Wanting Sheila Dead

by Jane Haddam

  “Okay,” Borstoi was growing ever more cautious. “That kind of things happen sometimes. It gets hard to find stuff out, even though it ought to be easy.”

  “Well, when the other woman got to the hospital,” Gregor said, “it turned out they couldn’t take her fingerprints, because the pads of her fingers were all scarred up, like they’d been injured or gone at.”

  “Now it’s beginning to sound wrong,” Borstoi said.

  “It’s definitely wrong,” Gregor said. “It isn’t hard, but it’s wrong. It’s just that we don’t think of old people as people who would do—things. If that makes sense. First, it turned out that the pill organizer we found in Sophie Mgrdchian’s pocket didn’t belong to Sophie Mgrdchian, which was significant because one of the prescriptions in that organizer was for a drug to control high blood pressure, and Sophie didn’t have high blood pressure. She sometimes suffered from low blood pressure.”

  “Ah,” Borstoi said, “and the hospital, not having anything else to go on, was giving her that stuff because they figured that if she had it on her, then it must have been prescribed for her. And somebody else in the hospital wasn’t doing the checkup and follow-up they should have, so they didn’t notice—”

  “That she was still comatose and they didn’t have an explanation?” Gregor asked. “They did notice that. They’ve taken her off the medication now. With any luck, she’ll come to, and she can just tell us what we need to know. But before we figured it all out about the medication, the other woman suddenly started behaving as if she was perfectly normal, and that’s when she said her name was Karen Mgrdchian. If she was Karen Mgrdchian, that would make her Sophie’s sister-in-law, the wife of Sophie’s only surviving brother-in-law, Marco. And with Sophie unconscious, we had no way of knowing she wasn’t.”

  “But she wasn’t?”

  “No,” Gregor said. “Oh, I just dumped all this in the lap of the police over there, and they’ll have to verify it, but I’m pretty sure that this is a con woman we have our hands on. I think she somehow made friends with or otherwise got herself into the life of the real Karen Mgrdchian, who lives in Cleveland, and that she probably took her for everything she was worth and then killed her. The Philadelphia police are going to ask the police in Cleveland, or wherever it is, to go look in the basement of Karen Mgrdchian’s house. If there’s a body, that’s where it is. This is an old woman we’re talking about. She isn’t likely to have been strong enough to do anything complicated with a dead body, and why would she bother? The basement would be there, if the house has one, and the house probably does. Anyway, I think this woman took Karen Mgrdchian for whatever there was to be had, killed the woman, dumped her body in the basement, and then either ran out of whatever it was she’d stolen or got to the point where she couldn’t continue without getting caught. If it’s the first, then either she wasn’t able to get hold of Karen Mgrdchian’s bank card, or Karen Mgrdchian didn’t have her social security checks direct deposited.”

  “And that would matter, why?”

  “More difficult to get the checks cashed,” Gregor said. “I don’t know what the real Karen Mgrdchian looked like, but my guess is that she didn’t look much like the one we’ve got.”

  “Then the other woman, the Sophie woman, must have known she wasn’t really her sister-in-law,” Borstoi said.

  “Not necessarily,” Gregor said. “According to the women on the block who did know Sophie, the last time Sophie saw Karen Mgrdchian was in the nineteen eighties, when Sophie’s husband died, and his brothers and their wives came in for the funeral. That’s a long time ago. Almost thirty years. People change a lot in thirty years.”

  “I guess,” Borstoi said. “I still think I’d be able to recognize them, once I knew who they were supposed to be. But maybe Sophie didn’t know this Karen very well.”

  “Hardly at all, I think,” Gregor said. “But, to get back to it, I think this woman calling herself Karen Mgrdchian killed the real Karen Mgrdchian and shoved the body in the basement. My guess is that the police will find she hit her on the head or something. She wouldn’t be likely to have as good a dodge as the one with the blood pressure medication. But whatever it was, she killed Karen Mgrdchian, and then when the money started to run out or she was about to be found out, she decided to take off. She probably heard about Sophie from Karen. Maybe she heard that Sophie had a big house on an expensive street. Whatever it was, she came out here and moved in with Sophie.”

