"Fine, I admit that you're tougher than I am," Nick panted as he finished his bowl of gumbo, "But this stuff is a lot better when it isn't so spicy."

Judy thought that he was probably right. As prepared, the actual flavor of the meal had been hard to taste underneath the spiciness of the dish, but the ingredients had all been fresh and it seemed well-prepared. "We'll have to come back," Judy said.

Nick nodded his agreement and took another gulp of his drink. Judy had lost count of how many sweet teas he drank, but it had to be at least half a dozen. She had stuck with water, which hadn't done much to kill the heat in her mouth, but also didn't have far more sugar in it than any bunny could reasonably take. "You all set?" Jamie asked, reappearing at their table.

"Never let me order the gumbo this spicy again," Nick said.

Jamie laughed as she handed over the bill. "I won't."

Nick fished a pawful of cash out of his wallet and stuck it into the bill holder, giving it back to the vixen. "You take care now, OK?" he said, as he and Judy got up to leave the restaurant.

Jamie pulled him into a hug again. "Only if you promise to do the same," she said.

Nick smiled. "I always do."

EZ Collision and Glass looked pretty much exactly how Judy had expected it would. It was a modest two story brick building in an industrial park full of similarly sized buildings that ran the gamut of small businesses, from silk-screening to electronic cigarettes. The shop did, however, stand out from the others, since it was the only one that had a fenced-in side lot full of cars of all sizes and types, from ones that a bunny could drive to one that could only be meant for a giraffe. In terms of damage, the vehicles ranged from ones with mild dents to ones that Judy would have guessed would be totaled, but they were all neatly arranged. The cars with broken glass or missing doors had plastic sheeting carefully taped over the openings to keep the weather out.

Inside, the shop's waiting area was also neat, but fairly well worn; it probably took a lot of effort to keep it clean. The paint on the walls was chipped in places and the linoleum flooring had a worn gray streak near the front door. An ancient-looking coffee pot on a battered end table next to a series of wooden benches filled the waiting room with the not quite unpleasant smell of burnt coffee, which fought for dominance with the pervasive scent of motor oil. There was a reception desk with no one behind it, but there was a buzzer on the desk that had been labeled "Please 'Ring' for Service," in even block letters next to a drawing of a bell.

Nick glanced around the waiting area, apparently taking in the minimal decor. There were some faded posters on the wall advertising a particular brand of oil and one showing how to determine if it was time to replace a set of tires. There were also some wooden plaques indicating that EZ Collision and Glass had sponsored a youth softball team for years and a few awards from an organization Judy had never heard of called the Slow N Low Society.

Although the waiting area was entirely empty of mammals, Judy could hear the sharp sound of an impact wrench from what was presumably the work area beyond the waiting room. She pressed the buzzer and was immediately rewarded with the faint and somewhat incongruous sound of the Westminster chimes going off from behind the door marked "Employees Only."

Nick's muzzle quirked up in a smile at the sound the buzzer had produced. "I'm sure that never gets irritating," he said.

A moment later, the door to the garage area opened and a dingo walked in. He was unmistakably the same one from the picture that Heather had shown Nick and Judy, although at the moment he was dressed in a grimy set of gray coveralls. As Heather had said, Bruce was a few inches taller than Nick was and much more solidly built. His fur was tawny and streaked with grease. Bruce was wiping his paws off with a stained cloth that might have been white at one point when he walked through the door, and when he caught sight of Nick and Judy his friendly expression fell to something more serious. "Two of you are here about Heather's sister, right?" he asked.

"That's right," Judy said, offering him a paw to shake, "I'm Officer Hopps and this is Officer Wilde."

Bruce gave his paws a final wipe before he shoved the cloth into the back pocket of his coveralls and accepted her shake. "Bruce Newcastle," he said, "But I figure you already know that. You mind if we talk in my office?"

Bruce jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate that it was through the same door he had entered through. "Not at all, Mr. Newcastle," Judy replied.

"Call me Bruce," he said, as he opened the door for them.

