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Sandra found her next interrogee in the kitchen, rifling through the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?”
Matthew whirled around, looking guilty. “I’m starving,” he said, with abnormal slowness.
Sandra crept closer to him and held her candle up to his face. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. “Are you stoned right now?”
He held a hand up to block the candle’s faint light, as if it were blinding. “What’s it to you?”
She lowered the candle. “Oh, wow, I don’t know. There’s a murderer running around, and I thought maybe you’d want to keep your mind sharp.”
“I think better when I’m high.” He sounded as if he actually believed this, and Sandra knew he wasn’t a very good actor, so he probably did.
Either way, Sandra didn’t want to argue with him. “Where were you when Treasure fell?”
“I don’t know.” He turned back toward the cupboards. “When did she fall?”
Sandra liked him less and less every second, and her opinion of him hadn’t started out very high. She tried to be patient. “I don’t know the exact time, but it had to have been minutes after she was rude to you on stage—”
“She wasn’t rude to me.”
Well, rude was a relative concept. Sandra thought. Just when had she fallen? It might be useful to pinpoint the time. She chewed on her lip as she stared at Matthew. She knew her gaze was making him uncomfortable, pot or no pot, and she thought this was a good thing. She hadn’t heard Treasure fall. Wouldn’t she have cried out? And those stairs were old and loud. During a play, cast had to tiptoe up and down them, or the audience could hear them. So surely it would have made some noise to fall down the stairs. Therefore, she must have fallen during the loud snowball fight scene, right? Otherwise, Sandra would have heard something. “She fell when the kids were rehearsing the snowball fight.”
It was difficult to tell beneath his heavy eyelids, but she thought he glared at her. “I have no idea when that was. I was down here.”
“She fell at about six-thirty. And where down here? In this kitchen?”
He looked around, as if he’d just realized he was in the kitchen. “I don’t remember. Maybe the green room. Aren’t you supposed to be looking for your son?”
She wanted to strangle him. Then there would be two killers on the loose. “Is that what you were looking for in the cupboards?”
His eyelids came up a little. Definitely a glare this time. “I know you think you’re some sort of super detective because you got kidnapped once, but you’re not. Why don’t you just look for your kid, and let the cops catch the killer.”
Bob put a hand on Sandra’s shoulder. She’d forgotten he was there. She turned to look at him, and he jerked his head toward the door. He was right. Talking to Matthew was a waste of time. She turned to go, but then had a thought. “Matthew,” she said, stopping and turning back for a second, “you must have been pretty angry when Treasure rejected you in front of everyone.”
“Easy,” Bob said, but Sandra wasn’t scared of Matthew on his best day. And this wasn’t his best day.
“She didn’t reject me.”
“She wasn’t rude to you and she didn’t reject you? Matthew, I saw it. She completely disrespected you. Didn’t that make you angry? I would’ve been furious.”
Matthew looked down at his hands. At first, he didn’t respond, and when he did, his voice quavered. “That’s just how she was.”
Sandra couldn’t believe it. He’d really cared about her? “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.” Suddenly in a hurry to leave the young man in peace, she stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind her.
“Well, that was weird,” Bob said, “but I don’t think he killed her. Now where do you want to go? Where is everyone?”
“Maybe they’re back upstairs. But hang on. I want to go back to the green room.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer him. She just walked to the green room. He’d find out soon enough. She tapped on the door. “Gloria?”
“Yes?”
“Still doing okay in there?”
There was a pause. “Define okay.”
Okay was also a relative benchmark. “Still warm enough? And no one’s trying to kill you?”
A faint giggle drifted through the door. “Yeah, then, I guess we’re okay.”
“Hey, do you know exactly when Treasure fell?”
Another pause. “No.”
A meek little voice piped up. “I think she fell when we were doing the snowball scene,” Corina said. “Because we didn’t hear her.”
Smart cookie. Maybe I should take her on the road. “Do you remember where you were during the snowball scene, Gloria?”
Again, a pause. Sandra leaned her forehead on the door and tried to be patient. “I’m not sure. I think I was in here.”
Good. “Was Matthew in there with you?”
“No. No one was.”
“Okay, thanks. You guys sit tight.”
She stood up straight and looked at Bob. “So maybe he’s not so innocent. He said he was in here.”
“That doesn’t mean much. Even if Gloria is telling the truth, her memory isn’t foolproof.”
A qualm wiggled its way into Sandra’s brain. Why hadn’t Gloria been upstairs watching the snowball scene? Both her kids were in it. What had she been doing instead?