by Jane Haddam
Standing in the driveway, Gregor looked around. This was a good neighborhood. There were rubberneckers, but the rubberneckers were discreet. They looked like joggers who weren’t much interested in what the police were doing. The lawns were beautifully kept too—but Gregor saw that they had been badly planned. They were all the same size and shape, like the lawns in a tract house development, and when you looked at them long enough, you noticed. The architecture had been badly planned too. Each of the houses was carefully unlike any of the others, but too much unlike. Gregor looked over the Willises’ Tudor, and then around at a French Provincial, a brick Federalist, and an elaborately gabled and turreted Victorian. Out on the Main Line, where the really rich people lived, the houses were much more alike, and much larger. These looked oddly like stage sets, studied and self-conscious, uncomfortable.
John Jackman touched his elbow. “So,” he said, “what do you think?”
“Expensive,” Gregor said.
Jackman nodded. “Oh, it is that. Houses go for about five hundred thousand apiece.”
“That was the other thing I was thinking,” Gregor said. “That isn’t expensive enough.”
“I know what you mean. The first thing I thought of the first time I walked in here was Bryn Mawr and that place Bennis Hannaford’s family had—do they still have it?”
“It was willed to Yale University after Bennis’s mother died,” Gregor said.
“Right. But that was really a place, wasn’t it? At least forty rooms. All those servants’ quarters. The stables. You couldn’t have fit it on one of these lots.”
“Is this the first of these gated communities you’ve ever been in?”
“Live and in the flesh, yes,” Jackman said. “We don’t have a lot of them in Philadelphia proper, as you can imagine. And they’re not the kind of places the police tend to get called in.”
Gregor shook his head impatiently. “Why do they do it?” he demanded. “What’s the point of the gates and the guards and all the rest of it? They can’t possibly believe it turns them into successors to the robber barons.”
“Of course they don’t,” Jackman said. “They do it to keep the black people out.”
Gregor shot Jackman a look and started to say something, but he didn’t have time. They were being approached by a large white man in a leather jacket. If the man hadn’t been obviously white-haired and old, he would have been menacing. Gregor caught the patch on the sleeve of his jacket and realized it was some kind of police insignia.
“Dan,” Jackman said, holding out his hand. “Good morning. This is Mr. Gregor Demarkian—”
“—the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot,” Dan finished.
“I hope not,” Gregor said.
“Dan Exter,” Jackman finished, “chief of homicide for the Heggerd town police. It says something that a place called Heggerd, Pennsylvania, needs a chief of homicide.”
“It’s not exactly that impressive,” Dan Exter said mildly. “The last murder we had out here was four years ago, and it was an assisted suicide we didn’t even prosecute in the end. Couple of old people. If you don’t like being called the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot, what do you like to be called?”
“Gregor,” Gregor said.
John Jackman rocked back on his heels. In one way, he looked out of place there. He was probably perfectly right about the way the people who lived there felt about black people, and he was so very black. In another way, though, he looked much more like he belonged there than most of the joggers. He was less tentative than they were, more sure of himself, more confident of his authority. John Jackman was a young man, but he had a lot of internal authority. Gregor had met him when he was just a rookie cop, and the quality had been evident even then.
“They’ve been holding off going around the neighborhood,” Jackman said, “because they know what a hassle it’s going to be, and I don’t blame them. Still, it’s going to have to be done.”
“I know it’s going to have to be done,” Dan Exter said patiently, “but it isn’t going to help us any and it’s going to be a problem. Let’s get the important things done first.”
“Somebody might have seen her leave,” Jackman said.
“The security guard saw her leave,” Dan Exter said. “Actually, if you ask me, from what this guy said, the woman made a point of making sure he saw her leave. In fact, from everything I’ve heard over the last few hours, she seems to have made a point of being noticed wherever she went. Did John tell you about the money?” he asked Gregor.
Gregor shook his head. “I thought there had to be money in it somewhere, but he hasn’t said anything in particular.”
“She went to a bank in Philadelphia yesterday,” Jackman said. “It was a couple of blocks from where she parked the car. She wrote out a check for fifteen thousand dollars and handed it to a teller.”
Dan Exter scratched his head. “I don’t know about you, Mr. Demarkian, but it’s my guess that a woman who lived like this in a place like this would know better than to write a check for that much money and hand it to a teller. She would have known she had to clear it with an officer of the bank. She would have known the bank would have to do some reporting—do you realize that? The Feds make the banks report any cash deposit or cash withdrawal in excess of $9999.99.”
“Drugs,” Jackman said.
“Drugs and the Internal Revenue,” Dan Exter said. “Anyway, when the news hit the airwaves last night, we got a call from the manager of the bank branch where she cashed the check—”
“She did actually cash it?” Gregor put in.
Dan Exter nodded. “According to the bank manager, she did. We haven’t really had a chance to go into it. John has one of his people interviewing the woman this morning—”
“Just to go over loose ends,” Jackman said.
“—and of course we want to know about the account and why she went to that particular branch and all the rest of that sort of thing.”
“The branch was near the parking garage?” Gregor asked.
