Free [SS01] Assault and Pepper by Leslie Budewitz Page A

body.”
    Tory stared at me, speechless. As if the shock of the death had just hit her.
    “But—Sam,” she said. “He couldn’t—he wouldn’t—”
    “Brown cardamom,” Zak said, taking the jar from my hands. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever sold that to anyone.”
    Eyes still on Tory, I said, “You can count on us.”
    “Boss,” Sandra called, and I headed to the front counter. She clutched the phone in both hands against her chest, muffling our conversation. “It’s Callie Carter. You used to work with her. Her toddler used her grandmother’s antique nutmeg grinder to make rocks into gravel, and her mother’s coming to visit next week. This is your department.”
    I glanced at the spice grinders in the glass-front display case and took the phone. Five minutes later, I’d sent Callie, a librarian at my old firm, pictures of two possibles and one likely replacement, and she’d promised to come down on Friday to check them out. We spent a few minutes catching up—she still worked part-time with several of our colleagues. I also suggested she take the original grinder to the cutlery shop up the street; the wizards there can mend all manner of abused kitchen toolery.
    A deep masculine grunt at the side door caught my attention and I trotted over to check it out. Before I reached the top of the landing, a broad-shouldered brown-clad back popped into view, jerking a heavily laden hand truck up the outside step and over the threshold.
    “Figures,” the UPS man said, a teasing tone in his rough bass. “Biggest shipment of the year and your front door is blocked and I gotta haul it all uphill. Backwards.”
    “Like Ginger Rogers, but without the heels,” I said.
    His blank look said the joke went over his head. Too young, or too male? Or not a fan of old movies.
    A few minutes later, stacks of boxes crowded the shop. I started unpacking a shipment of newly released cookbooks, resisting the temptation to cart the lot to the nook and drool.
    “We can unveil the new designs for your anniversary,” Kristen said.
    “I’m beginning to feel like you’re all ganging up on me.”
    She was sitting on the floor, dusting and realphabetizing the bookshelves. You’d think books would pretty much stay where you put them, but no. They travel. An Italian cookbook ends up next to the oregano and a book on French bistro style cozies up with tarragon. In high school, Kristen clerked in a now-closed bookstore on Broadway a few blocks from our house, and always says the adventures of our cookbooks don’t hold a candle to the travels of
The Joy of Sex
.
    Expanding our once-slim book selection had boosted the bottom line. Plus books make great displays. This shipment included
Salt: A World History
, by Mark Kurlansky, and
Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes
, by Mark Bitterman. September’s Spice of the Month: salt. We’d pair books, shakers, cellars, and grinders with
fleur de sel
from the Camargue region of France, Maldon Sea Salt from Britain—both smoked salt and the very popular flakes—and of course, salts handcrafted from the icy waters of the San Juan Islands.
    Head tilted, Kristen looked up. “For somebody who makes major decisions in an instant, you can move like a glacier on the small stuff.”
    A good friend is someone who knows all about you and should know when to keep her mouth shut, even if you did ask for it.
    I found out about Tag’s affair when he told me he was working an extra shift for a buddy, freeing me to join my office pals for a drink after work at a trendy—and pricey—new place. To see what was going on. On my way to the restroom, I spotted Tag and Miss Meter Maid in a corner booth all but plugging coins into each other. I kept my cool on the spot, but yelled and screamed for a few hours and moved out the next day. Filed for divorce the next week. “Don’t rush this,” he’d pleaded, but the discovery made sense of tiny, odd details: furtive