“What are you still doing here? Go chase the story,” I told David. I was okay, he didn’t need to babysit me. With David, the job always came first. Plus, it wasn’t like he had any responsibility to me and my wellbeing.
“I’d rather talk to you first,” he told me. His dark-brown eyes locked on me and I felt a whirlwind in my belly. How was it possible that I couldn’t still think clearly with him in front of me? We’d broken up two years before. But it was kind of strange seeing and talking with him in broad daylight. Awfully obfuscating too. “Can we go somewhere more private?” he added. George from apartment 10B was lurking closely.
“There’s nothing else to be said, and the last thing I want right now is to go anywhere with you.” Even if that was exactly the opposite of what my body was telling me. But our breakup hadn’t exactly been friendly, and we hadn’t learned how to talk to one another afterward. “I just need to get home.”
“Let me find out if they’ve reopened the building,” David said.
“¡No necesito que preguntes nada! I can ask myself.” I told him I didn’t need him in a harsher tone than I’d anticipated.
He looked at me again and his eyes caught me completely off guard. There wasn’t offense or anger but real concern. It was as if he was worried about me, so fuckingly worried that I was pretty much sure he was neglecting his work.
I was considering telling David I was sorry when I heard, “Elena.”
I was getting tired of hearing my name. I turned and saw Victor coming my way. He was the one who’d called me. “The police want to talk to you.”
“I’ve already talked to them,” I snapped. I didn’t need a second man trying to organize everything around me. It had been annoying enough seeing David asking questions and handing out bottled water all morning.
“The detectives in charge of the investigation want to talk to everyone again,” Victor said. “But especially you—and David. Given your relationship to Dashing Henry.”
“I guess they want me to tell them again that I was home alone all night,” David said, directing his gaze to me one last time. My breath caught in my throat. Then he made his way inside the Eastern Columbia and approached one of the police detectives.
···
“Name?” the police detective, a tall Black man in his fifties, asked me as we took a seat in two of the low-profile midcentury modern chairs of the Eastern Columbia’s main vestibule.
He’d introduced himself as LAPD Detective Alex Rooney. Or it could have been Clooney or Phooney. I think it’s been previously established: I’m bad with faces and worse with names.
“Elena Freire Valls,” I answered.
“Valls as in Aurora Valls?” I could see the curiosity in his face as he tried to find some physical resemblance between my mother and me.
“The mayor is my mother, yes.” It was better not to play coy once people had already figured it out.
“You look nothing like her,” the officer went on, and I could only take that as a slight.
My mother is a gorgeous sixty-four-year-old. Think Tilda Swinton or Kristin Scott Thomas kind of arresting and enviably well preserved. She’d taken LA by storm almost two decades before. She was tall where I was shortish, she was skinny where I had hips. Her hair was a perfect white bob that was regularly maintained. I hadn’t seen my stylist in months and was at present sporting a messy bun of brown and not necessarily clean hair. She was always impeccably dressed in Balenciaga and Ralph Lauren pantsuits with the occasional Chanel classic tweed skirt suit thrown in. Even if I’d had time to change out of my pajama pants that morning, it wouldn’t have been a huge improvement. It’s not that I’m a fashion agnostic—I can almost always tell what people are wearing. But most of the time I don’t care enough to make an effort.
“I take to my dad,” I said, putting the officer out of his doubts.
“I see,” he said. “And you live in apartment 10A.”
“Yes.”
“What time did you get home yesterday?” He opened his top-bound pocket notepad.
“Around nineish?” I answered, trying to remember. “I went to this Q&A session with Shonda Rhimes at the Television Academy—I mean, I didn’t gowith her,I went to see her and listen to her talk. I grabbed a bite with a couple of colleagues at Sugarfish after that.” I didn’t add that I like their cucumber roll and their seaweed and kikurage salad, but it’s still hard to go there if the rest of your party is going hard on the raw fish. Sugarfish is not a destination for vegan sushi like Shojin, after all.
“Which Sugarfish?”
“The one on Ventura Boulevard? Both my colleagues live in the Valley and that one is close to the Academy. Is that relevant?” The detective didn’t reply and kept taking notes.
“What did you do when you got home?”
Detective Clooney’s question was rather impertinent. I sure wasn’t going to tell him that when I arrived home, I had an edible, undressed, and proceeded to power on one of my favorite toys before I got an unexpected—but thoroughly welcome—surprise.
“I brushed my teeth and did a bit of reading before going to bed,” I said.
“What are you reading?”
