Last Day (31 page)

“Rhode Island,” Reid said in a musing way, as if he hadn’t heard what Jed had just said. “That’s where Beth’s husband is from. Did you know him there?”

Jed’s lips tightened. “Hell no, I don’t know him at all. And don’t want to.”

“But two guys from Rhode Island? The Ocean State?”

“No,” Jed said and left it there. Reid took note. It was unusual to question someone who didn’t overexplain.

“You’re in AA?”

“Twenty-four months clean and sober.”

“Good for you.”

“Thanks.”

“When did you and Beth begin to have an affair?” Reid asked. He meant it to sound harsh, and it must have, because Jed reacted as if he’d been punched.

“That sounds really sleazy,” Jed said, shaken. “And it wasn’t.”

“You got her to cheat on her husband,” Reid said. “How isn’t that sleazy?”

“No. He had his thing going with Nicola. He had basically abandoned Beth. She was such a good person—even after he hurt her, she cared about him. But there was a breaking point. How could she go on with him after he had a kid with his girlfriend? There was no way. She had already decided to leave when she and I began to see each other.”

“That’s funny,” Reid said. “Because I hear she and Pete decided to reconcile. That they were working it out.”

Jed shook his head hard. “She would never take him back.” He gave Reid a sharp, defiant look. “We were in love.”

“And having a kid together?”

Jed blushed and didn’t speak. Reid watched his discomfort grow. He had boxed himself into a corner.

“Jed. Beth was having a baby. Either you and she were in love and Matthew was yours, or she and Pete were getting back together and he was his. Which is it?” Reid asked. Still no reply. He watched Jed hang his head. Two fat tears plopped down on the picnic table’s weathered boards.

Reid gazed at Jed’s shoulders, which were shaking as he wept. The sounds were barely audible. There was a napkin dispenser on the table, but Reid made no move to pass him a napkin. A full two minutes passed before Jed looked up. His face was still wet, but he had composed himself. He reached for a napkin and blew his nose. He stared at Reid. Reid noticed he wore a silver band on the ring finger of his left hand.

“Are you going to answer my question?” Reid asked.

“This might make you think I’m trying to hide something,” Jed said, speaking slowly, in a very measured and calm way. “But I am not going to discuss that part of Beth’s and my life with you.”

“Well, that does sound as if you’re trying to hide something,” Reid said.

Jed tightened his lips, gave a half shake of his head, as if to say he didn’t care.

“Let me ask you this,” Reid said. “When did you last see Beth?”

“Almost a week before she died,” he said.

“That must have felt like a long time to be away from the woman you loved,” Reid said.

“It did.”

“So, what were you doing during that week?”

“I was on Fishers Island. Teaching art to my friend Lainie’s grandchildren.”

“Did you leave the island?”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Unfortunately?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Jed, what’s that ring you’re wearing? Did someone give it to you?” Reid asked.

Jed’s mouth was clamped shut, as if he had finished talking and was ready to go.

“The soup kitchen,” Reid said, deciding to change directions. “Where Beth volunteered and you sometimes had meals. Is there a food pantry there too?”

“Yes,” Jed said.

“Did you ever meet Martin Harris there, at either place?” Reid asked.

Jed looked blank and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Who is he?”

Reid thought Jed seemed to genuinely not recognize the name, or maybe it was just the numbness left over after crying. “Okay, Jed,” he said. “Give me your friend Lainie-from-Fishers-Island’s full name and contact info so I can get in touch with her.”

“She’ll tell you I was there the whole time,” Jed said.

“Teaching art,” Reid said. “Got it.”

Jed pulled a sketch pad and pencil from his orange backpack and began writing out the name and phone number.

“One other thing,” Reid said. “A minute ago, when I asked if you had left the island, you said, ‘Unfortunately, no.’ What did you mean by that?”

“If I had, I might have been able to save Beth,” Jed said, tears filling his eyes again.

Reid stared at Jed and without thinking handed him a napkin. The thing was, he believed him, that he really did feel that way.

37

Scotty Waterston sat on the beach with Lulu, taking the sun full on, no umbrella, no sun hat, the lowest SPF sunscreen. She’d been careful all summer, but she wanted a Saint-Tropez tan. Hubbard’s Point had tons of rules, including no drinking alcohol on the beach, but Scotty had filled water bottles with gin and tonics. Lulu sipped hers slowly, but Scotty was getting quietly, progressively drunk. The two women had pulled their beach chairs close to the water’s edge, and the advancing tide sent waves to tickle their toes with sea-foam, then withdraw, then return.

