27
You are a city. Imagine it. Imagine the streets and avenues lined with buildings . . .
Stevie sat in the Sunshine Diner with the copy of Dean’s book open in front of her, too shocked and sad to cry, too angry
about what had just happened to engage reasonably with the world, and too in pain to think about more than one thing. She
had ordered something they called their “health tea,” which was chamomile tea with a mint leaf and a nickel of ginger floating
on the bottom. The staff, having already seen her once today, almost seemed concerned that she had nowhere else to be. All
she had was Dean’s stupid book.
And Katrina. Katrina had entered the chat. She was in the booth with Stevie, so Stevie ignored her and continued to read.
Some are for industry—for working. Some are for playing.
Some are for worship. Some are homes. There are grocery stores for sustenance.
And those streets and avenues, those are the neural pathways your mind has built for navigation.
Who built this place? You’ve always lived in it, but who made it for you?
I’m not talking about a higher power here—I’m talking about the structure of your mind. Who made this place?
We are the architects of our lives. The city planners. We have to demolish parts of that old city and reconstruct it, making
sure that the places that nourish us are the biggest and the easiest to get to, with many wide roads to access them. We have
to tear down the derelict places that house the things that harm us—old patterns, old games, old addictions, old messages—the
places where our city was broken.
At the center of this city, taller than any other structure, you should build a monument to yourself.
This was bad for a lot of reasons, one of the major ones being that a city is a community, and this is about a city without
other people, which cannot exist. It was the wet dream of a narcissist—the benefits of other people without having to talk
to them or smell them or wonder if they have thoughts too.
This is the person Helen had lived with.
He had controlled her life. And Helen had died of natural causes, Benny had not.
Clusters of death seemed to follow this man around.
Melissa Long and the people in the van. Helen and Benny.
There had to be connections between these things.
And maybe Stevie could put these things together, but her head started to pulse from an ache right above her eyes.
It felt like the booth was moving slowly, like an amusement park ride spinning to a stop.
She was creating her own ecosystem of sweat inside her clothes.
There was no doubting it. She had what Vi had, and it was coming on fast. It would knock her out. She would spend the rest
of the time in New York unable to do anything. No time to help Helen and Benny, anyway.
Stevie barely looked up when Luna slipped into the booth across from her.
“I was watching the front camera waiting for you to come back,” Luna said as an answer to the unspoken “What are you doing
here? You come here to the diner a lot.”
Luna was not wearing makeup. Without the heavy liner, her hazel-green eyes had a softer, almost surprised look. They were
red from crying. Her skin had little islands of pink acne that kind of suited her. She had dressed simply in an oversize black
hoodie. It was pretty clear that she had spent the day curled up in a ball, suffering the loss of her friend.
“Are you sick?” Luna asked after ordering an egg cream.
“I’m trying not to be,” Stevie said. “I’m trying to think.”
“About what? About Benny?” Luna leaned in and lowered her voice. “The cops are saying it was an accident. That’s what Al told
me. But you know about this stuff. What do you think?”
“Did Benny ever mention someone called Dean Grant?” Stevie asked.
“No.”
“Or something called Monument Movement?” Stevie held up the book. “Ever see her with a copy of this?”
“No,” Luna replied, making a face. “There’s no way Benny would read something like that.”
It felt like powerful hands were gripping Stevie’s entire head and slowly crushing it. It was hard to focus.
“That first night you were here,” Luna said, pushing Stevie on, “you were talking about how you solved your cases. You said
you looked around, you—”
“Start with the why,” Stevie cut in. “Why would someone kill Benny?”
“They didn’t like her. Mitzi. Arthur. Elliot. No one liked her.”
“Not liking someone and wanting to murder them are different things,” Stevie said.
“So why do people commit murder?” Luna said.
This was a question Stevie had considered many times. It was the one she thought about whenever she listened to something
about a real case or tried to solve a mystery in a book. What was the cause? Where did it all start?
Like Watergate. You want to be the president. You want the power. After that, the money, the burglars, the break-ins, the
wiretaps. But always, the want.
“Big feelings and big wants,” Stevie said. “Money. Fury. Fear.”
“Mitzi was furious.”
“Mitzi saw a roach,” Stevie said.
“Yeah, but that makes her apartment worth less. My parents talk about how having Benny around brings down the value of our apartment because her door is weird. Anyone who owns an apartment wouldn’t like her.
