“But you don’t understand—” I said, but he cut me off.
“Don’t bother. I’ve heard it all. There’s nothing you can do or say that someone else hasn’t already tried, and it didn’t work for them, either. You’re wasting your time.” He pushed the phone back toward me without trying a single thing.
“You remember that viral flash mob video that was going around on Monday? The girl who fell off the elevated walkway at Domino Park in the middle of a marriage proposal?” I asked.
“Do I ever! Stuff like that never happens in this neighborhood. I must have watched that a dozen times.”
“This”—I picked the phone up off the counter and waggled it in front of his face—“is her phone. The girl who fell.” Now I had his attention. “The police think it was an accident, but I know it was a murder and the proof I need is on this phone. By refusing to help me, you’re practically helping a killer walk free.”
He sighed. “Tell you the truth, lady, I can’t unlock it. Like it’s not possible, especially if the last update’s installed.”
“But you can see her cloud account, right?”
“I can see that she has one,” he admitted, “but it’s encrypted. Wait a sec.” He started typing on the keyboard under the desk, frowning at the screen in front of him.
“You do have a back door. I knew it!”
“Sit tight. I just wanna see . . . Let me check this one thing . . .” He typed frantically, but when he stopped and looked up at me, his expression was grim. “Good news and bad news.”
“Hit me.”
“I can’t crack it.” I sighed. “But,” he added, one finger in the air, “she has Smart Lock turned on.”
“What’s that?”
“There are lots of options. Could be she set it up to unlock whenever she’s walking, but that’s buggy as anything. Chances are her phone automatically unlocks in certain locations or near another Bluetooth-enabled device.”
“Can you tell where?” I asked, leaning over to see if I could catch a glimpse of the screen.
“Nope.”
“All right, thanks.” Painfully aware that the line behind me was losing patience, I pocketed Bethany’s cell phone and stepped aside. I had a feeling he could give me more information if he had wanted to, but short of violating the Geneva Convention, I didn’t have a lot of options.
Technically, I could turn the phone over to the cops. They had resources I didn’t. But Castillo had made it perfectly clear that there was no case to investigate. At first, I’d gotten the impression he wasn’t completely sold and was clinging to the hope that I could convince him. When he’d been in the lobby of my building last night, that hope surged front and center—and then came crashing down when I realized he’d come to take Izzy out on a date.
Cops didn’t date possible suspects, witnesses, or coworker-slash-friends of the deceased. At least, good cops didn’t. That he was free to date Izzy meant he wasn’t investigating Bethany’s death as a homicide. A phone in itself wasn’t going to change that. I needed to find real, hard, actionable evidence. But to do that, I needed to crack the phone. Which I couldn’t do without a warrant.
I was caught in a vicious circle.
Moaning about all the things I didn’t have—a warrant, a cool hacker friend, any experience or training in the investigative arts—wasn’t gonna get me anywhere. Maybe someone on YouTube knew how to unlock the phone, but chances were any links I clicked on would be loaded with viruses, not solutions. I tried to focus on what I did know. Bethany spent most of her time at her boyfriend Marco’s place in Queens, the apartment she shared with Cherise and her other roommates in Bed-Stuy, and Untapped Books & Café.
Now would be as good a time as any to pop by the shop and see if her phone automagically unlocked for me. But if I did that, Todd would definitely rope me into working, especially since I’d skipped out on half of my shift yesterday. As much as I loved my job—and really, I did!—I needed a day off now and then to recharge, especially with Todd always getting me to do the odd jobs that he should be doing, the ones that had nothing at all to do with waiting tables and serving craft beer and artisan sandwiches.
Speaking of which, I should probably post something to the social media accounts. I never should have let Todd railroad me into taking responsibility for all of the advertising and outreach on the internet. But who else was going to do it? Todd? He probably still had a Myspace account. Andre? Unlike Todd, he had his hands full actually working.
I dashed off a quick tweet about escaping the heat with a cold beer and a hot new book and clicked post. Almost as soon as I did, a DM popped up. I hadn’t been keeping up with notifications as well as I should have, but since the store got dozens of mentions a day, it would practically be a full-time job to reply to all of them. Other than scanning them to make sure none of them were spam or bots, I ignored them. If Todd wanted me to answer every reply, he was going to have to cover my tables and pay me minimum wage.
But a direct message was different. Maybe someone had a complaint and they were willing to report it privately instead of putting us on blast. To be honest, it was probably some rando with “genuine, honest, and caring” in their bio wanting to “make a special friend.” Those accounts got an autoblock from me, even when I was logged in as the store.
I clicked on the message. It didn’t appear to be a deposed foreign prince or a spam bot, at least not at first glance. In fact, the message appeared to have gone back and forth with the shop quite a few times. I assumed it was Bethany who replied to earlier DMs. The message came from someone named Stefanie99NYC—why did that name sound so familiar?—and the latest read, “Have u forgotten Bethany so soon? Did she mean nothing to u? Would it kill u 2 to say something? Or does that not match ur greedy corporate ‘brand’?”
