The Solace of Bay Leaves

hour explaining how I’d fingered Jake Byrd as both Smoking Man and the two-time shooter. I described how I’d thought I could trick Byrd into admitting he didn’t know much about the movie he’d bought the ticket for, but then realized he knew it too well, far better than I did. Tracy and Armstrong seemed impressed when I suggested they check his streaming history; I was sure they’d find he’d seen Lady Bird twice, shortly after Pat’s murder and again after Maddie’s shooting. They were less impressed at my takedown—what Tracy called my antics— although Armstrong did give me points for creative use of a cup of a coffee. The coffee had been too hot to drink, but not hot enough to hurt Byrd, although he’d been treated for a sprained ankle before being hauled off to jail. The same nurses who tended him had been concerned about my knees and hands, but while I knew they might sting after the adrenaline wore off, I didn’t mind. I’d caught him; what were a few cuts and scrapes?

When Officer Clark returned from the cafeteria with coffee for the detectives and a sandwich for me, she’d given me a nice “atta girl.”

“Oh,” I said. “You were here today to keep an eye on Jake Byrd.”

It all made sense. She nodded and slipped upstairs to talk with Maddie and Tim. To liaise.

Finally, Tracy had cut me loose. He offered to have an officer drop me off in the Market. But I’d had another stop to make before getting back to work. Maddie’s condition had improved so much that the nurses were getting ready to wheel her to the medical floor when I arrived. Tim had gone ahead with the latest flowers. She asked them to give us a few minutes and close the door behind them.

“That’s one thing I hate about this place,” she said. “Everyone is so nice and so good at what they do. But unless they’re baring your backside, they leave the doors open 24/7, exposing your life to everyone who walks by.”

“I’m afraid I’ve made that worse,” I said, perching on the edge of the bed. “Exposing your family secrets.”

She exhaled heavily. “Ironic, isn’t it? I never would have learned the truth about my family if Jake hadn’t been so determined to destroy us. The way he believes my grandmother and great-grand-parents —our great-grandparents—destroyed his family.”

“Your grandmother’s photograph album was the key. Unfortunately, it’s now part of the police file. Detective Armstrong—”

“The tall one?”

“The tall one. He says they may be able to make a digital copy for you, since resolving all the criminal charges could take a while.” I slipped off the bed and into the chair. “When did you figure out who Byrd was?”

“At the first public meeting he and Deanna Ellingson held, more than three years ago. I wanted to know who’d managed to convince Mr. Barut to sell, and what his plans were. I heard him tell Barut’s son that his grandfather had once owned the property and that he wanted to bring it back into the family. It was our great-grandfather . His grandfather lost the place. My father had been trying to get it back for years, then I tried, but no luck. Bad timing, I guess.”

I had my own theory about that, but no point resurrecting the old Turkish-Armenian tensions.

“I’d always known about Jake,” she continued. “Though I never knew his last name or where he was. I pored over those albums with Grandma Rose when I was little, and then again in the last few weeks of her life, when she was looking back. If she knew what had happened to him, she never said.”

“It’s not a pretty story,” I said, but she wanted to hear it, so I recounted what Jake had told me outside the hospital.

“All that anger and bitterness,” she said softly. “No wonder he hated us. He was raised to hate us.”

“When you couldn’t get him to work with you, or to change his plans for the property, you went to Pat Halloran for help. That was kind of brilliant, by the way.”

“Other way around. Pat knew my efforts to persuade Byrd to scale back were doomed, and he offered to help. At a soccer practice. I was skeptical at first, because he was part of Neighbors United and they can be pretty outspoken. But he convinced me it would work. That’s why I went to his house the day he was killed. I was horrified when I heard what happened, but I never imagined it had any connection to the project. The police said his murder was connected to his work as a prosecutor, and I was sure they were right.”

“Byrd figured you and Pat were in cahoots, though why he thought killing Pat would stop you, I can’t imagine. Nothing ever stops you.”

She smiled wryly. “He almost did.”

“But meeting at Pat’s house was risky, wasn’t it? I mean, he lived next door to Deanna Ellingson.”

“We were supposed to meet Saturday at my office. Turned out I’d put the weekend at the island place with Kristen and Eric on my phone for the wrong day. I had to take the chance that Pat would be home, and that the neighbors wouldn’t see me.”

“Bruce Ellingson did see you, through the hedge. But he thought it was his wife. With all you knew about Byrd, why did you agree to meet him at the building last week?”

“I had no idea he was dangerous. He said he had some sketches he wanted to show us. My builder was supposed to meet me—he didn’t know we were meeting Byrd—but he got stuck in traffic on the wrong side of the drawbridge. By the time he got there, Byrd had already left. Thank God, or Byrd would have shot him, too, and we’d both be dead.”

With no