Detective Ortiz pulls a plastic bag from his pants pocket and slides the spangled EpiPen inside. The silence thickens as he looks around the room. “Which one of you found this?”
“I did.” Cheryl takes a step forward. “When I was meditating in the garden. I thought someone must have dropped it.”
“Can you show me exactly where it was?” the detective asks.
Cheryl inclines her head. Not even a police investigation can disturb her inner peace. We follow her to the courtyard like a line of ducklings. The strange procession continues around one side of the pool, passing the wall covered in climbing vines and the raised planters full of cooking herbs. At last she stops, pointing at a cluster of low bushes bordered by gravel.
“There,” she says, pointing. A lizard streaks out of sight.
“Stay back, please,” Detective Ortiz tells us.
“What do you suppose he was doing over here?” Mrs. A wonders as we watch the detective search the ground.
I try to imagine Bradley wandering through the prickly bushes at the far end of the courtyard. He didn’t strike me as the type to spend a lot of time contemplating nature.
Detective Ortiz hasn’t said a word. After an intensive study of the rocks his gaze tracks up, and up, until it reaches the lone balcony stretching over this exact spot.
“Who lives in that unit?” he asks.
No one speaks. We look at the ground or our hands—anywhere but at the person whose terrace is directly overhead. I’m sure Bernie would be happy to tell him, but she doesn’t know the building well enough.
Grandma Lainey steps forward, ending the stalemate. “I do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEENTHE BODY IN THE EMPTY APARTMENT
I’ve been alone at Grandma Lainey’s before, but it never felt like this. The quiet is seeping in through my pores. Mrs. A offered to stay, but I didn’t want the added pressure of having to pretend I was okay—as opposed to quietly losing my shit.
Because although Detective Ortiz didn’t arrest my grandmother, he did politely ask her to come down to the station to answer a few questions. Which is not a great sign, having watched him do the math (or physics, whatever, I’m taking that next year) on the distance from the edge of her balcony to the location of the lost EpiPen.
The knock on the door sends my heart into my throat. I take a deep breath, pulling myself together before checking the peephole.
“I thought you might be freaking out,” Felix says as soon as I open the door, like he’s afraid I’ll slam it in his face if he doesn’t explain his presence ASAP.
“Because I seem like the freak-out type?”
“No.” He shakes his head for emphasis, three times longer than a normal no. “I was imagining how I would feel. If my grandfather was… you know.”
I appreciate that he doesn’t use the actual words“implicated in a crime.” It’s tactful.
“Also, I brought food.” He holds up a foil-covered plate.
“You cooked?”
“I heated up leftovers. It’s picadillo.”
“You should have led with that.” I step aside in a silent invitation to enter.
“Have you heard anything?” he asks, following me into the kitchen.
“Not yet. Mervyn said he would call as soon as there was news.” I fill two glasses with ice water and scrape half the picadillo onto a second plate before leading Felix to the living room, because I don’t want to sit across from my grandmother’s place at the table, staring sentimentally at her basket of essentials. The purple reading glasses! Her good pens! Almond oil hand lotion!
Why am I sighing like she went off to war? I give myself a mental pinch.
“You know what I was thinking?” Felix asks.
I shake my head, grateful to him for breaking the silence. The scrape of our forks against the plates was like bombs going off. I’m pretty sure he can hear me chew, given how close together we’re sitting on this love seat.
What a random name for a piece of furniture.
