by Jane Haddam
Gregor shined his light on the fire escapes. There were three of them, one going only so far as one of the second story windows. Gregor thought that one led to Melina Kashinian’s bedroom window—although how Howard or anybody else expected an eighty-nine-year-old woman to go crawling down those metal stairs in case of fire was beyond Gregor’s comprehension. One of the other fire escapes led almost to the roof level, probably to an attic. Gregor knew that nobody lived that far up. He wondered why Howard had bothered to take the precaution. Howard was not known for spending unnecessary money on anything or anybody but his wife and himself. Maybe he’d intended to put another apartment up there and never got around to it. The last fire escape went to the fourth floor. Gregor walked over to it and shined his flashlight at the bottom step.
“It might as well be a staircase,” he said.
Russell Donahue agreed. “These are the best escapes made. They don’t fold up. They’re wider than the average. They’re strong as hell. I’m impressed with the landlord.”
“Don’t be. He was just making sure he couldn’t get sued.”
“Whatever the reason, I’d like to have these on my building.”
“Let’s go around to the other alley and see what it’s like.”
The other alley was much pleasanter than the one they’d come down. There was no garbage in it at all, just a big metal shed with a padlock on it that probably held paints and ropes and brick cleaner. Gregor walked out to Cavanaugh Street and then back to the courtyard, shining the flashlight up and down, thinking. He finally stopped at the foot of the fire escape that led to Hannah Krekorian’s bedroom window and tapped his foot against the flagstones there.
“There would have been a preliminary visit,” he said.
“Fine,” Russell Donahue said. “A preliminary visit to where? By whom?”
“To here. By the murderer,” Gregor said. “There would have had to be a preliminary visit, because this whole operation was very well-planned. Which is a funny thing to say about a murder that in the end depended so much on luck, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“You know,” Russell Donahue said, “Cheswicki warned me that you started talking like this after a while. He said I was supposed to keep reminding myself that you’re a genius.”
“I’m not a genius. And I’m making perfect sense. The murderer had the address of Hannah’s apartment, of course, because the murderer had one of those invitations. The problem with that is that everybody on earth seems to have had one of those invitations. Hannah was not being exclusive.”
“What about Hannah possibly being the murderer?” Russell asked. “A few hours ago you were recommending that we arrest her immediately. I take it that’s off.”
Gregor sighed. “I wasn’t recommending that you arrest her because I thought she’d killed anybody. I was just hoping to do something to light a fire under this case. This was beginning to shape up into one of those non-events. Murder happens. Everyone freezes solid. No one makes a move. Unless you’re dealing with an idiot who scatters clues the way Hansel and Gretel scattered bread crumbs, you never solve a case like that.”
“I take it you’ve changed your mind,” Russell Donahue said. “Now you don’t want us to arrest her.”
“Now I don’t think you can,” Gregor told him. “We’ll have to check, of course, but I’m willing to bet my life that Hannah Krekorian has a rock-solid alibi for the time of Candida DeWitt’s murder.”
“Why?”
“Because Hannah is being watched over by a bunch of Armenian-American women who worry. If she suddenly dropped out of sight for a few hours, I would have heard about it. Remember. I was sitting in my own living room when you called. I was available.”
“Right.”
“The murder of Paul Hazzard was definitely planned for last night. The plan was hatched when Paul Hazzard received his invitation to Hannah’s party. At that point, the murderer knew something critical. The murderer knew that Paul Hazzard would not only be at Hannah’s party, but that he would probably be at Hannah’s apartment after the party. I don’t mean that he would have slept overnight. I suppose he might have—before all this started, I used to think I knew the women I’d grown up with very well, but I’m giving that up—but the key here is that it wasn’t necessary for Paul Hazzard to sleep over for this plan to work. It was only necessary for Paul Hazzard to still be in that apartment when everybody else was gone.”
“It won’t work,” Russell Donahue said. His nose was turning blue. The tip of his nose was turning bright blue. “I see where you’re going here. First the murderer came out here to check out ways to get into Mrs. Krekorian’s apartment, and found the fire escape.”
“My guess is that the murderer came out here between five and seven o’clock at night,” Gregor told him. “Monday or Tuesday. On weekends we get a lot of tourist traffic out here, but on weekdays the only busy times are between five and seven. People stop at the Ararat and get take-out to eat back home in the suburbs.”
“Whatever.” Russell Donahue was not interested in this. “The murderer checks out the fire escapes and finds he’s got a way in—”
“—or she—”
“Or she. I’m not going to do that over and over again, Mr. Demarkian. It’ll make me crazy.”
“If you don’t, it might prejudice your reasoning.”
“Right. The murderer, he or she, works out how to get into the apartment—what about window locks?”
“What about them?” Gregor said. “You can always break a window. Considering what was being set up here, it might even have been an advantage.”
“All right. So, on the night of the party, last night, the murderer climbs up the fire escape, meaning to sneak into the apartment, but when he—or she—gets to the landing, there’s Paul Hazzard, designated victim, pacing around in the bedroom—”
“No,” Gregor said.
