This whole situation was just so impossible to comprehend.
But she’d just have to go with it for now.
Detective Rivers was expecting her.
* * *
“Find anything?” Mendoza asked as she peered around the edge of Rivers’s cubicle. She was carrying a cup of coffee in one hand, and she waved it carefully toward his computer screen, which was open to Megan Travers’s Facebook page.
“Nope.”
He’d been checking Megan Travers’s social media pages and feeds, but her accounts had been stagnant for half a week, no activity. It was as if Megan Travers had fallen off the face of the earth.
Or been pushed by James Cahill.
“What about Cahill’s page? You check that?”
“Doesn’t have anything personal, just basic information about his businesses—the construction firm, the tree farm, the inn, even the café.” Rivers typed in Cahill Industries, and the website came onto the screen with a small picture of James Cahill in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up that was superimposed over the masthead, which featured pictures of tiny houses, fir trees, and the hotel.
“Busy guy.”
“No time for personal stuff on Facebook or Tinder, or Twitter or Instagram or whatever.”
Mendoza rounded the edge of his cubicle to look over Rivers’s shoulder. “James Cahill is pretty damned hot.” She took a sip from her cup as she eyed the image on the screen.
“Save it.”
“Even now, with a bandage covering half his head.” She nodded, as if agreeing with herself. “I hate to say it, but it’s true.” Her gaze assessed the obviously posed and pointedly casual image of Cahill on the screen. “I’m telling you, the guy’s got something.”
Rivers shot her a look as he rolled back his chair to stare up at her.
She lifted her free hand in surrender. “Fine, fine, you don’t want to talk about how sexy James Cahill is—”
Rivers snorted.
“I’m just giving you the female point of view, you know. Why he’s got all these women fighting for him.”
“All these women?”
Nodding, she said, “He runs through them. Like water.”
“And they fight for him?”
“Well, that’s just my take on it. Maybe not fighting literally, but somehow he got pretty damned beat up. And those scratches on his face?” she said, eyebrows elevating. “From a woman. An angry woman.”
“Or a scared one, defending herself.”
“Possibly.”
“So tell me about James Cahill’s women.”
“First off ”—she held up a finger—“there was that schoolteacher in Marysville, Jennifer Korpi. I got hold of her on the phone. She’d already given her statement to the Marysville PD, and they forwarded it. I just called to get some facts. She’s not only a teacher; she also tutors kids struggling in school and helps out at the local animal shelter. She has a steady boyfriend. Also her brother is her alibi. According to the deputy who interviewed her, she was pretty angry that she would even have to come up with one.”
“What happened between her and James Cahill?”
“Short-lived and flared out as soon as he met Rebecca Travers. Korpi said the waning interest was mutual but”—Mendoza shook her head, her black messy bun shining under the overhead lights—“I’m not so sure about that. And they do have a connection, if a weak one. Jennifer’s father used to work for the Cahill family in San Francisco, as a groundskeeper.”
“But James grew up in Oregon.”
“And spent some summers in California visiting Cissy Cahill, even though she’s a lot older than he, by fifteen years or so.” Mendoza waggled her hand to indicate she wasn’t certain of the age difference. “Anyway, according to Jennifer Korpi, that’s where he and she first met—at the Cahill estate in San Francisco.”
“So how did they reconnect and get together here?”
“It’s the whole ‘small world’ thing. Her brother’s a carpenter. Actually, her stepbrother, Gus Jardine. He works for Cahill on the tiny houses or sometimes in the tree lot, as I understand it, so she ran into Cahill again—or something. I don’t have all the details yet, but I’m going to schedule a face-to-face.”
“Jardine’s her alibi.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll come with you on the interview.”
“It’s an hour and a half in good weather, probably over two now, and that’s if the roads are clear.”
“I’m okay with that. So, go on. Somewhere along the way, she and Cahill stopped seeing each other?”
“Cahill doesn’t stay with one woman too long. At least, that’s his track record. From Jennifer Korpi, he moved on to Rebecca Travers.” Another finger joined the first one. “That lasted a few months, until he and the sister, Megan, got together.” A third finger stood at attention. “And then, lately, while still involved with Megan, or at least so she thought, he took up with Sophia Russo, a woman who works for him. Pretty fast by most people’s standards.”
“All within a year?”
She shrugged. “Maybe a year and a half. Still nailing that down.”
“Fast work.”
“Hmm.”
“Anyone else?” His phone buzzed, and he saw that it was, again, the reporter for the Clarion, Charity Spritz, so he ignored it.
“Those are the most recent, the ones we know about.”
“To start with.”
She nodded. “Who knows what might come out of the woodwork when we start digging? Not to mention that we could discover a jealous boyfriend or two.”
“Or an old enemy, someone he screwed over or was perceived to have screwed over.” He saw her make a face. “But you’re focused on the ex-girlfriend angle.”
“So far it’s the only angle we’ve got,” she reminded him.
“Just the most obvious,” he pointed out. “He’s rich, or will be. Wealthy heirs attract interest.”
“But he’s not the victim.”
“No . . .”
They both thought about that a moment, then Mendoza said, “He’s not the last person to have seen her alive. There’s Knowlton, the snowplow driver, and a woman in town, all of whom said they saw her driving after the fight.”
Rivers scratched his head and frowned at the image of James Cahill in his battered jeans, work shirt, and well-practiced smile that stared at him from his computer screen. Was it a lovers’ quarrel? But with something else at play?
He said, “Megan Travers is missing, not James
