stuff I shouldn’t have. You know how strong Chuck’s margaritas are. But I never said Theo had done it. He was just a kid.”
“Accidents happen,” Kate said.
“Trust me. That gunshot was no accident.” He mimed a gun with his hand and held his finger to his skull an inch above his ear, pointing diagonally down. “The bullet went in right here, then down and out through her chin. The coroner told us it was fired no more than a few inches away. That’s why her brains were all over the place.”
“Victor, please,” Louise said. Kate couldn’t tell whether she meant “please stop” or “please go on, in great detail.”
“I know what people say about Theo,” Victor said. “He was … different as a kid, even before all this happened. But I also know what boys are like at that age. I have two sons.” He gestured at the family photos Kate had been looking at earlier. “And if you think an eleven-year-old could kill his mother at close range, see her body in the shape it was in, then call the police and fake tears like that, all without getting blood on his clothes … No. No way.”
Kate had thought something similar when she was looking at the photos of Theo in Miranda’s darkroom. How young he had been, how innocent. But it was Victor’s first words that caught in her mind. I know what people say. How many times had Kate imagined hearing those words about herself? How many times had she walked into a room and heard the chatter stop for a beat, as if passing over a speed bump? She had been so quick to judge Theo. The truth was, a part of her had been relieved that someone else was the focus of speculation.
“So what about someone else?” she asked, pushing aside her discomfort. “Maybe she went out that morning to meet someone. She was standing there talking to them, it got heated, she turned away, and they shot her. Then they wiped the gun off after. It’s possible, right? They just would have had to get through the gate.”
Victor rubbed his eyes, tired. “The gate wasn’t like it is now. Jake had that put in after they left town.”
“So anyone could have come in. I know how many people disliked her. You really never had any other suspects?”
For an instant, Victor’s face seemed to shudder, as if it had been wrenched sideways. A light went on in his eyes, then out.
“No,” he said. “No one important.”
“People from her childhood? From the art world?”
“I am not going to name everyone we investigated,” he said in what Kate now thought of as his cop voice.
Before she could push him any further, he looked at the clock and said, “Well, all right. I better get back to my day.” He picked up the plate of cookies, which Louise had mostly demolished, and held it out to them. “One for the road?”
At the front door, as Louise moseyed out to admire Leah’s new mulch, Victor patted Kate awkwardly on the shoulder.
“You’re asking good questions,” he said. “I’m sorry it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
Although he meant it kindly, Kate didn’t like the way he phrased it, as if she were a child who had been denied a second scoop of ice cream. She turned back to him. “I forgot. Earlier, you said they couldn’t rule it a suicide unless they could prove Miranda’s state of mind. So what happened? Did you find proof?”
“Oh, we didn’t have to.” He gave a dismissive wave. “We had all her photographs. Self-mutilation. Blood everywhere. Her hospital admission, her list of prescriptions. That was all the evidence we needed. In the end, the investigation was just a formality.”
* * *
As Kate and Louise walked down through the pink clouds of the Velázquezes’ manzanita bushes, Louise asked, “Did you see his face when you asked about other suspects?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, surprised her aunt had caught that. “Do you know who he was talking about?”
Louise shook her head. “No,” she said sadly. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“At least we know Theo didn’t shoot her,” Kate said, mostly to herself.
Louise nodded sagely. Then she added, as if she couldn’t help it, “At least not by accident.”
“Aunt Louise!” Exasperated, Kate stopped at the end of the walkway, so fast her aunt bumped into her. “Did you see how Victor was holding his hand, imitating the gun? I’ve seen photos of Theo from back then. There’s no way he