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brought over a dish of noodles, orange cheese, and probably tuna. I’m guessing, since Mom had dumped the casserole into the garbage disposal. “They smoke PCP over there,” she had explained to me.
    â€œWant something to drink?” Alberta asked.
    â€œYes, please,” Colin said.
    I said nothing, still wary of food and drink prepared in a kitchen of PCP smokers.
    â€œComin’ right up.” She trundled into the small, yellow-tiled kitchen, then shouted, “Reggie, detectives is here.” To me, she said, “Maybe now we can get some answers, since you know us and know how things go around here.” She touched her heart-spot. “And ’specially since all this happened to you and your family.”
    I gave a curt nod, then turned my attention to the framed photographs hanging on the walls. These pictures captured Chanita, Regina, and Alberta in different versions of Fabulous. But there were also shots of Malibu’s foggy seaside, downtown Los Angeles nightscapes, and an older woman’s gnarled hands. Pictures a collector would professionally mat and hang.
    â€œAin’t much changed since y’all left,” Alberta said. “Remember Michi, the little Japanese lady who’d trim the bushes up front like bonsai trees? She still in nine. And Miss Candy from up front? She dead, but Lamar and Quinton still livin’ there. How’s your momma doin’?”
    â€œGood,” I said.
    â€œStill in LA?”
    â€œYes, not far from the Ladera Ralphs.”
    Alberta laughed. “She didn’t like me much back then. But we all had our struggles. Tell her I say hi.” She returned to us with two glasses of grape soda. “Nita took those pictures,” she said, handing me a glass. “That girl got a good eye, don’t she?”
    â€œShe certainly did.” I bristled. Shit. Just used past tense. I peered at the shot of a homeless man and his mutt walking past a parked Bentley. Sorrow set in—these photographs, just like the autopsy picture, made my stomach ache.
    â€œWanna see her awards?” Another woman’s voice.
    She stood in the doorway separating the living room from the bedrooms. She looked close to vanishing in her red and black kimono. Her head had also shrunk, and the red scarf around her hair shadowed her expressionless, blemished face. She hadn’t slept since forever—the bags beneath her eyes testified to snatches of sleep and crying when she wasn’t sleeping.
    I knew that look—Mom had worn the same expression for ten years.
    And this woman had to be Chanita’s mother.
    I held out my hand. “Hi, Ms. Drummond. I’m Detective Norton—”
    â€œShe used to live over in apartment seven,” Alberta shared. “You probably too young to remember. But the news story last June—remember they found them bones down in the plaza? That was Detective Norton’s sister.”
    Regina sighed, then retreated down the hallway.
    Colin and I excused ourselves from Alberta, taking the glasses of soda with us.
    Photographs lined the hallway walls: stray dogs, homeless men, prideful gang-bangers …
    Regina stood at a bedroom’s doorway.
    â€œWe have news about your daughter,” I said.
    She nodded. “In here.”
    Chanita’s fuchsia and white comforter and matching curtains reminded me of my own teenage bedroom. Instead of Michael Jackson and LL Cool J posters on the walls, though, Chanita had taped-up posters of Bruno Mars and Beyoncé. A white dresser held fruit-scented body sprays and lotions, fingernail polishes, rolls of film, and a small television set. Countless ribbons, trophies, and certificates crowded the mirror, a small bookcase, and a desk.
    Regina sat at the foot of the bed, then met my eyes. “Tell me.”
    Dry-mouthed, I opened my binder to that picture of Chanita taken by Big Reuben. “Yesterday, we found a girl…” My throat