Thyme to Live: A We Sisters Three Mystery Read Online Free

shook his head. “No.”
    I waited but apparently he was going to leave his answer at a terse, one-worder.
    “So then, what’s your plan?” I pressed him as we walked up the wide stairs to the row of buzzers beside the double front doors to the building. This wasn’t a doorman building, that much was clear.
    “It’s a work in progress,” he muttered cryptically, scanning the rows of typewritten names, some yellowed with age, some curling up at the edges, and others brand-spanking new.
    I peered over his shoulder. He pressed the button beside “V. Smith.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “That’s Helena’s apartment.”
    “V. Smith?”
    He gave me a sidelong glance. “It’s urban safety 101, Thyme. Please tell me your buzzer label doesn’t identify you as a single woman living alone?”
    One, I highly doubted that ‘Thyme’ screamed ‘I’m a lady.’ But, two, just in case, I did list my name as “T. Field” everywhere because I wasn’t actually an idiot. I didn’t use a pseudonym, though.
    “No, it doesn’t,” I assured him. “But why ‘Smith’? Isn’t her last name Callais, like yours?” I asked knowing full well that it was.
    He either didn’t hear the question or pretended not to. He laid on the buzzer again. After a moment, he sighed. “No answer.”
    I squinted at the buzzer labels. “Do you know which of these is the building super?”
    “I do, but he’s a dead end. I called him this morning and he said the only way he’s letting me into Helena’s apartment is if I have the boys in blue with me.”
    I shrugged. I could kind of see the guy’s point. Helena was an adult. If she just happened to have met her dream man over the weekend, and they were holed up in her bedroom with a vat of whip cream or a family-sized bottle of baby oil, it would be pretty awful to come storming in with her brother.
    “Have you considered calling them? The police, I mean?”
    “No. Not yet.” His face darkened.
    I decided not to push the issue. “Okay? So are we going to hang out here until someone comes home and try to talk our way in, or what?” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I mean, it wasn’t cold , but it wasn’t warm. And as the autumn sun dropped lower and lower in the sky, it was only going to get cooler. Already, my dried hot yoga sweat was giving me a slight chill—at least I hoped that was the cause of my shivering.
    He flashed me a smile. “Watch and learn.”
    He started at the uppermost button on the far left. He gave it one short press, waited a moment to see if there would be a response, and then moved to the button to its immediate right. It was late afternoon on a weekday, so assuming most of the apartment dwellers in Helena’s building worked, the majority of them were unlikely to be home. He kept pressing, moving left-to-right, top-to-bottom, in search of a shift worker, a stay-at-home parent, or a retiree. On the eleventh button, he got a hit.
    “Who is it?” a distorted male voice answered.
    I checked the label. ‘Bizwan Malta.’ Works from home in tech support, I guessed, based on nothing.
    “This is Victor Callais. I’m a reporter with The New York Times . I’m doing a man on the street feature about the mayor’s latest crime-prevention initiative and wondered if you’d like to share your thoughts?”
    “I’m not on the street. And no.” Bizwan dismissed him and went back to helping a frustrated computer user reinstall Windows 8.1 or whatever it was he’d been doing before his buzzer had interrupted him.
    Undeterred, Victor resumed his relentless march through the buzzers.
    He had another hit on the nineteenth try.
    “Yes?” A cautious female voice answered. Apparently, its owner had taken urban safety 101. The nameplate read ‘Keith Binder.’
    “Hi, my name’s Victor Callais. I’m a reporter with The New York Times , and I wanted to ask Mr. Binder his views on the new magnet school that’s being proposed for this neighborhood.”
    “Oh.