Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) by Parshall Sandra

Author:Parshall, Sandra [Parshall, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2012-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The apartment Shelley Beecher had shared was on the top floor of a narrow federal rowhouse that had been cut up into three residences. Tom climbed the stairs, hearing every decade of the building’s age in the creaks and groans of the wood underfoot.

He knocked on a door painted bright red. A beautiful young woman with glossy black hair and olive skin as dark as his own opened the door.

Tom introduced himself.

“Oh, hello.” The girl almost smiled, then caught herself and turned solemn. She spoke in the lilting accent Tom recognized as Indian. “I am Supriya. I was so terribly shocked to hear about Shelley’s death.”

“You lived here with her?” Nobody fitting this girl’s description had turned up in the interview notes Fagan had shared with him.

“Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve only lived in this apartment for one week. I didn’t know Shelley well, although I believe she was a lovely person.”

“Does somebody named Maria Lima still live here?”

“Oh, yes, she does. She and Shelley lived here together.”

Maria, as it turned out, was working at her day job behind the counter at the nearest Starbucks. Before Tom headed over there, he asked Supriya, “Have you heard about anybody harassing Shelley? Has there been any gossip about who might have abducted her? You don’t have to be able to prove it, and I’ll keep it confidential.”

“There have been many rumors. Gossip and innuendo.” The girl fussed with her long hair, sweeping a strand off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. “But I can’t tell you whether any of it is true.”

“What have you heard?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say. I didn’t hear anything firsthand from Shelley herself. I don’t want to gossip.”

Yes, you do. The eagerness in her eyes begged him to talk her into spilling it all. “Anything you can tell me might lead to the arrest of her killer.”

He’d spoken the magic words. With a little smile, she said, “Then of course I’m very happy to help. I’ve heard that a man came here to the apartment several times and made quite a fuss. I’ve also heard that Shelley received frequent telephone calls that upset her, and she was afraid to go out at night alone.”

“She was out alone the night she disappeared, wasn’t she?” Tom said.

Supriya sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Yes. Indeed she was.”

***

The roommate, Maria Lima, had a line of customers to serve at the Starbucks counter, and she wasn’t getting much help from the lanky, spiky-haired young man working with her. A miniature dynamo with a long black ponytail, she whisked back and forth, producing lattes of every description, scooping cookies and slices of lemon pound cake into bags, plucking proffered bills from outstretched hands and depositing change in palms, filling three orders for every one her fellow server completed.

Most of the customers wore jeans and t-shirts, some had book bags slung over their shoulders. Students just out of afternoon classes at George Mason University, Tom assumed. He waited a few minutes until the crush dwindled.

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