Yikes. That was a lot to unpack. I should have let Todd handle this, but if I knew him, he’d ignore the DM or block the user, even though previous messages indicated they were a loyal customer. I dashed off a quick reply, “Thanks for your concern. Bethany will always be a member of the Untapped family.” I hit send before I could overthink it.
Stefanie99NYC did have a point. In addition to the wake that Izzy was planning, it would be nice to put some kind of tribute to her up on our social media accounts. Too bad Todd would never allow such a thing.
Since Untapped was out, I decided to try my luck at Bethany’s apartment instead. The whole train ride to Bed-Stuy, I racked my brain, trying to figure out who this mysterious Stefanie99NYC was. I couldn’t remember meeting anyone named Stefanie in Brooklyn. I tried to learn the names of the regulars, but if she was a bookstore patron only or liked to frequent the café in the evenings, our paths might never have crossed.
I got off the subway and headed toward Bethany’s old apartment with the help of the map app on my phone, which had not failed me yet. Sure, I’d been to her apartment once before, but I always got turned around leaving a subway station and my GPS had a better sense of direction than I did.
I reached the building with no problem. When I pressed the buzzer, a male voice answered. “Sup?”
“Hi, my name’s Odessa. I’m a friend of Bethany’s.”
“She’s . . .” He hesitated, unsure how to proceed. “She doesn’t live here anymore.”
Well, that was one way of putting it. “I know,” I told him. “I was wondering if I could have a minute?”
“I’ve gotta leave for work in a few,” he replied.
“It will only take a sec,” I assured him.
He buzzed the door open, and I hurried up the steps. A man stood in the doorway to their apartment. He was taller than me, which applied to at least 80 percent of the population over the age of fifteen, and was wearing a poufy white blousy shirt, black boxers, and nothing else. “I’m Tran Nguyen,” he said, eyeing me warily. “What’d you say your name was again?”
“Odess
a. Odessa Dean,” I said, enunciating carefully. “I worked with Bethany at Untapped Books & Café.”
“And?” he asked. Unlike Cherise, he didn’t seem inclined to invite me inside.
“And I’ve got Bethany’s phone. Before I give it to her next of kin, I wanted to double-check that there’s nothing, you know, embarrassing on it.” I’d lied more the last three days than I’d lied in my entire life up until then. I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that I was doing it so much, or that it was getting to be so easy.
“So?”
“So, I think there might be something in the apartment that will help me unlock it. Mind if I have a look around?”
He opened the door wider. “Knock yourself out.” Once I entered the tiny apartment that the four roommates shared, he pointed to five boxes of varying sizes stacked against the wall. “That’s her stuff. You gonna take those, too? It’s bad enough that Bethany took up half the apartment when she was alive and not paying rent. Now that she’s dead and not paying rent, we’re still stuck storing her junk.”
Sounded like Tran wasn’t Bethany’s biggest fan. Then again, if she was as big of a slob as Cherise had said, and didn’t carry her weight with the rent, I didn’t blame her roomies for resenting her. The worst part was Tran had caught me in a lie even if he didn’t realize it. If I admitted that I didn’t know Bethany’s next of kin, he would question why I was trying to unlock her phone. If I agreed to take the boxes, not only did I have to haul them back to Williamsburg, but then I had to figure out what to do with them.
I couldn’t throw them out. This was everything Bethany owned in this world. Besides, something in those boxes might tell me why she died, or who killed her. “Sure. Can you help me carry them downstairs?”
“Whatever.” He grabbed the two smaller boxes on top and headed for the door.
As soon as he was out of sight, I pulled out Bethany’s phone and clicked the button to wake it up. It was still solidly, stubbornly on the lock screen. Drat.
I walked around the apartment, waving the phone around like I was in one of those high-tech spy movies and I was scanning for bugs. Nothing happened. The apartment wasn’t large, and it only took a minute to cover the whole place. Nothing, with a side of nothing, and a glass of nothing on the side.
What was it that the guy at the cell phone store with the Santa beard had said about Smart Lock? It could be set to unlock to a specific location, or to a Bluetooth object. I’d hoped that she’d set it for her home, but with three roomies, she couldn’t have had much privacy here. Maybe something in those boxes had Bluetooth enabled, and when it was powered on, would pair up with her phone. I crossed my fingers, grabbed a box, and lugged it downstairs.
I had to squeeze past Tran on the stairs. After depositing the box, I headed upstairs for the rest. Luckily Tran was on his way down with another box, leaving only one for me to lug downstairs. “Thanks,” I told him.
“Sure. Is that all?”
“You wouldn’t happen to know someone named Stefanie, would you?” I asked.
“Stefanie-with-an-f or Stephanie-with-a-ph?” he asked.
“Either,” I said.
“Nope,” he replied.
“Then why did you . . .” I stopped myself. Why would he care how Stefanie spelled her name if he didn’t know any Stefanies? “Never mind. It’s not important. Let me grab the last box, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
I retrieved the last box and carried it down to the foyer with the rest of them. Fans were blowing in the apartment, but the hall, without any windows, was stifling hot. I ordered an Uber—no way I was gonna be able to lug all of those boxes on the subway in one trip—and while I waited for it to arrive, I ducked into the kitchen to see if I could snag a drink of water.
