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that—”
    “Richard.” I rolled down my own window and leaned on the sill. We stopped alongside him.
    “Whatcha doin’ here, Big Guy?” Jeannie asked.
    Richard leveled a look at me, then pulled his eyes away and answered. “Shadowing Diana.” He paused. “This is how you spend your day off, Emily? At a funeral?”
    “Funeral’s nothing,” Jeannie said. “Earlier she went to the jail. Then that fancy gym.” She nudged my shoulder. “Show him your nails.”
    I pulled my arm back inside the car. “Diana’s husband and Wendell Platt had a surgery practice together. Did you know that?”
    He shook his head.
    “What happens to a business when a partner dies?” I asked.
    Richard tapped his steering wheel. “I guess Platt’s share goes to his heirs.”
    “Ooh!” Jeannie piped up, as if answering a trivia question. “No wife, no kids!”
    By way of clarification, I told Richard what we’d learned during the eulogy.
    “He must have left his share to somebody,” Richard said. “The question is to who.”
    Jeannie pointed at him. “To
whom
.”
    Richard ignored her and squinted at something ahead of him, behind us, in the distance. “She’s leaving.” He took his foot off the brake and idled forward. I watched in my rear view mirror as he slowly caught up to Diana’s departing Mercedes. My cell phone rang.
    “I’ve heard of buy-sell life insurance policies,” Richard said. “Something about buying life insurance on your partner.”
    “I’ll look into it.”
    “Into what?” Jeannie asked.
    “Ever heard of a buy-sell life insurance policy?”
    She shook her head. “We’ll Google it.”
    ***
    “You won’t believe this,” I said, climbing into the passenger side of Vince’s old pick-up. “She’s gone.”
    It was an old-style truck, the kind without an extended cab. Jeannie made Vince drive whenever she could, reminding him each time how much she liked cowboys and their trucks.
    I shoved my hip into hers and forced her to scoot over, not wanting to spend another minute outside. The heat was so oppressive my clothes were already sticking to me after the short walk across the lot.
    “Gone, like out on bail?” Vince asked, reversing out of our spot. He and Jeannie had agreed to stop at the jail on our way out for Mexican.
    “No. Transferred to County.”
    Jeannie whistled. “She’s hating life tonight.”
    “So am I.” My boss was hiding things. Our client was hiding things. “I asked Claire for a reason Diana would want Platt dead and she didn’t suggest one.”
    “You’re assuming Diana’s responsible then?” Vince said.
    “I’m not assuming anything.” I leaned forward to look at Vince around Jeannie. “But don’t you agree it’s weird she didn’t tell me Platt was linked to Diana’s husband?”
    “She’s a liar,” Jeannie said. “Liars leave stuff out all the time.”
    Maybe Jeannie was right. Still, Claire intrigued me and I spent the remainder of our short drive trying to figure out why.
    “Is it her money?” Vince asked. “Her looks?”
    Certainly, her wealth and beauty fascinated me, but those weren’t the lures that continued to draw me in.
    “It’s the type of parent she is, I think. To me, it seems incongruous that a woman who cheats could be a good mother. Yet, somehow I believe she is.”
    “A murderer can be a good mother,” Jeannie said. “Take self-defense, for example.”
    I didn’t have the energy to point out that murder and self-defense were different things.
    Vince flipped his turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of Pepe’s.
    “If there are acceptable reasons for murder, you should ask yourself if there are acceptable reasons to cheat.”
    “Cheating’s never okay,” I said, a little too quickly.
    Vince took a spot near the multi-colored stucco building, stopped the engine, and shrugged. I wondered if the shrug meant he had no opinion or that he thought cheating was allowed in some circumstances.
    I didn’t ask.
    During the