The World Between

Chapter 2:

Kowalski was obviously expecting some sort of a reaction from Julius. For his part, Julius stared at him for a moment before saying simply, "Oh." Then he scratched his head. "I guess I should meet her, then. Right?"

Kowalski stared at him in confusion before Julius's words sunk in. "Oh ... yeah. Right. She's at the Café Briggs down the street. You know where it is?"

Julius nodded wordlessly. "She's got stunning black hair," Kowalski said. "You can't miss her."

After nodding again, Julius tramped off. Oddly, his thoughts weren't on the murder. Instead, he was thinking about his lack of shoes and how much he wished that he had even just thought of socks. He supposed it was too late to think of that and reluctantly ignored the stinging pain in his toes.

The Café Briggs—a really weird name, in Julius's opinion, though less so when he considered it was a man named Mr. Briggs who owned it—was a tiny breakfast place that served undercooked pancakes, cold hot coffees, and boiling hot iced coffees. It was probably because Mr. Briggs was blind as a bat without his glasses and was constantly losing them. Unfortunately for Julius, he was often called by the man to find said lost glasses and return them. His reward usually consisted of coupons for the—erm—food that Mr. Briggs served.

As Julius went to pull open the glass door to enter Briggs's café, a voice hailed him from down the street. "Mr. Barnum! Mr. Barnum!"

Julius stopped with his hand on the metal handle of the door as the police officer ran up to him. The young man had a black leather pocketbook in his hand and was panting for all he was worth. "Sorry—sorry, Mr. Barnum," he apologized breathlessly.

"Sorry?" Julius repeated uncertainly, looking at the officer with a frown. "Sorry for what? I'm awake."

The man stared at him with a blank look. "Wait, what?" he said.

"I thought you were apologizing for waking me up," Julius said. "So I wanted you to know there was no reason to be apologizing."

The police officer shook his head in bemusement. "That wasn't—" he began, then took a deep breath to calm himself. "Mr. Barnum, sir, someone broke into your car. They were trying to steal this." He handed Julius the black pocketbook he'd discovered on his lawn. "I stopped them before they could."

Julius eyed the pocketbook warily. First it had ended up on his lawn out of nowhere, then some stranger had tried to steal it? He decided that, after his interview with Yuri, the victim's sister, he'd open it and see what was inside. Wordlessly, he took the bag from the officer and slipped it over his shoulder, having nowhere else to put it. The officer nodded at him, and it was only after he'd begun to walk away that Julius found his voice. "Thanks for getting it back for me," he told the man.

The police officer turned, grinned, and saluted. "Anytime you want, Mr. Barnum, sir!" he said. "I was glad to be of service." His face fell. "I'm afraid your car window, though ..."

Julius sighed. "Par for the course. I'll have to get the window fixed, won't I? Don't worry about it. I'll figure something out. Thanks, anyway." With a casual wave, he pulled open the door to Briggs's café and went inside.

There was nobody there. The brightly-lit café was totally empty; the 60's stools with their red cushions were unoccupied at the counter. None of the side booths had any customers in them, and even Mr. Briggs himself was not there. The normal smell of burnt coffee was absent, and the only indication that anyone had been in there all day was a napkin on the grey countertop. Julius walked over to the counter, dropping the pocketbook on it as he slumped into his seat. He considered the napkin carefully. There was only one sign on it that showed it had been used—a lipstick stain. Whoever the woman who had used it was, she had only light, glossy, pinkish-orange lipstick on. Perhaps it was the mysterious Yuri, hiring him to solve a murder that he was under suspicion for. It didn't make a lot of sense the more he thought about it.