Last Day (36 page)

“No,” Winnie said. “Beth’s interest in the gallery goes directly to Sam, to be overseen by Kate. That includes the real estate, the works of art and all other assets, and the business itself. Pete receives nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Beth leaves him a lump sum of money from her own investment account.”

“How much?” Reid asked, riffling through the pages.

“One point five million dollars,” she said.

That stopped Reid short. “Well, there’s a motive,” he said.

“Until you consider that Beth’s entire estate is worth seventy-five million dollars. And add in the fact that Pete does not receive the money free and clear. It is in trust. And Kate is the trustee.”

“So . . .”

“It will be her discretion as to how much is paid out and when.”

“Still, one point five is a lot,” he said.

“Conor, he would have gotten much more in a divorce. They didn’t have a prenup. They have a sixteen-year-old daughter, and if he claimed he had helped Beth build the business, he could have a good case.”

“Did he know what was in the will?”

“The trust,” she said, correcting him. “The documents were on Beth’s computer in the gallery, attached to an email from her lawyer.”

“I doubt she gave Pete her password,” he said.

“Her computer wasn’t password protected. And our tech guys determined the trust documents were accessed after her death.” Winnie paused. “Beth’s Gmail account had a very easily guessed password.”

“What, Sam’s birthday?”

“Yes, combined with the name Popcorn and Beth and Pete’s wedding anniversary.”

“Can Pete contest the trust?”

“No. It’s brilliantly written and quite unbreakable. Pete is out of the business, will only be able to stay in the house if Kate, as trustee, allows it, and will walk away with a sum that, from what I gather by looking at his rather extravagant expenses, will be gone in two years. Unless he receives wise investment advice.”

“So this means he would have been better off . . . ,” Reid said.

“With Beth alive. A divorce would have been in his interests. Not murder,” Winnie said.

“There goes his financial motive,” Reid said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have the feeling this isn’t what you wanted to hear. It doesn’t help your case against him.”

And neither did the search of Pete’s hard drives,
Reid thought. Ahab’s white whale had killed him in the end. That’s what obsession could do. He shook his head hard, as if he could clear out the fog. Winnie was right; her work was easier: numbers didn’t lie, and they didn’t care.

“Eye on the ball,” Reid said out loud.

“I’ve heard that before,” Winnie said.

“Yeah. Dad always said it.”

“You can do this,” she said. “You’re going to solve this case.”

“I appreciate you thinking that,” he said.

“I have no way of knowing whether Pete is your killer or not. He still might be, Conor. There are motives other than money.”

“True,” Reid said, but his heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t want to talk anymore. He felt as if he had been building his whole case on a ton of emotions and not enough evidence. The opposite of keeping his eye on the ball. His father wouldn’t be proud of him, and Reid certainly wasn’t proud of himself.

He hugged Winnie and walked her down the hall to the front door. Then he returned to his office and stared at his desk.

It was time to start again.

44

Kate walked Popcorn along the city waterfront while Sam did homework upstairs in the loft. Dark water swirled with reflected orange light. The rusty bulkhead and rocky shore were littered with old tires, broken pilings, the fiberglass core of a foundered boat, all exposed by the outgoing tide. Waves from the wakes of passing ferries sloshed the shore. Amid the cacophony of trains and ships, Kate sought white noise, but nothing stilled her thoughts of
Moonlight
hidden in the beehive oven, hearts of blood scrawled more than twenty years apart.

On her way back from the walk, she saw someone sitting on the steps of the Maritime Museum across the street from her loft. When she got closer, the man stood. The streetlights illuminated him, and she recognized Jed. Popcorn hustled over, wriggling with pleasure as he reached down to pet him.

“Hey, boy; hey, boy,” he said. Then, looking up at Kate, “I was waiting for you.”

“How did you know where I lived?” she asked.

“Beth showed me,” he said. “We’d take walks after finishing up at the soup kitchen, and she’d always steer me down here. She loved you, Kate.”

Kate looked up at the sky at the mention of her sister.

“I know,” she said.

