“When was this?” Mendoza asked.
“The first time was a few weeks ago. Maybe around the first week of November. At least, that’s when she told me about it. She suspected he was seeing someone else, and she was upset because she’d thought they were . . . exclusive.” Rebecca’s eyes seemed to darken. “I’m not sure James saw it that way. He . . . he’s always been . . .”
“. . . interested in other women?” Mendoza asked.
“What Dad used to call ‘playing the field.’ So yeah. I think Megan thought he was ‘the one.’ At least that’s what she told me.”
Mendoza said, “You said you were involved with James Cahill before your sister was, right?”
Rebecca’s jaw visibly tightened. “Yes.”
“You were in love with him?” Mendoza pressed, and a telltale blush crawled up Rebecca’s neck.
“I . . . thought so.”
“Until Megan came along?”
She gave a sharp little nod, picked up the coffee cup, then set it down again without taking so much as a taste.
“So would you say she stole him from you?” There was no judgment in Mendoza’s voice.
“You can’t steal something that doesn’t exist,” Rebecca said dryly. “James and I dated, yes, but we were never really a couple.”
“But he went from you to her, right?” Mendoza said.
“James and I saw each other in Seattle, but he lived here, and once he and Megan . . . once they got together, she moved here to be near him.”
“Six months ago?”
“Around that time. Yes.”
“But she called you when they weren’t getting along?”
“More so lately.”
“That must’ve been awkward,” Mendoza observed.
“Well, yes. But I got over it.”
Was that a lie? Rivers couldn’t be sure. She was twisting her ring again, then, as if realizing it, stopped and put her hands in her lap.
“Is this your sister’s handwriting?” Rivers asked and slid the once-crumpled note in a plastic bag across the table. He knew the answer, had seen Megan’s loopy scrawl on notes in her apartment.
“Looks like it,” she said, nodding, her dark hair showing glints of red under the overhead lights. “Oh, Megan.” Sadness came over her then, as if she’d come to the fatal conclusion she might not see her sister again. “I assume you’ve talked to James.” She slid the note back.
“Yes.”
“But he can’t remember what happened. Right? That’s what he says?”
“He’s not clear.”
She snorted.
“Do you know a woman named Sophia Russo?” Mendoza checked her notes as if getting her information straight, but that was all for show. She’d already started tracking down the woman that Bobby Knowlton had told her James Cahill had been seeing.
She shook her head. “Is she the woman James was involved with?”
Mendoza said, “We don’t know.”
“Megan didn’t give me any names. She was so upset; she just let me know she was coming and was crying. She said she’d tell me all about it when she got to Seattle, but . . .” She let that thought trail off.
“Do you know anyone who would do her harm? Does she have any enemies?” Rivers asked.
“No . . .”
“How about friends she may have called?”
“I tried them,” she said.
“Do you have their names and numbers?”
“Some.”
“Would you share them?”
“Of course.”
Mendoza slid the legal pad across the table, and Rebecca, after checking her phone, used her own pen to write a short list of names and numbers. “I don’t really know who her friends are, not anymore, other than the one woman she worked with. The nurse.” She thought for a second. “Andie.”
“Andrea Jeffries,” Mendoza supplied. “We talked to her.” She glanced at Rivers, who gave a quick nod, but Jeffries, who had been interviewed by one of the deputies, hadn’t indicated she’d been close to Megan, just that they’d worked together for less than a year.
“That might be. I’ve never met her.” Rebecca pointed at the pad with the pen. “Those names are people from, like, high school, people I’ve met, but I’m not even sure she’s in contact with any of them. Don’t you have her phone records?”
Mendoza was nodding. “We do.”
“And?”
“Not much,” Mendoza admitted.
Actually, so far the information was a near bust. The cell phone records had given them nothing, nor had the interviews with her coworkers added new insight. The truth was, they were stymied, and until James Cahill copped to regaining his memory, they were at a dead end, which they didn’t tell Megan’s sister. But based on the way she was eyeing them and the dismissive way she dropped her pen onto the table, she seemed to sense it.
They asked a few more questions and got no more answers that were of any help. When they were finished and Rebecca Travers stood to leave, her face hardened. “Find my sister, Detectives.”
And then she walked out the door.
Forgetting her pen.
Rivers scooped it up. “I’ll walk her out,” he said to Mendoza, even though Rebecca was in the hallway. Pocketing her pen, he caught up with her and held the door as she walked into the parking lot.
“If you think of anything else—” he began.
“I’ll let you know.” But she didn’t even cast a glance over her shoulder as she walked crisply to her vehicle, a white Subaru parked in the lot. Rivers watched her leave, then returned to the interview room as Mendoza was gathering her iPad and notes.
“She orders us to find her sister?” Mendoza snorted.
“She’s upset.”
“Yeah.” Mendoza was staring at the empty doorway. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“But there’s something more going on there. With Cahill. Did you notice? Whenever his name was brought up, she kind of gritted her teeth.”
“Like she hates him.”
“Maybe.” Mendoza’s eyes narrowed. “But you know what they say about hate?”
“There’s a fine line between hate and love.” They walked out of the room and into the hallway, and Rivers added, “You think Rebecca Travers is still in love with her sister’s boyfriend.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a man came between sisters.”
“And you think she had something to do with
