“No,” Pete said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sam is spending the night at Kate’s. And you know why, don’t you?”
Nicola shook her head.
“Because I’m here. Trying to keep you happy instead of being home with my daughter, where I belong.”
“Then go,” Nicola said.
“It’s too late now,” Pete said. “She’s at her aunt’s. I swear to God, if Kate keeps poisoning her against me ...”
“No one can do that,” Nicola said, staring at Pete with all the truth in the world. “Sam loves you. You’re all she has left.”
“Yes,” Pete said, looking away from Nicola and Tyler.
34
“Hello, Kate,” Reid said, meeting her and Popcorn outside her loft on Bank Street at midnight, a few blocks from where he’d just left Tom at the Y-Knot. “Jed Hilliard.”
“My sister loved him,” Kate said with a note of despair in her voice. Reid was a little buzzed. He focused on her face, on the lines in her forehead, and he felt her unhappiness. “And she didn’t tell me.”
Ah, Kate,Reid thought. Close sisters, a secret between them. That could hurt. It could break a heart.
“Who was he to her?” Reid asked.
“An artist she met. And cared about, and encouraged. And ... fell in love with.”
“And Pete found out?” Reid asked, checking another box in the motive column.
“That I don’t know. Not yet, but I will find out.”
“Take it easy, Kate. Tell me the details, and I’ll track it all down. Where did she meet him?”
“At Ainsworth,” she said. “Visiting our father. And later at the soup kitchen.”
Ainsworth.Martin Harris had been incarcerated there too, and Reid wondered if Harris and Jed had known each other. Or if Harris had known Garth Woodward, for that matter.
“You’re thinking something,” Kate said, grabbing Reid’s hand. “I can tell.”
Reid held her hand tighter. The whiskey was hitting him.
“You’re right; I am,” he said. Could she smell the whiskey on him? Did he seem too loose? He couldn’t seem to let go of her hand.
“I want to know—please tell me.”
“Did you ever hear of anyone named Martin Harris? Did Beth mention him? Or your father?”
“I don’t think so; why?”
“Someone from Ainsworth who might have run into Beth,” Reid said, deliberately vague.
“The name doesn’t sound familiar,” she said. “But, Conor, she was head over heels. I think Jed might have been the reason she was going to leave Pete. Now I wonder if Matthew was Pete’s baby at all. What if he was Jed’s?”
Reid thought of the screwup, how he hadn’t requested a paternity test during the autopsy. He swallowed hard, couldn’t bring himself to tell Kate, and it seemed she hadn’t yet thought of it herself. She seemed to be reeling, just coming to grips with the fact her sister had had a lover she hadn’t known about.
“This might sound out of left field,” he said, “but do you know if Pete is into celestial navigation?”
