Wanting Sheila Dead(118)

“What? They’ve got the gun. Do they think they’re going to find bloody footprints, or something? What’s the point of all this?”

Ivy got closer to the door. The drawers were all back in their places. The clothes were all folded and put away. One of the men was looking through a jewelry box. Another of them was dumping out a makeup bag. Both of them were wearing those whitish-but-nearly-clear latex gloves that people wore on police shows on television.

Ivy shifted a little to get a better look. They had to know they were being watched. They just weren’t paying attention. The one looking through the jewelry box put the jewelry back and put the box on top of the dresser. Ivy found herself wondering who brought a jewelry box to a competition like this. Whoever it was must have brought it to the auditions without the faintest idea whether she’d be in the house or not. The one who was looking through the makeup bag put the makeup back into the bag.

“I can’t believe this,” somebody in the hall said.

Ivy didn’t immediately recognize the voice, so she ignored it. As far as she knew, the police hadn’t taken anything out of the other rooms they’d searched. That meant they hadn’t taken her diary, which was a good thing. It would be interesting to know what they’d think if they read it.

On the other hand, they would almost certainly find it impossible to decipher her handwriting.

One of the men started to take the suitcases out of the closet. The other one sat down on one of the beds and opened the drawer to the night table. Then he stood up again and leaned over toward the bed he hadn’t been sitting on.

“Here,” he said.

“What?” the other one said.

The first one put his latex-gloved hand over the bedspread and then under it, moving carefully, inching along as if he would set off a bomb if he made any sudden movements. Then he made a sort of strangled noise and stood up. He was holding a little wad of beige something, crumpled up in his hand.

“My God,” Alida Akido said, from right over Ivy’s shoulder. “That’s Coraline’s bed. That’s Coraline’s bed.”

“What?” Coraline said.

The other girls had rushed the door by now. The policeman with the beige wad was holding it in the air. The other policeman was holding out a plastic evidence bag. The first policeman dropped the wad in and the second one sealed up the bag.

“They took something from your bed,” Alida said, swinging around at Coraline. “It’s you, isn’t it? It’s always you. We all told you to go away and leave us alone, and you wouldn’t listen. Well, I don’t want you here. I don’t. And I’m not going to have it. They took something out of your bed!”

“What did they take out of my bed?” Coraline was in tears, again. “What did they take? There wasn’t anything in my bed. I don’t even keep my nightgown in my bed.”

“Just stop it,” Alida said. “Stop it. Nobody cares anymore. Nobody cares. You’re just stupid white trash and we don’t want you here.”

“I want her here,” Ivy said.

“Just shut up,” Alida said. “I want this stupid, murderous bitch out of here right now. I won’t sleep on the same floor with her. I won’t eat at the same table with her. I won’t look at her face again. And if she comes anywhere near me, I’ll claw her to shreds.”





3


Olivia Dahl was standing at the foot of the stairs when the police came down and went out the front door to their cars. There was a lot of calling back and forth, and what she thought was people on cell phones. Two of them came back in and asked to speak with her, but they didn’t have much to say.

“Mr. Demarkian and Detective Borstoi are on their way,” one of them said.

The other just sort of nodded, and Olivia felt as if she’d like to slap one of them. Was it really necessary for police to be this annoying? They had taken something from one of the rooms upstairs. She supposed it was whatever it was they had come to look for, because they didn’t seem to be interested in looking anymore. She went into the interview room and looked around to make sure that the crew was striking the set and packing away all the equipment. Then she came back into the hall again.

Sheila was standing near the bottom of the stairs, looking out the open front door to the police cars in the driveway.

“I take it they aren’t leaving yet,” she said.

“They said Mr. Demarkian’s coming. Him and that detective, Borstoi, who was here before.”

“This seems to have backfired,” Sheila said. “You wanted to hire Demarkian, and now it seems the police have hired him. Or maybe not. I don’t know what’s going on around here anymore. Nobody tells me anything.”