Stillness in Bethlehem

by Jane Haddam

  “There were those hunting accidents,” the other waitress said.

  Faith crinkled her nose. “It’s not the same thing. You know what I mean. There isn’t any crime.”

  “I’m not investigating a crime anyway,” Gregor told them. “I’m just being impossibly nosy.”

  “And you came all the way up to Bethlehem, Vermont, to do it?” Faith looked skeptical.

  “I came all the way up to Bethlehem, Vermont, to see the Nativity Celebration,” Gregor said. “I really am just being nosy. About some people I saw having an argument down on Main Street near the newspaper building. I’ve got no good reason for wanting the information at all.”

  “You mean you want to gossip,” Faith said, laughing. “Sure. Go ahead. We gossip all the time. Ginny was born here, but I came out just for the year—”

  “We’re both taking a year off from Middlebury College,” Ginny said.

  “—and we spend most of our time talking about the people, because I can’t stand not being filled in. What do you want to know?”

  Gregor glanced back at his own table, but there was nothing to worry about. Bennis and Tibor were still bent over the brochure, and Bennis had started to write on paper napkins. Once Bennis started writing on paper napkins, she was occupied until someone came along to distract her. Gregor turned back to Faith and Ginny and described the scene on Main Street in as much detail as possible, including his impressions of both women and his instinctive distrust of the man.

  “Well,” Faith said when he had finished. “Your friend was right. The small blonde woman is Candy George. She is playing Mary this year.”

  “The taller one is Cara Hutchinson,” Ginny said. “She was two years behind me in high school—in fact both of them were—but Cara is a big deal. Vice president of her class. Honor student. On the debate team. Candy is—”

  “Married,” Faith said.

  “To Reggie George. He was in my class in high school, if you could call that being in a high-school class, if you know what I mean. Bikes and black-leather jackets. He’s supposed to be a good mechanic, though. My father says Reggie got a job out at Mitchell’s Texaco and he’s doing really well.”

  “He hides her,” Faith said.

  “What?” Gregor asked.

  “He hides her,” Faith repeated.

  Ginny explained. “He won’t let Candy leave the house usually,” she said. “He won’t let her have friends over, and he never lets her have enough money to have lunch in town or keep up with anyone she knows. Of course, everybody just assumes he’s beating her up—”

  “When I first came here, she’d just been chosen to be Mary and it was a big deal,” Faith said, “because everybody was surprised he let her try out, and everybody was even more surprised he let her take the part when she got it.”

  “And it was all Peter Callisher’s fault in the first place,” Ginny said. “Peter Callisher owns the paper. He’s on the Celebration committee every year, and he saw Reggie and Candy in the pharmacy or someplace one Saturday last July and he just walked right up and told Candy she ought to try out.”

  “It’s supposed to have made Amanda Ballard fit to spit,” Faith said.

  “Who’s Amanda Ballard?” Gregor was confused.

  “She’s Peter’s girlfriend,” Ginny told him. “She’s supposed to have wanted to play Mary herself, but she didn’t try out and that might just be talk—”

  “Because nobody likes Amanda Ballard anyway,” Faith summed up. “I mean, it’s hard to like someone who looks like a miniature version of Michelle Phillips at twenty and is supposed to be a saint at the same time.”

  “Not that she’s twenty,” Ginny put in. “She’s supposed to be something like thirty-five.”

  “Why is she a saint?” Gregor asked them.

  Faith shrugged eloquently. “It all depends on who you listen to. It’s because of this man, Timmy Hall, who is mentally retarded and was in Riverton, which is a place with a lot of different things going on for people who aren’t all there. You know, like the mentally retarded and crazy people and—”

  “And druggies,” Ginny said. “That’s why there’s so much talk—”

  “—because Amanda knew Timmy Hall when Timmy Hall was at Riverton, and then she got him the job here when he was ready to come out and live on his own because they train mentally retarded people to be self-sufficient, that’s one of the things they do. And then some people started to say that she knew him because she used to work with retarded children up there, but other people said it wasn’t retarded children at all, it was a drug problem, and they met in the patients’ lounge or something because all the patients mingle together up there unless they’re like in maximum security.”

