Immediately, Alyssa knew what had been making her neck itch last night just before Holly had arrived. Barbara Carpenter, the flamboyant neighbor who’d been out walking her lavender-colored dog the day Gabriel and Lydia were murdered, said she’d seen ‘a tall man about Cord’s height with dark brown hair like Gabriel’s and driving a fancy car.’ Though her pulse doubled in speed, her voice was level as she told Cord and Sandra what she was thinking. ‘Mack Kensington has hair coloring just like his brother’s, is close to your height, Cord, and drives an Escalade. Need I say more?’

‘Hot damn,’ Sandra breathed out. ‘This case just became deeper than a game of Clue. My prediction is the shady criminal defense attorney killed his family in the kitchen with a rolling pin and a nine-millimeter before kidnapping his niece and her best friend.’ When neither Alyssa nor Cord joined in her amusement, her laughter died off, and she muttered an apology.

On the video, Mack’s gaze drifted down to his watch as he leaned against the maître d’s podium, straightening again when a well-dressed gentleman walked out. The two shook hands and exchanged a few words, and then that was it. Even as the probably-Mack walked out, Alyssa noticed he’d never once glanced back in Gabriel’s direction. And as Cord had suggested in Elizabeth’s case, she had to admit to the possibility that Mack really hadn’t known his brother was there.

But even if that were true, if her hunch was correct, and he was indeed the person Ms. Carpenter had spotted with Gabriel Thursday afternoon, it still left her with the question as to why he hadn’t mentioned that he’d seen his brother earlier in the day. If they’d been arguing, as Ms. Carpenter had suggested, the obvious answer was that Mack was a lawyer and would know better than to implicate himself. On the other hand, his decision to keep silent placed him on the top of her pitiably short list of suspects.

‘So, um…’ Alyssa and Cord directed their attention away from the screen and over to Sandra when she hesitated.

‘Um, what?’ Alyssa encouraged.

‘What are the chances that Mack, who lives nearly five hours away, just happened to be in Albuquerque and just happened to be at the same restaurant as his brother hours before the man was killed? That’s a little too coincidental in my book.’

Cord chewed on the inside of his cheek the way he did when he was mulling something over. ‘Could be coincidence. Could be something else. But the man’s a big-shot attorney, so if he is somehow involved in fratricide, I can’t imagine he’d be so sloppy as to knowingly be seen at the same place as his brother on the night the man was killed. Just doesn’t make sense.’