“Get well soon,” she read out. “Lara. No kisses?”
“She’s a friend,” Cloister said as he glanced down at the scrawled cast. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but the truth—her son was targeted by a kidnapper and her other son kidnapped, and Cloister had some idea what that was like—was hard to compress. “Her kids wanted her to write something.”
He sat back and rested the cast against his thigh. Now that Frome had set him to work again, he supposed he should get some sort of cover for it. Tancredi’s happy possum might be cute to some, but it hardly looked professional.
Mrs. Lopez started to say something and then stopped. She tilted her head to the side and pressed her knuckles against her upper lip to shush herself.
“Are you the deputy who was hurt the other night? The hit-and-run?” she asked. Her voice started off thrilled with the proximity to drama and then abruptly cracked into dismay as she recoiled. “Oh my God, was that my car? And they said a girl was attacked.Oh my God,did they assault some poor girl in my car?”
Her voice spiraled up toward shrill with secondhand panic. Cloister reached over the table and pushed her still-hot cup of tea toward her.
“Mrs. Lopez, please try to stay calm,” Cloister said. “Agent Merlo will explain everything when he gets here.”
She wrapped her hands around the cup on autopilot. The click of metal on ceramic made Cloister glance at her hands. Merry widow or not, she still wore her wedding ring.
“I knew I should have sold that car,” she muttered as she lifted the mug to her lips. “It’s cursed.”
Cloister would have asked, but Javi opened the door to the room just as he opened his mouth, so he put his curiosity aside for later.
“Agent Merlo,” he said.
“Deputy Witte.” The clipped way Javi said his name made Cloister give him a curious look. A flick of Javi’s fingers dismissed the unspoken question, or at least tabled it for later. Javi tucked his files into the crook of his arm and leaned over the table to offer his hand to the shaken woman. “Mrs. Lopez, I’m sorry to have kept you. We just have a few questions.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Lopez said quickly. She nervously wrung her hands around the mug. “I’m sorry I was a bi… being difficult. I didn’t realize this was about that poor girl.”
A muscle flickered in Javi’s jaw, and he turned slightly to glare at Cloister. “I see Deputy Witte has filled you in already.”
Cloister gestured at his forehead. The bruises had already faded down from purple and black. He always healed quickly, but the stitches were still there. “She guessed.”
“I see.” Javi sat down and flicked the file open in front of him. “Mrs. Lopez, we suspect your car was used in a crime over the weekend. I just have a few quest—”
“I was out of town,” Mrs. Lopez interrupted. “If I need an alibi, I can get a friend to call, or….”
“That’s not necessary,” Javi said. “We don’t suspect you of being involved, ma’am. The thing we need to know is who’d have access to your car?”
She was about to answer. Her mouth was open and “Just me and—” had made it out. Then she stopped abruptly. Her eyes went flinty, and she pressed her lips together in a thin line.
“I think I’d like to talk to a lawyer.” She set the mug down neatly in front of her and crossed her arms. “Before we go any further.”
There was a pause.
“Mrs. Lopez,” Javi said. “We just want to clear this up. Right now you arenota suspect—”
She lifted her chin. “Right now,” she said. “I. Want. My lawyer.”
That was that.
TWENTY MINUTESlater Mrs. Lopez left the station in an Uber, her confused housekeeper on her heels. Cloister stood at the window in Javi’s office and watched her from above. He scratched under his cast as he finally stepped back from the glass. The last time he was in plaster was a couple of years ago, when a fall during a cliff rescue broke his foot. He’d forgotten how bad the itch was.
“So who do you think she’s protecting?” Javi asked as he swiveled his office chair around to face Cloister. “The housekeeper? A lover?”
Cloister shook his head. “We know the housekeeper used the car,” he said. “He’s not the one she’s worried about. Her stepsons are teenagers, and if Tancredi is right about Mrs. Lopez being out on a yacht on Friday night, that means her stepsons were probably home alone. Access doesn’t mean they did it, though. What connection could the Lopez boys have to Janet Morrow?”
“Unless Mrs. Lopez is putting on a very good front,” Javi mused, “they’re a wealthy family. At least from the point of view of a homeless cleaner from New York, they probably are. Maybe they’re the people she thought owed her something.”
“What thought?” Cloister asked. “They’re at school, so they’re what, sixteen or seventeen? How would Janet even know them?”
“Online, maybe? Or it could be a connection to Mrs. Lopez that the boys knew about,” Javi said. A glance at his watch made him frown, and he got up to walk briskly over to the office door. He pulled it open and held it for Cloister. “Why don’t you find out, Deputy Witte.”