“She wanted to be closer to you,” Jed said. “She wanted you to know about us. Every time we walked by, she hoped you’d be coming out your door, leaving the building, and that you’d see us.”

“Why didn’t she just bring you upstairs?”

“She was afraid of how you would react. An accidental meeting would be okay, but she thought it would be too aggressive to throw it in your face.”

Kate glanced up at the tall windows of her apartment. The lights were all on; Sam was still up.

“What made you come here now?” Kate asked.

“You’re the only other person in the world,” he said, “who loved her as much as I did. Sam, of course, but I can’t talk to her. I can’t stand how much I miss her, Kate. I just want to talk about her.”

“Yes, I want that too,” Kate said.

“Can I buy you a tea?” Jed asked.

They walked two blocks to Witchfire Teahouse, open till midnight. Thessaly sat at a back table, reading tarot cards, not looking up when they brushed through strings of bells hanging in the entrance. They took a table, and Popcorn lay beneath it on the painted wood floor. A young waitress with a blue streak in her blonde hair and a ring in her nose took their order: a large pot of Earl Grey.

“When you said she wanted me to know about
us
,” Kate said, “what does that mean?”

“We were together,” he said. “She was my person; I was hers.”

She stared at him. He wasn’t much older than thirty, seven or eight years younger than Beth.

“What about the fact she was married?” she asked.

“Pete didn’t deserve her. He was a bastard, and she’d had enough. She stopped being able to pretend and put up with it, even for Sam’s sake. She was going to leave him.”

“And be with you?”

“She was already with me.”

“But she was living with him.”

“Presence is only part of it. Intent and feelings are what count.”

He held out his left hand, showed her a ring. White gold or platinum, etched with fine markings. “She gave it to me, and I gave one to her. We designed them together. They were going to be our wedding bands, but we figured, why wait to wear them? They were our promise to each other.”

Promise to each other.
The same phrase had run through Kate’s mind just hours ago, remembering the blood sister ceremony. She leaned over the table to examine the ring’s delicate engraving more closely, but the dim light made it impossible.

“Earl Grey,” the waitress said, setting down the blue-and-white bone china pot and two mismatched chipped porcelain cups and saucers. She poured the tea, then took a pewter sugar bowl off another table and left it with a pitcher of milk.

“Beth wasn’t wearing hers,” Kate said as soon as the waitress walked away.

“She only wore it when we were together.”

“Did Pete know about you?”

He frowned and looked troubled, didn’t speak as he stirred sugar into his tea.

“Did he know, Jed?” she repeated.

“I’m not sure. She was going to tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“That we were in love. That she was divorcing him.”

Kate sat up straighter. She thought of what Conor had said, about Pete’s anger building as he realized everything he was losing.

“When?”

“Well, she planned to when we saw each other a few days before he left on the boat trip.” He paused. “But I don’t know if she followed through.”

“Why wouldn’t she let you know?”

“I never spoke to her again. We were together that day—at my tent, don’t think it’s weird, Beth was the most, I don’t know, refined, elegant, whatever you want to call it, person I’ve ever known, but we were happy there. She could let all the bullshit go, all her unhappiness, and just be. Just be Beth. She left my tent that day, and I headed out to Fishers Island. She was supposed to talk to him, and she never called to let me know if she did.”

“Why didn’t you go looking for her?”

He stirred his tea, the milk swirling in the amber liquid, and was quiet for a long time. She had the feeling he was figuring out something to say. Inventing it as he went along? She waited.

“I wanted to. I felt like getting a ferry back from Fishers, going to see her. But I thought maybe he’d talked her out of it. That she’d changed her mind,” he said finally. “It was up to her to tell me, and she didn’t.”

“Really? But you were so sure. You gave each other rings. You promised each other.”

“I know that. I hate myself for doubting her. But I live in a fucking tent. She’s Beth Woodward. She comes from all that. Maybe she decided she didn’t want to give it up.”

Kate thought,
The money is Beth’s, not Pete’s. He’d be the one giving it up.

“To Beth a promise is a promise,” Kate said instead. But was that true? Even after the ceremony, the vows marked with blood, she and Beth hadn’t stayed close. “Are you the baby’s father?”

