The silence in the room lasted for what felt like forever. Gregor tried his coffee and decided it was better, black, than the stuff he made for himself. Kyle, who had never taken a seat, shifted from one leg to the other.
“Well,” he said.
Gregor took another sip of coffee. “Do you mind if I ask you about the day in question, the day he died?”
“Of course not.”
“He left for work that day, when?”
“Well, he wasn’t due at work until ten or eleven o’clock, but he left a long time before that. At eight, I think, or maybe quarter of. Chris picked him up and they went down to the Sycamore for breakfast.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Oh, no. They did that maybe twice a week. I think it made them feel adult to sit in a restaurant and order from a menu, even if it was only the Sycamore.”
“Do you know if they went by themselves, or if they met people?”
Daisy Houseman shook her head. “I have no idea. The impression I got is that they went by themselves, but the Sycamore is the main teenage hangout in this town. It still is. They might have met a dozen people. They never said so.”
“Not even on the day in question?”
“No.”
“I don’t remember there being anything about them meeting other people that morning,” Kyle said. “You know, in the gossip in town after it all happened. Just that they’d gone to breakfast there in the morning.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “So. Chris Inglerod took Michael to the park and Michael went to work as a lifeguard. He spent the day sitting on the lifeguard’s chair. There’s no indication that he was missing from that chair for any significant amount of time, is there?”
“He didn’t even take a break for lunch,” Daisy Houseman said. “He ate sitting in the chair. I sent a bottle of orange juice and a bologna sandwich with mustard with him, in a brown paper bag. That’s what he liked to take to school, too, but at school he had an apple with him, too. You can’t send apples with them when they’re lifeguarding. They cramp.”
“Michael started work in the lifeguard’s chair,” Gregor said, “and Chris Inglerod did what?”
“Came back to town and met up with Nancy Quayde and went to her house,” Kyle said promptly.
“Nonsense,” Daisy Houseman said.
“What?” Kyle said.
“I said nonsense. That’s not what she did unless she changed her plans that very morning. I heard her talking in this very house before she and Michael left for the Sycamore. She was going to stay in the park and meet with that pack of—well. Those girls. Emma Kenyon and Belinda Hart and Maris Coleman and Peggy Smith. Oh, and Nancy Quayde, too, of course. Always Nancy. I’m glad I left teaching long before she ever got into it.”
“Mrs. Houseman,” Kyle said patiently, “I’ve read the reports. And I was here at the time, don’t you remember? Chris went to Nancy’s house, and the other girls—”
“Nonsense,” Daisy Houseman said again. “They’d been planning that operation all summer. Chris told Michael about it, right in my dining room, weeks before it happened. Michael had a fit. He didn’t want it happening on his watch. He’d have to go investigate it. They’d put him in a terrible position. I think that’s why they waited until after five. So that Michael would be off duty and the park would be closed and he couldn’t turn them right in for what they’d done.” She wheeled around to look at Gregor Demarkian. “I know you must think we’re all a bunch of savages in this town, Mr. Demarkian, but believe me. If Michael hadn’t died the same night, those girls would have been in major league trouble for what they did. At the very least, they’d have been hauled in front of juvenile court. Betsy Toliver’s father was the most important attorney in this part of the state. He’d have seen to it. And the rest of the town would not have stood behind them. We are not jerks. Did they really tell the police they hadn’t thought up that stunt until the day it happened?”
“They told everybody that,” Kyle said.
“Well, what can I say?” Daisy’s hands fluttered again. “I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. I had other things to think about. I didn’t realize. But if I had, I would have told somebody. Belinda Hart discovered the snakes’ nest two weeks before graduation, in June. There were eggs and the eggs would hatch. That’s how they were sure of getting enough snakes. Chris sat down at my dining-room table and drew a whole diagram for Michael to show him what it was about. They wanted him to help, but he wouldn’t do it. He told me he didn’t believe they’d do it. And you know what he was like. He would have turned them in, just the way he always said he’d turn in whoever it was who was selling the marijuana at the high school, if he ever found out. But don’t you dare let that pack of bitches tell you that what they did to Betsy Toliver that night was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”