Frohmann looked up at me for guidance. Polly’s mother followed her gaze. “Oh!” she said. “Inspector Keene.” She looked upset. I’d been the one to interrogate her over Nick.
“Mrs. Bailey.” I descended the stair like a host. I wanted to be kind.
“If you think Harry had anything to do with it, you’re wrong. Where have you taken him? Have you dragged him away to jail?” She was strangling her wrists with the strap of her bag.
“No, no, no, Mrs. Bailey,” I said. “Please, sit down. Please,” I said.
Frohmann got to the point as soon as she was off her feet. “He’s dead, Mrs. Bailey.”
She jumped up. “What? No! No, it’s Gretchen. I was told by someone from the University. Gretchen’s dead.”
“They’re both dead,” Frohmann assured her.
Miranda looked at each of us, back and forth, a little tennis game. “Really?” she finally squeaked.
There was a box of tissues on the mantel. I handed it to her. Frohmann pushed her gently back to sitting, and sat next to her, on the arm of the couch.
“Was he in the car too?” Miranda asked, obviously having heard “car accident” through the grapevine. Her misunderstanding of the facts spoke well for innocence.
I took over. Not everything would be released to the public. “He died here.”
Miranda cried. Frohmann pushed ahead. “Did you know him well, Mrs. Bailey? Why did you come here today?”
“I…” She looked around, as if surprised to find herself here. “I’d heard about Gretchen. I wanted to see if he was all right.”
“How well did you know Mr. Reed?”
She only blinked.
“Harry Reed,” I expanded.
She put her hand to her mouth, and looked back and forth from me to Frohmann. “I thought his last name was Paul,” she finally said.
“A reasonable mistake,” I assured her.
She rocked back and forth. “No, it’s not. It’s really not.”
Frohmann intervened. “How well did you know him, Mrs. Bailey?”
“Apparently, not well at all!” Her laugh was high-pitched.
“Can you tell us why they took such an interest in your arrest?” I pressed. “Did you know either of them before your arrival in Cambridge?”
“They were friends of my daughter. They took an interest in justice. Do I really need to rationalise that?”
“No, Mrs. Bailey,” I agreed. “No, it’s only that your concerns about one another seem to have been deeper than one would expect of friends of family.”
“Then I feel sorry for you,” she said. “You must lead a very insular life.”
“When exactly were you here last?” I asked, ignoring her editorial.
“Yesterday morning. Around ten-thirty? I think?” Her hands were full of crumpled tissue. As she swivelled her head looking for a rubbish bin, she suddenly perceived her vulnerability. “When I left he was alive!” she asserted. “I left him and he was about to take a shower. And I went into town. I took Polly shopping. We bought things. I used a credit card at Robert Sayles! You can trace that! I bought a sweater. I bought her a coat. She wanted a new coat…”
“Sergeant Frohmann will take you home,” I suggested. We would check on that alibi later.
“Oh. No, thank you. No, I have a rental car. A hire car. I’m visiting my old village today. I used to live fairly near, when I was a girl. I wanted Polly to come with me, but she didn’t want to. That’s all right. It’s been a good visit. She let me buy her a coat yesterday. We haven’t been shopping together in a long time, too long. But yesterday she let me. She let me buy her a coat.” She was awfully excited about that coat. She covered her face and eked out a sound like a deflating balloon.
“What do you make of her?” Frohmann asked me, after she’d left.
“She seemed honestly surprised.”
Shouting outside distracted us. Across the street, Miranda and another woman were arguing in the driveway of a house for sale. The other woman sounded belligerent and Miranda cowered.
Frohmann bounded across the street.
The woman arguing with Polly’s mother wore a suit and high-heeled shoes, all in red.
They stopped. Lady-in-red turned her glare to Frohmann. “This car needs to be ticketed. It has no right to park here.”
“Can we back it up a little?” I suggested, catching up. “You are…?”
“Rebecca Phillips-Koster. I represent this home for sale, and I’m tired of people using it as a catch-all parking slot.”
Miranda was crying again. “Yesterday a horrible man put notes on all the windshields of cars parked in the street instead of in driveways. He was on a crusade against Christmas shoppers parking in the road. I didn’t want to deal with him today. You had the police cars in the driveway, so I parked here. I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”
“What horrible man?” Frohmann asked.
“That man.” She pointed to the house next door to Gretchen and Harry’s. The neighbourhood watch.
“This driveway is not a public car park. This is trespassing!” the red lady insisted.
“All right, all right,” I soothed her. “I understand your frustration. Has this been going on a lot?” I shot Frohmann a significant look.
The red lady looked embarrassed. “Once or twice. But even once is too much! This is private property.”
“Yesterday?” Frohmann prodded. “Was anyone parked here yesterday?”
Red lady shook her head, then switched abruptly to a nod. “Students.” She rolled her eyes, inviting us all to commiserate. “One had left a bicycle here. Propped against the side of the house, around here…” We all walked around the side of the house, and looked where the offending bicycle had once been.
“Did you see this student? Do you remember what the cycle looked like?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see him. But-” She pulled a remote control out of her purse. The garage door slowly inched upward. “I taught him a lesson. I put the bike in the garage. Ha.” She looked satisfied.
I must have looked pretty satisfied myself. “Please don’t touch it,” I said, as she walked toward the garage. Frohmann called forensics on her mobile. I felt a vibration in my front pocket.
“Why haven’t you phoned?” Gwen demanded.
“I’ve been working,” I apologised.
“I assumed so.” Her voice was deliberate. “But I didn’t know it. I was wondering if something had happened.” This comes from every police spouse.
“I slept at the station. Things went late. We found that student…”
“I know. And the professor. It’s on the news.”
“It’s ugly. Look, we’re in the middle of-”
She cut me off. “It’s Dora.”
“What? What’s Dora?”
“We left the wedding after you did. She was exhausted. She was cold. A waitress lent her some dry clothes. She went right to sleep as soon as we got home-”
“Right, right, yes, I get that. What’s happened?”
“I wanted to brush her hair. It was getting matted with all that gel and pins in it. I opened her vanity drawer, to get her brush, and there was a condom in there.”
Shit. I stepped farther away and lowered my voice. “It’s not hers. It must belong to a friend.”
“Exactly,” she said. Meaning a male friend.
“She’s fourteen, Gwen. She’s fourteen…” She didn’t say anything, so I kept talking. “I can’t deal with this right now. We’re in the middle…”
Gwen cried. I couldn’t not deal with this.
I called to Frohmann, “Take care of the bicycle. I’ll catch up with you at the station.” I walked down the driveway, holding the phone tight enough to squeeze the blood out of my fingers. “All right. What can I do?”
“I don’t know.” She was still crying.
“Have you talked to her? Is she there?”
“No. No, she was asleep the moment she fell into bed. I didn’t say anything last night, I just walked out of the room. I waited for you to come home. I kept waiting…”
Sorry, sorry, sorry… “Then what?”