  “And these women who knew Sophie from the neighborhood, they didn’t think anything of it?”

  “Oh, no,” Gregor said. “You should see these women. We call them the Very Old Ladies. They’re that. They’d also make Miss Marple look like somebody who can mind her own business. The Very Old Ladies were up in arms in no time, and they were convinced that Sophie was being murdered in her bed. They kept trying to get in to see Sophie, but no one answered the door. Mind you, Sophie was not a social sort. She kept to herself most of the time. It wasn’t necessarily all that odd that she wasn’t talking to people, except that this woman was there. So they came and got me, and I went and rang the doorbell. And when the door opened, there was Sophie, lying comatose on the floor. And there was this other woman, acting as if she had dementia.”

  “Did she have dementia?”

  “I don’t know,” Gregor said. “She might have had a mild stroke. It was her blood pressure medication she was feeding Sophie Mgrdchian. I think that if we hadn’t gotten there when we did, she’d have shoved Sophie’s body into the basement and gone on living in that house until she started to feel it wasn’t safe anymore. But Sophie would have been dead. I’m going to have Bennis remind me not to turn into a recluse in my old age. It’s a good way to get yourself victimized.”

  “And the fingerprints,” Len Borstoi said, “that’s because her prints are on file somewhere. She didn’t want to get caught at this and have it come back that she had a sheet.”

  “Well, have you ever known a con artist who started as an old lady?” Gregor asked. “And have you ever known any con artist who worked for forty or fifty years, who never got caught even once? I’d be willing to bet just about anything that this woman not only got arrested a few times, but that she got convicted at least once. But we’ll see how it works out. At the moment, we’re in the position of not having a real reason to hold the woman. Sophie Mgrdchian hadn’t woken up the last time I checked, so she can’t tell us anything. And just yet, there’s no sign there’s ever been a crime. So—”

  “It’s like what happened with that Emily Watson,” Len Borstoi said. “We got her in jail, then we checked out the gun and there was no ammunition in it. Did I tell you that before? It wasn’t blanks. There was nothing in it. The gun was absolutely clean. It hadn’t been fired. At all. Ever. So, when push came to shove, there wasn’t a whole lot we could charge her with, and the judge wasn’t going to let us hold her when the charges we did have didn’t amount to much. So, the next thing we knew, she was out on the street.”

  “Yes, well. We don’t want the fake Karen Mgrdchian out on the street. If she makes a habit of this, she’s a serial killer as well as a con artist.”

  “And our guy here isn’t?”

  “No,” Gregor said, “she’s killed only this once. But it was cold as hell. And I wouldn’t like to speculate about what she would and wouldn’t do for the rest of her life.”

  “If you can really prove this, she’ll spend the rest of her life in jail.”

  “You’re the one who’s going to prove it,” Gregor said. “That’s my usual deal with police departments. I come in. I consult. I go home. They get the credit.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have thought of looking for this stuff if you hadn’t suggested it. I give credit where credit is due.”

  “There seems to be some kind of riot going on in Engine House.”

  2

  Riot wasn’t really the word. The front doors of the house were open. People were spilling out onto the front steps, al
l kinds of people. Uniformed police officers were backed up against their patrol cars. There were lights on everywhere.

  “Damn,” Len Borstoi said.

  He pulled the car into the roundabout and stopped it. Gregor looked out the windshield at the action in front of them. Then he opened his door and the noise hit him. Somebody was crying hysterically. Somebody was shrieking. Somebody was just plain yelling, and he knew that voice. That was Sheila Dunham in her best end-the-universe-now mode, reading the riot act to somebody she expected to just lie down and die. Apparently, this time, she was mistaken. Nobody was going to lie down and die.

