Page 29 of What They'll Say About Us

I nodded, then headed up the aisle and through the double doors leading into the lobby. I was walking so fast I almost barreled into a man crossing the lobby.

"Sorry," I said, jumping back. As our gazes met, my pulse sped up once more. "Nate? Nate Gardiner?"

"Tessa Conway." He looked startled by my presence but not all that surprised. "I heard you were in town. How are you?"

"I'm good," I said, my gaze running across his face, noting that the past decade had actually made him a little more handsome than I remembered. He had blond hair, hazel eyes, and a thin, narrow face. He'd been a runner in college, carrying little weight on his frame, and he looked much the same now.

Nate had been Paige's boyfriend at the time of her death. He'd also been in the theater group on the crew side. Now, he was working for my aunt.

"Did you want to talk to me about Paige?" he asked.

"Yes. Do you have time?"

"Let's go into the ticket office." He moved me toward a door leading into the office. The three windows that opened into the lobby were closed, so it was just the two of us in a rather small room, and I felt a little uneasy, but it wasn't like there weren't dozens of people within earshot, including Morgan. "Have a seat." He pushed one of the three rolling stools in the office in my direction.

I sat down as he did the same.

"I heard you're trying to get the police to reopen the case," he said without any real emotion in his voice, no anger, no spite, which was somewhat surprising, since he had been one of the persons of interest by virtue of his relationship with Paige.

"Alina asked me to put Paige's case on my true crime podcast."

"She's always been unhappy about the fact that the police considered Paige's death an accident."

"What do you think?" I asked curiously.

He hesitated. "I'd rather believe she tumbled into the water than imagine someone killing her. That said, I don't understand why she would have been walking so late at night." He shook his head, then gave a helpless shrug. "I can't think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt her."

I was happy that my name wasn't coming out of his mouth as the best possible suspect. "I don't remember exactly when you last spoke to Paige," I said.

"It was Friday morning. We talked on the phone for about ten minutes before I drove to Lake Geneva for a weekend trip with my brother."

"And how was she during that conversation?"

"She was annoyed that I was going out of town, which, frankly, irritated me. Because she was spending eighty percent of her life at the theater. I wasn't the one who was always too busy to get together. So why would she get pissed off when I finally had something fun to do? It didn't seem right. I told her that on the phone, and she said she was sorry, that she was very stressed, and she really wanted to talk to me. I said we'd talk when I got back on Sunday, and that was the last conversation we had. It kills me that we were arguing for most of it, that I didn't tell her I cared about her, that she didn't say the same to me. I've relived it a million times. It still hurts when I think about it. You never know when your conversation with someone is going to be the last time."

He seemed genuinely sad about everything he was telling me, and it didn't feel like he was trying to hide anything. But maybe this was a story he'd come up with nine years ago and had polished to perfection. I couldn't afford to take anything at face value.

"Let me ask you something, Tessa."

"Okay."

"Did you really think Paige slept with Professor Hale when you started that rumor?"

I sucked in a quick breath. "I never said she slept with him."

"You implied it. She was unhappy about that accusation. She said you were trying to make her look bad."

I thought about how I wanted to respond to that, then said, "I thought she and Hale were closer than they should have been. I caught them whispering together a few times. Maybe she was just flirting with him. It's not like she would have been the first or the last aspiring actress to do that." I paused. "Did she tell you anything about him?"

"She said she thought he was being extremely hard on her and that it wasn't fair after everything she had done. I didn't know what she meant. After she died, I wondered about the rumor you'd started, if it was actually true. I asked Sloane about it. She said she couldn't imagine Paige cheating on me and that I should let it go. It didn't matter anymore anyway." He paused. "So, you're saying you never had any proof that they hooked up?"

"No proof, but suspicion," I said.

He shook his head. "I don't know what to think."

"How is it working with him now?"

"I don't work with him. I manage the ticket office and help with marketing and advertising, as I do for several other clubs in the city. When I'm here, I work mostly with your aunt. Hale isn't here that much except for this show, because it's the summer, and his class schedule is lighter. He's more of a consultant than anything. We've had little conversation with each other." Nate paused. "I have to admit when I realized he was a part of this, I had second thoughts about the job, but like I said, I don't have anything to do with him."