by Jane Haddam
“People are just worried about you,” Emma said stiffly.
Peggy smiled stiffly and drifted off between the shelves, picking things up and putting them down again. Emma had the almost desperate need to run down to where she was and grab her, as if Peggy’s touching the things in the shop would taint them somehow. She wished she wasn’t sweating so heavily that the sides of her dress had begun to feel damp.
“Look,” she said. Her voice sounded shrill even in her own ears.
Peggy looked up from a shelf full of hand-painted porcelain teacups and said, “I was just wondering if you knew anything about it. If you’d talked to her and what she’d said. That she was going to write an article about us. Maris said it was supposed to be some kind of true crime about Michael Houseman and her being stuck in the outhouse and all that. Because of the stories in the tabloids. To clear her name.”
“I don’t know, Peggy,” Emma said. “How would I know?”
“I went to the library,” Peggy said. “I went a couple of times. And I read some of her articles and her books, and it isn’t the sort of thing she writes about. But maybe I was looking at the wrong things. I don’t really understand how those things work. So I figured, if you’d talked to her—”
“I haven’t.”
“We’d all look awful, if she wrote an article about us. We’d all look like Nazis. I don’t know what the board of education would think.”
“The board of education is made up of people who’ve known us since we were all in diapers, mostly because they were in diapers, too. This is a silly line of thought, Peggy. It doesn’t matter what Betsy Wetsy does. After yesterday, she won’t ever show her face in town again. Leave it alone.”
“Why after yesterday? Do you think she murdered Chris?”
“I don’t know if she murdered Chris,” Emma said, “but there’ve been reporters in town all day, and I heard from Mrs. Cadwallader who lives out in Stony Hill that there were hundreds of them out in front of Betsy’s house this morning. They practically stormed the front door. Betsy and Jimmy Card and the boys have all disappeared somewhere. I don’t even know if they’re in town anymore. And Betsy’s mother is in the hospital. It doesn’t matter what she was intending to do. This changes everything.”
Peggy put down whatever it was she’d been holding. Emma couldn’t tell what it had been.
“Well,” Emma said.
“Is it still raining?” Peggy said. “I ought to go back to the library. I ought to go up and see Maris and Belinda, if they’re home. I so rarely get a day free to myself.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t see Betsy in person,” Peggy said. “It’s too bad she’s hiding out now or whatever she’s doing. I would have liked to talk to her.”
“Call her office in New York and make an appointment.”
“You don’t take it seriously. You never take anything seriously. But she could make us sound like Nazis, if she wanted to.”
Emma couldn’t get past the feeling that there was no reason why Betsy Toliver should want to, but on this matter she knew she was in the minority.
Peggy came up from the shelves to the counter and picked up her pocketbook. She’d left it there when she first came into the store. “Well,” she said, “I’ll be going.”
“If you’re trying to fool Stu that you’ve been at work, you’d better be careful.”
“I can’t fool Stu about anything,” Peggy said. “You don’t understand. None of you do. Stu is a genius.”
Stu is a jerk, Emma thought, but that was something there was no point in saying, and she just clamped her mouth shut and watched Peggy go back on out the door. When the door opened the sound of the rain was deep and thunderous. When the door closed, the cowbell tinkled faintly in the wind the door created. Peggy went down the front steps. She did not hold her pocketbook over her head to stave off the rain. She did not hunch her head. She walked as if not a drop of water was landing on her.
Maybe, Emma thought, Peggy had always been schizophrenic, or whatever it was, and they had never noticed.
SEVEN
1
Gregor Demarkian had no idea how difficult it would be getting anything done in this kind of downpour. More than once over the course of the morning, he wondered desperately if Kyle Borden wasn’t engaging in some kind of criminal stupidity. For all Gregor knew, the National Weather Service might already have declared an emergency. The whole area might already be under orders to evacuate to higher ground—although it would be difficult to get much higher than they were now without climbing into the trees and brush that carpeted the mountains above them. It was eerie. Nobody they saw on the street seemed to be panicking, either. The stores were all open. The lights were all on. The people drinking coffee in JayMar’s were reading newspapers. The reporters were easily recognizable as people trying to use cell phones that didn’t work.
Now Kyle pulled into the parking lot behind the police station and shut off the engine. “That wasn’t very helpful, was it?” he said. “You got anything in those notes you took?”
Gregor flipped the pages of the notebook back and forth. “I was thinking about something. What about the others?”
“What others?”
“The other girls who were part of the group that night in 1969. So far, everybody we need to investigate seems to be part of that group. The victim was part of that group. Mrs. Grantling and Mrs. Bligh were part of that group. What about the others?”
“Well,” Kyle said, “Maris Coleman was part of that group. She’s on our list for investigation, too.”
“That makes four. There were six,” Gregor said.
“Peggy Smith and Nancy Quayde,” Kyle said. “They don’t have anything to do with this, do they?”
“I don’t know. Had they remained friendly with Chris Inglerod? We can’t just assume that the solution here will be restricted to the people we already know were at Elizabeth Toliver’s house. What about these two? Do we know where they were? Are we going to talk to them?”
