Detective Lloyd stood up. “Just to rule out that Mr. Abadi had Xanax in his possession.”
“You can look, but we don’t keep any medicine in the bathrooms. We keep it down here in the kitchen.”
Detective Lloyd dimpled again. “Would you mind showing us?”
I led them into the kitchen and opened the cabinet where I kept meds like painkillers and allergy tablets, along with alcohol swabs and various sizes of Band-Aids. This cabinet saw a lot of action during the kids’ years of scraped knees and grazed elbows.
“While Detective Fox looks through this cabinet, would you mind if I looked at the medicine cabinets?” Lloyd asked. “Just to be thorough.”
I numbly showed him upstairs to look through the bathroom cabinets.Bintitrailed after us. When we came down again, the doorbell rang.
“Are you expecting someone?” he asked.
“No, but I didn’t know you were coming either.”
I found Nasser on my doorstep wearing a dark tailored suit and a concerned look on his face. He didn’t wait to be invited in.
“What are you doing here?” I asked at the same timeBintistarted barking.
Nasser focused on Detective Lloyd. “I’m Nasser Abadi.”
The detective’s brows lifted. “The eminent defense attorney?”
“That’s right.”
“Your reputation precedes you.” His eyes narrowed as he contemplated Nasser’s unexpected appearance. “Has Mrs. Abadi retained you as her counsel?”
Did the man think I’d hired a lawyer in the last ten minutes? Why would I?
The detective’s face brightened. “You have the same last name. I take it that means you’re related?”
Instead of answering, Nasser turned to me. “What are they doing right now?”
“The detectives say Ali had Xanax in his system.”
“Xanax?” His face twisted with disbelief. “Ali?”
“Exactly.” Nasser knew as well as I did that Ali would have had to have a serious medical issue in order to take any medication. “They’re checking to see if we have anything like that in the house.”
His face tightened. “We need to talk about this.”
“No need.” Detective Fox appeared. “We’re finished here.” She held up a plastic bag containing a couple of bottles of prescription medicine. “Do you mind if we take these with us for testing?”
I shrugged. “Those are old. I don’t even remember what the prescriptions were for.”
“We’ll have the lab check it out, just to be sure,” Detective Fox said.
“We’ll be in touch.” Her partner handed me his card on their way out. “Please call us if you have any questions or remember anything that might be useful. And, if I neglected to say it before, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“We both are,” Fox put in.
“Thank you.”
Nasser followed the detectives out and chatted with them by their car. After a few minutes, they all shook hands and the detectives drove off.
“What was that all about?” I asked when Nasser came back in. “How did you even know to come over?”
“I was listening on the phone, remember? I asked you to keep the line open.”
