Festival of Deaths

by Jane Haddam

  “Bram is absolutely livid,” she said, chucking a cake-encrusted fork into the sink after the plate. “I suppose we should stop treating him like such a child.”

  “We’ll stop treating him like such a child after his bar mitzvah.” David dropped into a chair across from Lotte at the kitchen table and reached for the coffee pot still waiting at the table’s center. His cup was still waiting for him, too. Rebekkah was smart enough to know that it made no sense to clean David’s coffee cup before David was ready to go to bed. Lotte always wondered how David managed to sleep after drinking all that caffeine. “So,” David said. “I talked to Tibor. He says things are a royal mess.”

  “Tibor would never say ‘royal mess,’” Rebekkah chided.

  “I suppose ‘royal mess’ is as good a description of it as any,” Lotte said. “But it’s not as big a mess as the other one was, back in New York. At least this time we have help.”

  “Do you mean Gregor Demarkian?”

  “I mean the police,” Lotte said firmly. “I do not know how to describe to you what the police were like back in New York. This man here seems both honest and intelligent, and that’s a relief. Not that it will help either Max or Maria.”

  “Maybe the police in New York were right.” Rebekkah slid into a kitchen chair herself. “Even if they weren’t honest or intelligent. Maybe it was an ordinary mugging—”

  “I’ve told you why it could not have been—”

  “Yes, Lotte, I know, but hear me out. You did tell me there wasn’t any rape, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Rebekkah. Yes, I did.”

  “I know you did. And I’ve been thinking about it, Lotte. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we talked last month. And it just doesn’t make sense any other way.”

  “But how does this make sense?” David demanded. “Maria in New York. This boy Max in Philadelphia—”

  “But we don’t know that,” Rebekkah insisted. “A blow to the side of the head—”

  “The same kind of blow to the same side of the head,” Lotte reminded her.

  “All right,” Rebekkah conceded. “But it’s not exactly a fine Italian hand. And if you don’t accept a pair of muggings and a pair of coincidences—”

  “More than a pair,” David said.

  “—then you’re stuck looking for a motive.” Rebekkah was stubborn. “And that’s where the conspiracy theories you two are hatching lose me. The motive. Who would want to kill Maria Gonzalez? Or Maximillian Dey?”

  David poured himself another cup of coffee, poured it carefully, poured it slowly. Lotte watched in fascination as he shoveled four teaspoonsful of sugar into it.

  “The motive,” he said carefully, “may not be anything any of us would take as sane. That man who was there today—”

  “Herbert Shasta,” Lotte said.

  “Herbert Shasta.” David nodded. “He’s only one of a tribe, from what I understand. There are hundreds of people like him out and around.”

  “What you’re trying to say is that somebody on Lotte’s show is a psychopath. Sociopath. Whatever you call them these days.” Now Rebekkah was mulish. “I say that’s impossible. The people on that show live in each other’s pockets. If someone was that far off, the rest of them would know.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” David said. “Look at Ted Bundy.”

  “So look at Ted Bundy.” Rebekkah threw up her hands. “Ted Bundy is one man, and he’s very unusual. Look at the rest of them. Look at Charles Manson. Look at Jeffrey Dahmer. Look at David Berkowitz, for heaven’s sake. They were all at least a little off and everybody knew it.”

  “But Rebekkah,” Lotte put in, “it really is impossible. Two deaths like this, with everything so close.”

  “All right then. Tell me. What was the motive? Is it somebody who just doesn’t like Spanish people? Then you’ve got another nut. What else could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” Lotte said.

  “I don’t know either,” David admitted.

  Rebekkah got up from the table. “I’d be willing to go along with this if either one of you could think of just one thing—just one thing—that doesn’t make these two deaths look like coincidental muggings. Just one thing. A fingerprint. A tire track. Something.”

  David winced. “Rebekkah wants the strange case of the dog that didn’t bark in the nighttime.”

