Wanting Sheila Dead (30 page)

“What's amoxicillin?”

“It's an antibiotic,” Billie said. “It's a very common one. They give it to people with ulcers, sometimes.”

“Did she have ulcers?”

“I don't know,” Billie said.

“Neither do I,” Gregor said. “But you're telling me she had a pill organizer with all this stuff in it, and at least two of those prescriptions are expensive. Did she have enough of all that stuff, the full doses you'd be likely to expect? Or was she skimping?”

“I don't know that, either,” Billie said.

“I think we have to find out,” Gregor said. “Because Sophie Mgrdchian was not a rich woman. She wasn't poor, and she wasn't destitute, but she wasn't rich. And if she has no insurance, not even Medicare, and she's getting all those pills over the counter, then—I don't know what then. But if she had enough and she didn't seem to be skimping, then it's imperative that you find some way to hold Karen Mgrdchian as long as possible. I've got to find a cab.”

“We've got another day,” Billie said. “You'd have to come up with something a lot more concrete for us to be able to hold her after that.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I know. I've got to get a cab. I'll call you again when I get home and when I've had some sleep. You need to check
with the police in wherever it is that Marco and Karen Mgrdchian lived. And you need to do this all fast. And I'm being no help at all.”

Billie was making fluttery little protests about how much help he was being when Gregor hung up, and then a cab appeared in the street, miraculously free.

By the time Gregor got out to Bryn Mawr, it was raining again, and he was cold. It was not the weather that was cold. Even with the rain that had gone on all week, the temperatures had been suspiciously warm. Television weathermen talked on and on about the risk of infectious disease from “near subtropical conditions.” Gregor doubted that this was anything like near subtropical conditions—in fact, considering that he was just back from Jamaica, he could practically guarantee it—but he couldn't complain about freezing to death, which was the problem he often had in Philadelphia. No, his cold was something else. His cold was lack of sleep. He got that way sometimes at night these days. It was how he knew he should have gone to bed half an hour earlier.

The gates were not closed at Engine House this morning, and there were no police cars in the drive. Gregor asked the cabbie to go right up to the front door steps, and then proceeded to pay him the kind of money he would ordinarily have spent on a small kitchen appliance. The intelligent thing to do would have been to know in advance that he wanted to come out here, and either call for a cab appointment ahead of time with one of the companies that offered fixed rates, or gotten somebody from Cavanaugh Street to drive him. Bennis wouldn't come out to Engine House, so that probably would have left Donna Moradanyan Donahue, who was usually busy. Still, he could have asked.

He got out of the cab and looked up at the house. He really couldn't expect the cab to wait. He had no idea how long he would be. He walked up the steps to the front door and knocked. Nothing
happened, although he could hear people from just on the other side of the door. He tried the knob and it turned. He pushed in the door and looked in on the foyer.

The foyer was packed with people, and there were people on the stairs and in the living room as well. The yellow crime-scene tape was still up across the study door, and there was a policewoman there now when there had been a policeman before. That meant that the police were either not finished with the room, or that Len Borstoi wanted to come back to it. Gregor understand that last thing. He'd always liked coming back to crime scenes himself. It was the kind of thing a federal officer almost never got the chance at.

Nobody was paying any attention to him. He walked in and among the girls as they milled around, and among the other people, too, people he hadn't seen the last time he was here. There were dozens of young men moving equipment around. Gregor had no idea what most of the equipment was for. There were young women with clipboards, all of them looking anxious and rushed.

Gregor stopped right outside the living room doorway and looked in. One of the contestants was sitting on a wingback chair, talking to a woman sitting on a couch. They were both in front of a fireplace and the fireplace was lit. Off to the side, Sheila Dunham was standing, leaning against a long table that was backed up in front of another one of the couches. It was a massive and old-fashioned living room, full of overstuffed furniture and knickknacks of every possible variety. Had there really been an era when women of “taste” had wanted to own a dozen porcelain angels?

