“No? Surely you need to be there for her when she shows up . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Rebecca understood she meant if Megan showed up. “Someone in that town must know something. Someone always knows something they’re not telling, but you can find out! And check into her boyfriends. They’re always the ones, you know?”

She thought of James and wondered. His attitude did seem off. Should he be more concerned about Megan? He’d told Rebecca about their fight without the right amount of emotion, as if he were talking about someone else or spouting lines from a script. And yet he was found broken and bruised with scars that might never completely heal.

Or was that all in her head? Had James’s reaction been spot-on and she, so close to the situation, was simply blind to the truth?

“She might have a secret lover,” Angelica suggested.

“I don’t know about that,” Rebecca said, but, she supposed, anything was possible. For the thousandth time, she wondered about Megan and James’s relationship. How had it started? What was it like? She might never know, but it still stung. Probably always would. Her sister and the man Rebecca had once loved. Had they ever discussed her? Laughed at her expense? Had he told her about their lovemaking? Even now, the thought could make her blush.

“You find out,” Angelica instructed. “You can work from there. No problem. You know. I’ll send you what you need, then I’m flying to L.A., looking at space not far from Rodeo Drive. Wouldn’t that be something, to expand down there? Keep in touch, but stay, Rebecca. Your sister deserves it.”

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 29

Something didn’t smell right.

Phoebe Matrix had lived long enough to know when things weren’t right. She’d buried one husband and divorced two others, all of them tomcats who couldn’t keep their privates in their pants. She’d been foolish to give her heart to any of them, though in truth it had worked out. Didn’t she own this apartment building free and clear? Good thing too. You just couldn’t count on Social Security to support you in your golden years.

Golden?

Ha!

That was a laugh.

Anyone who’d lived into their seventies knew that the whole idea of those fabulous retirement years was a fool’s dream. She’d give anything, including the Cascadia Apartments—lock, stock, and barrel—for a good run at twenty or thirty again. And she wouldn’t have married Marvin, Steve, or Charles . . . well, maybe Marvin again. She just would have played her cards differently and would never have let him drive by himself to Yosemite, where somewhere south of Bend, Oregon, his little Chevy Nova had been T-boned by a tractor trailer. No, sirree, she wouldn’t have let him take that fateful trip again.