Chapter Fifty
Chapter
Fifty
I awoke the next morning feeling like I’d gone through a wringer, with every bit of emotional energy squeezed out of me.
Theo had texted the night before to say that she’d been at aqua therapy yesterday.
She asked—dictated, really—for us to meet this afternoon.
Somehow, I found her demand comforting. Maybe because it was a glimmer of normalcy in the midst of my emotional turmoil.
I didn’t dwell on the fact that I now considered investigating a murder and taking orders from a teenager as normal.
Spurred on by the chance my mom had given me, I spent the morning job hunting.
My spirits lifted around midday, when I received invitations to interviews for two jobs I’d applied for previously.
One was for a copywriting job and the other was for a position at the local clothing store.
That job was part-time and paid minimum wage, but it was better than nothing.
Livy had a playdate at a friend’s house, so I was waiting on my own in the Mirage’s lobby when Theo rolled in the front door.
The sun had made an appearance that afternoon, so we sat out in the courtyard while I brought Theo up to speed on everything. Well, everything except the kiss and the issue of Livy’s guardianship. I didn’t want to think about either of those topics.
I counted myself lucky that she snickered only a couple of times while I related the story of my torture session at Ultimate Beast. She laughed harder at the tale of my visit to Vinny’s Pawnshop with my unintended sidekicks.
“We need to get back into the speakeasy,” Theo declared once I’d finished debriefing her.
“But the cops have already searched it,” I reminded her.
“We might still find some fingerprints, and if we find Hoffman’s prints, that’ll be proof that he knew about the speakeasy.”
I was about to ask how she planned to search for fingerprints when she pulled a black plastic case out of her backpack. I read the label as she handed it to me.
“A fingerprinting kit,” I said. “Seriously, do your parents let you loose with their credit cards?”
“Gift cards,” Theo said. “I get them for Christmas and my birthday. I really wanted to order a portable biometric scanner, but those are out of my price range.”
“Is it even legal for the average citizen to own one of those things?”
Theo shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She wheeled across the courtyard, heading for the door. “Come on,” she said. “My chair won’t fit through the secret door, so you’ll have to dust for prints.”
Once inside the building, Theo gave me a quick lesson on how to use the fingerprinting kit.
Then she sent me through the secret door, calling out some final instructions before adding that she was heading upstairs to grab some cookies from her grandparents’ apartment.
Left in peace, I dusted the bar, the shelves behind it, and a few other surfaces.
It probably would have been best to dust the bottles of liquor, but the police had cleared them all out, leaving nothing but dust bunnies, dead flies, and clear circles on the shelves where the bottles had once stood.
The police had already dusted for prints, as evidenced by the black, powdery film left behind.
That made me wonder if there was much point in me doing the same.
I didn’t want to voice that thought to Theo, though, so I found a few clear spaces to dust and lifted two partials and one full print.
At one point I thought I heard a muffled noise from somewhere not far off, but I held still and waited and heard nothing more.
As I packed up the kit, the lost and found basket that Livy had shown me before caught my eye and got me thinking. Had Freddie found the art deco cuff links in the basket and helped himself? Probably. The cocktail shaker disguised as a trophy was likely from the speakeasy too.
I grabbed the kit and decided it was time to leave, but I paused when I reached the display of photos hanging on the wall.
I loved 1920s women’s fashion, so I took the time to admire the flapper dresses the women wore in the pictures.
As I moved along the wall, something twitched in my memory before quickly slithering out of my grasp.
I felt like I was missing something, but no matter how many times I looked at each photo, I couldn’t figure out what that might be.
“What’s taking so long?” Theo yelled, clearly back from her short trip upstairs.
I hurried up the steps and joined her out in the hallway, where she handed me a chocolate chip cookie.
“How do you propose we get fingerprints for comparison?” I asked before taking a bite of the delicious, chewy homemade cookie.
“We’ll get Freddie’s—for elimination purposes—from his office or apartment. As for Hoffman’s, you can use your key to get into his place again.”
She made it sound like a walk in the park, not an endeavor that required breaking the law and risking time in the pokey.
I finished off the cookie in two more bites and tried the door to Freddie’s office, now free of police tape. I expected to find it locked, but it swung open easily. So easily that it couldn’t have been latched properly.
“Take a look at this.” I pointed at the damaged doorjamb and corresponding scratches and splintering on the door itself.
Theo drew the same conclusion as I had. “Someone broke in.”
I peeked into the office. It was empty, so I entered the room, with Theo right behind me. All the drawers of the filing cabinet had been left partially open, and the same was true of the desk drawers.
“They were looking for something,” I surmised.
Theo approached the desk. “And probably found it. Come and look.”
I rounded the desk. She pointed into the bottom drawer, which was the deepest one. It was empty, save for a thin layer of dust on the bottom. Two circles of disturbed dust were visible, the same size as the clear circles on the shelves in the speakeasy.
“Freddie had a couple of bottles stashed here,” I said.
“And whoever broke in probably found them and took them.”
“The camera in the lobby doesn’t cover the entrance to the office.”
“But it might show someone entering the building through the front door,” Theo said. “Someone who doesn’t belong here.”
“It’s worth checking,” I agreed.
Even if the person didn’t have a key to the building, they could always ring a bunch of units until someone buzzed them in. That was probably how Hoffman got in on the day of the murder.
We left the office and turned toward the lobby. A small poster caught my eye as I paused by the bulletin board on the wall outside Freddie’s office door.
“Hey,” I said, “Minnie’s having an art show.”
Theo studied the poster. “Maybe we should go.”
Theo’s grandma stepped off the elevator, carrying a full garbage bag in one hand.
“Hello, girls,” she said with a kind smile. “What are you up to?”
Theo zipped up her backpack, hiding the fingerprinting kit. “Just hanging out.”
“Mrs. Harris, can I take that for you?” I asked, gesturing at the garbage bag that was almost dragging on the floor.
“Oh, I’m just taking it out to the dumpster,” she said.
“I can do that.”
She beamed at me. “That’s very kind of you.”
I relieved her of the bag.
“Thank you, dear.” To her granddaughter she added, “Homework all done, honey?”
“Of course,” Theo replied.
With another smile, Mrs. Harris got back on the elevator. “Come up for more cookies if you get hungry,” she said as the doors closed.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Theo, already heading down the hall.
I passed through the courtyard and into the back wing of the building. I pushed open the door to the alley and kicked down the doorstop before stepping outside.
The bag of garbage slipped from my hand and slumped to the ground.
Then I screamed.