City of Lies. Alafair Burke

rare exceptions, Ellie called her mother in Wichita every single night. The routine dated back to her first days in New York, where she’d followed Jess more than ten years ago to assuage her mother’s concerns about her only son, and most reckless child, living on his own in a city where a person like Jess could find more than his fair share of trouble. Ellie would call her mother each night because she knew her mother would sleep better once she heard her two children in the big city were safe.

      Then slowly what had begun as a sweet habit had become a requirement – minimal validation to lonely, widowed Roberta that the children who’d abandoned her at least missed her from afar.

      And now Ellie had forgotten to call. She knew from experience she would pay for it the next time they spoke.

      ‘You didn’t tell her where I was, did you?’

      ‘Are you kidding? I didn’t pick up the phone.’

      ‘Jess.’

      ‘Sorry, sis. That drama’s your department.’

      ‘I assume she left an epic message?’

      Jess nodded, knocking back a toss of bourbon.

      ‘Don’t tell me. She did her whole passive-aggressive, I-know-you’ve-got-more-important-things-to-do speech.’

      ‘Something like that. I believe she may have said something about spending all your time with a man she still knows nothing about and has never met.’

      ‘Jesus. I never should have mentioned Max to her.’

      ‘Uh, duh? Don’t ask, don’t tell, is my motto. Tie me to a water board at Gitmo. Call out the dogs. I say notzing,’ he said in his best Sergeant Schultz impersonation from the old television show, Hogan’s Heroes.

      ‘You know the only reason you get away with that is because I tell Mom what’s going on with you.’

      ‘No, you tell her what she wants to hear about what’s going on with me. The dude featured in the fictional tales of those phone calls is a complete and utter tool.’

      Ellie did have a tendency to convey to their mother a brighter version of her and Jess’s lives. In the fairy-tale world that Ellie had created for her mother’s benefit, Ellie was a well-adjusted woman who just happened to be a cop, who had girlfriends, dates, and hobbies. She was nothing like the father, and her mother’s husband, who had given everything to the job. And in these stories Jess’s band, Dog Park, actually got paid to play standing-room-only gigs, and a lucrative record contract was waiting for them around the next corner.

      ‘You should have picked up, Jess. Just to make her feel better.’

      ‘And you should stop coddling her, and allowing her to hold you hostage with your daily calls. But that’s not up to me.’

      Instead of responding, Ellie took another sip of her drink.

      ‘So,’ Jess said, filling the silence, ‘I may have met the stupidest woman on the planet yesterday.’

      ‘Hmm, I don’t know. The competition in that arena can be pretty stiff.’