“Well, it couldn’t have been Olivia who did the shooting,” Alida said. “She was standing at the back there, not where we were. The bullets wouldn’t have been in the wood that way if she’d shot the gun—”
“Right, and then she’d have had to get the gun around to the side of the couch,” Suzanne said. “That was where the gun was found, between us and Sheila Dunham.”
“It was a little to the side,” Grace said impatiently. “And anybody could have dropped it there. We were all running around acting like lunatics. None of us was noticing anything. Anybody could have dropped a cannon on that floor and we wouldn’t have seen it.”
“I was sitting on the couch,” Alida said. “I couldn’t have dropped it anywhere. I was sitting down.”
Grace thought she was going to scream. “All right,” she said. “You were sitting on the couch. It probably wasn’t anybody sitting on the couch. I agree. But Coraline wasn’t sitting on the couch.”
“Oh, don’t start that again,” Alida said. “She didn’t have any of that gun stuff on her hands any more than the rest of us did.”
“No, she didn’t,” Grace said, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She could have been wearing gloves.”
“Did you notice her wearing gloves?” Suzanne asked.
“No, I didn’t,” Grace said. “And I’d guess nobody else did, because nobody said anything. But it wouldn’t have been hard. Wearing gloves, or holding something that would protect her hand from the gun stuff. It wouldn’t have been that hard, and it wouldn’t have been hard for her to hide it—especially if it was gloves, or just one glove. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to hide it somewhere.”
“Where?” Alida demanded.
“In the couch, maybe,” Grace said. “Or, you know, anywhere. It’s a huge room. She didn’t have to hide it where we were. She could have put it anywhere.”
“They’d have found it by now,” Alida said.
A couple of the other girls had come up to listen. Grace saw Deanna, and Mary-Louise, and Janice, and Linda. They all looked wide-eyed and excited, as if this was some kind of murder game made for TV and completely unreal. They didn’t seem to understand that someone was dead, somebody else might end up dead before it was all over, and somebody was almost certainly going to jail. This being Pennsylvania, somebody could be going to a lethal injection.
“Look,” Grace said. “In the first place, Coraline is the only one of us who could have done it. She was the only one here when the murder happened—”
“You don’t know that,” Mary-Louise said. “You don’t know when it happened, I mean. Maybe it happened when we all got back.”
“How?” Grace asked. “Think about it. We got back. The doors to the limo opened. We all piled out and came rushing into the house in a big wad—”
“I wasn’t first,” Mary-Louise said quickly. “There were already people in the hall when I got there.”
“There wasn’t even a full minute between the first person going into the house and the rest of us going in,” Grace said. “There wasn’t time enough for anybody to commit a murder. Coraline was the only one who was here. If it isn’t Coraline, then it isn’t any of us. And the crew didn’t stay behind, either. They came to the restaurant to film us.”
“She makes me feel creepy,” Deanna said. “I know she’s my roommate, and we’re supposed to get along, but—”
“Why would she kill somebody she didn’t even know,” Linda Kowalski asked. “I mean, we didn’t know this person, right?”
“Coraline could have seen her before,” Grace said. “We don’t know who this girl was or where she was from or anything. And the police don’t know, either. She could be anybody. She could be somebody Coraline knew back home.”
“What was she doing here?” Suzanne asked.
“I don’t know,” Grace said. “How am I supposed to know? The girl was whoever she was. It doesn’t matter. The police will find out eventually.”
“Maybe Coraline is one of those serial killers,” Mary-Louise said. “There are women serial killers. They just go around killing people. Except, you know, mostly it’s about sex.”
Grace wanted to do more than scream. She wanted to jump around and hit somebody. These girls were all such idiots. They really were. They couldn’t think straight to save their lives, and they couldn’t actually reason their way through a problem for anything at all.