Page 79 of Random in Death

“Good morning. How can I help you?”

She held up her badge.

“Oh, right! Should’ve recognized you guys. I saw the vid. I mean, who didn’t?”

“Who didn’t,” Eve agreed.

“Dev’s in the back. I’ll get him, but I gotta get somebody to cover the counter while—”

He broke off as a woman strode out. Middle sixties, Eve gauged, sturdily built, with improbably red hair filling her cap with curls. Her skin was so white Eve wondered if she glowed in the dark.

“You the cops?”

“Yes, ma’am. We need to—”

She pointed a finger at Eve. “What’d they do? And I don’t want to hear any namby-pamby megillah.”

“They’re not in any kind of trouble.”

“We don’t put up with criminals and deadbeats in here.”

“As far as I know, ma’am, they’re neither. They may have seen an individual we’re looking for, and have fully cooperated in our investigation. This is a follow-up interview, as we’ve uncovered new information.”

“About these two?”

“Indirectly only.”

“Jeez, we didn’t do anything. I told you—”

Now that finger pointed at Hank. It bore a sharp, murderously red nail Eve imagined capable of slitting a throat with a single swipe.

“Hush! Go get Devin.” She pointed across the room. “Take that table. I’ll bring you a nosh.”

“We’re fine, thank you, but—”

“You sit in my place, you have a nosh.”

Better to move things along, Eve decided, and walked to the table.

“Whatever it is,” Peabody told her, “it’ll be really good nosh.”

Hank came out of the back with his friend. If Hank represented the high school quarterback, Devin could have stood as his defensive lineman, with his broad shoulders, tough build. He had smooth golden brown skin, a long blade of nose, and big, dreamy brown eyes. His hair, a kind of brassy gold at the crown, fell into pure black twists.

Both boys yanked off their caps as they sat, as if they weighed half a ton each.

“Sorry about that, Officers.”

“Lieutenant,” Eve corrected Hank. “Detective.”

“Yeah, still sorry about that. My bubbe’s a hard-ass.”

“That’s your grandmother?”

“Yeah.” Hank flashed the smile. “She says it’s her job to keep me, and Dev, too, on the straight and narrow, so we don’t end up putzes like her sister’s first ex-husband.”

“We didn’t tell her about being at the club that night, you know.” Devin hunched his broad shoulders. “She’d worry. We told the other guy… Sorry, the other detective guy we’d seen the dead girl—I mean before,” he said quickly. “Before that happened.”

“Understood. You danced with her.”

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