Guilty as Cinnamon by Leslie Budewitz

piper. (Silver goes where the pepper is.)
    â€”Piero Zen, Venetian ambassador to Constantinople, 1530, quoted in Charles Corn,
The Scents of Eden: A History of the Spice Trade
    I strolled up First Ave, drinking in the rain-rinsed air and midmorning calm. Fabiola had gleaned few details about Tamara’s personal life. Their friendship had been too new. But the pain of loss does not run a logical course, and the effect of the murder on Fabiola made me more determined to find the killer. Not just to save my good name, but for Tamara. For justice.
    How did one kill with ghost peppers? Who would ever conjure up such a thing? I mean, I sell them, I pack them—I know the pain. Intentionally inflict it on someone else? Never.
    I wrapped my arms around myself. Poor Tamara, dead so young. Her dream so close, destroyed.
    Is there anything more inspiring than a passionate woman? A woman who throws heart, mind, and body into everything she does, whether it’s Fabiola with her brilliant designs andcrazy outfits, or the contemplative and fictional Sister Frevisse cocooned in her woolens and wimple. Seems to me the world needs more women like that. Too often, it squelches them.
    Or outright kills them.
    Half a block from the Market entrance at Pike, inspiration struck, and I stayed the course on First.
    Even in my brief time in the spice biz, I’d witnessed fads and trends. Medicinal queries and purchases had exploded. While I don’t mind selling turmeric in bulk to a woman I suspect is using it for her blood pressure and not her curry, I send customers seeking medical advice to Ron Locke or the herb-and-incense shop in the Economy Market.
    Another trend: more African and Indian spices. It’s gratifying when immigrant customers believe we’ve got the freshest, highest quality ingredients for their ethnic dishes, like the Lebanese chef at the Middle Eastern restaurant on the Hillclimb who buys his sumac and Aleppo pepper from me. (After the incident last fall, he offered me free falafel for life. It’s a sin to refuse generosity, so I begged him for the recipe instead.)
    On one of her recent forays into Seattle, Jane had eyed the jars we’d added since my takeover. “Used to be I sold more cinnamon, vanilla, and oregano than anything else. Kosher salt was exotic. Now it’s pink salt, truffle salt, flake salt. And all the peppers—the hotter, the better.” She was right about that. Foodies talk about Scoville units like they get what that means. Heck, even I barely know.
    But I know ghost peppers burn up the charts. So who had mustered the creative cruelty needed to kill with them?
    â€œFive minutes. I promise.” I held up my hand, fingers extended. Dr. Ron Locke’s clinic manager rolled her eyes and pointed toward his office. When my employee Reed’s dad, a veteran acupuncturist and font of arcane medical knowledge, gets going, five minutes easily becomes ten or twenty, leaving his staff to placate impatient patients.
    Across the book-and-paper-strewn desk, Ron raised hiseyebrows at my questions, but his expression quickly turned serious. “This is about the customer you found. So sorry, Pepper.”
    I described what I’d seen at the building site. Ron swiveled his chair toward a bookcase and hooked one brown forefinger on the gold-lettered spine of a fat blue volume.
Flip, flip, flip
. “Could make a powder into an aerosol for ease of delivery,” he mused.
    â€œLike bear spray.”
    â€œExactly. That would cause temporary blinding, or chemical burns. You said no visible injuries, but her eyes were swollen and she’d been reaching out.”
    Or clawing for air.
    Flip, flip, flip
. “There’s a kind of mushroom that expands when ground,” he said. “Maybe the peppers emit a toxic substance when they’re cut.”
    â€œNo. Alex and I chopped a few dried peppers and extracted the capsicum in oil. The pieces softened as they