“What I know about wine you could fit on the back of a postage stamp,” she said, taking a sip of water.

“Are you sure you won’t have a glass with me?” he asked, refilling his own.

Bernadette didn’t want him getting plastered. So to keep him from guzzling it all, she pushed her glass toward him. “I’ll have one.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said, filling hers to the top.

“That’s more than enough. Thank you.” She’d have to pick up her own tab and tried to calculate the cost of a single glass of two-hundred-dollar wine. Garcia was going to have a fit when he saw her expense account.

He took a sip of wine. “Were you surprised that I called you?”

“I was curious,” she said, fingering the stem of her wineglass. “How’d you get my number? Did you steal my card off your brother’s desk?”

“I rescued it from Chaz,” he said. “He was about to deposit it in the circular file.”

“Chaz?”

“Charles, my brother’s manservant.” He took a sip of wine.

“Chaz … yeah—he hustled you out of there before we could talk at the office,” said Bernadette. “Did Luke tell him to do that? What was your brother afraid of? What didn’t he want you to say to me?”

Matthew dodged her questions by rambling on and on about Charles. “Luke was going to hire a woman after Rosemary retired, but then Chaz called for a job. One of the old neighborhood gang. He’s more my brother’s friend than mine. I don’t like him. He’s so—I don’t know—smarmy. Don’t you think it’s odd to have a male receptionist? He makes shit coffee. A pretty young woman would be so much more—”

“What are you intending to tell me or give me?”

“My brother said you were interested in lithium.”

“I am,” she said.

“Lithium is one of the oldest and most frequently prescribed drugs for the treatment of bipolar disorder. There’s nothing criminal in the fact that a bottle of lithium was found in Kyra Klein’s home.”

“What if I told you Klein could have been murdered with the help of those meds? Would you classify that as criminal?”

He polished off his glass of wine. “You may not be privy to the fact that Miss Klein’s own mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and committed suicide when Kyra was a child.”

“How would I know that? Your brother is sitting on her file.”

“You should also be made aware that Miss Klein attempted to kill herself a couple of years ago.”

Big brother had no qualms about sharing with his younger sibling. So much for patient privacy, thought Bernadette. “Sounds like Luke was having trouble helping his patient manage her illness.”

Matthew emptied the remainder of the bottle into his glass. “Her suicide attempt was while she was under the care of another physician. She’d been improperly diagnosed as having depression and was on medication that made her bipolar disorder worse.”

“So your brother rescued her.”

“My brother made the correct diagnosis and got her going on the proper medication.”

“And she died anyway.”

He shrugged. “It happens.”

“Is that going to be your brother’s defense if Kyra Klein’s family drags him into court? Death happens?”

“I really doubt her family is going to sue,” he said.

“Your brother is worried about it,” she said. “That’s why he won’t talk to me.”

He took a long drink of wine. “He’s protective of his patients and their privacy, as he should be.”

“I’ll tell you what I told him: Kyra Klein is dead!”

Diners a table away stopped talking and looked over at them. “You’re scaring the children,” Matthew said with a smirk.

She leaned forward and said in a lower voice, “He needs to give me those files.”

“The police didn’t ask for them.”

“We’re approaching this case from different angles.”

“Can we please get off the subject of Miss Klein?”

“Fine.” She took a drink of water. “What can you tell me about Zoe Cameron?”

He sipped his wine. “Never heard of her.”

She didn’t believe him. “You seem to know a lot about your brother’s business. Have you got one of your own? What do you do for a living?”

“I’m in between jobs.” He eyed her untouched wineglass. “Is there something wrong with the Cab?”

She picked up her glass and took a small sip. “No. It’s fine.”

He grinned. “Oh, I get it. The wily FBI agent gets the dummy drunk so he spills his proverbial guts.”

“Now, Matt, if I did that, I couldn’t trust or use what you gave me.” She took another sip of wine to appease him. “Besides, I’m not the one who called this meeting. In fact, I’m a little mystified as to why you even bothered. This is your brother’s problem.”

“Problem? Is he in trouble for declining to answer your questions?”

His concern for his brother sounded genuine, and she played off it. “His lack of cooperation doesn’t look good. He seems more interested in covering his backside than in getting to the bottom of what happened.”

“He’s following federal patient privacy guidelines.”

“Baloney,” she said. “He’s got a lot of wiggle room when it comes to those regs. He could help us more.”

“Has he done anything illegal?”

“Maybe not illegal, but certainly unethical.”

“My brother is not only one of the top psychiatrists in the country but also an honorable and generous man. On his own time and at his own expense, he developed a school-based program that screens teens for mental illness. He’s worked hard to increase the public’s understanding of brain disorders through free educational seminars. He goes to bat for patients who are discriminated against on the job. He started a suicide help line that is still up and running and saving lives today.” He took a deep drink, nearly finishing his wine, and pointed a finger at her. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a more ethical and giving man than Luke.”

“He needs to give to me. When a patient dies—”

“It’s tragic, but it happens.” He drained his glass. “People with mental illness are at great risk for—”

She held up her hand to stop him. “I already heard the company line.”

“It’s not a line,” he shot back. He ran his eyes around the restaurant. Catching the waiter’s attention, he pointed to the empty bottle.

She took a sip of water and checked her watch. She regretted ordering dinner. The conversation was moving in circles, and he was getting drunk. “Why am I here?”

“You’re here because you’re hoping I’ll say something inflammatory that you can use against my brother. Get him to turn over those patient files.”

Staring at him, she wondered if he was one of those rare individuals who actually got smarter as they got drunker. “Fair enough. Why are you here?”

He grinned. “I wanted to have dinner with a beautiful, interesting woman.”

“Spare me.”

His smile flattened. “I wanted to see why you were focusing on my brother. He doesn’t make a very good first impression, and I wanted to …”

“Do a little PR work for him?”

He shifted in his seat. “Don’t you have any siblings, Bernadette? Someone you feel protective of?”

She noticed a catch in his voice. Had he somehow found out that she’d lost a sister years ago? Rather than answer his question, she said evenly, “Your brother is a smart man. He doesn’t need your help.” She took a sip of wine. “He went to Harvard, I noticed. Saw the degree on his office wall. Did you go there, too?”

Matthew barked a laugh.

“I’ll take that as a no,” she said with a small smile.

“It’s a difficult school to get into,” said Matthew, trying to recover a little dignity. “I don’t know any other people in our circle who went there.”

“I just met a professor at the U. Wakefielder. He went to Harvard. He’s about Luke’s age.”

“Don’t know him,” said Matthew. “Is he at the medical school?”

“Literature professor,” she said.

“The liberal arts,” he said somberly. “Good stuff.”

“You’re sure you don’t know him? Luke wouldn’t know him?”