie’s van, the detectives following. I desperately wanted to talk to them, desperately hoped they’d found something in the van that pointed to the killer.

  I turned back to Mr. Adams. “I’m so sorry about your son. I know it’s been a long time, but I imagine it never stops hurting.”

  “You get a pain in your ankle, it doesn’t stop you from walking. It’s a pain in your heart, but you keep living. You got to.”

  “If your daughters and your other grandchildren are as lovely as Cayenne . . .”

  “They are.” He ran his gnarled fingers over Arf’s ears. “Now that we’re all friends, don’t be strangers.”

  Twenty-two

  Avoid traffic problems. Move to Albuquerque.

  —Emmett Watson, legendary Seattle reporter and curmudgeon

  Oh, to hop a ferry and sail away, gliding across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula. Take my dog for a drive in the ancient rain forest. Browse the lavender farms at Sequim. Ogle the historic homes of Port Townsend. Stroll along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, gaze across the waters to Canada, and pretend I was a sea captain, exploring the New World.

  Oh, brave new world!

  Fat chance.

  Nobody tells you when you buy a shop that you can never take a vacation. That you’re on, even on your days off. You feel like you’ve married a building and an inventory and your staff, not to mention your vendors and your customers and your neighbors and Market management.

  I’d waited for the detectives to stop and share their secrets with me over cookies and cappuccino, but they’d sped on by without so much as a wave. I sat in the Mustang and glared at my phone. Three texts from the staff, all semi-urgent. Two from Tag, which I ignored.

  A text from Ben saying he finally had some time between meetings to research Russell and would e-mail me the results later today. Good. Maybe then I can get somewhere. I tossed the phone in my bag and stuck the key in the ignition. Time to get back to work. I didn’t really want to indulge my running-away-from-it-all fantasy. I am reminded daily that chucking the corporate world for a life of spice is a very special kind of living the dream.

  Besides, the shop needed me. Customers and employees needed me. I had pounds of hibiscus on its way and no plan.

  All that, I could handle. What gave me the fire-alarm-from-a-dead-sleep-at-two-A.M. willies was the thought of telling Kristen the true history of her stolen bracelet.

  And of forcing her to admit she knew more about the past—and Bonnie-Peggy’s role in it—than she was telling me.

  We crept up First Avenue South at a pace that would have bored a snail. When we finally reached Safeco Field, I saw that the Mariners were home, playing an afternoon game. Once we cleared the stadium traffic hangover, I zoomed up to the loft to park, then headed to the Market. Along the way, Arf and I stopped to visit a few vendors. I wasn’t procrastinating; I was being social.

  At least, that’s what I told myself.

>   “Boss, this registry—”

  “Sandra, no. Don’t tell me the computer’s on the blink or we have another Momzilla on our hands.” I was barely in the door when my second-in-command charged me.

  “No. That’s what I wanted to tell you. The registry is a hit. Wherever you got that idea, go back and get more brilliant ideas.”

  I kissed her.

  I set my sights on Kristen. My BFF and most congenial employee had given me the slip all day, but her time was up.

  “I need to make a delivery and wet my whistle. Walk with me.”

  Her chin dipped, and she gave me a hard look. “Don’t suppose I have a choice.”

  “Nope.” I faked a sunny smile and picked up a bag of spices Sandra had packed.

  Part of the Market’s charm is its history. Another is the nooks and crannies, the half-hidden places. My mission was Emmett Watson’s Oyster Bar, a nook and cranny if there ever was one. The late founder and namesake had been a notorious grouch who’d used his newspaper column to advocate for Lesser Seattle. Tongue-in-cheek or not, he’d made an art of urban skepticism.

  I handed the bartender his order—a black pepper he favored for his Bloody Marys, and dried chiles to flavor his vodka. He grunted his thanks. Kristen turned to leave, but I steered her toward a booth, and we squeezed in. Too grouchy to enjoy real food, I ordered a beer and deep-fried zucchini.

  “Just iced tea,” Kristen said, her mouth tight, expression wary.

  I’d learned, in fifteen years of solving personnel problems, that no matter what approach you take—and the options are legion—always, always leave out the emotion.

  Trouble was, this problem wasn’t personnel—it was personal. And I didn’t know whether I was confronting Kristen, or protecting her.

  The waiter slid our drinks onto the table.

  “It’s time to stop hiding the truth. Tell me everything you know about Bonnie. Peggy. Roger Russell.” I gripped the frosty glass and took a tiny, careful sip.

  Her head jerked as if on a string, and her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you push me.”

  I leaned in, both hands and forearms on the table. “I need to know. What happened in June of 1985? We got to St. Louis, and my mother got a call. She flew home alone.” We made the long, sweaty trip to my grandparents’ house every summer, hitting the road the day after school let out.

  Kristen stared into the past. From the TV above the bar came the crack of a bat, followed by an anxious silence, then the staff and patrons cheered.

  “And when Dad and Carl and I got home two weeks later,” I continued, “my mother had found the house in Ravenna and we moved.”

  Kristen clenched her icy glass. The waiter set the fritters between us without a word.

  I pressed on. “My parents always said we moved because it was time, we needed more space, especially with a growing boy. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?”

  A tear formed on the inner corner of her eye. “I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t supposed to know. They argued and argued. They couldn’t agree on what to do.”

  I reached for her cold, damp fingers. “It had to do with Peggy, didn’t it? And the tragedy.”

  She looked up, baffled. “How did you find out?”

  Suddenly I felt colder than the beer, than her iced tea. “They didn’t know, did they? Your parents and mine? Tell me they didn’t know what Roger and Peggy were planning.”

