I don’t have the money yet.
It’s gotta be here Friday.
Can’t you spot me? I’ll get it Sunday.
I can’t do it, man. Friday, or you’re out.
That was where the messages cut off. Lucas’s money problems seemed to be causing an issue, but there was no context. The guy he was texting seemed stalwart in his refusal to cover his friend, but why? I didn’t know enough about this kid to have a clue what the message thread was about.
Sonya grabbed the phone and pulled it closer. “I don’t think this is anything,” she said. “The dates, this was right before Lucas moved out. He came down to the office asking about staying longer if he couldn’t get enough money together to help pay the deposit on his new place. I think his boss gave him an advance on his paycheck, because he ended up moving out that weekend.”
Disappointed, Sonya handed the phone back to Jake. He started scrolling again. His eyes stayed on the screen when he asked, “How long was this guy living in the building?”
“About two weeks. Why?”
“Well, if he saw something his aunt was doing, or something weird happening in the building, waiting to look at the older texts and emails for later will save time.” He looked up at Sonya, smiling when he caught her gaze. “If he was involved in something shady, it must have blown up before he got killed. There should be something in the most recent conversations.”
Sonya nodded and scooted toward him so she could see the phone better. Or maybe she just wanted to sit a little closer. Figuring they would say something if they found an incriminating text, I reached for my laptop and the newspaper clippings piled on top of it. Puck’s chair made a dull screeching sound as he scooted it closer to mine. I held back a sigh. I was firmly undecided on whether or not I liked Puck, despite how great his smile was.
“Want some help?”
Sighing, I tried not to sound like Baxter. “Why are you here, Puck?” Okay, I might not have succeeded in sounding pleasant.
Puck shrugged. “Jake and I are roommates. He said he was coming over. I wanted to see you again, so I tagged along.” He leaned back in his chair. “I thought maybe you could use an extra pair of eyes, too.”
“You want to help us find the killer?” The skepticism in my voice was impossible to miss. Sure, we could use all the help we could get, but if Puck’s version of helping was flirting and trying to get me into bed…no thanks.
Puck chuckled at my disbelief. “Yes, I want to help. You have a week, right? Our next show is two weeks away. You can’t very well come if you’re dead, can you? So, I better help you catch the killer before they catch you.”
Crinkling my nose at him, I said, “You warn me off Sean, but you’re as big of an ass as he is.”
“No, I just like you more than he does.” When I screwed up my face at him again, his expression softened and grew more serious. “I’m worried about you, too. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
His words felt like someone jabbed me in the ribs, not hard enough to hurt, but with enough force to get my attention. Baxter had said the same thing. Puck’s motivation, I was pretty sure, came from equal parts genuine concern and wanting to get laid. I thought Baxter’s came from a promise to my sister. He’d said I was wrong. I had no idea what his real reasons were.
“If you want to help, fine,” I said, “but that’s it. Keep your hands and advice about my life to yourself, got it?”
Puck grinned. “Are you that worried about where my hands might end up?” He leaned in closer. “Trust me, Eliza, you wouldn’t be disappointed if I did get distracted by you.”
Puck was handsome in a slightly dangerous kind of way. His grin was seductive and challenging at the same time. His blue eyes positively shone with the promise of something exciting. His blonde hair was just short enough that you couldn’t run your fingers through it, but that and a layer of stubble on his face gave him a look that was just rough enough to be convincing. When I’d agreed to go out with Sean the first time, even though he was attractive and exciting, I had no illusions of a lasting relationship with him. Puck was something else, and that terrified me.
Pushing that fear to the front of my mind, I squared my shoulders. “My ribs look like someone painted them with an entire jar of grape jelly. You’re the one who will be disappointed if your hands end up anywhere near me today,” I promised.
His teasing grin disappeared instantly. “Last night you said you weren’t that hurt. When Sonya tried to take you to the E.R. you said you were fine, just a little scraped up.”
I closed my eyes, wanting to slap myself. Baxter had mentioned the bandage before he left, but everyone must have been too surprised by finding him in my apartment to really think about it. Why had I brought it up? To keep Puck away from me until I figured him out. I sighed. “I may have lied, a little.”
“How hurt are you?” Puck asked.
Instead of answering him, I pushed my shirt up enough to give him a view of the splotchy purple mess.
“Holy shit,” Puck said.
“Did you find something?” Sonya asked. She gasped as soon as her head popped up. Jake was staring at me, too, but Sonya cut off any response from him. “Why didn’t you let me take you to the hospital? That looks horrible!”
“It’s just bruises,” I said as I let my shirt drop. “I’ll be fine.”
“But you could have a cracked rib or something!” Sonya argued. I gave her a look that made her lips pinch together, but she stopped trying to change my mind. Shaking her head, she went back to looking through the phone. She kept flicking her gaze back to me every few seconds, but I decided to ignore her.
Puck was eyeing me as I logged into my computer and brought up the file I’d started on the obituaries and the random people from the other articles. So far, I was having a hard time making any connections other than the fact that most had lived in New York at one time or another. That alone may have been enough to connect them to Ms. Sinclair, but there had to be something more. Who kept track of one time acquaintances for decades, lifetimes?