  Lotte looked down at her hands. A fingerprint. A tire track. Sherlock Holmes marching around in circles with a magnifying glass. There was something.

  “Wait,” Lotte said.

  The coffeepot was empty. Rebekkah was rinsing it out, so that it didn’t stain. Sterling silver was something else she took care of herself.

  “Wait,” Lotte said again. “I remember.”

  “Remember what?” David asked her.

  They were both looking at her the way her television audience looked at her, expectant. Lotte felt the way she felt when she had to announce that the subject of today’s program is “Is Broccoli an Aphrodisiac?” thereby disappointing everyone. But there was nothing to do now but get it over with.

  “I remember,” Lotte told them, “the dreidel.”

  2

  SHELLY FELDSTEIN WAS NOT a superstitious woman, any more than she was a religious one. She believed in science and mathematics, physics and chemistry, PBS and the New York Times. Her unconscious but unshakable take on serial murderers was that she would know one if she ever saw one and have sense enough to run like hell. Her very conscious take on the present situation was that a couple of admittedly bizarre coincidences were being used in the relentless effort at self-aggrandizement being perpetrated on the citizens of the United States by one Gregor Demarkian. Shelley had only met Gregor Demarkian for about a minute earlier that day, when DeAnna Kroll had introduced them and Shelley had shaken the great man’s hand. He hadn’t looked like such a great man to her and she hadn’t liked him on any level. She hadn’t expected to. Shelley Feldstein hadn’t met Gregor Demarkian before this morning, but she’d heard about him. What she’d heard she didn’t like. Shelley was a woman who believed in institutions. Significant scientific discoveries were made in the well-funded laboratories of government research facilities or university departments. Great literature was written with grants from the NEA. Crimes were solved by the police. Why the police chose to put up with G. Demarkian, Shelley would never understand. Shelley made a point of never having anything to do with anybody who was even so much as fifteen pounds overweight, if she could help it. Fat was an infallible indicator. Anybody who let himself get fat had to have something wrong with his character.

  Shelley put up with Sarah Meyer because she was stuck with Sarah Meyer, just the way everybody else was. Shelley had discussed Sarah’s weight with Lotte and been told her to mind her own business. Lotte was very European that way. Europeans didn’t understand how important it was to bring the natural appetites under control.

  Sarah didn’t seem to care. Shelley had asked her down to the bar to take some notes. As soon as she’d gotten there, Sarah had ordered a turkey sandwich with mayonnaise and a glass of diet Coke. Shelley supposed the diet Coke was a step in the right direction, but the sandwich was something else. She hated to see fat people eat.

  “You should have had a salad,” she said to Sarah, unable to help herself any longer.

  “I don’t like salads,” Sarah told her. “And besides, I can’t eat them with one hand and take notes with the other.”

  “I’m sure we could break for fifteen minutes to let you eat a healthy dinner.”

  “I don’t want to eat a healthy dinner. I don’t like healthy dinners. And there’s nothing unhealthy about a turkey sandwich.”

  “Mayonnaise is nothing but fat.”

  “You’re not my mother, Shelley. You’re not even my boss. If we’re going to finish this memo, we ought to get on with it.”

  Shelley knew that if she had been the boss, instead of Lotte, Sarah would never have been hired. DeAnna Kroll might never have be
en hired, either. Shelley would have run a much tighter ship.

  Shelley picked up the notes she had brought down from her room and turned a little to the side, so that she wouldn’t see Sarah when she accidentally looked up.

  “Carmencita is doing her best to find us another serial killer, but at this point we can’t count on her being successful. Especially as long as there’s a chance that Herbert Shasta—ah—”

  “Offed Max,” Sarah said helpfully.

  “Whatever. You ought to be much more careful of the language you use, Sarah. You’ll never get anywhere really important if you sound like an illiterate street urchin.”

  “It’s all because of my disadvantaged background,” Sarah said sweetly. “Because I went to Wellesley instead of to Hunter.”