“It’s all too much,” Scotty said.

“Yep,” Lulu said.

“It’s heartbreak for all of us, but you don’t even have kids. I mean, Beth was our friend, but Sam is Isabel’s. My daughter is a wreck.” She stared across the water to where Isabel was sitting on the raft, all alone.

“It must be horrible. I remember how it was for us when we were her age, how hard to know how to be around Kate and Beth.”

Scotty took a very long drink. She wished she had brought slices of fresh lime. No need to suffer. She’d have to remember for next time. “The detective is coming to interview Isabel. I made the mistake of telling him how she and Pete had read the same book, gruesome thing about a killer hiding a body in a cold room.”

“God, like Beth,” Lulu said.

“Poor girl; he’s coming over to grill her later.”

“Well, it’s good of her to help the investigation.”

“Sam isn’t taking Isabel’s calls,” Scotty said. “They had that bit of trouble over at Little Beach, with the rocks.”

“The graffiti,” Lulu said, so harshly it felt like a slap in the face.

“I’m not trying to sugarcoat it, if that’s what you think.”

“Good, because what they did was horrible.”

“I agree. But I get the feeling Kate is blaming Isabel for it. Has she said anything to you?”

“No. I just think she’s worried about Sam.”

“Well, of course!” Scotty said. “If you can’t act out after your mother gets murdered, when can you?” She caught the look Lulu gave her and checked herself. Drinking always made her want to be outrageous—the worst was when she drunk-texted or posted political messages on Facebook or Twitter. The next day she’d go back and do a mad scrub, furiously deleting everything. At least Lulu was drinking too and hopefully wouldn’t remember.

“This is really hard on Kate,” Lulu said.

Scotty peered at her. Lulu always looked so chic. She and Kate hadn’t had children. They’d kept their svelte shapes and single-woman attitudes. While Scotty wore a Hawaiian-print bathing suit with the hint of a frilled skirt to cover her thighs and built-in bra cups to keep everything from wobbling, Lulu wore a white lace halter dress over her black bikini and looked like a model from the Sundance catalog, where they were all too thin, too pretty, and far too cool.

“It’s hard on
all
of us,” Scotty said, staring out at Isabel. “We loved Beth too. And let’s face it—she confided in us more than she did Kate. Has anyone talked to Jed, by the way? He must be destroyed.”

“Kate met him,” Lulu said. “She hasn’t told me the details yet, but she texted that she found him.”

“I can’t believe I had to be the one to tell her about him. I felt so awful. And I haven’t heard from her at all, as if she’s blaming me. Where is he, anyway?”

“Camping somewhere,” Lulu said, sipping her drink and looking away as if she wanted to evade further questions. That was so Lulu—keeping Kate mostly to herself. It had always hurt Scotty, the way the two of them were a closed society. Beth had felt that way too. Scotty felt herself burning over it.

“Sometimes you seem so superior,” Scotty said.

“What?”

“Yes, you and Kate. The pilots. Above it all, better than me and Beth. It hurts.”

“I’m sorry; I don’t mean to make you feel that way,” Lulu said, sounding genuinely surprised. Was it possible she didn’t know how fat and suburban and boring Scotty felt beside her?

“Well, you do,” Scotty said. She realized she was slurring her words but took another long drink anyway. She was about to tip over into weepy territory, feeling sorry for herself about Beth, feeling helpless about Isabel’s pain—and even Jed’s. Beth hadn’t treated him very well at the end.

And then there was Julie. Her beautiful little girl with schizotypal personality disorder. The name alone terrified her, but the reality was even worse. Even the literature was hurtful—people with the disorder were labeled “odd and eccentric.” Julie turned inward, had never had a close friend. She didn’t know how to interpret people’s words and actions, so she was easily hurt and confused.

Julie had started dreaming about the murder, screaming out in her sleep.

“When I think about Sam’s mommy, it hurts me a lot!” she cried while Scotty rocked her.

Scotty wanted her daughter to feel peace, to not be so scared. She felt as if Julie’s fears would pass as time went by, but some nights they were extreme.

