Dead Soon Enough: A Juniper Song Mystery

by Steph Cha

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound reasonable and apologetic. “My name’s Juniper Song. I’m a friend of Lusig’s and Nora’s. I emailed you earlier?”

  He blinked sharply and nodded once. “Yes, I saw that. I’m sorry, I was planning to respond later this afternoon.”

  His demeanor was stiffly professional, and I saw that this stance worked to my advantage. I held out my hand. “Sorry for accosting you in this way,” I said. “Pleased to meet you, regardless.”

  He took it, cautious but obedient, and I knew I’d secured the interview.

  “Would you mind speaking with me for a few minutes?” I asked, before fully releasing his hand. “It’s about Nora.”

  He took a sip of coffee and pulled his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. “I can talk briefly,” he said.

  “Great. Outside?”

  We retreated to the stone planter, where I was apparently taking meetings now. I wondered what kind of clients I’d get if I put out a shingle right there.

  I sat on the edge of the planter, where he rested his coffee while he stood, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “How did you know Nora, again?” he asked.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I should clarify. I don’t know her directly. I’m a friend of Lusig’s. I’m helping her find Nora.”

  “She’s looking for Nora?” There was a tinge of hurt feelings in his voice, like he hadn’t been invited to a birthday party.

  I cursed myself mentally. Lusig hadn’t meant to include Chris in her investigation. Maybe she just didn’t like him, but it seemed likely that she suspected him of having something to hide. “This is a new thing,” I said, reassuringly. “She just asked me because I have some experience with this stuff.”

  He nodded. “I wish I could help.”

  “Maybe you can.”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t help the police.”

  “When did you last see her?” I asked, launching into questions before he could demur further.

  “It was the day after Valentine’s Day. A day before she disappeared.”

  “Did anything unusual happen that day?”

  He took a sip of coffee and shook his head. “She spent Valentine’s at my house, and went home the next afternoon.”

  “Do you know if anyone saw her after that?”

  “Yes. At the very least, her roommate saw her on the afternoon of the sixteenth.”

  “How long were you together?” I wondered if he’d contest my use of the past tense.

  “Four years,” he said.

  Nora was twenty-six years old, which meant she’d spent the most significant part of her adult life with Chris, who I’d gathered from his bio was thirty-one.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a long time.”

  He nodded, starting to look miserable.

  “How did you meet?”

  “Our mothers are friends,” he said. “Not close friends, but they know each other. The Armo community is fairly tight.”

  “They set you up?”

  “Yes. I had a good job, and she was starting law school. Our mothers thought we would make a good match.”

  “And they were right. You hit it off.”

  “We did.”

  “Was the idea that you guys would get married, have kids, the whole thing?”

  “It was always a possibility.”

  “You didn’t live together after four years, huh?” I realized I was asking a very personal question, and I tried to make it sound as casual as I could.

  “Religious thing,” he said vaguely.

  “But I take it your lives were pretty intertwined?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you participate in any of her activism?”

  He drew in a quick breath—this was apparently the touchy subject. “No, I did not. I thought it was stupid of her to push it as far as she did.”

  “The blog?”

  “The blog, the Twitter, her whole attention-grabbing thing.”

  “Was this a source of conflict?” It was the closest I could get to accusing him of anything. I wondered if the police had given him the full suspect treatment.

  “No, I wouldn’t say conflict.” He sighed. “But she wasn’t the same girl anymore. She was this firebrand—wayward, opinionated, passionate. If she’d stayed in law school, kept herself quiet, no one would have had any reason to hurt her.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have had reason to hurt her?”

  “No.” He seemed to bristle at the question, as if he’d finally caught that I was interrogating him. “No one by name.”

  “Are you talking about the Internet trolls? The people who were harassing her?”

  “I told you. I don’t know any of those people.”

  A pause entered that lingered a second too long, and I found myself glancing around us until I saw two men dressed in business casual, staring at us without pretense. I made eye contact with the more blatant one, holding it until he turned away with an embarrassed expression.

  “Do you know those guys?” I asked.

  Chris glanced over, and they waved at him with smiles that were too wide, revealing a caught sheepishness. He waved back, though without enthusiasm. “Yeah, they work on my floor.”

  It occurred to me that Nora’s disappearance was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to Chris. It was probably the most interesting thing that had ever happened to his coworkers.

  “This must be hard for you,” I said. “But I promise I didn’t just track you down for a cheap thrill. I’m going to find your girlfriend.”

  A look of open pain crossed his face. He dumped the remnants of his coffee into the planter and crumpled the cup. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I don’t even know you.”

  “You’re right,” I said, shifting back into my most businesslike tone. “Thank you again for your time.”

  Five

  I went back to the office instead of heading home. I wanted to talk to Chaz, and I was afraid of what I might feel when I got to my apartment and found Lori gone or packing.

  He was at his desk when I got there, and he made a show of puzzling over my Post-it as I walked into his office.

