Trouble Magnet

by DelSheree Gladden

  One of the building rules demanded the lobby door remained locked from ten at night to seven in the morning. Residents had to use their keys to get in and out of the building during that time period. At the most, it couldn’t have been any later than five-thirty by that point. Cold that had nothing to do with the ice spread through my body as I wondered how Officer Williams managed to get up to my apartment without a key.

  11: Crazier by the Day

  I’d come to a decision while showering. That was quite an accomplishment given that Baxter was sitting in the living room the entire time, distracting me to no end. What I had realized while rushing through washing my body and hair was the same realization I had come to five years ago. The police weren’t going to help me. If I wanted to survive long enough to finish my first semester of culinary school, I needed to figure out why someone kept breaking into Ms. Sinclair’s apartment and was now watching me. Before they upped the ante to killing me.

  Bernadette called twice before I got on the subway. I had another missed call when I got back to street level. I didn’t return any of her calls, but I did text Sonya, telling her I would call during my lunch break. I didn’t mention a word of this to Baxter. He’d yell at me for being stupid enough to get involved and tell me to stay out of it. While that may have been the most responsible thing to do, I feared it would be what got me killed. Sonya was the only person I trusted to help me.

  Sean slid onto a stool at the station next to mine and said, “Sorry I missed your call last night. I had my phone off so I could study without distractions. Did it go okay at Saul’s?”

  Hesitating for just a second, I made a split decision and smiled. “Yeah, it was great. Danielle tried to sabotage me, but I made it through.”

  “Sabotage you?” Sean asked. He shook his head, clearly imagining her capable of such a thing. “What did she do?”

  “Wrote out all her tickets in diner lingo.” Filled with too many other competing concerns, I couldn’t dig up the same anger from last night.

  Sean closed his eyes and sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t even consider she might do that or I would have prepared you.” I crooked an eyebrow at him. He shook his head. “We used to do it as a game, late at night when things got boring. I should have figured she’d pull something like that. Sorry. I can teach it to you if you want.”

  “You better,” I said. I was still somewhat annoyed at him over Danielle, but it was at the bottom of my list of concerns right now.

  “Over lunch?” Sean asked.

  I nodded, figuring I could step away to call Sonya at some point. I really didn’t have much to tell her yet, aside from my distrust of Officer Williams after his assault and suspicion that I was on my own. Where to go with that, I really didn’t know yet. Hopefully Sonya had a few ideas. For a moment, I reconsidered telling Sean about the guy who hit him coming into the diner. His comment about having taken hits before made me think he might know more about this sort of thing than either Sonya or me. Before I could decide, class started and my head was filled with safe cooking temperatures and types of disinfectants that could be used on food prep areas.

  By the time three o’clock rolled around, I was anxious to continue the conversation I’d started with Sonya at lunch. I hadn’t had time for much more than a quick rundown of my concerns and vague beginnings of a plan before someone from the building interrupted our call with a complaint about something ridiculous. I spent the rest of the break getting diner lingo lessons from Sean before spending two hours perfecting different styles of cutting vegetables in my cold kitchen class. I practically bolted out of the school and headed straight for the subway entrance. I was about to head down the stairs when that creepy crawly feeling of being watched sent a ripple of fear down my spine.

  Snapping my head around, I scanned the area for the intruder. Foot traffic was lighter than it would be on my way back to work, but too many faces filled my vision to see everyone in detail. Something caught my eye to the left and I whipped my head around in time to see a figure disappear behind a bus stop shelter. It was the wrong build for the guy I was looking for, but something about the motion put me on edge. Could there be more than one person sent to watch me?

  I thought it was likely, but something slimy seemed to seep into my skin as I watched the shelter for the man to reemerge. After several minutes, my limited time pushed at me. The man had either disappeared, or was content to wait as long as need be to avoid detection. I had to talk to Sonya before work. Standing there all afternoon would only put me at risk even more.

  Ducking into the subway entrance, I hurried down the stairs. Subway platforms weren’t the safest place when it came to being pickpocketed, but the crowd allowed me to hide more easily. I slipped up to the yellow line where it was busiest and kept my eyes peeled for any familiar or suspicious faces. It felt like ages before I made it back to the building and slipped inside to its relative safety.

  Sonya spotted me as soon as I came through the door and rushed out of her office. “I am so sorry I wasn’t there to help you last night. My grandma thinks she’s dying every time she gets heartburn.” She threw her arms around me and I hugged her back, comforted by the gesture.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It all worked out. I’m glad your grandma is okay.”

  “All worked out?” Sonya said. She shook her head at me. “We must have different definitions of what that phrase means. Come on. Tell me about this plan of yours.” She ushered me toward her office and shut the door once we were both inside.

  By the time she was seated across from me, I had a starting point, at least. “The cops said you could clean Ms. Sinclair’s apartment, right?”

  “Yeah. They gave me a list of companies that specialize in crime scene clean up, but the earliest available appointment wasn’t until next Wednesday.” She shrugged, clearly disappointed at the delay. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having to pass the bloodstain in the hall for another week, but it gave us time to do a little digging.