The girl in the wingback chair looked like she was going to cry. Gregor ran the names he remembered through his head and came up with one: Mary-Louise Verdt. Somebody came up behind him and leaned in close.

“They keep changing where they sit,” the voice said. “First they have the interviewee in the chair, and then they have the interviewer in the chair. I think it's just to make us feel as uncomfortable as possible.”

“I think it's to make us cry,” somebody else said.

Gregor turned around. The first girl who had been whispering in his ear was the one with white-blond hair with a neon green streak in it. The other was the girl named Janice Ledbedder, who had talked to the murder victim on the day of the auditions in Merion.

The girl with the neon green streak in her hair smiled. “Ivy Demari,” she said. “I used to be Ivy Demaris. We went over all this yesterday.”

Olivia Dahl came flying out of the living room with the clipboard clutched to her chest. “Will you all just stop it?” she demanded. “This is not a movie we're on. We don't get to rerecord the sound later. And it's expensive and annoying to get rid of white noise when we don't have to. So if you please, will you all just shut up—oh, Mr. Demarkian.”

“I can shut up,” Gregor said.

Olivia shook her head violently and headed back for the set. Gregor could see Mary-Louise Verdt on the couch, wringing her hands the way the mothers of good boys gone bad always did in thirties-era movies. Janice Ledbedder was right: Mary-Louise looked ready to cry. If she didn't cry, she was going to jump off the couch and run away. Gregor didn't think he had ever seen anybody so uncomfortable.

All of a sudden, the woman on the couch stood up, and people in the living room started fussing around. Mary-Louise left the wingback chair as if she had been launched from it, pushing past the men with their cameras and almost running out into the hall.

“Oh,” she said, reaching Janice and Ivy. “Oh, my God. That woman is such a—she's such a—”

“Oh, I know,” Janice said. “And they look into your life and they find out everything, and then she just comes along and socks you with it. She was hitting me with my boyfriend right up to the very end—”

“They didn't have to dig hard for that story. You've told all of us a dozen times about how your boyfriend dumped you for another girl,” Ivy said.

“I know, I know,” Janice said. “I'm sorry if I keep talking about it. But it worked . . . But it worked out all right. We both sent in tapes for this, and I got asked and she didn't. And I'm going to be on television
for at least a week, right? I mean, I'm in the house, so I have to be on television at least until the first elimination.”

“Wouldn't that suck?” Mary-Louise said. “Going home on the first elimination. That's got to be the worst feeling. I'd almost rather not get on than get on and go home first.”

“Oh, people are always saying things like that,” Janice said. “And then they're saying the opposite two minutes later. We're all here.”

“Who goes next?” Mary-Louise asked.

Ivy shook her head. “You were the last one,” she told Mary-Louise. “They're cleaning up. Can't you see.”

Gregor looked into the living room with the girls. They were indeed cleaning up. Men were packing equipment away or just moving it around on wheels. The woman who had been playing the interviewer was standing next to Sheila Dunham, talking and looking dissatisfied. Olivia Dahl was checking things out on her clipboard.

Olivia came back into the foyer. “I'm sorry, Mr. Demarkian, we're just doing a little work around here. I wish you'd called. I could have given you a better time. We're going to be another ten or fifteen minutes, I'm afraid.”

“That's all right,” Gregor said.

Olivia started shooing the girls. “Come on now. We're going to film one of Sheila's pep talks, and then you're all off for a couple of hours. No, Janice. Don't go upstairs and get changed. You're supposed to look ‘come as you are.' ”

“I just have to go to the bathroom,” Janice said. “I'll only be a second.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. Then she raised her voice and said, “Get into the living room, please. We've got to set you up. It's a bigger room than the study. We've got to make sure we get the shot. I'm going absolutely crazy. What do the police want around here? The body is gone. I mean it's really gone. There's nothing more to find here. Why can't they go away and let us have access to that room again?”

“It's probably procedure,” Gregor said, fully aware that he'd said nothing of any importance whatsoever.

