“The more you can tell me, the more helpful it will be,” Reid said. He placed the notebook on the table and took a pen from his pocket. “So, since you and I are here now, why don’t we start with a very simple question. When did you last see Beth?”
Pete sighed. “It’s burned in my brain. The morning I left to go sailing with my friends. She’d gone back to bed, not feeling great. To the point I genuinely considered canceling the trip.”
“About what time?”
“Around 8:00.”
Reid jotted down the time. “She’d already been outside gardening, is that right?” he asked, thinking of Scotty Waterston’s account.
Pete frowned. “Maybe. I guess so. She liked to garden before the sun got too strong.”
“But you don’t remember?”
“No.”
“That seems odd to me. The last morning of your wife’s life, and you don’t remember whether she was out in the garden, planting flowers to make your house look pretty?”Especially since Scotty had been over.Could Pete really have missed that?
Pete glared at him. “You want me to make up something I don’t remember?” he asked.
Like you tried to coach Leland Ackerley to do?Reid thought but didn’t say.
“What made you decide not to cancel the trip?” he asked instead.
“Beth. She insisted I go. It was an annual thing with the guys. She knew I enjoyed it.”
“But you could have decided not to.”
“I loved my wife. But I’ll be honest. We needed a break. We’d both talked about it.”
Reid’s goal was to be objective, butI’ll be honestwas an indication of guilt, right up there withlywords.
“When you say you ‘talked about it,’ what do you mean?” Reid asked.
Pete narrowed his eyes. “I’m sure you know about Nicola and Tyler.”
Reid nodded slowly. Often suspects threw out a fact, seemed willing to discuss something difficult or embarrassing. In fact, coming in for questioning at all was frequently wanting to learn what the police knew.
“I’d like to know more,” Reid said.
“Well, feel free to talk to Nicola. She’s expecting it. She’ll tell you the same thing I will: we all got along. Beth wasn’t thrilled at first—not at all. I could have handled it better, I admit. But Beth was a grown-up. She knows people make mistakes.”
“So having an affair with Nicola was a mistake?” Reid asked.
“Twisting my words,” Pete said with a sarcastic smile, shaking a finger at him.
“Was I doing that? Hmm,” Reid said.
“If you would simply stick to the facts as I am presenting them to you, if you actually listened to me, you would do better—you’d rule me out and solve the case faster, because you’d start looking in other places.” He grabbed the water bottle and drank.
Reid was silent, watching Pete’s body language change. The finger shaking, the fact he straightened his posture and rewarded himself with a long drink of water. If the interview was a chess game to Pete, he felt he was winning.
“Let’s go back to the last time you saw Beth,” Reid said. He pretended to consult his notes. “Around 8:00 a.m. What was she doing?”
“I told you, she was in bed.”
“Did she have breakfast?”
“Yeah. We had it together,” Pete said.
