Wanting Sheila Dead (33 page)

What Coraline really hated was this thing where they were none of them ever allowed to call home, except for the limited call they got to make to their families after the murder. They couldn't have their cell phones. They couldn't use the phone here except in the evenings, and then there was only one, and all of them had to share it. It was impossible to get any time for a really good talk.

She walked around the room again. She looked up at the mirror again. She looked at the floor. There used to be two carpets on the study floor, Oriental ones like the ones in the living room, but the carpets closest to the fireplace had been taken away. There were still bloodstains on that, too.

Coraline heard a sound and looked up. She was starting to get supersensitive to sounds. It would make her look guiltier if anybody noticed.

Ivy was standing in the doorway to the study. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” Coraline said.

She revised her impressions in her head. Janice was not the only one who was being nice to her. Ivy was being nice, too. The problem was, she didn't like it when Ivy was nice to her. There was that hair. There was that tattoo. Back in Southport, only guys got tattoos, and only guys who weren't nice. Ivy could ride with a motorcycle gang when she was back home. For all Coraline knew, Ivy could be a prostitute.

“They're going to put a buffet out in the dining room,” Ivy said. “You ought to come and eat something. People really aren't ostracizing you, no matter what you think.”

Coraline thought about telling Ivy about Deanna, and how Deanna didn't want to sleep in their room anymore, but she wasn't sure Ivy would understand. Janice would understand. Janice was almost like the girls she knew at home, and so was Mary-Louise, although neither one of them were saved. Didn't anybody get saved outside the South? Maybe the people who got saved outside the South just knew more about television and things like that, and didn't try out for shows like
America's Next Superstar
.

“Coraline?” Ivy said.

Coraline looked back up in the mirror. It wasn't tilted much forward. If you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't notice that it was tilted at all. Nobody would have done something so small on purpose.

“Coraline,” Ivy said again.

“I'm coming,” Coraline said.

She didn't want to. She wanted to go back upstairs and cry some more. She wanted to call her mother and leave the house and go back home.

She had no idea what she could do and what she couldn't do without making herself look guiltier and guiltier, because from what she'd heard them talking about this morning, she seemed to be the only person in the house who could have killed that girl.

Janice knew that a lot of the girls were trying to keep their mouths shut when they were talking to the police, but she didn't see the point. It was exciting, all this. It was much more exciting than she had expected it to be, and she had gone over and over the possibilities in her head before she came to the auditions. This was going to be the most famous season of
America's Next Superstar
ever. Everybody on the planet was going to watch it, because they'd want to see if they could tell which one of the girls was trying to kill Sheila Dunham. It would be even better if nobody was arrested, because then there would be suspicion everywhere. People would not only watch, they would watch
closely. All the girls would be famous in no time flat. Janice Ledbedder wanted to be famous.

Most of the girls were trying to pretend they didn't know anything about crime, too, but that was even sillier, in Janice's opinion, than trying to keep their lives a secret. She had no secrets in her life. Everybody in Marshall, South Dakota, knew she loved to watch all those true-crime shows on television. A lot of the girls liked to watch them, too, and if they didn't they had mothers who liked to watch.

“I saw the one about the murders at Margaret's Harbor,” Janice had told Mr. Demarkian when she'd been called in to talk to him and Detective Borstoi. “They made a
City Confidential
about that and an
American Justice,
too, and there was stuff on it on
Forensic Files.
I think maybe that was because of all the celebrities. Everything's more interesting if there are celebrities, don't you think?”

“I don't think,” the police detective had said.

Janice ignored him. “They did the one that happened here, too,” she said. “It was the first thing I thought of when I heard the name of the house. I mean, I wouldn't have known it was the same place, you know, because all those pictures of the outsides of big houses look alike. But then somebody said the name and I knew. And I'm not the only one. Mary-Louise knew, too. She'd even looked it up on the Internet.”

“Looked up what on the Internet?” Mr. Demarkian said.

“Looked up the house,” Janice said. “The first night we were here. We aren't allowed to have Internet, really, but there was a computer in one of the offices downstairs and we didn't know we weren't supposed to be in there, so we were using it. We were IM-ing, if you want to know the truth. It's terrible, being stuck up here without being able to talk to anybody practically ever. Anybody outside, I mean. We're really not allowed to. So we did that and we looked at pictures of the house and talked to people, except I didn't talk to anybody because, you know, nobody I knew was on.”

“Tell us where you were when you heard the shots,” the detective said.

Janice took a deep breath and brightened right up. This really was exciting. Nothing like this ever happened in South Dakota. There was crime there, but it was the kind of crime that would make anybody bored.

“I was standing behind the couch in the back row,” she said. “Not that there were really rows, if you know what I mean. It's just that even though the couch is big, it isn't big enough to have ten girls strung out in a single line behind it, so we were all sort of squished together. I had Coraline in front of me to my right, a little, and then in front of me to my left a little there was Deanna Brackett, Coraline's roommate.”

“And who was to either side of you?” the detective asked.

“Faith Stackdopole on my right, more up front, and Suzanne, I think, on my left. I'm not really sure about that. We were all just sort of moving around until the last minute.”

“Did you hear the shots when they happened?” Mr. Demarkian asked.

“Well, of course I heard them,” Janice said. “I mean, they were very loud. I'd have to have heard them.”

“Do you know what direction they came from?”

Janice shook her head. “No. No, they were just there. Just sort of everywhere, if you know what I mean. I thought they were close, but they would have to be close, so I don't see that that's any help. Really, it was just—well, we weren't expecting it, were we? And then everybody starting yelling and running around, and somebody got off the couch—that Shari girl, I think. And she was jumping around and yelling, and so was everybody else.”

