by Jane Haddam
“I’ve got to go,” Fritzie said, suddenly feeling confused.
And she was confused. In fact, she was more than a little horrified. She tried to remember what she had said over the last minute or so of conversation, but all she could retrieve was a vague feeling of: this will get him. She had no doubt whatsoever who the “him” was, it was who the “him” always was except that she would have said, not ten minutes ago, that she didn’t feel that way about Jon at all. And yet, she was not surprised. It was as if the emotion had been there all along, and this man Demarkian had only brought it to the surface. She backed away from him and swallowed, hard.
“You’re nothing at all like a great detective,” she said. “I don’t even like you.”
“Mrs. Baird?” Gregor Demarkian said.
But by now she was almost all the way back to the staircase, ladder, whatever you called it, almost all the way back to her escape route. She’d decided to throw that woman out of Tony’s room and make him talk to her. She’d decided to do something definite, at any rate. It wasn’t true that she felt about Tony just the way she felt about Jon. It wasn’t true that she wanted to kill both of them.
What she really wanted was a Roquefort cheeseburger from Hamburger Heaven and a plate of deep-fried onion rings in batter.
2
“Damn,” Jon Baird was saying, almost two hours later. “There goes another one.”
“Another bridge?” Charlie Shay called back. “The same one?”
“I only have one,” Jon Baird said. Then he stuck his head into the main room of his two-room suite and smiled so that Charlie could see the gap in his gums, a long line of unrelieved pink that ran along the bottom on the right side. Then Jon stuck his hand out and showed off the broken bridge, lying cut in half across his palm. Charlie shook his head, and on the other side of the cabin Calvin Baird wagged a finger in the air.
“That dentist of yours ought to be sued for the work he does,” Calvin said. “Nobody should get away with producing shoddy workmanship of that kind.”
Jon Baird shot Charlie Shay a look, and Charlie found himself smiling, just slightly enough to go undetected by Calvin. Charlie wouldn’t have liked to have had to admit it, but that look had made him feel good, almost physically warm. In the old days, he and Jon had been that way together often, sharing secrets, knowing what each other thought. Theirs had been a college friendship, and like all college friendships it had had elements of small-boyishness in it. They hadn’t cut their fingers and sworn to be blood brothers, but if they had it wouldn’t have been out of place. Then the years had gone by and all Charlie’s inadequacies had been put on display. Charlie didn’t even bother to deny that they were his own inadequacies. There were men who were geniuses at business and men who could get along in it without too much trouble. Charlie would have done himself better service if he’d gone into teaching or art. Jon, being a genius, hadn’t had much patience with that. Charlie didn’t see why he should have. Now, however, Calvin’s prissiness had drawn them together again, temporary though that might be, and Charlie was glad.
“It’s not bad workmanship,” he told Calvin. “It’s the shape the bridge has to be to fit into Jon’s mouth. Jon was warned it was going to be a lot of trouble.”
“I was warned not to eat pistachio nuts, too, but I haven’t stopped.” Jon came in from the back room, fitting the new bridge in place. “These things are put together just like airplane models, I swear. It’s just that they use porcelain instead of plastic. Maybe there are airplane models that use porcelain instead of plastic.”
“Don’t look at me,” Calvin said. “You’re the one who always liked airplane models.”
“I didn’t always like them,” Jon said. “I just put together a few when we didn’t have the money to do much of anything else. Did you two come up with any answers while I was off breaking apart my mouth?”
Charlie looked down at the pile of papers in his lap and sighed. For most of the afternoon, he and Calvin and Jon had been poring over Calvin’s figures on Europabanc, trying to see where something had gone wrong—and coming up with nothing, of course, because (Charlie was convinced) there was nothing to come up with but a computer error. Calvin’s bad luck with computers was notorious. He couldn’t even send his letters to word processing without causing a breakdown in the main system. If he hadn’t been so intent on making himself look important, they wouldn’t have been here all these hours fussing at something that didn’t matter any more anyway. If the discrepancy had shown up back in August, when they were making the final moves in their offer for Europabanc, then there would have been a problem. They’d had to have a certain amount of cash on hand to make the deal fly, and that cash had had to be verified. But the discrepancy hadn’t shown up then. To satisfy Calvin, they’d just gone through the old reports and found everything to be just as it should be. Whatever this was was recent and therefore minor, something the accountants could have straightened out when it came time for the year-end report. At least, that’s what this should have been. It wasn’t, because Calvin was Calvin.
