Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

Mooney, Mustang owner, paid the $200, and I was a free woman.
    She’d kept her taxi waiting. I was home in about seven minutes. A red Volkswagen was parked in my space, and Elena said it was Kandi’s. No one was inside it.
    “She must have gone inside,” said Elena. “It’s been about an hour and a half since I sent her. Call me in the morning, and I’ll come get you and drive you back to get your car. It’s the least I can do.”
    I gave her the keys to the Mustang and told her where to find it.
    Stuck halfway into my mailbox slot, so that it could be easily extracted, was a folded piece of lined paper from a pocket notebook. I unfolded it and read: “R—US w/p. K.” I took it to mean “upstairs with purse” and mentally applauded Kandi for being so cryptic. This is always wise, I think, when leaving notes practically in public. The only thing was, if I hadn’t talked to Elena first, I wouldn’t have known who “K” was. But this was a quibble: she’d have identified herself through the intercom as soon as I rang the doorbell. I pressed the button to prove it.
    No one answered, so I figured she was asleep. Since there’s a little overhang in the entryway where the mailboxes are, I wasn’t getting wet, but it was two-thirty and I wanted to go to bed. I rang a lot more times—more than I needed to, because I was getting damned impatient. But still nobody answered.
    There was nothing to do but ring the other doorbells until someone answered. I’d probably wake someone up, but it couldn’t be helped. I pressed the manager’s bell first. It’s her job to be inconvenienced.
    Her voice was husky over the intercom: “What is it?”
    “Mrs. Garcia, it’s Rebecca Schwartz. I’m locked out. Could you buzz me in?”
    “Oh Lord. Okay, come to my apartment for your key. I’m too tired to meet you at yours.”
    “It’s okay. I have an extra key on the doorsill. All you have to do is buzz me through the gate.”
    She did, and I said thanks, but she didn’t answer.
    I’m foolhardy enough to keep a key on my doorsill because I have a tendency to lock myself out when I go to the garbage chute. It’s not the safest thing in the world, but I feel like an idiot having to beg Mrs. Garcia to let me in my own apartment, so I’m willing to take the chance.
    I decided I’d probably wake up everybody in the building except Kandi if I banged on the door. I’d use the extra key and if I scared her, it was too bad. I felt for it and unlocked the door. Even though the lights were on, I reached automatically for the light switch to the right of the door. I did it even though I could plainly see that someone had ransacked my house and left Kandi dead on my Flokati rug. The mind is a funny thing.
    Kandi was lying half-on and half-off the rug, with one leg kind of folded under her and the other stretched out under the aquarium stand. Her hair and my rug were stained and so was the base of my Don Quixote statue, which had been tossed carelessly on the rug, apparently after serving to bash Kandi’s brains out. (I meant that figuratively—there weren’t any brains in view. If there had been, I know for a fact I’d have screamed, which I didn’t.) I suppose Kandi must have fought for her life because a lot of fluffy apricot feathers had settled on the rug and on my two white sofas. I think I hated the feathers most of all. They reminded me of something: a cat Gary and I had kept that came and went as it pleased through a cat door. More than once, we came home and found feathers all over the living room. That was the cat’s way of showing us he’d made a kill. I hadn’t had much experience with death, but I associated feathers with it.
    A few books had been torn from my bookcase, my purse and Kandi’s had been emptied on the coffee table, and the sofa pillows were on the floor. That was about all there was to the ransacking. There aren’t many secret crannies in my living room.
    Now, as I have mentioned, I did not scream. But I wasn’t altogether brave and true about the situation either. I probably should have gone and felt Kandi’s pulse to make sure she was dead. But I didn’t; I just assumed she was.
    After absorbing death and ransacking, my quicksilver brain hopped right on to the next subject: the whereabouts of the murderer. He might still be in the apartment, and it wasn’t big enough for both of us.
    Although it’s Mrs. Garcia’s job to be inconvenienced, I didn’t go to her apartment. I went