John Lutz - Serial

“Made for you,” Nora said, “even though we haven’t met until today.”

They played out the familiar scene then, the small woman being reassured by Nora and the good-looking guy that yes, she looked terrific in the coat.

And you do look great, Nora thought. It would be a pleasure to sell to this woman. She thought back over the work that went into the coat’s design, and then the hours getting the cut and stitching just right. She knew the woman was going to buy the coat. Right now, Nora felt so good about what she was doing. She was in the right business and would make a major go of it. Someday the Nora N. brand would sell to the major buyers, be in the finest stores. No doubt about it, if she just kept working. And she would keep working; she was getting better and better at the design end of the business, and developing an accurate sense of what would sell.

“How much is it?” the good-looking guy asked. He asked it like a man ready to be generous to his lady.

“Three hundred dollars,” Nora said.

The shapely dark-eyed woman, looking sexy as hell in the soon-to-be hers coat, gave him a look calculated to melt. The good-looking guy shook his head and smiled in a way that made Nora like him. “Okay by me, if it’s what you want.”

That was it. The guy had too much class to try to talk her down; he knew the coat was a bargain at three hundred.

Nora gave him a smile. You’ve got faith in the Nora N. brand, too.

The good-looking guy paid with Visa, and Nora watched the happy couple walk away, the small, shapely woman clutching the coat in its plastic bag tight to her side.

It might be raining outside, but Nora was inside where the sun was shining.

By the time the antique and flea market closed, the rain had stopped. Mark Drucker, who sold furniture he repaired and refinished at the flea market, used his dented white panel truck to drive Nora and her merchandise to where she rented space in a former produce warehouse near her Village apartment. When they were finished unloading clothing, they used part of the day’s proceeds to buy a pizza at K’Noodles and then parted. Drucker drove back to Chelsea, where he lived alone, as Nora did, and Nora sat for a while and sipped a second Diet Coke.

She watched people passing on the other side of the window, the men, mostly. Nora thought about Mark Drucker and the good-looking guy. She knew Drucker, though not a matinee idol, was a quality man, and she could sense the same gentleness in the good-looking guy. Men aren’t all bad, she thought, even though they’re all men.

Nora thought about her father, and her brother Tenn, before Tenn was killed in that auto accident. The car that rammed into Tenn’s had been stolen and driven by a black man who’d had too much to drink.

A black man.

Maybe that had been part of the problem, the man’s color. Nora had many black friends. It was wrong to see them all in a different way because of what had happened. It had nothing to do with political correctness. Racism simply didn’t make sense. It wasn’t logical and belonged in the last century. She wasn’t a racist. She knew she wasn’t.

Or maybe she was. It would explain a few things.

She suddenly didn’t feel as optimistic as she had a few minutes ago, before Mark had left the restaurant and driven away in his rattletrap panel truck.

Nora moved her glass aside on the tiny table and stopped staring out the window at the people who were not like her, who did not have her kind of problem. Instead she rested her head in her hands and closed her eyes, almost but not quite crying. She was sure she wouldn’t cry. That, at least, was one thing she could control.

I really screwed up!

I was so sure.

My God, how could it have happened?

Whether she understood it or not, it had happened. And there was nothing Nora could do to change the past. Nothing she could somehow alter to escape what she’d done.

The past was like a goddamned trap.

If only it all happened some other time, before Tenn was killed. ..

She pulled her hands away from her face and stared at the glistening wetness of her palms.

Those are tears.

I am crying.

I really screwed up.

Will I ever stop paying the price?

Pearl and Fedderman searched everywhere in Millie Graff’s apartment for pornographic material or other evidence that she was involved in a deviant lifestyle. Quinn had instructed them not to tell Harley Renz what they were doing, or why, unless they found something. There was no point in unnecessarily stirring up Harley.

Except for the aftermath of murder, the apartment was neat. Millie had been a tidy housekeeper. The sink held no dirty dishes. The small, stacked washer-dryer combination in the bathroom held no wadded clothes. The furniture was arranged with symmetrical precision. On the kitchen windowsill was a ceramic planter with bright red geraniums that appeared healthy even without recent care. Pearl thought briefly about watering them, then decided that wasn’t the thing to do at a crime scene.

“Something…” Fedderman said, holding up rumpled black net panty hose. “Sexy, I’d say.”

“Remember Millie was more than just a hostess in a hot new restaurant,” Pearl said. “She was also a dancer. We need to keep that in mind. Look in her closet and you’ll find highheeled shoes that look like implements of torture, maybe with steel taps on them.”

Maybe they were instruments of torture. Quinn hadn’t known Millie at all as a grown woman.

“Here’s some kind of tight elastic thing,” Fedderman said.

“A leotard,” Pearl said. “Also worn to shuffle off to Buffalo.” She had a feeling she should be the one searching through Millie’s dresser.

“Buffalo?”

“Keep looking.”

“Whoa!” Fedderman said, after a few minutes. “How about this?” He sounded like a kid who’d found a trinket in a treasure hunt.

He was holding up a vibrator dildo. He’d found it in a padded brown envelope taped to the back of a dresser drawer, a favorite hiding place of many an amateur. In addition to being blue and having buttons at its base, the vibrator wasn’t at all lifelike but had ridges in it and a small protuberance near the bottom, obviously meant for clitoral stimulation. Obviously to Pearl, anyway.

“This what I think it is?” Fedderman asked, grasping the object between finger and thumb and handing it over to Pearl.

“It’s not to let you know your table’s ready,” Pearl said.

“So Millie had her fun.”

“Yeah, like millions of other women in New York.”

“Pearl…?”

“Don’t ask,” Pearl said.

Fedderman wisely took her advice. He put his hands on his hips and looked around. “We’ve tossed the place pretty thoroughly.” He knew tossed wasn’t quite the word; they’d be leaving the apartment almost exactly as they’d found it. As if Millie Graff might do an inspection and approve of their work. “So we searched everywhere and this is all we came up with, this-It kinda looks like some weird electrical bird with a long neck.”

“Millie was what cable TV would call normal,” Pearl said.

Pointing to the vibrator, Fedderman said. “Quinn isn’t gonna like that we found it.”

“Let’s put it back where we got it,” Pearl said. “Quinn won’t be shocked to know about it. Hell, it isn’t whips or chains. It’s a woman’s private accessory.”

“When I think accessory,” Fedderman said, “I think purse or maybe scarf.”

“Right now,” Pearl said, “I’m thinking testicle clamp.”

Fedderman winced and then motioned with his head toward the vibrator. “One thing we oughta know about that…”

“Yeah,” Pearl said, and pressed one of the buttons. The vibrator began to quiver and jumped so violently she almost dropped it. At the same time, it flickered with a dazzling blue light.