"Garage door locked," Rosita had written. "But was door from garage to mud room locked? If number 2 had dragged number 1 to car from house, number 2 could have left through house. Ask cops about drag marks. Burglar alarm on? Ask number 3 who has keys to house. Ask the M.E. if it's possible to know whether number 1 was unconscious before carbon monoxide kicked in. Check enrollment records."
Enrollment records? Rosita had lost her completely. But perhaps Rosita was lost, too, for she hadn't been able to take these electronic files with her when she left. If Tess offered her the printouts, would she break the code in exchange? It was worth a try. If Rosita was working on something legitimate, it would be nice to pass the information along to Feeney as a peace offering, even if neither of them had started the war between them. Perhaps it was time for another surprise visit to Rosita's.
Cutting through downtown and heading uptown on Charles Street, she noticed people streaming out of churches, palm fronds in hand. How could it be Palm Sunday beneath these leaden skies? A lot of Easter hats and outfits were going to be wasted if the weather didn't improve markedly over the next week. No matter the weather, it was a torturous season for Tess. April meant the return of rowing, and it was always a struggle to readjust to a 5:30 A.M. alarm, especially after daylight savings stole yet another hour. Worse, this time of year meant putting in appearances at both the Monaghans' Easter Sunday dinner and the Weinsteins' Seder, with little time for recovery in between. April was the cruelest month.
At Rosita's apartment building, it was no trick to once again blend in with a group of residents, allowing them to carry her through the security door and into the elevator. On the eighteenth floor, she knocked-politely at first, then a sharp rap, and finally an out-and-out pounding. No response. Tess tried the door and it swung open. Wonderful. Maybe Rosita was down in the basement laundry room, or making a quick run for Sunday papers at the deli across the street. She'd just take a quick look around.
The apartment hadn't changed, with the exception of a pizza box and an empty Chardonnay bottle on the kitchen counter. Same impersonal air, same Kit-Kat Klock keeping time. Tess looked around, her gaze settling again on the pizza box. She couldn't help herself-she loved cold pizza and she hadn't eaten anything since the Mint Milanos at Colleen's apartment. She looked at the side of the box, trying to figure out which pizzeria it had come from, then flicked open the grease-spotted lid. Sausage, her favorite. She picked off one of the nubbly pieces, popped it in her mouth. Yech. Turkey sausage. What an aberration. What an oxymoron-healthful sausage, low-fat fat. You should do things full out, Tess always reasoned. Hedging, trying to have it both ways, was what got you into trouble. She'd have to share this bit of wisdom with Rosita.
The porridge segment of her Goldilocks impersonation concluded, she began prowling around the small apartment, looking for the box of files Rosita had carried home on Friday. Maybe the key to her notes was there. She checked the hall closet, looked beneath the sagging springs of the sofa, opened kitchen cabinets. The apartment was eerily quiet, the only sound coming from the swinging tail of the Kit-Kat Klock, moving back and forth in the same cadence as its wide eyes. Funny, Rosita didn't have a computer-that seemed unthinkable for someone of her age and profession. Perhaps she had set up an office in a corner of her bedroom.
A blast of cold air surprised Tess when she opened the bedroom door. The sliding door to the tiny balcony was open, its gauzy curtains blown parallel to the floor in the stiff wind. Tess walked over to shut the door, then stepped outside instead, an acrid taste in her mouth.
Some people experience dread as a sensation that their stomachs are falling twenty stories; others feel a humming-bird-fast pulse flapping high in their chests. For Tess, fear and anxiety always had the flavor of something bitter, like a shriveled peanut in a bag of fresh roasted ones. Or a piece of turkey sausage, when you were expecting the real thing.
She leaned over the balcony, not sure what she would see from this height, not sure what she was looking for. Everything was still so brown and lifeless, even the overgrown brush in the gully that ran behind the apartment house. The only color was from the hundreds of blue plastic grocery bags caught on the dried vines, like puffy wild-flowers. And a flash of white surrounded by beige, one shade lighter than the earth.
When the coroner pulled Rosita Ruiz from the gully, she was wearing bicycle shorts and the same mermaid T-shirt she had worn the last time Tess had visited her. La Sirena. Well, La Sirena had sung her last song.
Tess called Sterling from Rosita's apartment and he arrived while the two homicide detectives were still questioning her. The detectives were politely solicitous of Tess, who looked a little green at the edges, but she could tell they had no real interest in considering Rosita's death a homicide, too. That would involve admitting fault, prolonging a case the county cops were ready to close as soon as the tox screens came in. If there was an angry lover or ex-lover, someone with a personal grudge against Miss Ruiz-fine, they were all ears. But it was inconceivable to them that Rosita had been thrown off the balcony by Wink's killer, because it was inconceivable to them that Wink had a killer.
"That's kind of far-fetched, Miss Monaghan, especially when you consider Miss Ruiz was fired on Friday," said Detective Tull, a slight, short man with remarkably tiny feet and an acne-scarred face. The scars gave his handsome face a touching vulnerability. He must be used for the remorseful ones, Tess thought, the tearful women who yearned to confess.
"You see, Miss Monaghan, it makes more sense if she jumped-especially when you see the empty bottle of white wine. Alcohol is a depressant and she was probably plenty depressed, right? She drinks, she eats a little pizza, she thinks about her life, and she steps out on her balcony, then steps out into space. The medical examiner will look for signs of a struggle-skin beneath her fingernails, scratches on her body that might tell us more about how she fell. But everything here is saying suicide. A footstool is pushed up next to the balcony, so she could climb up to the railing. The open balcony door. No one reported hearing a scream last night or early this morning, and no one saw anyone going into her apartment last night."
"No one here ever sees anyone," Tess protested. "Besides, she was a writer, or thought of herself as one. She would have left a note."
"Notes are less common than you think. A whole bottle of wine is considerable when you're as small as she is and you haven't eaten very much-there are only two slices of pizza gone. My guess is the M.E. is going to find she was legally intoxicated." Tull turned to Sterling. "Do you know how to find the next of kin? We'll have to notify them."
"We should have a contact number down at the paper."
Tull stood to leave. His partner, a tall, graceful black man who looked like a dancer, had been standing all along, leaning against the kitchen counter as if he were just passing through.
"You know, normally we don't give the victim's name to the press until we've made that call," Tull said. "We can't keep you from printing what you know, but it would be better if you waited until we talk to her parents."
"Under these circumstances, there won't be a story. We don't write about suicides unless they're somehow public, or involve public figures."
"Well, for now, it's not officially a suicide." Tull looked at Tess, and she knew he was humoring her. "The M.E. will make the ruling on that. We're going to canvass the building, see if anyone heard anything or saw anything. You can sit here for a while, Miss Monaghan, if you don't feel up to driving just yet."
Tess smiled wanly at Tull. She did feel light-headed. Rosita's broken body had looked disturbingly peaceful and composed, sleeping on its bier of brambles and blue grocery bags. If there was an argument to be made for suicide, it was the strange serenity in her face, more relaxed in death than it had ever been in life.