D. Schmidt - They Ate the Waitress?

“Don’t worry about it. You’re just doing your job. That’s what’s important, right?” He patted his pockets, pretending to search for cash. Feigning surprise, he pulled some coins from his money pouch. “Oh, looks like I have some cash after all.”

“How amazing,” she said flatly. She rang up the light and shoved it into a plastic bag, nearly tearing a hole in the bottom. “Nick, I’ve heard stories about you, but it’s hard to tell the truth from myths, urban legends, and your own lies. Are you any good at what you do?”

“I’m the best there is, baby!”

She jabbed him in the chest with a sharply-manicured finger. “Do you remember what I told you about that?”

“That if I keep calling you ‘baby,’ you’ll use my testicles for castanets?”

“And I won’t warn you again. Now, as I was saying, I might have a way for you to work off your debt. – As a detective , you ass. Stop smiling at me like that.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He used his fingers to pull the corners of his mouth into a more serious expression. “Please, continue.”

“A few weeks ago, my cat died, so I went to the pet store to get a new one. They had Perma-Kittens on sale. I guess they do something to their growth hormone levels so they stay small and cute forever. Not important. The point is that the salesclerk was really creepy. He kept standing too close to me, asking me personal questions, touching my hair.” She cringed at the memory. “He must have copied my address of off my credit card because, ever since then, he’s been stalking me!”

“Stalking? What has he been doing, exactly?” It was important to ask. Sophia was given to exaggeration. She had once called in sick with the bubonic plague.

“He shows up outside my apartment, he shows up here, he’s at the grocery store whenever I am…” She switched on her clipboard and tapped to open a folder. “I’ve been keeping notes; it’s all right here. I told my security patrol about it, but they won’t do anything. Each time he appears, we’re in a public place, so he hasn’t broken any laws. I can’t prove he’s following me, but maybe you can.”

He considered his options. On one hand, he was already on a case, which was taking up a lot of his time. On the other hand, Little Brother’s could turn his tab over to a collections agency, and the collections agents could take his possessions in payment. They could take his car, his computer, his drugs… “I’ll do it!”

“Oh, thank you so much!” She leaned over the counter, giving him a grateful hug.

“Email me your notes tomorrow morning and I’ll get started as soon as I can. You might consider skipping work. If he’s dangerous, it could be the only way to insure your safety.” He wanted to add “and you could spend the day off with me,” but it didn’t seem worth the effort.

She handed him his bag and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Stop by if you want anything else from me.” Seeing confusion in his eyes, she added, “I mean more detective stuff. You know, magnifying glass, pipe, deerstalker hat…”

“Oh, that. Yes, will do.” They said their goodbyes and he headed to the door, lighting yet another cigarette.

“You should quit smoking,” she called after him.

“I should do a lot of things.”

Early the next morning, Nick forced himself out of bed and drove out to Renée’s apartment, where he searched for a way inside. The building’s forty-three stories of chrome and glass shone brightly in the rising sun. In a recent newsfeed interview, the architect had said that the shape of the building was supposed to represent “the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.” Nick thought it looked more like a giant marital aid, but what did he know about modern art?

He found a small, open window near the ground. Kicking out the screen, he slid inside, dropping down into the building’s laundry room. “That was easy. I’ve seen daycare centers with better security. Of course, they needed it. Some of those kids could be dangerous, especially the ones in solitary confinement. Well, while I’m down here, I should pick up a disguise.” There were several piles of clothes left by people waiting for an empty washer. Digging through the dirty laundry, he searched for something that didn’t smell too strongly of sweat, smoke, or other, more mysterious odors. He grabbed a knit cap and an oversized basketball jersey and headed for the stairs.

The apartment doors were reinforced steel, locked with fingerprint scanners. His usual methods would be no help getting inside Renée’s. He knocked on the maintenance manager’s door and a beefy man in blue coveralls answered. Just past the doorway stood a small table with a glass jar on top marked “Tipping isn’t just for cows.”

“And just what in the hell do you want?” the maintenance man demanded. “There’s a pretty long waiting list for repairs, so if your refrigerator is broken or something, it’ll stay that way until Cocytus boils. Unless you want to throw some coin in my tip jar.”

“No, that’s not it,” Nick said. “Listen, I used to live here with this girl. She kicked me out of the apartment a month ago and she still hasn’t sent me my stuff. I just want inside to get my television.”

“Not my problem,” the maintenance man said, cracking his knuckles.

“I’ll give you fourteen dollars.”

He considered Nick’s kind offer for a moment. “Yeah, alright. But listen: if she finds out about this, I never saw you.”

The maintenance man led the way to Renée’s apartment. There were a couple of young girls in the hallway playing with a robot kitten. Or, rather, they were watching the robot kitten play by itself. Most toys were so advanced that they didn’t need the child at all. It was almost as good as watching television.

“Here we are, apartment 43.” The maintenance man pressed his thumb to the scanner plate and weaved Nick inside. “Hey, buddy, remember, you’re just taking your TV. If anything else comes up missing, I can always give your description to the security patrols.”

“Make sure to tell them about my adorable dimples.”

“Weirdo.”

Nick slammed the door and turned to examine his surroundings. As Renée’s murder was not yet public knowledge, her rent and utilities were still being automatically withdrawn from her bank account. As far as the apartment superintendent knew, she was still living there. Her place had been left as it was the day she was murdered. At least, for the most part. A maid service still came by once a week. This meant that any fingerprints or DNA evidence would have been long since wiped away.

“On the other hand,” he thought, “their cleaning the apartment is a clue in itself. A maid wouldn’t have cleaned up blood splatters or bullet holes. If her apartment looked like a crime scene, they would have called a security patrol. That means one of two things: either the murder happened someplace else, or Renée was killed in a way that didn’t leave a mess.”

The apartment was annoyingly cheerful. The sunny yellow walls were covered in posters of babies dressed like flowers and kittens clinging to tree limbs. The window blinds were on a timer, opening automatically at dawn. Oddly, none of her windows doubled as TVs. Apparently Renée liked to look outside.

In the corner of the living room stood a small bookshelf filled with memory tabs and photo albums. “Looks like Renée wasn’t a big fan of reading,” he thought. “An entire bookshelf for only three books.” Taking a closer look, he realized that the “books” were actually Schlock Products™ Secret Safes, metal boxes disguised as large dictionaries. They might have passed for genuine books if the word “Dictionary” hadn’t been in quotation marks. Renée hadn’t bothered to lock them. There was nothing inside but cheap costume jewelry and a few antique Federal Reserve Notes. He pocketed the later, planning to give them to Sophia, as she collected that sort of thing. She also collected celebrity blood samples, but he didn’t see any lying around.