I swallowed hard and reminded myself of my promise to Mrs. Nagy. That helped me to gather some courage. Or maybe it was recklessness. Either way, at least I no longer felt like I was about to pass out.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” I whispered as time ticked along and Theo kept wiggling tools inside the lock.
“I spent my lunch hour watching online videos about how to pick locks.”
“Couldn’t you, like, join the library club or something?”
The withering glance she shot my way made me clamp my lips together. Although, after a few more nerve-racking seconds of expecting to get caught, the need to chatter took over again.
“Where did you get those tools, anyway?” I asked. “Isn’t it illegal to have them?”
She shrugged and kept working, leaning in closer to the lock for a better view. “I bought them at a flea market last year. I figured they’d come in handy eventually.”
“Isn’t that a bit of an odd thing for a fifteen-year-old to buy ata flea market?” How many kids even went to flea markets these days? I thought it wise to keep that second question to myself.
“I wassixteenlast year,” she said with a distinctly frosty edge to her voice. “I’mseventeennow.”
I winced. “Sorry.”
“I suppose it’s hard to guess a young person’s age when you get old.”
“I’m twenty-eight!” I protested.
“Exactly.”
I planted my hands on my hips, ready to defend my status as a totally-not-old person, but she looked up at me with a self-satisfied smile and turned the knob. The door swung open.
“Never underestimate Theo Harris,” she advised before wheeling into Freddie’s apartment.
Chapter
Fifteen
As much as I didn’t want to enter the dead man’s apartment, I relished even less the prospect of getting caught lurking in the open doorway. So I slipped inside after Theo and quietly shut the door behind us. Theo was already on her way across the living room, but I stood in the entryway, taking stock of my surroundings.
Freddie’s unit had a layout similar to the one I shared with Livy, except it appeared to have one bedroom instead of two. The entryway was barely big enough for a small closet, and it would take me only two steps to reach the kitchen, which was open to the living room. On the far side of the apartment, two doors stood open, and I could see from my vantage point that the left one led to the bathroom and the right one to the bedroom.
I advanced a few paces and took in the sight of dirty dishes piled in the sink, drawers left half open, and clothes and empty take-out containers strewn about the apartment. Maybe some of the mess was left behind by the police searching the place after the murder, but I had a feeling that Freddie was responsible for most of it.
“Hey, check this out,” Theo called from the living room.
“Keep your voice down,” I chided in a whisper as I scooted around a ratty armchair to join her by the coffee table.
She ignored my admonishment and pointed at something on the scuffed parquet floor.
I leaned down for a closer look. “A false eyelash?”
It was smooshed up against the leg of the coffee table and barely visible from more than a foot away.
“Probably not Freddie’s,” Theo said. “But we shouldn’t make assumptions. Check his bedroom closet.”
“You think he was a drag queen?” I asked as I wandered toward the bedroom, ignoring the fact that she was bossing me around again. I hesitated at the door, not keen to wander into the bedroom of a man I’d considered a sleazeball.
“The longer this takes, the more likely we are to get caught,” Theo pointed out.
That got me moving.
The air inside the bedroom had a stale quality to it, and the curtains were messily drawn across the window, leaving a narrow, uneven gap in the middle. Pale daylight seeped in through the crack, providing just enough illumination for me to see by. I picked my way over a pile of dirty clothes and eased open a set of bifold doors. The closet held a couple of pairs of pants, two sweaters shoved onto a shelf, several empty metal hangers, and an old pair of work boots.
