Page 42 of A Murder is Going Down

Farnoosh smiles, but her eyes almost immediately flick back to her computer screen. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she tells the screen. And then, ‘Sorry, I’m on deadline.’

‘This way,’ Sarah says, leading us to a smaller room overfilled with two leather couches, an upright piano and a gigantic bookshelf that immediately puts me at ease. The urge to scan the spines of the books fights with mydesire to charm this stranger into telling us something important.

‘Lilia said you might have some questions about the night Felix died, which I absolutely understand. I’d love to help any way I can,’ Sarah says as we all take a seat. Patrick and I drop onto the biggest couch. Sarah perches on the other. Lilia eyeballs the cushion next to me like she’s thinking about it, then takes the spot next to Sarah instead.

It’s at that exact moment that I realise my focus up to this point has been on looking haunted, not coming up with something to say.

I look at Patrick, hoping he’ll jump in.

‘You were with Felix and Elena that night,’ he says in that special voice he uses when he’s trying to charm people. ‘I guess we – Heidi and I – are trying to come to terms with what happened, and we wanted to talk to the people who were there.’

Sarah nods. ‘That makes perfect sense,’ she says, which is a surprise to me, becausedoes it?

‘You went over for dinner, is that right?’

‘Pizza and drinks, yeah. Elena invited a few of us. We all adore Elena at work – you know what she’s like – but we’d never met Felix. Then, a few weeks ago she invited us over.’

‘What was the party like?’ Patrick asks.

‘Before Felix died?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Fun,’ Sarah says. Then she looks guiltily at me. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, hoping the rest of my face is adding:But I need more closure.

‘Elena introduced us to Felix, who was great, and we got to check out the house. It’s super impressive.’

There’s a roar from outside as a neighbour starts up what could be a lawnmower, a chainsaw or a rocket being launched into space.

‘How did Felix seem that night?’ Patrick asks, raising his voice over the noise.

‘He was charming. I remember he kept topping up our drinks all night.’

‘Was Felix drinking?’ I ask. I know how charming my brother could be, but I also know how the mask slipped a little more readily when he was drunk.

Sarah frowns. ‘Sure. I think so. It was that kind of a night.’

‘What else happened?’ Patrick asks.

‘We had a few drinks, some crackers and hummus, then the pizzas arrived. Afterwards we were sitting around with more drinks and Felix said something about popping outside.’ Sarah sat forward in her chair. ‘Sorry, I was going to make tea. Do you guys want one?’

Patrick waves the tea away, although I would have quite liked one. ‘We’re fine. What happened then?’

‘Felix went outside, but the rest of us were hanging out on the couches. The aircon was cranked pretty high and Elena wanted to go upstairs to grab a cardigan. That’s when the lift got stuck. You know about that, right?’ Patrick nods as Sarah continues, ‘It was wild. We thought Elena was joking around at first – she can have a black sense of humour sometimes – so I was laughing. Then we realised she was really stuck.’

‘What did you do?’

‘We tried to press the button to bring the lift down and that didn’t work. Then we tried to make it go up and that didn’t work, either. Someone – I think it was Haruto – said we were making it worse, that we were confusing the system. He thinks he’s an engineering expert, because he built his own robot one time.’ Sarah adds the last line with a laugh. Patrick and I exchange glances, and I wonder if he’s curious about the robot too. (How big? What does it do? Any chance it could push a man to his death?)

‘Eventually, I guess Elena remembered she had her phone in her pocket, because she called me,’ Sarah says.

‘Why you?’ Lilia interrupts and we all look at her. I can’t be the only one who sort of forgot she was there.

‘What do you mean?’ Sarah asks.

There’s a pink splotchiness on Lilia’s neck that’s at odds with the casual tone as she clarifies: ‘Why wouldn’t Elena call Felix, her husband, first?’