When they pulled up outside the five-story brick building, Dante removed his wallet and paid the woman behind the wheel. “Thank you.”
She took his money and turned away. Dante climbed out of the vehicle and strode toward the building. Neatly trimmed shrubs and blooming plants lined the outside of the building; the neatly manicured lawn was freshly mowed. The few cars parked in the spots out front were all newer models.
He climbed the stairs to the glass door at the top and studied the keypad under the protective overhang. Last night, Preston gave him the code to enter, and he punched it in again now. When the buzzer sounded, he pulled the door open and entered the clean, brightly lit entry hall.
Like last night, Dante detected the aroma of lemons. Last night, he assumed it was someone cleaning or maybe baking, but it might be one of those diffusers, and someone was obsessed with lemons.
However, the lemon aroma was faint as the stronger scents of pancakes, coffee, and bacon filled the air. The familiar smells brought a smile to his face; he missed bacon. The freshly painted dove gray walls shone under the glow of the recessed lighting, and the blue, industrial carpet looked new.
Dante walked to the end of the hall and the apartment at the end. Lifting his hand, he knocked loudly and waited for a response; there was none.
Leaning closer to the door, he strained to hear any noise coming from inside as he knocked again and waited. The door across the hall opened, and a middle-aged woman with a toddler in her arms leaned out.
“Are you looking for Arnold?” she asked.
“Is he the superintendent?” Dante inquired.
“Yeah.”
“Then yes, I’m looking for Arnold.”
“I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”
Dante kept his surprise over this revelation hidden. Everything he’d seen about this building and the property indicated it was well maintained by someone who put in alotof time here. “Do you often go days at a time without seeing him?”
The woman shifted the toddler on her hip as uneasiness filled her face. “No. I’ve lived here for five years, and I’ve talked to himeveryday. He must have had a family emergency or something.”
“Would he have left without telling anyone?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so; it’s never happened before. Maybe he didn’t have the time to let anyone know he had to leave for a bit. I hope everything’s okay and he’ll be home soon.”
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” he assured her. When she remained standing in the doorway, Dante smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“Oh… ah… yeah,” she muttered.
She ducked back into her apartment and closed the door. He took no offense when the locks clicked into place. Dante turned his attention back to the superintendent’s doorway, but he didn’t bother to knock again.
Maybe Arnold did have a family emergency, but Dante wasn’t buying that. It was a little strange that Jasmine and Arnold would vanish from the same building. But why would Arnold go missing weeks after Jasmine disappeared from Preston’s life? Had Jasmine only recently abandoned her apartment?
One thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to discover any answers standing in this hallway. Grasping the door handle, Dante looked up and down the hall before turning the knob. He expected to have to put his shoulder against the door to break through the locks, but the knob turned easily, and the door swung open.
Standing in the doorway, Dante craned his head to see inside. The door was open, but he still couldn’t walk in there unless invited. Lifting his hand, he pushed it toward the apartment; when it traveled past the doorway, an uneasy feeling twisted in his stomach.
Unless Arnold had moved out or was dead, Dante shouldn’t be able to enter the apartment, but he stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and studied the apartment. Judging by the family photos on the wall, the books sitting on the couch’s end table, and the plants hanging from the windows, Arnold hadn’t moved out.
Dante discovered that all Arnold’s clothes and toiletries remained behind. He even found a few hundred dollars tucked into the sock drawer. No, Arnold hadn’t moved out, but he wasn’t alive either. However, he hadn’t died here as there was no sign of a struggle or a body.
Before leaving the apartment, Dante found a rag and wiped his fingerprints off everything he’d touched. His prints were still on file with the police department, and the last thing he needed was the Boston PD looking for him.
He left the apartment and stood in the hall as he tried to figure out his next move. Who had killed Arnold, and where was the man’s body? Those questions might have nothing to do with Julie; the man might be dead in the park and his body hadn’t been discovered yet.
However, he didn’t think that was the case. There was something strange going on here, and he couldn’t rid himself of the certainty that solving this mystery would help him find Julie. Jasmine’s apartment was on the second floor, and he decided to take another look at it. There might be something he missed.
When he stepped off the stairs and into the hallway of the second floor, he detected an aroma that hadn’t been there last night. Sniffing the air, he caught a faint whiff of something rotten, but it wasn’t coming from this floor.
Dante hated to do it, but he shut down the connection linking him to Cassidy. It would upset her when she discovered it, but if what he suspected lay above did, then he preferred to tell her about it in person. He was determined to keep her out of this as much as possible.
He took the stairs to the third floor and then followed the aroma to the fourth. That was where the faint, sickly sweet smell of rotting meat was a little more potent, and so was the scent of lemons.
