Rita shrugged. Quill, under pretext of neatening up the box, lifted the magazine pile out. Bingo. A set of keys, marked "spares."
Quill reached over the box, hand extended. Rita got out of her chair and shook it. "Thank you so much! I feel a little closer to Nora, now that I've talked to you. I'll just take these, shall I?"
"Gotta sign for 'em," said Rita. "Hang on." She produced a manifest, marked an empty line with a large X, and handed it to Quill. She signed the first name in an illegible scrawl and the last, Cahill, in readable but sloppy script.
"Thanks, Rita. I'll be off."
"Poor thing," said Rita. "Poor, poor thing."
Back in the Oids, Quill turned the engine on and turned up the heat. There was no address book - presumably the police had taken it - and the Rolodex was almost empty. It wasn't going to do a bit of good if she had the keys to Nora's apartment and car without her home address; no celebrity - especially an investigative reporter - was going to risk an open listing in the city phone book.
Quill turned to the papers; there, under a calendar for the coming year marked "compliments of Mac's Garage," she found a letter from Nora's HMO, addressed to 559 Westcott St. Quill hesitated a moment; it was getting late. She didn't want to risk returning to Rita to ask directions to Westcott. But it couldn't be too far; Nora had mentioned being able to walk to work.
Nora hadn't mentioned the fact that Syracuse was an old city, by American standards, and the streets a bewildering labyrinth, twisting around buildings that didn't exist anymore, truncated due to the building of newer roads, blocked by renovations to entire city blocks. She found Westcott after a series of frustrating dead ends.
This whole area, Quill realized, was oriented to nearby Syracuse University. Most of the students had gone home for the holidays, and the parking was relatively easy. She pulled up at the curb next to a row of storefronts that gave her a pang of nostalgia for her days in SoHo in New York: a pizza parlor with the phone number painted on the window in screaming red letters; a small gallery, filled with student work; a boutique clothing store; a business sign for a company called Oddly Enough. She scanned the store numbers and found a door marked 559. She fumbled at the entrance, going through three of the four keys on the ring before she found the right one. Inside, scanning a row of metal mailboxes she found N. CAHILL #3.
The single door at her right was marked 1. Quill mounted the steep stairs. At the top of the landing, #3 was on the left.
The interior of the apartment belied the student atmosphere. Nora had comer rooms, with windows on two sides overlooking Westcott and Argyle. The style was Euro-Tech: Berber carpeting, a black leather couch, plain wrought-iron shelving, and a display of hand thrown pottery. A very nice copy of a de Kooning hung on the wall over the couch. The kitchen was through an open archway on the east wall; the two closed doors on the south wall probably led to bedrooms. The first Quill opened was to a room with a sofa bed and a desk. A window looked out over the back of the building, letting in dim gray light. Quill glanced out; light snow was falling, like spume from a breaking wave. She hesitated, a hand on the overhead light switch, and decided to work in the dimness as best she could.
There was a place on her desk where Nora's PC had a been, marked by cables and an extra battery. Quill flipped through the file case of computer disks. They were all pre-formatted and, as far as she could tell, unused. Were they really empty? Quill wasn't sure. If she were an investigative reporter, she wouldn't label files. She slipped the disks into her shoulder bag.
The desk drawers were filled with stationery, envelopes, a folder of bills neatly marked "paid" with the date of payment, used check registers, and a few bank statements. Nothing unusual, except for the fact that Nora's affairs were so orderly. That was suspicious itself.
The front door opened into the living room, and someone walked in.
Quill swallowed so hard she choked. She stepped to the office door. A man in a suit stood in the center of the living room, behaving much as she had done, casting swift, appraising glances around the room.
Quill's visual memory was good; where Meg could separate flavors into component parts of recipes, Quill's artist's eye, like a good cop's, could categorize age, background, and dress. The man in the living room was from somewhere around the Mediterranean; her guess would be Northern Italy. He was wearing a medium-priced suit with a cut at the edge of this year's fashions. Like his haircut. There were a lot of guys like this one on the streets of New York, lawyers on their first job, mid-level bankers, entry-level stockbrokers.
Quill stepped into the living room. "Excuse me." She kept her voice as well under control as she could, but thought she could hear a nervous quaver. She scowled to cover it.
The guy in the living room didn't jump. This made Quill uneasy. Any friend of Nora's would have assumed the apartment was empty.
"Hi. You're Nora's sister, Sarah?" He stuck out his hand. "Joseph Greenwald."
Well, south of Northern Italy, Quill thought. Very south.
"Rita at the station thought you might be here." Quill looked at him.
"Nora told me quite a bit about you two as kids." He grinned. Like a shark. "You don't know who I am?" Quill cleared her throat. "I can't... that is, Nora never mentioned you."
"No? We've been dating almost a year. But she was pretty goosey about letting anyone know about us. Even you. Her favorite. Sister."
"Why?"
His eyelids fluttered. "She thought the single-minded career woman bit would keep the station focused on her performance. Was she as determined to make it big-time when you two were kids?" He shook his head, clicked his tongue against his teeth, and said admiringly, "That Nora. God. She was one focused lady. I miss her, you know? What a shame. What a rotten shame." He took a step toward her. Quill dodged and moved left, out into the living room, toward the front door.
"Rita said she'd given you the box of Nora's things from the office. If you don't mind, I'd like to take a look. Have you been through it yet? There was a picture of the two of us that I'd like to have, as well." He glanced around the living room. "It's why I came here. To pick it up. She used to keep it on the shelf right here. But it's gone. Was it with her stuff from the office?"
"I haven't had a chance to go through it." Quill added cleverly, "If you leave me your address, Joseph, I'd be happy to mail it to you."
"I'll see you at the funeral, won't I? Could I get it from you there?" He frowned at her expression. "You have been making the arrangements, haven't you? The police wouldn't tell me a damn thing. Just told me anyone could walk off the street and claim they'd known her and I had no proof that we'd been dating." His voice sounded bitter. "She was right on her way to being famous, you know. So anyone could take advantage. People are scum. Just like whoever killed her is scum."
Did Nora have a sister? Suddenly, Quill felt like the worst kind of liar, the most offensive kind of intruder. She was exploiting a tragedy.
Joseph Greenwald sat down on the couch. He looked sad. He also looked as if he had been there before. "The police must have told you if they have a lead on who did it. They'd let family members know."
"I haven't really heard anything," Quill said cautiously.