“Grace,” he said.
She stopped biting at her nail and looked up at him.
“You should definitely tell the police you’re here,” Harry said.
She shrugged, and said, “I’ll talk to them. They won’t believe me, but I’ll talk to them.” She started chewing at the side of her nail again. He wondered what she’d done today—if she’d left this room, or had anything to eat. He was going to ask her, but instead he said, “I should go. Thanks for telling me the truth about my father.”
“Stay a little longer,” she said quickly, smiling weakly, her eyes locking on his.
“No, I should go back,” Harry said. He stood.
“Okay. I understand.”
Harry didn’t immediately move. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.
“I will be. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning, okay?” he said. “Bright and early. I think we both need to get some sleep.”
“Okay,” she said, her shoulders dropping. There was a sad smile on her face, and she looked defeated. “Be careful,” she said.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be back tomorrow. We can go to the police, together, if you’d like?”
“Yes,” she said. Harry went through the door, shut it behind him, and retreated, hand on a banister, down the dark stairwell, and out the front door, back out into the night.
Back at Grey Lady, he shut the front door quietly behind him. He could hear gentle snores coming from the living room. He took his shoes off by the door, and went and looked over the couch at Alice, sleeping, while another home renovation show, this one with a pair of handsome twins, played on the television.
Harry left her where she was and went up to his own room. It was warm and stuffy, retaining the heat from earlier in the day. He opened a window, took off all his clothes, and got under his single sheet. He cracked a book even though he knew there was no possibility he’d be able to read anything. He stared at the illegible lines of print, and thought about the day, and about how little he’d known his father.
Chapter 20
Then
The police returned the next evening. Not Officer Wilson with his fuzzy mustache, but a woman with a perm of tight curls who introduced herself as Detective Metivier.
“Sorry to come around during dinner hour,” she said to Jake at the door, as Alice listened from the living room, “but I have some follow-up questions for Alice.”
Jake let her in, offering her coffee that she turned down.
Alice had called in sick at the pharmacy, and was still in her pajamas and her favorite robe. She wasn’t sick, but she really didn’t want to be out in public, listening to people speculate about what had happened to Gina Bergeron. They must have been gossiping like mad in Kennewick, because they had already begun to gossip in the world at large. Alice had watched Entertainment Tonight the previous evening, and Gina was the second story. A promising model who had mysteriously died in the ocean while visiting her family. Alice had been shocked when one of the pictures they chose to show was her own favorite picture. Gina in the yellow bathing suit with the sad eyes. Well, they’d picked it because of how haunted she looked, probably. At the end of the segment, John Tesh had said something like “More to come on this story, for sure,” and Mary Hart had frowned and tilted her head. Alice had thought: Why is there more to come? Another tragic model, drugs and suicide. What else was there?
After Jake pulled up a chair for Detective Metivier to sit on, Alice, settling on the edge of the sofa, noticed that the detective held a small plastic box in her hands. It looked like a square toolbox, or a piece of medical equipment. The detective caught Alice looking at the box, and said, “It’s a kit for making a tooth imprint, Alice.”
Jake, still standing, said, “What’s going on?”
“Alice, did you bite Gina Bergeron on Friday night?”
“Yeah, I bit her on the hand.”
The detective looked a little taken aback, as though she’d been preparing for a denial.
“Can you tell me why?”
“Okay. I went to dinner at the Bergerons’ house because Gina’s mother invited me. After dinner, Gina and her mother asked me to come outside, and then they attacked me—”
“They attacked you? Physically?” the detective asked, gesturing. Alice noticed that there were no rings at all on any of her fingers.
“Not physically, but they ganged up on me.”
“Why did they do that?”
Alice turned and looked at Jake. His normally placid features registered a small amount of concern. She turned back to the detective. For someone who didn’t wear jewelry at all, she wore a lot of makeup.
“They didn’t like that I was still living with Jake. They thought I should get my own place.”
“Alice, you—” Jake began, but the detective interrupted.
“Why did they think that?” she asked.
“You obviously know, because you’ve talked with Mrs. Bergeron. She must have told you about the bite, so she probably told you all about everything else.”
“I’d like to hear it from you, Alice.”
“They thought Jake was taking advantage of me. It’s sick. I have no family left, and Jake is all I have. He’s more than a stepfather to me, more like a real father, and they were telling me that I should get away from him. It was crazy. I took off.”
“Why do you think they thought Jake was taking advantage of you?”
“How do I know? Gina got it stuck in her sick head, and she told her mother, and her mother believed her, I guess.”
The detective turned to Jake for the first time and asked: “Did you know anything about this?”
“No, I’m hearing this for the first time. It’s totally ridiculous. Alice is, was, my wife’s daughter. That’s all it is. Alice, why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Because I didn’t want to bother you. Because it was disgusting.”
“So, Alice,” Detective Metivier said. “What can you tell me about the bite?”
Alice breathed deeply through her nostrils. Some of the anger she’d felt that night was coming back, and for a brief moment she could feel Gina’s flesh between her teeth. “They kept accusing me, and I got upset. We were in the backyard and I decided to just leave. Gina ran over and grabbed me, and I just took her hand and bit it. I wanted her to let go of me, and it worked.”
“But Gina came back that night. She came here and tried to talk with you some more, right?”
“I already told the other policeman all about that. Gina was drunk. She came to apologize and wanted to go swimming as a way to restart our friendship, or something. I told her I didn’t want to, and she left. That’s all that happened.”
“You didn’t go swimming with her?”
“No. I stayed here. If I’d gone swimming with her she probably wouldn’t have drowned. Does her mother think I went swimming with her?”
Instead of answering, the detective asked, “Why didn’t you tell us the whole story when Officer Wilson first questioned you?”
“I told you, because I hadn’t told Jake about what Gina and her mother were saying. I didn’t want to upset him. And it had nothing to do with what happened later. I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I didn’t.”
“That’s okay, Alice,” the detective said, and looked as though she was about to stand.
“So you don’t need my teeth . . . you don’t need to use your . . .”
“I don’t, not if you’re telling me that it was you who left the bite mark on Gina’s hand.” She stood, glancing toward Jake, then back to Alice.
“What does Gina’s mother think? Does she think I had something to do with what happened to Gina?” Alice asked.
“She’s pretty upset. She says that Gina hated swimming, and would never have gone swimming alone in the middle of the night, especially with her hand the way it was.”