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“How long were you gone?”
“About five minutes. It was an easy fix.”
“Has a camera malfunction ever happened before?” I ask.
“Not on my watch,” Charlie says.
“When did you notice it was out?”
“A little after one a.m.”
My body freezes. That was around the same time I heard the scream and went to check on Ingrid. Five minutes later, she was gone. Which means Ingrid left immediately after I returned to 12A.
The timing seems too convenient to be a coincidence. In fact, the camera being disconnected just as Ingrid left strikes me as being a distraction.
My first thought is that Ingrid did it herself so that she could leave unnoticed—which would make little sense. There’s no rule requiring apartment sitters to remain at the Bartholomew if they don’t want to. And Charlie wouldn’t have stopped her. He probably would have hailed her a cab and wished her well.
Besides, that would have required Ingrid to gather all her belongings, travel to the basement to disconnect the camera, then go back to the eleventh floor so she could then carry her things all the way down to the lobby. That’s a lot of work for something she was well within her right to do, and it surely would have taken more than five minutes. Especially if she arrived at the Bartholomew with a lot of personal belongings.
“Were you on duty when Ingrid moved in?” I say.
Charlie nods.
“How much did she have with her?”
“I can’t really remember,” he says. “Two suitcases, I think. Plus a couple of boxes.”
“Did you see anyone going to the basement before you realized the camera was out?”
“I didn’t. I was outside, attending to another resident.”
“At that hour? Who was it?”
Charlie straightens his spine, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t think Mrs. Evelyn will like that I’m telling you so much. I want to help, but—”
“I know, I know. The building’s big on privacy. But Ingrid’s basically the same age as your daughter. If she were missing, you’d be asking a lot of questions, too.”
“If my daughter was missing, I wouldn’t rest until I found her.”
My father had said the same thing once. He meant it at the time. I’m sure of it. But that’s the thing about searching. It wears you down. Emotional erosion.
“Don’t you think Ingrid deserves the same treatment?” I say. “You don’t have to tell me a name. Just give me a little hint.”
Charlie sighs and looks past me to the flowers on the coffee table. A hint almost as massive as the bouquet itself.
“She took the dog out a little before one,” Charlie says. “I was outside with her the entire time. You know, making sure nothing bad happened. That’s not the hour a woman should be on the street alone. Once Rufus did his business, we went back inside. She took the elevator to the seventh floor, and I peeked at the security monitors. That’s when I saw the camera in the basement was out.”
This means Marianne was in the elevator at roughly the same time Ingrid supposedly left her apartment.
“Thank you, Charlie.” I snap off a rosebud from the bouquet and place it in the button hole on his lapel. “You’ve been a huge help.”
“Please don’t tell Mrs. Evelyn I said anything,” Charlie begs as he adjusts his makeshift boutonniere.
“I won’t. I got the feeling from Leslie that it’s a sore subject around here.”
“Considering the way Ingrid departed, I’m pretty sure Mrs. Evelyn regrets ever letting her stay here in the first place.”
With a tip of his cap, Charlie opens the door to leave. Before he can make it all the way out of the apartment, I toss him one last question.