Agnes sobbed louder.
Her distress finally unlocked my frozen state. I sidestepped into the room so I could put an arm around her shoulders without stepping in any blood.
Wyatt straightened up, and the grim expression on his face answered my unfinished question. Not that I didn’t already know the answer. There was an unnatural pallor to Freddie’s face that was almost as good as a bright neon sign.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
Now that word flashedandclanged in my head.
“We don’t want to disturb the scene any further,” Wyatt said, gently ushering Agnes and me toward the door.
Murder scene,my brain elaborated. Because what else could it be? I didn’t see how Freddie could have accidentally smashed a bottle over his own head. Although the shattered glass was closer to his feet than his head, so maybe the bottle hadn’t caused his fatal injury. But he also wasn’t near the desk or filing cabinet, so it didn’t seem likely he’d struck his head during a fall.
Even though I screamed,Don’t do it!in my head, I glanced over my shoulder on my way out the door. My stomach churned again at the sight of Freddie’s lifeless body. The mixed smells of alcohol and blood didn’t help either. I nearly closed my eyes in an attempt to block everything out, but then something caught the light, drawing my attention.
I stopped so abruptly that Wyatt bumped into my back. It was a testament to my level of shock and numbness that I barely registered the contact.
The office’s fluorescent lighting glinted off little gold flecks dusting Freddie’s shirt, near his left shoulder. The pretty sparkles seemed so incongruent with the rest of the scene that they held me transfixed.
“Emersyn?”
Wyatt’s voice yanked me back to the here and now.
I gulped a deep breath and scooted out the door as an ominous weight pressed down on my shoulders.
The next hour or so passed in a blur. Wyatt called the police, and they descended on the Mirage like a swarm of uniformed bees. I was trying to comfort a still-sobbing Agnes when the cops swooped in and separated us. I provided my contact informationand a witness statement to one of the officers before I started panicking about getting to Livy’s school in time to walk her home. Fortunately, with mere minutes to spare, I was free to go. I looked around for Wyatt out on the street, but he and his gorgeous eyes—car! his gorgeous car!—had already disappeared.
I told myself that was for the best. Finding Freddie had shaken me to the core and left me wary. I didn’t think I had it in me to deal with a Wyatt-shaped complication, no matter how hot and nicely muscled that shape might be.
As I set off at a brisk pace toward the elementary school, I almost called my parents in West Haven to ask them to take Livy for a few extra days, in addition to their upcoming weekend visit. I didn’t want my niece catching wind of what had happened at the Mirage, but the police would likely be there for hours, if not for days, and it would be hard to hide the fact that something had gone on in the building. Still, as my thumb hovered over the screen of my phone, I ditched the plan and shoved the device back into my pocket.
If my parents found out that we lived in a building where a man had been murdered, they wouldn’t be satisfied with taking Livy for a few days. They’d want to keep her for good. The mere thought of that happening nearly sent me nose-diving into a pool of panic.
Somehow, I managed to calm myself down before I reached the school, and I put on my best acting performance ever. Maybe I should consider a career in Hollywood? Livy held my hand, hopping and bouncing along beside me as we walked home, telling me all about her day and never once suspecting that anything was amiss. But even an Oscar-worthy performance couldn’t distract her from all the police cars parked outside the Mirage.
Livy’s blue eyes widened at the sight. “Is someone going to jail?” she asked with a mixture of worry and awe.
A stony-faced police officer stood at the top of the stairs, guarding the front door.
“The police are doing a standard safety check of the building,” I fibbed. “Wait right here for a second, okay?”
I hated letting go of her hand in that moment, but I didn’t want her to overhear my conversation with the officer stationed at the door.
Keeping one eye on Livy, who was now peering through the window of an empty police cruiser, I had a quick chat with the officer. He directed us to a side entrance, which we accessed via the narrow gap between the Mirage and the neighboring building. Using a stairwell just inside the door, I was able to get Livy upstairs to our apartment without running into more police officers or any other signs that something was wrong.
Livy seemed to forget about the police presence and whiled away the evening playing with her toys, while I surreptitiously checked every closet and every nook and cranny in our apartment for a lurking murderer. Once I was satisfied that we were killer-free, I did my best to relax, but I couldn’t shake the dark cloud that seemed to be hanging over my head. It stayed with me through the night, which I spent mostly tossing and turning, trying without success to banish the image of Freddie’s dead body from my mind.
There was still a police presence at the Mirage the next morning, but I managed to get Livy out the side entrance and off to school with minimal questions from her. My plan was to check out more online job postings once I got home, but I found several of my neighbors loitering out on the sidewalk. Rosario López, Bitty Dover, Leona Lavish, and Carmen Álvarez stood together, watching like hawks whenever a police officer entered or exited the building.
“What’s going on?” I asked when I joined the group. “And how is Agnes? Does anyone know?” She wasn’t present, and I felt a surge of worry for the woman. She’d been so distraught the day before.
“She’s at the bakery,” Rosario replied. “She wanted to focus on work instead of how she found Freddie.”
Rosario lived on the third floor and worked as a bank teller. My best guess was that she was in her late fifties, but I didn’t know herexact age. Short and slightly plump, she had straight, chin-length black hair that she always held back with a colorful headband. I’d also never seen her without a pair of whimsical earrings. Today’s set featured dangling skeletons. An unintentional nod to Freddie’s demise, or did she have a rather macabre sense of humor that I didn’t know about?
Next to her stood Bitty, a tiny eighty-something woman with fair skin, curly white hair, and large, thick-lensed glasses. Every time I saw her, she wore a dress with a cardigan over it, even in the summer. Today, a delicate hummingbird brooch adorned her baby blue sweater.
“Any word on what happened?” I aimed the question at the group at large.
