[SS01] Assault and Pepper (8 page)

“Get a job, freeloader,” a tall white teenager with floppy blond hair yelled at Hot Dog.

“Who you calling freeloader?” Hot Dog raised his fists chest-high, the expression on his dark face hidden by the shadow of the totem pole. “Living off daddy’s credit cards.”

My arms were full with the flowers and a bag of produce, my shoulder tote extra-heavy with the wine and a loaf of bread. And my phone, buried in there somewhere.

The kid took a step closer. Two of his friends pulled him back. No doubt they saw what I did: He was younger and better fed, but Hot Dog had fought before. A couple standing at the overlook watched, alert. The woman dug in her purse. The man slipped his phone out of his pocket, handed it to her, and took a step forward, his attention on Hot Dog and the boy.

“Come on,” one of the kids said.

“Let it go,” said another. “It’s not worth the hassle.”

The would-be fighter hesitated, then stepped backward, his friends’ hands on his arms. He finally acquiesced, glaring over his shoulder as they tugged at him, and the four headed up Virginia, away from the park. Hot Dog maintained his stance a good while, then sank onto a bench. Jim said a few words to the third man, who stood guard, eyes trained on the disappearing teens. The sightseeing couple resumed their ferry watch.

I sighed in relief and turned toward home, but not before Jim scurried toward me.

“Thing I like about you,” he said a few moments later, a slight wheeze in his chest, “is you keep your eye on things. A spot of trouble doesn’t scare you off.”

“Thanks.” Prelude to a shakedown for cash or food? Some of the men who walk women to their cars or downtown apartments try that. Sam certainly never had—not that I’d heard, at least—but I didn’t know my new escort well. “Where’s Sam tonight?”

“Sam?” A wheeze. “Heck, I don’t know. He doesn’t check in with me.”

That didn’t ring true. Not only had Jim been the clear leader at the makeshift memorial, he’d hesitated long enough to make me think he was bluffing. A slight flush rose on the unscarred left half of his face.

“Jim, this morning, you said something about Doc that puzzled me. If I remember right, you said, ‘Old man has no business interfering even after he’s dead.’ What did you mean?”

Again, that hesitation, this time in his step as well as his voice. “Oh, just blowing smoke. Don’t give it another thought.”

I stopped. “You’re blowing smoke all right—right now. Tell me what was going on with Doc, and what’s up with Sam.”

His deep-set eyes grew weary, and his tone became guarded. “You’re married to that cop, aren’t you?”

“I was married to Officer Buhner of the West Precinct Bike Patrol for thirteen years. Divorced for two. If you’re afraid I’ll tell him something you don’t want the police to know, you’ll have to trust my judgment. But if you try to harm me, I’ve got him on speed dial.” If I could find my phone.

“Ah, shoot. Don’t be afraid of me.” He looked like a kicked puppy, disappointed in himself for having disappointed his owner. “I’m just an old man who likes my life and keeps an eye on his friends. Doc had Sam all upset. Sam, he—” Another wheeze. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth. He doesn’t always think straight. And sometimes, he gets—ideas.”

He emphasized the word, making clear that Sam’s ideas weren’t always healthy ones. Delusions maybe.

“And how does Doc come into this?”

“Well, Sam likes his corner. He’s convinced it’s the best one in the Market. Now, it may be.” He’d recovered his dignity and held out a hand apologetically. “I mean no slight to you.”

“None taken.”

“What matters is Sam thinks so, and we all let him have it, because it means something to him. And whatever means something to a man has got to be respected. You aren’t a man anymore if you can’t manage that. Or a woman, too, I expect.” His cheek pinked, and I wondered how long it had been since Jim had had an extended conversation with a female. Did he have a long-abandoned wife somewhere? A daughter who prayed every night to keep him safe, and please God, bring him back to the family before he dies?

“And Doc threatened that,” I said. Jim nodded solemnly. “But why?”

A long, slow wag of the head. “No idea. Man just showed up a week, ten days ago. Ignored the rest of us. Didn’t want to talk—and I respect that, but we have our ways, and he didn’t want any part of them or us.”

Doc had violated the rules of the streetwise community. Sounds odd to call it that, but every society has its rules. Theirs include protecting the weak, those who—like Sam—can’t always protect themselves. Doc either didn’t know the rules, or chose to disregard them. Why?

