“Are you okay?” she asked, and he gaped at her.
“Me? Are you okay? What happened?” he asked, hugging her to him again.
“This man came after me and Cookie and her boss, Charley, saved my life.”
I cringed. It was nice of her to leave out the part where we were the reason she almost got killed in the first place.
Uncle Bob strolled up to him and offered a hand. “Congressman,” he said.
“Are you Detective Davidson?” he asked, shaking his hand.
“Yes, sir. Thank you for coming in. Can I get you anything before we start?”
Kyle had agreed to give a statement, insisting he had nothing to hide. He hugged Mimi again, a sad smile on his face. “I guess this is it,” he said to her.
“We had to do this sometime.”
“That we did.”
I wondered if they would be arrested for not coming forth earlier. I hoped not. They were victims in all of this as well.
“This is Charley Davidson,” Mimi said when she saw me hovering.
Kyle took my hand. “I owe you everything.”
“Warren!” Mimi ran into her husband’s arms as he practically stumbled into the station, looking as harried as usual.
I spoke to Kyle under my breath. “I hate to have to tell you this, but I thought you were the one behind these murders for quite some time.”
He smiled sadly in understanding. “I don’t blame you, but I promise,” he said to Uncle Bob, “I had nothing to do with them. I’m not exactly innocent, but I’m not guilty of murder.” He took out his cell phone. “I know we have an interview, but would you mind if I called my mother? I couldn’t get a hold of my dad. I think he went fishing, and he never carries his cell. I just want to let them know where I am and what’s going on before they see it on the news.”
“Not at all,” Ubie said.
“Thank you.” He spoke over his shoulder as he walked away. “She’s visiting my grandmother in Minnesota.”
Uncle Bob and I both froze. I stepped up and placed a hand on Kyle’s, lowering the phone from his ear.
He frowned and closed it. “Is something wrong?”
“Kyle … Congressman—”
“Kyle is fine, Ms. Davidson.”
“The murder suspects were hired henchmen from Minnesota. Did you tell your mother or grandmother what was going on? What happened in Ruiz? Or even that Tommy Zapata wanted to step forward and confess what he did?”
Kyle blinked in surprise, contemplated what I’d said, then turned from me, his face a mask of astonishment.
“Kyle, everyone who was in that room with Hana Insinga is dead except for you and Mimi. And trust me, Mimi was not going to see another day if those men had anything to say about it.” I touched him gently on the shoulder. “That leaves you.”
He covered his eyes with a hand and breathed deeply.
“Your mother didn’t happen to borrow a hundred thousand dollars from you recently, did she?”
“No,” he said, facing me with a resigned expression. “My mother comes from money. She would never have had to borrow any from me.”
That explained the ritzy house in Taos that she lived in with a retired sheriff.
“Do you think she’s capable of—?”
“My mother is more than capable, I promise you.” A bitterness suddenly edged his voice, cold and unforgiving. “I told her everything that happened that night twenty years ago. She made me swear not to tell my father. She said I would be arrested, that people would say I was just as much to blame as anyone. The minute school let out for the summer, she sent me to my grandmother’s.”
“She knew all along?” Uncle Bob asked.
He nodded. “When I told her I was going to step forward with Tommy Zapata, she went ballistic. She said nothing mattered more than the Senate. And eventually, the presidency.” He laughed, a harsh, acidic sound. “It would never have worked, anyway. They would have found out about my past, my lifestyle. People like me don’t get to be president, but she insisted that I try, beginning with a seat in the Senate.” He leveled a hard gaze on me. “That woman is nuts.”
“Maybe we should get that statement now,” Uncle Bob said.
He led him to a separate interview room while I hung back. My head was still pounding out a symphony, but it had moved from Beethoven’s Fifth to Gershwin’s “Summertime.” I did feel better about one thing. My stepmother may be nuts, but she wasn’t a murderer. Not that I knew of, anyway.
I took two ibuprofen and sat on one of the chairs in the waiting room. My lids grew heavier than I would have liked, but I wanted to wait on Cookie and see what Uncle Bob came up with. I was pretty sure we just solved a murder mystery. Still, my lids didn’t care. The world blurred, dipped, spun a little, did the Hokey Pokey and turned itself around. Then my dad came in. I figured he’d heard what happened and came to check on me.
“Hey, Dad.” I pried my body out of the chair and gave him a groggy hug. I hadn’t seen him since the night of the attack, which made me a very bad daughter.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, holding me tight.
“Um, what are you doing here?”
“I still have to give my statement on the attack.”
“Oh.” Duh.
“Why are you wrapped in a blanket? What’s going on?”
“Dad, I’m fine. Just the usual. PI stuff and all that.”