“Stevie,” she said. She had the firm, commanding tone of someone who was used to doing roll call. “And you are?”
“Her assistant,” David said. “The one that asks the stupid questions.”
“Watson, huh?”
“That’s me,” David replied, smiling.
“It’s going to be a hot one today, so I wanted to finish up some of this weeding early. Come on in.”
She marched inside, and Stevie and David followed. The inside of the house was almost as plant heavy as the outside, with ferns and greenery of all sorts in dozens of pots. Two orange cats sat on a perch in a sunny window, lazily entwined around each other. There was a framed collage of photos of Susan and another woman. Stevie paused a moment to look at them.
“My wife,” Susan said, noting where Stevie was looking. “Magda. She passed away eight years ago.”
“Oh, I’m . . .”
“It’s all right,” Susan said. “I didn’t say it to make you feel bad. She was the nurse at the camp. That’s where we met. There are good memories of the camp too. She was also an artist. All of these are hers.”
Susan indicated the shelves and surfaces full of pottery. Stevie didn’t know much about whether pottery was good or bad, but these seemed nice enough to her, and the colors were vibrant.
They were led to the kitchen, which was decorated in a surprising pink color. Pink everything—walls, mixer, towels, floor mats.
“Magda liked a pink kitchen,” Susan explained. “Sit down.”
They did as they were told, and Susan put mugs of coffee in front of them.
“I’m sorry about Allison,” Stevie said.
“So am I,” Susan replied. “It’s a damn shame. Horrific. So many terrible things have happened here. She had been through so much and did so well. I used to stop at the same spot on my morning runs. A lot of people do. It’s got the best view. It’s a bad place to fall from. . . .”
“She seemed really careful to me,” Stevie said.
“Yes . . .” Susan’s gaze drifted a bit. “She was. Very careful. Not like her to make a mistake like that. People do, of course. Her head must have been somewhere else.”
Susan sighed deeply and seemed to collect herself somewhere in the bottom of her coffee cup.
“So,” she said, “why is it you—or that person at the event the other night—think you can solve this case when no one else has?”
“I don’t know if I can,” Stevie said. “It’s more that we’re trying to tell the story. . . .”
“People know the story,” Susan replied. “People have been coming here for years, making their shows, writing their books, making money off a tragedy. How are you different?”
“She’s pretty good,” David said, nodding at Stevie. “Never count her out. She succeeds where others fail. And she’s not about money.”
Stevie felt herself flush. This conversation had gotten off to a very weird start and was perhaps slipping out of her control. Susan regarded David with interest.
“And does she pay you to say that?” she joked dryly.
“Me? Oh yeah. I’m really cheap.”
Susan smirked and nodded. “I looked you up,” she said to Stevie. “And I know you were okay with Allison, so I suppose there’s no harm in going over things again. Where do you want me to start?”
Susan Marks was all business, so Stevie would be the same. She confirmed that it was all right to record, which got a terse nod but a slightly disapproving look.
“I guess . . .” She reminded herself to stop saying things like that. She had to sound more like she knew what she was doing. “How did you end up at Camp Wonder Falls?”
“Back in the seventies, I was the head of health and physical education at Liberty High,” Susan said. “I taught during the school year, and then there was an opening to run the camp in the summer and I took it. It suited me—I like to keep busy, and the camp had so many sports and activities to manage. That summer was my fifth one in the job.”
“So you knew all the . . . everyone involved . . . well?”
“Oh, I knew them all,” Susan replied. “Todd, Diane, Eric, Sabrina . . . they were all my students, all grew up in town. This town is a bit like a family, but even families . . .”
She let that statement hang for a moment.
“You didn’t like all of them,” Stevie said, trying to read Susan’s expression.
“No. I didn’t like all of them. I never like to say kids are rotten, but . . . Todd Cooper, he was a rotten kid. Charming. Polite to your face, always. But he was the son of the mayor, who was himself—pardon my French—a real son of a bitch.”
“Do you think Todd had anything to do with Michael Penhale’s death?” Stevie asked.
“Oh, I absolutely think so,” she said, her voice getting louder and her expression more animated. “I don’t think anyone doubts that. He was guilty as sin, and everyone knew it. That was the shame of our town. It was a disgrace, and that no-good sheriff we had did nothing, just like he did nothing when the murders happened. Then there was Diane McClure. You know, I liked Diane. She was a good kid, deep down. Her parents owned the Dairy Duchess, the ice cream place across the way. But she was a hard nut. Tough. Good athlete. I tried more than once to get her to join the track team, but she never would. I think Diane liked a good time and bad boys. Todd was a bad boy. I was unhappy to see those two together, but it wasn’t a surprise.”
“What about Sabrina?” Stevie said. “No one seems to understand why she was there.”
“Sabrina was everything people say she was. She was bright as hell. Hardworking. Nice kid. Really nice kid. She would have left town, done something special with her life. Her parents put a lot of pressure on her to be perfect, and that concerned me sometimes. She was hard on herself. I think she was probably trying to cut loose a little that summer, after graduation. She was starting to hang around with Eric Wilde. . . .” She trailed off. “Eric Wilde,” she said, smiling. “I knew him since he was a little boy. His father taught at the school, and his mom was the librarian in town. He was smart, funny. He was also mischievous, but not in a malicious way. It didn’t exactly surprise me to find out he was the one supplying the pot to the camp. There’s less of a stigma about that now—it’s legal here—but at the time, it was a bigger deal. When we found him on that path, it was . . .”
She sighed deeply and reached down to pet the orange cat who had come over and stretched up on his hind legs for a head scratch.
“Talking about it gets easier with time, but the feeling never goes away completely. Which is good, I suppose. It means it matters. It should matter. I was in charge. I ran that camp. I was responsible for them. No one ever blamed me, which I think was really generous. I don’t know where I stand on blaming myself. I ran a tight ship, for the time. You have to understand, never in a million years did we think anything like this could happen. Maybe it was a more innocent time. I’m not sure. There’s more monitoring now. Kids don’t play unsupervised. Everyone has a phone. Back then, even little kids went out to play on their own, sometimes all day. Kids rode their bikes all around town. I was considered a hardass for doing spot bed checks and having a lot of rules. So people in town were very good to me after it happened. No one thought I’d failed when those kids went out to the woods. Because that’s what kids did back then. We expected them to, to a degree. More coffee?”