"Oh, my, yes." She rapidly punched in the code to disable the security system. "They'll be very interested."

*There's an advantage to being tall.* Randal's eyes narrowed as he watched her finger skim across the keypad, and he memorized the sequence of numbers, tucking it away securely. Randal had the closest thing to a photographic memory that the department had ever seen. Their refusal to let him use it for anything other than scut work was another reason for him to be pissed off at the system.

He bade Nana good-bye and went to the '62 Cadillac hearse that was his pride and joy. The back had seen a hell of a lot of life since it had been retired from transporting the dead. It was amazing the number of women who were turned on by the prospect of doing it in a coffin. He never told them that he'd had it custom built: a standard would have been just too damn narrow. He needed a little space to move.

In the car, he got his notebook from behind the visor and wrote down the security code, just to be on the safe side. He didn't know if he would ever actually use it, but you never knew when a nugget of information like this would come in handy. He'd have to be cautious. There was nothing to say that they didn't change the code every week, or have a different code to reset the alarms. If he was going to go so far as to enter unlawfully, he wanted to be able to leave without making it obvious that someone had been there who shouldn't have.

Tucking the notebook away again, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel idly, trying to decide what to do next. He had a free day, and had actually been hoping to spend it with Naresha. He wondered whether the old lady had been being frank with him, if it was a standard brush-off she gave everyone who showed up at the door unannounced (and that had to happen, with a woman like Naresha), or if it was special treatment because he was a cop.

Randal was used to being treated oddly by the outside world, but it didn't mean he enjoyed it. His clothing and lifestyle choice alienated him from a major portion of society. A large number of those who might have accepted him because of his goth leanings were put off by his profession. He wasn't exactly lonely, but he didn't have a huge circle of friends. He could always use a few more. He started the engine. *Especially if they look as good as those ladies, and taste as good as Naresha. Well, if I want to get a little bit closer, I may as well try the old fifties' approach to making the girl interested in you: learn more about her interests.*

He went to Wired, the coffee house-cyber cafe a few blocks from Crowely's, and got a biscottie, a cappuccino (no espresso, that cup of amphetamine juice he'd gotten at the Akujis' was still jittering along his nerves), and bought a couple of hours on one of the computers.

He took a soothing sip of the drink, wiped away foam, and opened the CD case he'd gotten out of his glove compartment. Slipping it into the tray, he brought up the information he'd copied for Naresha Akuji. When he'd realized that he'd gone ahead and copied out the information for her, despite his intention not to, he'd made another copy for himself. You never knew what information could be useful.

"Olliphant," he murmured. Long before his time, of course, and not spectacular enough for them to still discuss it at the station. After all, only two bodies: one simple beating and one gun shot. He started reading.

*Hm. I'd have thought they'd still be talking about the kid in the freezer, but I guess since she got out of it okay...* There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, nothing that stood out. The guy had been known to knock his wife around in the past.

Randal finished his drink and stared thoughtfully at the monitor. Domestic violence accounted for a huge amount of the paperwork that came through his department. A murder-suicide after a history of that hardly raised a blink in the law enforcement community. *Maybe in this case it should have? They just say that there were incidents reported, they don't say how many, how severe, or how close to the deaths the last incident was. It's possible for a couple to overcome that type of problem. Not very damn likely, but possible. I think I'd like to do a little digging on the domestics that got called in on those two before the murder.*

He was tempted to swing by the precinct and check the data now. But it was his day off, and he never went by the office on his day off. To do so now would be to raise suspicions, and the didn't need that. There'd be time on his coffee and lunch breaks tomorrow. He snorted softly. It wouldn't raise any eyebrows if he just stayed on the computer in his free time. They'd just assume he was downloading porn, like everyone else.

*I'll just have to try to find some good snitches who don't know they're being snitches.* Where would be a good place to start? Probably back where it all started. He headed toward Crowely's.

