Mrs. Trejo grabbed her big black purse from the floor, unclasped it, fished around in its contents, and pulled out an envelope she handed to her daughter. Isabel removed a single handwritten sheet of paper from it and slid it across the table.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Read it,” she said.

I glanced at the salutation. “Dear Dolly?”

“That’s me,” Mrs. Trejo said. “My name is Dolores but everyone calls me Dolly.”

“Who wrote this?” I asked.

Mrs. Trejo said, “Bill.”

15.

15.

Dear Dolly, I know how sad you must be that Nick is gone because he was your baby but I had to take him with me because he was going to suffer so bad if I left him behind. I have AIDS, Dolly. I found a spot on my leg and I went to my doctor and he told me it was what they call a Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion and it’s the first sign of AIDS. If I have it then Nick has it too, because I’ve infected him. I didn’t do it on purpose and I hate myself for having given it to him because it means Nick will die a horrible death. There’s no treatment, there’s no cure, just suffering and more suffering and then a miserable death. I couldn’t let that happen to my Nick. Forgive me, Dolly. Try to believe that I did this out of love. Bill Ryan

I read it twice before the monstrousness of the note fully registered. “Bill Ryan killed himself?”

Isabel Trejo nodded. “Yeah, and he tried to kill Nick.”

Mrs. Trejo pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed the tears from her eyes.

“Where did you find this note?”

Her daughter responded, “Bill mailed it the morning before he died. My mom got it the day after.”

She handed me the envelope; the postmark confirmed that the letter had been mailed from San Francisco the day before Bill Ryan died.

I turned the envelope over in my hand and looked at the two women. Isabel Trejo’s blunt features were expressionless. A tear trickled down her mother’s cheek, making a furrow in her face powder. She clutched the used tissue in her fingers. A working woman’s rough fingers, a mother’s fingers.

“Mrs. Trejo, why didn’t you tell me about this when I first spoke to you and Nick?”

She glared at me, “Because it was none of your damn business.”

Isabel Trejo directed a silencing hand at her mother. “When my mom got the letter, we figured that was the end of the story. We didn’t know about the insurance policy. You caught us off guard.”

“But still. This note exonerates Nick.”

“Exonerates him?” Isabel Trejo said, angrily. “Nick didn’t do anything wrong. We thought you’d see that and go away but you couldn’t stop digging. You figured out that Sal lied about the gas leak.”