“Is there one of me?”
“I don’t remember.” He tries to turn several pages at once, but I smack my hand down before he can.
“You are a terrible liar. Let’s see it.”
Sighing, he shows me my suspect listing, now jazzed up with a detailed pencil drawing of yours truly. Three-quarters profile, from the neck up, not quite smiling.
“When did my hair look like that?” I fluff it a little, in case it happens again.
Felix grabs the sketchbook. “If you’re finished admiring yourself maybe we should investigate this murder.”
“Fine.”
Turning to a blank page, he writesPEOPLE WHO KNEWat the top.
“It was the day Claude’s sister moved in. I came inside from the pool”—my pause is an unspoken acknowledgment of everything that happened immediately prior, including the run-in with Bradley—“and Bernie was there in the lobby with her suitcases. After she went upstairs, I mentioned it to my grandmother, who was sitting with Mervyn… and Mrs. A.”
Both of us wince. It’s the opposite of a locked-room scenario. Once Mrs. A had the intel, it’s a safe bet it spread through the building within hours.
“Don’t forget the two of us,” Felix reminds me. “We got the full spiel.”
“It’s worse than that.” I glance at him to see if he knows what I’m talking about, but Felix shakes his head. “Do you ever think we might have given Bradley the idea? By talking up how great this place is.”
He’s speechless for a second. “Nope. That’s not on us. Are we potential murderers? Sure. But we didn’t tell Bradley to transform this place into a giant man cave.”
My shoulders relax as I exhale. That’s one less thing to worry about.
“I know this is bad,” I admit, “but I still wish it was Cheryl. Only she’s way too relaxed for murder, so I guess we have to eliminate her?”
“Bold word choice, under the circumstances.”
“You know what I mean.” I go to elbow him, but instead of dodging he leans closer, pinning my arm between us. It’s strangely comforting, like a side hug. “I keep wishing there was a random stranger we could point at, to take the heat off.”
“Funny you should mention that.” He turns to a new page and writesSOFIA.
“I thought you liked her.”
“I do. As a friend,” he adds, studiously avoiding eye contact. “But there’s something going on with her. She took off like the building was on fire, right after you left.”
Now that he mentions it, her reaction to the news that Bradley’s death wasn’t an accident did seem intense. “Huh.”
He nods as if I’ve said something profound. “We need to find out why.”
Sofia agrees to meet so readily, it almost feels like she was expecting us to ask.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Sofia says the second she sits down at our table. We chose a coffee shop in walking distance as neutral ground, because it felt weird to ask her for a ride to her own interrogation. “It’s about my sister.”
Felix and I exchange a quick look, rapidly recalibrating our approach. So much for wheedling the information out of her.
“Elena?” I ask.
“No, Carmen.” Sofia takes a deep breath. “She knew him.”
I set down my glass of ice water too hard, sloshing some of the contents onto the table like the smooth operator I am. Felix passes me a napkin. “You mean—Bradley?”
Sofia nods. “They went to the same college. He was a year behind her.”
My thoughts fly back to the first time we met Bradley, at the reading of Claude’s will. “That wasn’t a line? When he acted like he recognized you.”
