“The man was enraged. He pounded on Claudia’s—that girl’s—door, then he kicked it and started shouting. I asked that girl about it later but she said she didn’t know who he was. I didn’t believe her, but I let it drop. I wish I hadn’t.” Sarah stared at her manicured hands. “That was on December twenty-eighth, just three days before she died.”

I thought Sarah was being melodramatic, but I couldn’t deny that Tariq could be intimidating. She’d probably never encountered anyone like him. Why would she? I sat in a metal chair, admiring her simple white linen blouse with gold cufflinks and tailored black trousers, accessorized with an Hermès Birkin bag, an alligator belt, and a simple strand of pearls. She was impeccably elegant and I felt deflated, the dime-store glamour of my red lipstick and secondhand clothes tawdry by comparison. It was odd that someone so elegant had chosen to live on the Lower East side, but I supposed that only demonstrated how gentrified the neighborhood had become.

“Ms. Lyons, you saw this neighbor with Kaylee Quan and this aggressive, possibly Arab, man,” said Renfrew. “Anyone else?”

“She had a visitor in the middle of November, two weeks after I moved into the building,” said Sarah. “A middle-aged woman, tall, brown-haired, mousy. She looked desperate. I remember thinking that she was old enough to be Claudia’s mother, but she didn’t look anything like her. There was something off about the whole thing.”

“What does off mean, exactly?”

“I heard Claudia say that the woman shouldn’t have come there. Something about how no one should see them together. The other woman said she’d had to come back because she’d run out of money. It was strange.”

“How did you hear this, exactly?” Bruxton tossed in.

“I was in the hallway. Noise carries quite easily in the building,” Sarah answered with a withering glare. “I was on my way out, and that was all I heard. Claudia was away for a few days after that. When she came back, she never mentioned the woman or what she was doing there, and I didn’t ask. Claudia went away for the weekend quite often, but she never mentioned where, only that she was seeing friends.”

We pondered that quietly, until Bruxton spoke up. “You have any idea who any of these people were, Lily?”

“I have no idea who the woman was. Claudia didn’t introduce many of her friends to me.”

“You ever know this neighbor of yours to use drugs?” asked Renfrew.

“Good heavens, no.” Sarah looked horrified. Of course she would. Letting Sarah, with her pristine demeanor and formal bearing, in on my family problems made me feel grubby and low. “She was a very healthy person. She told me she only bought organic produce. She did yoga.”