Wanting Sheila Dead(124)

Sheila Dunham took the foot of the table, sitting down and stretching out a little as if she were about to interview a not-very-promising aspirant for the next season. Gregor took the head of the table because it had been left free for him. Len Borstoi, his silent partner, and the two uniformed officers took up places against the walls, near the exits.

Gregor looked up and down the table. Alida Akido was right up next to him, looking triumphant. Grace Alsop was sitting on his other side. Ivy Demari, the one with the streak in her hair and the tattoo, was midway down the right side, on one side of Coraline. Janice Ledbedder was on the other side, still with her arm around Coraline’s shoulder. Coraline had not stopped sobbing.

Alida had her arms folded across her chest. “I only said what everybody else was thinking,” she said. “They found something in Coraline’s room. In Coraline’s bed. And Coraline was the only one of us who was here the day that girl was murdered. She was the only one of us who could have murdered her. And then they found something. So Coraline must have done it. And I don’t want to go to sleep on the same floor as a murderer. You don’t know what she’s going to do next. You don’t know why she killed that girl. She could kill me, too.”

“You’re an asshole, Alida,” Ivy said. “Did you know that?”

“They found something in her room,” Alida said again.

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Well, let me clear that up. What they found in Coraline’s room—” He looked around at the officers. “Was it in her things? Or just in the room?”

One of the uniformed officers stepped slightly forward. “It was in her bed. Sort of shoved up under a comforter thing that was on the bed instead of a bedspread.”

“All right,” Gregor said. He looked up and down at the girls again. “What they found in Coraline’s bed was a beige net glove, made out of stretchy nylon mesh with things appliquéd to it. Butterflies, I think we were told. The glove was used to make sure there were no fingerprints on the gun used to shoot at Sheila Dunham today. Mesh like that has several advantages over a latex glove. For one thing, it’s closer to the color of the human hand, so it’s less noticeable than the white of a latex glove. For another thing, latex gloves sometimes retain fingerprints on the inside of the finger sheaths.”

“Oh,” Janice said. “I heard about that. That was on Forensic Files.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “That was on Forensic Files.”

“So,” Alida said, “I was right. Coraline shot at Sheila Dunham and then she hid the glove in her bed. She wanted to kill Sheila Dunham. Of course she did. She was absolutely humiliated the day of the first challenge. Sheila grabbed Coraline’s T-shirt and ripped it right off, in front of everybody.”

“So that makes sense?” Ivy said. “First, this other girl shoots at Sheila Dunham, then the girl shows up at our house and Coraline kills her for no reason at all, then Coraline tries to kill Sheila Dunham. I mean, for God’s sake. Try to indulge in a little linear thought.”

“The girl calling herself Emily Watson did not shoot at Sheila Dunham,” Gregor said. “The gun she was holding at the Milky Way Ballroom had no bullets in it. It didn’t even have blanks in it. Emily Watson was not trying to kill Sheila Dunham. And her name was not Emily Watson.”

“Somebody shot at Sheila Dunham at the ballroom,” Grace Alsop said. “There were real shots. I heard them. And there were real bullets. The police found them, in the wall. I saw that on the news.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “There were real shots fired in the ballroom. They were fired from the same gun used to kill the girl calling herself Emily Watson, and the same gun that fired at Sheila Dunham today. Maybe I should say, sort of at Sheila Dunham. If they’d been fired directly at Sheila Dunham, she’d be dead.”

“You mean whoever it was, wasn’t actually trying to kill me?” Sheila said. “That’s a relief. And a disappointment, if you catch my drift.”

“Yes,” Gregor said, “well. You can take that up with your psychiatrist.”

“It’s not her psychiatrist who’s going to be interested,” Olivia Dahl said. “It’s the publicity people. You have no idea how excited they were about going to work on a story about somebody actually trying to kill her.”

“I don’t see why any of this matters,” Alida said. “We’re still back to where we started. Coraline was the only person in this house when that girl was killed. The only one. The rest of us were all out at the challenge. The glove was found in her bed. Obviously, she must have known this girl somewhere. There’s got to be a reason. But she’s still the only one who could have murdered her. And that’s that.”