Maybe. Rivers considered it, but really didn’t put much faith in coincidence.

“So what is it you want to know?” Korpi asked as she made her way back to her desk and leaned a hip on the edge. “Oh, right. About my ‘relationship’ with James.” She made air quotes, her fingertips the same shade as her sweater. “Well, if you want to know the truth, it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“How so?” Mendoza asked, and Rivers guessed that she was recording as her phone was in her hand.

Korpi arched an eyebrow at Mendoza. “You’ve met him. He’s what Gus calls a ‘chick magnet,’ which I think really means big trouble. We didn’t date that long, but it certainly wasn’t exclusive, at least not on his part. There were always women coming out of the woodwork.” Her lips twisted wryly. “Not only is he too handsome for his own good, but he’s got money, and that . . . oh, it’s stupid I know, but he has that bad boy attitude that some women find so attractive.”

“Is that what attracted you?” Rivers said.

“No.” Then, “Maybe.” With a sigh she shook her head. “I really don’t know. He was different from the other men I’d dated, and yeah, his don’t-give-a-sh—damn attitude was refreshing. He seemed more real, you know, but looking back, maybe I was being played. Anyway, it didn’t last all that long.”

“Because of Rebecca Travers?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe she was a symptom and not the cause, y’know. James doesn’t seem to be a one-woman kind of guy.”

Rivers asked, “How did you meet?”

“I already told this to the Marysville cops.”

“I know,” Mendoza said, “but humor us.”

She picked up a purple tension ball from her desk, then realized what she was doing and dropped it quickly. It landed between one of three coffee cups and a stack of papers. “We knew each other as kids when my father worked for his family and he’d come to visit, and then we reconnected when Gus took the job at his shop last year. At the time, I thought it was ‘fate, ’ ” she admitted ruefully, “but now I realize it was all just a big, fat mistake.” She sounded bitter, heard herself, and said, “I just wish this was over. I just hate being involved.”

“So, how did you reconnect?”

“Oh. I thought that was pretty obvious. Gus introduced us. Well, technically reintroduced us. We all got together for drinks, and James and I clicked and . . . well, you know . . . one thing led to another. Before I could think twice about it, we were dating and yeah, I was fantasizing about being in love. Then along came Rebecca Travers, and”—she slapped her hands together—“poof. That was that. What do they say? ‘Over before it really began’? Well, that’s how it felt.”