“Anything below five is a problem! Anything below five!”
“How was I to know?” Haskel made another ineffective swipe. “Just give me the damn food or else you’ll count yourself lucky to see three stars again!”
“You want your food?” The woman flashed a sinister smile, then deliberately let go of the bag. It dropped to the floor with a papery rustle…and then she proceeded to stomp it like a flamenco dancer. When she picked it up, it was flatter than a single flapjack and a drop of glistening syrup dangled from the corner. “Oh look, it fits,” she said, and shoved it through the crack.
The door slammed shut without another word.
“That was one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever seen,” I said. “But won’t you get in trouble for it?”
Doordash gave an easy shrug. “Nah. I quit yesterday—I just spotted one of the other drivers and let him think he was charming me into doing him a little favor. Creep. This was mygoing-away present to myself. Now, what was it you wanted to know about this place?”
Turned out, Natalia—I could hardly keep calling her Doordash, what since she’d quit and all—had been delivering to the building for nearly three years. Long enough to remember Kostic (a “sweet old guy”), Boswell (“tin foil hat”), and, most importantly….
“Her name was Sarah.”
Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “That’s some memory you’ve got.”
Natalia shrugged. “Usually I only remember the really good, or really bad tippers.” She cut her eyes meaningfully to Haskel’s door. “But one time I dropped off some Chinese takeout and she answered the door in super dark sunglasses. And the name Sunglass Sarah kinda stuck.”
“And it was Sarah’s name on the delivery?” I said.
“Must’ve been—it’s not like we had a big conversation.”
“And you’re sure it happened, when?”
“After the old guy moved out.”
I wished I could have given Nataliaallthe stars. Because not only did I know for certain there’d been a woman in that apartment—but our team in Records now had somewhere to start looking for proof.
Today’s visit had been more fruitful than we dared hope, no thanks to Murray Haskel. I slid a card under his door anyway, in case he had a change of heart… But I wasn’t about to hold my breath.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“THEREWASA woman,” I told Jacob. “I knew it. Okay, ‘knew’ was a bit of an overstatement. But repeaters don’t just come out of thin air.” And since I could only spot the one in the bedroom upstairs on a good day when I tilted my head just right, the validation was a big relief.
“So, what are you thinking?” Jacob asked. “Foul play?”
“Something’s not adding up. People die all the time, for all kinds of reasons. Even if shewasscreaming, you can’t draw a conclusion. It could’ve been anything from a freakish spider bite to an aneurysm. But if she did die there, why are there no records of an ambulance?”
“Maybe someone drove her to the hospital?”
Might’ve been quicker. Though Jacob and I had both been on the force—so it stood to reason we’d be thinking, maybe someone moved her body.
“While we’re waiting for Records,” I told Jacob, “let’s get one more look at that bedroom.”
We’d been on the second floor landing, talking in low tones so the neighbors didn’t overhear us. I headed for the stairs, but Jacob didn’t follow. I paused halfway up to three. “Aren’t you coming?”
“We can’t contaminate the scene.”
If Sunglass Sarah was with the mailman—and the witness’s account definitely put her in Zachary Sledge’s tenancy—then the apartment had seen plenty of action between then and now. Not to mention the fact that I’d already been through it a few times before.
Unfortunately, physical contamination wasn’t the only consideration here, and Jacob and I both knew it. Psychic ability was proven—but on a gut level, lots of folks still equated psychic evidence with the bogeyman. Under a defense attorney who knew how to sway a jury, even the most airtight murder investigations could suddenly spring holes.
Still….
“This isn’t a murder investigation,” I said. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me. But an unexplained repeater? What else could it possibly be?” I crossed my arms. “Which means we hand it off to the police.”
And some cops were even more leery of psychics than juries were.