Jon dropped into a chair, stretched out his legs, and said, “We’re not going to straighten this out. Nobody’s going to straighten this out. It’s going to turn out to have been a glitch in the computer, and when we run the program again it will be gone.”
“We ran the program four times last night,” Calvin said coldly. “We were at the office until four o’clock in the morning.”
“Too tired to see straight, probably, and making mistakes because of it.” Jon yawned. “I really don’t want to spend this whole trip talking business, Calvin. I was looking forward to a chance to relax.”
“You don’t have any right to relax,” Calvin said. “You’re about to be the head of the largest financial services combine in history.”
“It sounds more impressive if you just say I’m going to be head of a bank. What about you, Charlie? Are you as sick of all these numbers as I am?”
“I was sick of them before we ever got started,” Charlie said truthfully. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at dealing with the Europabanc thing. I can’t even think about it without feeling a little dizzy.”
“I can’t think about it without feeling tired.” Jon pulled his legs back in, stretched his arms this time, and shook his head. Charlie had seen him get like this in the past, innumerable times, because Jon Baird was the sort of man who couldn’t sit still for long. These days, if he’d been a child, some teacher would probably have wanted to put him on Ritalin. Now he got up and paced around the cabin. It was a much larger cabin than any of the others had—and not really authentic, either, since the captain’s cabin on the original Mayflower hadn’t had two rooms—but it was still tiny and the ceiling was still low. Jon had to stoop slightly while he paced, in spite of the fact that he was a very short man.
“The thing is,” he said finally, “I’ve got more trouble than I want on this trip anyway, and I don’t need business around to complicate things. Did I tell you I got the private detective’s report in on Sheila?”
“Was that Mr. Demarkian who did the private detective’s report?” Charlie asked. “I didn’t think that was his field, somehow.”
“It isn’t. I hired a perfectly ordinary private detective to check up on Sheila, the same one I used to check up on Fritzie. I got the same answer, too. What is it about me, my wives aren’t unfaithful with other men, they’re unfaithful with credit cards and diet programs.”
“The kind of woman who marries you isn’t really interested in sex,” Calvin said stiffly, “she’s interested in money.”
“Sheila spent six thousand dollars in the month of August on cosmetics alone,” Jon said, with a kind of wonder. “That takes talent, if you want my opinion. That takes dedication.”
“I take it you want to divorce her,” Calvin said.
“Of course I do.” Jon sat down on his bunk, stretched out, thought better of it, and stood up again. He was a little too fast, and bumped his head a
gainst the beam. He rubbed his hand against the spot—sore, Charlie supposed, although he himself was always so careful on the Pilgrimage Green, he never got conked—and went to the porthole, to look out on God knew what. There wasn’t anything to see any more. They were well out on the water now and headed north. They wouldn’t spot land again until they reached the coast of Massachusetts and the passage to Candle Island.
“The thing about women like Sheila,” Jon said, “is that you’re supposed to divorce them. The other thing about women like Sheila is that they don’t like you for it. I was wondering whether the two of you would like to do me a favor.”
“No,” Calvin said.
“Of course,” Charlie insisted.
Jon smiled slightly. “I just want you two to talk to her, keep her out of my hair, keep her out of Demarkian’s hair especially, if you know what I mean. His presence here bothers the hell out of her. I think she’s convinced he’s the—other private detective.”
“If he had been, you’d have got more on her,” Calvin said.
“Maybe so. Right now, she’s really not the person I’m principally interested in getting something on. Women like Sheila are always very reasonable in divorce courts. They have to be if they want to get their settlements. It’s the people who aren’t very reasonable who worry me. Aren’t they the people who worry you?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, feeling confused again. “I suppose people aren’t unreasonable very often around me. Maybe it’s because I’m not a strong enough personality.”
“Maybe it’s because you barely remember what’s going on in the business from one day to the next,” Calvin said. Then he flushed and apologized, in his way. “I’m a little on edge,” he told them. “This discrepancy. Sheila. Mr. Gregor Demarkian.”
