“Jessica. Look at this, the Plozun pilot charged me for repairs. Don’t clear that charge for the ZLV Seven K Series camera. That Plozun collected plenty of replacement parts. And patching holes in a fuel line or his ship. That’s damages done by Mr. Smith's family. Honestly they should be responsible, they are the ones that let the quadratops out. Oh I see you have a customer. Show him back here.” Detective Zanders dropped his feet from his desk.

  “Good morning. You have wings.”

  “Very observant. I see your detective skills are on point.”

  “But no hands. But I bet you can fly with those. What, is that a fifteen foot wingspan?” Detective Zander stretched out his hands.

  The Luntans wing folded in twice to only a third of their size and still dragged on the floor.

  “Again, very observant. It gets tiring hearing everyone talk about how great it must be to fly. It’s hard enough to do everything by voice commands or with our toes, which is becoming quite problematic of late.” The Luntan wiggled its toes, which looked more like bird's claws.

  “Take a seat, or stand if that’s easier. I’m not sure how one would sit comfortably with wings. My apologies for my rudeness. You’re the first Luntan that I have met.”

  The Luntan remained standing but did produce a data cube somewhere down by its ankle and more agile than Detective Zander would have expected handed the cube up to Detective Zander.

  Detective Zander bent his knees to retrieve the cube and set it on his office desk. “What’s the case? What are you hiring me for?”

  “The Luntan are not hiring you. The minor court of cross species concerns hired you. Apparently because your rates were most affordable.”

  “Jessica, did you hear that? Our rates are low. We should increase them.”

  “You need paying customers before you increase rates.”

  “We have paying customers the Jolanges, the Kohask; ok the Kohask are a bad example. And I’m certain that Mr. Smith will pay despite my investigation sending his family to jail.”

  The Luntan coughed. “Mr Shilo Zander. The court has deemed that the Luntans' complaint against the Jolanges requires independent review of the case files. Your job is simply to validate our evidence against the Jolanges. However, if you have a conflict of interest here we can request for a new investigator.”

  Detective Zander set his hand on the Luntans shoulder. Was it a shoulder? wing joint perhaps? “Hold on. Don’t make any rash decisions. You don’t want to be waiting on the court to find a replacement. The paperwork is good. There's no conflict here. I worked on one small pest problem with the Jolanges. Let me pull up the case files.”

  “Very well.” The Luntan started for the door. “Don’t you want to stick around. In case I have any questions?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “No need. Our investigation is quite thorough. Should you have any need for further information a request can be made. The instructions on how to do so are in the data files.”

  Detective Zander sat down and pushed the cube into the slot on his desk to read the data. “Very well. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “You have five days to complete your review. To be honest I don’t expect it to take more than an afternoon. Everyday that passes more Luntan’s lose their toes. We expect action and justice.” With that the Luntan puffed out its wings and sent a gust of air around the office then stormed out.

  Detective Zander ignored the smell of toe jam, He wiped the toe jam itself from the cube and set it in his drawer and retrieved the case files from his printer. He preferred the old fashioned feel. The data the Luntan had provided would have created a stack of paper stretching from the space station to the nearest moon and then some.

  What he held in his hands was the a summary of the reports and evidence, a selection of key pieces of documentation, and a list of the files. It was excessive, complete bureaucratic nonsense and a union job for certain.

  Detective Zander sipped on his bitter cold coffee and pushed the dirty coffee mug away clearing space on his desk. He spread the files out and flipped through some other pages.

  The Luntan was being literal with his proclamation of missing toes. Plants coming from the Jolanges colonies were coming alive while expiring in the Luntans refrigeration units, Luntans were losing toes, wing tips, and beaks during meal time.

  The evidence pointed to Jolanges. Shipment tracking numbers, produce description and events outlining where the vegetation was purchased. One video showed Jolanges farmers harvesting the crops, Jolanges food services packaging and shipping the supplys. The food wasn't carnivorous during this process. The video continued into a ninety-seven point slide show with charts and tables spelling everything out. Detective Zander paused the videoPaper and skipped ahead. The evidence continued with the plant coming alive and snapping at presumably the camera as the feed went dead and a commercial warning about the hazards of shopping for Jolangess cuisines cut in with the tag line. Don't let your kids loose toes to cabbage.

  It was very cringe but the cabbage looked mean.

  The Lutan had also covered their bases by analyzing the produce. They'd found markers in the gentic code and traced genomes back to the Jolanges farms. He skimmed the rest of the reports but was very thankful the big points were clearly circled and bolded in the slides.

  "JoLane. What have your people been doing?" Why would the Jolanges do this? This had to be wrong. Detective Zander skimmed the content list of the data and spent the afternoon looking through the reports. It all very clearly and most assuradly pointed to the Jolanges causing the trouble.

  The report summary on the print off did not align with digital version. He'd pulled them up and compared notes until he saw the issue. One corrupted file. The record still existed in the digital copy but was gone.

  "That's something. Jessica. I'm taking the ship."