Chapter Fifteen
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.
“Anything?” Theo asked from the doorway.
“No women’s clothing.” I eased the doors shut again.
Theo was already turning around. “So that eyelash didn’t belong to Freddie.”
I glanced toward the drawer of the bedside table, but there was no way I wanted to know what Freddie kept there, so I scurried after Theo. “Maybe he had a girlfriend.”
“If he did, she has terrible taste.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“You’d better bag it,” Theo said with a nod toward the eyelash.
“I don’t have a bag.”
“Then put it in your pocket.”
“I don’t want to touch it. What if the person who wore it had pink eye?”
Theo let out another heavy sigh and fished a packet of tissues out of the bag hanging on the back of her wheelchair. She handed one to me and snapped a photo of the eyelash before I carefully picked it up with the tissue and tucked it in my pocket.
“Keep searching,” she ordered.
“What, exactly, are we looking for?” I asked, wandering around the living room. My gaze skipped over a chess set—all its pieces in their starting positions—and the red toolbox I’d seen in Freddie’s possession on more than one occasion.
“Anything that might tell us why he was killed. Evidence that he owed someone money, threatening notes, things like that.” She pulled up in front of a battered bar cart. “The guy sure liked his booze.”
I joined her by the cart. An array of bottles cluttered the three levels, with a couple of dirty glasses among those on the top shelf.
The collection included vodka, whiskey, tequila, and rum.
The contents of most of the bottles were running low, although a dark brown one with a yellowing label declaring it to be whiskey was still three-quarters full.
We both lost interest in the alcohol and moved on in opposite directions.
I drifted over to a bookshelf that was home to only three actual books—military fiction by the looks of them.
Otherwise, the shelves held odds and ends, like nails and elastic bands, a framed and faded photo of a red Corvette, and a silver trophy with no inscription.
I reached for the photo but froze when Theo snapped, “Don’t touch anything without gloves!”
“I already touched the closet doors!” I reminded her.
“So wipe them off.” She held out a pair of purple disposable gloves.
“Why didn’t you say you had these?” I accepted the gloves and started pulling them on.
“I forgot, okay?”
I heaved out a sigh that sounded uncannily like Theo’s earlier ones. Maybe they were contagious.
With my purple gloves on, I reached for the framed photo again. I checked the back of the frame and even peeked between the backing and the photo itself. No clues appeared, and there wasn’t even any writing on the back of the picture.
As I set the frame back on the shelf, my elbow bumped the silver trophy.
Before I could catch it, the trophy toppled off the shelf and fell to the floor with a crash, breaking into three pieces on impact.
I stood frozen, expecting someone to pound on the door, demanding to know who was in Freddie’s apartment.
I looked up to meet Theo’s wide-eyed stare. Five full seconds ticked by before she spoke.
“And you thought I was being too loud?”
I dropped to my knees and gathered up the pieces of the trophy. I thought I’d broken it, but as I handled the parts, I realized that they were meant to come apart. It wasn’t an ordinary trophy; it was a cocktail juicer and shaker disguised as a trophy.
Relief flooded through me. I hadn’t harmed the silver cup, and no one would ever know that I’d touched it. With all the pieces put back together, I carefully returned the trophy to the shelf and stepped back, reluctant to touch anything else.
Theo was rifling through the open mail, empty take-out containers, and other junk on the coffee table, so I moved into the kitchen.
On the counter was a colorful flyer advertising plastic food-storage containers with a brand name I’d never heard of: Grub Tubz.
I spared it little more than a glance and peeked into the cupboards, where I found three different sugary cereals, mismatched dishes, and a half-empty box of pasta.
I shut the last cupboard door. “Anything?” I asked Theo.
“Nothing.” She sounded disappointed.
I was experiencing a bit of a letdown myself.
I hadn’t really expected that we’d find anything earth-shattering.
The police had likely gone over the place with a fine-tooth comb, and it wasn’t likely that Freddie would have left a note or sign pointing us to his killer.
Even so, it would have been nice to find something to suggest that he’d owed money to a bookie or had wronged someone so severely that they’d want him dead.
Since no such clue presented itself, all I had to go on was the information that Bitty and Leona had shared that morning.
Although I nearly told Theo about the fact that the ladies had overheard Freddie arguing with Rosario, I stopped myself.
If Theo knew about that, she’d no doubt want to break into Rosario’s apartment next.
I, on the other hand, wanted to go home to my own unit.
My nerves were shot after one round of breaking and entering.
I didn’t think I could handle another in the same day.
Thankfully, Theo had given up on our current search too, so I peeked out into the hall. The coast was clear. We hurried out of Freddie’s apartment, closing the door quietly behind us, and stripped off our purple gloves before heading for the elevator.
“We need to find out if Freddie really did have a girlfriend,” Theo said as I pressed the button on the wall. “The murder could have been a crime of passion.”
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked when she didn’t follow me into the elevator.
“I’ve got an appointment to get to, and I’m supposed to meet my grandparents out front. We’ll reconvene later.”