by Harper Lin
The security guard looked at me, eyes wide. “There’s another man dead?”
“I don’t know. Is there?” I asked, confused.
“Caesar. Who’s this Caesar? You said he was dead too.”
“Oh, Lord. It’s just a saying. He died well before your time. Even before my time.”
The guard looked at the body in my shopping cart. A drone buzzed above him, looking too.
“Sir,” the drone said. “I must ask you to get out of the shopping cart. Shopping carts are for SerMart products only.”
The security guard frowned at the drone. “Go away. Security override.”
“Have a nice day,” the drone said, buzzing away.
“God, I hate those things,” he said, looking back at the body.
“You and me both.”
“When I heard the security call, I was in the office. I looked at the camera and saw this guy in your cart and thought he was drunk. That happens sometimes.”
“He might have been drunk, but that knife in his head makes me think he’s got more problems than overindulgence in alcohol.”
“What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I was walking along, and this body fell into my shopping cart. It fell from up there somewhere. I’ve been watching, but I haven’t seen anyone up there.”
“We keep it locked during store hours to keep kids from getting up there and spitting on the customers.”
“How very thoughtful of you.”
“The door to get up there is only open after hours so the night shift can move stuff around.”
“You might want to check that the door is still locked.”
The security guard nodded. “Yeah.” He unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and plugged in an earphone so I couldn’t hear. I felt rather left out. The body was in my shopping cart, after all. “Mary? Call the police. We have a dead man in aisle six. Yeah, a dead man. No, really dead. And check the door to the service stairs. Make sure it’s locked. But don’t touch the knob, all right? The cops will want to dust for fingerprints.” There was a pause as a voice crackled in his earphone. “No, I’m serious. Someone really is dead, not like last time.”
He got off the walkie-talkie.
“Not like last time?” I asked.
“Last week there was a zombie flash mob.”
“A zombie flash mob?”
“They organize it on social media. A bunch of people show up at a store acting like regular customers, then one of them pretends to have a heart attack. Another one plays the doctor, who comes over to help and declares the man dead. Then the guy pretending to be dead gets up and starts attacking all the onlookers. He bites them and they turn into zombies. Scared the hell out of me. We had zombies everywhere.”
“Was this some sort of protest?”
Serengeti.com was an innovative company and a controversial one. Maybe they were inspiring equally innovative protests.
“No, they just do it for fun.”
I had nothing to say to that. Some of the things people get up to these days really make me feel out of touch.
Although that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The security guard’s radio crackled.
“What’s that? The door’s locked? Okay, thanks, Mary. Go through the store and keep an eye on the catwalks.”
There was another crackle on his earphones.
He turned to me. “The police are on their way. My colleague just called them.”
“And the door upstairs is locked?”
“Yes, there’s no other way up there. You say the body just fell?”
“That’s right.”
He looked up at the shelves, scanning the upper reaches of the giant warehouse for a murderer who was apparently not there. He wiped the sweat from his brow and scratched his head. He was still out of breath from his marathon run across the store.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he murmured.
“No,” I replied. “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Three
The worst part about uncovering a murder in this sleepy little suburb is that I have to deal with Police Chief Arnold Grimal.
In Police Chief Arnold Grimal’s opinion, the worst part about uncovering a murder in Cheerville is that he has to deal with me.
Murders seem to congregate around me. I hadn’t been here an entire season before a member of my reading group got bumped off. This was followed by a rapid succession of murders that almost included the world’s most famous movie star. I had come to Cheerville to retire from a life of danger, and my life of danger figured it was too young to kick up its feet and decided to continue its career.
Arnold Grimal did not look like a symbol of authority. He was a lifelong desk jockey who, until my ill-starred appearance, mostly dealt with parking offenses and cats stuck in trees. He wore a cheap yellow suit that did not hide the sweet-and-sour sauce stains from his favorite Chinese takeaway restaurant. He slouched into SerMart (he has worse posture than my teenaged grandson), and his face fell when he saw me.
“Why am I not surprised?” He groaned.
“Nice to see you too.”
He had taken a good twenty minutes to respond to a 911 call about a dead body. By this time, SerMart’s two security guards had cleared the store of all the customers. Now a cluster of employees stood by the cash registers, herded there by a nervous-looking woman in a gray business dress who I took to be the manager.
“So, what happened?” Grimal asked the security guard who was standing beside me. The fellow had finally caught his breath but was still sweating, I suppose more from stress than exertion. He was a bit odoriferous, I must say.
“A dead body fell in her shopping cart,” said the security guard, whose name, I had finally learned, was Bob.
Grimal slumped a little more. “Of course it did.”
He turned to a pair of policemen who had just come up.
“Search the building. Lock all the doors. Make sure no one gets in or out.”
“I’ll help you,” said a second security guard, who I took to be Mary.
The woman in the gray suit clacked up in high heels.
“I’m Florence Nightingale.”
“And I’m Sherlock Holmes,” Grimal replied.
