She frowned at that and then shrugged, as if to accept that, if she was in for a penny, she was in for a pound, so what the hell. She wrote down two names. “These two were in last night.”
“You got the other names, right?” Rodney asked Kate, standing against the doorjamb, his arms across his chest. He looked down the street, then turned to the woman. “Looks like you might have some business coming.”
“Maybe, or it’s just my replacement.”
“Who takes over after you?”
“Riley,” she muttered. “He has been here since forever too. Honestly, if it weren’t for the two of us, the boss couldn’t keep this place open. Nobody else wants to work these hours.”
“They’re not the best, as hours go, are they?” Kate asked. She accepted her notebook back again, then asked, “How is the coffee now?”
“Shit,” the old woman replied, “but it’s all I have to serve.”
“Got it.” Kate hesitated. “Is it really bad, even if I’m desperate for coffee?”
“Yeah, it is,” she stated. “You better go down around the corner and get something better.”
Kate wasn’t sure if the push-off was because the older woman didn’t want them around any longer or if it really was ugly coffee, but Kate figured she’d take the hint anyway. “Good enough. Hopefully we won’t have to bother you again. If you do hear any rumors, talk, or anything along that line, give us a shout.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You’re not in the business anymore,” Kate noted, quietly taking a chance. “Yet you know a lot of women out there who are. We don’t know for sure that the woman we just found was on the streets because she was in reasonably decent shape, but she sure could have been.”
“She could have been new, or she could have been working high-end.”
“She could have been either of those, and she also could have been somebody’s mom. She was definitely somebody’s daughter.” Kate’s gaze bored into the other woman’s eyes. “Somebody has to care sometime.”
At that, the woman looked down at her fingers and muttered, “Nobody ever cares.”
“We care,” Kate responded, “but we still need help in order to solve these crimes and to ensure we don’t find another body in another alleyway.”
“You’ll find it anyway.” She sighed. “Another body, another day, another alley.”
“You’re right,” Kate agreed, “but let’s do our part to make sure there isn’t another one today.”
*
Simon stood infront of his building rehab project, arguing with his foreman about the siding to be used. Simon and his crews worked long days and weeks when on a deadline. No Sundays off if they could help it. “I don’t want any cheap vinyl,” Simon stated, “and you know that Hardie board lasts forever.”
“Not really,” he argued, “but it’s got to look like it belongs in this historical area too.”
“So what do you want to do?” Simon asked.
“Brick is expensive. Rock is expensive, and anything else looks like cheap plastic.”
“If we want to make it look like the rest of the buildings on this strip,” Simon noted, “I’ll have to go with a mixed-media look.” He groaned as he studied the tall building in front of him.
“Interesting that they made all these so tall and narrow,” the foreman noted. “Reminds me of London.”
“Only these are twice as tall.”
“Right. Still, it’s what we’ve got to deal with.”
“Let me think about that. How’s the plumbing?” Simon asked. Just as his foreman went to answer, Simon’s phone rang. He pulled it out, frowned, then shut it off and put it away.
“Do you need to answer that?”
“I’ll get it in a few minutes.” Kate would wait. Normally he wouldn’tnotanswer, but he knew he wouldn’t like anything about the message she had for him, so he was just as happy to push it off. After that, Simon and his foreman got into a heavy discussion on plumbing and budgets, then adaptations and change orders. Simon was loath to do too many change orders on one building because that was a surefire way to ensure no profits at the end of the day.