I opened the door, the one next to the sign that read FREDERICKS & TAYLOR PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS, and stepped inside. Freddie was happily working the PC mounted on his desk. I remembered a time when he hated computers. Somewhere along the line he caught the virus, though, and now he was the best at running background checks and skip traces, hunting identity thieves, vetting jurors, uncovering hidden assets, and even conducting cyber investigations—all from the comfort of his stuffed swivel chair. He looked up when I entered the office.
“Taylor,” he said.
“Freddie.”
“How’d it go?”
“We’re still on the clock.”
“You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.”
“I don’t know, Freddie. More and more I’m thinking this is one we should walk away from.”
“We could, but that would be establishing a whaddya call, dangerous precedent, quitting a lawyer midcase. Besides, I like Helin.”
“Me, too.”
“He’s been very good to us.”
“Yes, he has.”
“Way I look at it, we’re workin’ for him, not the client. The way I always look at it.”
“I suppose.”
“So, we’re on the same page?”
“Sure.”
“You best take a look at this, then.”
Freddie called up an article that appeared on the website of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The headline read:
MURDER VICTIM WAS HIDING UNDER ASSUMED NAME
“Did they get that from the cops?” I asked.
“Doesn’t say, but whenever a pretty white girl gets killed, reporters like to run a picture, interview the family and friends, get folks to say they never expected nothin’ like this t’ happen in their neighborhood. Maybe they figured it out for themselves.”
“The CA might have told them off the record. I’ve come to admire her sneakiness.”
“Don’t know ’bout that. Paper does say how a PI gave up the alleged victim to the alleged killer.”
“Did it print our names?”
“Just yours.”
“Swell. Does it mention anything about a license review?”
“Is there gonna be a license review?”
“The CA says so.”
Freddie smiled a big toothy smile. “Never a dull moment, huh?” he said.
I went to the coffee machine we shared, one of those expensive suckers that brews one cup at a time, and fixed myself a mug of Chocolate Caramel Brownie, a flavor provided by Cameron’s Coffee. Cameron’s used to be located in New Richmond, Wisconsin, but had since moved to Shakopee in Minnesota, just southeast of the Twin Cities. I, on the other hand, was in the exact same place I was six years ago. I sat behind the same desk and swiveled the same chair to look out the same window. The view of downtown Minneapolis had changed. Me, I hadn’t changed at all. Or maybe I had. What did I know?
“How long have we been partners now?” Freddie asked. “Five years?”
“Why? You thinking of throwing an anniversary party?”
“I’m thinkin’ we’ve been involved in some serious shit since we joined up.”
“Some serious shit before that, too.”
“What we learned, people usually kill out of anger. Even if it’s over drugs or what you call gang related, it’s usually cuz someone is pissed off.”
“Okay.”
“This Barrington, Eleanor Barrington, she was supposed to have popped the Denys girl outta anger cuz she thought the bitch was rippin’ off the son—what the papers said.”
“Freddie—”
“How come the bullets weren’t in front, then? You pissed off at someone; usually you shoot ’em straight on. You’re facin’ your anger, so to speak. But little Emily—one bullet in the back of the head, no sign she even knew it was comin’.”
“Meaning what?”
“Maybe she wasn’t murdered. Maybe she was assassinated.”
“A professional hit?”
“Not necessarily. What I’m saying, the way she was killed, it wasn’t personal. That’s the thing.”
That’s what I missed when I was working alone, the reason Freddie and I agreed to become partners despite what you might call a stormy relationship—was it really five years ago? It gave me someone to talk to besides myself, a second opinion to balance the voice in my head.
I wagged my finger at him.
“You just might make a decent investigator someday,” I said.
“Comin’ from a seasoned professional like you, that’s mighty fine praise. Makes a brother all warm inside. Gotta ask, though—if a poor black child without no proper education can figure it out, how come the white man’s police department be laggin’ behind?”
“Kind of makes you think the county attorney might be up to something, doesn’t it?”