  “So it’s not a crime scene anymore, right?”

  Sonya shook her head. “No, they cleared it and said I could do what I needed to. As far as I know, Lucas was her only relative. I’ll have to go through her apartment to look for a will or phone number for any other family.”

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  Surprised at first, Sonya caught on quickly. “You think the police missed something?”

  “Given that Officer Williams was involved in the search, it’s likely. More than that, whoever’s following me hasn’t found what they want, either.”

  Sonya frowned. “Maybe whatever they’re looking for isn’t in the apartment.”

  “Where else would she put it?” I asked. “You told me she hardly ever left the building. Even her groceries were delivered.”

  “Sure, but Lucas is the one who seems to have drawn trouble to the building, and he could have hidden whatever it was anywhere.”

  “Then why was he so set on getting back into her apartment when she died? He didn’t even seem to care much that she was gone. He just wanted whatever he’d left here before someone else got it,” I argued.

  Frowning, Sonya considered what I’d said. “Officer Williams did mention that Lucas’s apartment had been ransacked as well. He didn’t think the guys who did it found what they were looking for there, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “The entire place was trashed. If they’d found something, why continue to tear the place apart. Unless they found what they were looking for in the very last possible place, there would be some part of the apartment left alone, right?” Sonya said.

  “He told you all that?” I asked.

  She waved off the question. “Of course not. He said just enough to let me piece together the obvious. How that guy became a cop, I’ll never know.”

  Nodding in agreement, I rubbed my arm absently.

  “Well, should we start now?” Sonya asked. “I know you have to go to work in a while.”

  “Yeah,�
�� I said. “Let’s at least look around and see if anything jumps out at us as odd.”

  Cringing, Sonya shivered. “There’s a lot about her apartment that’s odd.”

  Not sure what she meant, I followed her out of the office and up the stairs to where my meddlesome neighbor’s blood still coated the carpet. When we reached the door, Sonya unlocked it and we took a wide step over the stain, like touching it might somehow mark us. I already had a target on my back. No need to make things any worse. We crept in on tiptoe and Sonya locked the door behind us. As soon as I turned around, I realized why Sonya hadn’t looked all that excited or hopeful about searching the apartment.

  A stack of old newspapers climbed the wall near the door. Unopened boxes of cereal and pastas lined another. Canned goods peeked out from beneath the upturned skirt of the ancient sofa. Packages of water bottles nearly buried a side table, and I could barely see the curved edges of a piano under the heaps of plastic bags stuffed inside other plastic bags.

  “I have no idea what to do with most of this stuff,” Sonya said with a sigh. “I really hope she has some other relative so I don’t have to deal with all of this.”

  I glanced around the apartment, feeling bad for Sonya. The place was relatively clean, but so filled with junk and food it would take forever to clear out. Spotting the silver handle of a filing cabinet poking out from behind stacks of books on every topic imaginable, I tried not to make more of a mess as I moved the books aside and tugged on the first drawer. It didn’t budge and I tugged again.

  “It probably needs a key,” Sonya said. She stepped over more stacks and navigated her way to the kitchen where a cutesy key holder hung on the wall. After searching through the sets, she tossed a simple pair of silver keys at me.

  One quick turn and the top drawer opened. Eager to dump the responsibility of cleaning up this mess on someone else, Sonya bounded around hoarder paraphernalia and kneeled next to me. I pulled the drawer open all the way and scanned the labels sticking up from the top of each hanging folder. Most looked like tax information or receipts, with a few meant for recipes and old photos. Sonya grabbed out one labeled “personal documents,” and started thumbing through it hopefully.

  I reached for one labeled “clippings,” curious about what a shut-in might want to cut out of the newspaper. Grabbing out a stack of papers, I noticed some were directly from the newspaper while others had been printed out and then clipped. The first handful all had one thing in common.

  “What is with old people and obituaries?” I asked. I remembered sitting at the breakfast table at my grandmother’s house during summer trips before she passed, watching her diligently peruse the names. “It’s morbid, and creepy.”

  Sonya shrugged. “My grandma does it every morning. She doesn’t get out much, and most of her friends are gone. The ones that are left, even if she doesn’t see them anymore, it’s important to her to send some kind of condolence to the family when one of them passes away.”

  It was a nice thought, in a way, but I still found it bothersome. Flipping through the obituaries, I wondered if Ms. Sinclair knew all of them. It was odd that they weren’t just from one of the local newspapers. The ones printed on computer paper came from all over the country, and even one from Italy dated eight years previous, though the name sounded American.

  Robert Porter, age 63, was found deceased by his maid in his Paris flat on Tuesday, of an apparent heart attack. He had no living relatives.

  The other obituaries were more personal, giving small excerpts of their life history. Three of the seven clippings were from New York or the surrounding areas. Constance Michaels, Peter Denish, and Mark Little. Each died within the last two years of natural causes or diseases common to older populations. Phyllis Ormond died at her home three years previous in Pennsylvania from complications due to cancer treatment. A stroke claimed Elizabeth Escobar five years ago in Texas, and Elbert Cruz was killed in a car accident in Southern California just over two years ago.

