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In the kitchen, they found Mrs. Leong sitting at the table with her head in her hands, her silver hair as unkempt as dandelion fluff. A cup of tea sat in front of her, the scent of jasmine wafting up with the steam.
“Nai nai?” Lena said.
Slowly Mrs. Leong looked up at her visitors, her eyes red from crying. She pointed to the other chairs and they all sat down, Lena taking the chair next to her grandmother.
“First, Lena, can you tell us what she said to you on the phone?” said Frost, pulling out his notebook.
“She said she and Sofia planned to get together this morning. But when Grandma went next door and rang the bell, no one answered. The door wasn’t locked, so she went inside. She saw the blood. And then she saw Sofia.”
“What time was this?”
Lena asked her grandmother, and Mrs. Leong responded with a long stream of Mandarin that was surely more than just the time of day.
“A little before eighta.m.,” Lena said. “They were going to make tamales together. Usually they do it in January, but that was too soon after Tony died, and Sofia was still pretty shaken up.”
“That would be Mr. Suarez?” asked Jane. “How did he die?”
“It was a hemorrhagic stroke. They operated on him, but he never woke up. Spent three weeks in a coma before he died.” Lena shook her head. “He was such a nice man, so sweet with my grandma. With everyone, really. You’d see him and Sofia holding hands whenever they walked around the block. Like newlyweds.”
Frost looked up from the notebook he’d been jotting in. “You said your grandmother and Sofia were going to make tamales this morning. How did they talk to each other?”
Lena frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Your grandmother doesn’t speak English. And I assume Sofia didn’t speak Chinese.”
“They didn’t need to talk because cookingisa language. They watched and tasted together. They were always passing dishes back and forth. Sofia’s tamales. My grandma’s amazing oxtail stew.”
Jane looked at the spice rack by the stove, at the collection of condiments and sauces that were so different from Sofia’s. She remembered the sacks of masa in the dead woman’s kitchen and imagined these two women sitting side by side, wrapping corn husks around pillows of cornmeal, laughing and jabbering in different languages, but understanding each other perfectly.
Jane watched as Mrs. Leong wiped her face, leaving wet streaks on her cheek, and she thought of her own mother, alsofiercely independent, also living alone. She thought too of all the other women in this city, alone in their homes at night. Women who would be alert to the sound of shattering glass and unfamiliar footsteps.
“Last night,” said Jane, “did your grandmother hear anything unusual? Any voices, any disturbance?”
Before Lena could translate, Mrs. Leong was already shaking her head. Clearly she understood the question, and she answered in another long stream of Mandarin.
“She says she didn’t hear anything, but she goes to bed at ten,” said Lena. “Sofia worked the evening shift at the hospital, and she’d normally get home around eleven-thirty, midnight. By then, my grandmother would’ve been asleep.” Lena paused as Mrs. Leong spoke again. “She’s asking is that when it happened? Right after she got home?”
“We believe so,” said Jane.
“Was it a robbery? Because there’ve been a few break-ins in the neighborhood.”
“When were these break-ins?” asked Frost.
“There was one a few months ago, the next block over. The owners were at home in bed when it happened and they slept through the whole thing. After that, my dad installed new deadbolts in Grandma’s doors. I don’t think Sofia ever got around to doing hers.” Lena looked at Jane, then at Frost. “Is that what happened? Someone tried to rob her and she walked in on them?”
“There are items missing from her house,” said Jane. “Her purse, her cell phone. And possibly a laptop computer. Does your grandmother know if Sofia owned one?”
There was another rapid exchange of Mandarin. “Yes,” said Lena. “Grandma says Sofia was using it in her kitchen last week.”
“Can she describe it? What color, what brand?”
“Oh, I doubt she’d know anything about the brand.”
“Apple,” said Mrs. Leong, and she pointed to a bowl of fruit on the countertop.
Frost and Jane looked at each other in surprise. Did the woman just answer their question?
Frost pulled out his cell phone and pointed to the logo on the back. “This kind of Apple? An Apple computer?”
