Deadly Beloved

by Jane Haddam

  “If they don’t get married, they’re going to feel pretty silly,” he said. “They’re going to be tripping over this stuff for the rest of their lives.”

  “If they don’t get married, they’re both going to feel miserable,” Tibor said. “And what is worse, Tommy is going to feel miserable too. Bennis is making excuses to Russell.”

  “About Donna? Shouldn’t Donna make her own excuses?”

  “Donna would tell the truth. This is not a girl with a wonderful sense of self-preservation, Krekor. I should say ‘woman,’ except I shouldn’t, because a full-grown woman would have more sense.”

  “Donna is over twenty-one,” Gregor pointed out. “And she has a child.”

  “I wouldn’t care if she had thirty children,” Tibor said. “She is a child. She is especially a child about men. How is it that American girls can grow up with men all over the place, boys in their school classes, dates by the time they’re fourteen, and know so little about men?”

  “Maybe if they knew a lot about men, they’d give up the dates and demand to have duennas,” Gregor said.

  Tibor waved this away. “Don’t be ridiculous, Krekor. When you are in the teenage, the whole world is about sex. You don’t want to have anything to do with a duenna. But Donna should know better about Peter. He is not an unknown quantity. Even in the biblical sense.”

  “Well, she got Tommy out of that, Tibor. Good things come out of messes sometimes.”

  “No good thing is going to come out of this mess,” Tibor said. “I have a plan.”

  “What kind of plan? A plan about what?”

  “About Peter. About what we do just in case he shows up to spoil the wedding. Bennis and I have talked about it.”

  “Peter isn’t going to show up to spoil the wedding. Don’t be silly. Peter’s irresponsible, Tibor, but he’s not a complete fool.”

  “Even you don’t know very much about men.” Tibor said this disapprovingly. “He is a spoiler, that one. He does not like to see other people happy.”

  “You’re making him sound like a psychopath.”

  “If he comes here to stop the wedding, I want you to arrest him,” Tibor said.

  Gregor nearly dropped the silver soup spoon he was holding. It was engraved in curving script HVK. Gregor was careful not to let it go where it might fall down the garbage disposal.

  “I can’t arrest anybody,” he told Tibor. “I’m not even with the Bureau anymore. I’m a private citizen. And what would I arrest Peter for? Being a prime bastard? It isn’t a crime.”

  “You could think of something to arrest him for. It wouldn’t have to stick. It would be only to get him out of the way.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Bennis says that if it is necessary, she could possibly find some marijuana and put that on him and then he could be arrested for that. She says her brother Christopher—”

  “You’re worse than insane,” Gregor interrupted. “Tibor, this is the United States of America. There’s something called the Bill of Rights here. There are also dozens of laws against the kind of thing you’re talking about. Entrapment. False witness. I don’t know. There are laws that apply though, trust me. You’re going to get yourselves into a lot more trouble than you’re going to get Peter into.”

  “I don’t want to get Peter into trouble,” Tibor said patiently. “I just want to get him out of the way.”

  “The next thing I know, you’re going to be talking about cement overcoats,” Gregor said. “You can’t do this.”

  “We can do something,” Tibor said stubbornly. “Listen, Krekor, it is a matter of only one week. At the end of the week Donna and Russ will be married, they will take Tommy off to Disneyland, everything will be all right.”

  “Right,” Gregor said.

  “The important thing is to get through the wedding.” Tibor was adamant. “You do not believe me, Krekor, but it is true. He will come here. I will bet you anything you want.”

  “And I’ll bet you anything you want that he won’t. He isn’t stupid, Tibor. I’ve met him.”

  “Stupidity has nothing to do with it. Could you promise me this? If he does show up, will you keep him away from Donna?”

  “I don’t know if I could do that. Peter is Tommy’s father, no matter what kind of idiot he is. Don’t you think Donna’s old enough to handle these things for herself?”

  “No.”

  Gregor took a piece of loukoumia off a plate of the things in the middle of Tibor’s kitchen table. Even through the powdered sugar he could see that it was one of the pink ones, flavored with rosewater. Since it had come from Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store right down the street, it was also the size of a small brick.

  “If Peter shows up, I promise you that I will do something to make sure that he does not stop this wedding. Not that I think anything can stop this wedding. Donna is just being Donna. When the time comes, she’ll do the right thing.”

  “When the time comes, I will hit Peter over the head with the long staff. I will take the cross off it first, so as not to be sacrilegious. Take some of that loukoumia home, Krekor. I don’t need so much for myself.”

  “I don’t need any more than I’ve got,” Gregor said. “I have a plate in my kitchen just like this one. Don’t worry about Donna so much, Tibor. It will work out.”

  Tibor made a noise, which meant that he didn’t think it would necessarily work out. In his life, things very often had not worked out. Gregor supposed he didn’t blame him, but it made things complicated. Tibor always seemed to make things complicated.

  2.

