Uh-oh. The blood drained from my face. Frannie couldn’t vouch for Luz’s whereabouts the whole time. Fifteen minutes was a tight window for Luz to hit Bruce over the head, start a slow-burning fire, and produce a clipboard . . . but it wasn’t impossible.
A prosecutor could claim with a straight face that it had happened that way.
“And what happened to the clipboard?” I asked. I closed my eyes and summoned the memory of the two of them running toward me at the scene. Luz hadn’t been carrying a clipboard.
“Um . . .” She paused. “I’m not actually sure. I guess she probably brought it with her to the bodega? Or maybe she dropped it at the grove when we took off running?”
I struggled to keep my voice chipper and calm. “Well, thanks so much. That’s very helpful for my timeline.”
“Absolutely! Call back if you think of anything else. I might take a nap—it’s been quite a day—but you’re more than welcome to wake me up. Luz must be so angry about the fire.”
I bit my lip. “Yeah, she’s definitely angry. We’re going to figure out who’s responsible.”
I couldn’t make eye contact with Vicente when I hung up.
He finally broke the silence. “Luz and Frannie weren’t together the whole time, I gather.” Disappointment laced his voice. “So she doesn’t have an alibi.”
“Frannie says Luz was only gone for about fifteen minutes. That feels like a pretty tight time crunch to attack Bruce and start the fire.”
“She left to do what?” he asked.
“Get a clipboard from the winery.”
Vicente swore under his breath. “That awful detective will think fifteen minutes is a suspiciously long time to get a clipboard. The main building is only a two-minute walk from that grove.”
Officer Stent’s words replayed in my head. We want to get to the truth, not just make an arrest and close the case. Well . . . at least that’s what I want. Detective McNamara back there . . . he’s running for sheriff in the next election.
Luz needed an alibi so strong that Detective McNamara would realize his case against her couldn’t possibly hold up. Even if it strained believability that she could have attacked Bruce at the bodega and set a fire in the vineyard in that amount of time . . . we needed more than that to combat Regina’s claim that Bruce had identified Luz as the attacker.
“Then again,” I murmured, “maybe we do need a fresh suspect list.”
He reached for a cookie, and my mouth watered.
Okay, fine, just one more. I gave in and grabbed another one. I didn’t even want to think about the number of calories I’d consumed today.
“What about security cameras?” I blurted.
Vicente snapped to attention. “There are a few around the property. Twenty years ago, my abuelo had them installed amid a string of break-ins in the area. Ordinarily, police would have collected the footage by now, but because of the fire . . .”
“There wasn’t time to do that before everyone’s attention was pulled away,” I finished. “So they haven’t done all of their normal investigation tactics yet.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Let’s go. There’s a security room off the garage.”
I followed him down a hall to the staircase that wound down to the basement garage. At the top of the stairs, I felt a little dizzy and gripped the handrail tightly. One step at a time.
We hit the bottom of the stairs, passed Luz’s SUV, and walked through a nondescript door in the corner of the garage.
A bank of screens showed scenes from around the vineyard. I scowled at the TVs. “Why did no one tell me this was here when we were looking for you?”
He shrugged. “Guess they panicked?” He strode up to a keyboard, hit a few keys, and frowned. “Wait . . . what?”
“What’s wrong?”
He reached out and stuck his hand into the VHS player, then swore under his breath. “There’s no tape. We can see the live footage, but it’s not writing a VHS tape. Did . . . did the saboteur steal them to hid his identity?”
Frantically, he began pawing through the shelf of VHS tapes.
“VHS tapes, huh?” I asked. “That’s such old technology now. I’m amazed she can even find an inventory of those.”
“They’re labeled on the front with dates,” he explained. After a couple minutes, he let out a long sigh. “No, not sabotage. Looks like Luz hasn’t been making tapes for a couple months.”
“She probably couldn’t find any more to buy.” I chewed my lip. “I guess that’s why no one mentioned the cameras.”
