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sat back on his haunches. “Son of a bitch.”

Chapter 4
    A t about the time Detective Magozzi was rubbing noses with the dead jogger, Grace MacBride was turning her big black Range Rover onto Washington Avenue and heading for the warehouse district.
    From her first day here Grace had pegged Minneapolis as a prissy city, an aspiring lady with her skirts held ankle-high to avoid the prairie mud. It had an underbelly, of course—the hookers and johns, the porn shops, the junior-high kids cruising for a hit of black tar or Ecstasy—but you really had to look to find it, and that it existed at all never failed to shock the stalwart Lutheran populace into action. It was one of the few cities in the country, Grace thought, where the self-righteous still thought you could shame the sleaze into redemption.
    Washington Avenue, once the province of the homeless and dealers, had long since been scolded into submission. Old warehouses wore new windows and sandblasted brick; seedy diners had been polished and transformed into sparkling oases of nouvelle cuisine; and only the bad people, the very bad people like Grace, ever smoked on the street.
    She parked in front of a small warehouse with a decidedlypink cast to the old brick, got out, and looked down the block.
    Annie was just coming around the corner, sending a smile on ahead. She was wearing a bright red wool cape that flapped open as she walked. The hood clashed nicely with her hennaed hair, Grace thought. She was wearing it short this year, in a flapper’s bob. A ruler-straight row of bangs rode high on her forehead over unnaturally green eyes.
    “You look like Little Red Riding Hood.”
    Annie laughed. “
Big
Red Riding Hood, sugar.” Her voice was cane-syrup sweet, remembering Mississippi. “You like?” She turned in a tight circle, a glorious scarlet hippo in a pirouette.
    “I like. How was your weekend?”
    “Oh, you know. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Same old, same old. How about you?”
    Grace keyed open an innocuous door that was unmarked save for the relatively fresh coat of paint Annie derisively called Martha Stewart Green. “I worked a little.”
    “Hmph.” Annie walked through the door into a ground-floor garage, empty except for a brand-new mountain bike and a mud-splattered Harley hog. “A little. What would that be? Ten, twelve hours a day?”
    “Something like that.”
    Annie clucked her tongue. “You need a life, honey. You never go out. It’s not healthy.”
    “Not my thing, Annie. You know that.”
    “I met this really nice guy I could set you up with …”
    “Last time you set me up it didn’t exactly work out.”
    Annie rolled her eyes. “Grace. You pulled your
gun
on him. He still won’t talk to me.” She sighed as they walked toward the freight elevator on the far wall, the click of their heels echoing in the cavernous space. “We could go clubbing together after work tonight, maybe snag a couple of youngfarm boys if you put a bag over that ugly mug of yours.” She inserted a key card that started the throaty growl of machinery overhead, then turned and gave Grace her usual morning once-over. The look was that of an exasperated mother, silently disapproving the mystifying raiment of a rebellious child.
    To Annie Belinsky, a day without sequins was hardly worth living; a day without makeup was unthinkable. To have Grace’s Black Irish palette and refuse to paint it was surely a mortal sin. She reached over and lifted a thick black wave off her friend’s shoulder, then let it drop in disgust. “It drives me nuts that that stuff just grows out of your head like that. When you die I’m going to scalp you and make myself a wig out of that hair. It’s just wasted on you anyway.”
    “Keeps my head warm.” Grace smiled.
    “That is so Cro-Magnon. Hey, get a load of this.” She lifted the flaps of her cape and revealed neck-to-ankle rows of lime green suede fringe, which explained the new contacts. Annie’s eyes always matched her