  “I see you aren’t dead of boredom, so I guess whatever remedy you found must have worked. I hope no one else is dead for it.”

  “I’ve spent half the day sitting in traffic, so not quite in the clear. And, later tonight, Arturo has me doing a trash hit.”

  Chaz laughed, a little too happily, barking with amusement. “Oh, you poor woman. Tell me, would you have signed on for this job if you’d known about all the garbage?” He hooted some more, clearly pleased with this joke that was barely a joke. I thought of the prank he pulled on one of my first trash hits, when he made me save at least six blue-knotted Baggies of dog shit.

  I shrugged, not giving him the satisfaction of even feigned annoyance. “It’s not all bad. I wasn’t bored today.”

  “Yeah? Where have you been, anyway?”

  I told him about my errand in Century City.

  “I thought your current status on that case was minding your own business.”

  “Kind of,” I said. “But I didn’t have any other work to do until midnight.”

  “What’s wrong with sitting at your desk and numbing your mind on the Internet like the rest of us?” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think you like this job too much.”

  I put my head down on his desk and sighed. I acknowledged the seed of melancholy that had been sprouting in my chest, playing it up for my audience. “I’ve got nothing else going for me, Chazzie. I’m like a sad bachelor cliché. No one would notice if I slipped and broke my head in the shower.”

  He laughed. “Oh, that’s not true,” he said, patting the top of my head. “Lori would need to use that shower eventually.”

  I looked up at him, resting my chin on the edge of the desk. “Lori’s engaged. She’s moving out.”

  “Lori Lim is getting married? Do you hear
that?” He put a finger up and made a show of listening for a distant sound. “That’s the chorus of a thousand hearts breaking.”

  “I feel for them. Mine’s probably wailing the loudest.”

  “I believe it,” he said, striking a tone that invited confidence.

  “I’m only half joking, but you don’t have to worry,” I said. “You don’t happen to know any cool people my age who might need a place to live?”

  “Song, you are the youngest person I know who is not technically a child.”

  “Really?” I said. “What are you, like a boring dad?”

  “A very boring dad.”

  “You must have a distorted image of my generation.”

  “Everything I know about millennials I’ve learned from you. I gather you are all dogged chain-smoking PI types.”

  I nodded. “And none of us have figured out how to grow up, or how to feel good about staying who we are.”

  “You’re plenty grown up,” he said. “I hope my daughters are as mature when they’re your age.”

  “That’s very sweet of you,” I said, trying not to fight the compliment.

  He saw that I didn’t believe him. “Look, Song, what is it you think you want? What do you think you’re missing?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, the barefoot, pregnant life?”

  He slapped his desk and guffawed. “Give me a break. You wouldn’t trade places with a barefoot pregnant woman if she were married to Philip Marlowe himself.”

  “Okay maybe not barefoot and pregnant, but maybe pregnant one day? Maybe not alone forever?”

  “Are you whining about not having a boyfriend?” He grinned. “Carry on if you are. It’s fascinating.”

  “Why is it so cool to be a lone wolf, and so lame to be lonely?”

  “Who said it was cool to be a lone wolf?”

  “Movies, TV, everyone. Marlowe was a lone wolf. Spade. James Bond. Every outlaw cowboy.”

  “Okay, I see your point. Lone wolves. Bad boys.”

  “You know what it is? Men stand on their own. A single man standing tall against the world—that’s something we know to romanticize. But single women? Who’s ever told us to look at a single woman and say, ‘She’s cool, she’s whole, I’d like to be like her.’”

  He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it, his lips knotting and his shoulders deflating in thought.

  “Men without women are men. Women without men are pathetic. I’d like to feel like this isn’t true. On one level I know it isn’t true. So why do I feel pathetic?”

  “Well, girl detective, it’s ’cause you read too many books. If Marlowe were real, he would’ve gotten lonely and horny just like anyone else.”

  “You think Arturo gets lonely?”

  He gave me a sideways look. “Hey, don’t go making a mess of things. We got a good situation here.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, not what I meant.”

  “Okay, I have some gossip for you.” He beckoned for me to lean in.

  I scooted forward in my chair.

  “Arturo doesn’t sleep alone these days. He’s got a lady friend. She’s a recent divorcée. He got the money shot for her lawyer.”

  He leaned back, drummed the desk, and started singing “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” eyes closed with his hands to his ears like he was supporting a set of headphones.

  I laughed.

  “Feel better?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just remember, Arturo’s in his forties. You’re a baby, Song, practically wet from the womb. If you want a husband, children, all that, you’ve got time.” He came forward again, falling back into his confidential pose. “And look, Song, here’s a secret: Any idiot can have a child. The dumbest, most worthless people in the world can bump up on each other and reproduce. Sometimes they do this multiple times. Hell, I’ve managed two kids and I have just enough competence to wipe my own ass. You’ve got talent. Passion. Not everyone can reproduce that.”

  “So what you’re saying is, that if my passion is to be a mystery-solving busybody, then I should embrace it, maybe including tonight.”

