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find out?”
    “I told her.” Nakayla stared straight ahead. At first her smooth-skinned face showed no emotion, but after a few seconds, her dark eyes welled with tears. “She was my big sister. She looked out for me. After her injury, I tried to do the same for her.” Nakayla turned to me. “My sister could be too trusting. I think she was about to put her trust in you.”
    I felt my face warm at what I took for a rebuke.
    Nakayla saw the impact of her words and her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it that way.” She shifted her gaze back to the interstate. “Just that she seemed ready to enlist your help when she hardly knew you.”
    “But you think she checked up on me?”
    “Yes. And if she liked what she found out, she would have moved quickly.”
    “And if she didn’t dig deep enough, she could make a mistake, like dating a married man.”
    Nakayla wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Something like that. But the words you said at her funeral prove to me she didn’t misjudge you.”
    I felt my face flush again at the compliment. I stared out the side window at the ridges rimming Asheville and wondered if Nakayla could also be too trusting. What if Tikima had lied to her sister and hadn’t broken off her relationship? My years as a warrant officer, especially working with military prosecutors, had shown me how often people will say what they know someone else wants to hear.
    “You don’t think it’s possible that Tikima’s plans could have changed after she talked to you? That her apartment could have been the meeting place?”
    “She wouldn’t have met a business prospect there. Usually they’d meet at the client’s site or at a restaurant. Tikima would have called me again if her plans changed. I have a key to her apartment and sometimes I’d crash there to watch a video and stuff myself with popcorn.”
    “But you didn’t that Saturday?”
    “No. I had a date.”
    “So Tikima knew that.”
    “No.”
    No meant Tikima wouldn’t have brought someone up to her apartment if she thought Nakayla might drop by. No also meant the sisters didn’t tell each other everything.
    Nakayla flipped on her turn signal and eased the car into the right-hand lane. A green exit sign read Biltmore Village one half mile. I sat quietly, not wanting the questions swirling in my head to come out as an interrogation.
    “I had a working date, not a romantic one,” Nakayla said. “I didn’t discuss the specifics of my work with Tikima.”
    Working date? Who was I riding with? A hooker with a heart of gold?
    Nakayla must have read my mind. “I’m an insurance investigator. I went out with a guy who’d filed a disability claim. We went clubbing and he was making moves his crooked chiropractor stated were impossible for a man enduring his alleged suffering and pain.” Nakayla laughed. “He endured suffering and pain all right. I could see it on his face when he realized I’d snapped several shots with my cell phone of him contorting like a pretzel.”
    “You’re a private detective?”
    “No. I work for a company called the Investigative Alliance for Underwriters. We work exclusively for insurance companies. The Asheville office covers western North Carolina. Most of my time is spent on the phone interviewing neighbors and co-workers of people we believe to be filing fraudulent claims. Once in a while I work in the field.”
    My next question came without thinking. “Then why would Tikima come to me rather than you?”
    Nakayla’s answer was quick and short. “Whatever my sister was investigating, she must have thought it was too dangerous to involve me.”
    I said nothing. We both understood Tikima had been right.
    The I-40 exit led onto Highway 25, the main road into Biltmore Village. In the left lane, traffic was backed up for several blocks, waiting to turn into the Biltmore Estate. I’d never been to America’s largest private residence, but the proliferation of billboards throughout North