“Another dead end.” His shoulders sagged. “I know it’s all part of the job, but man . . . it feels different when it’s your family member that police are treating like a suspect.”
“I know,” I murmured.
We slunk back to the kitchen table in disappointment, and I tried to suppress a horrible thought: Why would Luz have stopped recording security tapes when the vineyard was being sabotaged?
Could Regina Stringer and the investigating officer be right? Could Luz have us all fooled? It was hard for me to imagine that she’d been lying to me all day—I liked to think I had a decent read on people.
How will Vicente handle it if it turns out his beloved cousin is guilty?
I had to follow the truth, no matter where it led. But this felt agonizing to even consider.
When we returned, Gloria peered through the doorway at us. “Where were you?” she asked.
“Checking the security feeds,” said Vicente. “But it looks like Luz stopped recording footage a couple months ago.”
“Oh!” Gloria exclaimed. “After the burglary. No, she didn’t stop the cameras. She’s no tonta.”
I exchanged a glance with Vicente.
Gloria continued, “After the burglary, Luz seemed . . . worried. More than made sense to me. It was just a burglary, I told her. It happened.” She seemed thoughtful. “Now I understand. She’d been receiving those notes.”
“So, what’d she do?” I asked.
Gloria crossed her arms. “She told me it was time to update to new technology. She got one of those fancy apps that connect to . . . thinking cameras.”
“Smart cameras?” Vicente asked.
“Ah!” Gloria’s face lit up. “Yes, that’s what she called them. Smart cameras. She put one at the front and back of the house and another on the gravel road that goes into the vineyard fields. I think it sent a notification to her phone when there was movement. She had ordered a few more cameras with fancy features that she wanted to put around the rest of the vineyard, but they have not arrived yet—they were on backorder or something.”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s why she didn’t tell me anything about the cameras. She gets a notification every time the camera sees anything—so she knew that it hadn’t picked you up moving around the vineyard.”
“Because she only had three cameras set up so far,” said Vicente. “And after I left the wine cave, I didn’t pass by any of them.”
“Is her phone here?” I asked. “Or did she have it on her when she was arrested?”
“I’ll call it!” Gloria grabbed her own phone and dialed.
We fell silent, listening for it to ring, but there was no response.
“What about her computer?” I finally asked. “Maybe we can log onto the video feed from there?”
“Her laptop is in her office, usually,” said Gloria. “She keeps it hooked up there so she can use two computer screens.”
Vicente shot to his feet and headed for the hallway. “I’ll get it. Be right back.”
While he was gone, I rubbed my temples and stared at my notes. What were we missing? Was there something obvious we weren’t seeing?
A few moments later, Vicente returned, a silver laptop in hand.
“Is it password-protected?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I got in.” He flashed a grin at me and set the laptop on the table. “The password was an inside joke.”
He sank down onto the chair next to mine and opened Luz’s email. “Okay . . .” he murmured as he typed. “Let’s search for smart camera, maybe?”
A moment later, he had the brand of camera she’d ordered and had opened the website.
“She’s logged in!” I exclaimed.
“Yup,” he said, clicking through the website’s menu. “Looks like we can’t view the footage from here—that’s probably for security reasons—but we can see the timestamps of when the camera picked up movement.”
I glanced at my timeline and then pointed to a timestamp on the screen. “This must have been when she came back for the clipboard. She walked in the back door.”
Vicente frowned as he skimmed the list. “This doesn’t help us out, does it?”
My heart sank. He was right. The camera had detected movement at the back door four times in that fifteen-minute window. “Did she come in and out twice?” I asked.
“We won’t know until we can look at the footage,” said Vicente. “Maybe someone else came in and out? Or maybe a deer was wandering close enough to be picked up by the motion sensor?”
I let out a long sigh. “But the bottom line is that we don’t have an alibi for her.”
His lips tightened into a grim line. “No, we don’t.”