Ascanio chortled next to me. It sounded like something out of a nightmare.

We walked to Downs Motor Care, which consisted of a parking lot littered with car parts and filled with random clunkers of both the mechanical and the magical persuasion. A large metal garage sat in the back. Two of the garage’s four doors were open. In the first door, a man dug under the hood of a Dodge truck.

“Afternoon!” I called out.

The man spun about, saw us, and hit his head on the Dodge’s hood. He was young, in good shape, with a face that looked like something had chewed on the left side of it and spat him out.

The mechanic yanked a large wrench from the nearby table. “What do you want?”

I held up twenty bucks. Six months ago I would’ve flashed my Order ID. He would have instantly been put at ease and I would have gotten my information. But in the past couple of months of working with Kate I had learned that the private sector paid for the answers to their questions. It chafed me, but I needed to find the killer.

“Looking for some information, sir,” I said.

Ascanio showed him the tire.

The mechanic studied us for a long moment. “Put the money on the ground. Pin it with a rock and don’t come any closer.”

I should probably rethink running around in beastkin shape, especially if I kept getting bloody. All my witnesses seemed to be disturbed by it.

I put the twenty under the rock. “Did you tow someone out of Garcia Construction in the last week or so?”

The mechanic rested the wrench against his chest. “Yeah.”

“Who was it?”

“Some woman.”

“Was she one of Garcia’s regulars?”

He shook his head. “Never seen her before.”

“What did she look like?”

He frowned. “About early forties, nice dress, good shoes. Well put together. Looked like a businesswoman to me.”

“Did she mention what her name was or what she was doing there?”

“No. I changed the tire, she paid me, that was it.”

“How did she pay?”

“Gave me a check.”

I blinked at him a couple of times, before I remembered that fluttering my eyelashes didn’t exactly go over well in my current shape. “You took a check from some woman you don’t know?”

“It was a check from her business. I called it into the bank; they said it was good.”

“What sort of business?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “Store of some sort or the other. Art something.”

Interesting. “Any chance you can find that cancelled check?”

“I have work to do,” he said. “I’m busy.”

I showed him a card, bent down, and put it under the rock. “If you happen to run across the check, there is another fifty bucks in it for you. The address and phone number are on the card.”