“My cousin Artemis.”
“Greta’s daughter?”
“Do you know another Artemis?” I snapped, then took a sharp breath and forced down my rising annoyance. “I was passing her house as she came home from some ghost hunt. We talked for a bit and noticed the fire—we could see it. I can give you a list of all the things I did last night, and you can go check with the owners of the houses. I promise you I couldn’t have been on the east side.”
Norm looked at Principal Sutherland. “I’ll have them call her down,” she said, ducking out of the room to tell the office assistant, then returning.
“Let’s assume you’re telling the truth for now,” Norm said. “Why were you late getting here today?”
I shrugged. “Sadie kept me. You know, giving me a speech about being a good person and doing the right things.”
“Speakin’ of your sister,” Jack said, “we’ve tried contacting her. Do you know when she’ll be home?”
“She gets off work around five today, but she might go out with her boyfriend after that.”
“Who’s her boyfriend?”
“Grim.”
Norm and Jack both looked confused for a moment. Then Norm scowled. Jack snapped his fingers and said, “You mean Gavin Grimshaw?”
“That’s the one.”
A look flashed across Norm’s face that made me suspect Grim was another of their suspects. If an eerie, overcast day could take human form, it would look a lot like Grim. Despite all his melancholy, Grimmie wasn’t dangerous. Weird for sure, but docile as a rag doll and sweet as all get out. And he was one of the few people who could get Sadie out of the trailer.
“Could you tell me your sister’s or Mr. Grimshaw’s whereabouts yesterday evening?” Norm said.
Even Sadie wasn’t immune to this witch hunt. Although she, too, had been known to commit the occasional misdemeanor, Grim was pure as a dove.
“I don’t know what they were doing while I was at work,” I said, “but after that they watched TV with me. They passed out before I did. Around nine thirty.” I folded my arms and clenched my jaw to keep everything else inside. I wanted to say so many things. I wanted words to make them understand. That I would never do something like this, and neither would Sadie. That despite what happened to Mom, and what Dad did afterward, Sadie and I weren’t bad people.
No anger or ranting or threat would make them believe it. So I pushed down the burn in my chest, forced myself to unfold my arms, and said, “I didn’t like him very much, but I’m sorry this happened to Mr. Masrell. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I don’t like fire now”—my voice shook—“and I don’t want to hurt people.”
They stonewalled me, all three of them, with faces that said clearly that my past was still counting against me. I understood why I was their first suspect. I’d be my first suspect, too, if I was running the case. But did they have to make it so obvious they were coming after me because I wasme?
Finally Norm broke the silence. “Do you know anyone else who might have done this, or had a problem with Masrell?”
Anyone who had a problem with Masrell and could makeall the ghosts on a street flee for cover?
“As far as I know, nobody’s set a house on fire since Hermit Forester,” I said. “Have you talked to him yet?”
Jack’s expression turned sour. That was all the answer I needed.
“We’re going to find out who did this,” Norm said, flipping his notebook closed and stuffing it in his breast pocket. “A man died last night, and all this town can talk about is ghost hunters and television shows. If you know or find out anything about what happened, you come tell us. Understand?Anything.”
“Understood.”
“I need to speak to the officers now, Zora,” Principal Sutherland said. “I want you to go straight back to first period. If you don’t, I will find out, and you’ll have detention for the rest of the semester.”
I stopped outside the office with my skin tingling. Artemis was in the waiting area. Her phone was open on her lap and her fingers flipped through the pages of her Moleskine notebook. Of course she couldn’t use the regular-ass spiral notebooks. She had to get the pretty, expensive ones for her ghost research.
She didn’t look tired at all. She looked like a princess with a fairy godmother who could magic her into made-up cleanliness every morning.
“Hey, slugger, you’re up.”
She looked at me. She had more fat on her cheeks than I did, but Dad always said he could see the family resemblance because we both kind of looked like our moms. The Aberdeen girls.
Her pretty cherubic face sank into a scowl. “What did you tell them about last night?”
