by Jane Haddam
“So?”
“So there’s going to be a list, and there’s going to be nobody on it but us. One of us killed him, all right?”
Anne Marie turned away. She was so tired, the room seemed to be swimming. “You shouldn’t say that. Not out loud where people can hear you.”
“If I don’t say it, maybe it will go away?”
“Maybe.”
“Anne Marie, I called Michael last night.”
Anne Marie turned around just in time to see Bennis throw chopped celery into the bowl and reach for a bag of commercially packaged croutons. God only knew where they had come from. “Am I supposed to know who Michael is?” she said.
“He’s the man I’ve been seeing the last couple of years.”
“And?”
“He happens to be a lawyer. With the Boston DA’s office. I got him out of bed at three o’clock in the morning because I wanted to cry on his shoulder, and I ended up getting a lot of information instead.”
“I can’t believe you wanted to cry on anybody’s shoulder,” Anne Marie said. “Not about Daddy.”
“Never mind what I wanted to cry about. Michael spent half an hour giving me chapter and verse on one Mr. Gregor Demarkian. Get the turkey. If you hold it up for me, I’ll be able to stuff it faster.”
Anne Marie looked at the turkey. The idea of touching its cold, wet skin made her physically ill. She never touched raw meat. She never touched anything slimy. She never even looked at the cuts she got in her hands when she was gardening.
Bennis had poured a large measuring cup of water into the mixing bowl, and now she was staring at her. Anne Marie grabbed the turkey around its thickest part and held it as far away from her as she could.
“I didn’t like Mr. Gregor Demarkian,” Anne Marie said.
“I did,” Bennis said. That was only half true. Sometimes, he made her very nervous. Anne Marie could tell. “But that’s not the point. Do you know why Daddy invited him to dinner?”
“No.”
“You’re not just saying that because you promised to keep it secret?”
“No. He never told me anything, Bennis, except what it was he wanted me to do, when he wanted me to do something. I spent a week arguing with him about Demarkian. Mother’s so damn sick. I couldn’t imagine her surviving a full-scale dinner party. It was like talking to a deaf mute.”
“Was it Daddy’s idea to have us all here for Christmas?”
“It was Myra’s.”
“Could he have asked Myra to make it look like her idea?”
“The only word Daddy has addressed to Myra in the last three years is ‘cunt.’ Scratch that. Sometimes he said ‘stupid cunt.’”
“Marvelous.”
“Daddy was a marvelous man.”
Bennis flipped back the flap of skin at the turkey’s neck and started filling the cavity with soft brown mush. “The thing is,” she said, “Mr. Demarkian is not your ordinary retired FBI agent. Michael says he’s famous. He was the best man they had at investigating murders for twenty years. Apparently the FBI investigates murders that take place on federally owned land and in kidnapping cases and things. When I mentioned his name, Michael practically croaked.”
“So?”
“So why did Daddy invite a murder expert to dinner on Christmas Eve?”
Anne Marie sighed. “Daddy wasn’t rational, Bennis. You know that. He put up a good front for the lawyers, but if he hadn’t had so much money he’d have been institutionalized years ago.”
“Look at it from that Detective Jackman’s point of view. Daddy invited Demarkian for dinner, and the night Demarkian is supposed to show up, Daddy got himself killed. A murder expert and a murder.”
“Bennis, what are you talking about?”
“If I were Detective Jackman, I’d be sitting at home right now, doing a lot of thinking about premeditation. Anne Marie, on the surface of this, right now, it looks like Daddy knew somebody was trying to murder him.”
The turkey was very slippery. It was so slippery, it fell right out of her hands and crashed into the pan she’d been holding it steady in, scattering pieces of brown mush all over the counter. “But that’s ridiculous,” Anne Marie said, wondering what had gone wrong with her head. Her ears seemed to be ringing. “If Daddy thought somebody was trying to kill him, he’d never have everybody here. He’d throw us all out until he calmed down.”
“Anne Marie, I knew Daddy. You knew Daddy. Jackman didn’t know Daddy.”
“But—”
“And there are a couple of other things. If Jackman doesn’t get happy very soon, he’s going to investigate everything. If he investigates everything, he’s going to start looking into the money. When he starts looking into the money, he isn’t going to stop with where it went, he’s going to want to know why it went that way, and then—”
“Bennis, please.”
“—then we’re really up shit creek.”
Anne Marie swallowed, very carefully, making sure there was room in her throat. “Bennis, he couldn’t possibly find out about that. There wasn’t any evidence. There wasn’t anything. He was just—”
“Myra will talk,” Bennis said. “She’ll get a couple of martinis under her belt some afternoon while Jackman’s here and she’ll talk her head off.”
“Oh, God.”
Bennis picked up the turkey and shoved it back into her hands. “As long as you’re having a nervous breakdown about that, I’ve got something else for you. Mr. Demarkian spent at least half an hour alone with us last night.”
“I know.”
“So does Jackman.”
This time, Anne Marie almost thought she could squeeze the turkey and have her hands go straight through.
She put it down carefully, not wanting to see any more pieces of brown mush. Mush and brains. Blood and skin and bone. Everybody standing in the door of the study last night, Bennis holding them back, saying over and over again that somebody had to call the police. Everybody sitting in the living room later, pretending it hadn’t happened.
