Rivers asked, “Did he tell you what happened to him?”
“He couldn’t remember, but obviously Megan was behind it.”
“Obviously?” Mendoza repeated.
“Well, yeah.” She stared at Mendoza as if she were dense. “The scratches on his face? Those were done by a woman.”
Rivers agreed.
“I figured he’d finally told her about us, or she’d found out somehow and they’d had a big fight. She attacked him!”
“Rather than the other way around?” Mendoza prodded.
“James would never hit a woman.”
“You know that?” Rivers asked.
“Well . . . no . . .” She lifted a hand, as if the truth were obvious.
Rivers leaned back in his chair. “So what happened to Megan?”
“How would I know?”
Rivers said, “If you were to guess.”
“I couldn’t. And I’m not going to. And don’t you guys work in facts? Not what-ifs? All I know is what I heard, that she left James’s house after the attack all pissed off, and drove like a maniac, almost hitting a snowplow or something. Supposedly, she was going to drive to see her sister who lives in Seattle or Tacoma, I think, but she never made it.”
“Who’d you hear that from?” Mendoza asked as, deep in his pocket, Rivers’s phone vibrated. He ignored it.
“Everybody who works for James. Bobby, Leon, Zena . . . you know—work gossip.”
Mendoza made a note. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Megan?” Sophia frowned, her eyebrows drawing into a knot of concentration. “I’m not sure.”
“Was it that day?” Mendoza pressed.
“I don’t remember . . . I think . . . I think I saw her in town . . .” She was working so hard to recall, her eyebrows knitted. “Megan works in that clinic off Main, right? The McKay Clinic?”
Mendoza nodded. “The McEwen Clinic.”
“I saw her there, not inside but out,” she said slowly. “She was in the parking lot, getting into her car. It was snowing. Hard. But I saw her. At least I’m pretty sure it was her.”
Rivers didn’t believe there was any doubt. Sophia seemed like the kind of person who knew exactly what was going on. Especially when it was a woman involved with a man she was interested in.
Mendoza asked, “When was that?”
“A few days ago? Oh, wait. I remember now! Tuesday afternoon. I was on the way to yoga, over in the basement of the Presbyterian church? We meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at six, that’s why I’m always rushing as most days I don’t get off work until five-thirty. Sometimes I’m late and miss the first stretches. I hate that.”
“And you didn’t see Megan on Wednesday or Thursday?”
“No.” Another quick sip from her drink, and it seemed as if her hands were shaking a little. What was it she was hiding?
“She wasn’t at the hotel?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Or with James?”
“I told you, I didn’t see her.” She folded her arms over her chest. Defiant. She then told them she’d never actually met Megan, not officially, and that she hadn’t been interested in doing so, all things considered. She looked away from the table, to the windows high overhead, and let out a sigh. “I knew of her, but that was about it. And before you ask, yeah, I knew she was seeing James and that they were ‘a couple.’ ” She made weak air quotes.
Rivers wasn’t buying it.
Sophia must’ve guessed as much. She licked her lips and fiddled with her hair, adjusting the band around the ponytail.
“Maybe I subconsciously avoided her, or she was avoiding me.”
Mendoza asked, “And the fact that they were a couple didn’t deter you from . . . getting closer to James?”
“They weren’t married or engaged or even living together!”
“So he was fair game?”
She squirmed in her chair a little. “I guess if I’d been hunting, then yeah, but it wasn’t like that. I told you. We were attracted to each other, and . . .”
It just happened. In his mind, Rivers finished her thought. Shades of Astrid’s weak explanation about her affair.
And so it went. For another fifteen minutes during which they didn’t learn anything significant. By the time Sophia slipped on her coat and hat and left the station, Rivers didn’t know much more than he had when she’d walked in.
“You believe her?” Mendoza asked, snapping her iPad closed.
“Jury’s out.”
“She’s a little too perfect,” Mendoza said. “Too put together. Too beautiful.”
Rivers pushed his chair back and stared at the door to the interview room as it hung open, the scent of Sophia’s perfume still lingering. “Not her fault.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t trust her.”
Rivers had experienced that same feeling. As they left the room, Mendoza asked, “Do you think she targeted James Cahill?”
“Targeted him before she came to Riggs Crossing?”
They walked toward their respective cubicles. “Think maybe she came to Riggs Crossing specifically because of Cahill? That she knew he was young and single and going to inherit a fortune?”
“There are lots of young, single rich men. You wouldn’t have to come all the way to Riggs Crossing to find one.” He thought it over. “Where’s she from?”
She propped her tablet onto his desk, opened it, and typed quickly. “California,” she said.
“Big state.”
“Hmm. Right. How about San Mateo?”
“How about it?” he replied, knowing its close proximity to San Francisco. Located about twenty miles south of the heart of the city, San Mateo was on the peninsula. He’d been there dozens of times when he’d lived in the Bay Area.
“Don’t you think it’s a coincidence that she comes from close to the same place that the Cahill family called home?”
“I come from the area, too. Lots of people do. Including Megan and Rebecca Travers.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
“I do. But James Cahill is from Oregon. His parents moved there after he was born, I believe.”
“But the Cahill family is from San Francisco, originally, and it’s where the family fortune was amassed. Maybe we should follow the money.”
“Instead of the women?”
“One always leads to the other,” she said with an