The front door was unlocked, but the place seemed almost deserted. He didn't wonder at the lack of security. All but the most ignorant were reluctant to mess with this place. Besides Boris and Cerebus, there were a couple of other equally impressive peacekeepers, and it was well known that they were perfectly willing to pursue retribution off the property.

Add to that the fact that there were a large number of Wiccans, Satanists, and other practitioners of the more arcane arts who loved the place, and were willing to light candles and chant spells, or perhaps take more direct action if their favorite hangout was troubled, and you had a pretty effective word-of-mouth security system. It was rumored that certain elements actively hoped for a break-in, just so they could get a little exercise.

"Hey, Goth Cop." Randal searched the cavernous interior of the club and finally located the source of the voice. Luka, the bartender, was behind the bar, waving at him.

He walked over. "Hey, Luka. How's it going?"

"Just fine. We're officially closed, but for you... Can I get you anything?"

It was a little early in the day for most people, but then, Crowley's clientele were most people. "Just a beer."

"Tap, or do you have a choice?"

"Got anything Japanese?"

"With this crowd and it's funky tastes? You damn betcha." He peered into a large refrigerator. "You have a choice of Sapporo, Yebisu, Asahi, and Suntory."

"Just give me whatever sells the best."

"Sapporo it is. Want it in a glass?"

"Please."

Luka poured, and set the glass before him. Watching Randal sip the pale brew he commented. "This is a first for you. I can understand you not wanting your usual Gimlet this early, but don't you usually go for a draft when you have beer?"

"You're a very perceptive man."

Luka shrugged, smiling. "You're a cop. You should know that according to police drama, the only life form in the universe that has more information than a bartender about everything is a landlady. So why the sudden craving for something more exotic? I have to tell you that if you're looking for something tastier and stronger than American beer, you'd be better off with a Mexican or British. The Japanese pretty much mimic American brews, except for the rice, and I can't actually say that's a plus."

"I just find myself interested in things Oriental right now. You know... Kabuki, sukiyaki...Akuji."

Luka smiled. "Ohhh, yeah. I noticed that Naresha took you into a private booth the other night. Lucky guy. She's got a wide circle of admirers, but she can be a little picky about who she lets get close to her."

"So I'm privileged, huh?" He sipped the beer, and sighed. Luka had been telling the truth: it wasn't anything special.

"A lot of people would says so, yeah. Anything interesting happen?"

"I don't kiss and tell."

Luka's smile was a little feral. "With Naresha, it doesn't have to involve kissing for it to be real interesting. Did she just share with her, or did you exchange?"

Randal sat back a little. "How the hell did you know that?"

Luka shrugged. "It was either that or sex, judging from the look on her face when she came out of the booth. If it was sex, it was pretty damn quiet, and I don't think she'd have been so quick to take Vanessa home."

Randal considered this. The possibilities it raised were intriguing. "You mean she goes both ways?"

Luka pointed, and flicked his finger in several different directions. "Both ways? She goes here, there, everywhere. All that matters to her is if you're good-looking, or interesting. She kinda goes beyond bi. I ain't saying she's, like into bestiality, but..." He grinned, "she's been with Cerebus a time or two."

"Christ, I'm amazed you don't have fights in here every night is she spreads it around like that."

Now Luka frowned. "It isn't like that, man. If you were to call her a slut out loud around here, you'd have about a half dozen of her lovers, male and female, jumping your ass. I've never seen anyone who inspires that kind of loyalty. Even the ones who didn't part totally amicably and still pine after her are defensive. They might mutter to themselves, but they don't let anyone else."

Randal digested this. That was unusual. In his past experience former lovers were seldom very protective of their old flames if the relationship hadn't ended on their terms. "What about her sister?"

"Which one? I haven't met Milda. Story is she doesn't go out much, kinda a homebody. Though I do know that she'll make a run to that grass-and-roots store a few blocks down."

"Grass and roots?"

