by Jane Haddam
The door to the dressing room popped open and Clara Walsh stuck her head in. “You can’t just stand around fidget-ing,” she said. “This thing is due to start any minute—”
Gregor checked his watch. “Five minutes,” he said.
“whatever,” Clara said. “We really can’t afford to be late. They’re in a very ugly mood, and the thing with Marcey Mandret this afternoon hasn’t made them any better. It’s useless trying to explain to people that a woman can’t grant interviews when she’s passed out cold, and it’s less than useless to explain why the hospital would be legally liable if it let you take a picture of the woman that way, and so now they’re all snarling, and blaming it on me. I wish you’d hurry up.”
“What about Jerry Young and Don Hecklewhite?” Gregor said. “It would be something if we could announce that we’d found the gun, or something that could be the gun. They don’t need complete forensics for that. They only need to check the raw facts against—”
Clara White made a face. “Honestly,” she said. “We can’t announce that now. We really can’t announce where we found it. I want to keep my job, and I’ll agree that looking like I’m doing something in this case would help with that, but I think Annabeth Falmer would probably have grounds to sue if I let it out like that. Or if you did. Jerry and Don will do what they can. Just hurry up.”
Gregor was hurrying. He watched Clara Walsh disappear through the swinging door and fixed his tie again, unnecessarily. Then he looked at Bram Winder, up and down.
“Are you worried about that?” he asked. “Losing your job?”
“No,” Bram said. “I don’t think Clara is either, not really. She’s just worried she’s going to screw this up.”
“Do you think that gun was the one used in the murder of Mark Anderman?”
“I think only the forensics could tell us for sure,” Bram said, “but you’ve got all the information right there. You’ve got manila envelopes full of it. You could make that call just as well as I could. Maybe better.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “Then I will. I do think it’s going to turn out to be the gun. It smelled new, but that may only mean that it was fired just the one time, and then cleaned. In the short run, though, in the absence of a bullet, it’s going to be very hard to tell. It’s possible that it’s going to be too hard to tell even to bring it into a courtroom. Which leaves a couple of interesting questions.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” Gregor said, “like how it got into Annabeth Falmer’s couch. I think the idea is that we’re supposed to believe Arrow Normand left it there when she was at Anna-beth’s house on the night Mark Anderman was murdered. But that’s got two problems. First is that, from all accounts, Arrow Normand was wearing so little in the way of clothes it would have been impossible for her to conceal a large, heavy gun of that kind on her person. But you know, that’s not really a deal breaker. Stranger things have happened. The deal breaker is something else.”
“What?”
“The fact that the gun smells new,” Gregor said. “If it’s ever been fired, it must have been cleaned. So either the gun is new, and it isn’t the gun used in the murder, or the gun is the one that was used in the murder, but it’s been cleaned. But Arrow Normand has been in jail more or less continuously since New Year’s Eve.”
“New Year’s Day,” Bram Winder said. “Jerry Young didn’t. Well, he wouldn’t. Right on the spot like that, if you see what I mean. He had to—”
“He had to be reasonably sure, yes,” Gregor said. “Still, there isn’t enough time for her to have taken the gun, cleaned it, and then put it in the couch, and why would she want to put it in the couch anyway? She’d only be implicating herself.”
“Maybe she thought she would be implicating Marcey instead,” Bram suggested. “Marcey was there that day too.”
“I know,” Gregor said. “And I know everybody assumes that Arrow Normand is too stupid to walk and talk at the same time, but that’s a little far-fetched. I’d say that she just got a break. If that’s the gun that was used in the murder, and it’s been cleaned, then that fact and the fact that it would have to have been put in the couch well after Arrow Normand was on it pretty much get Arrow Normand off the hook here. It does make it a little more difficult for me. I could have sworn, looking at this material, that there was only one possible solution to any of this, but—”
“Wait,” Bram Winder said. “You think you know who committed this murder? Already?”
