“Don’t think I’m a pushover,” she warned him. She flicked her eyes to his forehead, and she reached up to tap the same spot on her own temple. “That looks better.”
“Yeah, well,” Cloister said mildly as he stepped through onto the driveway. He scratched the cut and felt the stitch scabs under his nails. Bourneville roamed past him and swung wide to give the lawnmower a sniff. Then she glued herself back to Cloister’s legs. “At least it doesn’t look worse.”
She led the way around the side of the house. A large pool glittered in the sun, and a duct-taped unicorn floated in the middle of it.
“My stepson loves it,” she said. “He always did, but since his dad died, he’s determined to keep that thing afloat as long as possible. Drink?”
She sat down under the wide, fringed umbrella and didn’t wait for his answer. She just poured him a glass of pale-green cordial. The ice cubes rattled as they spun around the tall, narrow glass.
He sat down opposite her and lifted the glass to gingerly sniff the liquid. It smelled of sugar and something fruity and inoffensive.
“I’m not that much of a stereotype,” Mrs. Lopez drawled. She pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, and her blonde hair curled around the frames as she frowned at him. “If you ask anything about the children? I’ll have my lawyer here before you can tell your dog to sit.”
Bourneville huffed and leaned against Cloister’s legs. She rested her chin on his knee, and he could tell she was having what passed for a rest while she was working.
“When your husband killed himself,” he said. “What happened to the SUV?”
Mrs. Lopez shrugged and flicked the sunglasses back down onto her nose. “It got messy,” she said in an airy voice that didn’t hide any of the pain. She stirred her drink with her straw and shrugged. “That’s what happens when someone would rather shoot himself than talk to his family. Things get messy.”
“Did you get rid of it?”
“Well, I’m not going to keep it, am I?” she scoffed and stirred to make the ice cubes rattle. Her attention seemed to be aimed at the pool as the wind skiffed the unicorn float about. “That would be morbid.”
“Our mechanic checked the VIN when she took the car apart,” Cloister said “It’s the same car, Mrs. Lopez.”
“Then why ask?” she said. She took a drink, and he waited. Mrs. Lopez set her glass down and rubbed her wet hands against each other. “He loved that stupid thing. We were going to get some sort of luxury Airstream and travel the country in the summer. Well, the good parts. We were going to actually use the boat ourselves, not just pay people who knew what they were doing. He was going to retire, and we were going to do so many things in that stupid ugly car.”
“Instead he killed himself.”
“He left a note. He was sorry.” Mrs. Lopez sighed and slouched back. It was only when shewasn’tanymore that Cloister realized she’d been posed. “I thought he lost all our money, but we’re fine. Or a scandal, but nothing has happened. I live in fear that it will turn out he did something to the kids, and I missed it. I mean, you think that, and it’s horrible. Ilovedhim. But there had to be something.”
“So you kept the car? After he was found, what….”
Mrs. Lopez wiped under her glasses with a brisk swipe of her fingers. “I wasn’t going to keep it. Of course I wasn’t. He’d shot himself. There was blood all over the… all over.”
Cloister glanced down at Bourneville. She’d detected blood all over the car. He should have paid better attention.
“And it smelled. I was going to just have them—” She paused and mimed a crushing gesture in one hand. “Just get rid of it, but I couldn’t bring myself to sign the forms. It was like it would be letting go of his dreams, of the last bits of him. So one of the deputies gave me a card to some specialist cleaner who cleaned upthatsort of mess. I brought it back here, and I never drive it. To be honest, as much of a fuss as I made, I was relieved—”
“Do you remember his name? The cleaner?”
“I don’t.” She propped her shades on the top of her head again and frowned at him. “I can go and look. I should still have the card, with my husband’s effects.”
“Please.”
She shook her head in bafflement but got up and disappeared into the house. Cloister scratched behind Bourneville’s ear as he checked his phone. There was nothing from Frome about Hewitt, and he had a few missed calls from Javi. He’d have to call back once he was done here.
After a few minutes, Mrs. Lopez came back out. She’d put on a robe and replaced her sunglasses with reading ones. The sun made her squint as she stepped back onto the patio.
“Here.” She handed the card, dog-eared and smeared, to Cloister. Once he had it, she tightened her belt around her waist and twisted the silk tightly around her fingers. “What’s this about?”
It wasn’t much of a business card. Cloister could feel the tabs where it had been popped out of a sheet. The contact details had been printed on a home printer, probably laid out in Word.
Tim Hewitt. When Cloister turned it over, he saw Ellie Smith’s name written on the back in her looping, dramatic script. He could almost hear her voice in his head. “Just tell him I sent you. He’ll take care of you.”
She probably thought she was doing the sad widow a favor.
“Did the cleaner have access to the car’s keys?” he asked. Still confused but now looking worried as well, Mrs. Lopez nodded. “The house?”
