Nita nodded, her head bobbing with the ferocity of it. “She had no right. Just like she had no right to tell Jess what to do.”
“So, of course you wanted to talk to her,” said Gemma, moving past Nita’s denial of the texting. “You had to know what she meant to do about Jess. If she meant to tell the Sus about the inhaler. I know,” she added confidingly, “I wouldn’t have been able to stand not knowing. But maybe she wouldn’t want to tell you. Or maybe she wouldn’t tell you the truth.” She realized now that it would never have occurred to Nita that Reagan wouldn’t lie.
Gemma had been aware for some time of the hum of activity in the house—soft voices, footsteps, the creaks of the treads on the stairs. She only hoped Kerry would give her a few minutes more. Jacobs the constable stood unmoving as a statue, out of Nita’s line of vision, and Gemma didn’t dare glance in his direction.
“You thought if Reagan was tipsy, she might tell you, didn’t you, Nita? The only problem was that Reagan wasn’t much of a drinker. But what if she drank something really tasty—a gin punch, maybe? You must have had a good supply of Red Fox. Then, she wouldn’t notice if the alcohol was a lot stronger than she was used to.”
Nita stared at her, her eyes dilated, her thin chest rising and falling rapidly. Gemma thought of a rabbit caught in the glare of oncoming headlamps.
Swallowing, Gemma went on. “It was such a lovely night. Warm. Unusual for May. A perfect night for a chat in the garden. With a candle, a pitcher of punch, two pretty glasses. And Reagan in her white dress. She might have walked out of a fairy tale.
“And it worked a charm, didn’t it? Just the two of you, on the soft cool grass, with nothing but the stars and the flicker of the candle. She drank the punch and she giggled. When her head started spinning, she flopped back onto the grass, the white dress spread all around her like foam.”
“You can’t know,” Nita whispered. “You can’t possibly know that.”
Gemma clasped her hands together to stop them trembling. “But when you asked her what she meant to do about Jess—surely, you said, she must understand how essential it was that nothing interrupt his progress—she said that nothing was more important than Jess doing the right thing. That she’d help him in any way she could. And you couldn’t have that, could you, Nita?”
Nita blinked, once, but there was no flicker of emotion in her eyes. Thinking of Asia Ford’s bleeding head, Gemma was suddenly very glad of the constable’s presence in the room.
“Just shut her up,” Gemma murmured, a thread of sound. “Shut her up, you thought. Stuff her mouth with that soft white skirt. And she must have felt soft, too, with her girl’s skin, almost like a child’s. She struggled a bit. The candle tipped and went out, the wax spilling on the grass. Poof. And then she was gone, just like the candle.
“But you couldn’t leave her,” she went on, swallowing against the nausea. “Rumpled like a rag doll. So you straightened her dress. You laid her out as if she’d just fallen asleep, didn’t you, Nita?”
Another blink, and the slightest shake of the head, not quite a negation.
Gemma took a breath. “Where did Reagan leave her phone, Nita? In the kitchen? In her room? It must have been a shock when you’d tidied everything away, then the text came through. From Edward. Surely, not your Edward, you thought. Did you recognize the number? What if he came here? You must have panicked. So you texted back, just in case.
“Where’s the phone, now, Nita? Did you keep it? You had to read the texts and the e-mails, had to see if she’d told anyone. It must have been an even bigger shock the next day when you found her computer gone. Had she given it to someone? Had someone been in the house?
“But nothing happened except that Jess stopped talking to you. He wouldn’t tell you where he’d been on Saturday morning. Did he know something? Guess something?” Gemma was relentless now. “Had he loved her more than you? Then, when Asia rang and said she’d seen him in the garden when he should have been in school, you panicked. Real panic, this time. Asia told you she thought he might have taken her alcohol, but you didn’t want anyone connecting you, or Jess, to the missing bottle.
“Asia told you something else, too, didn’t she, Nita? Roland Peacock saw you that night, coming back across the garden. He was coming to tell Asia their tryst for that night was off. His wife had come home unexpectedly, and his son was ill. He didn’t dare use the phone to ring her. Neither of them wanted to speak up, for obvious reasons.” It was Roland who’d rung Gemma that morning and haltingly said that since the attack on Asia, he’d decided he couldn’t keep anything from the police, even if it meant coming clean to his wife. The affair, he’d admitted, had been going on for some time, and more than once Clive Glenn had glimpsed him leaving Asia’s house at daybreak.
Nita’s eyes had widened, but she didn’t speak. Gemma took a breath and went on. “So you took your chances, Nita. You had to shut Asia up, too.
“But it didn’t work, and Asia told us Jess never touched the bottles. Only you, Nita.”
“You can’t know,” she whispered, running her tongue around her lips. “You can’t know any of it. I won’t tell you.”
“Would Roland Peacock have been next? Where would it have stopped, Nita?”
The spasm in Nita’s hand told Gemma more than enough. When the hall door opened, she looked up with relief. She couldn’t bear another moment in the room with Nita Cusick.
It was Kerry, beckoning her. When Gemma stood, she found she was soaked with sweat.
Jacobs, his face still impassive, but his eyes warm with understanding, nodded at her as she went out. When the door closed behind her, she leaned against the hallway wall for a moment.
“Gemma?” said Kerry. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” Gemma straightened up. “What have you got?”
Kerry held up two evidence bags. One held a mobile phone, the other an asthma rescue inhaler. “Found both of them in her bedroom drawer, buried under her frilly knickers. People, honestly.” She rolled her eyes. “The phone is not password protected. It’s Reagan Keating’s. And Nita can’t claim the inhaler. It has Henry Su’s name on the label.”
“Christ.” Gemma sagged against the wall again, her knees weak.
“Not to mention,” Kerry continued, “the bottle of grain alcohol in the back of her liquor cabinet. The fingerprint techs will have a field day with it. And,” she added, not to be interrupted, “they found the shoes you described her wearing yesterday. The UV light brought out what looks like blood spatter on the toes. Did you get anything from her?”
“An admission? No. Confirmation?” Gemma nodded. “Yes.”
“Then let’s get her down to the station,” said Kerry, “and we’ll cross our own frilly knickers that the prosecutor will run with it.”