“Take this.” I rolled the cart toward her. “Follow me.”
Munoz Emporium came closer to an old-fashioned general store than any I had ever seen outside of the movies. It was square with a high ceiling and hardwood floors aged by traffic and time. The shelves were high against the walls and stacked with just about everything you might want to buy—eggs, milk, cheese, meats, bakery, canned goods, packaged goods, ice cream, beer, wine, pharmaceuticals, home furnishings, appliances, yard supplies, sporting goods, toys, cell phones, MP3 players, DVDs, CDs, TVs, and even a few lower-end PCs. The selection was small, but the categories were immense. I marched up and down the aisles, Tracie trailing along.
My first stop was for aspirin. I opened the bottle, tossed the cotton on the floor, and poured three tablets into my palm. The instructions said to take only two, but my headache screamed for more. I swallowed the aspirin and tossed the plastic bottle to Tracie.
“Think fast,” I said.
She caught the bottle with both hands.
“You’re hysterical,” she said.
I headed for the clothing racks. I grabbed shorts, socks, jeans, and shirts from the shelves and dropped them into the cart. I checked for my size, but not once did I look at the price, not even when I seized a pair of white, green, and black Adidas TS Lightswitch Garnett basketball shoes and pitched them on top of the jeans—and I haven’t been a fan of Kevin Garnett or his shoes since he left the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The manager of Munoz’s caught up to us in toiletries. He was wearing a blue smock with the name Chuck sewn above his pocket, and he didn’t like the look of me any more than his cashier did. Tracie worked to calm him while I fired containers of shaving cream, razors, toothbrushes, shampoo, and hair gel into the cart. He didn’t appreciate that, either, especially when I launched a tube of toothpaste from three-point range and it caromed off the wire rim and relocated a jar of face cream from the shelf to the floor.
“This is my store,” he said.
“You’re the owner?” I said.
“That’s right.”
“You should be pleased that I’m here, then.”
“Pleased that some half-naked clown is throwing merchandise around?”
He had me there. Still, my muscles continued to ache from the hours I’d spent curled up in the trunk of a car, and my stomach, which hadn’t seen a meal in nearly twenty-four hours, was making disconcerting grumbling sounds.
“Be nice, Chuck,” I said. “Or I just might leave this happy hovel you all call home.”
“See if I care.”
“You don’t want me to stick around and help catch the great Imposter?”
“It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.”
“No, I don’t suppose that it would.” I made a sweeping gesture, taking in everything around us. “I can see why the mall might have given you a few sleepless nights, but now that it’s gone south…”
“I would have been all right. This store has been here for over fifty years. My customers know me. They know I treat them fair, just like my father and grandfather did before me. They would have stayed loyal.”
“Yeah. That’s why Walmart does so poorly.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know that when it comes to money, loyalty doesn’t mean squat.”
Munoz quickly glanced at Tracie. She averted her eyes.
“I’m learning that,” he said.
“It wasn’t just me,” Tracie said. “The whole town wanted the mall. The county wanted it.”
Munoz pointed at the shopping cart. “You finished here?”
“Do you offer gift wrapping?” I said.
Munoz turned to exit the aisle, but Tracie blocked his path.
“Chuck,” she said.
He didn’t even say “excuse me” when he nudged her out of the way and moved to the front of the store.
“He’s upset,” Tracie told me.
“You think?”
“He’s convinced we betrayed him by supporting the mall. He said so in a city council meeting.”
“He was right.”
“We did it for the town.”
“‘Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel,’” I said, then added, “H. L. Mencken,” in case Tracie thought I made it up.
She studied me for a moment before pushing the cart up the aisle.
“You’re not what you seem,” she said.
I did a quick inventory of my appearance.
“I certainly hope not,” I said.
Her head swiveled left, then right, when she exited the store, as if she were uncertain which way to turn. Tracie paused for a beat and went left. Again, I noticed that she walked with gliding grace, her head high, her toes angled in slightly, her salmon skirt swishing back and forth in a most delightful manner. Men turned to look at her. She seemed to accept this as if they had always looked and always would. I followed her, enjoying the view, until she stopped so abruptly that I nearly ran into her. She brought her hand up to shield her eyes from the glaring sun.
“Must you walk behind me like that?” she said.