“You leave Mr. Demarkian to me,” Jon said. “Charlie doesn’t ask me about Demarkian.”
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t worry me,” Charlie said. “What is he here for, anyway? I thought he went around investigating murders.”
“I thought he went around meddling in other people’s business,” Calvin said. “If you want my opinion, Jon, what you’ll do about Demarkian is—”
“But I don’t want your opinion,” Jon said. This time, instead of pacing, he went straight to the door and opened it. Outside, the hallway was lit. Since there was no electricity on the boat, there was nothing to light it except the candles they might carry, and neither Charlie nor Calvin had candles. Seeing their predicament, Jon rummaged around in his table until he found a pair of tallows and lit them off his own lamp.
“Go,” he said. “It’s not all that long until dinner and I have a lot I want to do. We’ll talk about numbers some more in the morning.”
“But—” Calvin said.
Jon shooed him away. “Even if I didn’t have anything else on my mind, I’d have this damned Thanksgiving dinner. Do I want yams or do I want sweet potatoes? Should the onions be cooked in lard? You should see the damn fool note I got from the cook this afternoon. Four pages long and requiring an answer faster than FDR expected answers from Harry Truman. Go.”
“But,” Calvin said again.
“Go,” Jon insisted.
Charlie stepped into the hall, holding one of the candles, lit now, in his right hand. It provided very little light in the long, narrow, low-ceilinged place, and the one Calvin was carrying didn’t make much of a difference.
“If you ask me,” Calvin said, as Jon shut the door firmly in their faces, “it’s a kind of jinx. You’re just asking for trouble.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Charlie said.
“Of course you do. Asking a murder expert to go along for the ride. You do that, you’re likely to land yourself with a murder for your expert to be expert about. That’s what I think.”
Then he stomped off down the hall, apparently sure of where he was going, apparently undaunted by the cramped space or the lack of light.
Charlie rocked back and forth on his heels, feeling more nervous than he had even a few hours ago, when the numbers had been whizzing around his head and he’d been afraid that one of them would find him out. He didn’t know anything about numbers, but he didn’t want them to know he didn’t know anything about numbers. But as for this—
Charlie Shay was what he thought of as an ordinarily superstitious man. He checked his horoscope in the Daily News and was careful not to walk under ladders. He didn’t believe in ghosts and goblins and predestination by sidewalk crack. And yet …
If you ask a murder expert along for the ride … you’re likely to land yourself with a murder for your expert to be expert about.
It was the sort of silly thing Calvin said when he got his temper up, the sort of thing that Charlie never paid much attention to, and it was, of course, ridiculous.
What bothered Charlie Shay was the fact that he couldn’t shake the feeling it was true.
Seven
1
JON BAIRD HAD ASKED Gregor Demarkian aboard the Pilgrimage Green in order to investigate the press leaks that had plagued Baird Financial for most of the last two years—at least, that was what Jon Baird had told Gregor Demarkian, and Gregor Demarkian had accepted, during their one long luncheon meeting in New York. In some measure, Gregor had actually believed this story. He had known a great many rich men in his time, and most of them had been in the grip of what he privately thought of as “affluent paranoia.” Affluent paranoia came in numerous forms, often familial. Rich men always seemed to suspect either that they were about to be murdered (by their wives and children, by their business partners or their business enemies or the latest auditor sent out by the IRS) or that they were the targets of elaborate plots to embarrass them. All in all, they feared embarrassment more than death. Certainly all this nonsense about leaks fit right into Gregor’s theory. He had tried to tell Jon Baird what any good policeman would have told him about leaks, and Jon Baird had refused to listen. Jon Baird hadn’t wanted to make a series of differing, clandestine, and wholly false statements to a series of different and individually accosted employees. He hadn’t wanted to tap the phones at the World Trade Center offices of Baird Financial. He hadn’t wanted a grey-faced private investigator from one of Manhattan’s more discreet firms going through the office mail. He hadn’t wanted anything, in fact, that might get him what he did want, and from this Gregor concluded that either one of two things must be true. Either Jon Baird had a true case of affluent paranoia, pitched so high by now that it gave him a thrill he didn’t want to give up. Or Jon Baird was lying about both the leaks and the reason he had invited Gregor Demarkian on this trip, and Gregor Demarkian would have to wait and see.