  I read through each tribute, finding nothing to connect the random people other than that they were all around the same age, and there was less than eight years separating the seven deaths. Considering that Ms. Sinclair must have known these people and hoping for a connection, I asked, “How old was Ms. Sinclair?”

  Sonya frowned. “Sixty-nine or seventy, I think. Somewhere around there.”

  “How long has she lived here?”

  “Forever,” Sonya grumbled. When I gave her a questioning look, she shrugged. “I’d have to check her lease. I’ve always remembered her being here since I visited my grandma as a kid. She didn’t used to be as crazy, though. I mean, she was never very nice, but she definitely got weirder as she aged. I hope I don’t go senile like that.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Sonya gestured at the stacks of random food and supplies surrounding us. “This only started about eight or ten years ago. She got meaner around that time, too. Harassing the neighbors for stupid things, getting into arguments with my grandma about every little problem. Then she became more reclusive. She still drove everyone nuts, but she rarely left her apartment except to hand out her unsolicited citations, and started having all her groceries delivered. That was a whole situation in and of itself.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “She didn’t want to go out, but she was paranoid the delivery boy would…I don’t even know. Like I said, she got crazier by the day. I don’t know why she thought the delivery boy would care about which apartment she lived in, but she made me sign for her groceries and bring them up to her apartment.” Sonya rolled her eyes. “It was ridiculous, but worth not having her pitch a fit about it.”

  I considered what she’d told me. “Maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous.” When Sonya paused her search and look up at me, not understanding, I waved at the apartment we were in. “Someone sure cared where she lived, and took her out.”

  “But,” Sonya said, “it was Lucas they were after. Not her.”

  That was certainly the most logical explanation, but I had trouble accepting it. For one, it came from Officer Williams, who I didn’t trust at all. Secondly, it seemed too simple. Kind of. The police wanted to point fingers at Lucas, but they hadn’t come up with any solid reason to blame him. No sign of drugs, gambling, gang activity, nothing. He had moved into his own apartment the weekend before his aunt was killed, too. Someone watching that closely would have noticed, right?

  “Maybe she knew about whatever Lucas was tangled up in,” I admitted, “but maybe she really was the target.”

  “Then why kill Lucas?” Sonya asked.

  I shrugged. I had no idea. Sonya went back to shuffling through Ms. Sinclair’s personal documents. I set the obituaries aside and scanned the larger clippings they had been paired with. They made even less sense. They were random news articles about random people. I couldn’t see any connection between a girl winning a spelling bee in the Bronx in the eighties and a brunette couple getting married a decade later. None of the names seemed to match the obituaries, either. Maybe Ms. Sinclair was just a paranoid, spiteful nut and none of this meant anything.

  Sonya blew out a frustrated breath and tossed the file onto the ground. “She left everything to Lucas. No mention of any other relatives. Now what am I supposed to do?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. I’d never dealt with something like this before.

  “I guess I’ll have to ask Baxter.” She scrunched her face in dismay. “Hopefully he’s forgotten about the smoke detectors and won’t slam the door in my face.”

  I looked over at her, confused. “Baxter? Why would you ask him?”

  “He’s a lawyer. Didn’t I tell you that?” When I shook my head no, she shrugged. “I’m pretty sure he does immigration law, but I bet he’d know what I need to do with her stuff. I’ll ask him tonight.”

  I silently wished her luck with that. While he’d come through for me last night…and this morning…his reactions and temperament were too unpredictable to cou
nt on. Sticking the clippings back in the folder and tucking it under my arm to take with me, I asked Sonya, “Any ideas on how Officer Williams got in here this morning?”

  Sonya’s expression darkened. She had been upset when I told her about our run-in this morning. This neighborhood had been his beat for almost two years and she had thought he was nice enough, even if not the greatest cop in the world. Sonya knew her grandmother drove the residents she was in charge of crazy, but she did her best to keep them safe and as happy as she possibly could. Someone meant to protect them abusing his power got her hackles up like nothing else.

  “I tried asking around to see who the last person to come in last night was, but you know how social and attentive people are around here. The only person who saw anyone said they saw you and Baxter coming in around eleven-thirty,” she said. “Plenty of people are still at work, so I’ll ask around some more, but the best I can come up with is that someone came in after you guys and forgot to lock the door. It happens every once in a while.”

  “I know we locked the door behind us. If we were the last ones in, he had to have had a key to get in.” Something in my gut told me that was the most likely option, but I couldn’t figure out where he might have gotten one.

  Troubled, Sonya said, “Maybe someone left really early this morning and left it unlocked. Sometimes Jared McCarran gets called to the hospital in the middle of the night.”

  I nodded, hoping it was true, but doubting it. Somehow, Officer Williams got a hold of a key. Cold slid down my spine as a thought hit me. Ms. Sinclair’s keys had never been found. Could it be possible Officer Williams found them in the apartment and kept them so he could get back in later? It seemed like a ridiculous thought. Why would he want to? Why jeopardize his career like that? It made no sense why he would keep the keys just to come intimidate me, but his harassment spoke of more than a professional interest in the case.