“What do you think?”

“Were you?”

“You went through my tent. I know you took the sonogram.”

“A ring, a baby,” Kate said. “But you didn’t even go to see her when you couldn’t get in touch. To find out what was wrong. What if it was a problem with the pregnancy? Especially if the baby was yours.”

“Look, she wouldn’t tell me, okay?”

“Whether you were Matthew’s father?”

“Yeah,” he said. “At first, when she found out she was pregnant, she said I was. But about a month before she died, she backed off from that. She told me it was possible Pete was.”

“Did she even know?” Kate asked.

“She must have,” Jed said. “Because when she and I got together, there was nothing between her and Pete. She said it had been over a year. That’s why I was so sure.”

He sounded miserable.

“So what happened a month before she died?” Kate asked. “To make her be unsure?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was just one time with him; maybe he forced her. I can’t stand to think of either possibility. I think back six months before she died—February. That’s when Matthew was conceived. We were so happy; even before we found out she was pregnant, we knew we wanted to be together.”

Kate thought about that. If Beth had any doubts, why had she given him the sonogram? Had something happened last summer to make her want to push Jed away?

“This must be hard on you,” Kate said.

“Fuck yeah, it is. But in my mind, in my heart, I know for sure I am Matthew’s father,” he said. “I feel it, Kate. She told me she’d stopped being with Pete long before she and I got together. But then . . .” He trailed off, as if remembering something painful. “After a while, during the pregnancy, she began to seem so sad.”

“About the baby?”

“About the whole thing. She cried a lot, and I had no idea how to help her. She said Sam would be upset—she already had to deal with her father having Tyler. She was really worried about Sam. I said I’d be Sam’s stepdad; I’d do anything to help her. But she just seemed to get farther away from me.”

“Did she say more about it?”

“She said she’d messed up her life, that everything was so complicated. I told her I loved her and our baby, and she could count on that—that she hadn’t messed up her life, that we’d have a
great
life.”

Kate heard the passion and tears in his voice. She waited for him to be able to go on. “That’s when she said, ‘No one can count on anyone.’ I was shocked—I didn’t know what she meant. She told me she couldn’t plan anything—being with me, staying with Pete. It was because of him—he’s the one who messed her up. He treated her so badly.”

“But she was so happy to be having the baby,” Kate said. “She told me—I could see it in her.”

“I know,” Jed said. “She loved Matthew. It was the rest of her life that was making her crazy. Including me.”

“You?”

“She loved me. But she felt pressured. I didn’t want to put that on her, but she felt it anyway. She didn’t want to keep me hanging—but she couldn’t be sure she should leave Pete, upset Sam’s life that way.” He shook his head. “I figured she would sort things out once Sam was at camp and Pete left on his trip. I thought she’d tell me the truth, that I was the father. She wouldn’t feel so caught in the middle.”

“Except you didn’t see her. Why, Jed? If you expected to hear the truth from her, why didn’t you just go over there?”

“I told you! I was on Fishers Island. Beth arranged it, having me stay with her friends, give their grandkids drawing classes. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to be there to celebrate with her after she told Pete. I thought we’d be together then—for the rest of our lives.”

“Did you tell her you didn’t want to go to Fishers Island?”

“Of course. But she had made the effort for me, and I didn’t want to turn down a paying gig. My goal is—was—to pay my own way with her. She said she needed time alone. She was drowning in everything—the responsibility for everyone’s happiness, doing the right thing for Sam, for everyone she loved, and for us. I told her all I needed was her.
She didn’t answer.” He coughed as if he was choking. Tears streamed from his eyes.

Kate felt tense, watching him. His emotion was hot, pouring off him. She felt it on her own face, scalding her cheeks.

“I had no idea what to think,” he said, sounding as if he was about to explode. “Maybe she’d changed her mind about us—the guilt, the pressure, was too much for her. I’ll be honest; I was pissed. Hurt, whatever.” The anger seemed to leak out of him. He took a deep breath and peered at Kate. “Can you believe that? I wasted all that time feeling sorry for myself when she needed me.”

Kate couldn’t reply or even look at him.