  “And she’s so cold,” Ginny said, “people don’t take to her.”

  “But it’s probably all a bunch of junk, because around here people just go on talking.” Faith laughed again. “Listen to this,” she said. “You get a little gossip going, you get information about people you’re not even interested in.”

  “If you let us go on for a while, we’d probably give you capsule histories of everybody in town,” Ginny said. “But if you’re worrying that Reggie was going to hurt Candy over some scene with Cara Hutchinson—Cara was probably just trying to get Candy to quit; she’s been at that for months—anyway, I wouldn’t worry. Reggie really wants Candy to play Mary. It inflates his ego.”

  “Do wife beaters have egos?” Faith asked.

  “Oh, well, they must,” Ginny said. “If you don’t have an ego, you aren’t anybody.”

  “Is Reggie George anybody?”

  “I think I’d better get back to my table,” Gregor said. “My friends are going to start wondering where I’ve been. Thank the both of you very much for the information.”

  “Thank you for asking for it,” Ginny said. “Now, the next time we run into Peter Callisher, we get to tell him we’ve actually spoken to his hero, the great detective, Gregor Demarkian.”

  “The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot,” Faith said brightly.

  “The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot is going back to his table,” Gregor said, and he started to do just that. He was so intent in escaping the rash of jokes on Poirot, Christie and Armenian-Americans that he was sure were about to arise from the cauldron of bubbling giggles that was Faith and Ginny talking to each other, that he was halfway there before he realized Bennis and Tibor were not alone. With them was an older man with gray hair and a sagging face, holding his hat in his hands and standing just a little to the side of Bennis’s chair. Bennis was looking up into his face and trying to seem interested, when what she really was was amused. Gregor knew the signs.

  He walked up to the table, put his hands on the back of the chair that would be his if he sat down and said, “Excuse me. Do we know you from somewhere?”

  “We don’t know him,” Bennis said solemnly, “but he knows us.”

  “He has read about you in the paper,” Tibor said. “You see, it is how I have told you, Krekor. In this place, you are famous.”

  “It’s not just in this place,” the older man said fervently. Then he blushed, turned away, looked at the ceiling, looked at his shoes, looked out the window. Then he turned back to Gregor and stuck out his hand. “I’m Franklin Morrison,” he said. “Chief of police for Bethlehem, Vermont. And Mr. Demarkian, you have no idea how glad I am to get my hands on you.”

  Three

  1

  FOR AMANDA BALLARD, HAVING sex was like eating vanilla ice cream: a fundamentally unpleasant physical activity that could be endured with patience; an unfortunate social necessity that could be learned well enough to put on automatic pilot. It was now four o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, December 15th, and Amanda had been on automatic for several hours. That was because Peter had wanted to spend the day in bed. Peter always wanted to spend Sundays in bed. He said it was his new religion, now that he had given up the old one, which had been Presbyterian or something equally Old New Engla
nd. Amanda hadn’t been paying attention when he told her. She had been paying attention when he told her about the sex, because she had had to. His attitude bewildered her completely. Peter was not the first man Amanda had slept with. He was not even the first man she had made the decision to sleep with. He was the first one who had been really involved with sex. In Amanda’s experience, what men really wanted in bed was a fast and furious in and out and a ricocheting payoff. If they got that, they really didn’t care about anything else. Peter always wanted her to feel things and make little cries in the dark. In the beginning, it had left Amanda feeling frustrated, confused and angry. Then she had done a very sensible thing. She went to Burlington twice a month to buy books. On one of those trips, she stayed a little later than usual and went to the movies. The movie she saw was called Having Miss Smith, and it had been a revelation. At times it had made her physically ill. Amanda thought she might have missed half the movie—which was shockingly short, considering what they charged for admission—because of the amount of time she spent with her head between her knees, trying not to vomit. What she had seen had been very useful in the long run, however, and so made all the rest of it worthwhile. On the following Sunday, when Peter had wanted to spend the day in bed, Amanda had come to the project with a whole new set of moves, and Peter had been delighted. He was still delighted. Every once in a while he referred to her “wonderful awakening” and her “exciting responsiveness.” Amanda made noises in his ear, closed her eyes and counted backward from one hundred in her head.

