The Solace of Bay Leaves

snapping toward a man a few feet away. He took a step closer, momentarily hesitant, then a woman swept in.
“Laurel, how good to see you!” She was on the short side, trim with short, dark hair, in black pants and a cashmere sweater. Early fifties, like her husband. Laurel rose instinctively, the way you do when someone is intent on an embrace. In normal circumstances, Laurel is a hugger, but her stiff posture told me this wasn’t a normal circumstance. The other woman knew it, too, and the hug turned into one of those awkward things where you touch each other’s upper arms and lean in, but avoid actual body contact.
“How are you?” the woman said, stepping back and letting her hands fall away, her nails a pinky-beige, her diamonds bright. “We’ve missed you and Gabe. At Notre Dame, I heard. You must be so proud. What brings you to the old neighborhood?” Her gaze swept over Nate and me, then returned to Laurel.
“Coffee with friends,” Laurel replied, then to us, “next door neighbors.” She made no introductions.
“You heard about the shooting down the block,” the woman said, her voice low, as if speaking quietly would lessen the tragedy.
I scooped up my jacket and stood. “We’re just leaving. Take our table.”
“Thank you,” the man said. He unsnapped his dark rain jacket and reached for the back of my chair, then held it for his wife.
She extended a hand. “Seriously, Laurel, you know we wish you nothing but the best.”
“I appreciate that.” Laurel gave a tight-lipped nod and we headed out, wriggling into our coats as we wove our way to the door.
On the sidewalk, I untied Arf and glanced in the window. The woman leaned across the table and spoke to her husband, her eyes flicking toward us, then back to him. “They seemed nice enough.”
“They only wanted our table.”
There was a prickliness to her voice, beyond the smart-aleck remark, that surprised me. “Is that the guy? The neighbor who was pissed at Pat, the one they suspected?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s also the man who found Pat. Spotted him from his office upstairs. It looks down on our old backyard.”
“Ohhhh.” I forced myself not to turn for another look.
“Bruce and Deanna Ellingson,” she continued. “She’s a real estate agent. Condos. He’s—retired.”
“Young for that, isn’t he? I should have guessed about her. Real estate ladies have a distinctive personality.” We headed for our cars, in the next block. “So what about this argument between him and Pat?”
“Bruce is super anal about their yard. We had a compost pile in the alley next to the fence. Yard waste, no food scraps, perfectly legal. Bruce thought it was a blot on the block and wanted it moved. They got loud over it, but that’s hardly a motive for murder.”
Maybe so, but cops and prosecutors and very special agents had crawled over every inch of the neighborhood. They’d strip-searched his life. And from the wary look he’d given Laurel, I was certain: He still resented it.
At the car, Nate reached for the leash. Kissed my cheek. “Text me later.”
I nodded and watched him drive away with my car, my dog, and a piece of my heart.
“Let’s swing by Tim and Maddie’s house,” I said when we were tucked inside Laurel’s SUV, bought when she was hauling half the soccer team and their gear around town. “On the other side of Boyer, overlooking Interlaken Park.”
She headed toward the Montlake Bridge, its Gothic sandstone tower a defining landmark. In last summer’s heat, the drawbridge had gotten stuck open for more than an hour when the steel swelled, so road crews had started giving the century-old bridges cold water baths during hot spells. Some residents find the drawbridges a nuisance, and I admit, when you’re running late and the span opens to let a cruiser packed with tourists sipping wine drift by, it’s easy to get a little steamed. But the wait is never more than a few minutes, and the bridges are quite charming, especially this one.
Then I realized it wasn’t the bridge that had prompted Laurel’s detour but the wetlands alongside the cut, as locals call it.
One of the city’s founders had the bright idea to cut a channel connecting Puget Sound to Lake Union, and another linking Lake Union to the much larger Lake Washington. A set of locks keeps the saltwater from the fresh. Both crazy and brilliant, the channels created enormous possibilities for commerce and later, for recreation. They also necessitated those pesky drawbridges.
In the distance, the bridge clanked open.
Laurel pulled over, her hands white-knuckled on the wheel. Gray skies dampened the view, but the place was still stunning, an urban refuge for wildlife and human life alike.
“He loved coming down here,” she said. “Bringing Gabe and the kayak and binoculars. He worked with Neighbors United to curb the damage to the wetlands from the highway expansion. They didn’t stop the project completely, but they did limit its impact on the neighborhood.”
“Then when the corner grocery project came along, they turned their attention to stopping it,” I said.
“They didn’t want to stop it, not completely. They wanted developers to consider the community, not just their own profits. They wanted to be part of the conversation.” Her voice caught and she poked at the corner of her eye with a fingertip. “And boy, could Pat talk.”
What had he not been telling her?
Before I could say a word, before I could reach over and touch her arm, she shoved the car into drive. Pulled away from the curb and gunned up the hill.
Sometimes the only response to a painful memory is to keep moving.

Seven
An amateur detective’s approach “must rest mainly on the observation of character, which is of far more interest than forensic detail.”
— Ellis Peters, author