Living Witness(87)

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Quite a lot of it.”

“A fourteen-year-old must need a therapist because he doesn’t want to do his homework. Or, you know, God forbid, he doesn’t do it and then he lies about it to stay out of trouble. It must be a pathology. Mark Twain was wrong.”

Gregor smiled. “They seem to think you’ve got a lot of pathologies,” Gregor said. “At least, according to Shelley Niederman.”

“Well, yeah,” Gary said. “They think believing in God is a pathology. And voting Republican. We can’t really know what we’re doing and mean to do it. We must be sick.”

“She said that she and the woman who died, Judy Cornish, were harassed at the supermarket, among other places. That they were called names, mostly, I think. And that their children were called names. She mentioned somebody named Alice McGuffie. I’m pretty sure that’s one of the names on the school board list you gave me in that folder you left for me this morning.”

“It is,” Gary said. “And if Mrs. Niederman said Alice was following her around in the supermarket calling her names and, say, telling her she was about to go to Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised. Some guy said once that the best argument against Christianity was Christians, and when he said that, Alice was the kind of Christian he was talking about.”

“I take it she’s someone you know well.”

“Alice is what we call ‘deep local,’ ” Gary said. “She’s from here. Her parents were from here. Her great-grandparents were from here. Her family’s been here at least as long as the Hadleys have been. Everybody knows her. Which is too bad, if you ask me. She’s a nasty piece of work, and she is not getting better with age. In either direction.”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s got a daughter,” Gary said. “Just the one. Which, considering the fact that Alice is opposed to birth control and willing to tell you why you’re going to Hell for using it, is an interesting fact. Her daughter’s name is Barbie and Barbie is, if anything, worse than she is. Barbie McGuffie is a world-class bully, and like most bullies, she’s got less self-respect than pond scum.”

Gregor considered this. “Would you say that this Alice McGuffie was violent? Would you say her daughter was violent?”

“If you mean physically violent, no,” Gary said. “If you’re thinking of that in there,” he looked up at the house, “I’d sincerely doubt it. Hell, Mr. Demarkian. Alice doesn’t want people dead. What fun would that be? She wants them where she can torture them.”

“What about other people who share her point of view?” Gregor asked. “Are there a lot of these people in town? People who resent the people from the development? Who would have resented Ann-Victoria Hadley because she was like the people in the development in some way?”

“I’m sure half the town resents the development,” Gary said. “I don’t find that surprising. They’ve got a town here, and a way of life, and these people come in, and they don’t even try to fit in. And it’s not just that the people in the development think they’re better than us, it’s that we think they’re better than us. More education. More money. More sophistication. So, yeah, there’s a lot of resentment. But I don’t think anybody would have committed murder over it.”

“No,” Gregor said. “I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem very plausible to me, either.”

“Besides,” Gary said. “It isn’t just resentment that people in town are feeling. Some people in town actually think the people from the development might be a good thing. In some ways. You know.”

“No, I don’t. Who thinks that, and in what ways?”

“Well,” Gary said, “I do, a little. I mean, these people, they don’t just expect their kids to go to college, they expect them to go to Yale. There’s nothing wrong with ambition. And it matters what the people you’re with are like. If they’re all ambitious, you’re more likely to be ambitious, too. I don’t have my heart set on my kids growing up and growing old in Snow Hill.”

“All right,” Gregor said.

“And then there’s Nick Frapp and his people,” Gary said. “The people from the development don’t have any preconceived ideas about who people are and who they come from, so since they’ve been voting, Nick’s had less trouble getting his easements and things. People around here just tend to think he’s a hillbilly and his people are hillbillies and they don’t want them hanging around bringing down the town, but the development people just listen to his plans for a new school building, read the plans, and decide it sounds like a good idea. And I suppose it has been. A good idea, I mean. That church. That school. The hill people mostly down here instead of holing up in the hills the way they used to do.”