“I think there’s only one person where the psychology will fit,” Gregor said. “Although I’ll admit that I’m guessing, since I haven’t really talked to much of anybody yet. If I was constructing this as the plot of a novel, or a television show, or a film—”
“But this isn’t a novel or a television show or a film,” Bram Winder protested. “God, I hate this. The world isn’t a movie. No matter what anybody thinks. In real life, in real crimes, things don’t turn out the way they do on CSI: Miami. Never mind the fact that real-life forensics are not nearly that good. In real life, crimes are messy, and they don’t make much sense.”
“I’m not saying this crime makes sense,” Gregor said. “I’m saying that murders usually have motives. And in this case, there’s only one person for whom there is a motive that makes any sense at all. Even though, as I said, I’m guessing, because I haven’t talked to much of anybody yet. And then there is the problem that although my guess can certainly have committed the murder of Mark Anderman, there are a few other things connected to this case that—well….”
“That what?” Bram Winder said. “That he couldn’t have done? Or she? What other things are connected to this case anyway? I can’t believe you’re doing this. I think you’re crazy. You’re going to get us all killed.”
The room was suddenly filled with the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Gregor got the cell phone Bennis had given him out of his pocket and checked the caller ID. It was Bennis, not Tibor, which probably meant that the call was more than side issues, and he ought to take it. Of course, it could be about the wedding, and then he would have wasted his time.
“Could you give me a second?” he said. “I’ve got to take this call.”
“I think you’re crazy,” Bram Winder said. “I think you’re so crazy, you’re going to be the worst idea Clara ever had, and I’m going to go down with her.”
Then he stalked out of the men’s sitting room with all the dignity of the hero of an Oscar Wilde farce.
2
Gregor Demarkian didn’t really need to take this call right this minute. In fact, in spite of the excuses he made in his own head, he was fairly sure that this could be nothing but Bennis hyperventilating about the wedding again, or, worse, Donna on Bennis’s phone, demanding answers to questions he didn’t begin to understand. Did he want silk or organdy for the bows on the pews at church? Did he prefer gold charms with Jordan almonds for reception favors, or something more modern, but bulkier? He was sure grooms did not have to make these decisions in most weddings. He knew he had never had to make them for his wedding to Elizabeth. Of course, Elizabeth’s mother had been alive, and very active, when that had happened. Maybe Bennis’s problem was that she didn’t have her mother to arrange her wedding.
On the other hand, Bennis’s mother had been a Day, a real daughter of the old Main Line, and having that woman arrange his wedding would probably have been even worse than having Donna arrange it. And he would have liked the people less.
He fiddled with the buttons he got wrong half the time and said, “Hello,” as he put the phone to his ear, hoping. It worked. Bennis’s voice came bouncing at him, a little hiccoughy the way voices on cell phones got.
“You’re supposed to say ‘Demarkian here,’ or something like that,” she said. “Not just ‘Hello.’ ”
“‘Hello’ is what I always say when I pick up the phone.
I’m trying to avoid the imminent start of a press conference here, so I ’d appreciat
e it if you’d talk to me a little. I take it this is about the wedding.”
“No,” Bennis said. “Actually, not, although if you’ve gotten in touch with Janet, I ’d appreciate it. I mean, really, Gregor, hand made chocolates, and all she wants is to sound you out about it. She’s trying to be conscientious here. She is being conscientious here. And they’re very good chocolates. So cooperate.”
“I thought you said this wasn’t about the wedding,” Gregor said.
There was a sigh on the other end of the line, the kind of sigh all women perfected, on the assumption that all men were inherently impossible. “I called a friend of mine,” Bennis said. “I mean, I know you said to check the Internet, and I would have gotten around to it eventually, and I will if you still want me to. But I called a woman I knew at Vassar. At the moment, she’s the editor in chief of Celebrity magazine.”
Gregor thought about that for a moment. “Should I be impressed with that?” he asked.