And why stake his claim outside my door?

•   •   •

I’D
been tempted to give Jim my strawberries from the Corner Produce or a chunk of bread from the French bakery, but realized in the nick of time that he would see the offering as an insult. He might eat in church basements or drop by the Market Food Bank for produce donated at the end of the day, but he was taking care of himself.

I sipped my wine while the grill heated, on the teeny little ledge the developer called “the veranda.” You have to climb out one of the twelve-foot-high windows to reach it—why windows line the fifth floor of an eighty-five-year-old warehouse is a mystery lost to time. Five or six people could stand out there to get a breath and stare at the Viaduct, but access is strictly FOLI: First out, last in.

The only interior walls in the place surround my bedroom and the bathroom. We’d left the high ceilings open, the ductwork and brick walls exposed in classic loft style. For the corner kitchen, my builder pal had struck the mother lode: oak cabinets salvaged from the demolition of a country school out on the coast. An old zinc counter runs along the brick side wall, and salvaged butcher block tops the peninsula, where I do most of my cooking. I’d hunted down leaded glass windows that the builder attached to basic wooden boxes for upper cabinets mounted on the side wall. Extra shelves had been milled from wood the last tenants left behind.

I grated zest and juiced an orange, mixing orange, garlic, and cumin into creamy yogurt. The sliced chicken breast had taken a quick bath in my favorite citrus marinade. I slid the strips onto metal skewers for easy grilling. A bowl of greens stood ready.

Time to fire. I carried the plate of chicken out the window and carefully positioned the skewers on the grill. Some single people hate to cook—“All that fuss for one?” But why deprive myself of good food? It’s easy to plan ahead—the extra chicken would go in a pasta salad or a chunky vegetable salad later in the week.

In the distance, Bertha—the world’s largest tunneling machine—chugged on. While all this destruction and construction wreaked havoc with a woman’s piece of mind, I honestly believed in the waterfront revitalization project. As a matter not just of safety, but of healing old wounds and making downtown and the waterfront neighbors again.

And I would have one freaking fantastic view—and maybe even a veranda I could sit on. A girl can put up with a lot for that.

“
Buona sera
, Pepperoni.” My neighbor called to me. Our verandas are the same size, but while mine feels crowded with a few terra cotta pots of tomatoes, herbs, and flowers, his blooms like a jungle, flowering trees in giant pots, and who knows what else. He’s not actually Italian—he’s a gay, red-haired city councilman—but endearments in all languages spill from him effortlessly. “Smells delish, whatever it is.
Ciao!
” A plate of grilled salmon in one hand, he waved with the other and stepped through the window into his own loft.

My conversation with Kristen—and my encounter with Tag—had triggered too many memories of too much change. They poked at my jaw, my shoulders, my stomach. In HR, we referred to a handful of employees who were always in turmoil as the “Crisis of the Month Club.” I had never belonged, despite recent evidence to the contrary. And I had no intention of joining now. Just as things were settling down, just as we approached my first anniversary as the Spice Queen of Pike Place, a man died on my doorstep. Maybe a crime, maybe not. But unsettling as it was, someone else’s crisis had nothing to do with me.

I much preferred my personal club—the “Spice of the Month Club.”

S for September and salt.

I slid the chicken off the skewers onto a bed of greens, and drizzled the plate with yogurt sauce. Added a sprig of fresh thyme for garnish. I might not be dining at Alex’s fine table, but no reason to neglect the details in service for one.

A little Puget Sound finishing salt would be bliss. I grabbed my favorite glass shaker, a reminder of the diners we stopped in when my brother and I were kids and we made long, hot treks to St. Louis to visit my grandparents.

My collection of shakers, graters, mortar and pestle sets, sifters, and other kitchen paraphernalia had exploded in the last year. I’d hung gridwork panels on an open stretch of wall to hold the spice scrapers, egg beaters, and other gadgets that had to be seen to be believed. The modern version of Julia Child’s pegboard.

The Flick Chicks had tested margarita salt last week when we gathered at my place for Mexican Movie Night. A double-header:
Night of the Iguana
to depress us about our love lives and
Like Water for Chocolate
to make us yearn for romance anyway. Not last week—this week. Two days ago.