As soon as I stepped across the threshold, Bethany’s phone vibrated. I pulled it out of my pocket to see what new message had arrived, but instead of seeing the lock screen with a notification banner at the top, I was presented with her home screen, complete with a jumble of app icons.
18
Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ June 27
I listen to lots of true crime podcast, so basically I’m a detective, right? #publiclibraries #nosynellie
Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ June 27
*podcasts
Twitter really needs an edit button!
THE KITCHEN WAS the key, of course.
Bethany was most at home in the kitchen, mixing the scents and colors and various ingredients that would become her soap creations. It made total sense that this would be the place where her phone unlocked automatically. When she was making soap, her hands would be too full to constantly be unlocking her screen. Besides, when she was setting up videos and photo shoots, the last thing she needed was her phone timing out and going to sleep.
Forgetting for a minute all about the glass of water I so desperately needed, I opened the phone’s security settings and tried to pair the Smart Lock with my own phone to make it easier to access later. As soon as I went to save the changes, I was prompted to enter a code. Great. If I knew that, I wouldn’t need the Smart Lock in the first place.
I glanced at my own screen. The Uber was five minutes out, and I still needed to drag all of the boxes down the steps and out to the curb. I didn’t have much time.
I scrolled through her text messages first. Many of the unreads were automated alerts from YouTube, Twitter, Venmo, and other apps, but others were friends reaching out. Either they’d heard the news and didn’t want to believe it, or they were wondering why they hadn’t heard from her in a few days and were starting to get worried. I would have dug deeper, but I was running out of time.
Juggling the phone in one hand to keep it from locking due to inactivity, I tried to carry the boxes out in the other hand, but they were too big and unwieldy. I gave up and dragged all of the boxes to the door, propping the front door open so I could get back inside. Once all of the boxes were piled up on the curb, I went inside one last time to unlock the phone again, but Tran was coming down the stairs.
He was dressed like a pirate, from black-and-red-striped pants to a tricorn hat and an eye patch. The only thing his costume was missing was a stuffed parrot on his shoulder. “You’re still here?” he asked.
“Just waiting on my Uber,” I told him.
“You might have better luck if you wait outside,” he said pointedly.
“I’m gonna grab some water real quick.”
“What? You don’t have water in your own apartment? Look, lady, I’m gonna be late for work. You gotta go.”
I glanced down at Bethany’s phone. I was too far from the kitchen and the screen was dark. “Just one . . .”
He cut me off. “Now.” I stepped outside, and he followed to make sure that the door closed behind us. “Bye, Felicia,” Tran said. He walked down the sidewalk, looking like he was on his way to plunder the high seas. My Uber pulled up to the curb and the window for getting any more information from Bethany’s phone today vanished.
I wrangled the boxes into the Uber—much to the driver’s completely unhelpful amusement—and dragged them up to my aunt’s apartment, more grateful than ever for her elevator. Most apartment buildings in New York didn’t have elevators unless they were high-rises. Even then, they only worked on occasion. On scorching summer days, elevator service was limited and riding one came with the risk of being stuck inside during one of the common rolling power brown-outs.
Hardly a day passed without a new horror story of people trapped in elevators or elevators stuck in flooded basements. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got. Then I remembered this building had backup generators and had been gutted and rebuilt from the studs up in the late 2000s, when safety codes were considerably stricter than during the construction of most of the older Manhattan apartment buildings.
As I spread the boxes around the living room,
Rufus came over to investigate. Like most cats, he was obsessed with squeezing into any available space, especially spaces where he wasn’t welcome. I did a cursory examination of the boxes and was disappointed—but not surprised—that Bethany’s missing bracelet was nowhere in sight. Likewise, I found no laptop, video camera, or anything of value.
It wouldn’t surprise me if her roommates had neglected to pack anything worth more than a few dollars, especially if Bethany was behind in rent like normal.
She had fewer clothes and toiletries than I expected. Either her roommates had tossed out her half-used shampoo bottles rather than packing them up for collection, or most of her belongings were at her boyfriend’s. Or was that ex-boyfriend?
I wondered if Marco would want some of this stuff. Most of it looked like junk to me, but it might have sentimental value for him. I texted him and hoped he’d text me back.
The rest of the contents—a half-empty box of disposable gloves, several glass beakers, a variety of silicone molds, a pack of masks like the one I’d worn at the garbage facility, a scarred cutting board, and heavy-duty pink goggles—had a faint scent of sandalwood clinging to them. If I hadn’t known better, I would wonder if Bethany was cooking up designer recreational drugs behind closed doors. But I knew from spending several unproductive hours on Bethany’s YouTube channel looking for some kind of clue that these were common soap-making supplies.
Unless, of course, the soap-making was just a cover story? If Bethany had been making drugs, that could be a motive for murder. I shook my head. I was letting my imagination run away with me. If Bethany was selling drugs, she wouldn’t need a waitress job at Untapped, now would she? I needed to concentrate on the few clues I did have without inventing wild theories.
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