“Well, Iris isn’t,” Bennis said, “but for your purposes at the moment, she’s perfect. Celebrity magazine is about celebrities, which Iris defines as ‘people who are famous who haven’t actually done anything.’ I thought that was a little harsh, considering the fact that the celebrities you’re interested in are all making a movie, which is doing something, if not something as important as bringing an end to the conflict in Palestine. Is Stewart Gordon going to come to our wedding?”
“If you invite him, he probably will,” Gregor said. “Although I think he’s falling in love, so you’d better let him bring a guest. Does this Iris person know where Steve Becker is and what’s he’s doing?”
“Yes, she does,” Bennis said, “and she knows a lot more than that. Steve Becker is associate producer on a movie tentatively called Nemesis Rising that is, at the moment, filming somewhere in Canada. He started there on December fifth. Don’t go looking in your notes. I have it. The Las Vegas trip was November eleventh. Anyway, it’s anybody’s guess how he suddenly got to be an associate producer when all he was on that movie of yours was a grip, but the general feeling seems to be that Michael Bardman paid him off.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “Even I’ve heard of Michael Bardman. Isn’t he the head of some studio or the other?”
“Of Archer Entertainment, yes, which is a production company, which is not exactly the same thing as a studio. But it’s also Archer Entertainment that’s making your movie, so you see how that could work.”
“Michael Bardman is out here?” Gregor asked.
Bennis was exasperated. “Of course not. Michael Bard-man doesn’t go running around to location sites for minor films, even his own minor films. He’s always got some guy on the production whose main job is to report to him and keep things moving and cool. On your movie, it’s a guy named Carl Frank. His official title is head of public relations for the movie, or something like that. If you haven’t seen him around just yet, there’s this picture of all of them, well not really of him, of Arrow Normand and Steve Becker and Kendra Rhode and all of them when they first got to Vegas on that ridiculous trip—”
“I know the picture,” Gregor said. “They’re all standing in a line with their arms around each other’s shoulders.”
“That’s the one. Carl Frank is just in the background to the left, practically like the devil waiting to score a soul. Or something. Ignore me. I’ve been talking to Tibor. They’re all in that picture. Carl Frank is in the back. Mark Anderman is standing next to Kendra Rhode with his left arm around her neck, practically hanging on her, and Steve Becker is on the other side of her, with his right arm around Kendra Rhode and his left behind Arrow Normand’s back. And that, you see, is the big deal. The picture.”
“The picture is a big deal?” The door to the dressing room had opened and Bram Winder was standing in it, looking thunderous. Gregor waved him away and turned so that he couldn’t see him. “It didn’t look like a big deal,” Gregor told Bennis. “It’s a staged shot, from what I can see. And there’s something wrong with the light.”
“I know,” Bennis said. “The flash glinted off somebody’s jewelry and spoiled the effect. But it doesn’t really matter what the effect is, because that picture is the only one. There are some other pictures, single shots here and there, a few people got with cell phone cameras, but the thing about the Vegas trip is that they managed to go out there without the usual army of photographers. According to Iris, that’s because of two things. First, there weren’t that many photographers hanging around the set on Margaret’s Harbor before the murder. There were a few, you know, but these guys have to make a living, and there wasn’t enough action on Margaret’s Harbor to make it feasible for most of them to hang on full-time. Add to that the fact that Kendra Rhode had adopted some local newspaper reporter as practically her court photographer, and most of the big-time guys stayed in L.A. The other thing has to do with the posses.”