Murder on your doorstep destroys all sense of time.

I set my salad on the dining table, a weathered round wooden picnic table Tag’s mother had given me. A consolation prize after the divorce, for a nearly furniture-less woman reassembling her life. Two benches sat under it, but I slid into a pale pink wrought iron chair I’d found at a sidewalk sale. It looked like a refugee from an ice cream parlor. A perfect match for my new shoes.

Laurel could be pretty insistent. But I wasn’t going to do it. If I knew Doc’s family—if he had one—then maybe I’d go barging in with sympathy and flowers.

But I certainly wasn’t going to track them down and pick up the phone, both caller and recipient feeling as awkward as an elephant in a roller rink.

Kristen was right. I really had come into my own since buying the Spice Shop. I didn’t mind one bit being the “life begins at forty” poster girl. If the cliché fits, wear it.

I glanced at my pink shoes, sitting demurely side by side at the front door.

It was time to fully live my own life, and no one else’s. Not Laurel’s idea of what I ought to do, not Kristen’s or Sandra’s.

Not even Fabiola’s.

The original Skid Road—the track used to skid logs down to the mill—was Seattle’s Yesler Way, now the heart of modern-day Skid Row, a gathering place for the down-and-out.

—Murray Morgan,
Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle

I forced myself to take my usual route up the Market Hillclimb Friday morning. No spooking me.

Detective Tracy stood outside my shop door, hands in his pants pockets. His tan sports coat, buttoned against the morning damp, pulled across his chest and stomach. There’s an art to looking rumpled before 8 a.m., and he has it nailed.

“Morning,” I said through a bite of cinnamon-raisin bagel. Juggling bagel, latte, and tote, I pushed several bouquets aside with my foot. “Thought you police types travel in pairs.”

“Detective Spencer is interviewing witnesses.”

I straightened and eyed him sharply. “So now you know this wasn’t death by natural causes?”

His dark eyes gave nothing away.

The leaky windows in my loft—another upgrade awaiting the end of Tunnel Mania—had tipped me off that mornings were getting cooler, and I’d grabbed a raspberry pink fleece jacket on my way out the door. It matched my watchband and complemented my new pink shoes.

I fished in my jacket pocket for my spare key. “Voilà!” I said and held it up as Tracy dangled my key ring from two fingers.

He followed me inside, uninvited but not unexpected. I dumped my things in the office and walked back out, sipping my latte. Some tea and spice shops sell coffee beans, but I’d decided to leave that to the experts. And in Seattle, coffee experts abound.

Tracy was giving our shelves the same curious inspection Spencer had.

“Are you a cook, Detective?”

“My wife is.” He continued to scan the rows of glass jars and other curiosities.

An image of a pretty, petite dynamo popped into my mind. Laughing, chasing two small children at a lakefront beach party, if memory served.

His gaze stopped on the samovar.

He turned toward me abruptly and slipped a notebook out of his jacket pocket. “Shall we sit?” He gestured toward the mixing nook.

“I can spare a few minutes.” As if a detective with an agenda and a list of questions would give a fig that I had a shop to prep for the day.

“You’ve got an established work schedule, I presume. I’ll need a copy, plus all time records that show changes—anybody work late, switch shifts, that sort of thing. Everyone gone when you left Wednesday evening?”

“What does my staff have to do with this? Doc was dead before we opened Thursday. And yeah, I’m always the first to arrive and the last to leave. Except Mondays, my day off. I usually come in anyway, at least part of the day.” Still high season, still my first year. Still my baby.

“Except,” he said, “when you’re not.” A long pause. “When your resident artist beats you to it.”

Point. And if we were talking foul play, any of them could have seen something critical, whether they realized it or not.

“Do they all have keys?” A department-issue notebook lay open to a blank page, a black pen advertising a local hotel beside it.

“No. Just Sandra and Tory. Sandra’s my assistant manager. She opens and closes on days I’m off. Tory’s been here the next longest, and someone else needs to have a key, in case I’m out when it’s time to lock up. You know, I might run to the bank, swing by the Market office, make a delivery.” Reed and Zak handle most of our mail runs and downtown deliveries, but I like to visit the commercial accounts occasionally. Like Alex.

“And is it understood that employees may use the shop for personal reasons at other times?”