Bennis had taken a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her flannel shirt and was lighting up. “Anne Marie?”
“I’m all right,” Anne Marie said.
“No, you’re not. I bet you never got any sleep last night at all.”
Of course, Anne Marie thought, Bennis did sleep. Bennis would sleep. Bennis always knew everything, always did everything, always thought of everything. But then, Bennis hadn’t been living here in the house with him, all these years.
Am I making sense? Anne Marie wondered. She decided she wasn’t, but it didn’t matter much. She wasn’t afraid anymore.
Just sick.
2
On that Christmas Eve, Teddy Hannaford got the best sleep he’d had since he was ten years old. He slept until noon, as unconscious as a rock, and as soon as he woke up he vaulted out of bed. His bad leg hurt a little when it hit the floor, his brace cut into his knee, and he slid about half a foot, but he didn’t care. He barely noticed. He felt good. The grief reaction he’d been dreading hadn’t materialized. There was no reason why it should have—he’d hated his father without a break for two decades—but Teddy knew that reason rarely cut much ice with the human psyche. He’d carried his hate around for so long, he’d been a little worried he’d start mourning for it. Instead, he was free, happy, and at peace. He wanted to sing about the wicked old witch being dead, except that he couldn’t remember the words and witches were supposed to be girls.
Actually, he was a little feverish. He recognized that. The fever had started the night before, when it had finally sunk in that the old man was gone, and was heating up now, because there was so much about that situation he didn’t know. He was surprised he cared, but there it was. Obviously, that policeman thought one of them had killed him. Teddy knew all of them had wanted to, except maybe Emma. He’d never been able to get a real fix on Emma. Right now, he couldn’t even get a real fix on himself. It was as if he had two different songs playing
in his head, unrelated but not discordant. He didn’t want to listen to either of them, but he couldn’t seem to shut the music off. What he could do was concentrate on one and then the other. It made him feel like an audition master of nightmares.
Daddy was dead, and everything was not all right. That was the problem.
Teddy stared at his hands.
Daddy was dead—and now what? From where he was sitting, on the edge of the bed, he could see the neat stack of “professional papers” he had put out on the writing table the night he arrived. He hadn’t looked at them since, hadn’t even thought about them, because they were mostly for show, in case Bennis came into his room. Now he needed to think of them. They summed up his predicament as nothing else could. Greer College was still up there in Maine. The chairman of the English department was still planted solidly in his corner office on the second floor of Adrian Hall. The photocopy of Susan Carpenter’s paper was still sitting in a file somewhere, waiting to do him in. No matter how he looked at it, it turned out that Daddy’s dying hadn’t changed his life at all, and wasn’t going to. It scared the hell out of him.
He slipped out of bed, found a pile of fresh clothes in the larger of his two suitcases, and started to get dressed. He hated to admit it, but he didn’t want to give up teaching. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t want to give it up. He was going to have to do something to make a living. The income from his trust came to only $22,286.37 a year. That was it. Even with his teaching income added in, he was always in hock to his credit cards. What kind of work could he get, if he went looking for work? And how would he survive it? All those rigid hours, those great five-day blocks of time where you weren’t allowed to be anywhere else. All that worrying about getting fired. Teddy was convinced that people who worked jobs worried about getting fired all the time. Even Chris must do that, because he spent so much of his time doing that radio program and writing poetry brought in so little money. Teaching had it all over that kind of thing. Besides, there was one thing about teaching he did like. The ego trip. You stood up there in front of a lot of good-looking eighteen year olds, and every time you opened your mouth they took notes.
His leg was stiffer than usual this morning, probably because he’d been up late last night and moving around so much. He sat on the bed and held it straight, the only way he could get his jeans on over the brace. He was very cold. If he didn’t do something soon, he was going to be utterly, irrevocably screwed. He wouldn’t be able to keep it from them, either, and especially not from Bennis. There were too many links between academia and publishing. The first student he’d ever stolen a paper from was now writing mystery novels. Bennis probably knew him.
In his head, the two strains of music began to merge and complement each other. The backbeat was clear and driving, irresistible: it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair. It was the simple truth. It wasn’t fair. Daddy was dead. Once that happened, everything was supposed to be all right.
Jeans on, he limped out into the hall and down to the landing. He took the stairs slowly, one at a time, dragging his bad leg after his good one like a boxer’s dummy that had been inexplicably attached to his hip. In the foyer, he stopped and listened, but heard nothing. Christ, but this was a quiet house. He thumped over to the door that led to the wing where the study was and looked through it down the dark hall. Nothing.
And no one. That wasn’t right. There was a whole ritual for opening Christmas presents. It should be going on right now.
He thumped back across the foyer and went into the main drawing room, where the tree was set up and the presents laid out. The tree was lit up, but the presents seemed to be untouched. Teddy wondered what that was about. Why wasn’t Mother in her chair, handing out packages like Lady Bountiful? Why wasn’t the audio system blasting out Christmas carols? Maybe they thought there was something wrong with opening presents the day after there’d been a murder in the house. Teddy looked around for a box with his name on it, found three, and took the biggest one.
