Page 56 of What Have You Done?

She will find out what other parents do. Maybe they should take her phone away unless she agrees to show them what’s on it. She’s only thirteen. How much privacy is she entitled to? There shouldn’t be anything on there that her parents can’t see, should there?

She sips her drink, worrying about Taylor. On top of that, she keeps remembering her meeting with Principal Kelly earlier that day. It’s so distressing, all of it. That Diana is dead. That Turner was bothering her – and another girl, it turns out. That he doesn’t have an alibi for Diana’s murder. And there’s the fact that the body was found on his fiancée’s family farm. Could he have killed her? It’s making her sick to her stomach, thinking about it all.

She and her husband watch the news together. It’s out in the open now, about this other girl, it’s on the news. A shitstorm is about to come down on Graham Kelly’s head. She thinks that he probably deserves it. He hadn’t handled it properly, and it looks like he will have to pay the price. He will probably lose his job over this. He may never be able to work in education again. She suspects a female principal might have handled it differently.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ON TUESDAY MORNING, Joe Prior is on the job site when his foreman approaches him and tells him that two detectives want to speak to him. Joe doesn’t like the look on his foreman’s face, as if he’s wondering what the hell he’s done now. Joe’s already told him that all he’d done is chat that girl up at the cash register at the Home Depot. Now his foreman is obviously wondering why the detectives are here. Well, that makes two of them.

Joe looks past his foreman at the two people standing near the foreman’s trailer. He recognizes them. It’s the same two detectives who interviewed him before about Diana Brewer.

He approaches them, and the foreman heads back inside the trailer, eyeing them suspiciously. Joe faces the detectives.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asks pleasantly. He thinks the detectives look a bit ridiculous in their suits in the middle of a construction site. Be a shame if a beam hit them, and them not even wearing hardhats, he thinks to himself. But no chance of that, really.

‘Just a couple of questions,’ Stone says.

‘Okay.’

‘You crossed the border into Canada on Sunday afternoon,’ Stone says.

Shit. How do they know that? Are they watching him? Following him? They can’t do that. They don’t have sufficient reason to follow him. He thinks fast, considering his options. He can’t deny it, they know he crossed the border. It’s a worrying development, if they start to look at where he’s been, what his habits are. ‘Yeah, so what?’

‘What were you doing in Quebec?’

Joe shrugs. ‘Just went for the day, shopping.’ It’s a stupid thing to say. He doesn’t make a habit of shopping. But he’s been caught off guard.

‘What did you buy?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Do you have receipts?’

‘What the hell is this?’ he says, looking warily at them.

‘We’ll take that as a no,’ the detective says. ‘One more thing – where were you on Sunday night, between eleven and eleven thirty?’

‘I was at home, why?’ Joe answers. He wonders if they’re just trying to shake him up, let him know they’ve still got their eye on him.

Stone glances at his partner.

‘Thanks, we’ll be in touch.’ Then the detectives turn and head toward the foreman’s trailer. Joe turns around to go back to his worksite, but glances over his shoulder to see Stone knock on the trailer door. Joe stops to watch, apprehensive. The foreman appears, closes the door behind him, and walks with the two detectives over to the area where Roddy Donnelly is working. Joe can see the detectives talking to Roddy. Now he’s worried. He wishes he could hear what they’re saying. But he’s afraid he knows. If Roddy was just confirming what he told them before it would be a short conversation, but this goes on for too long. Stone is questioning Roddy hard, getting into his physical space. Joe can tell, even from here, from Roddy’s body language – he can tell the moment that Roddy capitulates. He’s not looking at the detectives any more – he’s looking at the ground, shaking his head. The detectives are nodding as Roddy keeps talking. Stone claps him on the shoulder.

Fuck.

Brenda’s lost track of what day it is. With each night that passes she becomes more convinced Diana is here with her; she can sense her in the house. She talks to her daughter as if Diana can hear her, as if they’re having a conversation. Perhaps all this is making her lose her mind.

She hasn’t been eating much. She feels rather faint, dizzy when she stands up or climbs the stairs. She must take Riley and Evan up on their offer to run some errands for her. She’s out of bread.

It was on the news, about the other girl. Brenda wants to know what the gym teacher did to her, what he did to Diana. She may never know.

She texts Riley and Evan and asks if one of them could come over after school. A minute later Evan answers, saying he’ll get Riley and they’ll be there in fifteen minutes.

When they arrive, she’s surprised at how glad she is to see them. They’re the only ones whose company she seems to want these days.

‘You shouldn’t be missing school,’ she says.

‘I haven’t gone back to school yet,’ Riley tells her.

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