The garage floor filled pretty much all of the first floor of the building, with a number of cars in various stages of repair taking up most of the space not occupied up by a pair of four point lifts and a staggering array of tool chests. The office was set off in the corner of the building diagonally opposite from where the waiting room was, which meant that they had to walk across the entire area. While most of the cars being worked on were fairly unremarkable commuter cars clearly being repaired, there was one that stood out from all the others. Judy wasn't particularly interested in cars as anything other than as a means to an end for traveling, so she couldn't identify what exactly it was other than that it looked a few decades old. The car was long and so incredibly low to the ground that it looked as though it would scrape over every single speed bump. What made it stand out, though, was the paint. The car was a deep metallic blue and looked as smooth as a mirror, but it wasn't a solid color. There were stripes and curves subtly worked into the paint in contrasting shades that emphasized the lines of the car and made it call to be looked at. Nick gave an appreciative whistle as they walked past. "'64 Impala?" he asked.

Bruce grinned and stopped for a moment. "That's right," he said proudly, "Almost done with it now. Real beauty, isn't it?"

"It's a real work of art," Nick agreed, "You paint it yourself?"

"Had a little help with the pin-striping, but otherwise, it's all me."

Bruce glanced at the car again, and then lead them to the door to his office.

"Hey, 'Lisa!" Bruce called out before they entered, "Keep an ear out for the buzzer, OK?"

The grubby arm of a pig holding a wrench appeared from beneath one of the car and waved in a lazy salute. "A'ight," said a deep but unmistakably female voice.

Bruce's office was a small room with a desk, a workbench, and a series of filing cabinets crammed into it. Paperwork of all kinds was scattered across the room and available surfaces, everything from invoices and receipts to wiring diagrams and service bulletins. The workbench was covered with oily looking car parts that looked vaguely similar to tractor parts. There was one battered office chair behind the desk, a stool behind the workbench, and a scratched metal folding chair against the wall near the door. Bruce took the chair behind the desk and said, "Please, take a seat," with a gesture that encompassed the two remaining seats.

Judy took the stool, since it was easier for her to climb up onto, and Nick took the folding chair. "So how can I help convince you that Heather didn't do it?" Bruce asked once they were settled.

"We just have a few questions," Judy started, but before she could get to her first question Nick jumped in.

"Heather didn't tell us exactly how the two of you met," Nick said.

Bruce smiled slightly. "She might have thought I'd be embarrassed," he said, "She's always so worried about other mammals."

"And is it embarrassing?" Nick asked.

"Not to me," Bruce replied, "Do you know what Li'l Friends are?"

Judy did. She was too old to have ever played with the dolls herself, but some of her much younger siblings had begged their parents for them. They hadn't seemed all that special to Judy, but she supposed that they had been rather efficient for the company that made them to churn out. The Li'l Friends dolls had soft plush bodies, plastic heads, and cloth ears, which meant that the same basic pattern could be used to represent all sorts of different species just by using a different tail, head, and ears. Judy nodded, and was surprised to see that Nick had done the same. She shot him a questioning glance, and he shrugged. "They were the hottest Christmas toy a couple years ago," he said, as though that explained it.

She supposed that it did; Judy found it very easy to imagine Nick, in his hustling days, selling authentic or bootleg toys to desperate parents at inflated prices right before the holidays. "That's right," Bruce nodded, "My niece got a Dolly the Dingo a few years back. Absolutely loved that doll."

Judy nodded along, unsure of where he could possibly be going with his story. "But then her little brother decided to give Dolly a nail polish remover bath," Bruce continued, "Took all the paint right off her head. My sister tried finding a replacement, but the company that makes Li'l Friends stopped making Dolly the Dingo. They got Dorothy the Dingo now, but my nice wanted Dolly."

Bruce chuckled. "Of course, Dolly goes for hundreds of dollars online now. So my sister asked me to take a crack at repainting the head."

"I'm betting you did pretty well," Nick said, "If that Impala is any indication."

Bruce nodded. "My niece loved it, and her friends were all so jealous. I did a couple more, and a few more, and before I knew it I had a steady second job."

Judy realized where he was heading. "So you started posting online," she said.

"That's right," Bruce said, "Heather was making and selling little outfits for the dolls as a hobby, and we started talking."