  Gregor got out of the car. So did Len Borstoi and the partner, who finally stopped texting and put his cell phone away. Nobody was paying any attention to them. Gregor looked through the crowd and counted quickly. All the girls seemed to be there. There were also a lot of people from the crew. It seemed odd to him that they would be there this late at night. He saw Olivia Dahl, holding a clipboard clutched to her chest and looking dazed. He saw a couple of people he thought must be the staff for the house. He didn’t recognize them, and they didn’t look like they belonged with a television crew.

  “There is a car waiting for you,” Sheila was bellowing. “It’s sitting right there, and I want you out of here now.”

  Gregor looked around quickly. There was indeed a car. It was an ordinary Lincoln Town Car, not a limousine, but it had a driver, and the driver had a uniform. He was leaning against the car’s hood and watching as if this was all a show.

  The girl Sheila was bellowing at was Asian, and she was not crying. She was furious. She was also not budging.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she was saying. “I’m going to sue. I’m going to get on the phone and tell everybody on the planet what’s been going on. You can’t keep my mouth shut.”

  “Do it and I’ll sue,” Sheila said. “And I’ve got better lawyers.”

  “God, the way these people behave,” Borstoi said.

  “Just remember,” Gregor said. “The most important point, here, is what ought to be obvious. Sheila Dunham is not dead.”

  “She goes on like that, she’s going to be.”

  Gregor waded into the crowd. He asked girls politely if they would move out of the way. They seemed surprised to see him. They had all been concentrating so hard on the scene in front of them, most of them hadn’t seemed to notice that a new car had driven up. Gregor saw one of the crew with a handheld camera and another with a camera mounted on a tripod. They were filming all this. It might even have been scripted. Gregor didn’t think so.

  He climbed up the steps to where Sheila Dunham was standing and tapped her on the shoulder. She jerked around as if a wasp had stung her, and then relaxed a little when she saw who it was.

  “Alida here is just leaving,” she said.

  “Not right away,” Gregor said. “Maybe we could get all this back in the house for a minute and talk? It’s starting to rain again.”

  Sheila looked at the sky. It was starting to rain again. So far, there were only a few thick drops, but it could get worse very soon. Sheila looked around at the girls again. The girls had all gone quiet.

  “All right,” Sheila said. “Mr. Demarkian here wants us all to go back into the house.” She turned back to him. “There’s still crime-scene tape up all over everywhere. I don’t know where you think we can go that’s big enough to get us all into one room.”

  “Try the dining room,” Gregor said. “I’m pretty sure that isn’t a crime scene, and from what I remember, it’s big enough for a small high school.”

  Sheila considered him for a moment. Then she went to talk to Olivia Dahl. Then things began to move. Gregor stood where he was and watched girls swirl around him. Alida Akido didn’t swirl but stomped, still looking furious. Coraline Mays, who looked like she’d been crying uncontrollably, was being shepherded around by Janice Ledbedder. Janice had her arm around Coraline’s shoulder and was whispering in her ear.

  The crew went in last, except for the guy with the handheld camera, who had hurried up the steps to stand in the entrance to get pictures of the girls coming up. Gregor wondered if this was all going to show up on television as part of this season of America’s Next Superstar. He had no idea if a murder would be a draw or a drag on ratings.

  Probably a draw, he thought. People were like that.

  He nodded to Len Borstoi. “The dining room is usually accessed through the living room, and my guess is that they’re going to go tromping through there, tape or no tape, but don’t worry about it. You’re not going to need anything there.”

  “Is there another way to get to the dining room?” Len asked.

  “You can go around the back hall the way the servants do,” Gregor said. “I am constantly astonished that I remember so much about this house. I was only in it a few times, and it was years ago.”

  “You didn’t come back here for your wedding?”

  Gregor didn’t begin to know where he would have to start to explain why that was never going to have happened, so he just went into the house, looked around the large front foyer, and followed the girls into the dining room. He had been right. They’d gone right through the yellow crime-scene tape as if it weren’t there. They’d gone tromping across the living room the way they’d go tromping through a field on a hike. If there ever had been valuable evidence in that room, it was either gone or contaminated now.

