“I want to know why you seem to believe I have one.”
“Did you ever see Sandy with this woman?”
“No.”
“You answered awfully quick, Alex. You’ve known Sandy since college, but you’re absolutely sure you’ve never seen him with this woman.”
“I don’t recognize her. If you’re trying to tell me she and Rod had a relationship, I didn’t know about it. I haven’t met every woman he’s ever been with. Why do you think she’s my sister?”
“Her mother was involved with your father.”
“For Christ’s sake—”
“Your father sent this woman to college. Paid the whole shot,” she continued as she saw annoyance turn to bafflement. “She did six months at University of Stuttgart. Big rival of your alma mater’s, right? Football rivals. Take another look.”
“I tell you I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.”
“Maybe you ought to think back to college. Sophomore year, and the big game. You made the varsity. Your pal was still a benchwarmer.”
“We weren’t . . .”
“Pals yet.” Eve smiled.
“We knew each other. Of course. We were friendly enough.”
Eve took out another photo, one of Cleo when she’d been eighteen. “Try this one, taken back in the day.”
“I don’t . . .” But he trailed off.
“Yeah, she looks different there. Younger, but that’s not all. Lots of long blond hair. The face is fuller. She looks girlier, fresher. Ring any bells?”
“You’re talking about more than ten years ago. I can’t remember every woman I’ve met or seen.”
“Now you’re lying to me. Fine, we’ll just move on.”
He slapped his hand on the photo before Eve could pick it up. “Who is she?”
“I ask the questions, you answer them. Now do you remember her?”
“I’m not sure I do. She looks like someone I saw around, during that time. With Rod. We were becoming friends, real friends. I saw him with her a few times, or someone who reminds me of her. I asked him about her, since we were starting to hang quite a bit—and, frankly, I liked the look of her. He was cagey, wouldn’t say more than she went to Stuttgart. I only remember because I called her Miss Mystery. Just a lame joke between us that lasted for months. Long enough that I remember it, and her. She’s not my sister.”
“Because?”
“Because I don’t have a sister. Do you think I wouldn’t find out? That he—my father—wouldn’t use it against me in some way? He’d—”
He broke off, and again Eve waited while he thought it through.
“You think my father sent her to Rod. To recruit him, to enlist him as a spy. To get close to me. That all this time, right from the beginning, Rod was my father’s dog?”
He pushed up from the table, walked to the two-way glass, and stared through his own image. “Yes, I see. I see how that could be, how he could and would orchestrate that. It doesn’t make this woman my blood. My sister. It just makes her another of Max Ricker’s tools.”
Peabody’s communicator signaled. She glanced at the text, nodded to Eve.
“We’ll be able to verify that shortly. If you’re being square with me on this, and if you were being square with me on wanting to know who killed Coltraine and why, you’ll do what I tel
l you now.”
“What are you telling me?”