Page 88 of The New Couple in 5B

“You claimed that you were at an audition that morning and then at rehearsal for your play until you went up to Dana’s studio.”

“That’s right,” says Chad. Do he and Olivia exchange a look? It’s quick if they do.

“Except that I’ve learned that you weren’t at rehearsal,” says the detective.

Chad clears his throat, shakes his head. “I was.”

“Your director says that you were there for a while, then had to leave suddenly for a family emergency.”

“Right,” Chad says. “When I realized that Rosie was heading up to Dana’s.”

“You said around two?”

“Correct.”

“He says around ten.”

Chad shakes his head, emphatic. “He’s wrong.”

Olivia isn’t chiming in, which strikes me as odd because they arrived at the studio together. His location services were off that day, I remember now. When I glance over at Chad, he’s the picture of concerned innocence.

“It will be easy enough to confirm with your cell phone data.”

“Not going to happen,” says Olivia.

“I don’t have anything to hide,” says Chad.

“No way,” says Olivia. “You want the box, his cell phone records—you need a warrant. You can’t get one and you know it. Because you’re just speculating, reaching, trying to get my clients to give away their rights.”

“We just need to verify Mr. Lowan’s story. And then we can cross him off our list of suspects.”

List of suspects? The phrase fills me with dread, and I push into Chad. Do they think Chad could have killed Dana?

“My clients are upstanding citizens, professional creatives with no criminal history. They’re artists, not murderers. They had no motive to harm either of the deceased.”

Olivia’s right. Maybe everyone does need a lawyer. She’s a bulldog and thank God. We’d be turning everything over to the police if not for her.

“People have been killed for less than a five-million-dollar apartment.”

“They have no reason tokillfor it,” she says sharply. “It belongs to them.”

“Except that Dana Lowan told her ex-husband that she believed Chad manipulated her drug-addled father into changing his will. That he was on such powerful painkillers toward the end that he wasn’t of sound mind. Apparently, there was a nurse who said she overheard something to corroborate this. Dana was about to sue for her inheritance.”

No. None of that can be true.

“What nurse?” I ask.

“A Ms. Betty Cartwright.”

“Did you talk to her?” asks Olivia. “What does she claim she heard exactly?”

“That’s the thing. I can’t seem to locate her. She hasn’t returned my calls. And yesterday, apparently, she didn’t turn up to work.”

“Betty was flaky,” says Chad. “Unreliable. She almost gave Ivan the wrong dose of pain meds one time. If I hadn’t been there, she could have killed him.”

I stare at Chad, his presidential profile and golden curls. I don’t recall that, or Betty as being unreliable. There were several hospice nurses toward the end—all of them kind, competent, present. I always think of hospice workers the same way I do midwives. They are standing on the portals of life and death, ushering souls in and out. I have found almost without fail that there is a powerful wisdom to those people, usually women, who do that kind of work. Betty was one of those—always on time, never impatient with any of us, dedicated to easing Ivan’s passing.

“Do you agree with that?” Detective Crowe is directing his question to me. “That Ms. Cartwright was flaky?”

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