  The message on his answering machine made things complicated too, Gregor decided. He played the message again when he got up the next morning, but it was just as garbled as ever. He wrote the name “Liza Verity” down on a Post-It note and took it back to the bedroom to check against his notes. He found the name in the list of people who were supposed to be at the reception but had not actually been there. The specific notation was short and unilluminating:

  LIZA VERITY—friend J.C. and K.P. Vassar College—Nurse—Phila.——Did Not Attend

  Gregor took his notes back into the kitchen and put them down on the table. He couldn’t remember when a case had called forth this much ink from him. He seemed to have spent all his time since John Jackman first called him in making lists of things. Lists of Patsy MacLaren Willis’s friends and neighbors at Fox Run Hill. Lists of people who had attended the reception for Karla Parrish. Lists of people who had been in or near the parking garage at the moment when the Volvo blew up.

  Gregor called John Jackman at homicide. When Jackman finally picked up, Gregor announced his name and said, “Well?”

  Jackman blew an exasperated raspberry into his ear. “Well what? We’re checking on it. We’ve been checking on it since yesterday. I can’t find that trustee. He’s off in the Bahamas or someplace. Not that I think that’s going to matter. I don’t think he ever met her.”

  “Did you talk to New Delhi?” Gregor asked. “Was Patsy MacLaren reported dead there in 1969? Did you talk to the U.S. State Department?”

  “We’re working on it, Gregor. For Christ’s sake. We’re not the FBI. We’re working on it. Don’t you have anything to do?”

  “I got a message on my machine. From a Liza Verity. Does that name ring a bell with you?”

  “No.”

  “She was one of the people on the invitations list for the Karla Parrish reception. She never showed up.”

  “Lucky her.”

  “She left a message on my machine, as I said. It’s a little garbled. She seems to want to talk to me.”

  “So talk to her.”

  “I thought you might want to come,” Gregor said. “She was at Vassar with Julianne Corbett and Karla Parrish. And, I suppose, with Patsy MacLaren.”

  “Hundreds of people were at college with Corbett and Parrish and MacLaren. It’s probably nothing.”

  “Didn’t they teach you always to check everything out
?”

  “Sure. They also taught me to have priorities. I’ve got a woman who put three bullets into at least one person and apparently blew up a whole bunch of others into varying states of distress and who now seems not to have existed for over twenty-five years. I’ve got as much to worry about as I want to.”

  “Meaning, I take it, that you don’t want to come with me.”

  “If you mean to see Liza Verity,” John Jackman said, “then no. Not today. I’ve got to straighten this other mess out today. Or at least make some headway with it.”

  “Will you mind if I go out there alone?”

  “No, of course not. You’re authorized. You’re an official consultant. The woman called you. She could have called us, but she didn’t. She called you. Go to it. Maybe you’ll even find out something interesting.”

  “Thanks,” Gregor said dryly.

  “Give me a break, Gregor. I’m trying to find a dead woman here this morning. I’m up to my ass in communications in Sanskrit. Or something. I’ll see you later, all right?”

  Gregor hung up. He went back to his kitchen table and picked at the pastry he had left there on a plate before he’d gone back to the bedroom for his notes. Bennis was supposed to be sleeping late. In spite of the things she liked to say about how tough and unstoppable she was, she had to be exhausted by the traumas of the last few days. Tibor would be up to his neck in church business. There was a wedding coming up. There were also all the usual day-to-day things that had to be done in an Armenian church, especially now that there were so many immigrant Armenians in the neighborhood. Donna would be with her mother, going over wedding arrangements or making sure her dress fit. Either that, or she would be bothering Bennis with one more round of hand-wringing about the Peter situation. Gregor was fairly sure that Donna would not be telling her mother about the reemergence of Peter, because if Donna did that, her mother was likely to walk all the way to Boston just to kill the man. Obviously, there was nothing for Gregor to do on Cavanaugh Street, and there wouldn’t be for most of the day.

  Gregor went back to the bedroom, got into a good pair of light pants and a cotton shirt and a jacket. He had spent all his life wearing suits and he wasn’t about to stop now. Then he made sure he had his wallet and that his wallet had money in it. Then he went out his front door and carefully locked it behind him. Nobody else on Cavanaugh Street locked their doors, but Gregor had been with law enforcement agencies for too much of his life to feel safe about doing that.

  Gregor went down a flight, stopped at Bennis’s door, and listened. No sound at all was coming from in there, not even the rhythmic ritual cursing of Bennis at work at her computer. He went down another flight of stairs and knocked on the door of the first floor apartment. Like many of the people Gregor had known over the age of eighty, old George Tekemanian never seemed to do any sleeping at all.

  Old George called “come in” from someplace inside his apartment. Gregor opened the door—unlocked again; always unlocked—and stuck his head in. Old George was sitting in his wing chair in front of a television set the size of an old CinemaScope screen, watching Blazing Saddles.

  “I’m going downtown,” Gregor said. “You want something from the great world of Philadelphia boutiques?”

  “Not a thing,” old George said. “My grandson Martin has brought me some videotapes. He thinks I will be shocked by them.”

  “And are you?”

  “No. I am embarrassed by the ones with the sex scenes, Krekor, but Martin doesn’t bring those anymore. I like this one. Did you know Peter Desarian wants Donna to give up Russ and marry him instead?”

  “I know. You know. People magazine probably knows by now.”

