“Before Claudia disappeared, she called him and asked for money. He admits that much. He says they talked on the phone a couple of times, but that she never picked up the check.”

“You think they had more contact than that?”

I nodded.

“Would your sister really do that to you, Lily? It’s… well, it’s awful if it’s true.”

“Claudia was always coming on to him. She tried to sit in his lap… she came out of the shower and dropped her towel…”

Sarah’s eyes stared at me with genuine horror. “She did that?”

“Claudia acted like it was some big joke, but she flung herself over him.” Talking about it made the memory more vivid, and it made me angrier.

“That rotten bitch,” Sarah snapped. She put her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Lily, I shouldn’t have said that. Ever since my husband… well, let’s just say, I find it difficult to be sympathetic to, shall we say, the other woman.”

“I know what you mean.” I took a long swallow of coconut water and tried to compose myself.

“How did your fiancé react to what your sister did?” Sarah asked.

“He was uncomfortable. He wasn’t interested in her, at least not then, anyway.”

“Is there a chance she’s hiding out at his home, or that he knows where she is now?”

“I don’t think so. He seems anxious to find her. He even suggested that we…” Hire a private detective. Duh. It hit me suddenly who Gregory Robinson’s employer might be. If Mr. Pete was right about his address, Robinson’s office was a couple of blocks east of Martin’s.

“Lily?”

“He wanted to hire a private detective. I just realized, he may already have gone ahead and done that.” Actually, if the detective was nosing around the building yesterday, that meant Martin had hired him before we talked at the flamenco bar.

“But that would be a positive thing, Lily, wouldn’t it? You have to find Claudia. I mean, the real Claudia. It’s the strangest thing, I feel like I know her even though we’ve never met.”

“I know. Everything about this situation is strange.”

“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” Sarah continued. “The woman who called herself Claudia knew all sorts of things that turned out to be true. I knew about you, that you were a journalist and living in Spain. I knew that your mother died… well, in a very tragic way.” She put her manicured hand over mine and squeezed for a second. “This girl knew all sorts of things about your sister. How did she know? What was the connection between them?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “No one seems to.”

“But they had to have known each other,” said Sarah. “There has to be something that the police are missing. If you can find that connection, you’ll find your sister.”