  “Lotte still wants to use Gregor Demarkian on a program,” Shelley said, “whether or not we can get a serial killer for him to debate with, but that’s going to have to wait, too. At least until the investigation is over. What we’ve decided to do is to go on tomorrow with what we were always going to go on tomorrow. The shoe fetishists.”

  “Maria Maples’s manager was accused of being a shoe fetishist,” Sarah said. “Did we get him?”

  “No. We have three men from the Shoe Lovers Liberation Army and four from Shoe Fetishists Anonymous.”

  “Are they going to be anonymous?” Sarah asked.

  “Of course they’re not.” Shelley was exasperated. “None of these people are anonymous anymore except for the real addicts, the alcohol and narcotics people. And even some of them like to go on television. These are shoe fetishists.”

  “So?”

  Shelley shrugged. “Lotte never goes to support groups unless she knows the people in them are ready to talk. She’s got ways of finding out. She’s good at it.”

  “Lotte found Maximillian in a support group,” Sarah said, “did she ever tell you that? She found him in a support group in Queens. It was supposed to be very funny.”

  “A support group for what?”

  “A settlement house kind of thing, you know. Where people went to get help with their English and tell each other how to apply for jobs and things like that. Lotte went because the same social worker who ran that group ran one on self-esteem for dwarfs—”

  “I remember that show.”

  “—and Lotte got to the place early and there was Max. It was right after Bill Rachetti quit to move to Florida.”

  “I ought to move to Florida,” Shelley said. “God, it’s awful about Max. It was awful about Maria.”

  “And bad luck is supposed to come in threes,” Sarah said.

  Sarah had finished her sandwich and gone to work on the potato chips that came with it. She ate them daintily and with deliberation, as if pointing out to Shelley how much she enjoyed each one.

  “Let’s get back to the show,” Shelley said. “We’re going to need a split stage. I’m going to want Max—well. It won’t be Max, will it? I’m going to need someone to toss furniture for me at five A.M.”

  “WKMB will supply somebody. They do when our guy is sick.”

  “You better call them and tell them our guy is more than sick. Five A.M. We’ve got about thirty pairs of shoes in boxes in the truck. I’ll need them all. I’ll also need a wider than usual coffee table to put them on. And a cloth. A white tablecloth. Do we have one of those?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I didn’t pack the truck.”

  “If we don’t have one, we’re going to have to get one. The shoes won’t show up against the wood grain of the tables we’ve got. Maybe WKMB has a different kind of table. Ask.”

  “Now?”

  “As soon as we’re done here.”

  Sarah flagged down the waitress. “I’m going to be up all night the way this is going.”

  “Do you really think you ought to order dessert?”

  “I’ll have a hot fudge brownie with chocolate ice cream,” Sarah told the waitress. “And yes I do think I ought to have dessert.”

  “It’s your life.” Shelley shrugged.

  “It was Max’s life this morning, wasn’t it? Dragging things around for you and getting himself killed.”

  “What was that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean nobody ever saw him come up after he took the chair downstairs,” Sarah said. “I heard the police talking about it. And that Mr. Demarkian. Max left the studio to take a chair downstairs for you, and that was the last anybody saw of him until he turned up dead.”

  “And?” Shelley insisted.

  “And nothing. But it’s true. They were all saying how strange it was. I mean, you could hardly miss him, could you? He’d have been carrying something heavy. He was supposed to bring up the blue chairs. But he didn’t.”

  “That’s true,” Shelley said. “He didn’t.”

  Sarah leaned far across the table, so that in spite of the fact that she couldn’t see Shelley’s face—Shelley was still turned away—she could breathe down the side of Shelley’s neck.

  “Do you know what else they thought was strange?” she said. “You. You didn’t complain. Max just left the studio and disappeared, and you didn’t say a thing.”

  “I was busy.”

  “You were busy putting the sets together, but you couldn’t do that without Max, could you? You should have been hollering the place down.”

  “Is this your own bright idea?” Shelley asked coldly.

