from the couch. He seemed warmer, friendlier, but she was aware it could be that good cop/bad cop routine she saw at play in TV crime shows.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” Burke said, fishing a notebook from his suit jacket pocket. “What time did Ms. Howe show and what was the purpose of her visit?”
“She arrived around 6:45,” Kit said. “I was aware of the time because she was supposed to show up at 6:30, and I was watching the clock. As I mentioned earlier, she’s—she was a client, and she stopped by to pick up several fabric boards. They’re in the package lying near her body.”
“Does it surprise you that no one saw the body until this morning? Don’t tenants here take the stairs?”
“Well, people on two and three sometimes do. But generally not the ones on four or five.”
“Why do you think Ms. Howe took them, considering all she was carrying?”
Kit shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s a chance the elevator was temporarily out of order. That happens sometimes.” She was about to add that it was working later that night, but that would necessitate mentioning she’d gone out just before nine. And she didn’t want to raise that fact if she didn’t have to.
“Did she seem okay to you? Not wobbly or anything?”
“Wobbly?”
“Could she have been drinking before she got here?”
“I doubt it. She’d come from an off-site brainstorming meeting for her company.” But as soon as Kit spoke the words, she forced herself to think back, replay the encounter. It would be just like Avery to celebrate the end of a daylong event with wine or champagne, even a tray of margaritas. But from what she recalled, Avery had presented as a hundred percent sober.
“She was a little rushed, but otherwise fine,” Kit added. “She said she had a few other stops to make.”
“Was she alone?” It was Wingate, speaking for the first time.
“Yes—though she had a car waiting for her,” Kit explained. “That’s how her assistant knew to call here. The driver reported that she never went back to the car.”
“When she left, did you see anyone in the hall?” It was Burke again. “Or hear any noises afterward?”
So was he thinking foul play? she wondered.
“No, nothing like that.”
“Does she have a boyfriend, do you know?”
“From what she said, she wasn’t seeing anyone.”
Burke didn’t speak for a few moments, just glanced down at the notes he’d been taking and then back at her, leveling his squinty gaze and holding it there. It made her think of a cat hunched in the grass, watching a little bird bobbing along and calculating when to pounce. She had to fight the urge not to touch her hair or her face or to twitch in her seat.
“How about the two of you?” he said finally.
“Excuse me?” she asked. What was that supposed to mean?
“You and Ms. Howe. Everything good with the two of you?”
She almost gasped in surprise. Was he toying with the idea that she’d pushed Avery down the stairs? That they’d had a tiff over a fabric choice Kit had made or a charge on the bill, and it had turned physical?
“Yes,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm, not defensive. “I was decorating a cottage of hers on the Jersey Shore, and she was a very nice client to work with.”
Had it sounded forced? She couldn’t tell. Burke just kept staring.
“There’s something you should know,” Kit added in a rush she regretted. “My apartment was broken into last Friday night. Burglarized. The detective I dealt with is named O’Callaghan—from this precinct.”
When they touched base with O’Callaghan—and surely they would—he’d of course raise the Miami incident, but she wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up.
Wingate shifted his position ever so slightly. “So are you thinking the guy came back?” he asked. “That he was planning to hit another apartment in the building and then saw a different kind of opportunity when Ms. Howe came out of your apartment?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything specific—I just thought you should know, that you might even hear it from Detective O’Callaghan. And there’s something else. Avery was wearing my trench coat. She’d borrowed it because it was starting to rain.”
They both studied her, and she could sense them summoning a picture of Avery in their minds—her body type, her hair color—and comparing the image to her.
“You thinking someone assumed it was you?” Wingate asked finally.
“I don’t know. I just thought I should tell you.”
“You got a boyfriend