Trouble Magnet Page 3

  3: What Needed To Be Done

  “No time,” turned out to be three hours. Not that anything got squared away since the police still had no idea who killed Ms. Sinclair. All the detectives who took over from Officer Williams were able to figure out was that we all lived in the most ridiculous apartment building on the planet and both Baxter and I had airtight alibis for the time of the murder, which had happened around three in the afternoon.

  Knowing I had been in classes all day, seen by several dozen people, didn’t make Baxter any more inclined to be civil, and knowing he’d been in a diversity training meeting all afternoon with twenty of his coworkers certainly didn’t make me think him any less capable of murdering someone. Namely me. I’d be watching my back around him from now on.

  By the time I made it home and collapsed on Bernadette’s couch, I figured it was probably time to call my sister back and explain a few things.

  “I have been trying to call you for the last three hours!” Bernadette exploded as soon as she picked up. “What on earth has been going on? The last thing I heard from you was ‘He killed her,’ and then nothing!”

  “Sorry.” I honestly couldn’t remember when I’d hung up on her, but I hadn’t even thought about her again until the police had cut me loose a little while ago.

  “Explain,” Bernadette demanded.

  Knowing this was going to take a while, I lay down on the couch and settled in. “Ms. Sinclair is dead. Murdered. Somebody stabbed her…more than once it sounds like.”

  “And you know who did it?” Bernadette gasped.

  “Well…I thought I did.”

  Groaning, Bernadette pieced the one comment she’d heard earlier with my hesitation to continue. “You didn’t, did you? Please tell me you did not accuse Baxter of killing Ms. Sinclair.”

  “Well, honestly, what else was I supposed to think?”

  “Nothing! It’s not your business who killed her. Stay out of it, Eliza, for your own safety, and because you barely know any of the people you might accuse. Baxter would never hurt anyone. I can’t believe you told the police he killed her.”

  “I can’t believe you’re taking his side!” I snapped. What happened to the sister who understood me and tried to help me through tough stuff like this? When did she turn into this person who tricked me into living in an apartment I was more likely to get murdered in than have a repair made without something blowing up? All just so she didn’t have to pay higher rent.

  Bernadette sighed, and I knew she felt bad. “I’m not taking Baxter’s side, but you really shouldn’t have accused him of anything. I know he can be intimidating, but he’s really a decent guy. Most of the people in the building are. All the weird rules and requirements just tend to get everyone riled up now and again, and people like Ms. Sinclair don’t help the situation.”

  Her claim of Baxter being a good guy wasn’t going to win me over any time soon, but I knew that last part was definitely true. I couldn’t believe so many people were willing to put up with this bizarre place just to have cheaper rent.

  “Maybe it wasn’t Baxter who killed her.” I was willing to admit that. The rest was still up for debate. “Somebody did kill her, though, and as soon as that sinks in, I’m really going to be freaked out. What if it’s someone who lives here?”

  “I doubt it’s anyone who lives in the building, Eliza,” Bernadette said in the comforting tone I was accustomed to.

  I wanted to let her words sink in and work like they usually would, but it wasn’t going to happen. Not this time. “Her door was locked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the deadbolt was locked when they found her.”

  “How did they find her then?” she asked.

  I shuddered thinking about it, glad I hadn’t come home any earlier and seen it without being prepared. “The lady who lives next to her, I can’t remember her name…”

  “Suzanne Pollard.”

  “Yeah, she was walking down the hall and saw blood seeping out from under the door. She called Sonya, who opened the door, and they found her there in the entryway. The police thought the murderer must have gone out the window, but…”

  “Ms. Sinclair doesn’t have a fire escape because it’s too close to the neighboring building to fit one,” Bernadette finished.

  “Plus, the window was still locked, too,” I said, “which means…the person who killed her had access to a key.”

