We Both Paid the Same Stranger to Sublet the Same One-Bedroom, and Neither of Us Would Move Out novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: Dolores Knows
Dolores Quigg's apartment smelled of lemon polish and old paper, and every flat surface held a doily or a framed photograph of a courtroom.
She sat us on a velvet sofa at seven on Thursday morning and put a steno pad in my lap.
The pages were covered in tiny curling shorthand, each entry dated.
"I took down everything that man said in March," she said. "Forty years of habit. I can't help it."
"What man?" Randy asked.
"Corey. He stood in the courtyard with Gloria and sold her the ferret."
I looked up.
"The tenant before you," Dolores said. "A man with a ferret and a lease signed with a big loopy C. Corey told Gloria he was a sublet agent for the owner, that the man was his cousin, and that the money went straight to the building."
"Did it?"
"The man paid Corey twenty-seven hundred in cash and stayed eleven days. Then Corey's phone stopped working, and the ferret went home to his mother."
"What happened to Corey?" Randy said.
"Gloria called the police. A report number and a shrug."
That sounded familiar.
She turned the pad's pages with one red fingernail.
"Four sublets in a year. I wrote them all down. Names, dates, and the exact words he uses. 'Don't stress, bro.' He says it every time."
"Dolores," I said. "This is a transcript."
"It's a record. It's admissible if anyone ever asks."
Randy was grinning.
"Will you read from it on Saturday?" he said.
"I was hoping you'd ask."
A cardigan appeared in the doorway.
Gloria Hurd stood on Dolores's welcome mat with a coffee cake in both hands.
By her face she had been standing there for at least four minutes.
"Don't mind me," she said. "I'm only listening."
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