Janice came hurrying back down the stairs, from where Gregor presumed the bathroom was. Olivia started checking things off on her clipboard. Then she raised her voice and said,

“Mary-Louise? Mary-Louise, for God's sake.”

“I'm right here,” Mary-Louise said, coming from the direction of the front door. “I was just getting some air for a second. I feel like I'm going to faint. But it's raining again.”

“Of course it's raining again,” Olivia said. “Into the living room. Into the living room, all of you. I think we're going to have Sheila in the chair in front of the fireplace. We'll have you people in front of her—Ivy, sit on the couch. You make a good focal point. Alida, too. Grace, I know you don't want to be right in front of Sheila anymore, but she's not going to have a fit at you on camera—”

“She always has a fit at people on camera,” somebody said.

“Yes, all right,” Olivia said, “I meant she isn't going to do it during a scripted sequence, and this is a scripted sequence. All right, if Grace won't sit on the couch, why don't we have Shari and Linda. That will work. You're both small. If the rest of you could just stand right behind the couch, stand up so that we can see you. We're going to have only the one camera again, so make sure you're all visible. We'll be shooting you from a little far back, because the focus here is going to be on Sheila. If you'll just move in a little closer—”

Gregor moved in a little closer, too. He even came into the living room, although he knew better than to get too close to what they were doing there. He scanned the crowd of girls behind the couch. Olivia Dahl had told him yesterday that there were fourteen of them, fourteen girls who had been chosen to move into Engine House and begin the real competition. He tried counting them now, but they were moving around too much. Olivia was moving with them.

“Stand still, for God's sake,” she was saying. “Stand still. Why can't any of you ever stand still? Janice, come closer to the back of the couch. You're shorter than Suzanne. Marcia, the same with you. Faith, I want you farther back. You're as tall as a flagpole. Brittney—”

They were milling around a lot. They were. Gregor's head was
spinning. He tried to make himself concentrate. The girls kept shifting in and out. They were all nervous.

There was a sudden hush, and then a light directly on Sheila Dunham. From this distance, she looked more regal than sad. Gregor couldn't see the lines on her face, or the tightness where the plastic surgery had tried to fix them.

“Ladies,” Sheila said. Gregor supposed there was nothing she could do about that voice. It was harsh and flat and angry, and always would be.

“Ladies,” Sheila said again. “You have just completed the last challenge you will have this week before the judging panel, and an elimination. You know that there will be an elimination every week while you're here, and that when a girl is eliminated, she has to pack her bags immediately, and go home. We'll have a car waiting at the door for you when the time comes. We'll take you directly to the airport. We'll have plane tickets waiting, if you need them. If you live closer than that, we'll do something else. Olivia will handle it.”

The girls all laughed. Gregor had no idea why they were laughing.

“So,” Sheila said, “this is to put you all on notice. Every one of you signed a contract when you came here, promising to reveal nothing about what went on in the show until after the show is aired. We're not stupid. We do realize that some of you come from small towns and that your casting for this show was big news there. If you go home early, the papers in those small towns will probably have something to say about it. What we care about is that you do not under any circumstances talk to reporters, or anybody else, about what you have seen and done here. We don't even want you to confirm your elimination. If you're asked—and you will be asked—just say that you've signed a contract not to talk until the season has aired, and keep your mouth shut. Because if you don't, if we find that you've given an interview, or put up information on your blog, or on Facebook or MySpace or wherever, if any of that happens, we've got lawyers from here to Sunday and we will sue you. And we're good at it. That goes double for any video you may have taken while you were here, or any you get your hands on. Any of the video we've taken ourselves belongs to us.
Any you've taken, you've taken illicitly and in violation of your contracts, since you're not allowed to have video cameras here, or still cameras, or even your cell phones. Revealing what has gone on in this house before it airs is like telling somebody who done it before they've read a murder mystery. It makes the entire exercise futile. And I won't have it. Am I clear?”