Still As Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Author:Sarah Stewart Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Minotaur

NINETEEN

THEY’D GOTTEN OLGA LEVITCH’S ADDRESS through the university’s payroll department after the address Keane gave them turned out to be outdated. As they pulled up in front of the ugly brick building on a run-down street, Ellie looked up at the building and said, “I wonder if this is what she thought she was coming to when she came to America.”

“Hey,” Quinn said. “It’s better than what a lot of people have.”

But it was pretty awful, a hostile-looking group of teenage boys hanging around out front and hypodermic needles littering the sidewalk. The front door was locked, and when they asked the boys where they could find the manager, they shrugged and pointed around the side of the building.

The malnourished-looking woman sitting in front of a small portable TV in the building manager’s office told them she was not the manager, but when Quinn identified himself and informed her that he needed access to Olga Levitch’s apartment, she stood up, took a key off the Peg-Board on the wall, and handed it to him, all without taking her eyes from the soap opera on the television. “Bring it back when you’re done,” she said, a hand picking obsessively at her overly permed hair. Apparently the police often needed access to apartments in the building.

“Hey,” Quinn said, shouting over the voices of the glamorous people on the screen. “Did you know her?”

The woman looked up blankly. “She didn’t talk to anyone. She was afraid of the police. One time there was a fire alarm and we had to get everyone out of the building, and she wouldn’t come out. She was afraid they were going to torture her something.” Someone started sobbing on the TV and she snapped her head back, afraid she’d missed something. Quinn rolled his eyes at Ellie.

Number 7 was a tiny studio apartment on the second floor. When Quinn opened the door, they were assaulted by the overly sweet scent of apples and cinnamon. The source of the fragrance was a pink basket of potpourri sitting on the only table in the room, a round kitchen table with a blue linoleum top. “Jeez,” Ellie said. “That’s pretty strong. I think you’re supposed to put it inside something.”

“I bet the cooking smells in a building like this are pretty bad,” Quinn said, picking up a handful of the potpourri and letting it fall between his fingers. He looked around the room, taking in the single bed, neatly made, with its white bedspread and a single pillow in a pink pillowcase at the head. There was a small bathroom through a door at the end of the room and a small closet next to the bathroom. The kitchen consisted of a half-sized refrigerator and an electric hot plate on top of a rolling butcher block that was pushed against the wall. Underneath the butcher block were what appeared to be all of Olga Levitch’s kitchen things: three nice china plates with a rose pattern on them, two matching teacups

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.