Simmer Down

began shouting, “A doctor! Is there a doctor here?” Another man was supporting Oliver’s wife, Dora, who had collapsed. She looked ghastly. Even from a distance, I could see that the stretched skin on her face, and especially on her forehead, had turned a peculiar shade of yellowish white. Oliver, I thought, wasn’t the only one who needed a doctor, and he was apparently beyond help. Well, in this group, there was certainly no shortage of doctors.
    Police, too, were available in large numbers. When Josh and I had arrived on Newbury Street, Food for Thought hadn’t even begun, and there had already been cops on the street corners. Now, four uniformed police officers entered the gallery. One positioned himself at the front door and loudly announced that no one was to leave.
    When I looked away from the front of the gallery, I saw Naomi rescuing Josh from Hannah. “Hannah, how horrible for you!” Naomi said, her voice shaking. She looked more freaked than Hannah did. Her face was pale, but I could tell that she was trying to gear herself into clinical mode and was determined to assess any psychological trauma that Hannah might be experiencing. I assumed that Hannah would resent Naomi’s typical hand-holding, but within moments, the two were clutching each other and sobbing. Actually, Naomi was sobbing, and Hannah was simply looking frozen with shock, so it was hard to tell who was comforting whom. But at least Naomi had detached Hannah from my boyfriend.
    “Chloe Carter?” I spun around to see the only detective in the world I knew, Scott Hurley.
    “Detective Hurley. How are you?” Not the smartest question. He looked even more haggard than the last time I’d seen him. I’d met Scott Hurley last fall and had immediately thought that he desperately needed a long vacation in Aruba. Tonight, his scraggly black hair and unshaven face assured me that he was as overworked as ever.
    “Peachy,” he said with sarcastic exhaustion. “Josh, how you doin’? Chloe, I’ll talk to you first, then Josh. We’re gonna need statements and contact info from everybody here before you can go.”

    8. Being questioned- by police regarding revolting food-processor murder.

    Hurley glanced up and called to an officer. “Connors! The docs are here. Help ’em through,” he ordered. I decided to keep my back to the EMTs to avoid watching them wheel Oliver out of the gallery. Because of the thousands of hours I’d spent watching TV crime shows, I was relatively sure that the body wouldn’t be moved for ages, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
    I followed the detective to the side of the room. My mother waved to me from across the crowd and smiled, as though watching her daughter being led off by a detective were the most normal thing she’d ever seen.
    Hurley leaned against the wall and yanked a notepad and pen from his pocket. “Tell me what you know about tonight.”
    As much as I wanted to impress a law enforcement official by issuing dramatic statements about key events I’d witnessed, I had nothing useful to say, or so it seemed to me. I explained why I was here and said that I’d been up front when Hannah screamed. I had just met Oliver and knew almost nothing about him. I’d been paying no attention to what was happening at the back of the gallery.
    Hurley looked down as he wrote. “The back door to the alley is open. Do you know who did that?” As I shook my head, I noticed that the high humidity tonight was making him sweat more than usual.
    “It had been hot in here,” I said. “So I noticed the cool breeze coming from back there, but I don’t know who opened the door.”
    “You were here with your boss, Naomi Campbell?” He paused. “Is that her real name?”
    I nodded and pointed her out.
    “Was she with you, too? When you left your table? And when the screaming started?”
    I shook my head. “No, she was still at our table when Josh and I headed up front. But she must have left pretty soon after that to give her speech. She was still speaking up front when Hannah started screaming.”
    “Who else did you see while you were up front?”
    “Well, between you and me, Naomi didn’t give the most scintillating speech I’ve ever heard, so people were kind of milling around and talking through most of it. Well, after Naomi had been talking for five minutes, maybe. People were bored. And they started to leave partway through, so I’m not sure who was where. Although I’m pretty sure my family