  Bernadette was silent for a long time. When she spoke, I could hear fear thick in her voice. “It could have been a family member’s key, or she could have lost her key. Sometimes she’d leave them stuck in her mailbox downstairs.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, but neither of us really bought that. “The police said her keys weren’t in her apartment anywhere.”

  “I’m so sorry, Eliza. I never would have suggested you move in if I didn’t think it was safe. You shouldn’t have to deal with something like this again.”

  She really did sound contrite this time. Not like earlier when we’d talked about the non-murderous brand of craziness of this place. Sure, my sister may have willingly led me into the ultimate nuthouse, but she’d never knowingly put me in danger.

  “You don’t think…” I hesitated, trying to shove my fears back down into the deep recesses where they had lived for the past five years. “It couldn’t be…him. Right?”

  “Of course not,” Bernadette said quickly. “He’s gone. Even the police agreed you were safe now.”

  Like that meant much. I took a deep breath, working to convince myself that my sister was right. I would never have left the bakery and my safe but lonely life if it hadn’t been true.

  “How’d you find out so much anyway? The police shouldn’t be releasing that much information to you,” Bernadette said.

  “They didn’t, well, not on purpose anyway.”

  Bernadette sounded tired as she yawned and said, “Well, I’m sure the police will figure everything out soon. Until then, be extra careful, and if you need anything, Baxter is right next door.”

  Scoffing at the suggestion, I wanted to hang up on her just to show her what I thought of that. “Under no circumstances would I ever go to Baxter for help.”

  My sister knew better than to argue with me, so she just made me promise I’d be extra vigilant and to call her every day so she’d know I was okay. A million promises later, she finally said goodnight and went to bed. I was too keyed up to sleep, but I had no intention of moving from the couch for at least another hour. The knots in my neck and shoulders were just beginning to relax when my phone buzzed and a number I didn’t recognize popped up on my screen.

  ***

  I thought I was angry at Baxter before. Now, he was the one who needed to watch out for someone sneaking up behind him with a wrench, or whatever it was I had in my hand. Thankfully, Sonya had known where my sister usually kept her tools and plumbing kit. I didn’t know what half the things in her toolbox were called, and even less about what they were used for, but I was standing at Baxter’s door waiting for him to answer all the same.

  After making me wait in the hall like an orphan begging for food, Baxter finally deigned to get off his ass and answer the door. It was plain as day he was enjoying this. “Since I’m not sitting in jail right now, no thanks to you, I figured it was as good of a time as any to get that leaky bathroom faucet taken care of.”

  “I almost wish Officer Williams had kept me overnight,” I grumbled when he let me in. Maybe he thought he was getting a little payback, but the joke was probably going to be on him because I had no idea what I was doing.

  Noticing the absolutely pristine order of his entire apartment as I walked through only made me hate him even more. Tidiness and I had long been enemies. Baxter was a jerk and a neat freak. Who would have guessed? My mood soured even more when he directed me into the bathroom. The counters were spotless. Not a bottle or toothbrush anywhere. Not even a stray hair or water droplet on the mirror above the sink. Who was this guy?
Nobody’s apartment should be this clean.

  “Well, let me know when you’re done,” Baxter chirped before abandoning me to failure.

  A string of names I was sure would have made Bernadette frown at me ran through my head as I hefted my screwdriver and wrench thingy and stared at the offending faucet. How did you make a faucet stop leaking? Was there something wrong with one of the handles, or was it the part the water came out of? What if the problem was a pipe I couldn’t see?

  Completely clueless as to what my first step should be, I did what I usually did when I needed to find an ingredient substitution or measurement conversion. I Googled it. A billion and a half results popped up in less than a second. Were there really that many different ways to fix a faucet? Good gracious, I was going to be stuck in Baxter’s bathroom forever!

  Not wanting to spend a minute more in this place than I had to, I clicked on the first YouTube video in the list, closed the door so Baxter couldn’t hear the sound, and then hit play. Three seconds in, I was completely lost. The faucet in the video had one long handle that extended over the spout part and the guy on the video was using all kinds of terms that went right over my head.