“What is all this stuff?” Puck asked.
“We found it in a filing cabinet in Ms. Sinclair’s apartment. I think they might be connected to the murders.”
Puck frowned. “More than the nephew being the source? Some old shut-in doesn’t seem like someone who’d have a lot of enemies.”
I scoffed at that faulty assessment. “You didn’t know her. She had plenty of enemies. I don’t think anyone in the building is sorry she’s dead.”
Surprised by my comment, Puck shook his head and went back to reading the articles and obituaries. I left him to it and continued my search where I’d left off. The only one of the dead people that sparked my interest on an initial search was Elbert Cruz, the guy who’d died in the car accident in California a little more than two years ago. There was something about it that seemed to have left even the police a little suspicious.
By all appearances, the old guy had fallen asleep and crossed into oncoming traffic. Witnesses verified that he’d been driving along just fine, then slowly began drifting toward the center line. The car behind him honked several times, and the grooves in the pavement should have startled him when he crossed the line, but nothing woke him up. An autopsy hadn’t been done, given the circumstances, but the officer on scene had seemed unsure about the whole thing. It had been four in the afternoon, not late at night, and Mr. Cruz had had an impeccable driving record up until his accident. The officer never suggested foul play, but there seemed to be some doubt in his mind.
“So, the only thing that connects these people is New York?” Puck asked. I nodded, and he frowned. “Have you tried the Census yet?”
I looked over at him, a little confused. “What would that tell me?”
Puck set down the obituary he’d been holding. “Judging by the notes you put on the backs of these articles, it looks like most of these people had spread out by the time they were in their thirties. If there’s something that connects
all of them, it happened before then. When they were kids or in their early adult years. You don’t really have any info about that time period for most of these people.”
I realized he was right and frowned. “Where would I go to look up that sort of thing?”
“I think you can usually find them on genealogy websites, and on the federal archives site, too. I don’t think you can access the most current ones, because of privacy, but most of these people are dead, so I would think they’d come up.” He shrugged, looking hopeful his suggestion might prove worthwhile.
After a quick search, I found several sites that stored U.S. Census records. It took a few tries to find one that didn’t require a paid subscription, and then I was typing in the first name. Elbert Cruz brought up a list of results, each one from a different decade. I skimmed to a date that would have been in his childhood through mid-twenties. There was only one during that time period, from when Elbert would have been sixteen.
I clicked on it and Puck moved in closer to read it with me. The cursive writing combined with aged paper made some of the words illegible, but I deciphered his parents’ names as well as their home address. I scratched it all down on a notepad to add to the document on my computer later.
“Can you read the second child’s name?” Puck asked.
After finishing my note, I squinted at the handwriting. “Em-ili-aña?” I said. “With a tilde on the n, I think.”
Puck nodded and began rifling through the articles. Finding what he was looking for, he held up a clipping I remembered reading a few days ago. Emiliaña Moldova was a teacher in Boston. She spent thirty years trying to help fourth graders understand fractions and grammar. There was a picture of her in the article, receiving an award from her school district for distinguished service at her retirement farewell fifteen years earlier.
Wondering if it could possibly be the same woman, I typed her name into a search paired with Elbert’s. A full page of results loaded, but only one seemed relevant. I clicked on a link from a New York paper’s archives and got a clipped article highlighting a young Emiliaña and Elbert volunteering at a soup kitchen that fed a large number of immigrants. The article named them as siblings, two of five children their parents had brought with them when leaving El Salvador behind for the dream of a better life.
“She’s his sister,” I said, even though Puck had read the article as well. That was one connection made, but it didn’t really tell us anything. Ms. Sinclair knew them both, apparently.
Stumped again, I searched another name from the obituaries, the ex-pat Robert Porter who’d died of a heart attack in Italy. His name came up in the Census data, though with only two results. One from when he was a preteen, and one in his early thirties before he moved to Italy. Jotting down his parents’ names and address, I clicked on the second result to find out where he was living later in life.
“Those are near each other,” Puck said, pointing at the first address I’d written down, the one for Robert’s childhood home. “That address and the one for the Cruz family. They’re less than a block away from each other.”
Curious, I typed in another name, then another, until I had all the obituary names covered. Puck leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “They all grew up together. On the same street.” He frowned and stared at nothing in particular. “I wonder if that means anything. It could be nothing at all. The old lady kept track of her friends through newspaper articles. Maybe that’s what everyone did before the internet.”
Maybe, but something was twitching at the back of my mind. I put in the names of the people from the other articles and scribbled out addresses and family connections. Two more proved to be siblings of the seven obituaries, one a cousin, and three no relation at all to the others, but siblings to each other. That made the twitching worse.
“Why these three?” I asked.
Puck scanned the names, addresses, and dates. While everyone else was connected by location or blood relation, these three stood apart. Leaning forward, Puck gestured at the laptop. “Go back to the census records. Maybe one of these people married one of the people we’ve already connected.