  “It is a very delicate situation, Krekor. I try to talk to Donna about it, but I can tell she isn’t listening. She thinks I am nothing but an old fart.”

  “Right,” Gregor said.

  “Of course she’s right,” old George said. “I’ve been an old fart for years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to say worth listening to. Especially about conceited little boys like Peter Desarian.”

  “I’ll get you a box of Ring-Dings,” Gregor said. “You can put a bow on them and give them to Martin and Angela for a present.”

  “If I gave Angela Ring-Dings, she would put wheat germ on them,” old George said. “Take care of yourself, Krekor. You’re looking very tired these days.”

  Gregor left old George sitting in the wing chair and went through the main foyer and out the building onto Cavanaugh Street. The sun was hot and bright even this early in the morning. The sidewalks were wet with the residue of a late night rain. Gregor walked out into the street and raised his hand to hail a taxi.

  3.

  Twenty minutes later Gregor Demarkian found himself counting out change on a street corner that looked less like the setting for an apartment building than like the sort of place where factories used to be back when big cities had factories. It was a blank, grimy neighborhood that had been going to seed for so long, it had nearly sprouted. It had none of the usual conveniences of city life. There were no dry cleaners or Chinese laundries—maybe they were Korean laundries these days. There were no delis or coffee shops. There were no newsstands. The only way Gregor knew that he was in the right place was that the building just in front of him had a sign that said BEAUDELIEU ARMS APARTMENTS. The building looked like it might be the perfect place to make hubcaps or sun reflectors. God only knew, it didn’t have enough windows to qualify as housing.

  Gregor saw several people on the street, none of them reassuring figures. There was a classic wino complete with ragged clothes and clear glass bottle in a brown paper bag. There was a young girl nodding out in a doorway, her eyes blank and her mouth slack. From the sateen short shorts she was wearing, Gregor assumed she was meant to be hooking, but somewhere along the way she had scored some dope, and now she didn’t have the energy. There was a bag lady rooting around in the garbage too, but the garbage wasn’t promising. It consisted of newspapers and empty bottles. The glass bottles were broken and the plastic ones were punctured. The bag lady was talking to herself in a language that was not English and not anything Gregor recognized either. It sounded vaguely Slavic.

  Gregor went up to the front door of the Beaudelieu Arms and pulled on the handle. Nothing happened. He saw a buzzer next to the door and pressed it. Nothing happened then either. There didn’t seem to be any other way to get in. He pressed the buzzer again. The day was heating up. Gregor could feel a faint line of sweat along his collar. He had a terrible feeling that the Beaudelieu Arms did not have central air-conditioning.

  Gregor pushed the buzzer again. Nothing happened again. He pushed the buzzer one more time, leaning against it long and hard this time. He could hear the sound of it going off inside, the angry whine. He stepped away from the door and tried to see through the tiny window in the top half of it.

  What seemed like an eternity later, there were sounds of shuffling and cursing inside the building. Gregor tried the grimy window again and got nothing. The door shuddered under his hand and he stepped back. Then the door swung in, open to blackness, and a man appeared who looked every bit as derelict as the wino Gregor had just decided was much too out of it to talk to.

  Gregor cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m looking for a Ms. Liza Verity?”

  The man shifted from one foot to the other, blank. Everything about him was blank. Even his clothes were blank.

  “Liza Verity,” Gregor repeated. “I believe she lives here. I would like to speak to her, please.”

  He might as well have been talking to Hal the Computer—except that it was worse, because Hal the Computer would at least have registered the fact that he was saying something. This man registered nothing. Gregor wondered if he was deaf, or if it was just that he didn’t speak English or had had so much to drink or smoke that he didn’t speak anything. Did he really want to look for explanations in a situation like this?

  He pushed the ma
n aside as gently as possible and walked into the building. Once he was off the street, it wasn’t so bad. The lobby was clean and surprisingly lobbylike. There were a couple of small sofas placed on either side of a low coffee table. It didn’t look as if they had ever been sat in, or as if the coffee table had ever held a cup of coffee. There was some generic modern art on the walls too.

  “Is there a call-up board?” Gregor asked the man. “You know, someplace where I might be able to intercom up to Miss Verity?”

  Blank. Blank, blank, blank. Gregor checked the piece of paper in his pocket with Liza Verity’s address on it. It indicated an apartment on the fourth floor.

  “I’m going upstairs now,” Gregor told the blank man. “To see Miss Verity.”

  Movement toward the elevators did what nothing else had been able to do. The blank man not only moved, he actually spoke.

  “No, no,” he said. “No up.”

  The accent was thick and difficult to understand. Fine, Gregor thought. He wasn’t dealing with a zombie here, only a man who spoke English badly and probably understood it worse.

  “I have to see Miss Verity,” he said again. “In Apartment 4C. Can you call up to her?”

  “No up,” the man said again, much more insistent this time.

  Gregor was sorry he hadn’t called first. Maybe he should leave now and try calling from a pay phone down the street, to have Liza Verity meet him in the foyer. The problem was, he hadn’t seen a pay phone down the street. Like diners and laundries, pay phones were extinct in this neighborhood.