“That’s right,” Dan Exter said.
“And the parking garage, from what I understand, is near the university,” Gregor went on.
“Exactly,” John Jackman told him.
“There might not be much of a reason for her to have chosen that particular branch,” Gregor pointed out. “The university isn’t in the worst neighborhood in Philadelphia, but it’s not in the best one either. I wouldn’t think they get middle-aged women walking in off the street wanting to cash checks for fifteen thousand dollars every day.”
“They get students who overdraw their checking accounts,” Jackman said.
“Go back to the beginning,” Gregor told him. “Patricia MacLaren Willis left here yesterday morning—when?”
“Early,” Dan Exter said. “It wasn’t even eight.”
“And then what happened?”
John Jackman shook his head. “We don’t know. Not yet. The next time we hear about her, it’s when she’s parking at that garage, about noon.”
“And making herself conspicuous?” Gregor asked.
Jackman nodded. “The guy at the garage I talked to myself. She pulled in there and made him sell her an all-day ticket in spite of the fact that the day was half over. Gave him a complicated financial argument, according to him, which probably means she talked common sense for ten minutes. This is not a rocket scientist we’re dealing with here.”
“Then she parked her car and left the garage,” Gregor said. “Then what?”
“Then she went to the bank,” Dan Exter said. “At least, the times are right that she didn’t do anything between the parking garage and the bank.”
“Where she cashed a check for fifteen thousand,” Gregor said. “Then what did she do?”
“She had a big pocketbook,” Dan Exter said. “Something called a Coach bag, according to the bank manager—”
“Coach is a brand,” John Jackman sighed. “I keep telling him.”
“She h
ad the money packed into this Coach bag and left the bank,” Dan Exter said, “and that’s the last we know until the pipe bombs blew a couple of hours later. Which, by the way, is all I think we’re going to know.”
“Somebody will have seen her,” John Jackman said confidently. “Just wait. Somebody always does.”
“Listen.” Dan Exter appealed directly to Gregor Demarkian. “This is a plain, ordinary middle-aged lady we’re talking about here. Not in spectacular shape. Not unusual in any way. Not dressed to be noticed—”
“No?” Gregor asked.
“She was wearing a thin silk blouse and a skirt that was ‘kind of beige,’ according to the bank manager,” Dan Exter said.
“That’s interesting,” Gregor said.
“Anyway,” Exter went on, “the point is, she wasn’t much to look at and she wasn’t a memorable kind of woman. We may find her eventually, but I don’t think she’s going to jump right out and bite us.”
Gregor turned around in a small circle, looking at the big house, looking at the driveway, looking at the other big houses up and down the street. He could see a head at a window on the second floor in the brick Federalist, but otherwise the place seemed deserted. Even the joggers had disappeared. Gregor scratched the back of his neck and wished he hadn’t worn a suit—but he always wore a suit, even to the beach, he didn’t own anything else to wear. He brushed sweat away from his suit collar and started up the drive, knowing that John Jackman and Dan Exter would follow him.
“We might as well get started,” he said. “The longer we hang around, the worse it’s going to be.”
2.
In a routine police investigation—the kind that involves poor people who live in ghettos, and drug deals, and domestic violence—crime scene investigation takes a few hours at best and half a day at worst. The lab people come in and do their dirty work as quickly and efficiently as possible. The police come in and talk to half a dozen people with conflicting stories and another half dozen who want to turn state’s evidence. But this was not an ordinary crime scene. In the first place, there were elements here that were honestly mysterious, even though they would probably turn out to be not so mysterious in the end. In the second place—well, Gregor knew the drill. You had to be careful when you were dealing with rich people, even quasi-rich people, like the ones who lived at Fox Run Hill. Rich people had lawyers and—more important—knew when to use them. Rich people knew their rights. They thought they ought to have more rights than the Constitution already allowed.
Gregor walked through the cavernous garage and into the mudroom. He checked out the wooden pegs artfully hammered into one wall and the bench that had been machine-cut to look rough-hewn. There would probably be a lot of that sort of thing in a place like this. He looked under the bench and found three pairs of shoes: Topsiders; Gucci loafers with pennies in them; Nike running shoes. All three pairs were the same size and made for a man. There were no clothes of any kind on the pegs. There were two baseball-style caps on a shelf over the bench. One of the caps had the words CAPITALIST TOOL printed on the crown. The other had the symbol for the New York Mets.
“Fieldstone,” Gregor said, kicking at the floor.
“This house is big on fieldstone,” Dan Exter told him, “also on beams and dark wood. It’s like a signature.”
“You ought to check out the shoes,” Gregor said. “Just because they’re all the same size doesn’t necessarily mean they all belong to—what was his name again?”
“Stephen Willis,” John Jackman said.
“Mr. Willis.”
Gregor walked up the four steps from the mudroom and opened the screen door there.
“That’s the kitchen,” Dan Exter told him. “Wait’ll you see what it’s like in there.”
