The woman came closer, still holding her badge up. Maybe she thought she could hypnotize Madeline with it. “You do know why I’m here, right?”

Madeline decided to move. Otherwise the woman might think she was an idiot. So Madeline nodded. Her hand started up, reaching for her eyebrow.

No, she thought. No.

She scratched her nose instead.

“It’s about Sophia Greenfield,” Wallace said. “We’re trying to talk to everyone who knew her in any way. And I understand the two of you attended the same yoga studio. Do you think I could just ask you a few questions?”

The cop looked friendly, more like a grandma than a detective. Madeline knew cops liked to pretend to be one thing when they were really something else.

Madeline ran through excuses in her mind, reasons to get away from the cop, but nothing plausible popped into her head.

She tried her best.

“Well,” she said, “it’s a lot of steps up to my apartment.”

Wallace turned her head, took in the three-story climb on the ancient stairs. “I’m deceptively fit. I do yoga too. I think I can handle it. Unless you want to talk somewhere else. We could go down to the station in my car. But that’s a lot less friendly.” The woman smiled again, took a step toward Madeline. “I’m not here to get you in any trouble, Madeline. I’m just here to find out what happened to Sophia. It’s possible you don’t know anything useful. And if you don’t, then I’ll just leave. But the sun is hot, and you have those books you probably want to put down.”

Wallace nodded toward the metal stairs, raising her eyebrows. She looked like she was suggesting something fun. An adventure. A day at the park. Not questions about a woman who’d been murdered.

But Madeline hadn’t talked about Sophia with anyone. Maybe she needed to. At least some parts of it.

“Okay,” Madeline said. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Wallace complimented the skylight but nothing else. Madeline trusted her more because she didn’t try to come up with some bullshit about what a homey apartment it was. Madeline knew it was a dump, crappy even by student standards. But it was all she could afford without mortgaging her entire future. As things stood, she’d be paying off loans until the end of time.

And she’d be paying off those loans while trying to make it as a writer.

Poverty much?