Wanting Sheila Dead (14 page)

Grace had stared right down the bridge of her nose at Coraline. “Don't they make you go to school back in Podunk, Arkansas?” she'd said.

And Coraline had had to cross her hands behind her back just to keep herself from slapping the girl. She hadn't been upset at all that Sheila Dunham had decided to go after Grace first, and it didn't matter to her what Grace's real last name was. It served her right. It was just like everybody at home said. They were all stuck up, all those people from the east, and especially the ones from New York.

There was a sound in the foyer, and one of the girls—the black one with the odd name—went to the doorway of the living room to see what was happening. A second later, she stepped back, and Mark Borodine and Johnny Rell walked through the doors. Coraline thought of the two of them as something like Siamese twins. They went together in her head. Mark was the gay guy you almost couldn't tell about. Johnny was the gay guy there was no mistaking. It all came down to the same thing in Coraline's mind. There were boys like this at home, but they didn't stick around long after high school.

Mark clapped his hands and smiled. He had a fake tan that looked sort of painted on, rather than actually part of his skin. “Well now,” he said. “The weather outside is awful, as you can probably tell. It's been raining for hours. But you know what? When you're a superstar, the weather doesn't change to accommodate you. Your first job is always
going to be, being camera ready under any and all circumstances. So. We're going to take you into the town of Bryn Mawr for lunch, but you've got to get yourself there without giving the paparazzi a photograph that will embarrass you all over the tabloids. You've got exactly three minutes to get upstairs, get into hair and makeup, and make it out to the limo in a state fit to be photographed in. There will be photographers in places you won't even notice when you're going out to the car, and there will be more when you get to the restaurant. This is your first challenge. The girl who does the best will get two hours tomorrow afternoon with one of the biggest and most successful makeup artists in the business. Are you ready?”

Girls clapped. Girls yelled. Girls screamed. Coraline had seen it on the show. She didn't understand it.

“Get ready,” Johnny Rell said. “One. Two. Three.
Go
.”

Somebody screamed again. Everybody rushed for the doorway at once. Coraline didn't stop to wait for Deanna. They were always telling you that this was not a place to make friends. This was a place to fight to win. Coraline was not very good at that.

Everybody started up the stairs at once, too. They were like a herd of stampeding bison, and once they got upstairs to the hallway leading to all the bedrooms they were even worse. Coraline raced past that black girl and past Grace Whoever-she-was and ran into the room she shared with Deanna. Her clothes were all hanging up carefully in the closet. It made her crazy. She never got dressed this fast. She always consulted with somebody, and took a long time choosing between things. She always asked her mother.

“Not too fancy,” she said, under her breath.

“What?”

Deanna was in the room, too. They were both standing in front of the same closet.

“Nothing too fancy,” Coraline said. “You see them on television, you know, going to lunch places. If they go to some big event like the Oscars, they're all dressed up, but when they go out to lunch they just wear stuff. Jeans. T-shirts. Nothing fancy.”

Deanna stared. “You're right,” she said. “You're absolutely right.”

Coraline knew she was right. She had a good pair of jeans, her one really expensive pair, from Calvin Klein. She put those on and then went through her T-shirts to find the one that fit the best. It was hard to know what to do. She had an expensive T-shirt to go with the expensive jeans, but the expensive T-shirt didn't fit all that well. She finally grabbed a bright red one that said
COKE—THE REAL THING!
on it in swirly letters. It covered her like paint.

Coraline raced to the vanity table. She didn't wear a lot of makeup under ordinary circumstances. She didn't think she needed to. That would work here, too. These people wore enough makeup not to look bad in photographs, but not enough to look like clowns. She put on a pale lipstick and then some gloss over it so that her lips shimmered. Then she got up and started running again.

She got to the downstairs foyer just before Deanna and just after the black girl, who looked like she was participating in a freak show. She had her hair frizzed out beyond belief and enough kohl around her eyes and mascara on her lashes so that she looked half dead. Coraline backed away a little and bumped into the Asian girl.

