I passed the water and waited while he slurped his fill. “Chico will be relieved to hear that. But that’s not why Redfern wants to interrogate you.”

“Interrogate me? Suppose you enlighten me, Miss Cornwall, since you seem to have the ear of the highest level of our town’s law enforcement.”

This was not going as well as I’d hoped. I had forgotten how sarcastic and cutting Mr. Archman could be. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t get math. If I was good at it, I wouldn’t have studied arts in university. I’d be a quantum physicist right now, discovering the secrets of the universe instead of running a cleaning business and kicking deadbeat ass by phone at the greenhouse.

I edged closer to the bed. “I guess you heard about the body found in the old high school. And about Sophie Wingman?”

“Of course, the news is all over town. A tragedy. It’s bad enough poor Sophie is dead. I only hope the body in the high school isn’t local as well.”

Really? He hoped that?

“That would be too much of a coincidence, don’t you think? A skeleton is discovered in the building that was boarded up hours after the last graduation dance. The next day, a grad who attended that party dies an unnatural death.” I had to be careful. Redfern would be greatly pissed if I spilled any confidential information. The trouble was, I didn’t quite know what he considered confidential. Everything, probably.

“Oh? I suppose you think you know who the first victim is?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. I was hoping you remembered the grad dance.”

“I remember it quite well. It was the last, and most horrifying, event to take place there. I had been drafted to chaperone, a duty I took seriously until I realized most of our graduates were stinking drunk. Thereafter, I and the other chaperones did our best to find the source of the alcohol but were unsuccessful. At midnight, we unlocked the doors and you fled into the night like scalded cockroaches. We should have called the police to haul you all down to the station for drinking underage, but we didn’t want to spend the night making statements. It’s a miracle you all survived.”

Well, we didn’t all survive, did we? Faith Davidson, wearing a white dress, reportedly got on the Toronto-bound bus after the dance and was never seen again. If the skeleton was Faith, she never got on that bus and the witness was mistaken. Or lying. I was out of my depth.

“Mrs. Czerneski was a chaperone, too, wasn’t she?” The diminutive Mrs. C’s dyed-black up-do bobbed in and out of my memory bank, but whether from grad night or French class, who knew?

“She was, poor soul. She passed about five years ago.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard. Who else?”

“Who else chaperoned? Fern Brickle. That was it. Just the three of us. Thirty wouldn’t have been enough to control you.”

“Come on, Mr. Archman. We weren’t that bad.”

“You were the wildest, most disruptive class in the history of Lockport High. And that includes both the old and present buildings. The only exception was Michael Bains, and perhaps Charles Leeds. Unfortunately, Charles wasn’t adept at mathematics like someone else I won’t mention.” He turned his massive head in my direction.

“Don’t look at me.” Here was an opportunity not to be missed. “What about Faith Davidson? She was always top of the class with grades, and very reserved.”

“Ah, yes. Poor Faith. She was a nice girl. It’s a shame she didn’t go to university, but didn’t she attend a technical college in Toronto?”

“For a month. Until she disappeared.”

“Ah, yes. The cities often chew up our young. Many times I have wished I had stopped when I saw her waiting for the bus and persuaded her to let me drive her home for the night. She could have caught another bus the next day. Then, whatever evil befell her in Toronto during the night might have passed her by.”

I tossed my bloody wad of tissues into the garbage can in the corner. Mr. Archman was the witness who saw Faith waiting for the bus. That was why Redfern wanted to interview him.

“Maybe the evil befalled … befelled Faith right here in this idyllic little town. Maybe she didn’t get on the bus at all that night.” Screw Redfern. But I wouldn’t mention the yellow dress.

“I understand you have an English degree, Miss Cornwall? What university might that be from? Were you absent the semester they covered verb tenses? Maybe you can drag your BA and a can of Benjamin Moore over to my house and paint my bathroom.”

A short balding man wearing glasses and a white lab coat breezed into the room. He looked like the doctor who had his fist inside the woman down the hall. And the one who twisted my nose in the waiting room. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Archman. I wanted a word before you leave. The x-ray shows …” He caught sight of me and stopped.

I edged toward the door. “Okay, I’ll just be outside, Mr. Archman. If you’re being released, Chico and I will drive you home. If not, good luck.”

“He’ll be a while yet.” The doctor scrutinized me in a way I didn’t like. Actually I didn’t like any doctors much, but especially gynecologists. They made me nervous.

“Okay then, take it easy, Mr. Archman.”

“Wait.” The doctor stepped in front of the doorway, blocking my escape. “How’s the nose, Bliss? I see it’s stopped bleeding, but you should put some ice on it immediately to prevent your eyes from bruising.”

How did he know my name? I hadn’t signed in. The triage nurse hadn’t been any more interested in me than Dr. Four-Eyes here. A little late for ice now, wasn’t it?

He buttoned his lab coat and straightened the ID badge clipped to his breast pocket. “I’m a friend of Neil’s. He talks about you. I’m the town coroner.”

“Neil who? Oh. You mean Redfern. What’s he been saying about me?”

“Only positive things, Bliss, I assure you. You make a handsome couple.”

A couple of twits. One twit can’t commit, and the other can’t broach the subject of commitment. “I don’t suppose you have any news on the skeleton? Or Sophie Quantz?”

The pursed lips were the only answer I was going to get from Redfern’s pal. As I passed him in the doorway, I whispered, “He has sleep apnea.” There, my conscience was clear. Then I hoofed it down the corridor before I was asked to help Mr. Archman with his pants.

In the waiting room, my “creature” was back and relieved that Mr. Archman didn’t plan to sue him. But I reminded him that he wasn’t out of the woods yet. I expected him to follow through on his promise to attend the food benefit on December 14. I didn’t care how many children he had.

CHAPTER

thirteen

Neil told Bernie to head back to the station, and Bernie had sense enough to keep his mouth shut on the drive. Why had he snapped at Cornwall and left her without a ride back to her car? Yeah, she was a little control freak. He’d known that from the beginning, and normally it didn’t bother him. If she wasn’t strong-willed, she wouldn’t have survived two years of poverty after her divorce, living in a rundown trailer park with drug dealers for neighbours. She not only survived, she forced her bastard ex-husband to fork over her share after he swindled her out of a fair settlement. He suspected she used blackmail on the Weasel, as she called him, sometimes to his face, but justice wasn’t always legal. He never questioned how Cornwall did it. From the look in Mike Bains’s eyes whenever he was forced to speak to Neil, he still harboured a grudge by association. Neil’s mind flashed back to the pages of grad photos in Cornwall’s yearbook. At seventeen, Bains was one of Sophie Quantz’s many boyfriends.

“Hey, Chief.” Bernie swung the 4 X 4 into the chief’s parking spot in front of the station. “I thought we were going to Dogtown to interview Fang Davidson.”