“Let me open a window a bit,” he said moving to the big windows.
He cranked the window out a bit, the cold winds blowing into the space. Although it was a loft, it was large with plenty of room for a sofa, side chair, coffee table and side table and television at one end and then her painting and work area at the other.
“This isn’t what I pictured,” said Joseph.
“What did you picture?” asked King.
“Messy. I think of artists as being messy. I mean, I’ve been to the work rooms for our own artists and there’s stuff everywhere. It’s organized mess, I suppose but this looks like someone cleaned it professionally.”
“No, that’s just how Morgan was,” said the man. “It didn’t matter what time of day or night it was, you could hear her or see her from the street wiping down windows, the vacuum running, or some such thing. I never had to get on her about taking her trash out.”
King walked around the room staring at all the half-finished paintings. He wondered if perhaps one of them could be what was keeping her between worlds. As he looked at each one, he could see where she was going for most of them, but some gave no indication to his uneducated eyes at all.
“How long did she live here?” asked Joseph.
“Oh, I guess six, maybe seven years now. She actually moved in when she was attending college and then suddenly moved out.”
“Why?” asked Eric.
“I don’t know. She just said she had to go away for a while. About a year later she came back and the loft was available again. She gladly took it and was the perfect tenant.”
“Did she and her fiancé ever fight or argue?” asked King. The manager pursed his lips, thinking for a moment.
“No. I can’t say I ever saw that. They were both pretty quiet. He was a nice guy, worked hard at the hotel. When I first met him all he talked about was how excited he was to settle down and have a family.”
“Had they been dating long?” asked King.
“A few years at least, I think. But when he made the comment about family and kids, they’d only been dating maybe a month or so. He was a great guy, just eager to move things along. She seemed, I don’t know, less eager. She was always reluctant about having a family.”
“Did she say why?” asked Joseph.
“No. I assumed it was depression. I mean, I didn’t know if she had depression or not but she was sad sometimes. Really sad. Plus, one of the other tenants had a new baby and I invited her to come to the post-delivery shower we threw. My tenants are all pretty close and I like to do things like that for them.”
“That’s nice,” smiled Eric. “Not many landlords do that anymore. Did she attend the party?”
“For five minutes. She walked in, left a gift, congratulated the parents and that was all.”
“She didn’t look at the baby? Touch it?” asked King.
“She looked at him while he was in his mother’s arms. The mother offered to let her hold him but she declined, backing away as if the baby had the plague.” The landlord’s phone began pinging and he sighed. “Sorry. I have a bit of a plumbing emergency on the first floor. You fellas take your time and lock up when you’re done.”
“Thank you,” said Eric turning to his friends. “I’m not following this. Was she depressed because she didn’t want to get married and have a family or was she depressed because she had so many commissions and couldn’t finish them?”
“I think we need to speak with Shep,” said Joseph. “I can tell you I’m glad that Julia and Noah aren’t here. There’s something really, really oppressive in this apartment. I don’t know what it is but I can feel it in my chest.”
“Should we look through her things?” asked King. Eric looked around the room and shook his head.
“No. Not yet. He said we could come back if we needed to. I don’t want to dig through things if we don’t have to. I think we need to go and speak with her parents. Javier said that they divorced when she was little and didn’t attend her funeral.”
“I guess we’re looking for her parents,” said King.
CHAPTER TEN
“Sheriff, we’ve been running into one another too much lately,” smiled Adam.
“I don’t mind running into you boys, metaphorically. Hittin’ one of you would ‘bout kill me,” he laughed. “What can I do for you boys?”
“We’re here to see if you have any information on the woman we found, Edie Rose.”
