My Favorite Suspects: Part 9
The only sound in Luna's apartment was the grainy scraping of her stainless steel blade...
In this cozy noir, amateur sleuth Terry Perez revisits his first case in which he investigates a series of crimes at his supermarket. Can he solve the mystery before he loses his job at the store? Who in his circle will turn out to be the criminal?
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Luna paled and a thin sheen of sweat appeared on her forehead. It certainly wasn't from the heat. The air conditioning in her apartment was going pretty good at that point. Luna wore a thin blouse and my pants were still in the washer, so I only had on a T-shirt and underwear. The kitchen table was close enough to a vent that Luna's dark hair moved in the artificial breeze.
"I really am curious," she said, "of why you thought I might be Ghost. And why you chose those examples." The set of her jaw gave me the impression that every word I chose mattered.
"The bit about you being an alcoholic? Or a thief? I didn't mean anything by them. I didn't say you're any of those things. I said it would be funny if you are."
"Why would it be funny?" She went to the counter and took a Cortland apple from a small wicker basket. "Is being an alcoholic funny?"
"I didn't…. It was an example."
She brought out a wood cutting board and put the apple on the board. She drew a paring knife from a wooden rack, thought about it, put it back, and drew a different knife. That knife's length and handle looked better suited for slicing meat.
"Something pointed you to those two specific examples. That's what interests me. Either alcoholic or thief. Pick one. Walk me through it."
Luna returned to her seat across from me, wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist, and started to peel the skin from the apple.
"Let's start with alcoholic," I said, failing to sound casual. "When I found you, you were pacing back-and-forth in front of the Backstop Bar. You seemed agitated. You kept looking at the front door. You sipped nervously at your drink. My presence bothered you, but when I tried to leave, you grabbed my shirt. You eagerly took up my offer for coffee. You spilled your drink on my clothes. On the bus ride here, you clung to me. You looked relieved to get inside your apartment but you didn't know what to do with me after closing the door. When I asked for a beer, and started to reminisce about drinking beer, you got upset. You don't have any alcohol." I took a careful sip from my can of RC. "All that can be explained by alcoholism. You wanted to drink but you didn't want to break your sobriety, so when I found you, you were wrestling with that. Your movements were uncoordinated. Maybe you were fighting an urge to drink and you spilled your pop on me. When I suggested coffee, you chose iced coffee, which is a base for many drinks. You clung to me on the way here as if you were afraid you'd hit one of the bars or liquor stores along the bus route. As we walked the last couple of blocks to your apartment, you rushed me past two markets along the way that sell beer."
She nodded and kept working the apple with that knife. A long ribbon of skin dangled between her fingers. The sugary apple-scent hit me. Her pulse throbbed on the side of her neck.
"Those pictures." I gestured to the fridge and tried to swallow through my suddenly dry throat. "Not your family. Maybe friends? The poses are formal. You're familiar, but not friends. And the lists of days and times and locations. They're all for meetings. Support group meetings. I know those places. The Student Union. The churches. They all advertise AA meetings."
She pointed to the fridge with the knife. "Are you in AA?"
"No. I did a year at Brockport and had a meal plan at the Student Union. Some of those churches provide services for disabled people and I've taken my brother to them. The other churches have kitchens and I get free meals there."
"What about my club?"
"I thought they'd serve drinks. As it turns out, the club doesn't serve alcohol. It's against policy. Being alcoholic wouldn't rule out a job as a stripper."
"It's a liability thing with the customers. Testosterone and booze aren't a good combo." She continued to strip the apple, the knife an extension of her fingers. "How did you know that?" Luna said. "Did you go to the club?"
"I checked their web site."
She made a face as if making a mental note. "OK. So that's the alcoholic story. What makes you think I'm a thief?"
Her apartment was eerily quiet. No street noises. No doors slamming. No birds chirping. No voices from adjoining units. The only sound was the grainy scraping of her stainless steel blade as it peeled back the apple's skin from its flesh.
"The club's web site,” I said. “You're not on it. Maybe you don’t work there."
"Maybe I'm new. Maybe they only put top-tier acts on the site. Maybe they're cheap and don't update their information."
