Nikki ignored her, staring at the open door Grider had gone out, and thinking the very first thing he would do when he got out of the building would be to call Barbie Duffy.
“Generally speaking,” she said, “who doesn’t want a crime solved?”
“The perpetrators of the crime,” Seley answered.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nikki said. “I’m going to go home and read every scrap of paper on this case again.”
11
Diana Chamberlain didn’t answer her phone. She lived in a shabby neighborhood near the commercial district known as Dinkytown, not far from the U of M campus. An area where the big old box-style houses had been cut up into cheap apartments for students, and where the sidewalks were buckled from the massive roots of the old trees that lined the boulevards. An assortment of older cars took up all the parking spaces on the street.
The sun that had melted the morning’s ice was gone, and its meager warmth along with it. The temperature had dropped just enough to freeze the slush into ruts and turn the puddles back into little skating rinks.
Taylor cruised past the address, pulling into the parking lot of a dirty little strip mall a block down the street. He parked in a space reserved for customers of a small dry cleaners with a flickering red-neon Open sign in the front window. A pissed-off-looking tiny woman in a hot-pink sari stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
“Parking for dry cleaning only!” she shouted as they got out of the car.
“We’re here on police business, ma’am,” Taylor said politely, holding up his shield.
“Police dry cleaning business?” she asked pointedly.
“Uh, no, ma’am.”
“I thought not. Then take your handsome self away from here and park elsewhere. I have a business to run.”
“We’re from Homicide—” Taylor started.
“No one has been murdered here. I have no need of you.”
“We have to go deliver some bad news—”
“I’m so terribly sorry to hear it. Don’t let me delay you,” she said. “Get in your car and go deliver your bad news of a murder that did not happen here at Star Dry Cleaning.”
Taylor looked at Kovac, clearly not used to being denied anything by a female.
“What time do you close, ma’am?” Kovac asked.
“Six o’clock.”
“It’s almost six now.”
“In seven minutes it will be six o’clock. You are taking the parking space of customers who must rush in to get their dry cleaning at the last possible moment, and this will cost my business money.”
“It’s only four minutes by my watch,” Kovac said. “We can drag this out for four minutes and park for free or you can accept our gratitude and let us get on with our business.”
She arched a brow. “How much gratitude?”
He looked at Taylor. “Give the lady ten bucks.”
“Ten bucks?” Taylor said with a tone of protest as he dug out his wallet. “It’s three minutes.”
“You are a cheap man,” the woman scolded, snatching the bill out of his hand. “Cheapness makes you less handsome.”
“It’s ten bucks more than you would have had without us,” Kovac pointed out.
A brilliant smile split her face. “This is very true. I thank you, gentlemen. Excuse me now while I close my shop. Good day to you.”
“We could have just parked there,” Taylor grumbled.
“Don’t be a piker. It’s important to foster good community relations,” Kovac said, flipping up the collar of his coat. The damp cold dug into his shoulders like talons. “Besides, it did my heart good to spend your money.”
“I’m so happy for you.”
Diana Chamberlain’s apartment was located on the ground floor of a huge, ugly brown house with a sagging wraparound porch. The front door was open. Three different kinds of loud music leeched through the thin walls into the first-floor hall, the volume rising and falling as apartment doors opened and closed. Taylor rapped on the door marked “B,” and they waited. He knocked again.
The door of the house opened and a college kid with dreadlocks came in with a bicycle and muscled it up the stairs to the second floor.
Taylor knocked again. “Miss Chamberlain?”
The door cracked open and a fit, good-looking Japanese man in his late thirties stared out at them. “Can I help you?”
Taylor held up his ID. “Police. We’re looking for Diana Chamberlain.”
“Finally. She had to see the news on TV first. Nice job, guys,” the man said sarcastically.
“And you would be . . . ?” Kovac asked.
“Ken Sato.”
“Professor Ken Sato?”
“Yes.”
Kovac cut Taylor a subtle What did I tell you? look.
“Do you live here?” Taylor asked. “We have a different address for you.”
“No, I came over for Diana,” Sato said. “She called me, hysterical. She’d seen the news coverage at the gym while she was working out.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I knew something had to be wrong when Lucien didn’t show for the meeting this morning. I never imagined anything like what happened. Was there really a sword involved? That’s a hideous thought.”
Doors opened and closed above them, and feet thundered down the stairs, accompanied by talk and laughter.
“We’d like to come in and speak to Miss Chamberlain,” Kovac said.