“He’s my attorney,” I said, playing it deadpan.
Vanderleigh narrowed his eyes at Val, and his nostrils flared. “You work for Aleksander Thorin. I’ve spoken to you before.”
Val stepped forward and offered his hand. Vanderleigh shook it. “Val Wotan. You’re Detective Vanderleigh and, yes, we’ve spoken before.”
“Where were you last night, Miss Mundy? Mr. Wotan, same question for you.”
“I was at some dive on the outskirts of town,” I said. “I’m not sure it has a name. I was there most of the evening with Skyla… I forget her last name.” I turned to Val for help.
“Ramirez,” he said. “Skyla Ramirez.”
“You didn’t come here at any point in the evening?” Vanderleigh asked.
“No,” I said and gave him the sequence of events of my last twenty-four hours, minus my assault on the roughneck at the bar.
“And you, Mr. Wotan?”
Val shrugged. “I worked at Thorin’s store all day. I left there and went to work out at the gym. Then I picked up some take-out. I came here to check on Solina, found the apartment like this, and called you guys.”
“You didn’t wait for an officer to arrive?”
Val pulled a face, obviously offended by the implication he might have had something to do with this. “I wanted to find Solina. I was worried about her.”
The detective asked a few more procedural questions before he pulled off the crime scene tape and ushered us inside. “Our office has already processed the scene for evidence. Before I give you clearance to do anything else, I’d appreciate it if you’d look around and make sure nothing is missing.”
“There wasn’t much left,” I said.
“That may be true, but I still want you to look.”
I walked through the apartment, but the place was such a wreck I couldn’t tell if anything was missing. The small collection of Mani’s possessions I had put aside to keep—photo albums, a packet of cards and letters, his journal—everything was ripped and shredded. I dug through the wreckage and unearthed my laptop. The screen was splintered, the housing was cracked, and the keyboard was a litter of broken letters and numbers.
Everything inside me went numb. A hot, dense fog filled my brain and mired my thoughts. “Scraps,” I said, shaking my head, unable to see much beyond my sudden tunnel vision. “I-I don’t know…”
Vanderleigh stepped over a pile of tattered fabric on his way to the door. “I’m going to let you start cleaning, but if you notice anything, please call me. Where will you be staying for the remainder of your visit?”
I opened my mouth to stutter something in reply, but Val beat me to it. “She’s staying with me.”
Vanderleigh nodded. “Miss Mundy,” he said, turning to let me have the full force of his best cop glower. “I advise you to finish your business here as soon as possible and then go home. I’m afraid things are too precarious for you to stay here any longer.”
I nodded dumbly, unable to fully process his warning.
“I’m watching out for her, Detective.” Val appeared at my side and put an arm around my shoulder. “We all are. We lost Mani, but we aren’t going to lose his sister.”
Vanderleigh frowned, obviously unconvinced, but he left us to our work.
My body moved on autopilot while the real me struggled to process all that happened, but then I found a picture of Mani and me, twelve years old, standing in the surf at Kure Beach. My arm was curled around Mani’s waist, and he had put his hand behind my head, giving me bunny ears. The photo lay in several pieces. I found more like that. I grabbed them in handfuls, desperate to keep them together, but the more I grabbed, the more I found, as if someone had taken all of Mani’s albums and boxes of loose photos and run them through a shredder.
I only realized I was crying when Val put his arms around me and pulled me to the couch, and into his lap. He held me and let my tears fall. “Bag them up,” he said. “We’ll work on matching the pieces together later. It’ll be fun. Like a jigsaw puzzle but with a picture you actually like at the end. We’ll invite everyone over and make it a game night.”
I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “I know they’re just some old photos, but I don’t have much of him left. They already took my brother. Couldn’t they let me keep his pictures?”
Val smiled, but any humor failed to reach his eyes. “They can have the pictures. I’m just glad they didn’t get you.”
“You think whoever it was wanted to do this to me?” I motioned to the shredded wreckage.
Val shuddered. “Let’s not think about it. Let’s finish this and be done with it. I don’t want you to have to come here anymore.”
For once, I didn’t argue. Val arranged for a local charity to pick up the bits of Mani’s furniture that had managed to survive the attack. The vandal had focused on personal items, especially my clothes. Kneeling in a pile of familiar fabric shreds, the remainder of my wardrobe and luggage, I covered my face and took several deep, calming breaths. “I need a shower,” I said. “I feel like filth on a stick, and now I have nothing to wear.”
Val leaned against the doorpost of Mani’s bedroom and stared at me, the sparkle in his blue eyes gone. “Thorin said you could get whatever you needed from the store.”
I pushed myself off the floor. “I guess I’ll have to take him up on that.”
Val wrinkled his nose. “Shopping?”
“You can watch me try stuff on.”
His face lit up, and the spark flickered back to life in his eyes. “Really?”
“No,” I said, smirking at him. It didn’t take much to revive his cheerfulness, and that was a good thing because I depended a lot on Val’s reliable congeniality. “Not really.”
We threw out the remaining garbage, and Val took me to Thorin’s store after a stop at a sandwich place for a late lunch. I grabbed cargo pants, knit yoga sets, a fleece pullover, a couple of T-shirts, and a jacket. While I tried things on, Val tracked down hiking boots and a pair of Mary Jane Keens in my size. The store sold sports bras and moisture-wicking underwear for the serious athlete types. I was more of a Hanes kind of girl, but beggars and choosers and blah, blah, blah.
At Val’s apartment, I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, and slipped into a pair of yoga pants and a hoodie similar to a set I had lost to the vandal.
“You smell like my soap,” Val said when I plopped beside him on the couch. He had the television on and an outdoor magazine in his lap open to an article about rock climbing. “That’s kind of sexy.”
“Is that all you think about?” I said.
