Chai Another Day by Leslie Budewitz

Author:Leslie Budewitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chai Another Day A Spice Shop Mystery
ISBN: 9781633885363
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Published: 2019-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Londoner Nicholas Culpeper’s masterwork, The English Physitian (1652), later called Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, was the first major Western pharmacopeia, describing the medicinal uses of more than 400 herbs, from acanthus to yucca.

I TUCKED HOT DOG’S NOTE INSIDE MY BAG, FOUND MY CAR, and got back on the road. My tummy didn’t feel good, but it wasn’t the fault of my lunch. It was the fault of my head, and the swirling eddy of uncomfortable thoughts.

One of my HR mentors liked to say we’re all the hero of our own stories. Not that we see ourselves as Han Solo, saving Princess Leia, who could have saved herself just fine, thank you, and had in fact saved Solo’s backside more than once, if memory served. She meant we all want to justify our own actions, and we tend to tell our stories that way. It was a caution to listen with care when attempting to resolve a conflict—the more persuasive storyteller is not necessarily the most accurate one.

But it was also a reminder to watch how we portray ourselves in our own minds. It’s easy to think evil thoughts of a driver who cuts us off, but maybe we changed lanes at the last minute or were going a teensy bit too fast. I pled guilty on both counts, and sent the driver behind me a silent apology.

Maybe I had misunderestimated the vulnerability behind Tony McGillvray’s fear. If you’ve been in trouble, heads snap your way the next time trouble pops up. Putting what I knew about some of the students at Changing Courses together with Tony’s behavior in my class and Seetha’s suspicions, I was sure Hot Dog had been suggesting drugs were part of Tony’s current trouble. Most addicts don’t become killers, but addiction plays a part in violent crime often enough for the rest of us to make the leap of judgment.

Hot Dog had called me out, and he was right. But he’d also given me a clue.

To what?

I parked and grabbed the delivery for Speziato. Before I bought Seattle Spice, I’d never been in a restaurant kitchen. Now, I was a regular at back doors around the city, and was often invited to taste a special or dine with the staff at “family meal.”

I knocked, then turned the handle. It opened. I stepped inside. Prep hadn’t started yet, the kitchen dark and quiet.

“Helloooo! Edgar? It’s Pepper, with your spice delivery.”

Nothing.

I called out a second time.

Above the stainless steel prep counter hung a rack of knives. I cook; knives are tools. But right now, they made me nervous. I was walking into a nearly empty space, where anyone bent on attacking me could grab a blade. I’d heard the stories of restaurant employees trapped in coolers and back hallways by bosses drunk on power. Of servers and bartenders harassed by customers and groped in dark corners. Of women who kept silent about assault because they needed the job. And as Joelle’s murder made all too vivid, a knife can be a deadly tool.

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