Wanting Sheila Dead

by Jane Haddam

  Olivia looked at him, and then at Gregor, and then at David Mortimer. Then she turned around and headed for the living room.

  Borstoi was staring at the floor. Gregor realized what it was that was bothering him. He wanted Len Borstoi to be doing something with his hands. You didn’t smoke around crime scenes these days. Most police departments frowned on officers smoking on the job at all. Maybe Borstoi should have had a lollipop in his mouth, like Telly Savalas on that old television show.

  “It wasn’t a Greek name,” Gregor said.

  Len Borstoi gave him the kind of look police detectives like to give people they think are probably crazy.

  “Kojak,” Gregor explained. “It was a television show that was probably before your time. The detective was supposed to be Greek, but Kojak isn’t a Greek name. I wonder if they’d have made that kind of mistake these days.”

  “I don’t think we really have to go into a jurisdictional war here,” David Mortimer said. “Whether we like it or not, pieces of this thing seem to have happened in different townships. We can’t just ignore the pieces just because they didn’t all occur in one place. I’m sure the Mayor’s Office would be glad to—”

  “Why don’t we just leave the Mayor’s Office out of it?” Len Borstoi said. He looked toward the study. “Does anybody know what happened here? You came, Mr. Demarkian, and you discovered the body—”

  “No, I didn’t discover the body. It had already been discovered. I came in through the front door and there were people milling around. The door to the study was open and the body was inside.”

  “Were there any people inside?” Borstoi asked.

  “No,” Gregor said, “not when I first saw the room, but I’d be very surprised if there hadn’t been some traffic in and out beforehand. It’s natural, really, to go up to a body and see if it’s really dead. There’s always the chance that there’s something you can do about it, some help you can give, or that if you called an ambulance you could revive them.”

  “But this body was dead,” Borstoi said.

  “As a doornail, as the saying goes,” Gregor said. “I knew it as soon as I saw it. But I’m used to seeing dead bodies. These people aren’t.”

  “And you don’t know who she is?”

  “No,” Gregor said, “and the impression I get is that none of the people here do, either.”

  “But the Merion police will know,” Len Borstoi said.

  “You’d think,” Gregor said. “I really mean it when I say that I haven’t been investigating this. All I know I heard from Miss Dahl, the woman we were just talking to, and the last I heard, this girl wasn’t talking. At all. To anybody. She was just sitting in jail and keeping her mouth shut. More than that must have happened or she wouldn’t have been released, but I don’t know about it. I don’t think anybody here, including me, even knows her real name.”

  “She gave a false name?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. She did apparently tell this girl she talked to, Janice Ledbedder, that her name was Emily. Whether that was true or not, I have no idea. Whether Ms. Ledbedder is remembering correctly or not, I also have no idea. But there is one thing you ought to be aware of.”

  “What?”

  “This is a reality show,” Gregor said. “If you look up toward the ceiling, you’ll see that there are cameras mounted practically everywhere. They film these girls twenty-four seven. They film everything they do.”

  “Really?” Borstoi said.

  He looked up at the foyer ceiling and spotted two of the cameras. Then he went to the door of the study and looked around.

  “There seems to be only one in there,” he said, coming back. “But it is aimed at the door.”

  There was a sound on the stairs. They all turned to look. Olivia Dahl was leading a sobbing girl by the hand, practically tugging her to get her to come downstairs.

  “It’s not the end of the world, Janice,” she was saying. “It’s just Mr. Demarkian, and the Bryn Mawr police. You talked to the Merion police without going to pieces.”

  TWO

  1

  Janice Ledbedder had never seen a dead body before today, and she was already sure she never wanted to see another one. She’d known it was a dead body, too, as soon as she’d set eyes on it. It didn’t look at all like anything she’d seen in the movies or on television. It didn’t even look like the pictures of the real dead bodies she had seen on shows like Cold Case Files and City Confidential. It was unmistakable even so. She had come running into the house, laughing a little because it was fun to try to outrace the rain. She had skidded a little in the foyer. Then she had started to take off her jacket, and when she’d done that she’d turned, and there it had been, right near the fireplace, where anybody could see it.