“There's a police technician over there,” the detective said. “She's set up to test your hands for gunshot residue. I'm obliged to tell you that you do not have to agree to take such a test without a lawyer, but—”

“Oh, I don't mind,” Janice said. “This really is exciting, isn't it? Do you think they'll do an episode of
American Justice
on this one? It would be so wonderful if they did. Then maybe I'd be on two television programs instead of one. They could interview me the way they
do, you know, with a backdrop of justice scales or something, and then the person talks about what it felt like to be there.”

“Well,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“Oh, I know,” Janice said. “You have to solve it first. But you will solve it. I know all about you. So that's all right. I just wish you'd do it soon, so that everybody could stop stressing about it. I mean, there's one of us here who killed somebody, and we don't even know why. Maybe they'll kill somebody else.”

“That's true,” Mr. Demarkian said.

“Nothing like this ever happens in South Dakota,” Janice said, “and nobody from Marshall ever gets famous, either, so this is going to be the biggest thing in years. Everybody in town's going to want to talk to me when I get home, and they'd have wanted that even if I'd just gotten on the program.”

“I'm sure,” the detective said.

They weren't very friendly, either of them, but Janice didn't mind. She was just racing at the mouth, that was all. She'd like to be one of those people who could keep her cool no matter what, but she wasn't, and that was that.

Afterward, she wandered around in the dining room and looked at the food on the “sideboard,” which seemed to her to be just the bottom half of a hutch, but people here used different words for everything. They ate different food, too.

She wondered if Coraline was going to come in to eat.

Grace Alsop was also wondering if Coraline was going to come in to eat, but she had more practical reasons in mind.

“They tested all of us,” she told Alida and Suzanne, “and they didn't find gun residue or whatever it is they were looking for on any of us. They didn't find it on Olivia Dahl, either.”

“Well, it couldn't have been Olivia who did the shooting,” Alida
said. “She was standing at the back there, not where we were. The bullets wouldn't have been in the wood that way if she'd shot the gun—”

“Right, and then she'd have had to get the gun around to the side of the couch,” Suzanne said. “That was where the gun was found, between us and Sheila Dunham.”

“It was a little to the side,” Grace said impatiently. “And anybody could have dropped it there. We were all running around acting like lunatics. None of us was noticing anything. Anybody could have dropped a cannon on that floor and we wouldn't have seen it.”

“I was sitting on the couch,” Alida said. “I couldn't have dropped it anywhere. I was sitting down.”

Grace thought she was going to scream. “All right,” she said. “You were sitting on the couch. It probably wasn't anybody sitting on the couch. I agree. But Coraline wasn't sitting on the couch.”

“Oh, don't start that again,” Alida said. “She didn't have any of that gun stuff on her hands any more than the rest of us did.”

“No, she didn't,” Grace said, “but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. She could have been wearing gloves.”

“Did you notice her wearing gloves?” Suzanne asked.

“No, I didn't,” Grace said. “And I'd guess nobody else did, because nobody said anything. But it wouldn't have been hard. Wearing gloves, or holding something that would protect her hand from the gun stuff. It wouldn't have been that hard, and it wouldn't have been hard for her to hide it—especially if it was gloves, or just one glove. It wouldn't have been hard for her to hide it somewhere.”

“Where?” Alida demanded.

“In the couch, maybe,” Grace said. “Or, you know, anywhere. It's a huge room. She didn't have to hide it where we were. She could have put it anywhere.”

“They'd have found it by now,” Alida said.

A couple of the other girls had come up to listen. Grace saw Deanna, and Mary-Louise, and Janice, and Linda. They all looked wide-eyed and excited, as if this was some kind of murder game made for TV
and completely unreal. They didn't seem to understand that someone was dead, somebody else might end up dead before it was all over, and somebody was almost certainly going to jail. This being Pennsylvania, somebody could be going to a lethal injection.

“Look,” Grace said. “In the first place, Coraline is the only one of us who could have done it. She was the only one here when the murder happened—”

“You don't know that,” Mary-Louise said. “You don't know when it happened, I mean. Maybe it happened when we all got back.”

“How?” Grace asked. “Think about it. We got back. The doors to the limo opened. We all piled out and came rushing into the house in a big wad—”

“I wasn't first,” Mary-Louise said quickly. “There were already people in the hall when I got there.”

“There wasn't even a full minute between the first person going into the house and the rest of us going in,” Grace said. “There wasn't time enough for anybody to commit a murder. Coraline was the only one who was here. If it isn't Coraline, then it isn't any of us. And the crew didn't stay behind, either. They came to the restaurant to film us.”

“She makes me feel creepy,” Deanna said. “I know she's my roommate, and we're supposed to get along, but—”

“Why would she kill somebody she didn't even know,” Linda Kowalski asked. “I mean, we didn't know this person, right?”

“Coraline could have seen her before,” Grace said. “We don't know who this girl was or where she was from or anything. And the police don't know, either. She could be anybody. She could be somebody Coraline knew back home.”

“What was she doing here?” Suzanne asked.

“I don't know,” Grace said. “How am I supposed to know? The girl was whoever she was. It doesn't matter. The police will find out eventually.”

“Maybe Coraline is one of those serial killers,” Mary-Louise said. “There are women serial killers. They just go around killing people. Except, you know, mostly it's about sex.”

Grace wanted to do more than scream. She wanted to jump around and hit somebody. These girls were all such idiots. They really were. They couldn't think straight to save their lives, and they couldn't actually reason their way through a problem for anything at all.

“Listen,” she said. “The fact is, she's the only one who could have done it, and she's the only one I can think of who might have had a motive. I think she's trying to wreck the show.”