The Solace of Bay Leaves

when a cop invites you to stay, it’s hard to say no.
Five minutes later, the five of us were crammed into Laurel’s office. She and Tracy took the two seats while Greer leaned against the desk and Armstrong the wall. That left me to squeeze between the file cabinet and door, making me wish I’d had the soup and salad for lunch.
Though all eyes were trained on Detective Tracy, it was Agent Greer who spoke first, drawing a small manila envelope out of her pocket. Her black pantsuit looked straight out of the TV version of an FBI agent, though the TV version would probably wear a lacy, low-cut tank instead of a gray silk tee. She handed Laurel a photograph.
“Recognize him?”
Laurel shook her head, then passed it to me. An Asian man, probably Chinese, about forty. When you work in a busy place like the Market, you see a lot of people. Making deliveries doubles or triples the count. I’ve got a good memory for faces. But this one—I wasn’t sure.
“You know him,” Tracy prompted.
“Maybe. Who is he?” I asked Tracy, who turned to Greer. This was her part of the investigation.
“His name is Xian Huang, though he goes by Joe. Chinese national. Ever hear the name?” she asked Laurel.
“No. Where would I have heard it? What’s his connection to Pat?”
“We’re conducting an investigation into the head of a Chinese import–export firm based in Seattle,” Greer said. “Huang works for the company, though we’re not yet sure of his relationship to the person of interest or his crony.”
Crony. Now there’s a word you never want to be called.
“What kind of investigation?” Laurel asked. “Was it Pat’s case?”
“I can only say that the investigation had just begun when your husband was killed,” Greer said. “Huang left the country shortly after that. He returned a few weeks ago.”
A collective shiver chilled the room.
“How’s he connected to Maddie?” I said. “She’s a small-scale developer and property manager. Her husband’s a business guy for a sports team.” Move on, folks; nothing to see here.
“We’re looking into that,” Greer replied. “We don’t think Huang is dangerous, and he’s not our target. But we are hoping he can give us information that will confirm a few key details.”
Was this the Mr. Big operation Tag had mentioned? Had to be. I held the photo out to Greer but instead of taking it, she handed me another.
“He appears to be associated with this woman, whom my partner and I followed to the Market Saturday morning. But in the chaos, frankly, we lost her. We don’t know if she is employed in the Market or was shopping.” She handed me a second photo, showing a small woman in black pants and a black hooded jacket holding the hand of a child in a purple coat. I thought the woman looked young, the child likely her daughter, but the rain made it hard to see their faces as they crossed the intersection of First and Pike.
Where I’d seen Greer Saturday morning when Nate dropped me off.
I started to hand the photos back, then stopped. “Wait. That’s why you said”—I glanced at Tracy—“that my lunch date with my brother saved you a trip. There’s an Asian grocery on Pike Place.” The little old lady whom I’d always assumed to be part of the family that ran the joint liked to perch on a stool at the entrance and snap at the feet of passers-by with one of those Chinese string toys. Her favorite was a paper alligator or crocodile. Kids were her main target, but she’d taken to nipping at my ankles then cackling when I jumped. I was finally on to her, but played along. Was this her daughter, the younger woman I’d sometimes seen at the cash register? “Does she work there? Or in a restaurant? You might show this around at the PDA, the Public Development Authority—that’s the agency that runs the Market. If she’s an employee of a tenant business, they won’t have a record on her. But someone might know her.”
“We tried that. No luck, on her or Huang.”
Maybe they were watching Maddie to see if Huang or someone he worked with tried to make contact. To figure out the connection. Smoking Man must be part of their detail.
“Can I keep these? They look so familiar—it may come to me later.”
Greer opened her mouth and I was sure she intended to say no, they didn’t need an amateur’s interference, but Tracy raised a hand and she said nothing.
“Be careful, Pepper. Don’t go searching for them. Just let us know if you see them. Or let the bike officers know.”
In other words, I was their inside gal in the Market.
I slipped the photos into my tote.
“You must have other suspects,” Laurel said, turning to Greer. “From Pat’s cases.”
The agent nodded. “We’re scouring those files. Retracing our footsteps, taking a closer look at everyone we looked at three years ago.” She hadn’t been part of that “we,” but cops and queens like the royal pronoun.
“We’re reconsidering the burglary theory,” Armstrong added, “and checking into Ms. Petrosian’s business interests for any possible overlap. And of course, working on tracing that gun. We’re putting everything we have into this.”
I believed him. Up until last Friday evening, I’d have likened the chances of finding anything amiss in Maddie Petrosian’s business interests to those of the proverbial snowball. But I was seeing some of the people in my life a little differently now.
“Overlap,” Laurel said. “You mean the community activists, the people who fought the original development.”
“Right,” Tracy said. “Your old friends and neighbors.”
“Pat was concerned, naturally,” Laurel said. “He knew how to talk the right language, about setbacks and quiet zones and all that stuff. His point was that the proposal was not in keeping with the