Doing as he asked, I typed in the woman’s name first, Janet Marsh, and brought her records back up. There were three mentions of her in the Census. She appeared first at age three, living in her parents’ home, then at age thirteen in the same place, and at age thirty-three when she was married to a man named Carlton Lewis and had two children. Nothing jumped out as odd, so I read through the information again, noting her parents’ names and professions, the fact that they didn’t live anywhere near the original seven obituary crew, and her three siblings’ names.
I started to enter a new search, but pulled my fingers back from the keys as that number hit me as odd. We had clippings on a group of three siblings, not four. Grabbing my pen again, I compared the names and found one extra. Donny Marsh. His name was listed as the oldest child of Phil and Betty Marsh in the first and second Census results that came up for Janet. The third was of her married family, so it didn’t mention him at all.
Feeling like I was on to something, I typed in the two brother’s names from the articles and saw the exact same results.
I typed in Donny Marsh to find out what I could about this curious guy, and was confused with what I got. Again, he was listed in the same two Census reports his other siblings were. After that, Donny Marsh was a ghost. I couldn’t say why, but I clung to this find. It felt relevant, important. Donny Marsh had a story no one knew about. I was sure of it.
“Listen to this,” Sonya said, interrupting my thoughts. “This is Lucas texting a friend named Kirk. It’s from the first night he showed up at the building.”
Puck leaned forward as we listened to her read.
I’ve gotta get out of here, man. ASAP. My aunt is nuts.
Like old people nuts? My grandpa got like that.
No, like checking the locks forty times a night and storing up food like her apartment might be sieged. She even makes me turn off my phone inside the apartment so no one can listen in or track it. I have to wait until she goes to bed to turn it back on.
That’s pretty weird. Agreed you should bail. I thought you didn’t have the money yet.
I can’t stay here a few months. I’ll find a way to get enough money for my own place. She sleeps with a knife, man. Her cat’s like a guard dog, too. Scratched up my face last night.
What’s wrong with her?
I don’t know. She’s convinced someone’s trying to kill her.
Dude, get out now.
Wish I could.
That was where the pertinent conversation ended. Sonya said it switched to normal things people talked about, like sucky jobs and going out for drinks. I’d had a hunch this whole thing centered on Baxter’s lunatic neighbor. Lucas’s claims that his aunt believed someone was out to get her could easily be brushed off as senility or baseless paranoia. I hadn’t found anything concrete in the connections between the obituaries and articles, but Donny Marsh vanishing from existence added another layer to the puzzle. Either one could be nothing. Or they could be the clues that would lead us to the truth, and the killer.
17: Forced and Feigned Friendships
It was a relief to be alone in my apartment. Sonya and the guys had stayed until almost two in the afternoon. They’d suggested going out for a late lunch, but I used my ribs as an excuse to stay behind. Really, they were feeling better than when I got up that morning, but I wanted five minutes alone to think and take a breath. The mysteries I had weighing on my mind were getting to be too much to handle. They had begun running through my head like a mantra.
Where was Mouser?
Where were Ms. Sinclair’s keys?
Who did she think was trying to kill her?
Why, besides the obvious, would someone want to kill her?
What did Lucas have to do with all of this, if anything?
Why had Officer Williams’ interest in the case gotten so intense?
What happened to Donny Marsh?
There might have been a few more that should have been added to the list, but that was all I could keep track of at the moment. My brain was maxed out, and I still had to get through one of Mrs. Osgood’s dinner parties. Working weeknights at the diner meant Saturday was my last and only chance to meet my lease obligation. In some ways, that was good, because there were less people on Saturdays. Mostly, it meant I was in for a really long hour, because Mrs. Osgood had less people to talk to and wanted to hear every single thing about my week.
After taking a short nap, I had two hours to prepare for the most uncomfortable dinner hour in the world. I had spent so much time making salads and cutting vegetables, I wanted to do some real cooking. Since moving in, I’d spend most of my nights at the diner, eating takeout with Sonya, or suffering through the bizarre building dinner parties, and hadn’t even had a chance to use the oven yet. The chicken drumsticks in my fridge were calling to me. Not too fancy for a potluck, but substantial enough I wouldn’t have to make myself a second dinner after the community awkward hour concluded.
So I washed my hands and set to work. Bernadette’s spice rack had been limited to salt and pepper when I arrived. I’d filled it earlier in the week and now grabbed out rosemary, sea salt, and coarse ground pepper. Out of the fridge I retrieved the garlic cloves, chicken, and whole lemon I’d picked up from a local shop Chef Lauren had recommended. Olive oil and white wine completed the ingredients I needed. I turned on the oven to preheat and got to work.
It felt good to let everything else slip away as I combined the herbs and oil and coated the chicken with them. No one was hovering over my shoulder to make sure I did it just right, and the chicken wasn’t presenting any questions or demanding answers. It wasn’t a difficult recipe, but I put all my focus into it. Knowing Bernadette, this was the first time the kitchen had been used for actual cooking. My superstar sister lacked only a few skills, and cooking was one of them.
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