Emma Kenyon Bligh was at the back of the store, polishing shelves. She looked up when they came in, then turned away quickly. Kyle and Gregor walked to the back to where she was.
“Don’t bother,” she said when they came close. “I talked it over with George last night. I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to. I can have the lawyer here to listen in to anything I have to say.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kyle said. “I’m not asking you for a statement, Emma. I’m just trying to nail down a couple of times for yesterday afternoon. This is Gregor Demarkian.”
“We’ve met,” Emma said. “Well, I mean, we haven’t been formally introduced. He was in here a couple of days ago. How do you do.”
She held out her hand. Gregor took it and kept his mouth shut.
“Mark DeAvecca said that you and Belinda gave him a ride yesterday,” Kyle said. “You and Belinda did give him a ride, right? From the library?”
“Oh, yes,” Emma said. “We did that. And we didn’t even get out of the car, so you don’t need to start thinking I killed Chris while we were at it. Belinda will back me up. We never got out of the car.”
Kyle sighed. “If I were you, I wouldn’t use Belinda frigging Hart as an alibi. She’ll forget what day of the week it was. What time was this, anyway?”
“Three o’clock, maybe quarter after. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Was the store closed?” Gregor put in.
Emma looked up from the pile of porcelain display plates she was wiping off and said, “My husband was minding the store. Usually he does real estate, but he didn’t have any appointments yesterday afternoon. Why do you let him ask questions? Aren’t you royally upset that some hotshot from Philadelphia is coming down here and telling you how to run your police department?”
“I could use a few more. Mr. Demarkian is usually very expensive, and this time he’s agreed to work cheap. Why’d you have Belinda with you? She has her own car.”
“We weren’t in the car,” Emma said patiently. “At least not originally. George came and took over the store to give me a break, and I ran across the street to see if Belinda had a minute to talk.”
“And?” Kyle said.
Emma got the last of the plates wiped off and put back on the shelf. She leaned forward and put her palms down flat on the floor. Then she put her weight on her hands and slowly began to twist her body until her knees were on the carpet. This, Gregor realized, was what she needed to do to get up.
Emma shrugged. “And nothing. He was there, Mark what’s-his-name. Sitting at one of the big round tables in the front room reading something really weird. And Belinda said he was Betsy’s son.”
“And?”
“You can’t just go on saying ‘and’ all the time, Kyle,” Emma said. “It sounds stupid. And nothing, I suppose. We were curious. Belinda and me both. About what he was like. He looked—expensive, if you know what I mean. I mean, he wasn’t wearing anything in particular, just jeans and one of those, what do you call them, polo shirts. But you could tell he came from money. He had that kind of aura.”
Emma started moving toward the front of the store, and they moved with her. She went behind the counter and arranged a few things there, needlessly. Kyle came up and pushed a box of pipe cleaners out of the way so that he could lean on his elbow.
“So then what?” he said. “Did you just go up to Mark and haul him off to your car? How did you end up driving him home?”
“It was just one of those things,” Emma said. “Belinda really wanted to talk to him, but you know what she’s like. And he kept looking up at the clock. So I sort of drifted over to him and the next time he looked I asked him if there was anything wrong. And we got to talking. And that’s how we ended up offering him a ride out to Betsy’s house. Her mother’s house. You know what I mean.”
“I’m surprised he let you take him,” Gregor said.
“Well, Betsy was late,” Emma said. “She’d forgotten all about him. Which is typical, if you want to know what I think. And anyway, he seemed to have heard all about us.”
“Did he really?” Gregor asked.
“Well, he knew I’d been captain of the varsity cheer-leading squad in high school, and he knew Belinda had been homecoming queen our senior year. Belinda and I thought Betsy must have been talking to him. It seemed odd at first, you know, because if I’d been like Betsy was in high school, I’d never have mentioned it to anybody for the rest of my life. But I think he must have seen her old yearbooks, or something, because he knew an awful lot.”