Bruce smiled, and it lit up his entire face, "Luckiest thing that ever happened to me, my nephew ruining that doll. Never would have met Heather otherwise."

Looking at Bruce, it was obvious to Judy that he absolutely loved Heather. She sincerely hoped that neither one of them was guilty of the attack on Holly, but mammals could do crazy things in the name of love. "Have you ever met Holly?" she asked.

Bruce shook his head. "Never," he said firmly, "Heather didn't even tell me about Holly until we'd been going out for about a month."

He laughed. "You wouldn't believe how happy she was when I told her I had no idea who Holly Leaves was."

Judy could believe that. Before her big break into a mainstream TV show, Holly's acting credits were all in shows targeted pretty firmly at the bunny demographic, so it wasn't all that surprising that a predator wouldn't know who she was. "Do you want to meet her family?" she prodded.

"Only when she's ready," Bruce said, "I can't really blame her, you know. My parents weren't very happy when I told them I was dating a bunny."

Judy supposed that mammals found it easy to think that they weren't bigoted as long as there wasn't a direct impact on their life. It was one thing to say that inter-species relationships were fine in the general sense, but if it was your own son or daughter, well, that was something else entirely. "I understand," Judy said sympathetically, "Could you tell us how your date with Heather went the night Holly was attacked?"

Bruce's versions of events lined up with what Heather had told them. He had met Heather at the Brier Patch and they had eaten dinner out on the patio. They had been forced to call it a night so that Heather could get back to the dialysis center and pick up her mother, but he insisted that they hadn't left the restaurant until then.

After Bruce finished telling them his version of events, Judy asked, "One more question. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt Holly?"

"I'm afraid not," he said.

It was the answer Judy had expected, but she knew that she had to at least try. "Thanks for your time, Bruce," she said, and let him show her and Nick out.

Once they were back in the car, Judy considered what their next steps should be. Between their lunch and meeting with Bruce, they only had a couple hours left before the appointment at the studio. "Where to?" Nick asked when she made no move to start the car.

Judy frowned and chewed at her lip. "Do you think Heather or Bruce did it?" she asked.

She had asked Nick the question before, but she wondered if his answer would change. "Now? No, I don't think so."

Judy sighed. "Neither do I," she admitted.

"We could still be wrong," Nick cautioned, "But why don't we check out Hyperion's alibi?

The deli that Jim Warren had said Hyperion had gone to on the night Holly was attacked looked like it had been there since the city was built. Liam's Deli was charmingly old-fashioned, down to the faded sign on the door which declared, in somewhat uneven text, "CASH ONLY" and the actual bell that jangled when the door opened. There wasn't much room inside the place to sit down and eat, and there was a small line of mammals, mostly bunnies, waiting to order. Nick and Judy got in line and patiently waited to get to the front. "Could we have a few minutes of your time, please?" Judy asked brightly with a smile, "ZPD."

The bunny behind the counter, a fat, older bunny with a name tag that read "Will" nodded. "You're Judy Hopps! Just give me a few minutes for the line to end, OK?"

A few more mammals had gotten in line behind Nick and Judy while they waited. "Absolutely, thank you," Judy said.

"Anything else?" the bunny asked.

"Two chocolate egg creams, please," Nick said.

Will shouted down the deli counter to another bunny, "Two egg creams!"

"Comin' right up," the bunny said, setting to work.

"Chocolate egg creams?" Judy repeated, as they walked over to the part of the counter that had a sign indicating that it was the spot to wait for orders and pay.

"Don't worry, Carrots. I don't know why they call them that. They don't have any eggs in them. Or cream. Just chocolate."

"Isn't chocolate bad for you?" Judy asked.

"Do you mean 'you' in the general sense, or me specifically?" Nick asked, smirking.

"You specifically."

"The answer's the same to both, actually."

Judy rolled her eyes. "I don't want you getting sick," she said.

"Your concern is touching," Nick replied, and she found it difficult to tell whether or not he was being sarcastic, "But I'll be fine. There's barely any theobromine in chocolate syrup."

