I didn’t.“But if you’ll hold on a few seconds, I’ll look it up.”
Mendoza held on while I accessed Google on my phone.“A quarter of a mile that way.”I pointed right.Mendoza turned the car in that direction.
Two minutes later, we pulled to a stop outside the Russian market.Mendoza cut the car engine.“Let’s go.”
“You’re coming in?”
“I’m going to talk to whoever’s here,” Mendoza said, “and ask whether they were open late enough last night that Zachary might have stopped by.And if he did, if he said anything.You can look around.You probably think more like he does.”
I wouldn’t be too sure about that.I was twenty years older than Zach, and female.Mendoza was only thirteen or fourteen years older, and male.Chances were that he thought more like Zach.
But he was the detective, and he had the badge and gun.I had neither.So when we walked into the store, he headed for the cashier and I started wandering, trying to see the store through Zachary’s eyes.
It was pretty interesting.I’ve been in ethnic grocery stores before.Mexican and Asian, mostly.The more mainstream ones.This one carried some things I didn’t expect to see.Like caviar in tubes.The kind you squeeze.Like a tube of toothpaste.And they had several kinds of caviar, both red and black.Until I saw it, I hadn’t had any idea that red caviar was even available.Or for that matter, tubed caviar.
There was also a healthy selection of Eastern European beers, and an even healthier selection of herring in jars and tins.By itself, in tomato sauce, in mustard sauce, in wine sauce or cream sauce.Pickled herring.Fermented herring.Herring in aspic.
Then there was the canned beef.Including meatballs in sauce.Made from reindeer.
Up near the checkout registers, there was the usual assortment of candy.Russian candy.There was also a bulletin board, with some pieces of paper stuck to it.I wandered in that direction.A few yards away, Mendoza was busy charming the woman behind the register.
In addition to the usual fliers for lawn care and moving services, there was a schedule for the Nashville Ballet pinned to the corkboard.Maybe not so surprising, as Zachary had told me the owner of the grocery store was a former ballet dancer.There was also a calendar turned to the current month.(October, in case you wondered.) The picture above the calendar showed a building topped by several onion domes.The Kremlin?Or maybe they’re more like our church spires, and occur mostly on places of worship?
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know much about Russian culture.I know that the domes are uniquely Russian, or at least Americans associate them with Russia, but I don’t know enough to know whether they only occur on certain types of buildings.
It was a pretty photograph, anyway: a brick building topped by a tower (with a tiny, golden onion dome on top), and several, much bigger onion domes.A white and blue stripe, a yellow and green swirl, a red and green checkeredandswirled pattern, a red and white zigzag…
St.Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, the tiny script below the picture said.
I stared at it, rapt, for a full minute—how did they do that?—before I remembered what I was doing here, and turned my attention to the rest of the services on offer.
A business card for a local vet was tucked into the corkboard frame, along with a couple others.A seamstress or tailor with an Eastern European name.A liquor store; maybe they specialized in vodka.
Or maybe not.
A club.Stella’s.
Music.Dancing.Girls.
“Hey,” I said.
Nobody answered.I looked over my shoulder.Mendoza had his elbow on the counter and was dimpling at the girl behind it.He seemed to have settled in for the duration.She looked dazzled, as well she should.
“Hey!”
He straightened.The girl gave me a look of concerted dislike.
“Never mind,” I said, since I had realized that what I was doing was stupid.Much better to leave Mendoza to be charming—he did it so well, and if there was anything to get out of the girl, he’d get it.Meanwhile, I’d just take the business card out of the frame of the corkboard and stick it in my pocket.
I did just that, and headed for the front door.“I’ll wait for you outside,” I told Mendoza on my way past.I think he nodded, but I didn’t look over my shoulder to be sure.
It was another five or ten minutes before he finally sauntered out.By then, I’d had time to inspect the business card in detail—there was nothing on it that I hadn’t already seen—and look up the address of the club on Google maps.It was within a mile of here, not too far from the funeral home where I’d held the services for David last month.
“What?”Mendoza wanted to know when he came out the door.
I gestured to the car, and he opened it.When we were both inside, I told him.“I found something.What about you?”
He turned the key in the ignition.The sedan purred to life.It wasn’t much to look at—incognito police vehicles rarely are—but it drove well.As he reversed out of the parking space, he said, “She worked last night.She remembers Zachary.He looked around for a minute, and then he asked her if she knew a girl named Anastasia.”