“All I know, a prosecutor callin’ out a private eye in the media for no good reason—I’ve never seen that before, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Freddie made a production out of resting his index finger against his cheek.
“Makes a man go hmmm,” he said.
* * *
Freddie was still hemming and hawing when the door opened and a woman with Asian features walked in as if she owned the place, which, if you go strictly by Minnesota’s property laws, wasn’t entirely untrue. She was carrying a one-year-old infant.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Freddie chanted. He rose out of his chair and reached for the child. “There’s my little man.”
He took the child from the woman’s arms. The woman raised her cheek to be kissed. Freddie had to bend down nearly a foot to reach her. He buzzed her cheek, then returned to the chair as he waved the child through the air. The child was laughing. I wasn’t surprised. Freddie had been known to crack me up, too.
I couldn’t pronounce the woman’s given name, much less spell it, so I called her what everyone else did.
“Echo,” I said.
“Hello, Taylor.”
She moved across the office to my desk. I stood up to give her a hug. She was nearly a foot shorter than I was, too, a Chinese girl who moved to the United States with her mother two dozen years ago.
“What brings you downtown?” I asked.
“We’re going to Lake Calhoun for a picnic and to listen to some music.”
“Yes, we are,” Freddie said. He was speaking to his son as he continued to wave him around. “Yes, we are. We’re going to the park. Taylor, look how big he’s getting.”
“Think he’ll play football, like you?”
“Not a chance, uh-uh, he’s not.” Freddie pulled the child to his chest. “End up like me, all-everything until he trashes a knee and becomes an AP in the air force because he’s too dumb to make it through college without an athletic scholarship? No sir. He’s going to be smart. He’s going to play basketball.”
“Is he going to become an actor, too?”
“Heck no.”
Heck. I had never heard Freddie curse in front of his wife.
“What does his grandmother say?” I asked.
“Never mind his grandmother.”
“What do you mean?” Echo said.
“Haven’t they told you? Freddie’s mother wanted her little boy to become a famous Hollywood actor. That’s why she named him Sidney Poitier Fredericks.”
Echo chuckled at the suggestion. “I did not know that,” she said.
“Never mind,” Freddie said.
I took the child away from Freddie—he seemed reluctant to let him go—and I waved him around a little bit myself.
“When you get older, the stories I’m going to tell you,” I said.
“I’d like to hear them myself,” Echo said.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Freddie said.
He pulled the child from my arms and cradled him.
“Did the bad man frighten you?” he asked.
“Is it true that you once put a gun to Freddie’s head?” Echo asked.
“Actually, I put a gun to his big toe while he was lying in bed, but in my defense, it was only after he whacked me on my head with his gun and left me unconscious in an alley.”
“That happened?”
“God’s truth.”
“No big thing,” Freddie said. “Water under the bridge.”
“How did you two ever get to be friends?” Echo asked.
“What makes you think we’re friends?”
“You’ve worked together for how long now?”
“I saved his sorry”—a quick glance at Echo, and Freddie said—“butt.”
“You did?”
I held up two fingers. “Twice,” I said.
Echo’s eyes flew from me to Freddie and back again, and I wondered, doesn’t the man speak to his wife?
“We’re going to the park,” Freddie said. “Yes, we are. We’re going to the park.”
“Taylor, come with us,” Echo said.
“I don’t think so.”
“It’ll be fun.”
“You’ll have more fun without me.”
“That’s for sure,” Freddie said.
Echo called his name and gave him the look some wives reserve for husbands that embarrass them.
“It’s true,” Freddie said. “Taylor’s been a stick-in-the-mud ever since he broke up with Cynthia—for the second time, I might add.”
“Stick-in-the-mud?” I asked. “Is that street?”
“Fuuuuudge,” Freddie said, although I don’t think that’s what he meant to say.
“C’mon, Taylor,” Echo said. “Come with us.”
I shook my head.
“Freddie’s right. You’ve been moping around for months. She’s just a girl.”
“Have fun, you three.”