Taggert nodded. “Here?” she asked, short brown hair visible beneath her hat.

“Unless she’d rather go into the station,” Rivers said.

“No. Oh, God, no!” the woman in the passenger seat said around sobs. “I can’t. I just can’t. I . . . I’m pregnant.”

Looking up at them, Taggert rolled a world-weary eye. Even though she was barely fifty, Taggert was jaded, thought she, personally, had seen and heard it all.

From the passenger seat, Zena said, “I have to get home. My boyfriend. He’ll be missing me.”

“Fine, we can talk here.” Mendoza leaned down to look past Taggert to the passenger seat, where the woman was shredding a much-used tissue.

They climbed into the back seat, which was warmer than outside, and conducted a quick interview in which Zena explained her concerns about her friend.

“She . . . Willow would call in sick, y’know, all the time, and it’s not like she was pregnant like me or had a good excuse and Donna—uh, Donna Bunn, she’s our supervisor—had said before that she was on her last nerve with Willow or something like that.”

Rivers adjusted himself so that he could face Zena as Taggert adjusted the heater and defroster. “Was Willow depressed?”

“What?” Zena Wallace seemed shocked at the idea. “No—I mean, maybe. It would be hard to tell.” She blew her nose. “She was so quiet. Could have always been depressed, for all I know.”

“Any change in her attitude lately?” Mendoza asked.

“No. She didn’t seem any different than usual.”

“Had she ever talked about suicide?”

“Geez, no!” Zena reacted by dropping a hand and covering her abdomen protectively as if she didn’t want her unborn child to hear.

“It wasn’t suicide,” Rivers reminded Mendoza.

“Just covering all the bases,” Mendoza said, but kept her gaze on Zena Wallace. “She have a boyfriend?” Mendoza asked.

“No. Well. Uh. Not that I know of.”

Rivers suggested, “Enemies?”

“Oh, Geez, no! Willow? Uh-uh. There isn’t—wasn’t—anything to not like about Willow. She just kind of blends into the woodwork, if you know what I mean. Kind of always around, but not loud or pushy or . . .” Zena started crying again and fanned herself with her hand. “Sorry, it’s my pregnancy hormones, you know, I’m like, I mean, my emotions are all over the place.”

“She has something she wants to show you,” Taggert said, interrupting another of Zena Wallace’s crying jags.

“What’s that?”