"If you're sure," she said, doing her best to push down her natural tendency to worry for him.

"I'm a big fox," Nick said, smiling.

While they had been talking, their desserts had been prepared and Nick paid up. Judy hadn't been exactly sure what to expect, but it turned out that a chocolate egg cream was a frothy and carbonated chocolate drink. "It's good, isn't it?" Nick asked, after she had taken her first sip.

The combination of chocolate and carbonation was an odd one, but it was refreshing and completely killed the remaining spicy aftertaste of her lunch. "Pretty good," she agreed, "Is this a city thing? I'd never heard of it."

Nick shrugged. "I guess. I haven't left the city much."

Before they could continue their conversation any further, the bunny they had asked to question walked over, all of the customers in the line having been served. "What can I do for you, Officer Hopps?" he asked.

"We're following up on a bunny that stopped in here a few days ago the night of the fourteenth. Were you working then?"

"Yeah, sure," Will said, scratching at one floppy ear.

"His name is Hyperion Leaps. Do you recognize him?" Judy asked, holding out a picture of Hyperion on her phone.

Will examined it closely. "We get a lot of customers every day. Most of them bunnies. Don't exactly stick out, you know?" he said.

"So he doesn't look familiar?" Judy asked.

Will shook his head. "Sorry."

"Do you have cameras?" Nick asked.

"Nah, sorry."

Judy thought about another way to go about it. "He came here to pick up an order. Do you keep records of that?"

Judy was afraid that the answer would still be no, but Will, who had been looking increasingly apologetic, suddenly brightened. "Oh yeah, why didn't you say he was here for an order? My son's real good with computers, he set up this order system. The fourteenth, right?"

"That's right," Judy replied.

"Just a minute," Will said, and then disappeared into the back of the store.

Nick and Judy sipped at their drinks while they waited for the bunny to get back. He finally reappeared with a printout, showing that Hyperion Leaps had put in an order for pickup on the fourteenth at about 4:30 and had picked it up at 5:57. "Thank you," Judy said, "Can we keep this?"

"Yeah, sure," Will said.

Before they could leave, he spoke up again. "There is just one more thing," Will said, fumbling with his apron nervously.

Judy's ears perked up, wondering if he had remembered any of Hyperion's visit. "Could I get a picture with you? My granddaughter's never gonna believe I met you if I don't."

She held back a sigh. "Of course," she said, as Will pulled a phone out of his apron pocket.

Nick looked positively gleeful. "Here, let me take that for you," he said, reaching for the phone as his smile split his face.

As Judy had figured would be the case, the snotty young wolf was still behind the reception desk when she showed up with Nick for their appointment. Mercifully, Bryce made no attempt to pretend that he didn't remember who they were or why they were there; he was probably an expert at pushing things just far enough.

"Mr. Wolf's office is just down the hall and to the left," Bryce said, his large fake smile on his face as he indicated the direction, "He's expecting the two of you."

Judy started off towards the doors that the wolf had indicated, but stopped when she realized that Nick hadn't moved from where he had been standing in front of the reception desk. "Tell me, Bryce, do you know what 'plausible deniability' means?" Nick asked in a friendly tone.

"No," Bryce replied shortly, and Judy caught a glimpse of something ugly flicker across his face.

Nick grinned. "I'm sure your teachers would find that a very plausible denial," he said jovially, "But I'll give you some free advice—one, it's a crime to interfere with a police investigation. And two, you might want to be careful about what you say over the phone. It's awfully easy to record a call. Just a couple things to think about."

Bryce's benign expression fully dropped, and Judy saw a brief moment of panic flit across his face before it was quickly replaced with out and out loathing. "I'll keep that in mind, officer," he said in a disinterested tone as he regained his composure, having apparently realized that the conversation would have gone very differently if Nick had actually had a recording of him telling Judy the wrong time.

"Glad to hear it!" Nick replied, and then started off in the direction that Bryce had indicated.

Once they were past the doors into the hallway, Judy grabbed Nick's arm and pulled him to bring his ear closer to her level. "Thanks," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I didn't do anything," Nick replied with a shrug, "I just gave him some advice."