"Speaking of cost, I'm not sure how much you make, but you probably don't make enough to live here." I'd been looking for apartments and had quickly ruled out Luna's neighborhood, where the corner market had an autographed photo of Anthony Bourdain and the dog walkers dressed on-trend. "Selling fetish stuff through your web store could help—if you had a bigger online presence. You have so much competition you don't even show up on the second page of search results. Thinking about your catalog, however, with all the random stuff in there, I think it might be a good way to offload stolen goods."
"SEO is a challenge," Luna said. "Tell me why I was at the Backstop."
"You sell some items in person. You set up meetings in public places like the Backstop. Today, you were waiting for someone. You were pacing around. Nervous. Meeting in person is risky. You might've been tricked by the cops. I surprised you when I showed up. I gave you an escape route by inviting you for coffee."
"Go on."
"Whoever you planned to meet would be looking for a woman alone. They'd probably ignore a couple, especially one that appeared to be on a date. So you spilled your drink on me. That gave me a reason to stay with you until you got here. As we walked, you wrapped your arm around mine to make it look like we were a couple."
Luna put the cutting board on the table. She lowered the flaccid apple skin onto the board to make a neat pile. She put the flayed apple next to that. She sat down, still holding the knife. She spun it vertically, like a top, the tip against the cutting board and the handle cradled between her fingertips.
"That's why you said you didn't feel safe, right? But you feel safe now."
Luna flipped the knife end-over-end with her fingers and went back to twirling it like a top. "Is that everything?" she said.
"Both stories could," I said, failing to suppress a stammer, "fit together. You use the cover of being an alcoholic and going to AA meetings to set up alibis and character references." I pointed to the fridge with my thumb. Luna's eyes stayed fixed on me with an unnerving blank stare. "You can explain your income and odd work hours by advertising you're a stripper. You've created an entire persona as an alcoholic sex worker who caters to people with weird obsessions. A persona that points people in the wrong direction, away from what you really do."
I ran out of breath. I took in air slowly and watched her reaction.
Luna sat expressionless. Cat watching prey.
"My turn," she said.
"Shoot."
She chuckled softly at my word choice. "How long have you been following me?"
I shook my head vigorously. "Not following. Pure coincidence. I was at the Rundel this morning. Using a computer to upload my resume to job sites. Most career pages don't work well on a phone."
She narrowed her eyes. "Coincidence."
"Entirely. And hey, you know, I'm only talking hypotheticals here. If you really are putting that much effort into —" I snapped my fingers, hunting for the word— "into misdirection, then you're certainly not going to be risking all your hard work by stealing cigarettes from a supermarket, right?" I laughed experimentally.
Luna didn't laugh. "Hypothetically speaking."
"Spitballing. Riffing."
"No," she said, her voice dark. "I would not be stealing cigarettes from a supermarket."
Her lips puckered thoughtfully. I'd always thought of her as being my age, in her mid-twenties, but at that moment the wrinkle between her eyebrows and the creases beneath her eyes made her seem like someone in her thirties who played at being younger. The day manager at the supermarket tried to hide her age, too, and sometimes it showed in the same way, when she was preoccupied and dropped the mask.
A door slammed across the hall, followed by the laughter of children, and a woman yelling for them to be quiet. The noise startled me.
Luna didn't move at all.
"You still haven't told me," she said, "how long you've been following me.”
“It’s not like that. I’ve been tracking people in the supermarket. On the monitors.” Pause. “Which, I guess, could be interpreted as following. But I wasn’t following you today. I don't even work there anymore. I was looking for a job and using the library computer to put together a résumé.”
Luna stopped twirling the knife and cleared her throat. "Terry," she began.
“You think…" I said, "that I’ve been following you… like a stalker… or…”
“Or a cop.”
“A cop? No.”
“Then, what are you?" She tapped the tip of the blade against the table. "No more stories. Explain it to me in one sentence.”
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Use the Previous and Next buttons at the end of each post to navigate through all posts on My Favorite Suspects, or use the Story Guide for an overview of this book and list of all chapters.
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