Chapter 43
“Hey, Conor,” Winifred Sibley said, walking into Reid’s office.
Tall and thin, with short white hair and bright-blue eyes, she gave him a huge smile, and he beamed back.
She was the state’s chief accountant and a Reid family friend, and he had asked her to come to the Major Crime Squad to go over the Lathrops’ financials with him.
“Hi, Winnie,” he said, hugging her. “I’m really glad to see you.”
“And I you, as always. You’ve got a lot going on, kid,” she said, lifting her black briefcase.
“Hope you have something good for me in there,” he said.
“That depends on how you define good,” she said, giving him a wry smile.
“Why don’t we go into the conference room? It will be more comfortable there. Can I get you a coffee?”
“Yes, please,” she said.
“I remember,” he said.
He went to the break room and filled two mugs.
It had been a busy, frustrating week. Judge Caroline Walker granted the warrants for Pete’s electronics, and the marshals executed them.
They seized his computers and mobile phone.
Analysts examined the hard drives, documenting his search history.
Jennifer Miano had had her knee surgery; she had come through with flying colors, but it would be a long recuperation, so Reid had scoured the reports alone.
And he’d found no evidence that Pete had searched for instructions on how to beat a polygraph exam.
After entering the conference room, he handed Winnie her coffee and sat down on the other side of the long walnut table.
She was about Reid’s dad’s age, and they had met when they were both young cops.
Over the years his dad had decided he was happiest patrolling the streets of New London, and Winnie had used her business degree to rise through the ranks of the state police.
“How’s your brother?” Winnie asked.
“Tom’s great,” Reid said. “Other than giving me grief every chance he gets.”
“Ah, the two Reid boys. Still the same.”
Winnie started to unpack her briefcase. Reid watched her place two black vinyl three-ring binders on the table. Then she looked up and gazed at him with those clear, intelligent blue eyes.
“What, Winnie?” he asked.
“I recognized the connection right away. Beth Woodward. I know how much she and her sister mean to you. I remember everything about the gallery crime—I had just gotten my master’s in accounting, and I was assigned to go through the books.”
“Yeah, I know,” Reid said. “I remember that.”
“It was a bad one. Your father was worried about you,” she said. “He knew you’d carry it for a long time. And here you are again, same family.”
Reid stared out the window behind Winnie, at the rolling hills, blue in the afternoon shadows. He had the feeling she wanted to reach across the desk, touch his hand.
“I’m okay,” he said, steeling himself against the feelings: for how his father had cared about him, how Winnie did now.
“Anyway, let’s get down to business,” she said.
“The Lathrop family’s financials,” Reid said.
“Yes. And here’s why my work is so much easier than yours. I follow the numbers. They are so nice and tidy. There’s no blood, no death. They don’t care who the killer is, and they don’t lie.”
“So what do they say?” Reid asked.
Winnie pushed the two black binders toward him. “The one on the left contains balance sheets from the Lathrop Gallery. Their earnings and losses, salaries and benefits, the purchases and sales of art going back to the year Beth married Pete. The one on the right contains Beth’s trust documents.”
Reid reached for the one on the right. He flipped it open and saw that Winnie had annotated each page, marked some with brightly colored Post-it notes.
“It’s a complicated trust,” Winnie said. “Originally set up by Mathilda Harkness.”
Reid scanned the first page—there were a hundred more to go through.
“Can you boil it down for me?” he asked. “Mainly, what does Pete get and when does he get it? Half the gallery? Will he have to share it with Kate?”
“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.