"Sprouts, alfalfa, ginseng, kelp... You know, 'health' food." He made a wry face on the word 'health'. "If it smells funky or is spelled funny, they sell it. I hear she's a hippie earth-mother type." He chuckled. "Musta been left on the Akuji doorstep as a changeling. That couldn't be much more different than the other girls. I don't see as much of Acacia as I do Naresha, but she comes in occasionally. Likes my drinks, the sicky sweet ones."

"I noticed. She was drinking what looked like a milkshake the other night."

"Try to drink that puppy like a milkshake and you'll be on your butt pretty quick. She invented it, like Naresha invented the Flaming Yellow Snow."

"I guess they have enough time on their hands to be creative. They're rich, aren't they?"

"Oh, hell yeah. I heard that the businesses pretty much run themselves, and the girls are free to do what they like. Naresha designs and seduces people, Acacia dances. Milda potters around the house and cooks."

"I hear they run some sort of detective agency." The smile faded a bit, and Luka's eyes were shrewd. *Damn, I won't get much more. He's put his guards up.*

"Who told you that?"

"Just talk. Gossip."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what it is. No, they don't run any sort of agency. They help people sometimes, but you're hardly the sort who'd need to go to them."

"Is this one of the subjects that you know a whole lot about, Luka?"

Luka picked up a large, wickedly sharp knife and began to carefully cut a lemon into wedges. "We're really not open right now, Turner. Why don't you finish that up and come back later when we are?"

The gesture was too subtle to be considered an implied threat, but it was clearly meant to put him off. Randal saw that he wouldn't be getting any more today without pushing it, and this wasn't anything that could be dealt with by strong-arm tactics, so he just finished his beer. "How much?"

Luka waved the knife. "On the house. I like having you around. Makes people think twice about pulling shit."

"Thanks." He walked toward the exit. When he glanced back at the bar, Luka hadn't resumed fixing his garnishes. He was gazing off into space with a thoughtful expressing. He'd laid down the knife, and was stroking the side of his throat slowly, his eyes distant and dreamy.

On the street, Randal put his shades on again and stood for a moment, looking up and down the street. "Well," he murmured to himself. "I suppose I could use some vitamins." He hadn't passed anything that looked remotely like a health food store on his way to the club, so he walked up the street in the other direction.

Sure enough he found it. Bounty. A tiny set of metal chimes rang as he opened the door and stepped inside. It didn't have the neat, 'health food is proven by science to be good for you' look he'd come to associate with such places. It reminded him more of an old fashioned general store. *Or possibly,* he thought as the smell hit him, *an apothecary shop.*

It was dimly lighted, and the floors were gleaming hardwood instead of the usual tile-over-cement. The shelves were wood, too, several aisles of them, and ranked running up each wall. That had run into some money, Randal knew. He had priced some oak cabinets for his place, and thought better of it. Besides the shelves there were open barrels of various odds and ends. He recognized raw soybeans and dried lentils: others were more mysterious.

"Hey man." The voice was slow, and a little blurred. Randal had to take a couple of steps into the store before he located the source.

The guy sitting behind the counter regarded him with mild, blood-shot eyes. He was probably somewhere in his fifties. His long brown hair was thickly shot with grey, and he wore it in a braid that extended almost to the small of his back. It was matched by an impressive beard that could have used a good trimming. Randal saw such beards on a fairly regular basis: the winos who passed through holding weren't much on personal grooming. *Thank God, he must comb it regularly. He doesn't appear to be wearing any of his last meal.*

The man was dressed in faded blue jeans, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and a fringed buckskin vest. He could have wandered down Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love and the only thing that would have drawn comment would have been his age.

Randal came to the counter. "How you doing?"

The man thought about this for a moment. Randal waited patiently for the obviously sticky mental gears to turn. Finally the man said. "Good. Yourself?"

"Not bad, but I've been feeling a little sluggish lately. I want to get a few things to maybe perk me up. Could you help?"

Again he thought. "Probably. We got some killer shit here, man." He paused, then said slowly, "Not that it would really kill you, I mean. I mean, it's all good. You know?"

