“Remember, outside Beth’s house, I mentioned I let something bad happen to her before?” she asked.
“Yes,” Reid said.
“It was about Nicola.”
“What happened?” Reid asked.
“Beth was determined to confront her and Pete—she called to tell me, when I was about to fly a family to Paris. I told her to wait till I got home, and I’d go with her. Beth couldn’t find any of Nicola’s contact info at the gallery—Pete had gotten rid of any trace of her. But Beth called the gallery’s accountant and told him to look at Nicola’s tax form. It had her address on it—my grandmother’s house.”
“You didn’t know where Nicola was staying?” Reid asked carefully, because he did know. Once he had realized Pete had a girlfriend, he had started watching him more often and had followed him to Cloudlands.
“I had no idea at the time—neither did Beth. She and I own the property. We sometimes rent it out to the Black Hall Art Academy—in the past they’ve used it for their acting president, or sometimes an important visiting professor. Pete handles a lot of Beth’s business matters. She put him in charge of renting the house.”
“She trusted him?” he asked skeptically.
“In that regard, yes,” Kate said. “The house seemed a safe job to give him—if it was leased at all, it was to someone in the art world. He made it seem the Academy had taken it again, but instead he put Nicola in there—he paid the rent from a bank account Beth didn’t know he had.”
“But she found out.”
“Yes, like I said, through Nicola’s tax form. While I was flying to Paris, she went to Mathilda’s house and let herself in. And she caught them in bed. And that’s a sight that burned in her brain, but it wasn’t the worst.”
Here it came, Reid thought. Kate knew. He made himself ask: “What was the worst?”
“Pete’s baby. The son he had with Nicola was sleeping in the cradle next to them. The cradle that Beth and I had slept in when we were babies. The one she had planned to bring home for Matthew.”
Reid watched her without expression, not wanting to show his emotions—they overwhelmed him, thinking of what Beth must have gone through in that instant and what Kate must be feeling now. Pete’s relationship with Nicola was a major reason Reid had instantly suspected him. But Reid wondered: Would he have killed Matthew, his own baby, as well?
“Beth had no idea?” he asked.
“That he had a kid with her? No. She didn’t even know Nicola was pregnant. She thought it was just an affair.”
Reid stared into the distance, trying to imagine how Beth had felt, finding out that way.
“That’s what I would have liked to protect her from,” Kate said. “Having to see that by herself. See it atall. I should have been there with her.” She paused a moment. “She got pregnant right after that. She hadn’t been planning on having another child, but I think ... she needed Matthew.”
“Because Pete and Nicola had a baby?”
“Because my sister had so much love inside her. She needed someone else to give it to.” Kate wiped tears from her eyes. “If you think I helped him kill my sister ...”
“Kate, I don’t think you did,” Reid said. “Iknowyou didn’t.”
“Good. Thank you.”
He nodded.
“Will you get whoever it was?” she asked.
“I will,” he said.
“It had to be whoever stoleMoonlightlast year,” she said. “Right? He came back for more. Don’t you think?”
Reid’s mouth was dry. He knew exactly what he shouldn’t say and said it anyway. “If you think your brother-in-law staged an art theft, then yeah.”
“Pete? He hired someone? You checked his bank account?”
“He didn’t hire anyone.”
“So how did he do it? He swam from Nantucket to Black Hall?” she asked. “Wouldn’t the guys have missed him?”
