Q: Well, that's still kind of an open question.
The door at the stucco house across the street opened to a heavyset, gray-haired African American woman in a brown jogging outfit. "Yes? Can I help you?"
Introducing himself, Juhle had his badge out, and held it up in his wallet. "Is this the home of Bethany Robley?"
"It is."
"I'd like to ask her a few questions, if you don't mind." "Maybe I do. I'm her mother. What's this about? What's she done?"
"She's done nothing, ma'am. It's about your neighbors across the street there. The Gormans. You may have heard that Mrs. Gorman died this morning."
"There wasn't any Mrs. Gorman. There was Dr. Dryden, Caryn, married to Stuart, if that's who you mean." Mrs. Robley had her arms crossed, and stepping forward, she completely blocked the door. "And that's got nothing to do with my daughter. She had nothing to do with them."
"I understand she was a friend of Kymberly's, their daughter."
"Okay, that. They know each other, all right, but Kym's gone up to school and she hasn't been over there since…"
Behind Mrs. Robley, Juhle heard a younger voice. "It's okay, Mom. I can talk to him."
"Not unless I say so, you can't." The mother came back at Juhle, holding her daughter back with an extended palm. "Are we going to be wanting a lawyer here, Inspector? You think my little girl had anything at all to do with Caryn's dying?"
"I've got no reason to think that, ma'am. I'd just like to ask her a couple of questions about what, if anything, she might have seen last night. From her window."
"And that's all?"
"That's all. Promise."
The mother half turned and Juhle caught a glimpse of a young woman of about his own height. She was wearing a Galileo High sweatshirt, a short black skirt, white tennis shoes.
"I'm gonna be with you the whole time," Mrs. Robley said.
"Fine with me."
A few seconds passed, and then the large woman sighed and moved to the side to let her daughter come forward. Bethany stepped up into the doorway-a clear, wide forehead and a solemn expression on her face. A keen intelligence seemed to emanate from a penetrating gaze out of deeply set eyes. To Juhle, she looked far too serious for a young woman of her age; she could easily have passed for twenty-five.
And Juhle immediately recognized a key truth: If Bethany was going to be one of his witnesses-and he thought that was a reasonable likelihood at this stage-he couldn't have asked for a better one. "I won't take up much of your time," he began. He looked behind Bethany to her mother, held up his tiny tape recorder. "I'd like to record what we say here." He shrugged apologetically. "It's just that I don't take really good notes, and I want to make sure I've got it exactly right. Is that all right with you, Mrs. Robley?"
"Ask my daughter."
Bethany shrugged with a slight awkwardness. "That's okay, I guess."
"Thank you." Juhle quickly dictated his standard intro into the device, then came back to his subject. "Well, Bethany, I was just over at Mrs. Sutcliff's house talking to her, and she told me that you were one of the people with her standing on the corner this morning when I pulled up. Do you remember that?"
"Sure."
"Well, she-Mrs. Sutcliff, I mean-she told me that you said you saw Mr. Gorman get home last night. Is that true?"
"Yes."
"Do you happen to remember roughly what time that was?"
"Actually, I remember exactly. He got home at eleven thirty. That's my lights-out time on a school night, and I was just finishing at my desk when I saw him turn into the driveway."
"And where's your desk?"
"Just under the window there that looks down on the street."
Juhle paused to consider his next question. "And you're sure it was Mr. Gorman? Did you see him get out of the car?"
"No. But it must have been him. He opened the garage automatically and went inside. Then closed it behind him. So I never saw him. But it was his car."
"You know his car on sight?"
Her lip curled downward, the question apparently striking her as insulting. "Sure. I've gone skiing in it with Kym maybe ten times. So yes, I know the car."
"I didn't mean any offense," Juhle said. "I guess I'm just asking how sure you are."
"What? That it was Stuart? I don't know. I told you I didn't see him. But if he was driving his car, it was him. Because that was his car."
"And how did you know that?"
"I don't know. I just knew."
Mrs. Robley decided to put in her two cents. "She knows what she knows, Inspector. She's not lying to you."
"Of course not. There's no question of that." Juhle spoke matter-of-factly to Bethany. "I'm sorry if I sound critical. That's not my intention. I'm just trying to make sure of what you're saying. So now, getting back to Stuart, you watched him pull his car into his garage across the street and then close the garage door behind him?"
"No." Again, the question seemed to frustrate her. "Look, I'm sure. No. I just saw him pull up and I'm like, 'Oh, Stuart's getting home,' and then went over and got in bed. I didn't think anything about it, except that I noticed it. The end. And I didn't sit at the window and watch until he closed the garage door behind him. Why would I do that? It wasn't all that interesting, dull though the rest of my life might be."
Juhle hesitated, a fragment of a barely remembered something nagging at him. "But I believe you said… can you give me just a second?"
"Sure. More, if you need."
He thanked her, then walked a few steps down to the sidewalk and rewound the tape recorder. In a minute, he was back up at the door with Bethany. "Here," he said, "listen to this."
When he pushed the recorder's play button, they heard her voice saying, "No. He opened the garage automatically and went inside. Then closed it behind him. So I never saw him. But it was his car."
"See?" he said. "You hear it?"
"What?"
"You say, 'Then closed it behind him.' Which you just said you didn't see him do."
"I didn't. See him close it, I mean." "Well, which is it?" "It was closed."
"Okay." Juhle rubbed away the crease in his forehead. He killed another few seconds fast-forwarding his tape recorder to the end again, and turned it back to record. Then he said, "Excuse me, Bethany, for being so dumb. But then how did you know it was closed behind him if you didn't see him close it?"
For a brief moment, the question seemed to stump her. Her normally grave expression turned to a look of near-despair before she suddenly broke into a surprisingly quite lovely smile. "Because I saw him open it later," she said. "So it had to be closed."
"You saw him open it? When was this?"
"Twelve forty-five. Pretty much exactly again." She brought her shoulders up in a shrug. "I had insomnia. I always have insomnia. I hate it. But then I had to get up and go to the bathroom and
I noticed it had been an hour and fifteen minutes already that I'd been awake, which made me start freaking out about how tired I'd be for school today." She let out a heavy sigh. "And which I am. Was. God."
"So what happened? You looked out the window and…"
"And Stuart was backing out again…"
"Backing out? At quarter to one in the morning?"
"I know. I thought that was a little weird too. But really, I wasn't thinking too much about him or anything else except getting some sleep." Stifling a sudden yawn, she smiled again. "Sorry. Just talking about it, sometimes, you know…"