“It’s not her. I can’t believe this. I need tea,” Ethan muttered, started preparing the water. “She wasn’t lying. She told the truth, and I didn’t believe her. I just didn’t look closely enough the first time you showed me.”

“Sutton denied doing this?”

“Sutton denied everything. She said she made one flip comment, and then her account was hacked. That everything that came after the first night was fake. I didn’t believe her. Why would I?”

“Because she was your wife?”

“My wife whom I was having problems with. God help me, I thought she was trying to gather attention, to pay me back for the affair. Aren’t I the arsehole?”

Graham pocketed her phone. She was very still. She’d stationed herself by the breakfast bar, watched him move around the kitchen. “Sir, I want to ask you something. Do you have any reason to believe your son’s death was something other than SIDS?”

The lid of the teapot clattered into place. “Sorry. Clumsy. You’ve been talking to the weird sisters, haven’t you?”

“Excuse me? Who?”

“Sutton’s group of friends. They don’t like me very much.”

“Why not?”

“I’m a bombastic serial cheater who belittled her and held her career back. Or hadn’t you heard?”

“Are you?”

“According to them. Her mother will say so, as well. What does the truth matter to a gaggle of women who don’t like a husband?”

“I haven’t been able to touch base with her mother.”

“Lucky you. She’s out of town. Canada, I think. When I told her Sutton was missing, she didn’t seem at all concerned. Told me I didn’t know her daughter and left for her trip.”

“That seems odd.”

“You don’t know Siobhan Healy. She’s no better than a spider—let her eggs hatch, find a wasp for them to feast on, then scurry away.”

“She and Sutton aren’t close?”

“Hardly. Sutton got the hell out the moment she was able to get a job and pay her own way. She hated one of the stepfathers with a passion, felt like Siobhan took his side over Sutton’s. She took off when she was sixteen.”

“One of the stepfathers?”

“Siobhan’s on hubby number four. She never married Sutton’s real father, he was a one-night stand. Sutton never knew him. She grew up hard, my wife. There was a new man every couple of years. They moved around a lot. She finally got fed up and bailed. There’s something...”

“Yes?”

“Nothing, never mind.”

“Everything you can tell me is helpful, Mr. Montclair.”

“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. Something happened when she was a kid. I have no idea what it was. Siobhan is tight-lipped, and Sutton won’t even acknowledge it. She always keeps a rock-solid wall up about her childhood.