Chapter Eighteen. The Body in The Empty Apartment
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE 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.
“He probably had to bring your grandmother in to appease Bernie.”
“Maybe.”
It’s true that she was making an unholy ruckus, wailing about sabotage and how poor Bradley never stood a chance.
The idea that someone (who is obviously not my grandmother) deliberately stole the brO EpiPen in hopes that Bradley would randomly have a fatal allergy attack is far-fetched.
Then again, the average game of Killing Me Softly is at least that convoluted.
Improbability is not the strongest argument for Grandma Lainey’s innocence.
“Do you ever think about what kind of witness you’d make?” Felix asks. “Like if you were in the courtroom.”
The real answer is All the time. It’s one of my cherished fantasies about myself: that I would blow everyone’s mind with my meticulous recall of crucial details.
Time, place, what people were wearing, physical descriptions, you name it.
I used to practice guessing people’s heights, so I’d be able to confidently say things like The suspect was approximately six feet tall.
Under the circumstances, Felix’s question hits differently. “Why do you ask?”
“Between the two of us, we could totally prove that your grandmother had nothing to do with the brO thing. Don’t you think?”
I want to smile, because it’s such a nice thing to say, but instead my eyes fill with tears.
“Oh shit.” Felix sets down his plate. “I’m sorry!” He looks like he wants to give me a comforting pat me but isn’t sure where to put his hand.
“It’s not you. It’s me,” I tell him.
“Are we breaking up?”
That knocks me out of my doom spiral. “What?”
“Sorry. Bad joke. I’m nervous.”
I gurgle a laugh, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He hesitates. “I think so. I tend to be a bit of a gossip, but only with small stuff.”
That’ll have to do. “I heard her moving around. That night—after Bradley died. She went out on the balcony.”
Felix absorbs this in silence. “Is that unusual?”
“I don’t know. But I feel like a real asshole for even thinking it might mean something.”
“Or maybe you’re an observant person who doesn’t lie to herself.”
I wish I could tell whether he’s trying to cheer me up or actually believes it.
“I bet I know what would make you feel better.”
“I already ate all the ice cream.”
“This is more of an intellectual challenge.” He leans closer, so I get the full impact of the glint in his eyes. “Let’s make a case file. Spin some theories. I’m sure your grandmother isn’t the only one who looks suspicious on paper.”
“I thought you were going to say we could watch something cheesy on Netflix.”
His face falls. “Would you rather do that?”
“Of course not.”
“I’ll be right back,” he promises, hopping to his feet. At the door, he pauses to look back at the couch, where I am still huddled like a mound of laundry with limbs. “Try not to miss me too much.”
I pretend to sigh in exasperation, because it feels less vulnerable than admitting how much I don’t want to be alone.
True to his word, Felix returns a few minutes later with a sketchpad and a handful of pencils. “Sorry I don’t have a whiteboard.”
“That’s okay.” Even though it means sitting thigh to thigh so we can both see the page propped half on his lap and half on mine.
“Now, I know some people would start by saying ‘There’s bound to be a logical explanation,’ but I think we can skip ahead.” He glances at me for permission.
“Totally.”
He writes the word THEORIES at the top of the page, followed by TRAINED MONKEY.
I point at the circle he’s drawn next to the first entry. “That’s your top theory?”
“They’re highly intelligent and have excellent motor skills. The monkey steals the EpiPen and runs. Case closed.”
“It’s a kleptomaniac monkey?”
“Or it was attracted to the sparkly letters.” He draws another circle below the first, adding the word CORVID next to it. “Crows,” he explains, when I give him an odd look.
“Do all your theories involve animals?”
“I’m working through them in logical order.”
“Okay, Dr. Doolittle. What about Zenobia?”
“Claude’s cat? Nah. She has plenty of her own toys.” He passes me the pencil. “Go ahead. Show me what you’ve got.”
I draw a star below his entry to be different, adding my idea next to it.
Felix squints at my handwriting. “What’s a slapwelder?”
“Sleepwalker.” I may not be an artist, but my printing isn’t that bad.
“Nice.” I suspect he’s kicking himself for not coming up with that one. Somnambulism is a favorite plot device around here. He holds his hand out for the pencil, adding a circle beneath my star before scribbling two words.
“Hypnotized slapwelder?” I frown at him, and not because he’s mocking my penmanship. “What does that even mean?”
“Like when you hypnotize someone and get them to do a robbery for you while they’re out of it.”
“Ah. A day in the life of a criminal mastermind.”
“Do you want to try?”
“I’m not letting you hypnotize me.”