I frowned. “No, not really. A retail shop has no other uses.” If Reed wanted to study here or someone wanted to use the nook for a meeting, fine. No one had ever asked. “But I don’t have a problem with Tory coming in early to sketch.”

His head bobbed ever so slightly, revealing a sprinkle of salt in his peppery, close-cropped hair. “You seem to have quite a bond with the Market residents and the people of the street.”

My eyes narrowed. I had no idea what might have gone wrong, what—besides a heart attack—might have killed Doc. But why are the less fortunate everyone’s first suspects?

“Some of them are very observant,” he continued.

The relationship between the police and the street folks is complicated. Suspicions cloud both sides. Individual patrol officers often forge good working relationships with individuals. Homicide detectives, on the other hand, work where they’re needed, lessening the chance of long-term connections.

But I wasn’t keen on making those connections for Detective Tracy. I’d told Jim he’d have to trust my judgment, but that meant I had to control my judgment—and watch my tongue. “If you need to talk with them about what they saw, why don’t you ask for Officer Buhner’s help?”

“I’ll do that. Thing is, the one I’m interested in seems to be missing.”

I caught my lower lip in my teeth. He had to mean Sam. Beret-free Sam. “I’m sure you can track him down. You guys know all the shelters and housing programs. The camps. All the haunts.”

He nodded. “Now, about that schedule.”

My HR brain briefly debated my obligation to protect my employees against my obligation to cooperate with the police, but experience told me the work schedule wouldn’t legally be considered confidential information. So I flicked on the office computer, and the printer spat out a copy. “Fridays are busy. They’ll all be in at some point today. Reed comes in at one, and Zak leaves at two.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for your time.”

After he left, I scrambled to fire up the tea. Tory arrived in time to finish the job while I set up the cash drawer and did a last-minute walk-through. A box or two remained from yesterday’s deliveries, and I tucked those out of the way.

I unlocked the front door and propped it open so the world could see we were back to normal. Sort of—normal does not include a mound of flowers and notes handwritten on scraps of paper or cardboard no doubt scrounged from recycling bins. I culled out the most badly wilted bouquets and rearranged the rest—in the sight line but out of the foot line.

A shame to risk the notes being blown away and trampled. I slipped them into my apron pocket. If Doc did have a family—well, I’d give the notes to Spencer or Tracy and let them decide what to do.

And then we were off and running, attending to the Friday rush and rattle. Sales had dropped a hair on Thursday—not too much to absorb, but business owners watch the trends, and I like mine moving up.

Judging by the jars waiting to be reshelved, Seattleites were trending up on red, green, and especially black teas. They were planning weekend meals from every corner of our map, using every herb and spice from Aleppo pepper to wasabi. (We got your roots, your powders, and your tubes of paste, and not one of them is horseradish colored with spinach powder. On my honor.)

September is still tourist season in these parts. The PDA clues us in on the big draws—the annual Flower and Garden Show in February, Folklife, Seafair, Bumbershoot—and dozens of smaller festivals and gatherings. More than ten million people stroll through the Market’s nine acres every year.

And though we couldn’t see the terminals from here, I knew one of the nearly two hundred cruise ships that stop in Seattle had docked at the Bell Street Terminal, aka Pier 66. The giveaway? The wristbands and the clutches of women, a few men straggling behind, and their purchases. Cruise shippers don’t bring in shopping lists or recipes. They buy products: lavender wands and sachets from Sequim, the town across the Sound that calls itself the Lavender Capital of North America, probably because that’s easier to pronounce. (For the record, it’s said Skwim. It’s a Klallam word. Or Clallam. Or Cle Elum. You think spelling some English words is tricky—try the native languages.) Sea salt harvested from Puget Sound. Or our Seattle Spice Shop Tea, custom blended every week and sold for your tasting pleasure in bags or bulk.

And when we have them, our seasonal spice blends.

Today’s tourists kept Zak busy, quizzing him about the shop, the tea, the Market, and more. He is a good ambassador, despite the unlikely appearance—or because of it. To the cruise ship crowd, he’s proof that grandsons can grow up to be decent young men despite strange hair, terrible music, and tattoos peeking out of shirtsleeves.

