“No. Not that. She says she is forgetting something. When she sees me on the stairs, she says she is forgetting something, and she goes back up to her apartment.”
“She goes back upstairs,” Megan said evenly. “You forgot to mention that the other times.”
“Did I? Well, I am nervous. This pretty girl in my building, you saw what happened to her. It is horrible. How can I feel safe?”
“Of course. I’m not criticizing you. You’re doing fine. Let’s just get this straight. Ms. Rossman went back upstairs to her apartment to get something she forgot. Did she mention what it was?”
“No.”
“You proceeded downstairs with your trash?”
“Yes.”
“And when Ms. Rossman appeared downstairs-”
“She had it.”
Megan leaned forward, twining her fingers into a single fist. “It.”
“The envelope.”
Megan hoped her smile didn’t look as weary as she felt. “I don’t think I’ve heard anything about an envelope, Mrs. Campanella.”
“A blue envelope. A square blue envelope.”
“You mean like a birthday card?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not asking if it necessarily was a birthday card, Mrs. Campanella. But that kind of card? The kind of card you buy for someone’s birthday?”
“I don’t know what kind of card it is. It is an envelope. Blue. Like the sky.”
“She didn’t happen to mention that she was going to a birthday party or some other sort of celebration?”
“Not to me she doesn’t.”
“But you think this is what Ms. Rossman went back up to her apartment to fetch? This sky-blue envelope?”
The woman made a clucking noise. “You are the detective, not me.”
Megan jotted down in her notebook: Card. Blue. Occasion?
“Thank you, Mrs. Campanella. You’ve been very helpful.”
Megan climbed the stairs to Nikki’s apartment. Ryan Pope was sitting at the kitchen table, eating an apple. In his other hand was a small circular plastic case.
“Are you on the pill?” Megan asked.
“Somebody was.” He offered the case. Megan took it from him and opened it. “Night before last. We can assume she was meaning to come home.”
There were footsteps on the stairs, then a knock on the doorjamb. “Dead lady live here?”
It was Rodrigo, one of the department IT guys. Rodrigo came into the apartment carrying a slender metal attaché case, and Megan directed him to a table in the front room. A computer was sitting on the table. The chair in front of it was a miniature armchair. It had one of those beanbag pillows on it, the kind you sometimes see people bringing with them on airplanes. This one was hot pink. The chair looked to Megan like the kind a person would settle into, spend some time in. Megan was curious about the computer.
“I want everything in it,” she said to Rodrigo.
“I’ll vacuum that puppy.”
“No crumbs. Get it all.”
“Do you want to dust the keyboard first?”
Megan thought for a moment. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
Rodrigo perched on the edge of the chair, flipped open his attaché case and got to work. Megan stepped into the bedroom. It was fairly neat. A bra on the floor, along with about eight shoes that looked like they’d decided to get up and walk around on their own. The bed was made. Nikki’s bedside reading was a stack of Marie Claire magazines, People, an old Time. On the dresser Megan found a merchandise tag from a boutique called Liana: WOOL â„ PLD SIZE 4. When she was found in the park, Nikki had been wearing a black sweater under a red crepe jacket and a thin black cotton skirt. Nothing plaid. Megan pulled open the dresser drawers and rifled quickly through the clothes. She did the same thing in Nikki’s closet. Curious, she went into the bathroom, where she found a light blue duffel filled partway with dirty clothes. Ryan Pope stepped to the door as Megan was dumping the dirty clothes out onto the floor.
“I’ve seen Kathy do this before,” Pope said. “You’ll want to sort out the colors from the whites.”
“It’s not here.”
“What’s not here?”
Megan was thinking out loud. “It’s possible she returned it to the store.”
“What store? What’re you looking for?”
Megan had a thought and very nearly regretted having it. She pushed past Pope and went back downstairs and rang Mrs. Campanella’s buzzer.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Campanella. But I was wondering if you by any chance recall what Ms. Rossman was wearing that night you saw her.”
The woman answered immediately. “She had on a puffy jacket. It was red. And a green and black skirt.”
“Green and black?”
“Yes. Plaid.”
“Plaid? You’re sure?”
“I remember thinking that she looked like Christmas. With red and green.”
“Green plaid.”
“Plaid. Squares on top of other squares. Isn’t this plaid?”
Megan thanked her again. As she ascended the stairs, she turned the information over in her head. She leaves her apartment in a new plaid wool skirt, but she’s found dead in a black cotton skirt. Means? Obviously, it means she changed somewhere along the line. Changed skirts but not her entire outfit. Why? Megan had no idea. The conundrum popped completely out of her head when she reentered Nikki’s apartment. Pope was standing behind Rodrigo, peering over his shoulder at the computer screen.
“Finding anything?” Megan asked.
Rodrigo’s eyes remained on the screen. It was Pope who looked up.
“Gold mine.”
24
MEGAN LOST IT. She felt the eruption starting and was helpless to lock down the lid.
“Son of a bitch!” She grabbed the blow-up doll by the arm, pulled it out of her chair and stormed across the hall. Ryan Pope was seated at a table with two uniformed cops. “Where is he?” she demanded.
She followed the eyes. Brian McKinney was leaning against the soda machine on the far side of the room, nibbling on a partially unwrapped candy bar. “Who’s your friend, Detective? She’s kinda cute.”
Megan crossed the room in a blood fury. Everything blurred except the smug bastard peeling back the candy wrapper as if it were a banana peel. She stopped several feet in front of him. Instantly, she regretted having stormed into the corral like this. She knew how ridiculous she must look, standing there with a beet-red face, clutching the female-figure balloon. McKinney certainly knew how ridiculous she looked. His measured aplomb was a precise contrast.
No going forward, no going back. Lose, lose. Dammit, the man did have his talents. Megan gulped her rage. As much as she could. “Maybe you’d like to explain this.” She clenched her teeth in order to keep the waver out of her voice.
“Explain it?”
“Yes.”
McKinney glanced past her at his audience. “Really?”
“Yes.”
McKinney shrugged and pushed himself off the soda machine. He removed the remainder of the wrapper from the candy bar, and before Megan could react, he prodded the black candy into the ugly puckered mouth opening of the balloon.
“Maybe you can help me out with this. If I understand this correctly, you-”
Megan’s slap was dead-on. Her entire hand covered the left side of McKinney ’s face. “You fucking bastard!”
“That’s assault,” McKinney said calmly.
She wanted to hit him again. There were actual white finger marks on his cheek where she’d slapped him, though they quickly disappeared under the rising pink. The candy bar had fallen to the floor when McKinney took the slap. He reached down and picked it up and held it out to Megan. “I guess a girl like you is a little out of practice for this. Why don’t I-”
She went at him. Though she was nearly half his body weight, her shove sent him backward into the soda machine. Her hand came up and slashed at his cheek, cutting a small pink swath. As McKinney attempted to turn his head away from the attack, Megan dug a thumb at the corner of his left eye. McKinney let out a grunt. “Fuck!”