Gregor went through the doorway and looked around. What it was like in there was large—too large, like some of the statuary of ancient Egypt, as if sheer size had been the point. There seemed to be two of everything: two sinks, two ovens, two refrigerators, two side-by-side Jenn-Air ranges built into a rounded-corner island. Beyond the island was what looked like an ancient keeping room, complete with an oversized stone fireplace big enough to roast a pig in. Gregor went over there and looked around.
“Can’t you just imagine watching the Eagles on the tube in this place?” Dan Exter asked him, pointing to the enormous television set placed discreetly in a dark wood cabinet, set up in front of a group of black leather chairs. “I’d be worried about making an echo every time I coughed.”
“It’s not exactly homey,” Gregor agreed. “Are those trophies over there on that wall?”
Dan Exter shook his head. “Some of them are, but most of them are decorations. They’re just supposed to look like trophies.”
“What are the real trophies for?”
“Golf,” Dan Exter said.
Gregor walked over to the trophies. Then he walked past them and looked at the bookcase built into the paneling. There were half a dozen books on securities law, one or two on the history of the Civil War, and a collection of the complete works of Tom Clancy in hardcover.
“Was Mrs. Willis a Civil War buff?” Gregor asked.
“Mr. Willis was,” Dan Exter said. “He’s got one of those Civil War chess sets upstairs, you know, where the pieces are soldiers in blue and gray. A really expensive set too.”
“How do you know it belonged to Stephen Willis and not his wife?”
“It was in Stephen Willis’s private closet.”
Gregor looked up at the ceiling. What was above his head right then were dark wooden beams, machine-cut to look hand-hewn. “Is upstairs this way?” he asked, pointing to an archway on his right.
“That’s it exactly,” John Jackman said.
Gregor went through the archway and looked around. There was a broad front foyer out there, and a staircase that curved in an angular sort of way. There was also a closet. He opened the closet and looked inside. There were six men’s coats, including a heavy camel hair and a black cashmere and a leather biking jacket that was much too expensive to have ever belonged to a biker. On the floor were four pairs of rain boots, Wellingtons and fancy galoshes, all men’s too.
“The bedroom’s up here,” John Jackman said, shooing Gregor in the direction of the staircase. “Every house in Fox Run Hill has a formal entry foyer and a grand front staircase.”
“That’s a direct quote,” Dan Exter said, “from the developer who built this place. We talked to him last night.”
Gregor stopped on the landing and looked out the window there, at the road and the houses.
“All the houses in Fox Run Hill have one of these landing things too,” Dan Exter said, “at least as far as I can figure. Or the ones right around here do. You can see it when you’re outside. The window halfway between the other windows.”
Gregor looked out at the big brick house. It had a window just above the entryway, halfway between the windows on the regular floors. “You can hardly tell the police have been here,” he said. “The place is so clean.”
“The place is antiseptic,” John Jackman said. “But you can tell the police have been here when you get upstairs. Just you wait.”
Gregor didn’t have to wait long. He got to the upstairs hall and looked right and left. To one side, the hall seemed as empty and clean as the rest of the house. The wall-to-wall carpeting looked as if it had been fluffed. The walls looked as if they had been polished. To the other side, however, there was chaos. A set of double doors was propped open by what looked like a pair of cardboard boxes. A large young man in a blue police uniform was standing watch between them. Beyond him, Gregor saw mess and insanity. He walked up to the large young man, nodded a greeting, and walked past him into the bedroom. Since John Jackman and Dan Exter were coming up behind him, the large young man did not protest. Gregor walked through to where the bed was and stood at the end of it. The sheets had been stripped from it, showing the bare mattress, still stained with blood. The bloodstains still loo
ked wet.
“I take it he was sleeping when she shot him,” Gregor said to John Jackman and Dan Exter, who had come up behind him.
“Let’s just say the body was in bed when we found it,” Dan Exter said.
“Shot how many times?”
“Three.”
“Any stray bullets?”
“Not that we could find, no,” Dan Exter said. “She fired three shots, she hit him three times.”
“Good hits?”
“One of them was,” Dan Exter said blandly.
“What’s a good hit except that it kills the target?” John Jackman asked. “Jesus Christ, Gregor.”
Gregor walked around the bed to the night table on the right side. This was obviously Stephen Willis’s night table. It had a little brass golf statue next to the lamp. Gregor opened the night-table drawer and found a pack of cards that looked well used and a brown wood pipe with a pouch of cherry tobacco beside it. The pipe was not well used. Stephen Willis, Gregor thought, had been one of those men who wanted to smoke a pipe for the prestige, but who could never get the hang of it.
Gregor walked around the bed to the night table on the other side. There was nothing on this one except the lamp, and nothing in the drawer either, except that sawdusty debris that collects inside wooden drawers after a while. Gregor slid the drawer shut and turned to the line of closets that made up the facing wall.
“Are these all the closets in this suite?” he asked.
“No such luck,” Dan Exter said. “These are his closets, from what I’ve been able to figure out. There are other closets in the dressing room, which is back through there.”
Gregor went “back through there.” The dressing room was large, but mostly with a lot of wasted space. It held a wall of closets and a stationary bicycle that looked even less used than the pipe.