“Oh,” Kyle said. The rain was drumming on the roof. He rubbed his hand against the side of his face and shook his head. “We could talk to them if you want. But it wouldn’t be a very convenient time, right now.”
“Why not?”
“They work at the high school. Peggy teaches something, I don’t remember what. Nancy is the principal. She’ll be superintendent a couple of years from now if she has her way.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “So, what, school’s in session until three o’clock? We can see them after that. But you still haven’t answered my question. Were they still friendly with Chris Inglerod?”
“Nancy was,” Kyle said. “Peggy—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Peggy married Stu Kennedy. I told you what that was like. He doesn’t like her to leave the house.”
“But she must leave it, for work if nothing else.”
“Oh, he doesn’t mind work,” Kyle said. He popped his door open and got out into the rain. Gregor got out, too. “He does mind socializing. Funny how things work out, don’t you think? She chased his ass for years, all through kindergarten, all through grade school. She chased and he ran. When they finally started going out, we were all betting it would last a week and Stu would be off looking for his freedom. And now he won’t let her out of his sight.”
“It’s the way men like that work,” Gregor said. “It’s an issue of control.”
“I know what it’s an issue of,” Kyle said sourly.
They headed to the back door of the police station. They were both so wet, there didn’t seem to be any need to run. They got into the back corridor and Gregor took his jacket off to hang on a peg. Sharon stuck her head in from the main room and said, “That Miss Hannaford called for Mr. Demarkian. She left a number where she could be reached. She said it wasn’t urgent.”
“Ah,” Gregor said. He and Kyle came out of the corridor into the main room. There was now only a single reporter waiting on the
bench in the reception area, and he seemed to be paying more attention to what was on his laptop than to what was going on with them. Kyle led the way into his own office. Gregor looked around. “Could I make a phone call somewhere? Privately?”
“Want to call Ms. Hannaford, do you?”
“No,” Gregor said. “I want to call long distance back to Philadelphia. Don’t worry about it. I’ll use my phone card.”
“Use the phone, for all I care,” Kyle said. “You close yourself in here. I’ll go see if I can get somebody to go get coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Gregor wondered where the Dunkin’ Donuts was—he could use some Dunkin’ Donuts—and then, when Kyle was gone, picked up the phone. He did use his phone card. He didn’t want to get into the habit of making personal calls on police telephones. He heard the phone ring on the other end and almost held his breath. You could never tell when anybody on Cavanaugh Street would actually be in and available to answer his phone, unless you called dead in the middle of the night, and even that might not be good enough for Tibor.
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Six times. Eight. Gregor checked his watch. It was after Tibor’s usual lunch time. When it’s rung twenty-two times, I’ll hang up, he promised himself. Then the phone was lifted on the other end, and he heard a rough gravelly voice say, “Hehn.”
“Tibor?”
“Oh, Krekor, excuse me. I forget my manners. In American, you don’t answer the phone by saying ‘hehn.’ Of course, to say ‘hehn’ is to be more polite than the Greeks are. They answer the phone by screaming and they scream ‘embross!’ It means ‘talk!’ It’s very intimidating.”
Gregor assumed that Tibor was talking about the modern Greeks, not the ancient ones, a good bet since the ancient Greeks hadn’t had phones. He had been talking to Tibor for less than thirty seconds, and already he was off track.
“Listen,” he said. “Bennis is here. Did you know that?”
“I knew she was going up to you, yes, Krekor, she told us all about it. At length. Also, Donna helped her to pack something, I don’t know what, Lida and Hannah put it together. They say there is never any decent food in these small towns.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Gregor said. “I’ve barely had time to eat.”
“If they’d heard that, they would have packed twice as much,” Tibor said. “So, you are all right? Bennis is all right? We listened last night to the story about the murder. It was on the eleven o’clock news.”
“As far as I can tell, it was on the eleven o’clock news in Timbuktu,” Gregor said. “Okay, can you do me a favor? I need to get in touch with Russ Donahue. I would have called Donna, but she’s got class this time of day, hasn’t she?”
“She has class, yes, until four-thirty. Why didn’t you call Russ at his office?”
“I didn’t have the number. You can give him my number, if you want, except that I’m not entirely sure where I’m going to be. I need to get hold of something, called a Regional Crime Report. I’m not sure if they had them for the year I’m looking for.”
“What year is that?”
“1969. In 1969, I was with the Bureau. I wasn’t even in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But if there isn’t actually a Regional Crime Report, there might be something similar, some reporting mechanism that came before it, I don’t know. Russ would know, though, or if he didn’t he’d know how to find out. What I need to do is to get in touch with him and tell him exactly what I’m looking for. Except that I can’t get in touch with anybody, because cell phones don’t work up here. So.”
“So,” Tibor said. “I will get in touch with Russ, and tell him what you want. A Regional Crime Report.”
“For this county, wherever I am,” Gregor said. “Hollman, Pennsylvania. He’ll have to look it up. I’m sorry. I didn’t think to get the information.”
“It’s not to worry about. We’ll think of something.”
