“Here at Ambrose?”
“No. At my old schools.”
Detective Bruno glances around the room like he’s only now taking note of the arrangement of its furniture and whatever else is in it. Which is a lie. I’ll bet the pair of them have been through my and Strots’s things with a fine-tooth comb.
“You and your roommate are close, right?” he says.
“Not particularly.” I allow honest sadness to creep into my voice. “But I wish I were more like her. Where is she?”
The detective’s face shifts subtly. “Your roommate overpowered Miss Stanhope fairly easily, didn’t she? In the phone room, I mean. Miss Strotsberry is an athlete. She’s very strong.”
“Where is Strots now?” I repeat.
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Ellen’s rich, you know.” I use her proper name because he doesn’t deserve her intimate one. “Her father can get her a very good lawyer—which she does not need because she didn’t hurt Greta down at the river.”
“We’re aware of Miss Strotsberry’s family connections.”
Given the way the uniformed cop’s lips thin, I get the impression that those connections are already doing what they need to do.
“She did not kill Greta,” I say. “She may have pushed her in the phone room, but she did not kill her.”
“I never said she did, sweetheart.”
“You don’t have to.”
The detective smiles at me, but there’s a don’t-get-ahead-of-yourself-kid chill in his eyes. “Miss Strotsberry did not just push Miss Stanhope. She tried to choke her.”
I have a quick image of Keisha hauling Strots off our enemy. “Sometimes people snap.”
“Do they? Tell me more.”
“But they come to their senses. A moment of frustration doesn’t lead to murder.”
Now he’s smiling at me in a condescending way. “So you and your roommate were here all night—”
“Greta can get pushy, too.”
“What makes you say that?”
“On Mountain Day, Francesca—who’s one of her best friends—and Greta were arguing. Later, Francesca had bruises on her face and her knees.”
“Did you see Greta assault her?”
“They were on the fringes of the picnic. They were definitely arguing, and the next time I saw them, Francesca had a black eye. You should ask her about it.”
“But you didn’t witness any physical altercation between the two.”
“Greta had grass stains on her skirt afterward. And a scrape on the side of her leg, too. She came back out of the tree line first.”
This is a flat-out lie. I don’t remember seeing either one of them emerge, but I figure the detail makes it seem like Greta’s tough.
“You should talk to Francesca,” I reinforce.
Sure, I’m selling the girl down the river a little. But as mad as she might have been at the park, and as much as Greta clearly pissed her off sometimes, I don’t think she’s capable of murder. Besides, she did copy my essay and put it in those boxes. Some payback is allowed on my side, right?
“Do you have any sense of what the two girls might have been arguing about?” Bruno asks.
I am losing threads even as I continue to weave, details slipping from my grasp. “Greta left her and Stacia in the rain once. Maybe that was it.”
“Left them how?”
Now I’m stuck in what is a trivial detail, all things considered. “She got into a car and left them to walk home from town in the rain.”
“When was this? And whose car was it?”
I hesitate because I’m not sure how much the school’s told him. “It was earlier in the semester. Before Mountain Day. And it was our RA’s car—Nick Hollis.”
“He’s the one who lives in the apartment just down the hall? With his wife?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And you saw Greta get into a car with him?”
I nod. “I went into town, to CVS, to buy some things. You know, just regular stuff.” Not aspirin and Orange Crush, for example. And no, I’m not bringing up the bleached clothes. “It was raining when I came out of the store. Greta and Francesca and Stacia were walking together ahead of me. They’d come out of the record place. They’d bought CDs.”
“And then what.” When I don’t immediately answer, he prompts me with, “What happened then?”
As I look down at my hands, I wonder if keeping quiet will make my diversion seem more significant.
There’s a creak and I glance back up. He’s closing the door. “Just for privacy. I’m not keeping you here. And whatever you’re struggling with, it’s best just to be honest.”
I nod and look at my hands again. The right one, the one I threw out to keep myself from falling over at the fence line, is dirty. I rub it on my thigh. Not much transfers.
Detective Bruno gets down on his haunches in front of me. Both of his knees crack as he does this, and he nearly hides a wince. I decide that one or both are injured from his old high school football years.
“Tell me,” he says, his eyes fixated on me.
I take a deep breath, and the image of Sandra Hollis is so vivid, it’s like she’s crouched in between the pair of us.
“Nick Hollis has a vintage Porsche,” I say. Then I point out the window. “It’s a really distinctive car. It’s parked right down there. Anyway, I was behind the three girls. I saw him pull up beside them and talk to them. Greta got in with him and they drove away.”
“So he gave her a ride and not the others?”
“It’s a two-seater.”
“And then what.”
“That’s it. Well, and then I saw Francesca and Greta arguing at Mountain Day.”
“And that’s it?”
Well, yeah. Except for pink panties. Blue Porsches. Geometry teachers. But if he knows about the phone room, surely he knows about all that.
“Yes,” I say in response to his question.
The hunter light in the detective’s stare dims, and he gives the floor a shove with his meaty palm as he stands up with a grimace.
“Okay. Thank you. I’ll follow up on all that—”
“Greta’s body is where they met every night.”
“What did you say?”
I rub my eyes to try to get that image of the body out of my mind. The scrub job does nothing to help with my crystal clear memory. “The body’s where Francesca and Stacia and Greta always met. On the rock at the river. They smoked there.”
“How do you know this?”
“I’m new here. I had no friends at first.” Still. “So I used to walk along the river at night when it was still light. I’d see them all sitting there. I never stopped to talk them because… well, let’s face it, I’m not their kind.”
In the silence that follows, I find myself mourning the sight of those three girls sitting on the big, flat boulder, smoking like they didn’t have a care, their lives so bright they had to wear shades, to quote the song. And now Greta is gone.
“What was the tone of their conversations?”