But my parents were home. They didn’t do it.
And she broke up with Elliot. So, like, everyone on the hall.
Well, Sophie and Imogen are just renting for a few months, so they probably don’t care.
And you guys are in Diana’s place. It wasn’t you.
And it wasn’t me. I love Benny. Loved Benny.
And Helen always had a lot of money, right?
Like, she always had money. So what if someone thought there was, like, money in Murph’s cage. ”
Stevie listened to all this, but things weren’t quite penetrating. There was a glaze over her brain, slick and wet. Information
hit it with a squelch and dripped off. Luna was going on and on while Stevie stared at the back cover of the book. Dean’s
smug author photo stared back at her. Luna going on and on . . .
“Wait,” Stevie said. “You saw me come to the diner. You saw me. I didn’t look, because it wasn’t a murder. I didn’t look . . .”
“What?” Luna said. “Are you okay?”
“Give me your computer. Pull up the feed for the twenty-fourth.”
Luna yanked it out of her bag at once, flipping open the sticker-encrusted cover.
“You mean the night Helen died,” Luna said as she typed. “But Helen died of—”
“Just do it.”
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it. Here.” Luna turned the computer on the table so they could both see the screen. “It starts at
midnight. Do you want the whole day?”
Stevie nodded. Luna turned up the speed and they watched people coming and going. Everyone from the floor went past. People from the building. Delivery people.
“What are we looking for?” Luna asked.
Stevie held up her hand. Christmas Eve was a busy day of people and packages. Stevie was about to give up when she saw it.
“Stop. There. There.” She slapped the pause button and rolled it back a few seconds. A figure in a dark coat and hat walked
to the desk. The person did their best to keep their head down—that’s what Stevie had seen—but then he tipped it up to clock
the camera.
She got a clear view of Dean. The time stamp said 4:57.
“He was here,” she said, largely to herself. “We have to go forward, to New Year’s Eve.”
They reviewed December 31, this time with Stevie looking for Dean. He never appeared. She reviewed every day between December
24 and 31. Dean appeared just once.
“So he was here on Christmas Eve, but not New Year’s Eve,” Stevie said.
“Who?”
“This guy,” Stevie said, pushing the book toward Luna. “The cult guy. He came to see Helen on the day she died.”
“But Helen wasn’t murdered.”
“He was here,” Stevie said, her voice creaking with desperation. “It’s all linked up somehow, but I don’t know how.”
“So how do you usually work these things out?”
“By doing this. By breaking into places. If I could look in Benny’s apartment . . . but it’s so public. There’s still police tape hanging off the door.”
Normal Stevie would have taken this as a challenge, but this Stevie was tired and feeling defeated.
Luna bit her lip and scratched violet polish off her thumbnail for a moment.
“And if you saw me get into Helen’s, I think I might get noticed going into Benny’s, especially because of what happened.
I’ll have to wait until the middle of the night or something. . . .”
She wiped the sweat from her forehead with a napkin. There might not be a middle of the night. It felt like she could fall
asleep and skip all the way to tomorrow.
“We don’t need to break in,” Luna said with a smile. “Give me five minutes and meet me in the lobby.”
Five minutes later, a shaky Stevie found Luna waiting for her on the front step with an open box marked HARRY & DAVID. There
was a skittering sound coming from within.
“Follow me,” she said, tapping them in and going right to the front desk, where Maria was on duty.
“I need you to let me in to Benny’s apartment,” Luna said. “I have to feed her snake. The cops said so.”
“The cops said you have to feed her snake?”
“Animal welfare,” Luna shot back. “If you won’t let me, I guess you can do it.”
She set the box of mice down directly in front of Maria, who pushed back on her wheeled chair.
“Get that away from me,” she said.
“Someone has to feed her,” Luna replied, folding her arms. “Either I do it or I have to leave these mice here. They’ll definitely
get out of the box. They’re already chewing it.”
Maria made unhappy noises as she slapped out the BACK IN FIVE MINUTES sign and got her keys. She stayed as far away from the
box of mice as she could on the elevator. Luna made sure to hold it up, so that their little faces and paws were visible.
“Not you,” Maria said to Stevie as she unlocked Benny’s door. “Just her.”
“Someone has to hold her while I clean out her terrarium and put new chips down,” Luna said. “Otherwise she might get out.