  Now she came down the stairs, being led by Olivia Dahl. She could see a lot of men standing in the foyer, and to the left of the stairs, where the study was and the body was, there were people going in and out in with strange equipment and things on wheels.

  One of the men standing in the foyer was somebody Janice had seen before—Gregor Demarkian, who was some kind of important detective, and who was sometimes interviewed on those true crime shows. She didn’t know if she was pronouncing his name right in her head. She thought she could get away with not actually saying it as long as he was right here. The other girls were standing in the doorway to the living room—or most of them were. Janice looked around for Coraline and didn’t see her.

  Miss Dahl got out of her way at the bottom of the stairs. Janice walked up and looked at the two men. Miss Dahl nodded.

  “This is Janice Ledbedder,” she said. “Janice, this is Detective Borstoi. He’s with the police. The taller one is Gregor Demarkian. He’s—”

  “He’s a detective, too,” Janice said quickly. “I’ve seen him on television.”

  “Maybe we could find somewhere to go,” Miss Dahl said. “It’s such a huge house. There must be an empty room you could use somewhere.”

  “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.”

  “I looked at it,” Olivia Dahl said. “I had to. There was no way to know from the doorway if the girl was still alive. And somebody called nine-one-one.”

  Janice saw Detective Borstoi and Mr. Demarkian both look at the room together, and then at each other.

  “I really didn’t know who she was,” Janice said. “I mean, I did talk to her that first day when we were waiting in line, but she didn’t say much. She didn’t say anything at all really, except for her name when I asked her. I sort of talk a lot when I’m nervous. But I’d never seen her before that time and I hadn’t seen her since, you know, until this. She was just sort of there and then she wasn’t there and then, you know, whatever.”

  “Did you by any chance see where she went after you and she parted, that first day in Merion?” Mr. Demarkian asked. “From what I’ve been able to understand, all the girls were waiting in line, and then they were let into the Milky Way Ballroom, and there was a sign-in desk, and you went there—”

  “That’s right,” Janice said. “We went to the desk and gave our names and there were people with clipboards who told us where to go.”

  “Do you remember this Emily stopping at the desk?” Mr. Demarkian asked.

  “I really don’t,” Janice said. “I don’t remember anybody. Oh, except for Ivy. She’s one of the girls who made it into the house. But everybody remembers Ivy because she’s white-blond and she has a neon green streak in her hair, so it’s hard not to notice. But I was so nervous, and I was trying so hard to go to the right place and not make a mistake, I really wasn’t paying much attention.”

  “What about here, today?” Mr. Demarkian asked. “Was there anybody in the foyer when you came in?”

  “Oh, no. Not that I noticed.”

  “Could you hear anybody moving around?”

  Janice shook her head. “It all happened really fast. It really did. I came in, and I left the door open when I did because everybody was right behind me. So I could hear the rain, and I could hear the other girls, and I could hear one of the judges, Johnny Rell. I could hear him talking. I couldn’t make out the words but I knew it was him. And then everybody else started coming in right behind me. So if there was something quiet going on someplace, you know, if somebody was dusting somewhere or something, I probably wouldn’t have heard it.”

  Gregor Demarkian looked out over the sea of girls crowding in the doorway to the living room.

  “What about the rest of you?” he asked. “Did any of you see or hear anything?”

  There was silence.

  “Did any of you touch the body in any way?” Detective Borstoi said.

  Janice was sort of surprised to hear his voice. He had faded into the background when Mr. Demarkian was talking. Maybe that was why Mr. Demarkian was the great detective, and Janice hadn’t heard of Detective Borstoi at all.

  The girls in the doorway were all murmuring, but they were all murmuring “no.” Janice tried to remember if that was right—surely, if somebody had touched the body, she would have seen it? Maybe not. She was still feeling a little sick, and she was finding it hard to remember anything.