“I don't understand how she ended up in the house at all,” the Asian girl said. “She isn't going to win this competition. You can see that she isn't.”

Coraline made a strangled little noise. “Most of us aren't,” she said. Which was true.

The Asian girl made a little noise and turned away. Coraline found herself next to Ivy Demari again. She told herself that it was really all right. Ivy was odd looking, but she was very nice. It was better to be next to her than to Grace.

Grace was standing right near the front door, so that anybody who came through them was sure to see her. She looked defiant.

“Do you think there's going to be another fight?” Coraline asked Ivy.

“With Grace?” Ivy shook her head. “Sheila's had Grace on a platter already once today. She won't do it again to the same person.”

Coraline shrank back a little.

It was just at that second that the front door opened, but instead of the limo driver, it was Sheila Dunham herself who came in. Coraline shrank back yet again. Sheila Dunham was such an
unpleasant
-looking woman. She was too thin, in the wrong way. And her mouth always turned down.

And she stalked.

Coraline sucked in air.

“Take the earrings off,” Sheila said to Mary-Louise Verdt. Mary-Louise put her hands up to her ears and unfastened her big gold hoops.

Sheila went past Grace without stopping. Coraline could hear the collective sigh of relief when it came. She was pretty sure she participated in it.

Sheila went past three more girls, looking them up and down. She stopped at Janice Ledbedder and walked around her. Then she moved on. Janice looked ready to faint.

Coraline was feeling a little better than she had. This was not too awful. There was no screaming. Sheila didn't act like a crazy woman all the time. This looked like it was going to be one of her calm periods. If only they could get out the door and into the limousine. If they could get this challenge started, Coraline was sure she'd be just fine.

Sheila inspected Andra Gayle, but didn't say something. Still, Coraline thought, you could practically see the contempt on her face. Sometimes, on the show, Sheila reduced girls to tears just by looking at them.

Sheila came up right in front of Coraline, and Coraline stopped breathing. She looked good. She was sure she did. She had double-checked her hair and her makeup. She had been careful about her clothes. She did not look overdone. She did not look sloppy.

Sheila seemed rooted to the spot. Coraline felt her looking up and down, up and down. Maybe she wouldn't like the shoes. Coraline was wearing cork-soled sandals. You saw celebrities wearing cork-soled sandals all the time.

Then Sheila put her hand up, grabbed the neck of Coraline's T-shirt, and ripped, just the way she had ripped at Grace this morning. The effect was worse. The shirt came away in so many pieces, Coraline had nothing to hold up against herself.

“The only logos we wear on this show,” Sheila Dunham said, “are mine.”

Policewomen were never called “matrons” anymore, as far as Gregor Demarkian knew, but it was a matron who greeted him in the lobby of St. Mary's Hospital when he came in to meet the doctor who was treating the mysterious Lily. Except, Gregor thought, that Lily wasn't really mysterious. She was just sad, and the things about her that did not fit the sadness—the fact that she was meticulously clean—did not add up to enough to make even a lame episode of
American Justice
. Gregor thought most episodes of
American Justice
were lame. He'd been interviewed on the show several times—and on
Cold Case Files
and
Forensic Files
and
Snapped
as well—but when he sat down and viewed the show as it was finally put together, it seemed to him that the writers and producers were working too hard to make it like a golden-age mystery. Of course, he hadn't known that at the time. It was only recently, when he'd started reading Agatha Christie, that his mind had made the connection.

The woman waiting for him was middle aged, a little thick around the middle, and wearing one of those old-fashioned uniforms with a jacket and a skirt. He supposed there was no reason why she shouldn't
be. There were probably plenty of variations on the standard uniform available to women on the force. It was just that he hadn't seen a policewoman in a skirt in decades.

She stood up when he came through the sliding glass doors and held out her hand. “Mr. Demarkian,” she said. “I was hoping I'd recognize you. The mayor said I would, but I'm not really that good at recognizing people. I'm Billie Ormonds.”

