“Surely, she could have gotten tickets before this?”
“Of course she could have, and free, too, just like the ones Peter gave her. But the impression I got was that they were just there and she just sort of said what the hell.”
“What did she go to see Peter Callisher about?”
Kelley shrugged again. “I don’t know. Peter runs the paper. Gemma goes—went—over there a lot, or sent me, you know, to put notices in and things like that, for when the church groups were going to meet or when the jumble sales were going to be or whatever. And the church ran a regular ad every week that gave our times for services and counseling hours and that sort of thing. All the churches do.”
Gregor hated explanations that amounted to “it happened for no good reason at all” and he hated them twice as fiercely as he might have because they were so often true.
“Did Gemma tell anyone she was going to attend this performance?”
“Tell anyone?”
“Was there anyone who knew?” Gregor insisted.
“I suppose a lot of people knew she had the tickets,” Kelley said, “but I don’t see why they would know she was going to be at the performance. I mean, she’d never been to one before. And I don’t think she made up her mind until she came home and talked to me.”
“You don’t think but you can’t be sure.”
“No, I can’t be sure. But Mr. Demarkian, I’ve got to say it doesn’t make much sense.”
Gregor was afraid it made entirely too much sense. If everyone in town knew Gemma Bury was going to be at the Nativity play tonight, then everyone in town had a chance to premeditate a shooting that Gregor was convinced had to be premeditated. If it hadn’t been—if it had been brought off on the spur of the moment by someone who just happened to have a rifle handy for use in auspicious circumstances—they were dealing with something worse than a nut and worse than a psychopath.
“What about once you got here?” Gregor asked. “You came in together at the beginning. Bennis and Tibor and I saw you.”
“We saw you, too,” Kelley said. “Gemma was amused. We’d been reading about you for weeks. Because of Peter liking to put your cases in the paper.”
“What about at the intermission? Did you come back first or did Gemma?”
“I never went away,” Kelley said. “Gemma got up and walked around. There were a couple of parishioners in the section just to the other side of the animal aisle from this one. She went over to talk to them, and she was gone almost the entire intermission, but I never left.”
“And she came back when? Before I did, I remember.”
“She wasn’t gone long,” Kelley agreed.
“What about the people immediately behind you and immediately in front of you?”
“The people immediately behind us didn’t come in until after the play had already started. They were a pain in the butt, let me tell you. The people immediately in front of us were back, but they weren’t sitting still. That’s the ground-level bleacher, you know. The people down there had this small child, and it kept wandering up and wandering away, and they’d go chase it. I saw one of those men questioning the parents, I think. Didn’t you?”
“No,” Gregor said, “I didn’t. Did you talk to anyone tonight? You didn’t go anywhere, you say. Did anyone come to you?”
“Amanda Ballard came up to talk before she left. She and Peter had tickets for the section directly opposite this one on the other side of the park. Peter gets tickets every year. Anyway, Amanda was feeling sick and was on her way out, and she saw me and came up to say hello.”
“She left and Peter Callisher didn’t.”
“That’s right.”
“And Peter Callisher had tickets over here to give to Gemma and tickets over there to use himself, all on the same night.”
“Oh, that. Peter had friends who were supposed to come up from Boston to see the play, and they only made up their minds about a month ago, so when he got them the tickets he couldn’t get them to go with the ones he already had. Then the friends couldn’t come up after all, so there he was.”
“Anybody else?”
Kelley thought about it, long and hard, but it only made her face go as grey as her name. She didn’t come up with much.
“I saw Candy George’s husband Reggie,” she said. “Candy’s the girl who plays Mary. And I saw Stu Ketchum wandering around. He operates a food stall during the intermissions. Oh, and I saw Timmy Hall. He works over at the paper. He’s here every year, too. Peter gets tickets for his whole staff, but not all on the same night. Timmy must have been with Peter.”