Wanting Sheila Dead(123)

“There is a car waiting for you,” Sheila was bellowing. “It’s sitting right there, and I want you out of here now.”

Gregor looked around quickly. There was indeed a car. It was an ordinary Lincoln Town Car, not a limousine, but it had a driver, and the driver had a uniform. He was leaning against the car’s hood and watching as if this was all a show.

The girl Sheila was bellowing at was Asian, and she was not crying. She was furious. She was also not budging.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she was saying. “I’m going to sue. I’m going to get on the phone and tell everybody on the planet what’s been going on. You can’t keep my mouth shut.”

“Do it and I’ll sue,” Sheila said. “And I’ve got better lawyers.”

“God, the way these people behave,” Borstoi said.

“Just remember,” Gregor said. “The most important point, here, is what ought to be obvious. Sheila Dunham is not dead.”

“She goes on like that, she’s going to be.”

Gregor waded into the crowd. He asked girls politely if they would move out of the way. They seemed surprised to see him. They had all been concentrating so hard on the scene in front of them, most of them hadn’t seemed to notice that a new car had driven up. Gregor saw one of the crew with a handheld camera and another with a camera mounted on a tripod. They were filming all this. It might even have been scripted. Gregor didn’t think so.

He climbed up the steps to where Sheila Dunham was standing and tapped her on the shoulder. She jerked around as if a wasp had stung her, and then relaxed a little when she saw who it was.

“Alida here is just leaving,” she said.

“Not right away,” Gregor said. “Maybe we could get all this back in the house for a minute and talk? It’s starting to rain again.”

Sheila looked at the sky. It was starting to rain again. So far, there were only a few thick drops, but it could get worse very soon. Sheila looked around at the girls again. The girls had all gone quiet.

“All right,” Sheila said. “Mr. Demarkian here wants us all to go back into the house.” She turned back to him. “There’s still crime-scene tape up all over everywhere. I don’t know where you think we can go that’s big enough to get us all into one room.”

“Try the dining room,” Gregor said. “I’m pretty sure that isn’t a crime scene, and from what I remember, it’s big enough for a small high school.”

Sheila considered him for a moment. Then she went to talk to Olivia Dahl. Then things began to move. Gregor stood where he was and watched girls swirl around him. Alida Akido didn’t swirl but stomped, still looking furious. Coraline Mays, who looked like she’d been crying uncontrollably, was being shepherded around by Janice Ledbedder. Janice had her arm around Coraline’s shoulder and was whispering in her ear.

The crew went in last, except for the guy with the handheld camera, who had hurried up the steps to stand in the entrance to get pictures of the girls coming up. Gregor wondered if this was all going to show up on television as part of this season of America’s Next Superstar. He had no idea if a murder would be a draw or a drag on ratings.

Probably a draw, he thought. People were like that.

He nodded to Len Borstoi. “The dining room is usually accessed through the living room, and my guess is that they’re going to go tromping through there, tape or no tape, but don’t worry about it. You’re not going to need anything there.”

“Is there another way to get to the dining room?” Len asked.

“You can go around the back hall the way the servants do,” Gregor said. “I am constantly astonished that I remember so much about this house. I was only in it a few times, and it was years ago.”

“You didn’t come back here for your wedding?”

Gregor didn’t begin to know where he would have to start to explain why that was never going to have happened, so he just went into the house, looked around the large front foyer, and followed the girls into the dining room. He had been right. They’d gone right through the yellow crime-scene tape as if it weren’t there. They’d gone tromping across the living room the way they’d go tromping through a field on a hike. If there ever had been valuable evidence in that room, it was either gone or contaminated now.

There had never been valuable evidence in that room. This afternoon’s shooting was not particularly important. It wasn’t even particularly smart. The best Gregor could say about it was that it made sense.

When he got into the dining room, the girls had seated themselves around the table. There were fourteen of them, plus Sheila Dunham and Olivia Dahl, and a few anonymous young women with clipboards. The dining room table held twenty-four even when it hadn’t been expanded. It could be expanded to hold fifty.