The man looked angry enough to kill. Standing in front of Gas 'n Go's counter, each fist clutching one half of his Visa Gold check card, his face turned as red as Phineas Gaynor's smock.
"You wanna know why I did it?" Phinn said. In truth he'd cut up the man's card cause the register's digital display instructed just that. But with a Bachelor's in Religious Studies - great degree, look at the plethora of minimum wage jobs it could earn - Phinn decided to have fun.
Phinn waggled the sharp scissors he'd used to cut up the man's card. Stay back, yuppie freak. "What religion are you?"
The man snarfed. Phinn repeated the question.
"Well, I was raised Baptist..."
Big deal. In Ghontin, Tennessee who wasn't? "This is happening because it's God's will," Phinn advised.
"...my wife, she's a Buddhist..."
"The Buddha would say it happens cause it happens."
"...these days I'm an agnostic myself."
"Then I can't help you." Phinn reached for the man's six-pack.
The tall, athletic man easily beat Phinn to the beer. Samuel Adams Honey Lager, high-dollar buzz. "I am not overdrawn. I have over two hundred thousand dollars in that account."
"And yet, your bank's computers say otherwise." One by one Phinn disentangled the tanned fingers of Joel Preston - the name on the card - from the beer bottles.
Of course Mr. Preston had no cash. For the third time since he'd entered the store his beeper beeped. Phinn had to lend him a quarter so he could drive his green Lexus round to the side and use the pay phone to discern his wife's big deal. Joel Preston didn't thank Phinn for the two bits as he stormed out.
The time was eleven p.m. Later they would meet again.
Phinn discovered Mr. Preston's body at one a.m.
Detective Eliot and half a dozen uniforms roped off the entire parking lot. Phinn hardly minded - this late the store's only business was drunks, truckers and drunks. When Dumpster Dan straggled in Phinn started to yell crime scene, please leave. Until he saw the handcuffs.
Phinn was busy painting himself heroic for a cute blond in blue. "I didn't even puke," he said. Mr. Preston had taken a shot between the eyes. His body lay by the pay phone. The phone, by an architectural quirk understood only by the Corporate Overlords who commissioned the store's design, was attached to the brown brick outer wall behind the store. The only light had burned out months ago. On a clear night phone customers had a lovely moonlit view of the dumpster. "I just swept around the body and then came in and called you guys."
And no, Phinn wasn't surprised no one noticed Preston's Lexus or corpse. Once Phinn put up a sign: READ THIS AND I'LL GIVE YOU TEN BUCKS. No customer ever collected.
Dumpster Dan entered with his hands behind his back. Two officers flanked him.
"I think we have a suspect," one of them told Detective Eliot.
Dumpster Dan's nickname came from his choice of sleeping places. The bum had been a regular ever since he jumped train on the tracks a half-mile away from the store.
He was a drunk, but harmless. His delusions included amusing anecdotes about how Queen Victoria knighted him for bravery in the Spanish Civil War. Phinn couldn't believe he shot Mr. Preston. The cops found him huddled in the dumpster, clutching a nine-millimeter, with silencer. They searched his refuse-stained beige overcoat. Mr. Preston's wallet didn't turn up.
"It's cause I didn't shoot nobody!" Dumpster Dan swore. The muffled gunshot sound had caused him to peer out the box-slot in the dumpster. A short, thin figure in a black ski mask and dark clothes pulled Preston's wallet from his coat. The figure ran to the dumpster, tossed the gun in, and ran into the thick woods behind the store.
Detective Eliot held up the plastic evidence baggie containing the gun. "And if we print this, I'm sure this person in black's fingerprints will be found?"
Dumpster Dan looked longingly at the beer cooler. "Dude wore gloves," he shook his head.
Phinn put on another pot of coffee.
At a quarter till three Mrs. Preston, the Buddhist, entered the convenience store. She didn't much look like one who'd decided to renounce desire and end life's suffering. Her paisley velvet housecoat alone suggested Joel had spent mucho to satisfy her desires. She wore black sunglasses. How... mourning.
Her shriek drowned out Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Phinn's personal fave third-shift soundtrack. She spit on Dumpster Dan as the cops took him out to a car.
Detective Eliot calmed Mrs. Preston and Phinn resumed selling Sinckers bars to the blond policewoman. She left them on the counter and swaggered for the ladies' room. What was up with that? Men always used the john, then bought their stuff. Women insisted on reversing the process.
Another mystery for another time. Phinn grabbed his broom.
Mrs. Preston was appalled. Wanted to sue the store for having no lights near the pay phone. Already had her lawyer's card out. She was just on the phone with Joel; he'd said he'd be right home for God's sake! Phinn arced like a pinball between her and the cops. There was no actual point in mopping. Muddy cop boots undid his every swish.
But manual labor helped Phinn think.
A robber taking an empty wallet. A robber that wore gloves and could afford to throw away a 9mm, with silencer?
Phinn mopped up a sweat.
Widow Preston drowned her sorrows in a bottle of mineral water and a granola bar. Very healthy. She pulled out a bank-fresh fifty dollar bill to pay. Phinn patiently explained that seriously, the sign on the register said they kept less than twenty bucks in the drawer on the grounds that it was true. Phinn wound up paying for her stuff from his own pocket. She left her purse and purchases on the counter and headed for the women's room, yay routine.
Ten cops in the store and Mrs. Preston asked Phinn to watch the purse for her. Yet he did. The cops congregated round the pastry aisle, yay cliche.
By a quirk of finance also known only to Gas 'n Go's Corporate Overlords, the store was too cheap to use real cameras. No one saw Phinn riffle through her purse. The cell phone and credit cards and Hint of Mauve lipstick were predictable. The yellow piece of paper emblazened with First Ghontin Bank's logo was more interesting.
Phinn dropped the bank statement on the floor in front of the counter. As Mrs. Preston exited the bathroom, Phinn announced she'd dropped something.
He feigned surprise as he read it aloud. This morning she'd withdrawn all two hundred grand from her and her husband's checking account.
Later, the police would assure her she had the right to remain silent.
She would do anything but. So she had a cell phone? How did that prove she stood behind the dumpster, disguised in black, all home calls forwarded to the cell? So she withdrew all the account's cash - without Joel's knowledge, as Phinn could testify. The cops made it sound like she'd found out the jerk was having an affair and decided to get revenge and skip town or something.
Much later, Phinn would hand Dumpster Dan the mop. The manager arrived at daybreak, the store looked like, well, a crime scene, and Dan owed Phinn bigtime.
"Don't worry," Phinn assured him. "A chimp could do this job."