“Now, write this down.” Gregor did not doubt that Tibor would write it down, but he did doubt that Tibor would ever again be able to find the piece of paper he’d written it down on. “I need a complete crime survey report for the months of June, July, August, and September 1969. Wait. Make it May and October, too. If Russ asks what I’m looking for, tell him you don’t know, because I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what you’re looking for?”
“Not specifically, no,” Gregor said. “I just—it’s a matter of proportion, that’s all. There has to be something else. Something else then and something else now.”
“Krekor? What are you talking about?”
“Never mind. It might make you feel better to know that I know who killed Michael Houseman.”
“This is the person who died yesterday at Elizabeth Toliver’s house?” Tibor said.
“No, this is the person who died in a park up here in 1969.”
“But, that is good, isn’t it? Isn’t it usually that if you find the person who has committed the one murder you find the person who has committed them all? You told me yourself—”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I know. And you’re right. I just can’t make some things fit together, and the times are all off, and the opportunities are all skewed, and there are five million reporters up here gumming up the works and they give me a headache. And Bennis is here, and you know what that means.”
“Well, yes, Krekor, I do know, but most often I am discreet enough not to mention it.”
Gregor laughed. “Listen, get Russ, tell him what I need, ask him if he’d mind being sure to be in his house and at his phone at, say, around ten tonight. That way I can call him directly and we can talk. How is everything on Cavanaugh Street? How is the woman with the harpsichord?”
“Grace. She is very nice, Krekor, what would you expect ? She has played the harpsichord for me and for old George Tekemanian yesterday evening. It is a very beautiful instrument.”
“Good. If she plays it too loudly, I can always go and sleep on Bennis’s couch.”
“It’s been a very long time since you slept on Bennis’s couch, Krekor. What do you take us for? Lida has been saying—”
“Never mind what Lida has been saying,” Gregor said. “I’ll talk to her when I get back. I’ll talk to you later. Remember. Ask Russ to be at his phone at ten. By then, I should know where I’m spending the next few nights. Did I tell you we’d all been driven out of the Toliver house by reporters?”
“It was on the noon news, Krekor.”
“Right.”
Gregor put down the phone and stood up. Kyle Borden was sitting next to the counter, talking on the phone there. When Gregor came in, he looked up and waved.
“That’s Nancy Quayde over at the high school,” he said, pointing to the receiver. “She sounds really upset. She says we can come right out and talk to her if we want to.”
“Good,” Gregor said, coming over. “What about the other one? Peggy Smith?”
“Peggy Kennedy these days. No such luck. She’s not at work today.” Kyle covered the receiver. “From what I’m gathering here, Nancy thinks Peggy got beat up last night. Peggy called in sick.”
“Does that mean she’ll be home?”
“Well, yeah,” Kyle said. “But I told you. I don’t like the idea of going over there when Stu is home and he’s always home, because he—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Gregor said.
Kyle went back to the phone. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll be right over. You sound like hell … yeah, yeah … I know … I know … I’ve told him. We’ll be over right away. Hold on tight.” He put the receiver back in the cradle.
“So,” Kyle said, “you ready to go?”
2
The Hollman public schools—or a lot of them—were on the top of a hill in the Plumtrees section of town, cordoned off from the rest of the world by a low brick wall and a fancy stone gate with the words “Hollman Educational Park” embedded in one side of it. Above him, in the rain, the “educational park” rose up in a scatte
rshot pattern of low brick buildings. The buildings all had metal letters on them that looked like brass, like the gate. The first one they came to said “Frank A. Berry Elementary School.” Hollman High School was three buildings up.
“What do you think?” Kyle asked.
“I think it looks like a women’s prison,” Gregor said.
Kyle laughed. “They built it our senior year. We didn’t actually get to go here. The town was really excited about this. Our leap into the twentieth century.”
“This is the twenty-first.”
“That was back in 1969. We don’t get around to things real fast up here. We’ll probably hit the twenty-first century in about 2088.” He pulled the car up to the curb in front of the largest building in the “park.”
“You want to make a run for the door?” Kyle said.
Gregor did want to make a run for the door. It was quite close—Kyle had parked right outside, in the fire lane. Gregor stepped out into the wet and bolted for the enormous plate-glass front of the lobby. Kyle was right behind him.
“You wonder what they’re thinking when they build places like this,” Kyle said. “It’s like living in a fishbowl. Literally. All glass.” He grabbed the possibly brass metal handle of the glass door and pulled it open for Gregor to go through. “Principal’s office to your right. There’s a sign.”
There was a sign. Gregor headed through it and found himself in a room very much like the room at the police station, a big space with a counter running across the end of it nearest the door, leaving a small area for people to wait until they could be spoken to. Unlike the area at the police station, though, this one contained more than a single receptionist. There had to be half a dozen secretaries, all working away at computers. Kyle came in and said, “Yo, Lisa. Where is she?”
A dark young woman rose from a desk at the back and came up to the counter. “Hello, Kyle. You must be Mr. Demarkian. She’s in her office. You don’t want to know.”
“We have an appointment,” Kyle said.
