Cheating at Solitaire (40 page)

“Well,” her mother said. “Arrow, I want to introduce Mr. Demarkian, the man I told you about. He's—”

“I really must interject here,” the lawyer said. “I really must protest. I do not believe this interview is a good idea. I do not believe it is in Arrow's best interests. Arrow, I insist you do not answer any questions until I give you permission to do so. Mr. Demarkian will ask. I will consider the question. I will okay the question if I think it is proper, and then, and only then, will you answer it.”

Arrow looked from the lawyer, to her mother, to Gregor Demarkian. How did you know if somebody was a friend of yours? How did you know if they even knew you, or saw you, or—Arrow had run out of categories. She thought it might have been different if she had had a different kind of growing-up. She should have gone to an ordinary school somewhere, and had slumber parties. She should have had best friends and best enemies and days when she cried because she hadn't been named to the cheerleading team.

“Arrow,” her mother said, sounding cautious.

“I want everybody to leave here except Mr. Demarkian,” Arrow said.

“Absolutely not,” the lawyer said. “There is no way you can talk to a member of the law enforcement team without an attorney present. There is no way—”

“I want everybody to leave,” Arrow said. “Right now.” She swung around to Gregor Demarkian. “I can do that, can't I? I'm over twenty-one. Just over, but I'm over. I can tell them to go if I want to.”

“You can,” Gregor Demarkian said. “But your attorney has a point. Anything you say to me, I will report to the police and the prosecutor. It might be an intelligent thing to have a lawyer present.”

“I don't care what you report to the police,” Arrow said. “I want them out of here.”

“Well,” Arrow's mother said. “Roger, maybe, just for a minute, you could step out. I can run interference here for a minute or two—”

“I want you out too,” Arrow said. “I want just me and Mr. Demarkian. That's all.”

“But you can't just talk to him alone,” her mother said. “He's, well, he's—”

“I've heard all about him on television,” Arrow said. “I want it to be me and Mr. Demarkian and nobody else in here. And don't tell me you won't let me, because I've got the right, and you can't stop me. I'll tell the judge and he'll make you. Get out of here.”

“I think we need to seriously consider the possibility that you should seek other counsel,” the lawyer said.

Arrow didn't have the faintest idea what that meant, and she didn't care. She just stood where she was, staring straight into Gregor Demarkian's eyes, refusing to look at either of the other two. She had a prayer going on at the back of her head, over and over again, like a mantra. It went: Get them out get them out get them out. Her mother was trying to talk to her. She wasn't listening. Her mother was putting a hand on her arm. She didn't react. She had to stand still and concentrate.
She had to focus. She had to will them out of the room.

And finally they were gone.

Arrow looked around at the empty room. She checked the door to make sure it was closed. She pulled out a chair and sat down. She felt too tired to breathe.

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” Gregor Demarkian said. He came down the length of the table and sat next to her. “Are you sure you know what you're doing here? Your mother has your best interests at heart. Your attorney is paid to have your best interests at heart.”

“I think my mother has her own best interests at heart,” Arrow said. “And I think my attorney mostly cares about how he'll look in a big famous case. Neither one of them will care about me in a week. You know I didn't kill Mark, don't you?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I know that. If it makes you feel any better, I'm here because Stewart Gordon knows that too. He was so convinced you were being wrongly accused, he came all the way down to Philadelphia to get me.”

“Was Kendra murdered?” Arrow asked. “I listened to some of the news last night, but I couldn't figure it out. Maybe she was murdered, and maybe she fell down the stairs.”

“Do you want to know officially, or unofficially?”

“I want to know what's true.”

“My best guess,” Gregor Demarkian said, “is that she was killed, but not murdered. That she was pushed, and ended up dead, but not because the person who pushed her necessarily wanted her to end up dead. I'm fairly sure, however, that the same person pushed her that murdered Mark Anderman.”

“And you know who that is?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Or rather, I know what person, in what position in this thing, it would have to be. I've just gotten here, though. I haven't talked to everybody yet.”

Arrow took a deep breath. “I didn't see who killed Mark.”