  I skimmed down to the comments to see if anyone had a simplified explanation and stared at the comments in shock.

  “I hope you die! This made no sense, you asshole!”

  “If I had been trying to confuse myself this would have been the perfect video!”

  “Trying to impress us all with your ability to use a thesaurus? WTF?”

  “You managed to turn a simple repair into building a damn spaceship!”

  Cringing at the furious comments, I went back to the search results and tried again. I clicked though a series of videos looking for something better, and ended up watching crickets and spiders fight each other in Mason jars, before pulling myself out of the YouTube hole I’d gotten sucked into and starting over. Finally, I found a video that had two knobs on either side of the spout like Baxter’s did. Hallelujah! I hit play and zeroed in on what he was saying. Half a second later, banging on the door made me yelp and drop the phone.

  “Are you almost done yet? How long can it possibly take to fix a little leak?”

  “It’ll take as long as I feel like taking!” It was tempting to whack the door just to see if it would hit Baxter’s head in the process. “Go away or it’ll take me even longer!”

  Grumbling accompanied his retreat, but he did leave, thankfully. By the time I picked up my phone and turned my attention back to the video, I’d missed a few minutes, but the guy talking seemed to just be rambling on forever about nothing, so I didn’t bother starting it over. Eventually, he got to the actual fixing part of the explanation with barely three minutes left on the video and I set to work loosening the little screws on top of the knobs that turned the water on and off.

  After dropping one of the knobs on the floor, I got the other one off with no trouble and set them both on the top of the toilet so I wouldn’t lose them. I was feeling pretty proud of myself at that point. Maybe it wouldn’t be quite as hard as I’d thought. Hitting play on the video again, I watched the guy use what he confirmed to definitely be a wrench, to loosen a nut of some kind that was holding the metal tubey thing the knob connected to in place.

  It didn’t look like it would be too hard to get it off and check the O-ring mentioned in the video. Famous last words. As soon as I started loosening the nut, I knew I was in trouble. Water definitely did not start spraying everywhere when the guy in the video used his infernal wrench! Covering it with my hand did nothing but send the water spraying directly at me rather than at the ceiling. Swearing at it did even less. Wrapping a towel around it helped some, enough that I was able to turn the spraying into more of a puddling. I’d take what I could get at that point.

  Frantic to fix the mess before Baxter pounded down the door and really did murder me for destroying his bathroom, I fished my phone out of my back pocket where I’d stuck it before picking up the wrench, and desperately dragged the cursor back to the beginning of the video. Whatever I’d missed thanks to Baxter’s banging must have been way more important than I’d thought. Water was creeping into my shoes as the puddle on the floor grew into a small pond before I found what I was looking for.

  “Before starting your repair, turn off the water to the sink,” the guy in the video instructed.

  Cursing Baxter, his stupid sink, and the guy in the video for not repeating that crucial tidbit of information after his ten minute monologue about nothing, I stuck my phone in my back pocket, where it would hopefully stay dry, and thrust my head under the waterfall now raining down from the sink in search of the shutoff valve. Water running in my eyes certainly didn’t help me find it any quicker, but given that there was only one knob-type thing down there, I twisted it for all I was worth.

  The waterfall didn’t stop immediately, but it fizzled out quickly enough. I had no idea what to do about the lake on the floor, but I was pretty sure I knew how to stop the faucet from leaking now. I worked like lightning, removing the nut and replacing the O-rings on both handles, then slapping them back together. I was hesitant to turn the water back on, but given that ninety percent of my body and clothes were already soaked and Baxter’s bathroom was a complete loss, I figured another geyser wasn’t exactly going to make things worse.

  Closing my eyes, I gave the shutoff valve a twist and jumped back, ready to cover my face, if need be. Wonder of wonders, nothing happened. The water stayed where it was supposed to—you know, except for what was on the tile and slowly soaking into the carpet peaking under the bathroom door—and when I turned the handles on and off, there wasn’t a single leak. I was about to chalk this up as a win until I took a step and splashed water all over the wall.

