A Stillness in Bethlehem(98)

“Five-five,” Sharon said. “Susan’s five-three.”

“Candy George is five-three, too, and Betty Heath is the same height I am. But Timmy’s nearly six-three. His head would have come right up over the top of this thing. He’d have had to bend over to aim, unless he fired without aiming, and I don’t believe that. I don’t believe Timmy would fire a rifle without looking at what he was aiming at. I don’t think Timmy would have fired a rifle.”

“Who says he did?”

Amanda looked back over her shoulder, up Main Street to the News and Mail office. “Lots of people,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the phone calls we’ve gotten today. They think that just because he’s retarded, he’s crazy.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Good,” Amanda said. “He’s sweet as pie, really, and not violent at all. He was the nicest boy at Riverton. Peter checked out all his records when we first decided to hire him. There wasn’t a single thing wrong.”

“I’m sure there wasn’t.”

“They just hate him because he’s different,” Amanda said. “Even Peter does. I thought when I heard about this that it would clear him, because it so obviously means he couldn’t have done any of it, but instead they’ve all got their theories. They’ve all got their fantasies about how he bent over to, shoot and nobody saw him. It’s sick.”

“Yes,” Sharon said carefully. “Amanda? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Amanda had been standing with her arms wrapped around her body. She’d barely moved from the moment Sharon had first come up to her. Now she shoved her hands in her pockets and turned her back on the stand of evergreen bushes.

“I’ve got to go back,” she said. “Timmy’s nervous and Peter’s really been crazy all day. I don’t think he’s been completely all right since Tisha Verek died.”

“What?”

But Amanda was already moving away, across the park to Main Street, down Main Street to the News and Mail in the direction opposite the one Sharon wanted to take. Sharon stood looking after her, feeling agitated and not knowing why.

Timmy Hall. Peter Callisher. God only knew there had been enough rumors about Timmy Hall. And Tisha Verek had started every one of them.

Sharon went back to Main Street herself and began to make her way toward Jim MacAfee’s front lawn. It felt horrible in this place now, sticky and vile, and she just wanted to get out.

It made her wonder why she and Susan had come here to begin with.





2


Kelley Grey was sitting in the rectory kitchen when the doorbell rang, sitting at the table and looking over the manuscript Tisha Verek had left with Gemma Bury. She was also conducting a running argument in her head about what she ought to do about this manuscript. She had already decided to bring it to Gregor Demarkian or Franklin Morrison or the state police or whoever was really investigating Gemma’s death. She may not have liked Gemma much at the end, but she owed the woman at least the courtesy of providing a clue to her murder to the authorities assigned to avenge it. Beyond the mere fact of handing the manuscript over, though, Kelley found it hard to think. Should she discuss Gemma with Gregor Demarkian? Yesterday, Kelley had been sure she ought to tell Demarkian about Gemma’s affair with Jan-Mark Verek, but today it had begun to seem less and less important as the hours went by. Maybe if she had been able to get in touch with Demarkian himself—instead of being forced to leave messages at the desk at the Inn—it would have been easier to make up her mind. It hadn’t been an important affair. Gemma Bury didn’t have important affairs. She didn’t want to get tied down. That, Kelley understood now, was why she herself had been so angry with Gemma at the end. Gemma hadn’t liked to get tied down to anybody, for any reason. Her idea of the ideal friendship was one whose emotional commitment never surpassed that of a lunch date. God only knew what her idea of the ideal sexual relationship had been. Kelley’s idea of the ideal friendship had always had something in common with the ideal of the indissoluble marriage, but maybe thinking like that was out of date.

When the doorbell rang, Kelley had decided to get up, make herself a cup of tea and do something serious about the part of the rectory she was now occupying. This part was shrinking by the minute—she got more and more afraid of the size and the emptiness of the place by the minute, too—but it could do with a few more Christmas decorations than it had been subjected to so far. Gemma had been fairly contemptuous about people who were “sentimental” about Christmas, the way she got fairly contemptuous of those of her parishioners she described as “wedded to the more ludicrous details of the Christian myth.” Gemma had preached diversity and nonjudgmental acceptance with the best of them, but she had had no tolerance for either in her own life.