Chapter 3 - The Woman in Apartment Six
Claire read the anonymous message twice before showing it to Nell.
“Do you know who took this?” she asked.
Nell squinted at the photograph. “That's my shoulder. Ivy was crying right there. But that camera angle's from the sink.”
Ivy shook her head. “I didn't have my phone. Grant collected them at the beginning of the shift and said we'd get them after speeches.”
Claire saved the message and forwarded it to the officer handling the incident. Then she drove home to the duplex she rented three blocks from Maple Court. Her twelve-year-old son, Ben, was asleep on the couch under an old quilt, waiting for her to get back from the wedding. She hadn't told him why she was going. He'd asked only whether Aunt Vanessa would let her sit with family this time.
Claire covered him, turned out the lamp, and cried in the kitchen where he couldn't hear. Not because her sister had knocked her down. She had been picking herself up from Vanessa's cruelty since middle school. It was the memory of her father carefully repairing that gold chair. He used to say nobody should be afraid to take a seat at his table.
In the morning Ben found her elbow wrapped in a towel full of ice.
The bruise looked dramatic against her skin, but the bigger damage was quieter: Ben had heard adults describing his mother as a thief for weeks. She had kept saying the accusation wasn't true without offering him details a child couldn't be expected to carry.
She sat beside him and said, “You don't have to defend me to your friends. Adults are looking at the records. I'm going to tell the truth and let them do their jobs.”
“Does Grandma know?” he asked.
“She knows more than she's saying.”
Ben glanced at the breakfast dishes. “Then she should say it.”
Claire couldn't disagree.
“Did she do that?”
Claire hesitated, then nodded. “She pulled my chair away. I fell.”
Ben stood very still. “You could stop going where they hurt you.”
“I think I can,” she said. “But I'm not leaving the workers with no pay.”
“Those are different things,” he said.
She stared at him. Sometimes her son sounded more grown-up than she was prepared for.
Before nine Claire knocked at unit six in Maple Court. Mrs. Elena Alvarez opened the door with her walker and a dish towel over one shoulder. Her television was on, low. On the table sat a half-finished crossword and a stack of mail secured with a rubber band.
“Baby, come in. I saw the video. Are you all right?”
“My elbow will heal. Have you received anything about moving?”
Elena's smile vanished. She handed Claire a letter dated the previous Thursday. It asked tenants to express interest in a voluntary relocation program. An enclosed form described a payment for residents who surrendered their leases by Friday.
“Julian from the developer came by,” Elena said. “Said the building had bad pipes, that the city was going to condemn it, and I'd be better off signing.”
“Did you?”
“I told him I wanted my daughter to read it first. He said the offer wouldn't last.”
Claire read the letter carefully. It did not state the city had ordered anyone out. There was no inspection notice attached. And Elena's apartment, though old, had a working kitchen and heat. Claire knew because she'd fixed the thermostat herself in January.
A knock interrupted them. Three other tenants had heard Claire was there. Malik Harper brought his lease in a plastic sleeve; Dana Price, a nursing assistant, brought photographs of a man measuring her doorway while her children were at school.
Claire didn't promise to save their homes. “I'm going to ask a housing attorney to look at these. I want you to keep the originals and not sign under pressure.”
Malik nodded. “That's the first honest thing anybody's said to us this week.”
Across the courtyard she spotted Nathan by the hall's loading dock. He wasn't wearing a tuxedo now. Work boots, jeans, dark jacket. He had an open folder in one hand and a coffee in the other. Claire had every reason to avoid a man whose wedding had become part of her humiliation, but she needed to know what his company had agreed to demolish.
“Were you told those apartments were empty?” she asked.
“Yes.” Nathan set down the coffee. “A representative from Westbridge showed me photos of boarded-up rooms. I never walked the property. That's on me.”
“You're a contractor. You know better.”
“I do.” He didn't ask her to make him feel better. “I've suspended our work until we inspect the actual site and review the contract.”
She showed him the tenants' letter. He studied the header. “This isn't from my company. Westbridge's relocation consultant issued it.”
“What can you do?”
“Give you what I have without pretending I'm your lawyer. The building condition report they sent me is dated last winter.”
“Does it say condemnation?”
“No. It recommends ordinary repairs.”
He photographed the letter with Elena's permission. “I'll preserve the tender packet.”
At noon Claire called attorney Jasmine Reed, who had helped Maple Court tenants with a heat complaint two years earlier. Jasmine agreed to meet the residents that evening and said she would review the proposed sale documents before offering any legal conclusion.
Claire found the anonymous sender when she returned to the hall. A young dishwasher named Luis waited by the kitchen's side entrance, twisting a clean towel in his hands.
“I took the photo,” he said. “My phone was hidden behind the sink. Grant didn't see it.”
“Why send it anonymously?”
“Vanessa told me if I testified, my mom would lose her cleaning contract.”
“I'm sorry.”
“I sent it because you used to make sure we got overtime.” He handed her a second picture. “This is the other door.”
It showed a narrow office marked STAFF ONLY. Through its window, Claire recognized the wall of her late father's records room.
A new deadbolt had been installed from the outside.
May you like
And through the glass, somebody had taped a handwritten sign against the inside of the door:
PLEASE DON'T THROW AWAY THE BLUE BOX.