“I know,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“We had an accident, in the truck,” Arrow said. “That was true, what I told that lady, the one whose house I ended
up at. We'd had, you know, kind of a lot to drink, more than we should have, because it was the middle of the day. But it felt like night. Because it was so dark. It felt like the middle of the night. So we were drinking, and we had, you know, some, something to smoke—”

“Marijuana or cocaine?”

“Marijuana,” Arrow said. “I don't. I mean. I don't know. Cocaine scares me. It does bad things to people.”

“True enough.”

“And we had an accident,” Arrow said. “The car went off the road. It just went careening off, over the rocks, onto the beach, and it was dark and there was all this snow, and he fell on me.”

“Who fell on you? Mark Anderman?”

“He fell on me,” Arrow said again, “and I hit my head, and he did, and there was blood everywhere, and I couldn't get him to move. He didn't answer me. He just lay there on me, and I had to wiggle and do things to get around him, because the truck was on its side and I had to climb over him, and my hair got full of blood.”

“And you walked to Annabeth Falmer's house?”

“I just walked out onto the beach,” Arrow said. “And I walked around. And I was still really high, you know, but I was dizzy, too, I was so dizzy I thought I was going to pass out, but that scared me. I thought if I passed out I was going to lie down in the snow and die of the cold. That happens a lot. You hear about it on the news. So I was scared and there was this house with lights on and I headed for that, and the lady was very nice. She gave me a blanket and she tried to get me to drink some tea.”

“And that's it?” Gregor Demarkian said. “You didn't see anybody else near the truck? You didn't hear gunshots?”

“No,” Arrow said. “I thought Mark was dead, though. I thought he was dead and I was going to die too, you know, because I'd been driving. It's one of those things, you know, that you can't do. Kill somebody when you drive drunk. Your career is over after that.”

“And that's why you've sat in jail for days?” Gregor said.

“Didn't anybody tell you that Mark Anderman didn't die in the accident? He died of a gunshot wound to the head.”

“Yes, I know. No, that wasn't why I stayed here. I stayed here because it was quiet. I really wanted to be quiet.”

“You're going to be considerably quieter at home,” Gregor said. “For one thing, you're going to have better security.”

“I don't think so,” Arrow said. She looked around the room. It wasn't much of a room. It was less than a movie set. In the conference rooms she was used to, everything was thick and expensive, the carpets, the furniture, even the decorations on the walls. There weren't many decorations on these walls. She took a deep breath. “When I heard about the gunshot wound, I thought Kendra had done it, because she was the one who should have done it. Did you know about that? Did you know that Kendra married Mark Anderman that weekend in Vegas?”

2

The pictures were all over the Internet in no time at all. Marcey Mandret saw them first thing the next morning as she was sitting at the computer at Annabeth Falmer's house, dressed in baggy sweat clothes and drinking something called “double spice chai” tea, into which Dr. Falmer had put a ton of honey but no milk. Marcey did not know if that was because Dr. Falmer didn't know how “chai” was supposed to be made, or because she didn't have any milk, which was possible, since lots of people were lactose intolerant. The pictures made Marcey want to heave, but that wasn't difficult, since she'd been wanting to heave for hours. She had the mother of all hangovers. Her head pounded. Every single muscle in her body ached. Dr. Falmer had brandy, but Stewart Gordon had already told her she wasn't going to get any of it.

She looked at the photographs on the screen again, and again. Different Web sites had different collections of them, but every Web site she'd visited had had what she now thought of as the Picture, the one of Kendra naked and spread-eagled with somebody's hand up her… up her… Marcey didn't usually have trouble with words, not even
vulgar words, but this morning she couldn't make the word for that one come into her head. There was something… weird about the pictures she was seeing… creepy… something. She wished she knew if there were words for the things she was thinking. It was like the pictures were a prophecy, as if she had seen her own death plain. But that wasn't quite right, because her own death could come while nobody was looking, or even wanted to look. Her own death could come after she had ceased to exist.

She heard a car outside and stiffened. Dr. Falmer came hurrying in from the living room and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

“It's quite all right, Miss Mandret, it's not the paparazzi. It's Gregor Demarkian. I think the paparazzi are all over at the jail. Arrow Normand's just been released.”

