Killing Thyme (5 page)

What if you knew her

And found her dead on the ground?

How can you run when you know?

—Neil Young, “Ohio”

There are cool June days in Seattle. This was not one of them, and if the bakery had AC, it wasn't keeping up. My chill came from what I'd seen in the studio. The triple shot I'd drunk earlier meant the one the barista had pressed into my hands would put me way over my limit—I'd have the shakes by noon. A new medical phenomenon—
caffeinum tremens
.

What I needed was a cold glass of water, to wash the sour taste of vomit out of my mouth.

Before I could answer him, Detective Tracy had been called down to the crime scene, leaving me with the beat cop, Officer Don't You Dare. He worked out of the South Precinct. He didn't know me, and his face barely registered when I mentioned Officer Tag Buhner of the West Precinct Bicycle Patrol. He flipped to a new page in his notebook. “Now, who are you, and why are you snooping around?”

“I
told
you. I'm a friend of Bonnie Clay. The victim.
When she didn't show up for work in the Market this morning, I got worried. I knew she lived below the bakery, and I know the owner—”

“Well, aren't you the social butterfly?”

“So I called Josh, and he found her and called you. 911. I came right down. I . . .” My words trailed off, stretched thin by adrenaline.

“Now why would you do that?”

“Because she's a big-hearted woman who drops everything when a friend's in danger.”

Our heads turned, and Officer Don't stood. “You know this woman, Detective?”

“We go way back,” Detective Cheryl Spencer said.

All the way back to last fall and a series of unfortunate incidents in the Market. Actually, we'd been acquainted before that, through Tag and the annual police officers' picnic, but we'd forged our own relationship in recent months.

“A chai latte, please,” she told the hovering barista, then pulled a chair up to our table. The budding ballerinas had dispersed, picked up by parents anxious over the police fleet blocking off the street and the barricade keeping looky-loos away. Now that the word was out—“dead,” “murdered”—I imagined thumbs were flying on Twitter or whatever social media site drew the tutu set.

“Pepper, I'm so sorry. Was she a friend?”

“Yes. Old family friend.” I gripped my rapidly cooling cup. That much I could say for sure.

Rare to see Spencer without Tracy. (They won't arrest you for making the joke, but they won't laugh, either.) The tall, cool blonde and her short, stocky black partner were Mutt and Jeff, salt and pepper, opposites who complemented each other.

He and I were oil and water.

“Now, fill me in.”

Outside the plate glass window, another patrol officer
directed the CSU investigators and the ME's crew to the basement.

“Victim was a tenant. Bonnie Clay, age unknown, reportedly a potter.” Officer Don't read his notes with no trace of amusement, but Spencer's lips twitched. I turned away, staring at the blank white walls. The upbeat music made my skin itch.

“According to the baker, Josh Gibson, who is also—”

The front door opened, and said baker entered, trailed by Detective Tracy. “And I'm telling
you
,” Josh said over his shoulder, “this wedding is at two o'clock, in the Arboretum, and if you don't let me leave in the next five minutes, thousands of dollars' worth of food will be ruined. Along with my business and my reputation.”

“Sir, you are a witness to a major felony.”

“I didn't witness anything. All I did was find her.” Josh pivoted and held his arms open wide, palms out. Pleading.

Spencer's highlighted bob barely swayed as she shifted focus to her partner. “Seriously, Mike? Do you want to tell that bride and her mother why they have no cake?” A petrified look replaced Tracy's usual smugness, and Spencer took over. “Mr. Gibson, give us the names of all the staff working today, and make sure everyone you take to the job comes back to the bakery with you, so we can get full statements. And give the happy couple our best.”

I'd never seen her contradict her partner. A new side of Detective Cool.

She turned back to the beat cop as if we hadn't been interrupted. The officer cleared his throat. “According to the baker, who also owns the building, there are five retail spaces, all on street level. Six apartments upstairs, four linked to a corresponding art studio downstairs. Studios one and two have been combined into a ballet school and rehearsal space, with a separate entrance.”

“What about the other two apartments?” I hadn't known
Josh owned the building. Either there's big money in macarons, or he had a major mortgage.

“The owner lives in one, and another is vacant. We have not located all the tenants yet.”

His chilly tone made it sound like their absence was suspicious. Like they might not simply be out grocery shopping or taking a Saturday morning bike ride.

“We talked to the employees here and in the other shops,” he continued. “No one heard or saw anything suspicious, except for Ms. Reece rushing down and prowling around a crime scene, demanding to know what happened.”

Prowling and demanding? It hadn't been that way at all. I raised both hands in a “hey, I'm innocent” gesture.

Spencer didn't flinch. “Get names and contact info for all the dance teachers, and find out who worked yesterday or today. And all the students, both days, and their parents.”

When he'd gone, she leaned back in her chair, her manner gentle as she asked me to tell her about the victim.

I cradled my espresso, now cold comfort. What did I really know? “Potter. New to the Market. My mother knew her years ago. Back then, she was called Peggy Manning. She came to a party at Kristen's house last night. Ben and I dropped her off downtown around nine, and she said she'd see me in the morning.”

I'd expected to see her alive. To chat about the present, and the past. Truth be told, I'd intended to poke around a bit to see why her reappearance made so many people I knew uncomfortable.

But now she was dead, and I didn't want to say any of that. Because it had all been conjecture. Hunch. Intuition. Sixth sense. All traits much valued in the community of my childhood, and in HR circles, but not high on your typical cop's list of Reliable Sources of Information.

Although Cheryl Spencer isn't your typical cop.

“So you sensed trouble and decided to track it down. Figures.” Detective Tracy's camel-hair jacket—practically a uniform for him—fit better than the last time I'd seen him.