  Right now, Amanda wasn’t counting backward from one hundred in her head, because she didn’t need to. The physical part of this session had reached a climax half an hour ago, and was unlikely to recommence until after dinner. She and Peter were sitting up in bed, half-watching It’s a Wonderful Life and half going through the notes Peter had for the upcoming issue of the paper. They had It’s a Wonderful Life on videotape, which was a good thing. Peter was always complaining about how, in the old days, the television stations used to show Christmas movies in the Christmas season. Now they showed reruns of The A-Team and Starsky and Hutch.

  “We’re going to have to put in more about the shootings,” Peter was saying, “even though Franklin doesn’t know anything and the staties don’t care. It’s all people are talking about. I’m going to put it on an inside page, though.”

  “It’s old news,” Amanda said judiciously.

  “It’s bad news for the Celebration,” Peter said. He put his hands up and rubbed his face. “God, wouldn’t that be awful. All those flatlanders think we’re the next thing to hillbillies up here anyway. Hootin’ and hollerin’ and shootin’ up the scenery as soon as we get lickered up. That’s all we’d need.”

  Amanda cocked her head. “Do you think that’s what happened? A couple of hunting accidents, I mean. Do you think all that’s true?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by all that. I know what the state police said, and they’re supposed to know their job.”

  “Well, yes,” Amanda said doubtfully, “but in this case it’s different, isn’t it? I mean, they didn’t know Tisha the way we knew Tisha.”

  “They didn’t know Dinah the way we know Dinah,” Peter pointed out. “You can hardly say somebody murdered her. She was eighty-something, for God’s sake. She was harmless.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think anybody is ever harmless, not really. People—people push. It has nothing to do with age.”

  “I’d’ve thought this was one conspiracy theory even too bizarre for you. You can’t be serious.”

  “Well, I’m not, really,” Amanda said, but it wasn’t true. She was perfectly serious. She had been thinking all this out for weeks. “It’s just that you have to admit it’s curious. All that with the guns and everything.”

  “They weren’t killed with the same gun.”

  “I know. But wouldn’t you have expected it would have been Dinah who was killed with Stu’s gun and not Tisha? And how did Tisha end up getting killed with Stu’s gun anyway?”

  “Tisha ended up getting killed with Stu’s gun because some asshole teenager took it off Stu’s wall and went blasting into the distance without paying attention to what he was doing. Amanda, we’ve been through all this before. Stu couldn’t possibly have killed Dinah or Tisha or anybody else. He was with me when both those people got shot and for a good long time before and a good long time after. It just won’t add up.”

  “I know it won’t,” Amanda said. “I just can’t help wondering. I mean, the timing was perfect, wasn’t it? Now Tisha can’t file for an injunction and the Celebration is safe.”

  “For the moment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that in all probability the Celebration is unconstitutional as all hell and not long for this world. Is that the downstairs bell? I think somebody’s trying to get in to the office.”

  Somebody was definitely trying to get in to the office. Amanda could hear not only the bell, but the sound of feet pounding against the mat on the porch, trying to stay warm. She got up, took Peter’s terrycloth bathrobe off the chair next to the bed and wrapped herself up. Then she went to the window and looked out. The porch out there had a roof, but only a partial one. If you got the right angle, you could see who was out there calling on you.