  “Why; what were you planning to do tonight?”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking maybe I’d talk to the roommate. What would you do?”

  “It’s six o’clock. I’m going home to have dinner with my family. But if I were you? I’d maybe talk to the roommate.”

  *

  Nora Mkrtchian’s last address was a two-bedroom apartment in Little Tokyo, on the eastern edge of downtown. Her building was one of the new ones, a large beautiful complex that couldn’t have existed in the area even five or six years earlier. Her roommate was a woman named Hanna Bloom. She’d been Nora’s classmate in law school, and they’d been rooming together for over a year when Nora disappeared. I gathered this much from a set of Facebook pictures from their housewarming last January.

  I parked on the street and made my way to the front entrance of the building. I found Hanna Bloom’s name on the giant intercom. She occupied apartment 118. I clicked through and found Nora still listed on the directory.

  I buzzed up to the room, and a few seconds later, a woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Are you Hanna Bloom?”

  “Yes, this is she. Who is this?”

  “My name is Juniper Song. I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking for Nora Mkrtchian.” I didn’t feel any need to mention that I was investigating on spec. “I was wondering if we could talk.”

  She was silent for a long beat.

  “Hello?” I prodded, in case she’d hung up.

  “I’m here,” she said. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “I just want to talk to you about her. What she was doing, who she was seeing. Anything could help. Are you available now, by any chance?”

  She hesitated. “Are you outside my apartment?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be creepy. I just know this was Nora’s last address.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, her tone still uncertain. “We can talk in the lobby, but I don’t have long. I have plans tonight.”

  “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see the apartment.”

  “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d like to see your face before I invite you into my home. We’ve had some nightmares in this apartment.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I’ll be right there, okay?”

  A minute later, Hanna Bloom came to let me into the building. She wore a reluctant, skeptical expression, as if she spied religious pamphlets spilling out of my purse. It was evident that I was imposing on her time, energy, and peace of mind.

  She was a pale, freckled white woman with a round face set off by a pair of hip, rectangular glasses. She dressed very well for a woman sitting alone at home—she wore a knit V-neck sweater and tight blue jeans that showed off a plump, curvy figure. Her reddish brown hair was short and well maintained.

  “This is my face,” I said, extending a hand. “I promise I’m only here out of concern for Nora.”

  She shook it and yielded a wry smile. “Trust me,” she said, “if I didn’t share that concern there’s no way I would’ve let a stranger into my building.”

  She led the way through a modern lobby that looked like it could have belonged to a Hollywood hotel. We left it to enter a courtyard with a large swimming pool and several alcoves with lounge seating. There were a few other people in the courtyard, but the place was calm enough. It was a Monday, and the chill of night had arrived.

  “We can talk here,” she said, sitting down on a cushioned bench.

  “This works.” I sat on an adjoining bench.

  “I’ve already spoken with the police. It probably says something that they caught me off guard less than you did.” She managed to state this without sounding hostile.

  “When was this?”

  “Last month, a few days after she
disappeared.”

  “Do you mind rehashing some old territory?”

  “Sure, but what is this for? Why are you looking for her?”

  I bit the inside of my lip. “I’ve been tentatively working for a friend of hers,” I said. “But I shouldn’t say more until it’s official.”

  “Ah, it’s Lusig, isn’t it,” she said, without rising intonation.

  “I can’t say.” I had to stop myself from stuttering.

  “You don’t have to. I know it’s her. She bought me dinner last week and quizzed me for details, anything she might have missed about Nora’s life.”

  I pictured Lusig, heavy and outraged, slipping away from Rubina’s grip long enough for this interrogation. My coyness felt suddenly stupid.

  I noticed an ashtray on a low coffee table in front of us. I pulled a Lucky Strike from my purse and asked, “Do you mind?”

  She shook her head. “Go for it.”

  I lit the cigarette and waited for the ritual of it to put me at ease. It worked, if only slightly. “Are you friends with her?” I asked.

  “Lusig? Not close friends, but I know her. Everyone who knows Nora knows Lusig, more or less. They’re kind of a set.”

  “Do you consider Nora a close friend?”

  “I do,” she said. “We met in law school and hit it off. Became roommates even though she dropped out. Our lives were very different, though. We had our own groups of friends. Lusig is part of her group.”

  “Armenian friends?”

  “Some of them. They went to middle school and high school together, so they have non-Armenian friends, but they both got into church, and activism, so I guess heavily Armenian. But in some ways, Lusig is her group. Or at least a large segment of her social life. Lusig is kind of her shadow.”

  “Interesting word choice,” I said.

  “I guess that came out a little snide. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Is that the dynamic? Does Lusig follow Nora around?”

  “I guess you never met Nora.”

  “No, I never heard her name until a few days ago.”

  “Have you read her blog?”

  “Obsessively,” I admitted.

  “She has something, doesn’t she? A spark? What Tyra Banks might call that je ne sais quoi?”