Her eyes filled with tears.
I left the cookies.
Twenty-Three
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
— Langston Hughes, “April Rain Song”
I SAT IN THE SAAB OUTSIDE MADDIE’S OFFICE. MY BACK WAS stiff from the wingback chair, which as I’d predicted, had not been as comfy as it looked. Jess hadn’t thought the police terribly interested in Maddie’s real estate dealings, but I suspected her fear and anxiety were skewing her perceptions. Surely they’d trained their radar on Jake Byrd.
He wouldn’t have been the first person to leap from losing out on a business deal to murder. He had to have spent a small fortune putting together a proposal, preparing the drawings, and all the other doodah, even if it was preliminary. A hundred thou? More? I had no idea how much his gamble might have cost him.
If this was Byrd’s first big project, as Jess thought, what had prompted it? A career change, a step up in the world, a move into the big time? Hopes dashed, money lost, pride wounded.
It would sting; of course it would. And I understood the urge for revenge, the urge to scream and yell and throw things. I had fallen prey to those urges myself, in days better forgotten.
But attempted murder? Why would it have made sense to take a shot at the woman who’d outmaneuvered him? Or to have killed Pat, with the same gun. If he had—that didn’t seem smart. Had a second shooter set him up?
In the law firm days, I had heard trial lawyers say that people get more riled up about disputes over real property than over personal injury claims. It defied logic, but they swore it’s true. Losing the safety and security of one’s home, a place you had saved for and gone into debt for, evoked more tears and sleepless nights than whiplash from a rear-ender.
But this hadn’t been Byrd’s home. And why would he have gone after Patrick Halloran? Yes, Pat had been active in the community group, but so had many others who were now alive and well. And Byrd likely would have acquired both the property and the necessary permits, had Maddie not intervened.
I picked up my phone and called Detective Tracy. Voice mail. I didn’t leave a message; what would I say?
My back was still talking. That’s what I got for skipping yoga. I put the car in gear and turned onto Nineteenth. A new deli had taken over the space on the opposite end of the block from Maddie’s office. Ages ago, as the Surrogate Hostess, it had been the heart of the community, serving strong coffee and warm cinnamon rolls. In the seventh and eighth grade, after my family moved out of Grace House, Kristen and I had often stopped in after school. I couldn’t picture Maddie in the group of girls at the long pine tables, but she must have been there. It was great to see the place buzzing.
I turned the corner and slowed in front of St. Joseph’s, a graceful white stucco church with a tower that pierced the pale gray sky. Very 1930s Art Deco. The anchor of the neighborhood in my childhood, though I wondered how many of my old friends and classmates could afford to live around here now.
Seeing our graduation photograph on Maddie’s shelves had shaken me. If I had a copy, it was slapped in an album now buried in a box in my basement storage unit. Clearly I had not remembered Maddie as central to our lives—Kristen’s and mine—the way she’d thought about us.
And that made me feel terrible.
BOXES filled the entry of the shabby two-story converted clapboard, a house turned law office. Paint cans and drop cloths were stacked in one corner.
“We found the perfect space. Modern, clean. Parking,” Amanda Wagner told me, a copy of the Washington Court Rules in her hand.
“Is Justin moving with you?” Justin Chapman, whose actions had helped destroy the law firm where Amanda and her husband had been young lawyers and where I’d learned the HR trade. He and I had met again this past August, after his wife’s murder. I hadn’t liked him any better then than I had years ago.
“No. He found an office share—not sure where. Figures, we give notice and the landlord decides to upgrade this place. New paint, carpet. Oh, well.” She stashed the book in an open box. “Sit, while I still have an extra chair.”
I told her about my long friendship with Maddie Petrosian and that I understood she’d worked on the deal for Maddie’s purchase of the corner grocery.
“Horrible news about the shooting,” Amanda said. “Sounds like she’s recovering, though. I can talk about the deal, but nothing privileged, you understand.”
I did.
“Mehmet—Mehmet Barut—was a crusty old guy, but I liked him,” she said. “He owned that grocery practically forever. Since 1970, I think. He ran the place himself until two or three years ago. When he hit eighty-five, his kids got after him to sell, but it was hard for him to let go. It gave him financial stability after he and his family immigrated.”
Mehmet Barut. M.B. Or, to the neighborhood kids, Emby. “From Turkey?”
Amanda nodded and went on. “He agreed to give Jake Byrd an option, but he was reluctant to actually sell. Then we got another offer. By then, Mehmet was quite ill and had moved down to Portland to live with his daughter. Byrd couldn’t match the second offer, so the kids convinced him to take the higher one. He agreed, but died before signing the contract. The kids—they’re in their fifties—debated whether to sign or not, so the probate took some time. Got it wrapped up a few weeks ago.”
“What was their concern?”
“By then, we’d