  “It’s like my mind is all jumbled up,” she said to Mr. Demarkian. “I’m not usually a scatterbrain, but I can’t seem to remember when things happened or in what order. I just saw the body and—but I knew it was dead. I knew right away. I don’t know why. I think somebody shot her. There were red holes in her chest.”

  “And you could see that from the door?” Detective Borstoi asked.

  “I could see it in the mirror,” Janice said, and suddenly it all started to make sense to her. “That’s what happened. That’s what I forgot. I got into the foyer and I looked into the study because the door was open. You know, not because there was anything for me to do, or anything like that, not that I was doing it deliberately. I just sort of did it because the door was open, and I was there. And then I saw the body near the fireplace and my head sort of jerked back, and then I saw the same thing in the mirror. There’s a big mirror tilted over the fireplace and I could see the body in that, and there were big red holes in her chest.”

  Detectives Borstoi and Mr. Demarkian looked at each other. Then they both walked over to the study door and looked inside. Then they came back.

  “Interesting,” Mr. Demarkian said.

  Janice thought the entire day had been entirely too interesting, but that was something else.

  2

  Grace Alsop had waited patiently, while all those people were in the house, to be pointed out and exposed. She’d expected Sheila Dunham, at least, to have told that Gregor Demarkian person who her father was, and what she was assumed to be doing in the house and on the set. Of course, Grace only had the vaguest idea of what it was Sheila thought she was doing. She’d told the entire truth when she’d said that she hadn’t spoken to her father in years, but even if she had, what could she get for him by being a contestant here? It would be different if she were some kind of investigative journalist, or if she wanted to write a book about her experiences on a reality show. As it was, all she wanted was a diversion for a few weeks, and a chance to see if she’d be any good at it. She’d been at loose ends for a while. She had an excellent education. She was bright enough. She knew what she liked and what she didn’t like. She just couldn’t get herself to focus on any one thing for any period of time.

  Maybe that was the real reason she had had so many fights with her father, and why she had stormed out of their apartment in
New York the way she had. Maybe it had nothing to do with Fox News and the political causes it championed, or the Republican Party and the way it was behaving about . . . about . . . Grace couldn’t remember what it was she had objected to. She knew it wouldn’t be hard to find objections. She objected to most of what the Republican Party did, just because it was the Republican Party.

  There was still yellow crime-scene tape across the door to the study. It was the first thing anybody saw when they were coming downstairs. There was a uniformed officer standing guard at the study door. That would only last for twenty-four hours, and only that long just in case the police wanted to come back and look things over again. Grace thought they’d looked things over well enough. There had been dozens of them, and so many test tubes, she’d thought she was in a remake of some old Roger Corman horror movie.

  Dinner was due to begin at seven o’clock, as usual, in the big dining room. Most reality shows that put contestants together in a house left them to cook for themselves. This one provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining room, and served and cleared, as if they were all training to be Jacqueline Kennedy instead of Paris Hilton. At least, Grace assumed that what Sheila Dunham was looking for was somebody like Paris Hilton, or maybe Tara Reid—somebody who would make a big splash in the tabloids and be photographed drinking until she fell over or was caught in a hotel room with somebody else’s husband.

  Did anybody know what a superstar was anymore? Michael Jackson had died. The television stations went insane over it, sending camera crews to stake out the front of the house even though nothing was happening there, doing tribute show after tribute show. At least Jackson had had talent. You could see that in the way he danced in his old music videos. What about Anna Nicole Smith? All she’d ever done was to be very pretty and take her clothes off to prove it. Then she’d gained a lot of weight and lost it again.

  Every bedroom in this house had its own bathroom. Grace was sitting in hers, looking at her face in the big mirror. It was absolutely the wrong house for this show. It was a house for the old-money rich. There were nice things here, but they were subtle things. There were none of the things the contestants on this show would think of as necessary to people who had a lot of money. There wasn’t a single large-screen, wall-hanging TV. In fact, as far as Grace could tell, there was only one TV, and it was downstairs in a little room near the kitchen. Grace wouldn’t be surprised if only the servants were expected to use it.