The nurse elbowed Mendez from behind and whispered in Spanish, “If she was a Mexican, she would be drunk.”

Mendez coughed into his hand.

“What’s going to happen next?” Bordain asked Dixon.

Dixon sighed and tipped his head like he was about to ram it into a wall. “There isn’t much we can do, Mrs. Bordain. With no license plate and no witnesses, there isn’t anything to go on.”

“Someone tried to kill me!” she said, tears spilling over her lashes.

“I understand that you’re upset.”

She turned toward the door. “Darren! Thank God you’re here!”

Darren Bordain came into the room with rain beading up on his blond hair and on his expensive trench coat. He looked at Dixon and Mendez.

“Gentlemen, we have to stop meeting this way. People will talk,” he said. “Are you finished grilling my mother? I’m sure she’d like to go home.”

“I have to have a CT scan,” his mother said. “I hit my head on the side window, and the airbag almost broke my nose. Someone tried to kill me, but no one is taking it seriously!”

While Dixon reassured her that wasn’t the case, Mendez nodded Darren Bordain into the hall.

“Why wouldn’t you take that seriously?” Bordain asked. “Someone sent her human body parts in the mail yesterday.”

“It’s not that we aren’t taking it seriously, Mr. Bordain,” Mendez said. “There just isn’t much for us to go on. She didn’t get a good look at the other driver or the license plate of the other vehicle. No one else saw the accident.”

Bordain’s perfect brow knit. “Do you think she’s lying?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“She’s usually a good driver.”

“She’s had a lot of bad things happen this week,” Mendez said. “She’s been upset. I’m sure she’s distracted, and she’s probably exhausted. Things happen. People get embarrassed. They don’t want to admit they just went off the road on their own or that they might have had a drink or two. The deputy should have done a Breathalyzer test on her at the scene, but he didn’t.”

“She had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner,” Bordain conceded, “but she was by no means impaired.”

“All right. We have to check every angle,” Mendez said. “There’s no offense intended.”

“I understand.”

“You had dinner together?”

“Yes, at Barron’s Steak House. My parents and I.”

“What time did your mother leave the restaurant?”

“Around ten thirty. We all left at the same time.”

“You came in separate vehicles?”

“Yes. I went home—to my house. My father had to go back to Montecito. Mother headed back to the ranch.”

“She’s staying out there alone?”

“No. Hernando and his wife—the caretakers—live on the property. And of course my father will come back now.”