Free Last Day by Luanne Rice Page B

did Beth. She and I own the property. We sometimes rent it out to the Black Hall Art Academy—in the past they’ve used it for their acting president, or sometimes an important visiting professor. Pete handles a lot of Beth’s business matters. She put him in charge of renting the house.”
    “She trusted him?” he asked skeptically.
    “In that regard, yes,” Kate said. “The house seemed a safe job to give him—if it was leased at all, it was to someone in the art world. He made it seem the Academy had taken it again, but instead he put Nicola in there—he paid the rent from a bank account Beth didn’t know he had.”
    “But she found out.”
    “Yes, like I said, through Nicola’s tax form. While I was flying to Paris, she went to Mathilda’s house and let herself in. And she caught them in bed. And that’s a sight that burned in her brain, but it wasn’t the worst.”
    Here it came, Reid thought. Kate knew. He made himself ask: “What was the worst?”
    “Pete’s baby. The son he had with Nicola was sleeping in the cradle next to them. The cradle that Beth and I had slept in when we were babies. The one she had planned to bring home for Matthew.”
    Reid watched her without expression, not wanting to show his emotions—they overwhelmed him, thinking of what Beth must have gone through in that instant and what Kate must be feeling now. Pete’s relationship with Nicola was a major reason Reid had instantly suspected him. But Reid wondered: Would he have killed Matthew, his own baby, as well?
    “Beth had no idea?” he asked.
    “That he had a kid with her? No. She didn’t even know Nicola was pregnant. She thought it was just an affair.”
    Reid stared into the distance, trying to imagine how Beth had felt, finding out that way.
    “That’s what I would have liked to protect her from,” Kate said. “Having to see that by herself. See it at all . I should have been there with her.” She paused a moment. “She got pregnant right after that. She hadn’t been planning on having another child, but I think . . . she needed Matthew.”
    “Because Pete and Nicola had a baby?”
    “Because my sister had so much love inside her. She needed someone else to give it to.” Kate wiped tears from her eyes. “If you think I helped him kill my sister . . .”
    “Kate, I don’t think you did,” Reid said. “I know you didn’t.”
    “Good. Thank you.”
    He nodded.
    “Will you get whoever it was?” she asked.
    “I will,” he said.
    “It had to be whoever stole Moonlight last year,” she said. “Right? He came back for more. Don’t you think?”
    Reid’s mouth was dry. He knew exactly what he shouldn’t say and said it anyway. “If you think your brother-in-law staged an art theft, then yeah.”
    “Pete? He hired someone? You checked his bank account?”
    “He didn’t hire anyone.”
    “So how did he do it? He swam from Nantucket to Black Hall?” she asked. “Wouldn’t the guys have missed him?”
    “He killed her before he left,” he said.
    “He couldn’t have,” she said.
    His heart was thumping. Yes, he’d thought it was Pete from the beginning, especially knowing about Nicola, but the evidence he wasseeing—including Sam saying she hadn’t seen her father—made his conviction even stronger.
    “I think he left that note on the door for the UPS driver,” he said. “So no one would be suspicious if she didn’t answer.”
    “It was in her handwriting!”
    “Yes,” Reid said. “She wrote it herself. But she did it before—I don’t know when, but Pete saved the note to use when he killed her. To make it look as if she was alive longer than she was.”
    “But he’s been gone for days—if he killed her—I mean, the forensics people can tell when. I know from my mother—they can tell to the hour.”
    “You were in the room,” he said. “It was a refrigerator.”
    “It’s been incredibly hot all month,” Kate said. “Beth’s pregnancy made her really sensitive