Chapter 48
Tests on the unpainted side of Moonlight came back.
Reid sat at his desk in his home office, scanning the data.
He was partly surprised by it. He had not expected the blood to be Pete’s—the romantic gesture of a drawn heart wouldn’t be Pete’s style, and besides, since meeting with Winnie, he had taken his focus off Pete.
It had started to make sense the blood might be Beth’s—given the hiding place known mainly to her and Kate—but he hadn’t seen the Tallulah Granville component coming.
The left side of the heart had been sketched with Beth’s blood, the right side with Lulu’s.
There was also a tiny smudge—not red at all; it looked like a coffee stain, blood possibly older than the lines in the heart, or perhaps it had been there since the painting had been made.
It had been left by a third person. Although the DNA wasn’t in the database, the markers indicated it belonged to a female.
Lulu had been fingerprinted for her various airline jobs.
Her DNA was on file because she had once been a suspect in an assault.
Reid hunched over his desk, reading the report.
Five years ago, a woman named Danielle Marvin had accused Lulu of domestic violence.
They were both pilots at different airlines, sharing an apartment in Greenwich Village.
Danielle claimed Lulu attacked her one night.
The file revealed photographs of Danielle with bruises around her neck, a bite mark on her shoulder.
From the start, Lulu denied it. She claimed she had moved out a week before and that Danielle had become obsessed with her.
Lulu had, in fact, filed for a restraining order, and it had been granted.
Reid read the copy that was in the electronic file.
The order of protection was based on an antistalking statute and detailed ways Danielle had installed spyware on Lulu’s laptop and a GPS tracker in her luggage.
She told friends and coworkers that she and Lulu were lovers, while Lulu maintained they were just roommates.
At the time, they each were based at JFK, and Lulu stated that the Village apartment was just a pied-à-terre for layovers in New York.
According to the restraining order, Danielle arranged her schedule around Lulu’s, contriving to be in the same cities at the same times. They had some friends in common but separate social lives. Lulu said Danielle would often show up at the same restaurant, pretending it was a coincidence.
The assault on Danielle occurred just after 10:00 p.m. in her apartment on Sullivan Street.
She accused Lulu of attacking her in a jealous rage after a stroll through nearby Washington Square Park because Danielle had told her she wanted to break up with her.
Danielle asserted that it was Lulu who had the obsession, who stalked her, not the other way around.
In Lulu’s sworn statement, she said that at the time of the assault, she was with Richard Guerin, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
It was their first date, and they were seeing Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera.
Reid was interested to learn that Richard was a longtime client of the Harkness-Woodward Gallery, that he’d been introduced to Lulu by Kate.
Lulu had voluntarily provided DNA and bite impressions. Richard had corroborated her alibi. She’d been cleared of the crime, and no perpetrator had ever been arrested. If she had been involved, her airline job would have been history.
Reid pushed his chair back from his desk, stretched, turned his head from side to side to relieve stress.
His gaze fell on the news clippings from his career, including the crime against Kate, Beth, and their mother.
He had recently tacked up newspaper and magazine stories about Beth’s murder, along with the time line he’d worked out about Pete’s movements in the months before Beth had been killed.
He realized, as he often did, that if anyone saw his wall, they’d say he was obsessed.
He always told himself that his fixation on the Woodward sisters, particularly Kate, was chivalrous, stemming from a desire to avenge what had been done to them as teenagers.
But was that so different from what Lulu said Danielle had done, for which she had obtained a restraining order?
Yes, it was. Night-and-day different. He was positive of that. His confidence was shaken only at night, when he couldn’t sleep, an unending tape of details from Beth’s murder running through his mind, interrupted only by a what-if scenario—him and Kate at the gallery, the kiss that didn’t happen.
That was the part that veered into the realm of obsession.
He had never felt passion for any other subject of an investigation before.
The other night he’d woken up sweating, dreaming of Kate.
In the morning, he’d felt this ridiculous wave of shame—Why should he?
Who could stop a dream?—but it had made him feel like heading to the Y-Knot on Bank Street and getting drunk.
He hadn’t sought whiskey or any alcohol as a solution for years, but shame and frustration were powerful motivators.
He stared at the heart and the small spot in the corner.
He looked up the address he had for Lulu Granville and headed over to question her about the bloody heart. Maybe she could tell him who the third woman had been, or perhaps it was historical, left by someone long dead.
And even though Lulu had been cleared of the charge of biting Danielle, Reid couldn’t get the image of those scratches and bite marks on Pete’s back out of his mind.
Early on, Pete had said he’d gotten them during sex.
It seemed crazy, but could they have come from Lulu?
Pretty much the only thing worse than having your husband cheat on you with an employee would be having him be with one of your best friends.
When he arrived at Lulu’s house, Reid found no cars in the driveway, and no one answered the door.