I burst out laughing. The cashiers all took a step back. You shouldn’t laugh at a murder scene. “It’s not a good look,” as my son says.
The manager frowned. “Florence Nightingale is my real name. My parents wanted me to be a nurse.”
“And instead you ended up managing SerMart,” Grimal said.
“Is there something wrong with that?” she snapped.
Grimal shrugged. “Not as long as you stick to one murder per year. You have to get a permit for more.”
I cocked an eyebrow. Was Grimal developing a sense of humor? Maybe he was hanging around me too much.
“Let’s go look at the murder scene,” she huffed and clacked away. Grimal, Bob the security guard, and I all followed.
The poor murder victim (actually, rich murder victim) was lying in my shopping cart, his arms and legs draped over the side, just where we had left him. A drone hovered nearby, telling him to get out.
“Go away!” snapped Florence Nightingale, waving her hands like she was shooing a fly. “God, I hate those things.”
The drone buzzed off.
Grimal looked at the body. “Oh no, it’s Sir Edmund Montalbion!”
“And who is Sir Edmund Montalbion?” I asked.
“He is the richest man in Cheerville,” Florence Nightingale said, going pale.
“Was,” I corrected.
“Was,” Grimal nodded sadly.
“You know him?” I asked the police chief.
“Not very well. He was a regular contributor to various charities. Once he asked for police advice about making his home burglarproof. He installed the best security equipment money could buy, along with safes good enough for a bank and an excellent CCTV system linked directly
to the region’s biggest security company. Monitored twenty-four seven. We assured him that with that level of protection, no one would rob him.”
“What did he need to protect?”
“Sir Edmund Montalbion collected gemstones like some people collect stamps.”
“Did he have any stamps in the house?” I asked.
Grimal’s brow furrowed in confusion, a common expression with him. “I suppose he had one or two.”
“So he collected stamps like some people collect gemstones.”
“Let’s just deal with this case, all right?”
I grinned. Grimal’s training was coming along nicely. He had already resigned himself to the fact that I’d be helping with the case.
I turned to the manager. “Did you know him?”
“I’ve met him several times at gem shows and auctions. He never talked to me much, though. He didn’t like the idea of SerMart.”
“Too commercial and corporate for his taste?”
She frowned. “Something like that.”
“Odd he would end up here, then,” I mused.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Florence Nightingale huffed. “Our quarterly assessment is next week.”
“Did he have any association with the store? Was he ever a customer?” Grimal asked.
Florence Nightingale shook her head. “No. He generally bought at auctions or privately. He was a big name in the jewelry business. A bit of a snob, to be honest. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a store like… oh.”
The manager covered her mouth and turned a brilliant shade of scarlet.
Grimal started taking photographs of the crime scene. Cheerville was too small a town to afford a dedicated police photographer, so he did the job. At least he was a better photographer than detective. Dead bodies don’t try to outwit you.
After he finished, he dusted for prints on the shopping cart and the victim’s two rings, felt the man’s flesh, and experimented with bending his limbs.
“Been dead several hours but not much more than that,” he muttered. “His flesh is almost room temperature and rigor mortis is just beginning.”
Congratulations, Grimal, you passed the final exam for Dead Bodies 101.
He rifled through his pockets.
“Nothing.”
“A man doesn’t generally go out in the early hours of the morning without his car keys and wallet,” I said.
“They could have been taken from him,” Grimal said in a superior tone. “A panicked attempt to hide his identity. Plus, he probably carried a fat wad of cash that would be a temptation for the murderer.”
“Oh dear, Grimal, I gave you a chance to one-up me and you missed it. When I said he should have had his keys and wallet, you should have pointed out his clothes had been changed.”
Grimal blinked. “His clothes have been changed?”
I gestured at the clothes. “Almost no bloodstains. What there is on them came when the head wound got jarred by his meteoric entrance into my shopping cart. And notice that his face has been washed, probably in haste or under low-light conditions. You can still see a few traces of bloodstains. When the coroner strips him, he’ll probably find the same with the rest of the body. A wound like that would have left his clothes and body soaked with blood.”
“Well, of course,” Grimal blustered.
Florence Nightingale looked from me to Grimal and back again. “Which one of you is the police officer?”
“I am,” we said in unison.
“Well, whichever of you is, could you please clean up this crime scene so we can reopen? I have a quarterly sales target to reach, and they’re checking next week!”
“But you only opened two weeks ago,” I said.
She glared at me like I had said the stupidest thing in the world. “Serengeti.com has quarterly quarterly sales targets and assessments. That means every three weeks.”
“That’s stupid,” Grimal said. Harsh words, coming from someone like him.
Florence Nightingale turned her glare on him. “It’s innovative and cutting-edge. Everything Serengeti.com and its associated companies do is innovative and cutting-edge.”
“Such as having dead bodies fall into customers’ shopping carts,” I said. “I’ve never had that retail experience before.”
Florence Nightingale let out a shriek. Grimal struggled with the holster beneath his jacket and finally managed to draw his gun, looking around for the murderer. The sight of the gun made Florence Nightingale shriek again.