Gregor sighed. “I take it we’re not talking about the old West,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bennis said. “No, the posses are the entourages, what these people call their entourages. Most of them travel with huge crowds of people. Assistants. Makeup artists. Hair people. Other people who just seem to be along for the ride. Iris said something about one woman who does nothing but carry water for somebody. I’m sorry, I can’t remember who. Anyway, the posses are huge, usually between thirty and fifty people, and they’re all paid. And they’re not in Margaret’s Harbor, because Michael Bardman had a full-time fit about the way they were mucking up the filming. Apparently the movie is over budget and behind schedule, and somewhere around the middle of October he told Arrow Normand and Marcey Mandret to send their people home for the duration or he’d fire both of them. And he didn’t just tell them. He wrote a letter and he leaked the letter to CNN, so it was all over everywhere. Anyway, they took the hint, and the entourages dispersed to points unknown, probably back to California. So there was nobody to alert the press when Arrow and friends took off for Las Vegas. Do you see what I mean?”
“Sort of,” Gregor said. “This was a stealth operation.”
Bennis laughed. “Nothing with these people is really a stealth anything,” she said, “but without the posses it was a lot easier for them to move around without being noticed, and they did. They were in Vegas for hours before anybody from the press realized they were there. They came in on a private jet. Kendra Rhode’s private jet, by the way. They hired a car to take them to the hotel. They checked in. They got dressed up and went out. They had time to pose for that picture you saw, and probably a lot of other things, and it was nearly eleven before the regular press knew they were there. And then they weren’t for much longer. They just retreated to the Hugh Hefner Suite and made like a fortress. And then, the next day, they came home.”
“With somewhat more publicity?”
“A little more,” Bennis said, “but it was very early in the morning, around six or seven, so not as much as you might think. And it’s driving everybody crazy. Because this local guy, the one Kendra Rhode turned into something like her personal photographer on Margaret’s Harbor, he was with them, and people saw him taking pictures, but the only picture that’s ever come out has been that one I told you about, the one you saw, with all of them together. There are people who’d pay a lot of money for a few more of them, especially if there are any from inside the Hugh Hefner Suite. Iris said people have contacted this guy, this—”
“Jack Bullard,” Gregor said.
“That’s right. That’s it. People have contacted him, but all he says is that he doesn’t have anything to sell, which nobody on earth believes. The best guess there is that he’s saving them up for a book for later, that there’s something really nasty in what he’s got, something unusual. But so far, not a thing. And Iris says the word around town is that Kendra Rhode has dumped him anyway—nobody will say why.”
“But presumably because of something in the pictures,” Gregor said.
“I told yo
u I could do better than just look up things on the Internet,” Bennis said. “Is any of this any help to you at all? Does it make any sense? None of these people make any sense to me, and I’ve been around famous people most of my life.”
Gregor was going to tell her there was a difference between fame and celebrity—it was a lecture he’d heard more than once from Father Tibor—but Clara Walsh had slammed back the dressing room’s swinging door and was marching on him, men’s room atmosphere be damned.
3
When Gregor finally went into the Versailles Room, it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, although it was odd enough. The room lived up to its name in some ways. The walls were all lined with mirrors, making the space look seven or eight times as large as it was. And the space was large enough. Gregor had been to the palace at Versailles. He had seen the original Hall of Mirrors. It was, by modern standards, a rather smallish room, nothing to rival even Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, never mind major public spaces like the Colosseum or Madison Square Garden. This space was twice the size of the room it was trying to imitate, yet in spite of that, and in spite of the illusion created by the mirrors, the men and women sitting in row after row of wooden folding chairs looked cramped. The cameras and the light crews just looked out of place.
Still, in spite of all Clara Walsh’s talk—and Stewart Gordon’s—about ravaging hordes, the crowd was polite and orderly enough, and at least the front ranks of it were filled with people Gregor recognized from news outlets he understood. CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, Fox. The names were familiar and familiarly unthreatening, and for some reason all their major correspondents seemed to be in their forties or above. It was in the rows at the back that Gregor could see the trouble coming. All those were filled by people he did not know, from places he had never heard of, and most of the correspondents were young. That, he thought, would be the Internet contingent, the infamous blogs, the people he was supposed to be afraid of. He tried to concentrate on the rows in the middle, where most of the print media was. The New York Times was up front, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer—well. Gregor supposed that Cleveland was used to taking a backseat to New York.