Gregor shook her hand. “I'm Gregor Demarkian. You threw me off a little. I didn't know that policewomen still wore skirts.”

Billie Ormonds looked down at her knees. “Most of us don't. Slacks are just easier to manage. But some of the clerical workers do. And people like me, who end up dealing with the public. Do you mind being thought of as the public?”

“As far as I know, nobody's hired me,” Gregor said. “Have you seen the woman who was in the house, the woman who calls herself Lily?”

“I'm attached to the investigation. Yes, I've seen her. She's in the hospital wing of the jail at the moment, although I don't know how long we're going to be able to keep her there. Or anywhere. We don't have any evidence that she's done anything wrong.”

“I was thinking that myself.”

Billie sighed. “It's an odd thing. There's this other woman, the one upstairs here—”

“Sophie Mgrdchian.”

“Ah,” Billie said. “That's how you pronounce that. Yes. There's Mrs. Mgrdchian, who is obviously in some distress. But as far as we know, she's in her eighties. Distress happens at that age. And there's nothing to say that this Lily woman wasn't invited into that house. It's a mess, really. If Lily was aware enough to have a lawyer, she'd certainly be out of jail already. The best we've been able to think of up to now, is to ask a judge to hand her over for a full-op four-day psych observation. I'm pretty sure we can get that done, in spite of the fact that the Legal Aid attorneys are going to land on us at any minute. But that's going to be four days, and after that—” Billie shrugged.

“So how's Sophie Mgrdchian?”

“Ah,” Billie said again. “That's the other problem.”

“Is she worse than she was yesterday?”

“Not that I know of,” Billie said. “Neither better nor worse, last time I checked. But the doctor. The reason I wanted you out here is that I thought you'd like to talk to the doctor face to face. The doctor is a little nervous. That's about the best way I can put it.”

Gregor thought that almost anybody working in a hospital would have to be a little nervous. There was sickness everywhere. There was death everywhere. There was a lot of expensive equipment that could go wrong at any second, along with the hundred and one other things that could go wrong.

Just looking around this lobby made him think that he ought to be nervous. This was the front lobby, not the emergency room. Nobody was standing around bleeding on the carpets. Even so, there were people in wheelchairs, and people looking strained, and one small woman sitting in a corner with her face in her hands, crying silently and unceasingly.

“I know,” Billie said. “I hate hospitals. It's like they're the one place you can go where you can't get away from the fact that we all die. Even funeral parlors aren't that bad. Or cemeteries. In funeral parlors and cemeteries, it's like it's all happening to other people. It's like it has nothing to do with you.”

“Well, it's all happening to other people here,” Gregor said.

“Only for the moment,” Billie said.

She waved him toward the long bank of elevators, and Gregor followed. She was, he thought, right. Maybe it was a function of the fact that everybody had been in a hospital once or twice by the time they were middle aged. Children were in to get their tonsils out. Women were in to have children. Men landed in the emergency room because of accidents at work or at home. It was easy to think that a funeral parlor or a cemetery was just somewhere you would visit as a guest, and not as the center of attention. With hospitals, it wasn't so easy.

The elevator was very wide and very deep and very tall and had doors on two sides, although only the ones on their side opened. It
was spotlessly clean, too, but it wasn't empty. Right after they got in, a woman got in whom Gregor only noticed on second glance was a nun. He liked his nuns traditional, in long habits and veils. This one was wearing a pants suit with a gold cross pinned to the lapel and a little half veil attached to the top of her head. It made her look like one of the help in an old British movie about the aristocracy.

“Right along here,” Billie said, when they reached the third floor. “She's in the wing. It's kind of a trek. I've asked Dr. Halevy to meet us there in about three minutes. She's usually pretty prompt.”

Gregor threaded his way through what felt like empty hallways, wide corridors with deep carpeting and doors, but no people that he could see. St. Mary's was not one of the expensive hospitals in the city. It was, in fact, the one that took in the vast majority of the uninsured, since it was subsidized by the Archdiocese. Gregor had a sudden vision of the present Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia, and then another of those nuns in the pants suit.