The Solace of Bay Leaves

to keep the clients warm and well-fed elsewhere.
I’d been counting on a good October. The next big step for the business was to expand our production facility, with full-time staff and pricy new grinders and packaging equipment. To make it fly, we needed strong fourth quarter financials. Fall cooking and Christmas baking were the ticket.
The Market is so alluring in autumn, when the last of the fall produce and flowers fill the stalls. Not to mention Halloween. Where else can you buy warty gourds, fresh pumpkins, ghost peppers, and a Dracula costume in one shopping trip?
But worry is a retailer’s ritual. As the news of Maddie’s shooting and its possible link to Pat’s murder soaked in, my sense of dread grew. Add in Laurel’s nightmare and her questions, and I had to ask: Why now?
And what next?
Arf’s leash looped through my hand, I bought a paper at the newsstand and stuffed it in my striped jute tote. Squeezed by the stacks of papers and magazines waiting to be unpacked and threaded my way down the congested aisle, patted Rachel the brass pig, the official Market mascot, and got in line at my favorite bakery.
Minutes later, the counter woman handed me a cinnamon roll and a nonfat double latte. I stood beside a column topped with a Victorian cast-iron capital, one of the features that prompt visitors to ask why modern architects don’t do that, and took the first sip. Instant attitude adjustment. You could make a fortune selling this stuff.
As Mr. Starbucks and Mr. Folgers well knew.
Across Pike Place, the produce seller and the old lady from the Asian market were jawing at each other, each pointing at a pile of flattened cardboard boxes, then at the other’s storefront and back at the boxes. I didn’t say everyone in the Market always gets along.
Then my dog and I headed into the Arcade, where I traded a wrinkled ten for a giant bouquet of sunflowers, a riot of red and yellow. We dashed across the cobbles to the shop and unlocked the front door.
I paused on the threshold to breathe it all in. Cinnamon and cardamom, ginger and nutmeg, cumin, cloves, and garlic. Spice in all its variety, the stuff of my life.
When new customers walk in, they often describe, unprompted, a memory evoked by scent: a fragrant stew, their grandmother’s apple pie, a day exploring the lavender fields in the south of France. There’s a reason for that. The same part of the limbic brain that detects smells also houses memory. They are physically linked.
Call it magic, for short.
I set my bounty on the counter and unhooked Arf. He let me wipe his feet and run a towel over his tan legs and tail; happily, the slicker had kept his head and the wiry grizzled fur on his back, called a saddle, dry. I gave him a rawhide chew bone, which he carried to his bed behind the front counter. Official Market policy says no dogs, but no one pays any attention, and the Market Master carries treats in his pocket. After I hung our coats and stashed my tote in the office, roughly the size of your standard refrigerator, I found a vase for the flowers. Even the worst grouch can’t help but smile at sunflowers, especially on a rainy day.
But before the day came rushing in, I had reading to do. I took the newspaper and my breakfast to the mixing nook, a small booth where we conduct taste tests. Flipped pages, the only sounds the ticking of the railroad clock beside the front door and my dog chewing.
On the front page of the local section, I found a short update on the shooting. As Tracy had predicted, Maddie was named now, described as a property investor who had apparently surprised an intruder. No pictures, no other details. No mention of Pat Halloran’s murder, though the annual recap would run soon. If the link between the two cases was public by then, the story would be front page news.
I let the last sip of coffee linger on my tongue, bitter mixed with sweet.
Then it was time to get to work. The staff arrived earlier than usual to prep. Food tours are all the rage with tourists and locals who trust an expert to find the best of the city’s food and drink. Some focus on wine, or chocolate, or sushi. The Market tours give guests a close-up with merchants and vendors, and a taste of history. Guests buy tickets, so we’re not paying kickbacks to the tour operators. And they shop. A group of eight or ten can easily drop several hundred dollars on spices, tea, and books, and order more online when they get home.
Sandra’s husband had driven her to work today, and I helped him haul in a cooler filled with appetizers. Cayenne set up the serving table and warming trays for the stuffed mushrooms and baked paprika cheese, with help from Reed, our college kid computer whiz. Paprika cheese is an invention of one of our favorite customers, and he’d been thrilled to hear we planned to serve it today. All week, we’d been serving our new chai—a spice blend or masala brewed with strong black Assam tea and vegan coconut cream. But today it was back to our signature tea, and Matt started the first batch brewing in the giant electric kettle that looks like a Russian samovar. The scent of cinnamon and cardamom filled the air. We’d go through vats of the stuff—the colder and wetter the weather, the more we serve. And the more we sell.
“Trial run for the anniversary party,” Sandra said.
In two weeks, we’d be marking the end of my second year as Mistress of Spice. Was it shallow to celebrate something so trivial with Laurel’s more ominous anniversary on the horizon? Life is full of difficult juxtapositions. Besides, Laurel