  There had never been valuable evidence in that room. This afternoon’s shooting was not particularly important. It wasn’t even particularly smart. The best Gregor could say about it was that it made sense.

  When he got into the dining room, the girls had seated themselves around the table. There were fourteen of them, plus Sheila Dunham and Olivia Dahl, and a few anonymous young women with clipboards. The dining room table held twenty-four even when it hadn’t been expanded. It could be expanded to hold fifty.

  Sheila Dunham took the foot of the table, sitting down and stretching out a little as if she were about to interview a not-very-promising aspirant for the next season. Gregor took the head of the table because it had been left free for him. Len Borstoi, his silent partner, and the two uniformed officers took up places against the walls, near the exits.

  Gregor looked up and down the table. Alida Akido was right up next to him, looking triumphant. Grace Alsop was sitting on his other side. Ivy Demari, the one with the streak in her hair and the tattoo, was midway down the right side, on one side of Coraline. Janice Ledbedder was on the other side, still with her arm around Coraline’s shoulder. Coraline had not stopped sobbing.

  Alida had her arms folded across her chest. “I only said what everybody else was thinking,” she said. “They found something in Coraline’s room. In Coraline’s bed. And Coraline was the only one of us who was here the day that girl was murdered. She was the only one of us who could have murdered her. And then they found something. So Coraline must have done it. And I don’t want to go to sleep on the same floor as a murderer. You don’t know what she’s going to do next. You don’t know why she killed that girl. She could kill me, too.”

  “You’re an asshole, Alida,” Ivy said. “Did you know that?”

  “They found something in her room,” Alida said again.

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “Well, let me clear that up. What they found in Coraline’s room—” He looked around at the officers. “Was it in her things? Or just in the room?”

  One of the uniformed officers stepped slightly forward. “It was in her bed. Sort of shoved up under a comforter thing that was on the bed instead of a bedspread.”

  “All right,” Gregor said. He looked up and down at the girls again. “What they found in Coraline’s bed was a beige net glove, made out of stretchy nylon mesh with things appliquéd to it. Butterflies, I think we were told. The glove was used to make sure there were no fingerprints on the gun used to shoot at Sheila Dunham today. Mesh like that has several advantages over a latex glove. For one thing, it’s closer to
the color of the human hand, so it’s less noticeable than the white of a latex glove. For another thing, latex gloves sometimes retain fingerprints on the inside of the finger sheaths.”

  “Oh,” Janice said. “I heard about that. That was on Forensic Files.”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “That was on Forensic Files.”

  “So,” Alida said, “I was right. Coraline shot at Sheila Dunham and then she hid the glove in her bed. She wanted to kill Sheila Dunham. Of course she did. She was absolutely humiliated the day of the first challenge. Sheila grabbed Coraline’s T-shirt and ripped it right off, in front of everybody.”

  “So that makes sense?” Ivy said. “First, this other girl shoots at Sheila Dunham, then the girl shows up at our house and Coraline kills her for no reason at all, then Coraline tries to kill Sheila Dunham. I mean, for God’s sake. Try to indulge in a little linear thought.”

  “The girl calling herself Emily Watson did not shoot at Sheila Dunham,” Gregor said. “The gun she was holding at the Milky Way Ballroom had no bullets in it. It didn’t even have blanks in it. Emily Watson was not trying to kill Sheila Dunham. And her name was not Emily Watson.”

  “Somebody shot at Sheila Dunham at the ballroom,” Grace Alsop said. “There were real shots. I heard them. And there were real bullets. The police found them, in the wall. I saw that on the news.”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “There were real shots fired in the ballroom. They were fired from the same gun used to kill the girl calling herself Emily Watson, and the same gun that fired at Sheila Dunham today. Maybe I should say, sort of at Sheila Dunham. If they’d been fired directly at Sheila Dunham, she’d be dead.”