“You think I know how to hypnotize people?” Felix grins at me, like I just put him on a magazine cover under the headline World’s Most Hypnotic Man.
“I didn’t say that. But I could feature you watching a video on YouTube and then deciding to use me as a guinea pig. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“That would have been amazing. I have so many regrets right now.” His eyes narrow in concentration. “I need a stage name.”
“The Great Distracto?” I tap the page in front of us. “What’s next?”
He turns to a new page, writing SUSPECTS across the top.
“I think we should look at everyone,” Felix says. “No playing favorites or holding back because someone is—”
“A grandparent?”
“Or one of us.” The pencil pendulums between us.
“You think I stole the EpiPen?” I am the only other person who was living in this unit at the time. Is that why Grandma Lainey gave herself up—so Detective Ortiz wouldn’t look at me?
Felix taps me on the top of the head with the pencil, like I’m being knighted. “No. But we might as well be thorough. It’s better than overlooking something because we assume we already know everything there is to know about a person.”
“Okay.” I take the pencil, writing my name and age. “What else?”
“Motive?”
I nod, adding a new line and the word CREEP. Can you say that about a dead person? Felix did say no holding back.
“Although if people murdered every guy who made them uncomfortable with their gross comments or how they look at us or yell things out of passing cars, there would be a trail of dead bodies all over town,” I point out.
“We suck,” he agrees, and I appreciate that he didn’t make excuses, or trot out the old “not all men” argument. We’re talking about the lowest common denominator here. To make it math-y.
“But I didn’t know he had an EpiPen. Or allergies.” I draw a question mark under the motive, hand stilling as a new thought occurs to me. “Wait. Is that what that lump was? In his pants?”
Felix chokes on his own spit.
“By his ankle.” I point at my leg. “His pants were so tight I could tell he had something under there.”
“Huh.” His forehead scrunches.
“What?”
“I just remembered something.” He’s still frowning, so even though I want to shoulder check him to knock the words loose, I pretend to be patient.
“A thought popped into my head—that day. He shaves his legs.” Felix swallows.
“And then I forgot, because … everything. But that must mean I could see part of his leg, you know? Like his pants were pulled up.”
I nod, because I know exactly what he’s talking about. Not the shaving part; it’s the weird way my impressions of that day are all fragmented and jerky.
“Maybe he was trying to get his EpiPen.” He looks at me like I must know the answer, but all I have are more questions.
“Was it already gone? Or did something happen to it after?” I shiver, because I thought we were playing this game to kill time, but it feels like we just stumbled onto something real. And I do not have the bandwidth to take that on while my grandmother is at the police station.
“What about you?” I ask, turning the wheel of this conversation.
“I don’t shave my legs.” Felix looks down at his cargo pants like he’s weighing whether he needs to prove his claim. “I thought that was for swimmers and cyclists—”
“I’m not talking about your body hair.” Grabbing the pencil, I write FELIX.
“Okay, what’s my motivation?” He sounds genuinely curious.
“Maybe you were jealous?”
He huffs at that. “I could tell you didn’t like him.”
I hope the shock isn’t written all over my face. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? “I meant of his car and stuff,” I clarify after a pause big enough to bury a body. “Sunglasses. Fancy watch. Etcetera.”
“Oh. That. Ha.” It’s the saddest fake laugh in the history of the universe. Maybe we should throw ourselves off the balcony, as someone allegedly did with the brO EpiPen.
“I did not kill him for his stuff,” Felix says after chugging the rest of his water.
“Right,” I agree, not meeting his eyes. “I didn’t think so. Moving on.”
We run through the next batch of names like we’re up against a countdown clock, careful to avoid any uncomfortable silences.
Mr. Namura might have taken issue with Bradley’s joyless high-protein diet, but it’s hard to imagine someone committing murder over carbs. Mrs. A could only kill someone with kindness, and we both feel strongly that Malia would have vocalized at the crucial moment, ruining the stealth factor.
“Too bad we can’t pin it on Cheryl.” She seemed perfectly nice, but right now I’m desperate to find a culprit who doesn’t live in this building.
“What about Claude’s sister?” Felix asks.
“Why would Bernie kill her own nephew?”
“Maybe she found out he was stealing from her. The painting,” he reminds me, when I don’t immediately connect the dots. Felix draws something on the corner of the page. “That would be my motive. Especially now, when—”
I don’t get to hear the rest of the sentence, because the apartment door swings open, an exaggerated Southern accent ringing out, “I do declare! A gentleman caller. Perhaps I should return later?”
Ladies and gentlemen, my grandmother is back.