“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?”