Excitement pounded through me. It made sense. Braden had told Rachel he was trying to figure out whether or not to intervene in some situation. Well, if he suspected abuse, he might have wrestled with whether or not to tell someone. I’d been mulling it over myself, and I didn’t know Mark or his family half as well as Braden did. Was Mark trying to protect his family by pushing Braden? Closing the garage door behind me, I hurried to my apartment. Whether my reasoning was right or wrong, I definitely had to let Agent Dillon know about Mark and the sheet.
WHEN I PHONED HIM, AGENT DILLON SAID HE WAS AT Rothmere and I agreed to meet him there. I parked in the graveled lot fifteen minutes later, reflecting that I’d spent more time at Rothmere in the last few months than I had in the last twenty years. Until I attended a fund-raising ball there in May, I hadn’t been near the place since I left elementary school. I found Dillon in the detached kitchen, staring at a roughly drawn map of some kind as he surveyed the brick walls and gaping mouth of the original fireplace. The wind huffed down the chimney, sending a whiff of grilled meat into the room, perhaps from some long-dead ox or pig.
The door squealed when I closed it, and Dillon looked up. The marine blue of his eyes warmed as his gaze rested on me. His suit and tie looked ludicrously out of place in the rough kitchen with its scarred wooden table and iron pots stacked on shelves.
“What’s that?” I asked, nodding at the page he held.
“Spaatz’s version of where everyone was—or was supposed to be—on Saturday night,” he said. “I compared it with yours.”
“Useful,” I commented, studying the page over his shoulder. Neatly labeled with last names, Xs showed where each pair of students had set up their ghost observation points. I could feel Dillon’s warmth through his jacket and see a tiny scar curving down from the corner of his mouth that I hadn’t noticed before. Discombobulated by his closeness, I stepped back a pace.
“Not as useful as one would hope,” Dillon said, “since almost no one stayed put.”
“Speaking of which . . .” I told him about my conversation with Lonnie and Lonnie’s assertion that Mark Crenshaw had come to Rothmere with a sheet stuffed in his backpack. “So did Ari Solomon and maybe some others.”
“Interesting,” he said when I finished. Moving toward the door, he held it open for me. “I’m visiting each of these sites,” he said, shaking the paper, “to see what was or wasn’t visible from each room.”
I followed him across the acorn-strewn lawn, through the front hall—with cables still stretched across the floor, but empty of people—and into the huge ballroom with its French doors looking out to the garden and the cemetery beyond. I remembered it as a peaceful view, but today the wind tore at the trees and angry clouds blocked the sky’s blue. “Those doors were open when I came in here Saturday night,” I said, gesturing to the French doors. “I felt a draft, but then the Lonnie and Tyler ghost show started and I forgot about them.”
“So anyone could’ve gone in or out without cutting through the hall and being seen,” Dillon said, strolling from one end of the room to the other.
I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I stayed silent while he made notes. Finally, he rattled one of the doorknobs and turned to me.
“So you think Mark pushed his best friend,” he said. “Any thoughts on why?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said, nettled by his tone. As I gave him my theory about Mark’s father abusing him and Braden feeling he had to intervene, Dillon kept his gaze fixed on my face.
His expression was grave by the time I finished, and he rubbed his forefinger against his slightly crooked nose. “That sounds almost plausible, Grace,” he said. “But I don’t know how we prove it. The Tandy girl has already said Mark was with her the whole evening, and I can’t see getting his mother to swear out an abuse complaint. She never has before, and if she does so now, she gives her son a motive for murder.”
“No mother would do that,” I murmured.
“Exactly.”
“What about Sunday night when Braden was . . . Was Lindsay at Ari’s party?”
“Supposedly. Only a couple of the kids who were here Saturday have solid alibis. Almost all of them were at the Solomon girl’s party, so no one really kept track of who was there or not, or for how long they stayed. Anyone could’ve ducked out, driven to the hospital, smothered McCullers, and slipped back into the party, all within an hour.” He crumpled the map in his fist. “It really gets my goat to think that a high schooler pulled this off and may get away with it.”