“I don’t think it’s necessary at the moment,” the man called Borstoi said. “I’m just trying to get some kind of feel for what happened here. It’s Miss Ledbedder?”
“Yes,” Janice said. She would never correct a police officer to make him call her Ms., even though she knew she was supposed to. At least, Ivy had told her she was supposed to.
“You found the body,” Detective Borstoi said.
“What?” Janice said.
“You found the body,” Detective Borstoi said. He had that endlessly patient tone in his voice that people got when they thought Janice was being stupid. She wasn’t being stupid, though. She wasn’t being anything like stupid. He leaned in toward her a little. “You were the first person to see the body,” he said.
“Oh,” Janice said. “Well. I mean. I don’t know.”
“Maybe we should say that it was Miss Dahl’s impression that you found the body,” Gregor Demarkian said. “You were the first person into the house after you all got back from wherever it was you were—”
“It was a challenge,” Janice said. “That’s kind of like a minicontest. I mean, if you don’t watch the show. We were supposed to leave the limousine and get photographed by paparazzi, and then we were supposed to have lunch at this place and then they’d see how we handled it. Andra won.”
“Excuse me?” Detective Borstoi said.
“Andra won,” Janice said again. “She won the challenge. She did the best. Anyway, that’s where we were.”
“And then you came back to the house,” Detective Borstoi said encouragingly, “and you were the first one inside, and you found the body.”
“I was the first one inside,” Janice said. “But I don’t know if I found the body. I mean, the body was already there. The girl. Emily. That’s what she said her name was. I met her in line the first day, the day of the interviews. Casting.”
“And she told you her name was Emily,” Detective Borstoi said.
“Well, she did, but she could have been lying,” Janice said. “And as for today, I was the first one through the door, but we were all pretty much together, and she was there next to the fireplace and already dead. But the house wasn’t empty when we got home. There were people here. The people who clean and stuff and some of the crew. They were already here. And Coraline was already here, too, because she didn’t go.”
“Who’s Coraline?” Detective Borstoi asked.
Janice heard Coraline’s sniffling before she saw Coraline. Coraline must have been at the back of the pack in the living room. Now she came out into the foyer and looked at Mr. Borstoi and Mr. Demarkian. Her eyes and nose were red. She looked like she’d been crying for hours.
“I’m Coraline,” she said. “Coraline Mays.”
Janice didn’t think she’d ever realized just how thick Coraline’s accent was.
“You were in the house all day?” Detective Borstoi asked.
Coraline nodded. “I didn’t go on the challenge. I was supposed to go, but when we all got downstairs and we were waiting for the limousine, Sheila came in and looked at us and she—she didn’t like what I was wearing, so—”
“She ripped her T-shirt right off,” Janice said. “Sheila Dunham ripped Coraline’s T-shirt right off, I mean. It was really dramatic. And then she said Coraline couldn’t go, and then the rest of us went.”
“And you stayed,” Detective Borstoi said.
Coraline nodded. “But I wasn’t downstairs. I went up to my room to change, because my shirt was all ripped up and anybody, well, anybody could see . . . So. And then when I got up there I just felt awful, so I laid down for a minute just to see if I could calm down, and I must have gone to sleep. The next thing I remember is somebody screaming her head off, and then I got up and ran downstairs.”
“And that was you screaming?” Detective Borstoi said.
“It might have been,” Janice said. “But everybody else got in just after I did. I mean, it wasn’t like I was alone in the foyer for more than a second or two. They all came running in from outside. And I remember seeing the body and going to the study door and then I think I did scream, but I think somebody else screamed before I did, only I’m not sure—”
“And by the time I got all the way down the stairs, everybody was screaming,” Coraline said. “And people were crowding into that room and crying and, I don’t know. But I went to the door and looked in, and then somebody sort of bumped me from behind, and then I’m not sure. Some people went over to the . . . the body. They went and looked at it.”