He was just deciding that pink velour pajamas were the most idiotic present he’d ever received, from anyone—what had Chris been thinking? The damn things were off the rack. They’d never fit over his brace—when the drawing room door opened and Myra came in. She was shoeless and makeupless, so unlike her normal self he almost didn’t recognize her. He banished the twinge of guilt he’d been feeling since he’d seen Chris’s name on the “from” end of the tag—Chris had brought presents; Teddy had not—and blinked.
“Good God,” he said. “You look almost human.”
Myra got a glass from a shelf under the bar and started filling it with ice cubes. “Go stuff yourself,” she said.
“I will if anybody ever gives me dinner. What time is Dickie supposed to arrive?”
“Dickie’s at his mother’s.”
“And you’re here?”
“I was supposed to go over at three o’clock. Not going to. It’s snowing again.”
“Well, Dickie ought to love that. Dickie’s mother ought to love it even more. Do you intend to be married after New Year’s?”
There was a bottle of vodka on the bar, opened and out. Myra filled her glass from it, dispensing with side issues like tonic and water. Then she threw a slice of brown, dried-up lime over the top. Teddy thought things must really have gone to hell here last night, what with the police in the house and everything. Limes were never allowed to sit around until the morning.
Myra threw herself into the chair next to the fireplace—where the fire hadn’t been lit; curiouser and curiouser—and said, “I was in the kitchen for a while. I couldn’t stand it any more. Bennis is cooking, and Emma is following her around like a puppy dog, asking what all the terms mean.”
“Bennis is cooking? Where’s Mrs. Washington?”
“Snowed in, in Philadelphia.”
“Can Bennis cook?”
“I really wouldn’t know.”
There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. Bennis being Bennis, she probably could cook, but that was a can of worms Teddy definitely didn’t want to open. Not when he was feeling so awful. He went back to the tree and got the other two boxes, and then two more he found behind them. By the time he got resettled in his chair, his leg was aching like a son of a bitch.
“So,” he said, “what has you drinking at fifteen minutes past noon?”
“I’m not drinking, Teddy. I’m just relaxing. I have a right to relax.”
“Right,” Teddy said.
“Besides,” Myra said. “I’ve been thinking.”
“God help us all.”
Myra swigged. “Do you really think Daddy’s dying was an accident?”
“Let’s just say I think we ought to think so. If you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. I want to know what you think. Do you think it was an accident?”
“No.”
“Neither do I,” Myra said. She stared into her drink. “If it had to be one of us who killed him, and you could pick anyone you wanted to be it, who would it be?”
The second box had gloves in it. Black leather gloves. Teddy already had six pairs. “Are we assuming this person is going to get caught?” he said.
“Would it make a difference?”
“Well,” Teddy said, “if there was no danger of getting caught, I wish it had been me.”
“Ah,” Myra said.
Teddy threw the gloves on the floor. They were from Emma. Emma had given him the other six pairs. “Assuming a trial and a conviction and God knows what else, then I’d want it to be Bennis.”
“Bennis?” Myra looked startled. “Whatever for?”
“Balance, I guess,” Teddy said. “She’s the one who’s had the perfect life.”
“Bennis?”
“Just look at her, Myra. She’s rich as shit. She’s famous. She’s beautiful. She’s even got a man who wants to marry her.”
“Well, yes,” Myra said, “but even so. She’s had to work for all that. And the man—
” Myra made another face. “Greek,” she said, as if it were an explanation.
“Now, now,” Teddy said, “don’t be a snob.”
“Anybody could marry a Greek,” Myra said.
“Who would you want it to be?”
“Oh, Bobby. Definitely,” Myra said. “He’s the one who’s had the really perfect life. I know he works like a dog, but he doesn’t have to. It’s just some macho kick he’s on. He’s got that huge trust fund, and that house in Chestnut Hill, and he goes running off to Europe every two and a half seconds. Besides, at the moment I want to kill him, and I’d much rather have the state of Pennsylvania do it for me.”
Teddy tried to remember if Pennsylvania had the death penalty, and couldn’t. “Why do you want to kill him? I didn’t think you even saw him much.”
Myra went back to staring into her drink. It seemed to fascinate her. “He’s just such a horse’s ass,” she said.
Teddy shook his head. “If someone was going to kill him for that, they’d have done it years ago.”
“I know. But you see—shit. I wish I hadn’t given up smoking. Bennis is out there puffing away, and every time I see her I want to mug her for a butt.”
“It has been a little tense around here.”
“Tense,” Myra said. “Yes. Teddy—”
“Yes?”
“If you did know something, something strange, that might get one of us arrested, would you tell the police about it?”
“I don’t know,” Teddy said. “That would depend.”
“On what?”
Teddy laughed. “On whether or not it was about Bennis.”
“Sometimes you’re just as much of a horse’s ass as Bobby is.” Myra looked into her drink again, saw that it was empty, and stood. “I’d better go get dressed. If Anne Marie sees me like this, she’ll have a fit. And I really can’t put up with one of Anne Marie’s fits today.”
“You’re not going to tell me what it was?”
