“Somebody just got murdered here,” Stewart pointed out.
Annabeth ignored him. Gregor ignored him too. The gun in the plastic bag was large and heavy, not a “ladies’ gun” as some of them were called, not small so that it could fit into a purse. He looked up instinctively and checked the pictures of Arrow Normand on his laptop screen. She was a very small woman, tiny, not much taller than five feet. She didn’t look strong, and she didn’t look athletic. Even in the pictures where she was supposed to be performing, the illusion of a toned and trained body was just that, an illusion. She faked it with spandex and Lycra.
Stewart turned his head to see what Gregor was looking at. “Aha,” he said. “You’ve looked her up. Our Arrow.”
“She’s very small.”
“And? ”
“And this is a big gun,” Gregor said. “It’s a heavy gun. It’s heavy even for Ms. Falmer there—”
“Dr. Falmer,” Stewart said automatically.
“Annabeth,” Annabeth said.
“It’s heavy even for Annabeth,” Gregor corrected himself, “and she’s not only larger in terms of height and body build, but she’s got more muscle on her. At least, as far as I can tell from photographs. Has it been fired recently?”
“We didn’t fire it, if that’s what you mean,” Annabeth said. “We only picked it up with a handkerchief, like I told you. I’m not sure I’d know how to fire it.”
“It’s simple to fire a gun,” Stewart said. “You make sure it’s loaded, you make sure the safety is off, and then you pull the trigger.”
Gregor opened the plastic bag. Then he reached behind him into his suitcase, took the first tie that was handy, and took the gun out with that. Then he smelled the barrel. There was nothing. He dropped the gun back into the bag.
“Well?” Stewart said.
“It smells new,” Gregor said, trying to be cautious. Trying to be cautious around Stewart was like trying to be—Gregor stopped. He didn’t know what it was like. He had no meta phor. “It smells new,” he said again, “as if it has never been fired at all. Ever. Which I can’t vouch for until we get it tested. Try to get that through your head.”
“What would Arrow have been doing carrying around a gun that had never been fired?” Stewart asked.
“Are you sure she was carrying it around?” Gregor said. “There was somebody else there that night, wasn’t there? You said you carried Marcey Mandret to Dr.—Annabeth’s house, and that’s how the two of you ended up finding the body of Mark Anderman.”
“Marcey Mandret wasn’t carrying a gun,” Stewart said. “I know. I had her over my shoulder. She wasn’t even carrying underwear.”
“In her purse?” Gregor suggested.
“Didn’t have one,” Stewart said. “I mean, I suppose she did have one, earlier in the day, but by the time I was wiping her up off the floor it had disappeared somewhere. Well, all right. I mean it didn’t occur to me she should have it. I was busy trying to get her out of that place before she landed on the front page of the Enquirer. Again. But she couldn’t have been carrying anything, and especially not anything that heavy. She was wearing so little, I would have noticed.”
“They were both wearing practically nothing,” Annabeth said. “When Miss Normand came to my door, I thought there must have been a rape, because she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Stewart explained it to me later, and it made sense, because of the shoes. You should have seen the shoes. There was nothing to them. They were just straps. And in that storm.”
Gregor looked down at the gun again. Arrow Normand shows up at Annabeth Falmer’s door wearing practically no clothes, no underwear and strappy sandals in the middle of a raging nor’easter. Stewart Gordon shows up at Annabeth Falmer’s door properly dressed for the occasion, but carrying Marcey Mandret, who is also wearing practically no clothes, no underwear and strappy sandals, over his shoulder. Arrow Normand is in shock. Marcey Mandret is dead drunk. There’s a body in a pickup truck down on the beach, and somebody has shot him through the head. Now there’s a gun in Annabeth Falmer’s couch, and nobody knows how it got there.
Gregor looked up. “When Arrow Normand got to your door, was she wearing a coat?”
“No,” Annabeth said, “why?”
“Was she carrying a purse?”
“No,” Annabeth said again.
“Was her dress long, to the floor or at least below the knee?”
“It was cut practically up to her—” Annabeth stopped. “Um. You know. Is this something I should be figuring out for myself?”