Disconnecting the phone, she sank onto one of the stools by the kitchen island. She couldn’t stop picturing Avery splayed out at the base of the stairs, all that vibrant energy of hers gone without a trace.
Why, Kit asked herself again, had Avery taken the stairs, especially when she had so much to carry? The building elevator could be wonky at times, and that might have forced Avery to the stairwell, but it had been working when Kit went out later. And how had Avery’s fall turned so deadly?
A thought that had been gnawing at her subconscious finally chewed through: What if it wasn’t an accident? What if Avery had been pushed down the steps? Had an intruder done it? A mugger? But the motive couldn’t have been robbery—her purse was still with her. Unless the assailant had panicked once Avery fell and didn’t dare waste time untangling the strap of the purse from her fingers.
Kit pictured the body again: There was the wheat-colored hair, the same color as her own and styled more simply last night, closer to the way she wore hers. And then the borrowed trench coat.
Her stomach twisted. What if someone had meant to hurt her, and in a case of mistaken identity, had killed Avery instead?
Don’t go there yet, she told herself. There was still a chance it was all a horrific accident. She had to stay calm, wait for the facts. But she also knew she had to reach Kelman, fill him in. She tried his burn phone but he didn’t answer. She left a message telling him that there was an emergency and she needed to talk to him immediately.
As she tucked the phone into her skirt pocket, another thought broke through, this one with the force of wood splintering. Could Kelman be the killer?
But no, it wasn’t possible. He’d been waiting at the restaurant for her, eager for information. He would have hardly tried to kill her before hearing what she had to say. But Avery’s death was going to shift everything. Kelman would have to change course and go to the police now. This would be a test of how much she could really trust him.
She forced herself to the sink, turned on the tap, and splashed water toward her face, just to wet her mouth. She needed to get back to Dara. She also had to figure out how to handle the police. They would have to be told about the break-in and they’d, of course, wonder if the two situations were linked. But there was no way she could come clean about her encounters with Kelman, not yet anyway. She had no proof of anything to offer them, just a story about her meeting more than once with a murder suspect. She might very well implicate herself.
The safest strategy, she decided, would be to volunteer the bare minimum and answer their questions carefully, keeping certain details under wraps for now.
Dara was still at the table when Kit returned, staring listlessly across the room, a pad and pen lying in front of her. Kit walked over and set a hand on Dara’s shoulder to comfort her.
“How are you doing?”
“It’s just so awful. She’s probably been lying there since last night, right?”
“I assume so. People on the top two floors never use the stairs unless the elevator’s out, so clearly no one came across the body.”
“What happened, Kit? Did she trip, do you think?” From Dara’s anguished tone Kit knew she was really asking what Kit had wondered, too: Could she have been pushed?
“I just don’t know. Maybe we’ll have a better sense after the police come.”
Dara reached up with her hand and rubbed a tear away. “Even though you were standing right next to me, for a split second I felt like I was looking at you at the bottom of the stairs. It was horrible.”
So she had been struck by it as well. The resemblance.
“I know. She—”
Kit’s words were cut off by the scream of a siren, and then the sound of a car lurching to a stop in front of the building. Kim looked down from the window and saw a patrol car below.
“It’s the police,” Kit said. “I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you at some point, but why don’t you just sit here for now and I’ll meet them.”
Her buzzer rang and she told the police to come up. Steeling herself, she opened the office door and waited. A short