“No?”
“That wasn’t when the murderer entered the apartment. It couldn’t have been. I went all over that with Bob last night. Paul Hazzard would have seen. He would have struggled. He would have cried out. By the time Hannah locked herself in the master bathroom and Paul Hazzard came to pace outside it, the murderer had been in Hannah’s apartment for quite some time.”
“Really. Since when?”
“Since sometime between seven and seven-oh-five,” Gregor said promptly. “That’s when, according to Helen Tevorakian and Mary Ohanian, Sheila Kashinian heard a moan.”
“Sheila Kashinian,” Russell Donahue ruminated. “Is that the one in the earrings and the four-inch heels and the green-and-gold dyed mink coat?”
“That’s the one.”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Demarkian, you can’t take that woman’s word for anything. She’s crazy.” Russell Donahue stamped his feet to get feeling back into them.
“She may be crazy,” Gregor said, “but she’s no liar. Let’s go back to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m cold. And because I want to talk to Bennis Hannaford for a while. Can you get in touch with anybody this late on a Saturday night?”
“Like who?”
“Like your lab and technical people. The ones who are running the tests on the evidence picked up last night.”
“I don’t know if I can get in touch with the exact people. But Cheswicki put rush orders all over all that stuff last night. There ought to be somebody over there who knows what’s going on with our stuff.”
“Good. I hate working blind like this. I want some confirmation of what can be confirmed. Like the fact that that idiotic dagger was not the murder weapon.”
“Right.”
“I’ve got it almost all worked out,” Gregor said. “It’s just a question of—well, never mind for the moment. Let’s go.”
“Right,” Russell Donahue said again, bleakly.
Gregor took the alley with the utility shed in it instead of the garbage, and went back out to Cavanaugh Street.
&nb
sp; 2
Bennis Hannaford was on the phone and the front door of her apartment was propped open with The White Trash Cook Book when Russell and Gregor came upstairs. They stopped and waved at her and she nodded distractedly.
“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” she was saying, “I really don’t. You have to understand—well, no—well, yes—I’ve thought of that already, but you can’t—oh, for God’s sake—no—no—never mind—I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Jesus.”
Bennis hung up the phone and walked across the foyer to them. “Sorry,” she said. “Is there something the two of you want?”
“This is Russell Donahue,” Gregor said.
“We met last night.”
Gregor felt awkward. Bennis was not usually this—this stiff? Had he done something wrong?
“Well,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind and you don’t have anything to do for the moment, I was hoping you’d come upstairs. There was something I wanted to show you. And something I wanted to ask you.”
“He’s outlining how the murder happened,” Russell Donahue said. “It’s very interesting. He has me totally confused.”
“I heard from Father Tibor,” Bennis said. “He said some friend of his was in your apartment when you got a phone call that Candida DeWitt was dead.”
“That’s true,” Gregor said.
There was a clattering from above them and Donna Moradanyan came running down the stairs, her hands full of red crepe paper and silver balloons, her blond hair sticking out in every direction. She saw them and stopped, blushing.
“Hi,” she said.
Russell Donahue seemed to stand a little straighter. “Hello,” he said. “Where’s your little boy?”
“He’s sleeping over downstairs at old George Tekemanian’s.”
“That must be fun for him,” Russell Donahue said.
“Yes,” Donna Moradanyan said. “Yes, it is.”
Bennis ran a hand through her thick black hair. “We’re going up to Gregor’s apartment, Donna. I’ll leave my door open. I talked to Sheila Kashinian. She’s got the helium you need for the balloons. When you’re ready for it, just call and Howard will bring it over. He stays up until midnight.”
“Great,” Donna said.
Bennis turned to Gregor. “My brother Christopher wants to talk to you. He knows something about Paul Hazzard. Or he met him once. It’s complicated.”
“Good,” Gregor said. “I’d like to talk to Christopher. Is he around here somewhere?”
“No,” Bennis said darkly. “He is definitely not around here somewhere, and quite frankly I couldn’t tell you where he was. Nobody ever tells me anything. Are we going upstairs?”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “Yes, of course, right away.”
“Good.”
Bennis wheeled around and started marching up the stairs to the third floor. She reminded Gregor of one of those grim-faced monsters in a Ray Harryhausen movie, a Greek fury processed through Freud.
“Valentine’s Day,” she said when she was halfway up to the third floor landing. “To hell with it.”
Right, Gregor thought.
As soon as he got upstairs, he was going to get back to the murders. They were going to be a lot less complicated than whatever it was Bennis had gotten herself involved with.
3
Actually, it turned out to be easy to get back to the murders once Gregor had let them all into his apartment. The change in scenery seemed to cause a change in Bennis. She calmed down dramatically and began bustling around the kitchen. She put the teakettle on. She looked into his refrigerator and made a face. The only time he had what she considered halfway decent food in his place was when Lida or Hannah or one of the other women brought some over—and they seemed to have given that practice up for Lent. If it hadn’t been for the Ararat, Gregor would have starved to death this week. Bennis sat down in a kitchen chair and stretched her legs.
