A pair of the beige brick-and-stone Victorian buildings on the campus of the old Grain Belt brewery complex had been beautifully renovated to house the library. When the brewery was in operation, the neighborhoods around it were populated largely by working-class people of Eastern European descent. In recent years, urban renewal had brought an influx of young professionals and artists. Other brewery buildings, warehouses, and old bank buildings had been converted to apartments, offices, studios, galleries, restaurants, and taprooms.
In good weather the area was an interesting place to explore. In the constant cold drizzle, Broadway and Marshall was just another busy intersection as would-be shoppers and diners passed by on their way elsewhere.
Nikki parked on Marshall and walked through the archway and up the brick path to the library. All warm wood and floor-to-ceiling windows, the place had a cozy feel, full of nooks and crannies and private alcoves for reading or surfing the Internet.
Jennifer Duffy emerged from an office on the other side of the main desk. She was a younger version of her mother: blonde, slender, pretty; smartly dressed in a mid-calf green wool skirt with tall brown boots and a brown sweater set with a pretty silk scarf cleverly tied around her throat.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a perfect librarian tone, a polite smile on her face.
“Jennifer Duffy?”
The smile immediately faded. “Yes.”
“I’m Sergeant Liska. I’m a detective—”
“I know who you are,” the woman said, frowning at the ID Nikki held up. She glanced around surreptitiously, clearly worried that someone might notice she was talking to a cop. “My mother told me you’d be calling,” she whispered. “I don’t have anything to say to you. I was nine years old.”
“I understand that,” Nikki said. “I just want to have a conversation with you. I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”
“I don’t see the point. I don’t have any information for you.”
“You don’t know what questions I have.”
“You have the same questions as every other detective.”
“From what I’ve read in the reports, no one ever bothered to ask you much of anything.”
“Because they knew I don’t have anything to say!”
She spoke too emphatically, drawing the attention of several people browsing the stacks. A tall elderly gentleman in a fisherman’s sweater took it upon himself to butt in, stepping toward the desk.
“Is everything all right, Jennifer?” he whispered, giving Nikki the eye.
Jennifer Duffy’s cheeks turned red. “Yes, Mr. Weisman, I’m fine. Thank you.”
He drifted back toward the shelves reluctantly.
“I’m not going away, Miss Duffy,” Nikki whispered. “Just sit down with me for fifteen minutes. Then I can write my report and cross you off the list, and I will never bother you again. Please. I’m just trying to do my job.”
She still wanted to say no, but she didn’t turn away.
“Look, I don’t want to make a problem for you,” Nikki pressed. “But my loyalty in this is to your father. He doesn’t get to ask you to help. I have to do it for him. And I will be like a dog with a bone, so you might as well sit down with me and get it over with.”
Looking annoyed and worried, Jennifer Duffy huffed a sigh. She turned and said something quietly to another librarian working behind the desk, then turned back.
“Not in here,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”
They walked in silence through the drizzle to a mostly empty coffeehouse within sight of the library. They ordered at the counter and then sat down at the farthest table, next to the window, away from curious ears. Nikki took the corner seat out of habit, so she could have the best view of the room and the people in it. Jennifer Duffy sat across from her, huddled in her raincoat, looking sullen.
“I don’t need everyone at work knowing my business,” she said.
“I understand.”
“If you understood, you wouldn’t be here.”
Nikki sighed. “Why do I seem to care more about finding your father’s killer than everyone else in your family combined?”
“Because you haven’t lived with it for practically your entire life,” she said. “It’s new to you. It’s like a shiny new toy,” she said bitterly. “That’s the way it always is, every time someone thinks they’re going to be the person to crack the case and nothing ever comes of it, and we’re all left to deal with our feelings all over again.”
She had a point. Nikki had yet to become disillusioned with the attempt to solve Ted Duffy’s case. Jennifer Duffy had been disillusioned again and again.
“It’s like having someone ransack your house over and over,” Jennifer Duffy said. “They never stay to put it all back together.”
“I’m sorry no one has ever been able to give you closure on this,” Nikki said. “I sincerely hope this will be the last time.”
“I hope so, too,” she said, though she had clearly run out of hope for that a while ago.
The waiter brought them their coffees. When he had walked away, Nikki said, “Your mom told me it was especially hard on you when your dad died. You were close to him?”
“No. I don’t have that many memories of him, to be honest. He was working all the time. So was my mom. One was gone or the other one was gone.”