  That was about the time Baxter yanked the bathroom door open.

  “What the hell did you do in here?” he demanded.

  Fear that he might ring my neck somehow got buried under my smug satisfaction at seeing the horror on his face when he looked at his no longer pristine bathroom. “I stopped your faucet from leaking. Isn’t that what you asked me to do?”

  Baxter’s mouth opened, closed, then fell open again. Finally, he sucked in an angry sounding breath and leveled a finger at me. “You are going to clean up every spec of water!”

  “Sorry,” I interrupted, “I’m not in charge of cleaning services, just plumbing. You’ll have to talk to someone else about that.”

  Having no clue where that came from, I decided to bail before my newfound moxie ran out and I started crying or passed out or something equally embarrassing. I grabbed Bernadette’s plumbing kit, the screwdriver, and the wrench, and bolted from Baxter’s apartment like it was on fire…although it would be highly unlikely to catch fire at this point given how much water there was all over it.

  I was so eager to get away, I ran right into Sonya and we both pitched over onto the ground in a mess of arms and legs and plumbing equipment. Sonya was the first to right herself and offered me a hand. “Were you just in Baxter’s apartment?” she asked in surprise. “And why on earth do you look like you went skinny dipping without remembering to take off your clothes first?”

  “Wouldn’t that just be regular swimming, then?”

  “Not with street clothes on. You’d have to be in a bathing suit for regular swimming.”

  I couldn’t argue with her there.

  In answer to Sonya’s original question, Baxter burst out of his apartment a moment later spouting off about how I’d ruined his bathroom and he fully expected me to get back in there this minute and clean it all up. There was no way that was going to happen, regardless of what Sonya said, but she surprised me by listening to Baxter’s entire rant before looking at him with a completely neutral expression and saying, “But she fixed your leaky faucet, right?”

  “Yes! I already said that,” he snapped.

  Turning to me, Sonya grinned and said, “Sounds to me like you did what needed to be done. Congrats on your
first successful plumbing repair!”

  “Successful?” Baxter howled.

  “Well, she did fix the faucet,” Sonya argued. “I’m sure you can handle the cleanup. After all, you’re perfectly capable of fixing a leaky faucet on your own. If you decided to call in a completely inexperienced young girl to do it for you instead, that’s your own problem from where I’m standing. Next time, just man up and do it yourself like you usually do.”

  Beyond infuriated by that point, Baxter slammed his door shut without another word. As soon as the reverberation stopped, Sonya and I both burst into unrestrained laughter. We were still laughing by the time I unlocked my apartment door and I gestured for her to come in. Sonya flopped onto the couch as I headed to the bedroom for dry clothes. She was flipping through channels on the TV when I reemerged looking a little less like a drowned rat.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I asked, searching for a way to get back at Baxter for venting his anger on me as he had, “what is Baxter’s building assignment?”

  A devilish grin spread wide across her lips as she instantly seemed to understand my motivation for asking. “Smoke detectors.”

  4: Worth Killing Over

  On edge from the previous day’s events, I hadn’t slept well, which meant I’d overslept and was now in a hurry to get out of the building and catch the subway. I couldn’t leave without stopping by Sonya’s office, though. Hoping it would only take a second to check in with her, I bounded across the lobby and reached for the doorknob. The sound of raised voices made me freeze. Chances were, one of the crazy residents of this building were having their daily freak out about one thing or another. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I couldn’t help listening in.

  “I just need to get in for a few minutes!” a male voice shouted. “Some of my stuff is still in there and I need it.”

  “I’m sorry, Lucas, but you’re not on your aunt’s lease. I know you’d been staying with her for a few weeks, but you have no legal reason to be in the apartment, and even if you had, it’s still a crime scene. Until the police say it’s okay, I can’t let anyone inside the apartment. You’re just going to have to wait.”