“Well,” she said. “What is it? Did I accidentally stumble over the murderer in Hannah’s living room and not know it?”
“No,” Gregor said. “I want you to look at something I’ve got and tell me what it is.”
“Let me make that phone call,” Russell Donahue said.
He got up and started to dial from Gregor’s kitchen wall phone. Gregor went to the windowsill over his sink and fished around in the little straw basket he kept odds and ends in until he found the single pearl earring he had picked up from the carpet of Hannah Krekorian’s guest room the night before. He placed it on the table in front of Bennis.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a pearl earring for a pierced ear,” Bennis said in mock solemnity. “In fact, it’s probably a Tiffany pearl stud.”
“Does it belong to Hannah Krekorian?”
“Of course not, Gregor. Hannah’s never had her ears pierced.”
“Do you know whom it does belong to?”
Bennis shrugged. “Practically everybody I know who has pierced ears has Tiffany pearl studs. They cost about five hundred dollars. They’re a really good anniversary gift or birthday gift in the really-special category. Donna has a pair she got from her parents. Lida Arkmanian has a pair her daughter Karen bought her for Christmas a couple of years ago. I have a pair.” Bennis pulled her hair away from her face. “I wear them all the time.”
“Are any of those people missing an earring?” Gregor asked.
“Donna isn’t,” Bennis said. “Or, at least, she wasn’t this morning. She was wearing hers. I don’t know about Lida.”
“Was Lida wearing hers at the party last night?”
“No, Gregor. She was wearing her gold shells. Don’t you ever notice anything?”
Gregor Demarkian had made a career out of noticing things. These were just not the right kinds of things. Bennis looked curiously at the earring.
“Did you find that in Hannah’s apartment last night?” she asked. “Was it at the murder scene?”
“It was in Hannah’s guest room. You don’t happen to know if Hannah had a guest staying there who might have been wearing earrings like this? Or how often that room is thoroughly cleaned.”
“That room is thoroughly cleaned every December first and June first. That’s when the cleaning service comes in and does a sweep,” Bennis said. “I can’t remember Hannah ever having a guest stay over in that guest room except her granddaughters, and they’re tiny. They don’t wear earrings yet.”
Russell Donahue came back from the phone. “I’ve got somebody checking,” he said. “She’ll call us back. Have you determined anything important while I was gone?”
“Maybe,” Gregor said.
He was still wearing his coat. He was still standing up. He shrugged his coat off and threw it on one of the kitchen counters. Then he searched through his pockets to find the piece of paper he wanted.
“There’s never anything around here to write on,” he complained. “There’s never anything around here to write with.”
Bennis got up. The water was boiling. She took coffee mugs out of Gregor’s cabinet and the instant coffee from his pantry shelf and put them on the kitchen table. Then she opened the drawer next to the refrigerator and came up with a pen and a much-used steno pad.
“Here you go,” she said, turning back to the refrigerator to get out the cream. The sugar was in a bowl in the middle of the kitchen table. Bennis got some spoons and sat down again. “Are you going to draw a picture? Or are you going to write down the name of the murderer and hide it in the cookie jar, and then when the police finally get around to doing something about the case you’ll pull the paper out and show everybody how much faster you were at working it all out?”
“Neither,” Gregor said. “I’m going to write down how it happened. Beginning at the beginning. Russell?”
“I’m paying attention.”
“Good. Let’s go back to what I was talking about before. The first and most important thing was the arrival of that invitation. That invitation provided opportuni
ty. Remember that this is someone who has already killed once—killed Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard to be exact—and gotten away with it. It would have been a major mistake to murder Paul Hazzard in the same place and in the same way that his wife was murdered. Our murderer does not make major mistakes.”
“If that earring belongs to your murderer,” Bennis said, “she made at least one major mistake.”
“Did she?” Gregor asked. “Even assuming it belongs to the murderer, Bennis, it’s only a minor mistake. It wasn’t lost at the scene but in another room. It’s something that many people have, you said so yourself. It could never be successfully used in evidence.”
“It seems to have given you ideas.”
“That, yes,” Gregor said. He pulled the steno pad close to him and began to write.
1. P. Hazzard receives invitation
2. Murderer checks out Hannah’s apartment to see if entry is feasible
3. Murderer hand-delivers invitation, repackaged, to C. DeWitt
Russell Donahue studied the list and frowned. “There’s something I don’t understand. So what if that invitation was delivered to Candida DeWitt? That couldn’t have been enough to ensure that she’d show up.”
“There was no need to ensure that she’d show up,” Gregor explained patiently. “All along, the murderer intended for there to be two suspects in this case. One, of course, was Hannah Krekorian. The other was Candida DeWitt. I don’t even know if Mrs. DeWitt was meant to be a serious suspect. Casting suspicion in this way might have been simply spite. But to cast suspicion, it wasn’t necessary that Candida DeWitt actually attend Hannah Krekorian’s party. It was only necessary that she could be proved to have known where Hannah lived.”
