There were no pictures hung on the walls or decorating the shelves.
Looking around, Trina’s first thought was that the wreath on the front door was the most personal piece of the apartment. Otherwise, it looked like a rental someone staged for a real estate viewing. Stylish but without any personality.
Which was kind of how Dermot struck Trina when they met at the wedding. She tried to dismiss the unkind thought, but it stuck to the side of her mind like an unwelcome visitor.
Addy fidgeted with the keys in her hand. “I’m not sure what we’re looking for.”
“Neither am I.” Trina thought about how she could really use a drink right about then, to steady her nerves and blunt the hard-edged feelings that kept rising when she was unprepared to handle them, which was essentially any time.
Trina took her boots off on the small patch of tile by the apartment door and laid her coat over the back of the couch. She had no clue what she was looking for or where to start, so she headed to the bedroom at the back of the hall. The walls of the apartment were thin, and she could hear someone talking in the apartment next door. Footsteps creaked above them as Dermot’s upstairs neighbor moved around.
At first Addy stayed on the tile patch by the front door, her coat on and her wish to leave as soon as possible clear. But then she took off her own shoes and placed her coat next to Trina’s, joining Trina at the threshold to the bedroom. The door opened easily. Trina noticed the carpet was worn but clean below their feet.
The bedroom had a twin bed, a small end table with what looked like a second-hand lamp poised beside it, and a bookcase partially full of old paperbacks. Trina was immediately drawn to the books and had to get close to read the spines in the dusky light of the bedroom. They were each well-loved, with cracked spines disguising some of the text, but Trina noted the majority of the books were crime and mystery novels. New and classic: Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie.
“Was Dermot a big reader?” The question came out before Trina could filter herself.
“Does it matter?” Addy replied, moving towards the bed and smoothing her hand over the bedspread, which was a plain-blue cotton.
Trina opened the closet to find a typical array of shirts and pants, mostly grey and black. To the right side were several fleeces and a few neon-orange sweatshirts, the kind Trina recognized were popular with hunters or hikers.
She pictured that young woman’s face—practically a girl—smiling back from the photo on Dermot’s Facebook page, the forest alive in color behind her. The one she saw looking at her and Dermot as they slipped into his hotel room the night he died.
“Are you almost done here?” Addy’s voice had taken on an edge. Trina looked up and saw her standing by the bedroom door, inching out into the hallway.
“You were the one who offered to bring me here,” Trina reminded her. “Why do you have a key to his apartment, anyway?”
“I watered his plants for him a while back, when he needed to go out of town. He gave me a key, I came and watered a few of his plants, and then I sort of forgot about it until all of this happened, and I saw you in the stairwell.” Addy crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorframe as she spoke.
“What was he going out of town for?” Trina opened the drawers on the bedside table.
Some pens, a few pads of paper that were blank, and a random mix of headphones coiled into each other in a tangled mess. The white kind, that came with certain laptops.
“I don’t know. He said for a work thing. Look, I’m not really comfortable with this anymore. Can we just go?” Addy glanced over her shoulder, as though she was worried someone might come in. Trina realized Addy might be right.
“Just another minute, I promise. I really appreciate you helping me with this, even if we don’t find anything that might clue me in to what’s going on.” Trina moved over to the bed and bent down to look underneath it. “What was the work thing?”
“I don’t know. And, honestly, I’m not sure if it really was for work.”
Trina looked up. “Why do you say that?”
Addy shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a feeling. When I came over to water the plants, there were a bunch of clothes scattered all over his bed, and they were the kind of things you’d wear on a date, you know? Not business casual. And there was a receipt on the kitchen counter—it was right by the note he’d left me about which plants to water, that’s why I saw it. I wasn’t snooping—for two bottles of really expensive champagne that he’d bought on Friday just before he left. So, I figured he was going away with someone.”
“How expensive?”
“What?” Addy looked even more uncomfortable.
“How expensive was the champagne?” There was nothing under the bed. Trina lifted the mattress slightly and slid her fingers between the mattress and box spring.
“Like, three hundred dollars for two bottles.”
The upstairs neighbor must have been doing an indoor workout, because the ceiling started to bounce slightly and the bedroom filled with the percussive noise of someone jumping.
Trina’s fingers felt something sleek and hard shoved between the mattress and the box spring. She pulled it out, and sure enough it was a laptop. Dermot had felt the need to hide it underneath his bed, which made Trina think it was probably not his normal day-to-day computer. Trina could only assume the police had missed it because Dermot’s main laptop was easily found somewhere else in the apartment.
Addy had been looking down the hallway, and when she turned and saw what Trina found, she blanched. “Where’d you find that?”
“Underneath the mattress. Let’s go.” Trina stood up, placing the laptop neatly underneath her arm. She’d check through it from the safety of her apartment.
“Are you allowed to take it?” Addy asked.
“As much as we’re allowed to come into an apartment that isn’t ours.” Trina moved by Addy and headed down the hallway.
“I told you…” Addy started to cut in, but Trina stopped her.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. You’ve been really kind.” Trina forced herself to look Addy in the eye. “Thank you.”
Addy uncrossed her arms and started to say something, her face softening, but a sound interrupted her.
Keys jangled in the door, and from their position in the hallway they heard the front door open as heavy footsteps sounded against the tiles. Somebody else had keys to Dermot’s apartment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX LAURA
Two women stood in Dermot’s apartment. The younger one looked terrified to see Laura and Rosie step through the door, her arms wrapped around her chest with fingerless gloves that Laura remembered the artsy kids at high school used to wear. The other was older, and Laura decided she would be pretty if she didn’t look like she hadn’t slept or eaten a real meal all month. Rosie put her hand on the small of Laura’s back and scooted around to stand in front of her.
“Who the hell are you?” Rosie asked, standing with her legs slightly apart and her shoulders squared. For such a tiny woman, she looked tough as nails. She balled her hands into fists, and for a second Laura thought that she might actually punch someone, just to prove her point.
“I know you,” the older woman said, looking at Laura.