“Sweetie, it was just a dream,” Scotty whispered, holding her.

“Bad person, terrible bad person,” Julie had said, shaking as she’d cried.

The rest of Julie’s diagnosis, receptive and expressive aphasia and language processing disability, meant that she experienced life in ways both simpler and more complicated than everyone else. She got so frustrated trying to get her thoughts and feelings out.

Scotty told the pediatrician, asking if it would be appropriate to give Julie something for anxiety. The doctor had suggested taking Julie to therapy. And Scotty was more than willing to do that, but in the last few days, Julie had seemed quieter, retreating into her safe, private world.

Nick was far from helpful. He would come home from the office, throw on his shorts and Nikes, and go running for hours, sometimes until dark. He was training for the Labor Day half marathon, aiming for next year’s New York City Marathon. He had told Scotty a bunch of people from work were doing it. Scotty pictured the women in his office. Everyone but her was in shape. She downed a big gulp of her drink.

“Let’s take a swim,” Lulu said, reaching for her hand. “It will be good for us.”

“I’m looped.”

“We don’t have to go out far.”

“That detective is coming to see Isabel later,” Scotty said. “I should go up to the house and take a nap. I have the G&T flu.” She paused, glancing at Lulu. “Who do you think did it?”

“Mostly I think Pete.”

“Me too, but sometimes I think Jed—I mean, she met him in prison.”

“I know,” Lulu said.

“And he’s an art person—it would make sense for him to take
Moonlight
. I’m sure he has a network; he could sell it. And we really
have no idea how he took the fact Beth had cooled off, was seeing him less. I think she wanted to stop altogether.”

“She did?” Lulu asked, and Scotty couldn’t help feeling gratified that she knew at least some things Lulu didn’t.

“She had made a mess of things—to go from perfect Beth to being pregnant and having two men in her life. It was tearing her apart. Didn’t she tell you?”

Lulu shook her head. “She never talked to me about it, Scotty. You’ve told me more than she ever did. I only saw her with Jed that one time, on the ferry.”

Scotty sighed. “He made her so happy for a while. It must have felt so nice to have someone all for herself, someone who really wanted her. Not like Pete, off with Nicola.” She thought of herself and Nick. She couldn’t help wondering about the women he worked with, beautiful and thin, training for the half marathon. Surreptitiously, on the side Lulu couldn’t see, Scotty grabbed the roll of fat around her waist. The old commercial used to say if you could pinch more than an inch you needed to eat their cereal and get into shape. Scotty could pinch half a foot.

“I really need to get into shape,” she said.

“You look great,” Lulu said.

Scotty gave her a skeptical look. There was all this wise-woman BS about accepting yourself the way you were right now, not thinking about the body you had when you were twenty-five. Easy for Lulu to say it when she had a stomach as flat as a teenage boy’s.

“You’re beautiful,” Lulu said.

Scotty didn’t believe her, so she ignored her. “I hope Isabel remembers about the detective coming.”

“Want me to go get her?” Lulu asked.

Scotty nodded. “That would be really nice of you.”

“I need the swim anyway,” Lulu said. She gave Scotty a big hug and kissed the top of her head, then went running into the water, dove
in, and started swimming fast out toward Isabel on the raft. Scotty gathered her towel, beach bag, and chair and walked as steadily as she could across the hot sand, toward her house on the other side of the boat basin. She couldn’t wait to close the door behind her. Emotions made her drink, and she was nothing but emotions these days.

Right now, she needed to lie down. She would hit the reset button and start fresh after her nap. She had to keep going on, but it wasn’t easy. Murder didn’t just take one life; it stole the essence, will, and ease from everyone it touched. It took their old lives and left them to make their way in a completely new and uncertain world.

Scotty had to find a way back to being alert and present for Julie and Isabel. Julie: hiding deep within herself. Isabel: her beautiful, troubled daughter. Scotty didn’t want to be a bad influence, drinking to escape the pain. Nick had grounded Isabel after she’d come home wasted the night of the graffiti.

Maybe Scotty should ground herself.

38

In Reid’s interviews with Pete and his friends, he had heard repeatedly that Pete was a member of Mensa, the high IQ society. Pete seemed determined that everyone know it, and to Reid’s mind, if someone had to brag about being a member, he might not be as smart as he thought.