  Sarah shook her head. “It was Demarkian’s. At least, that’s who I heard talking about it. And talking about you.”

  “Demarkian is a fraud.”

  “He solved that murder the nuns had a few months ago,” Sarah said. “And he solved the murder of Donald McAdam back around Thanksgiving.”

  “He horned in on a perfectly legitimate police investigation and made himself look good to the media,” Shelley said sharply.

  “Lotte and DeAnna have asked him to look into the deaths of Maria Gonzalez and Max Dey. Officially, you understand. For the program. He’s going to be a consultant.”

  “Lotte and DeAnna need to have their heads examined.”

  “Demarkian said figuring out where Max was after he left the studio with that chair is the most important part of this case. I heard him. He said figuring out where Max was then is the key to everything.”

  “That’s just wonderful. I hope he finds what he’s looking for.”

  “Oh, he will. Gregor Demarkian always finds what he’s looking for. That’s the point of Gregor Demarkian.”

  The waitress had arrived with Sarah’s hot fudge brownie. Shelley watched horrified as it was lowered onto the table at Sarah’s place, a mountain of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and maraschino cherries. It looked like an illustration from that children’s game Candy Land, where every move brought players in closer contact with sugar. Sugar. Shelley was nauseated by the very thought of sugar.

  “My God but that’s disgusting,” she said.

  Sarah shoved an overflowing spoonful of whipped cream and sprinkles and cherry into her mouth.

  “I’ll tell you what’s disgusting,” she told Shelley. “You. You’re disgusting. The things you do. The things you think you can get away with.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing you have to worry about, you think.”

  “Sarah.”

  “You shouldn’t leave the evidence lying around where people can find it,” Sarah said. “You shouldn’t think everybody’s as blind as a bat. You shouldn’t think everybody’s as dumb as your husband, either.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  This time, when Sarah dug her spoon into her hot fudge brownie, it came up dripping with ice cream and fudge as well as whipped cream and sprinkles. Sarah shoved the entire mess into her mouth—and it all got in there, Shelley noted, all of it, the woman had an enormous mouth—and grinned.

  “Under the circumstances,” Sarah said, swallowing, “considering who’s dead and everything, and who you’ve been sle
eping with, and how one thing might relate to the other, I think it would be a really good idea if I went and told all this to Gregor Demarkian.”

  It was like having a hot flash. It really was. Shelley had never had a hot flash, but she was sure that this must be what it was like. The world going red. Getting up out of your chair and onto your feet and not remembering doing it. She was going crazy.

  “You little bitch,” she said.

  Sarah made another attack on her hot fudge brownie. “He was sleeping with Maria, too. On and off. I’ll bet Gregor Demarkian would like to know that, too.”

  “Why don’t you just rent the electronic billboard in Times Square and announce it on that?”

  “They’re both dead,” Sarah said pleasantly, “and nobody knows why. Maybe this is why.”

  “If it is, you’re being very stupid, Sarah. If it is, you’re asking to get your head smashed in.”

  “I won’t get my head smashed in. I’m too careful to get my head smashed in. You should have been more careful.”

  “Maybe I’ll just kill you right here.”

  “Maybe you won’t.”

  “You shouldn’t lie to people, Sarah. Max wasn’t sleeping with Maria Gonzalez. He tried and she turned him down. She was a good Catholic virgin. He told me.”

  “Maybe he was just trying to make you feel better. On account of your—advanced age.”

  The little pile of scrap paper that constituted Shelley’s notes was still lying on the table. Shelley snatched them up and shoved them into her blazer pockets.

  “You little bitch,” she said again. “If you ever, ever spill this slime to anybody I’ll kick you right in your fat ass.”

  “I’ll sue,” Sarah said happily.

  And that, Shelley thought, as she steamed across the atrium to the elevator bank, was the problem with the twentieth century.

  In the days of Ruth and Naomi, she could have cleaved Sarah’s head with a meat ax and had a halfway decent chance of being considered justified.