*High.* "Yeah, I can dig it." The man smiled at the (obviously to him) familiar phrase.

"Tell me what the problem is, man."

"Like I said, just don't feel one hundred per-cent these days. Or even seventy per-cent. It might have to do with the fact that I started working graveyards recently."

The bloodshot eyes got round. "Oh, wow. Spooky. Are you, like, a caretaker or something?"

"No, I mean that I work the late shift, nine pm to five am. Total reversal, you know?"

"Oh."

"Maybe you have some other customers who have the same problem, and I could try what they do to help me out. Do you have anyone like that?" The man frowned, and seemed to be settling in for another long mental rummaging. Randal decided that subtle was useless here. "I hear that the Akuji sisters are mostly night owls."

A grin split the man's beard, and a spark showed in the dim eyes. "Oh, yeah! They are so cool. Milda especially, but all of 'em are nice. They helped Rainbow and me get this store."

"Did they?" *Unusual choice of charities.*

He was nodding. "Gave us as long as we need to pay it off, and only take five per-cent of the gross. That's better than Uncle Sam, man."

"They seem to have diversified interests."

"Huh?"

Randal sighed. "They have their fingers in a lot of pies?"

"Yeah, Milda bakes a lot."

Randal looked at him more closely. *This isn't a simple high. This is the dude's permanent state. Someone must've dropped a little too much Sunshine back in the sixties.* "They have a lot of different businesses?"

"Oh. Um, yeah, I guess." He started to slowly tick off on his fingers. "There's us, and Naresha sews really nice stuff for the weird kids, and Acacia has a record shop somewheres... Just records, no CDs. No, wait, she handles old 8 tracks, too. Says most of the music after they went to cassettes and CDs is crap, anyway. Gotta agree with her on that. Lessee... There's some sort of chemical or pharmaceutical company..."

"Moonie!" Randal wouldn't have believed that Moonie was capable of being startled, but he managed a creditable jump. A plump woman with hair almost exactly like Moonie's stalked in from a door behind the counter. "What are you doing?"

"Uh, just talkin' to the customer, Rainbow. You said I should be friendly."

"Friendly, not blabber-mouthed. What are you doing, flapping your gums about the girls? For all you know, he could be a pig." She shot Randal an apologetic glance. "No offense meant."

He smiled, a little nastily. "No offense taken. Oink, oink."

Rainbow blinked, looking at him more closely. "Wait a minute..." She stiffened. "You're him."

"It all depends on who you mean by 'him'."

"You're that Goth Cop person."

"My fame precedes me." He was a little disgruntled. Notoriety could work against you as well as for you, but he was surprised to see her relaxing a little.

"All right. I apologize for the pig remark. Word is that you aren't as porky as the others, but we're still not going to be discussing our other customers with you. Dig?"

Randal shrugged easily. "I grok." That got a smile from her. "It's nothing hostile, you know. They contacted me to help them with their... troubleshooting."

Rainbow's eyes lighted. "Really?" To Randal's astonishment, she reached across the counter and gripped his hand. "That is so cool! You're doing good things, man." She stood back, saying matter-of-factly, "But we still don't jaw till I have permission from the girls. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?"

*Oh, well.* "I could use something for energy, and do you have anything to snack on?"

"Sure!" She bustled from behind the counter. "Let's see, we'll start you off with a B-12 solution and some Herbal Blast capsules. As for a snack..." She gave him an appraising look, and a quick sniff that took him off guard. "You eat meat, and that probably means you like junk food. I'd recommend the toasted soy beans, or a carob-Tigermilk bar." She smiled fondly. "Those are Acacia's favorites, next to Snickers."

Randal followed her as she collected the items from various shelves, reflecting over the people in the Akuji sisters' lives he'd met so far: Nana, Luka, Rainbow and Moonie... *And myself,* he thought with some surprise. What sort of women, he mused, could interact so successfully with such an odd assortment of people?