Minutes before noon, I was straightening a display of tea mugs and infusers when Sandra hustled over. “Favorite cop alert,” she whispered, and Tag, in uniform, strolled in as if he owned the place, slipping off his mirrored sunglasses in a gesture of extreme cool.

A cop’s presence has a curious effect. Even among the upstanding, you can detect a touch of anxiety.
What’s going on? Why is he here?
Tag, naturally, eats it up.

“Let’s get a bit of sunshine,” I said and headed for the side door. I made a mental note to be sure Zak returned the Inn’s flowerpot doorstop before he left. Fridays are a gig night for him, so he works a short shift. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Officer?”

“Just—want to make sure you’re okay.” His china blue eyes showed concern. As I’ve said, he isn’t always a schmuck, but it’s not always easy to tell.

I crossed my arms and sucked in my lower lip. “Thanks. ’Preciate it. Glad to have the yellow tape gone—you know how busy weekends are down here.”

He hadn’t put the sunglasses back on, and for a split second, an uncharacteristic glimmer of hesitation crossed his face. I opened my mouth to ask what was on his mind when he spoke. “Well, then, good. Glad to know everything’s good. You’ll be fine.” He slid the glasses on and kissed my cheek. “Later,” he said, and strode down the hill, bike shoes tapping on the concrete sidewalk.

What the heck was that about?

I followed slowly, drinking in the sunshine and atmosphere. One of my favorite buskers often plays on the corner across Pine, and the strains of his fiddle danced on the air. Locals on lunch breaks smiled, tossed change in the beat-up black case open on the sidewalk, and kept moving. Tourists sauntered by, snapping pics with their phones. A few stopped to listen, forming an attentive semicircle. When he finished the piece—Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More”—he bowed deeply, then flashed a grin, toothless as an eight-year-old.

To my surprise, several of Doc’s compatriots had lined up along the Spice Shop’s front wall, flanking the mound of flowers. Each man had his head bent, hat in hand. A show of respect or coordinated panhandling?

Only one logical response. I popped inside, filled a tray with paper cups of tea, and headed back out. I felt a bit like an altar girl—servers, they’re called now. I’d ached to be one in fifth grade but my mother had refused to sign the consent form. Jim stood nearest the door, and his gaze barely met mine when he took the cup.

“Seen our friend today?” I asked. Sam loved the Market musicians.

A barely detectible shake no.

“If—when—you do, please let him know we’re thinking about him.”

A faint nod. I offered cups to all the men, then to passersby. Tray empty, I felt someone’s gaze and followed the feeling. Across the way, Yvonne flushed and whipped her head back to her stall, fiddling flowers madly. Empty tray in hand, I crossed the street.

“Not sure if you’ve been giving the men your unsold flowers to add to the tribute or if they’ve been paying you, but either way, thanks. It’s nice to see Doc honored.”

“You shouldn’t encourage them to hang around, giving them tea and crumpets.”

I shrugged. A debate as old as Seattle’s hills. Does acknowledging street folks and offering occasional generosity encourage vagrancy as some claim—those who deride tolerance and call the city “Fre-attle”? Or is it simply human kindness to show compassion for the less fortunate? The latter, in my view. The homeless are just like the rest of us. Except for that home thing.

Besides, they get their crumpets day-old from the Crumpet Shop in the Corner Market.

“And thank you for helping Alex Howard pick out that gorgeous bouquet. It made my day.” This time we both blushed and she almost smiled.

After lunch, the Market Master dropped in. Part den mother, part supervisor to the farmers and craftspeople, from the moment the morning bell rings, he’s on the move.

“So sorry to hear what happened. I was out in the field yesterday—literally. Inspecting a potential grower’s operation.” He reached for my hand and embraced it in both of his. “Anything you need?”

It struck me how no one ever wants to say the D words: “dead,” “died,” “death.” As if the words themselves are to blame for the sadness they bring—and the sense of mortality they trigger. We’d heard every euphemism in the book in the last twenty-four-plus hours, from “bought the farm” to “met his Maker.”

A homeless guy might enjoy owning a farm. But if Doc was as unpleasant as the other street men suggested, it might not be his Maker he was meeting.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s crazy to find someone dead on your doorstep. But we’re fine.”

“It happens from time to time.” He squeezed my hands again, an earnest expression on his narrow, weathered face. “Anything we can do, you let me know.”