We ended up in an interview room, sitting in metal chairs across from each other over a metal table. “I guess this makes it hard for people to leave graffiti,” I said, thinking of the wooden table I’d been questioned at when I was fifteen. There had been dozens of sets of initials carved into it, plus choice insults for the cops.

“Mostly it’s because of bedbugs,” Villaverde answered. “What did you want to talk about?”

“What’s going on with the investigation?”

“We don’t have an open investigation.” He looked bemused. “Your sister died of a heart attack, to put it in the simplest terms. Unfortunately, she had an underlying heart condition from her pregnancy.”

“What are you talking about?” Even though I was confused, a memory zipped through my brain. “Wait, is this about Caro having hypertension when she was pregnant with Teddy? Because that stopped after he was born.”

The cop flipped through some notes on a yellow pad. “According to her doctor, she had an arrhythmia that became an ongoing issue. Your sister didn’t tell anyone, far as we can tell. Her husband didn’t know. Your dad didn’t know.”

No one had explained Caro’s heart issue to me before. “I can’t believe it was serious enough to kill her. She never said anything.”

“She might’ve lived if she hadn’t hit her head,” Villaverde said. “People think a concussion only harms your brain, but it affects your heart. It constricts how it beats. It’s a tragedy, what happened to her, but as soon as we establish that there was no foul play involved, it’s not our department anymore.”

“How do you know there was no foul play?” I demanded. “Why was there no autopsy?”

“Look, a lot of people think an autopsy is automatic,” Villaverde said. “But that’s only true if the person was a victim of violence. Otherwise, it’s largely up to the family. We asked in this case, and her husband said no.”

Of course Theo had refused. Whatever he’d done to Caro had been careful and quiet.

I found the printout of Caro’s email. “I got a message from my sister yesterday. She wrote it just before she died. You need to read it.” I slid it across the table so that he could.

“You got this yesterday?” Villaverde raised a dubious eyebrow. “She died over a week ago.”

“Caro set the message up to go out if she died.”

“How do we know this is legit? Anybody could set something up online.”

“My sister is the only person in the world who’d make these references to our family.”

He gave it a quick once-over. “She called you Dodo in it. That’s your nickname?”