You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,125

cup.

Andie sniffed again. “It’s . . . it’s what Megan said to me.” She finally lifted her eyes to meet Rivers’s. Her voice a bare whisper, she finally confided, “She said that if anything happened to her, you know, like she went missing or . . . worse . . .”

Almost imperceptibly Mendoza leaned forward.

“. . . she, um, said that it would be James Cahill’s fault.” Andie closed her eyes, and tears were visible in her lashes. “I want to say this off the record, okay?”

A little late for that.

“I mean, like, I don’t want to testify.” Swallowing and sniffing, turning the glass in her hands, she added, “Bruce and I . . . we’ve got a baby coming. Just found out this week.”

“What exactly were her words?” Mendoza asked.

“I told you.” Andie closed her eyes for a moment. “She said, ‘If anything happens to me, it’s James, his fault.’”

“When did she tell you this?” Rivers asked as his cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

“I don’t know the date, but a couple of weeks or so ago. Like maybe a week before she disappeared.”

“She was angry.”

“Oh, man, really mad at him. Again. He’d blown her off or something, and she suspected he was with another woman.”

“Did she say who?”

“I think . . . I mean, he’d been seen with Sophia Russo. Again. Like it had happened before, and I really didn’t think much of it. Sophia works for him and, you know . . . sometimes Megan jumps to conclusions and gets all kinds of upset. That day she was really, really pissed, jabbing her arms through her sleeves, grabbing her things out of her locker in a rush. She threw her phone into her bag and was swearing. She was really mad. Like really, and she said, ‘If anything happens to me, it’s James. Okay? It’s James. He’s such an effin’ prick!’ Only she used the ‘f’ word, you know?”

“What happened then?” Mendoza asked.

“I don’t know. She was out the door and let it slam behind her. I saw her peel out of the parking lot. She nearly hit a kid on a skateboard, but luckily she missed him.”

“You don’t remember exactly when this was?”

She shook her head.

“Did you see her afterward?”

“The next day at work, and she acted like nothing had happened, y’know?” She rotated the glass once more, and Rivers noted her fingernails were chewed, polish gone at the tips. “Anyway, I told Bruce, and he said to forget it, that it was nothing, that she was upset. You know like when someone gets mad and says, ‘I could kill him,’ but it’s just because they’re upset; they’re not going to kill anyone.”

Mendoza eyed her.

Andie added, “So I didn’t say anything, just kept it to myself, like Bruce said.” She looked miserable. “But now . . . But now she’s been gone over a week, and I saw on the news that the police were asking for help, there’s even a ‘Find Megan’ group on Facebook and Instagram and whatever. So I thought maybe I should tell you.” Her face crumpled.

“You were right,” Mendoza said.

“But it’s off the record, right?”

Rivers asked, “Did she and James fight often?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it ever physical?” he pushed. “Did she come in with bruises or—”

“No! Nothing like that. She’s the one with the temper.”

Rivers wondered about that.

“Was there anything else she said or did that was odd in the days leading up to her disappearance?”

Andie shook her head. “Not really. She was maybe a little tenser than usual, but with Megan, it’s kinda hard to tell. Like I said, she’s pretty emotional.” She checked the clock over the revolving pie case in the corner and sucked in her breath. “Oh, darn. I gotta go.” She started gathering her coat. “I’m gonna be late, and Doctor McEwen has himself a little fit if you’re, like, more than thirty seconds late.”

“If you think of anything else, call me,” Mendoza said, but Andie was already sliding out of the booth and race-walking to the glass doors.

“Don’t count on it.” Rivers reached for his wallet and paid for the three drinks, noting that Andie hadn’t taken so much as a sip of hers. He wondered about her, and about her boyfriend who wanted her to avoid the law. That was the trouble with this case, he thought as they walked outside to the blast of raw wind blowing across the parking lot. The more answers he found, the more questions that arose. It was