“Why are you waving your gun around?” she shouted.
“Because you’re screaming, I thought…”
“I’m screaming because I didn’t realize she was a customer,” she rounded on Bob the security guard. “Why didn’t you tell me she was a customer?”
Bob shrugged.
“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Please don’t sue. Oh, please don’t sue.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “Calm down. I won’t sue.”
“We’ll give you a gift voucher,” she said, brightening up like she just had a stroke of genius. “Yes, a hundred… no, a thousand-dollar gift voucher. I’ll take it out of my personal savings. Just don’t tell anyone you’re a customer. There’s a quarterly quarterly assessment coming up. My God, if the regional manager finds out…”
“I promise not to tell. The gift voucher isn’t necessary.”
She got a look of profound shock on her face. “Yes, it is! If a customer suffers extreme stress or shopping dissatisfaction in our store and we don’t offer a gift voucher from our personal savings, Serengeti.com can sue us. It says so in the contract!”
“All right. Make it out for a dollar.”
She paused. Considered. “You know? That might just work.”
“Could we all focus on the dead body, please?” Bob the security guard suggested.
We all looked at each other, abashed.
Grimal got back to work, taking some more photos and then asking Bob to take us up to the catwalk. He led us to the rear of the store, through an employee break room and office, and to another door. It stood open with one of the policemen standing guard.
“We checked upstairs, sir. There’s no one. My partner and the other security guard are checking the grounds.”
“Did you dust for fingerprints?” Grimal asked.
“Yes, sir. Got a bunch, sir, as one would expect from a commonly used door.”
“That’s going to be a pain for the lab,” Grimal mused. He turned to Florence Nightingale. “We’ll need to get fingerprints from every one of your employees.”
“We have those on file.”
Grimal cocked his head. “You fingerprint all your employees?”
“Reduces the chance of workplace theft.”
“But not murder,” I said.
Grimal turned to the officer. “You stay here. We’re going up.”
We ascended a long flight of concrete steps, Bob huffing and puffing, me huffing and puffing almost as much, Florence Nightingale cursing and having to take off her heels, and Grimal grumbling. I couldn’t make out the words. Then I realized it wasn’t his voice grumbling but his stomach. It was about time for lunch. Those sweet-and-sour sauce stains must have been from yesterday’s lunch.
The stairway opened up onto a small landing of steel mesh and a labyrinth of catwalks spreading out every which way. It was open to the store below, and we could see dozens of aisles of shelves piled high with goods, drones flying above and along them.
“This place is huge,” Grimal said.
“The largest retail store in the state,” Florence Nightingale said proudly.
“What are the chances that the body would fall right into my shopping cart?” I said.
“Pretty close to zero,” Grimal said. “You think someone is targeting you?”
“Now who would target little old me?” I said in as innocent a voice as possible. I tried to keep the irony out of my tone. Really, I did.
“I can think of a million people,�
� he grumbled. “Let’s work through this place systematically and make sure no one is up here.”
It didn’t take as much time as the size of the store would suggest. The catwalks were all clearly visible to one another so as soon as we got away from the landing we could see the entire network. No one was up on this level. There was nowhere to hide and no back way to escape through.
I pointed to an area of the catwalk.
“The body fell from somewhere over there.”
We headed that direction until I could see my shopping cart down below, the body of poor old Sir Edmund Montalbion lying slumped inside, a drone hovering next to him. From far below, we heard its tinny voice say, “Sir, I must ask you to get out of the shopping cart. Shopping carts are for SerMart products only.”
We got right above the spot. The light was rather dim, the main fluorescent lamps that illuminated the shop floor hanging below the catwalk. We only got the reflected light. I suppose this was to make the work area less visible to the shoppers. Indeed, I hadn’t noticed it in my peripheral vision until I had looked up to see where the body had dropped from.
Grimal pulled a Maglite out of his pocket and flicked it on, shining it all along the catwalk. There was nothing there. I didn’t see any traces of blood. We peered closer.
“Look at that,” Grimal said, pointing.
There were several scrapes along the railing at the spot from which the victim had fallen. The metal was shiny, like it had been scraped with another metallic object.
“You see lots of scrapes like that up here,” Bob the security guard said. “The night crew is always carrying loads around. Makes a big racket when they bang against the railings.”
“Do you know which employees were doing this?” Florence Nightingale asked him. “They should get a written warning.”
Bob paled. “I, um, I didn’t see, ma’am.”
“These look fresh,” I said, bending close to the marks. My back twinged in protest.
“They’re always moving heavy objects over the side,” Bob said with a shrug.
“How do you get them down to the shelves?” I asked. The middle shelves were a long way down.
“We have ladders with adjustable platforms that you can make go up and down with an electric motor,” Florence Nightingale said. “We have crews working up here and down at the shop floor. But they only move the boxes that weigh more than 30 pounds. The lighter boxes are lifted by drone. That makes everything move quicker. It’s an innovative and cutting-edge method of stocking the shelves.”