Page 86 of The New Couple in 5B

“He’s a liar,” I say. It just comes out and even I’m surprised at how angry I sound. Olivia and Chad both look at me.

“Is this about the box?” asks Detective Crowe.

“What box?” asks Olivia.

I repeat the story that I’ve told Chad and Detective Crowe.

“So the doorman has a history of deception,” says Olivia, seizing on this piece of information. “Why don’t you start your investigation there?”

“I’m still waiting on that box,” says Crowe.

“Take it,” I say.

I want the box gone. In fact,Iwant to be gone. We’re selling this place. Nothing has been right since we moved in. Sure, lots of good things have happened. But way more bad things are piling up. Dead bodies. A miscarriage. I think about the history of suicides and violent deaths at the Windermere. Max was right. There’s a bad energy here. We never should have come.

“Absolutely not,” says Olivia. “Do you have a warrant to search the Lowan residence?”

Detective Crowe lifts his palms.

Olivia gives a curt nod of understanding. “There’s no warrant because there’s no evidence that the Lowans were involved in either incident. No judge would issue one at this point.”

“When was the last time you saw Xavier Young?” he asks.

“Last night,” I answer. “There was a gathering at the Aldridge apartment. Astrology night.”

“Astrology night?” he asks with a smirk.

“There’s a medium in the building. She does horoscopes, reads cards. She told Xavier that he was about to find love.”

He gives me a look as if this is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, and maybe it is.

“Did he seem depressed, unsettled in any way?”

I remember laughing with him about the escort. “Not at all. But I didn’t know him that well.”

“Another resident said that you two left the gathering together. That he came into your apartment afterward.”

Again, all eyes on me. Who could have known that? Only Abi, watching on the camera. But he wasn’t here last night, or so George said. Or someone was watching through the peephole of Charles and Ella’s. Or someone was listening.

“He wanted to come through our place to use the service elevator.”

“Why?”

“He said he was trying to avoid Abi.”

“Who wasn’t working.”

“That’s what he told me,” I say with a shrug. He could have used Ella’s exit. He needed to use the service elevator in any case because George was gone. “Maybe he just wanted to see the apartment.”

“What did you talk about?”

“We talked about Abi, and about how I shouldn’t tell him anything I don’t want the whole building to know. I asked him about the box, if he’d seen it in the elevator that day.”

“And?”

“He said he didn’t, but I think he was being careful about what he said. We planned to have coffee tomorrow. I think he had more to tell me.”

Detective Crowe seems to take that in. If you’re planning to kill yourself, maybe you don’t make plans for the next day.

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