Sonia whirled away and planted herself in front of the store window. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest. "You don't know who I am, Jon. You've hardly seen me in thirty years. How dare you come in here making judgments about my life. You don't know anything about me."
"This isn't personal," Stride told her.
"Well, it sure as hell sounds personal."
"Look, there are only two things I want. I want to know where Tanjy Powell is and what happened to her. And I want to know who killed Eric Sorenson."
"I have nothing to say about Eric."
Stride swore under his breath. "Then tell me about Tanjy," he said.
Sonia swiveled her head to look at him. "What about her?"
"You told Lauren that she left early on Monday."
She tossed her hair back. "That's right."
"Did she say why?"
"No."
It was like coaxing drops of wine out of an empty bottle now, trying to get her to talk. "What happened that day?" he asked.
"She took a break about three o'clock. When she came back, she was upset."
"About what?"
"I have no idea."
"Did she say anything?"
"No."
Stride was frustrated. "How long was she gone?"
"Maybe half an hour."
"Do you know where she went?"
Sonia shrugged. "When she came back, she had a cup of coffee from Katrina's place down the street. Java Jelly."
"Katrina?"
"Katrina Kuli. She owns the coffee shop. Talk to her, not me. Maybe she knows what the hell happened."
14
Java Jelly, where Tanjy got her coffee on Monday afternoon before her disappearance, was three blocks down Superior Street from Silk. It was a twenty-something hangout and a haven for folk musicians on the weekends, with warped wood floors, mismatched antique tables, and black-and-white publicity photos taped on the walls. The ceiling was low, and black pipes wobbled on loose brackets overhead. He saw a few students using WI-FI on their laptops and nursing lattes. He smelled roasting beans and old sweat socks.
The woman working the counter was heavyset, at least two hundred pounds, with brown hair bunched into two pigtails. She wore a tie-dye shirt that let three inches of her bare stomach bulge out over the belt of her jeans. Her navel was pierced, and so was her upper lip, and she had a barbed wire tattoo wound around her neck.
"Help you?" the woman asked him. Her voice was polite but cool. She was in her early thirties and older than she looked. As a university town, Duluth had its share of ex-students who never grew out of their hippy phase.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Questions go better with a muffin, don't you think?" she asked, wiping the counter.
"Sorry, I'm not hungry," Stride said. He added, "I'm with the police."
"So what? Is there some kind of no-muffin-when-I'm-on-duty rule?"
"Okay. Blueberry."
"Yah shoooor, blooooberry, the state muffin of Minnnnnnahhhsooodddaa." She grabbed a plate and snagged a muffin from the rack behind her with a pair of tongs.
Stride handed her money. "Are you Katrina?"
She nodded. "Katrina Kuli. I own the place, I run the place, I book the music, I bus the tables when my students don't show up, which is half the time."
"Cool spot," he said.
"And you look like an expert on cool," she told him, clucking her tongue. "What's your name? Joe Friday? Bob Thursday? Tom Monday?"
"It's Jonathan Stride."
"Well, well." Katrina folded her arms across her ample chest. "I see it, yes, I do see it."
"You've lost me."
"Maggie Sorenson is a friend of mine," she told him. "I've had to listen to a lot of stories about you."
"I'm sure none of them was flattering."
"You'd be surprised." Katrina frowned as her memory caught up with her. "How is Maggie?"
"Not good."
"I hear she's been suspended."
"She's on paid leave while we investigate this thing."
"I don't believe she could have done what they say."
Stride didn't want to go down that road. "How do you know her?"
"We met in an aerobic dance class last year."
He had a good poker face, but a twitch of his lips betrayed him, and Katrina caught it immediately.
"What, you think big girls don't dance?" she asked.
"Not at all."
"Let me tell you, big girls do everything, and we could teach lessons to some of those pretzel sticks in the girlie magazines. It ain't how much you got, it's what you do with it."
He held up his palms, surrendering. "You win. Can we talk?"
"Yeah, sure." Katrina waved a hand at a skinny boy with greasy black hair, who was slumped in a chair near the store's fireplace with a dog-eared copy of Ulysses. "Billy, watch the counter for me, okay?"
The kid grunted without looking up.
Katrina led Stride to a raised platform that doubled as a matchbox stage when bands visited the shop. The chairs wobbled as they sat down, and the table shifted unsteadily on its legs when Stride put his elbows down to lean closer to Katrina. Her breath smelled like berry tea. When he was near her face, he noticed caked-on makeup covering purplish bruises on her cheekbones and neck, and a scabbed gash poking like a worm out of the collar of her shirt.
"What happened to you?" he asked.
Katrina shrugged. "Nothing."
"That's not nothing," Stride told her.
"I slipped on the ice. Luckily, my tits broke the fall, or it would have been a lot worse."
"Did you cut yourself on the ice, too?"
"I think there was a piece of glass, yeah." She covered the gash with her hand.
"It looks like someone beat you up."
"I don't really care what it looks like."
"I'm not trying to pry. I just don't like it when husbands or boyfriends use their women as punching bags."
"Well, I don't have either one. Okay? Now what do you want?"
"Sonia Bezac at the dress shop sent me down here."
Katrina's eyes flashed with anger. "What the hell did she tell you?"
"Just that you might know something about Tanjy Powell."
"Oh." Katrina slumped.
"Do you know Tanjy?"
"Speaking of girlie pretzel sticks," Katrina replied, sticking out her tongue.
"So that's a yes."
"Sure, I'm in Silk a lot, so I see her there. Sonnie gets me decked out when I'm headed down to the Cities for a weekend of clubbing." She read Stride's expression and said, "Do I have to give you my big girls speech again?"
"No."
"Good. It's not funny, you know, the way people treat us plus sizes. And it's not just men. Women are the worst. Girls like Tanjy, they look at me like I'm some kind of freak."
"You're sure it's not the belly button ring, the tie-dye, and the tattoo?" he said.
"Okay, yeah, I may look like a freak sometimes. Hell, I am a freak and proud of it. But put me in a short skirt on the dance floor, and I can rock it out. Some women act all disgusted. Well, fuck 'em, I am who I am. I'm not going to walk around in a muumuu just because I was born with fat genes and I like to eat."
"I can see why you and Maggie get along," Stride said.
"Yeah, Maggie's got a foul little mouth on her. I love that. For a pretzel stick, she's not half-bad."
"What about Tanjy?"
Katrina growled. "Now there's a bitch. Slinks around the shop like she's better than everyone else. Always has her face stuck in a Bible, and then you find out she likes to get tied up and nasty. Fucking hypocrite."
"Does she come in here a lot?"
"Oh, yeah, she gets a cuppa almost every day. Treats me like I'm the hired help. And what the hell is she? Like she's anything more than a sales-clerk herself?"
"When did you last see her?"
Katrina took hold of her pigtails and wiggled them like antennae. "I do that when I need to think. Helps focus the brain waves." She thought for a moment and said, "I guess it was Monday."
"Was she here with anyone else?"
"No, she came in, got a cup to go, and left."