Another thought had crossed my mind. Caro’s father-in-law had watched Theo going into and out of the house. That meant he could’ve seen my sister leave for her run. Theodore’s involvement was an unlikely possibility. But if Caro was giving a journalist information about his company’s ongoing fraud, who knew what he’d do?

“It didn’t have to be Theo,” I said. “Her phone wasn’t on her when she died. If someone else saw her messages or call log, they’d figure out she was meeting you.”

“No one knew,” Ben said, standing. He picked up his book.

“Anyone who has access to her phone knows.”

“Caroline used a burner,” Ben said. “She knew enough to do that.”

He strode off before I could ask him anything else. My rule-following good-girl sister used burner phones? How would she even know where to get one? The feisty pigeon hopped up on the chair Ben had vacated.

“Did any of that make sense to you?” I asked it. “Because I am very confused.”

CHAPTER 25 THEO

CHAPTER 25

THEO

The Thraxton hotel in Berlin was on Museum Island, a small patch of land sitting in the middle of the river Spree. It was as far east from the Brandenburg Gate as the Tiergarten’s Victory Column was west, and I took a taxi to get there quickly. That provided an accidental sightseeing tour of the grand boulevard of Unter den Linden, with its neoclassical opera house and the imposing Humboldt University. This was a deviation from my plan to walk the streets I’d known as a student in Berlin, because I’d rarely visited this area in those days. But as I’d stared at my old apartment building, the certainty that another person had been in the room had only grown. I didn’t think it was my sister; I couldn’t remember seeing Juliet until I was carried onto the private plane that took me to rehab. Someone else had carried me onto the plane; Juliet was already there. I’d gotten a decent look at the man’s face as he’d strapped me into a seat. It hadn’t been Klaus, with his distinctive shock of white hair and huge belly. It was a man I couldn’t remember ever seeing before.

The taxi deposited me beside the Lustgarten—a name I’d snickered at as a student; it translated as “Pleasure Garden”—which was across from the cathedral. If I’d been in the city as a tourist, I would’ve loved nothing more than to head north. That way lay the Pergamon Museum with its Babylonian, Assyrian, and Roman treasures; the Neues—or New—Museum, with its bounty from Egypt and Troy; and the smaller Bode Museum, with its Byzantine art and assortment of curious collections. But I took a deep breath and headed south.