The barista set Spencer's chai latte on the table and turned to Tracy. “Just coffee. Black,” he said, fingers reflexively touching his stomach.

So, he was slimming. Or, judging by the arch of his eyebrows as he glanced around, slumming. Seattle coffee shops tend to fall along two lines: sleek, modern cafés boasting tall tables, shiny surfaces, and colored glass pendant lights, or the coffeehouse look, a collection of mismatched furniture and accessories deliberately styled to seem serendipitous. This one fit neither mold. It was pure vintage, a 1950s coffee shop with 1950s linoleum on the floor, 1950s chips in the Formica tabletops, and 1950s rips in the vinyl chair seats. At least the music was up-to-date, and the plain white walls had been refreshed in the current century. Who needs atmosphere, the space seemed to say, when your food and drink are this good?

“ME's pronounced,” Tracy said to his partner, not saying the actual word. “Now we wait for the official manner and cause.”

But I didn't need to hear it from anyone official. Marriage to a cop had taught me the terminology. “Homicide, from blunt-force head trauma, and an intra-cranial bleed. No one smashes herself with a platter,” I said. It appeared to have been a finished piece. Could they get fingerprints?

Officer Don't had stepped outside when Tracy arrived. Now he returned and whispered into Spencer's ear.

“Pepper, will you excuse us?” She didn't wait for my reply, and the two detectives followed the uniform outside. He gestured up the street, then down, no doubt reporting that they had not yet found the potter's van I'd described.

I wasn't hungry, but I finished my cranberry-orange
scone anyway. Maybe it would soak up the excess caffeine. I needed to call my mother, out of earshot of the customers, who chattered wide-eyed as they funneled in through a lane formed by yellow tape and those orange traffic-stick things.

I stepped outside and crossed the street to check on Arf, napping in the Mustang's backseat. Leaned against the stone retaining wall next to the sidewalk and punched in my mother's number, half hoping she wouldn't answer. I'd delivered plenty of bad news when I worked in HR, but it never got easy. And telling my mother her old friend was dead was way worse than telling a secretary we were letting her go.

But I got my selfish wish—voice mail—and struggled to keep my tone level. “Hey, Mom. Call me as soon as you get a chance. It's—important.” Same result on Carl's home line.

Kristen didn't work weekends, didn't know I'd rushed away from the shop worried about our new-old friend. I got ready to poke the phone again.

“That one of them—what are they called? Some kinda terrier.”

Was someone talking to me?

“Seen one on that TV show—
Planet of the Animals
?” The handle of a golf club poked out of the overgrown yews behind me. The hedge blocked the house from view and nearly blocked the concrete steps up to the yard. An ancient man, his skin as dusty as his voice, stood on the top step, waving the club.

“Animal Planet,” I said. “Yeah, I heard they ran an episode on Airedales not long ago.”

“That's it. The King of Terriers. That dog hunt?”

Only once that I knew of, this past spring. He'd got his man but good. “He's more a lover than a killer. Say hello, Arf.” Arf jumped out of the convertible and trotted over, his tail curved up. The old man extended a shaky hand, and Arf leaned his fuzzy golden brown head into it. Mr. Ambassador.

One of the dance students gave a demonstration whirl in the street, and the other kids clapped. “I don't know how those kids do those pairo—what are they?”

“Pirouettes?” I said, and he nodded. His gaze moved to the ambulance, then back to me, questioning. “One of the tenants was attacked. She—didn't make it.”

“My word.” He grabbed the iron railing, and I took a step forward, praying he wouldn't tumble down. His face turned ashen.

“I told those people, you put those fancy dresses in the windows, the gangbangers that been hanging around, they gonna think everybody around here's made of money. I told them, there'll be trouble. Mark my words.”

Somehow, I doubted the gangs he had in mind would be interested in yards of organza or bags of tiny glass beads. And a knife or a gun would have been a more likely choice for a career criminal than a clay platter. But he'd been right about one thing: trouble.

“Who was it?” he said.

“Bonnie Clay. The potter. She hadn't lived there long. Apartment upstairs, studio below.”

“Oh, Lordy. Older gal, skinny, looked tough. I'd have thought she could fight off almost anybody.” He pressed his lips together, his hands tight on the head of his golf club cane. “Now if it had been the one in there before her, I'd have said no surprise, the way the two of them went at each other.”

Arf ambled back to my side. I rubbed his ears, the pressure of his warm body against my leg reassuring.

“Hannah was her name,” he went on. “Little gal, big paintings. What do you call 'em? There's one, over there.”

I craned my neck for a better view. A giant mural of psychedelic flowers covered the side of the building. I'd been too rushed to notice it on my tumble down.

“So, who went after each other? Hannah and—”

“That boyfriend of hers. She's a jumping bean of a redhead, 'bout thirty. I'd hear 'em yelling, stomping out onto the street. Next day, they'd be all lovey-dovey. Some couples go for that, running all hot and cold, but I never could understand it.”

Me, neither. The old man had a way with descriptions. He'd nailed Bonnie, and I expected to recognize Hannah in a flash.

“You hear anyone threatening Bonnie?”

“Nope. Never. We got acquainted when she was moving in—musta been April. Then I went in the hospital. She brought me flowers from my own garden, so I wouldn't miss out.”

He started telling me about his angina and his kidney stones and how his doctor had wanted to do one kind of procedure but his daughter thought they ought to do another type instead.

I was still thinking about Bonnie. And the gangs he'd suggested. According to Josh, the outer door had been locked, but the studio door had been open. There were no signs of forced entry, or of a smash-and-grab. From what I'd seen, the place had looked neat and clean, except for a fine layer of pottery dust everywhere.