  “It’s Cara Hutchinson,” Amanda said. “Should I go down there and see what she wants? We’re supposed to be taking ads today. And announcements.”

  “I’ve got to start hiring somebody to sit at the desk,” Peter said. “This is getting ridiculous.”

  “Should I go?”

  “I’ll go if you want. Just call down and tell her I’ll be a minute.”

  “That’s all right. It’ll take me less time to get dressed than you. I’ll do it.”

  One of the reasons it would take Amanda less time to dress than Peter was that Amanda already had more on than Peter. Peter liked to sit up in bed all day naked, but it made Amanda self-conscious. She got into her underwear as soon as it seemed feasible. She opened the window and stuck her head out into the cold.

  “Cara? It’s me, Amanda. Give me a second. I’ll be right down.”

  Cara backed up and came down the first of the porch steps to the street. “Amanda? Did I wake you up?”

  “No, no. I’m fine. I’ll be right there.”

  “Hurry up. I’m freezing out here.”

  Amanda knew how freezing it was. The wind was blowing in on her and her bones were chilled. This was what they called a “mild” winter in Vermont, and “warm” weather for December. It made Amanda crazy. She searched around in the wardrobe until she found one of her jersey dresses, dropped Peter’s robe to the floor and pulled the dress over her head. It had short sleeves and a wide neckline and was totally inappropriate for the season, but it would have to do. She shoved her bare feet into moccasins and said, “I’ll only be a minute. Why don’t you think about what you want to do about dinner.”

  “Mmm,” Peter said.

  “At least think about thinking about it.”

  “Mmm.”

  Amanda bit her lip. It was impossible, really. It was always impossible with men. They didn’t listen. It had seemed new and unusual with Peter for a while only because he didn’t listen to different things. Amanda let herself out of the bedroom, made her way across the living room and came out on the landing to the stairs. When she got to the next landing, she chose the door into the newspaper offices and made her way around the equipment to let Cara in the front door. She didn’t see any reason to get any colder than she absolutely had to.

  She reached the front door, pulled it open and practically pulled Cara inside. It was getting dark out there, and Amanda always thought it was colder in Vermont in the dark.

  Cara didn’t seem to have spent much time noticing the dark. She came stomping into the newspaper office, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright. She was a plain girl and not one Amanda cared for much—she was too ambitious, for one thing, and too likely t
o cut corners to get what she wanted—but this time her excitement was attractive. She was waving a piece of paper in one of her gloved hands, so Amanda assumed she wanted to place an announcement or an ad. Amanda went behind the ad counter and waited.

  “Oh, Amanda,” Cara said, twirling around on the heels of her snow boots. “You just won’t believe what happened. You just won’t believe what happened to me.”

  2

  Sharon Morrissey spent her late Sunday afternoons in the basement of the First Congregational Church, teaching reading to a small collection of old people who came in from the hills and back roads to expose themselves to this humiliation one day of every week. Most of her old people were women, all but two of them were white, and every last one of them was embarrassed. Sharon got past that by pulling the shades tightly down on the half-windows that looked out on the street and keeping the door shut. She got her old people moving by promising them they would be able to read the Bible in church on Christmas Day. There was now exactly one weekly session left before she’d have to make good on her promise, and she thought it was going to work out. Her group wasn’t ready to plunge into the more unfamiliar recesses of the King James Version, but they ought to do fine with the familiar Nativity narrative of St. Luke. It made Sharon feel as high as liquor ever had, and without the worry about waking up with a hangover. Everything about her involvement with the First Congregational Church made Sharon high. Sharon didn’t know what Congregational churches were like in general, but this one had been wonderful to her without being condescending, and she was grateful. Nobody had made a big fuss about what she was, one way or the other. Nobody had made a point of not making a big fuss about what she was. She and Susan had been accepted without comment or unease. The fact that the literacy project she was working in was sponsored by the First Congregational Church was another reason Sharon liked teaching her old people to read.