  Tell me, I meant, that our entire childhood wasn’t a lie. That our parents really did work and pray for peace and justice.

  Tell me we were who I thought we were.

  She shook her head slightly. “No. They didn’t know until afterward. And I’m not sure they ever learned everything.” Her fingers tightened on mine. “Aja had a nightmare and woke up crying. She’d left her doll in the playroom, so I crept down to get it, and I hid behind the door to listen. Terry told the group what had happened. Roger had been killed. Peggy had disappeared. They thought . . . That’s when my mother called yours.”

  That’s what my mother meant, last week in the Market. “They thought she’d been part of the attack at the Strasburgs’ house. They thought she’d been killed, too.”

  “I’m certain none of them—your parents or mine—knew about the plan. The police came—several times—but the adults were careful to get the kids out of the house. I never did find out exactly what happened, or what Roger and Peggy expected to accomplish. But—but—” Her voice grew urgent. “Our house was the focal point of the community. Meetings, dinners. Everyone shared the van, the garden, the meditation room.”

  “They crashed in the guest room and stored their stuff in your basement.”

  “Right. So I always thought they—we—were the center of the community. In charge.”

  “There were a lot of people doing a lot of projects in the name of Grace House. By then, it had lost its cohesiveness.” Not that I’d realized any of that as a kid. Not until now, when I could see that our parents had still been young themselves. Trying to figure out a new way to live, and raise their kids, and change the world.

  But when it comes to people, some things never change.

  “Right. And I think our parents were badly hurt when people started projects on their own, without consulting the others.”

  “Without consensus.” Part of their credo.

  “So when your mom came back, there were all these hush-hush meetings. Everything changed. When your family moved out, that was the beginning of the end for the whole community.”

  With the self-centeredness of a twelve-year-old, I had not given much thought to the changes in our mothers’ friendship.

  But now that I saw that time through older eyes—we were older than they had been then—I could see the rift that never healed.

  “All these years and you never said a word.”

  “Nothing to say.” Kristen swished a zucchini fritter through the cucumber sauce. “Our lives didn’t change much. We were still friends. We were still in the same class and activities.”

  “But the truth,” I said. “I would have known the truth.”

  “Do any of us know the truth? I just knew a few more details.”

  When I discovered that Tag had betrayed me with another woman, the details of our lives had realigned themselves. Shirts that came back from the cleaners that I didn’t remember taking in, his last-minute schedule changes—they made a different picture. I questioned every good thing he’d ever done, every declaration of love, the essence of our lives together. The essence of my own life.

  Details lose their power to hurt us over time, but like Mr. Adams had said, you don’t forget the pain.

  Something like that had happened to my mother in 1985. Part of me thought I should spare Kristen those details now, but this was no time for holding back.

  Trust her strength. Trust your own.

  “Peggy wasn’t killed. Obviously. She took off, but first she came back to the house. For how long, or who knew, I don’t know. But long enough to hide the bracelet in your basement.”

  Kristen’s hand flew to her mouth, her barely pink nail polish the same shade as her cheeks.

  I told her about my visit to Detective Washington and the picture he’d shown me. “No question. It’s the same bracelet.”

  She pressed her hands together, thumbs beneath her jaw, steepled fingers against her lips.

  I did the same. When it comes to justice, I believe in work. But praying never hurts.

  Twenty-three

  Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case.

  —Ellis Peters, The Raven in the Foregate

  “Do you know how much I love working down here?” Kristen said as we strolled out of the Soames-Dunn Building, arm in arm, as much to stick together on the crowded sidewalk as to reaffirm our best-friendship. “It’s
like, in the Market, anything can happen.”

  “And does.” Across Pike Place, in the craft stalls, Bonnie’s absence created no visible gap.

  But those invisible gaps are a whole other story.

  A familiar figure wearing Seahawks number 12—the fans’ number—sauntered out of Starbucks. The staff know Hot Dog’s love of cappuccino and occasionally buy him one from the tip jar.

  “Summon your persuasive powers,” I told Kristen.

  She gave me a conspiratorial wink, and we flanked him.

  “Uh-oh. Two pretty women picking up a dude like me, somethin’ ain’t right.”

  “Ah, Mr. Dog, a man of great taste,” Kristen said. “Not to mention talent and wisdom. You know, there’s an espresso bar at Changing Courses. And when you graduate, you can find a job with all the cappuccino you want, all day long.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The three of us sidestepped a couple, the woman using a motorized scooter.

  “Now if you’re worried about not being able to do the work—” Kristen said.

  “Oh no, ma’am. I want to do it, real bad, but—”

  “Is it your health?” I asked. “That new medication—”

  We’d reached the corner across from the Spice Shop, and he stopped. It was impossible to tell from his face whether he was worried about the program or about disappointing us.

  “Been a long time since I’ve spent the day inside. And I’d miss”—he waved a hand—“all this.”

  From where we stood, I could see half a dozen takeout spots and smell a dozen more. Then there were the butchers and bakers and specialty grocers who open every morning by rolling up giant aluminum doors or pushing collapsible gates aside. Not to mention the food trucks and street vendors that dot the city much of the year, places of business not marked by four walls.

  “Then you, my friend, have identified your first job requirement. That gives you a leg up.”

  “Make that two job requirements,” Kristen said. “Fresh air and fresh coffee.”

  Hot Dog’s laugh rumbled up from the soles of his faded black Converse sneakers, a caffeinated burst that enveloped us all. After we’d stopped howling, and he’d promised to fill out an application the next day, Kristen and I headed for the shop.