“You work in this?” She points to the dress. “It’s very pretty. Looks expensive.”
“I’m not working today.”
“Still. Not many students wear designer clothes. Especially people with money trouble. Do you have family to help out?”
“My mother died four years ago. There’s no one else.”
“I see.” More writing. “Tell me about your relationship with Grace.”
I remember Bradley’s advice: Tell the truth as much as possible. But now that Detective Gelman is sitting across from me, telling the truth seems like a wildly stupid thing to do. Because if I tell her the truth about everything Grace did to me, then I’ll be suspect number one. The detective will dig and dig until she discovers what happened on the bridge.
“She was fine.”
“Fine? Mr. Little said you had a difficult relationship.”
Bradley. I’m going to kill him. Why didn’t he tell me how much he was going to tell them?
“Yeah, she was a bit strange, I guess,” I say, trying not to stammer. “Eccentric. She could be mean.”
“Mean how?”
“Just… It’s hard to explain.”
The detective leans closer, elbows on her knees. “Try.”
“She would just make comments.” I notice that I’m picking my cuticles. Is fidgeting a sign of guilt? Or is it worse to be perfectly still? “It just didn’t seem like she liked me.”
“Why wouldn’t she like you?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“And what about the marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Little? How would you describe that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I wasn’t around them both very much. I guess I wouldn’t know enough to describe it at all, really.”
“I see.” She looks down at her notebook for a moment. I feel like I’m in a doctor’s office, waiting for her to deliver a terminal diagnosis. “Tell me about what happened the day she disappeared.”
“There’s not much to tell. I stayed in the cottage. I was thinking about going into town, but decided not to. Later in the day, Bradley asked if I’d seen her.”
“I’m guessing you hadn’t?”
“No, but Bradley had said she’d been acting strangely for a few weeks. He’d mentioned she was coming off medication?” I wonder if the detective sees what I’m doing. It doesn’t seem very subtle. “I guess he told you all this himself?”
“But you didn’t think she was acting strangely?”
“I did, though I didn’t know if that was just who she was. She’s a writer, you know. They’re weird people.”
“Did she do anything that stands out in your mind?”
“No.” The answer comes out quickly.
She flicks back a few pages in her notebook. “Mr. Little mentioned that you complained that Grace had locked you in the basement and left town?”
Bradley! I could kill him.
“I over-reacted,” I say. “I was just scared. I jumped to conclusions.”
“That’s quite a jump.” She continues to stare, her expression one of focused curiosity. I instruct myself not to fill the silence, and eventually she takes a card from her pocket and holds it out. I don’t want to reveal how much my hands are shaking, so I snatch it quickly from her hands. “If there’s anything else, just call that number.”