As it turned out, Gregor Demarkian spent most of that first day on the Pilgrimage Green waiting and seeing—except that he didn’t see much and waiting was almost intolerable. His run in with Fritzie Baird was interesting, but not diverting. She was obviously a severely disturbed woman. There was no way to know what he could and could not take at face value of what she had presented to him. He wanted to say “nothing,” but he knew that was unlikely. Even certifiable schizophrenics weren’t that seamlessly wrapped into fantasy. It was Fritzie’s interpretations he really had to distrust—what Jon felt, what Jon thought, what Jon wanted—and they were too textbook to hold his attention for long. After all, he was the man who had hunted down the Stick Pin Killer, via telephone and computer printout. A standard case of delusional projection hardly fazed him.
The only other diverting thing that happened during his day was a chance meeting with Calvin Baird, who had come barreling out of Jon Baird’s cabin while Gregor was on his way up to the main deck, caused a collision that knocked Gregor’s head into a beam and his back into a ladderlike grid of supports near one of the doors. Then he had scowled his very best Calvin scowl and declared it was all Gregor’s fault.
“I know what you’re really doing here,” he said, trying to brush Gregor aside. “You’re getting in the way and gumming up the work
s and making it impossible for anyone to get anything done.”
Gregor tried to move aside so that Calvin could pass, and so that Calvin would stop reflexively hitting at his shoulder with the back of his hand. He couldn’t do it, because the passage was too narrow. The best he could manage was to move a little closer to the stairs, where there would be slightly more open space and a chance to maneuver.
“I’m glad that you know what I’m doing here,” he’d said pleasantly. “I’ve been a little confused about it myself.”
“I think Jon’s out of his mind,” Calvin said. “It’s prison that’s changed him, if you want my opinion. He doesn’t care about numbers. He does care about you. You know what he said to me just a little while ago?”
“No.”
“He said going to prison was a wonderful thing, if you knew how to go about it the right way. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Maybe.”
“I think it’s crazy,” Calvin said. “I think he came back addled, to tell you the truth. Before he went to jail, he would never have been so—so cavalier about these numbers. Even if they weren’t going to have any effect on anything we did. It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Mmmm.”
They were nearly at the stairs, a circumstance that made Calvin fussier and more prissily furious than ever. He, after all, wanted to go in the other direction. Gregor wedged himself into the stairwell and sucked in his stomach. Calvin squeezed by him, sniffed, and ran a hand through his hair.
“In the old days we never had strangers along for family holidays,” he said. “In the old days, we never had leaks, either.”
“Good for you,” Gregor said.
Calvin sniffed again, loudly enough, this time, to have qualified for a television commercial for an antihistamine. “Silly ass,” he said, presumably meaning Jon Baird. “If he goes along the way he’s been going, the whole company is going to fall into the sea.”
Gregor didn’t know about the company, but he did know about Calvin Baird. The man was a first-rate little prig, and if Gregor were Jon Baird he’d have done a good deal more to tweak his ears than suggesting that there might be some good in going to jail. He watched Calvin stomp down the narrow hall to a door that presumably opened on Calvin’s own cabin. Calvin opened it, stepped past it, and then closed it behind him. Gregor stared at the closed door and wondered if he ought to do what he really felt like doing—what he’d actually wanted to do since he first came out of his own cabin and headed upstairs—and that was to knock on the door just beyond Calvin’s now closed one and find out what Bennis and Tony Baird were up to. It was driving him crazy, just the way it had been driving him crazy all morning and all afternoon. It was going to go on driving him crazy until he dragged Bennis back to Cavanaugh Street or did something to confront the situation directly. He couldn’t drag Bennis back to Cavanaugh Street any time in the next few days. Even after they’d landed on Candle Island, he would be at the mercy of Tony Baird’s father’s boat for any trip he might want to take to the mainland. As for confronting the situation directly—Gregor had spent a great deal of his life in direct confrontation, not only with serial killers but with chairmen of Senate subcommittees and presidents of the United States. He had no idea how to proceed with a direct confrontation here. After all, what would he say? He wasn’t her father, her brother, her husband, her lover, or her son. She was a young woman who knew her own mind—or who said she did. He could hardly rise up righteous in the guise of a Victorian paterfamilias and tell her her present interest was much too young.
