Author's Notes: Thanks to tx_tart and maelithil for audiencing!

"Vecchio!" Welsh called from the doorway to his office.

"Yeah?" Frannie looked up from the case file she was going over for the eighteenth time, hunting for a break that wasn't there.

"Go grab the Mountie and get down to the docks." He waved a file folder at her. "Got a body with your name on it."

"Thanks, Lieu." Frannie shuffled the papers back together with a small sigh of relief, not that she was glad someone was dead, but at least it got her out of the swamp of unsolved gang hits where no one was talking.



*

"...Consulat du Canada--"

"Thatcher!" Frannie said, cutting Meg off.

"Frannie, what can I do for you?"

"We got a case, Meg. Can you get Inspector stick-in-the-rear to set you free early?"

Thatcher's warm laugh poured through the cell phone. "I'm sure Inspector Fraser could be persuaded--"

"Hey, you don't need to make that sound so dirty."

"Frannie! I assure you nothing could be further from my mind. The Inspector is an entirely professional officer of the--"

"Fantastic," Frannie said, climbing into the Riv. "I'm on my way."



*

Frannie took the report from the uniforms and followed up with the guy who'd found the body, while Thatcher tiptoed around the Forensics guys, bright as a beacon in her requisite serge. The vic was lying crumpled in a pool of blood, a frickin samurai sword sticking out of his chest. Pretty gross, Frannie thought, especially the way the blood was congealing in the wind. Nice scrollwork on the hilt, though.

"So, Chinatown?" she asked when Thatcher reappeared.

"Japan-town, actually."

"Same street, more or less," Frannie said with a shrug.

"Yes, of course," Thatcher said, her glance traveling down Frannie's body. "Did you eat today?"

Frannie's eyes widened a little, but she told herself Thatcher was only looking out for her. They were partners after all. "Uh...I had a granola bar with my coffee this morning."

Thatcher smiled and raised an eyebrow. "That was six hours ago. Sometimes I think it's a wonder your mother even lets you out of the house."

"Hey!" Frannie protested as they returned to the car. "I am a grown woman here."

"We could get dim sum after we interview Tadeshi Matsuo's brother-in-law."

"Mmm, wait. Tadeshi-who?"

"The victim's employer."

"And you know this how?"

"Ah." Thatcher removed her Stetson and smoothed her hair into place. It was almost as dark as Frannie's, but Thatcher's always seemed to do what she told it to, and she never, ever suffered from hat-hair. It was amazing. "Well, Frannie. You remember of course that I ran track back in high school?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, my running partner was Canadian, of Japanese descent, and we spent many hours at her parents'..."

Frannie tuned out and focused on driving. Thatcher wasn't so bad, really. It wasn't anything like when Frannie'd gotten stuck listening to one of Inspector Fraser's Inuit stories for a full hour once while waiting for Thatcher to get back, and sure, the guy was cute, but not that cute. Besides, when Meg used weird words like "internecine", she didn't make you feel stupid about not knowing them, she'd just explain and not make a big deal about Frannie being a product of the Chicago school system, or whatever. And once in a while, like the books they swapped back and forth between them, some of it came in handy sometimes.



*

The interviews went quickly. Thatcher took care of translating, since she spoke Japanese, but Frannie had a knack for getting to the heart of a rivalry, and competition was competition, no matter what the culture. Just like she'd hoped, the brother-in-law got nervous and gave up a cousin. Then the cousin got scared and ran. She and Thatcher gave chase and found him hiding at his sister's, but the sister threw him out on the sidewalk, cursing him for being a liar and a cheat. He started spontaneously confessing to all kinds of freaky imports violations and stuff, so Frannie cuffed him and held him there until the uniforms showed up.

Problem was, the Mountie had gotten a twitchy look on her face, pressed her hat down hard on her hair, and bolted after the sister.

Watching the dust settle, Frannie wondered how fast Meg could swing a hundred yard dash.



*

Michiko Saito glared across the table in Interview One as Frannie paced and yelled and paced some more. Thatcher leaned against the wall saying nothing, doing that weird Mountie thing she did, waiting in the wings.

The lawyer finally showed up, right around the point when Frannie'd yelled herself hoarse and Thatcher started talking, in that low, soothing way she had, telling Michiko all about her girlhood friend Hotaru and all those years they'd run track together.

The lawyer had glared at Frannie, glared at the Mountie, and glared at the one-way mirror until ASA Kowalski came into the room to find out what was up.

"Is there a problem here, Mr. Frobisher?" Kowalski asked, eyebrow cocked.

"A problem?" the lawyer replied in a loud, bombastic voice. "No, there's no problem. I'm just wondering when this place turned into Cagney and Lacey?

"What, you got a problem with female detectives?" Frannie shot back, standing up to her full height.

"Frannie..." Thatcher said in a warning voice.

Kowalski rolled his shoulders and lifted his chin toward the woman sitting at the table. "Save it for the courtroom, Frobisher. Your client's up on murder one for stabbing a guy through the chest with a katana. Maybe we could focus on that right now, instead of the gender of the detectives conducting the investigation?"

Thatcher's lip curled into a cold smile behind him, but only Frannie saw it. It was nice. It calmed her down. And maybe she'd had a point about the blood sugar thing earlier. Her stomach was growling.

"I need some time with my client," Frobisher declared.

"Fine," Frannie said.

"Fine," Kowalski agreed.

"Understandable," Thatcher put in, and then said something fast in Japanese that made Michiko blink up at her, startled, before she recovered her cool faade.

"What was that?" Kowalski asked in the corridor, after they'd left Frobisher and the perp alone together.

Thatcher shrugged. "I merely reminded her of the dishonor a blood feud would bring to her family name and suggested that a full confession would save numerous lives, not least of which being those of her younger brother, her cousins, and potentially her sister as well."

"That's...hunh." Kowalski nodded, his carefully spiked hair bobbing.

"I also pointed out," Thatcher said with a smug look, "that Mr. Frobisher is the sort of attorney who thrives on creating media circuses and suggested such an ordeal might be considerably unpleasant for herself and everyone she cares about."

Frannie grinned. Kowalski rocked back on his expensive heels and let out a hearty laugh. "Yeah, well, we can hope, Constable. We can hope."



*

After a long wait, Michiko gave them a statement, not a confession, but enough of a statement that they were free for the day.

"So, dim sum?" Thatcher asked, and Frannie hated to let her down, but she didn't much feel like another trip to Chinatown. "Or we could go back to my place and cook? I have makings for jambalaya, butternut squash casserole, chicken kiev--"

"Um," Frannie cut in as they pushed through the double doors to the parking lot, "I think maybe you're right about me forgetting to eat, you know? Right now I think I'm hungry enough to eat a horse, and waiting for stuff to cook just--"

"How about burgers at Renfield's?"

Frannie turned her head in surprise. "God, I love how you do that."

Frannie dug her keys out of her coat pocket, watching Thatcher's amused smirk grow into a wide, radiant smile.