The Solace of Bay Leaves

my head and blew out a breath—“it will take more than a bullet to slow her down.”
The stylist and customer exchanged a glance in the mirror. I had to speak carefully if I wanted to learn anything useful.
“The new building should be good for business, right?” I said, taking a cue from Frank Thomas’s upbeat attitude. “People popping in for milk will see your shop, give you a call. The people in the apartments upstairs will be thrilled to have a salon close by.”
“Hmmph,” the stylist said, squinting at her customer’s roots. “We’ll touch those up next week when you come in for your manicure.”
“With all the plans and rumors over the years, who knows what will actually go in,” the customer said. “Now she comes along and promises an old-style neighborhood grocery with a modern wine and cheese shop. Sounds great, but I’m not holding my breath.”
She’d unwittingly touched on my own confusion. “So somebody else proposed something else? Before Maddie got involved, I mean.”
“I went to a couple of meetings,” the customer said. “I didn’t trust that Burns or Burke, whatever his name was. He acted like we should be grateful that he was here to save the neighborhood. I mean, we all knew something would happen to the property—the old guy wasn’t going to live forever, and that lot has to be worth a bundle. But we could never get the straight scoop. My impression, he meant to tear down the whole block and put up fancy condos. He and that pushy real estate agent.”
“His name was Byrd,” the stylist said. “With a Y. And he called the project Byrd’s Nest. With a Y.”
“That’s right. He had all these fancy drawings, but they were ugly as sin.”
“What meetings?” I asked.
“Oh, Neighbors United. They asked him to make a presentation, up at the community center. So we would know what was going on. Then they claimed his proposal violated city standards, and wasn’t in keeping with the neighborhood. They were right, but developers do what they want, no matter what we think.” She looked in the mirror and touched the side of her head. “A little shorter, maybe?”
“That went on for ages,” the stylist said. “A couple of years. Then all of a sudden this summer, he was out of the picture and your friend had bought the corner grocery. Her proposal looks nice. It looks great.” Snip, snip, snip.
“But can we trust her, either?” the customer said. “I mean, she says she just wants to put up a new building on the corner, so why buy the whole block?”
Whoa. This was news to me. It must have cost a pretty penny.
“Right?” the stylist said, nodding at the mirror. “I admit, this place needs work, but the rent’s been fair. She promised to upgrade all the wiring and stuff when she remodels upstairs—her electrician’s already crawled over every inch—but she also said she had no intention of raising our rent. If you believe that . . . Except the coffee place. I heard they wouldn’t sell.” She put her scissors down and twisted the lid off a jar of product. A sweet, gooey smell filled the air.
“Well, why would they?” the customer replied. “That building’s been in their family for ages. But I will say this. Once Maddie took over, tensions eased. When she held a community meeting, she listened. Made a point of saying she lives here, too, and intended to address our concerns. Even the NU people seemed happier.”
“I still don’t believe her about not raising the rent,” the stylist said.
I understood her skepticism, but from a developer’s perspective, it made sense. If Maddie needed to rent out the upper floors to help pay for the building, she’d need to bring them into the twenty-first century, and she couldn’t do that without upgrading the entire structure. By holding rents steady, at least for a while, she could mollify the existing tenants and keep the street level space occupied.
“Maddie just bought the corner grocery this summer, right? When did she buy this building?”
“A year ago,” the stylist said. “Same time as she bought the one next door. I think she’d already bought the insurance agency and the apartment building, a year or two before.”
That was what I wanted to know. When Patrick Halloran was killed, Maddie did not own the corner grocery, the property at the heart of the neighborhood dispute. She’d bought all these buildings after his death, and finally acquired the corner lot.
“If she hasn’t raised the rents yet,” I pointed out, “sounds like a promise kept.”
“True,” the stylist admitted.
Time for me to go. I stood. One more question, though I thought I knew the answer. “Who was the real estate agent? The one you thought was so pushy?”
“Oh, what was her name?” the customer said, again looking at the stylist via the mirror. “It’s plastered all over the neighborhood.”
Deanna Ellingson.

Thirteen
According to a 2018 study, Seattle drivers spend fifty-five hours a year stuck in traffic.
WE DON’T ANY OF US FIT IN THE BOXES PEOPLE BUILD FOR us, do we? Not me, and not Maddie.
Maddie ran her business from a small second-floor office in a commercial block not unlike the one I’d been prowling. But asking questions had taken time I didn’t have, so there was no chance of stopping by today. And I wanted to get back to the shop before closing, though that might mean springing for a spot in the Market garage. My plan was to zip over to Madison, then shoot straight down the hill and over the freeway into downtown.
But I’d forgotten to tell the traffic gods.
Cars were backed up on Madison for blocks. My best guess was a wreck at the I-5 on-ramp. I slipped the Saab into park, cracked a window, and turned off the