Marcey relaxed. She was a bigger star than Arrow was, but business was business. Arrow coming out of jail was a money shot if there ever was one. She took a long, deep sip of tea. There was so much honey in it, it coated her throat, which actually felt good. The kitchen door opened and she heard Stewart booming on about something. The other man, the one who was Gregor Demarkian, had a softer voice. Marcey wondered, not for the first time, why the people who had built this house had put the front door where nobody would ever use it.

Dr. Falmer came into the alcove where the computer was. “Why don't you come out and sit with us in the living room,” she said. “I've got more tea, if you're about to be out, and I've got cookies. Mr. Demarkian is just settling in.”

Marcey looked at the screen full of pictures again. If Dr. Falmer had noticed them, she hadn't said anything. Marcey wondered if she would have. She said “just a minute” to Dr. Falmer's retreating back, deleted the Web page, and then put the computer on to CNN. It was one of those computers that stayed on almost all the time, or stayed on the Net almost all the time. Marcey wasn't sure how that worked. Back in Los Angeles, she had a tech person to do that kind of thing for her.

She got up and went down the little hall to the living room. She felt odd in the clothes she was wearing. They were warm, which was good, but they hung on her, and they covered her completely. She felt as if she were in hiding, which she possibly was. She'd forgotten the tea. She went back and got it. Then she edged into the living room and looked around.

“Splendid,” Stewart Gordon said. “Why don't you sit down in the club chair, Marcey. You can balance your teacup on the arm.”

“Do you need more?” Dr. Falmer said.

“This is Gregor Demarkian,” Stewart Gordon said. “Gregor, this is Marcey Mandret.”

Gregor Demarkian held out his hand. Marcey took it. Gregor Demarkian did not seem particularly scary close up. Stewart Gordon seemed scarier. Marcey took a long sip of her tea, so long she felt as if she were going to drown in it. Dr. Falmer saw her and took the cup away to refill it.

“The one thing I want you to understand,” Gregor Demarkian said, “is that, at this point, I do not think you are a suspect in the murder of Mark Anderman, or in the murder of Kendra Rhode.”

“Was she murdered?” Marcey asked. “She was at the bottom of the stairs. I thought she must have fallen, or been pushed, and it made sense to think she'd been murdered, but I didn't really know. I don't really know. You shouldn't rely on what I said, at the time, you know, because I was—”

“Right royally pissed,” Stewart Gordon said helpfully.

“Oh,” Marcey said. “No. I mean, I wasn't pissed at all, I was just still sort of high, you know, and things were fuzzy—”

“He meant high,” Gregor Demarkian said. “It's a Britishism. Although it's usually used to mean drunk, and as I understand it you'd had rather more than alcohol yesterday.”

“Yes,” Marcey said. “Rather more.”

“Oh, for God's sake,” Stewart said. “You were high as a kite. I saw you. We all saw you. He's not a reporter. Make some sense.”

“I'd had some Valium,” Marcey said. “And, um, maybe
some Prozac. And things. Pills I had around the house. I was nervous.”

“Because of the murder of Mark Anderman?” Gregor asked.

“Sort of,” Marcey said. “I was mostly nervous about Arrow. I didn't know Mark all that well. He was just one of those people, you know. He was around. He was on the set but not important. Or sometimes they were not on the set, they were local. And around and cute. And it's boring out here. There's no place to go but the Oscartown Inn or that bar, Cuddy's, the one with the dark windows. There's no music. Or. You know. Anything.”

“Okay,” Gregor said. “I want to talk about the afternoon that Mark Anderman died. And I'll repeat, you're not a suspect. It's marginally possible that if Kendra Rhode was murdered, you could have committed the crime, but it is not possible in any way that you could have murdered Mark Anderman. At the time he was killed, you were in full view of a few dozen people in Cuddy's, or on your way to this house with Stewart Gordon, or here, pretty much passed out. So it would be helpful if we could talk about that night, and about what led up to that night, without beating around the bush. Do you think we can do that?”