Why granny doesn't retire
Question: Why is Alice convinced that Torrey Mackilroy has talked to Pauline Ortona recently?
Solution: Torrey and Pauline were very close friends in high school, close enough to warrant quite an amount of comment in the yearbook biographies. Alice is struck by the fact that despite such an intense friendship, Torrey is not the least bit curious when approached by a private investigator. She doesn't ask what has gone wrong, why Polly is missing, how she is, what she'd done, etc. — all natural questions one might expect. The only reason for that, Alice surmises, is that Torrey already knows the answers.
Safety inspection
Question: How does the WSB inspector know this?
Solution: When the WSB inspector sat in her car observing the construction site — particularly the two-by-four safety rail Sully had allegedly put up around the third-floor ledge — she noted that the nail heads used to install the rail were gleaming back at her in the sunlight. If the railing had been put up four weeks before, and was untouched (except by rain) because of the strike, even galvanized nail heads would not be gleaming by this time. They would be rusted or at least oxidized. The inspector quite rightly suspects that this is a very recent installation, probably one that took place after Sully's death.
The worst kind of phone call
Question: What in Allie's story does Karen Tarata not believe?
Solution: Allie told her mother that the girls recognized the boys' car when they saw headlights coming up behind them. In the dark, it's not possible to identify a car when its headlights are shining toward you.
