by Jane Haddam
“I saw her,” Gregor said. “I don’t know what kind of great detective I am. These days I seem mostly to be retired.”
“You haven’t been retired down here,” Ginny said. “You shouldn’t be so modest. I know what you’ve done since you came to visit David. You’ve been wonderful. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t helped me out.”
“Here?”
“At this party.” Ginny’s right arm made a sweeping arc in the air. “I’d still be back where I was, in jail, or in the county jail. I know that. I know what all of them were thinking. Did you know that I’d separated from my husband?”
“Oh, yes,” Gregor said. “I heard that.”
“He didn’t believe in me, either,” Ginny said. “None of them did, not really. Some of them say they did, but it isn’t true. It’s strange what you find out about people, when you’ve been through something like this.”
“You find out a great deal,” Gregor agreed. “But most people never find themselves in a situation like this.”
“Well, it’s a good thing, isn’t it? It’s a good thing. It’s too horrible to think about, even now, after all this time. I’m glad you came down to help me, Mr. Demarkian. You did help me. You helped me more than you’ll ever know.”
“Oh, I think I know,” Gregor said. “I think I know exactly. You know what’s puzzling me, at the moment?”
“What?”
“I keep wondering how long you expect to get away with this. Because you must know you can’t get away with this forever. You have to know that that just isn’t possible.”
Gregor Demarkian had never believed in shape-changers, but now Ginny Marsh seemed to be one. She changed right in front of his eyes. Her eyes went sharp and small. Her nostrils pinched. She lost all her small-town quasiprettiness in a flash. All that was left of it was her hair, cascading blond and bright over her shirt collar and down her back.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her voice very low, very low, impossible for anyone around them to hear.
“Of course you know what I mean,” Gregor said. “You killed your child.”
“Stephen killed my child,” Ginny said. “You proved it.”
“I proved no such thing. Stephen killed Carol Littleton and Zhondra Meyer, yes, that he did, but he didn’t kill the child. You killed the child. You were the only one who could have.”
“How can you say that? Stephen went out on the kitchen terrace with Carol Littleton and took Tiffany with him. It was in his confession. It was in all the papers—”
“It wasn’t part of his confession,” Gregor said, “it was in the fake suicide note he wrote for Zhondra Meyer. And he had to have a name, of course, because he couldn’t remember killing the child. Because he hadn’t killed the child. And he had to have a reason, too, for killing Carol Littleton later. He couldn’t tell us why he really killed her. That would have destroyed everything he had been working for.”
Ginny turned her face away. “I still don’t understand what you mean. I think you’re being cruel, that’s all. I think you like to—to torment people.”
“When you cut Tiffany’s throat, she was alive, Ginny. She was alive. The blood pumped out of her. That’s what Stephen said.”
“I didn’t cut Tiffany’s throat. I’d never do anything like that. I loved my baby.”
“Oh, Ginny,” Gregor said. “You’ve never loved anybody but Ginny and you know that. I know that. I’ve watched you operate, on television before I came down, here today at this party. You’re a remarkable young woman, in a way. You killed the child with your own hands, but then you got better. You sat in that jail cell day after day and killed Carol Littleton and Zhondra Meyer and Stephen Harrow, too, all without raising a finger.”
“Stephen killed Carol and Zhondra,” Ginny said. “You told me so. And Stephen killed himself. Clayton Hall was there. He saw him. You saw him. Even Lisa saw him.”
“I know who saw him, Ginny. I know you were sitting all alone in that cell they gave you, reading your Bible and biding your time. But you killed them anyway. All the way along, all Stephen was trying to do was stay sane and protect you. He did the second part reasonably well, but he didn’t manage the first. By the time Stephen Harrow put that bullet through himself, he was something worse than out of his mind. He was staring into the pit of hell and hearing it call to him.”
“He was crazy all along,” Ginny said. “He must have been, to do what he did.”
“No, Ginny. He wasn’t crazy all along. He was troubled, but you made him crazy. He would have confessed to killing the child if he had killed it, Ginny. He needed to confess. He wanted to.”
“He blanked it out,” Ginny said. “You hear about people doing that all the time. When something’s too horrible for them to remember, they blank it out.”
“You were the only person who was gone, Ginny. The only person besides Stephen Harrow who wasn’t anywhere to be found in those two rooms, except for Carol and Stelle and Dinah, and they were together.”
“They say they were together. They could be lying for each other. They do a lot of lying up there at that camp. They’re all lesbians.”
“There isn’t anybody else, Ginny. There’s only you.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Ginny said, straightening up. “It’s all—it’s all just a fantasy in your head.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gregor said. “People say I’m so wonderful at solving crimes, but that isn’t really what I do best. What I do best is to find the evidence that’s needed to arrest and convict after the crime has been solved. That’s a much more useful talent.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“North Carolina has the death penalty, Ginny.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with me, either.”
“I think it does. I’ve never believed in the death penalty. I’ve always thought there were too many chances to make a mistake, to convict the wrong person, to execute the wrong person. But in your case, Ginny, those scruples would not apply. So I’ll tell you what.”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” Ginny said. “You have nothing to say to me.”
Gregor leaned forward and put his hands on the sides of Ginny’s chair. “Listen to me, Ginny. I am going to come back to North Carolina, and when I do, it’s going to be for one reason and one reason only. I am going to come back and watch you die.”
Ginny stood up, quickly, abruptly, almost making the chair topple and Gregor topple with it. “I’ve got some people I’ve got to talk to. I can’t say it’s been nice talking to you.”
Then she turned around and hurried off, pushing through knots of people with barely a nod of her head, half running, as if she had to get to the bathroom right this second or suffer something dire. Gregor watched her until she disappeared into a crowd of people. Then he went up to where David Sandler and Henry Holborn were still talking about cover copy and publicity releases and said, “I’ve got to go now, David. If I don’t hurry, I’ll miss my train.”
“I’ve got to drive you,” David said, standing up. “Henry, why don’t you come out to the house for dinner some night next week? We can go over all this. I’m sorry to have to rush off on you like this—”
“No, no,” Henry Holborn said. “You go right ahead. Mr. Demarkian is probably eager to get home.”
“I’m sure he’s glad he came,” David said. “Aren’t you, Gregor? Gregor loves to work on cases like this. It’s his life.”
Gregor shook Henry Holborn’s hand, said good-bye, and then stepped outside. David’s pickup truck was parked at the curb, with Gregor’s suitcase already in the back. Gregor started to walk around it to the passenger side door, and then he stopped.
Back on the tailgate, where David had once had a fish with feet and the word “Darwin” written inside, there was now no fish with feet. There was, however, a fish without feet, and what was written inside it was “Jesus.”
Gregor wondered how lon
g it would take David Sandler, the most famous atheist in America, to notice.
Epilogue
1
DONNA MORADANYAN’S DECORATIONS WERE still up from the christening. The first thing Gregor Demarkian saw when he came back to Cavanaugh Street was his own brownstone building, wrapped up in white satin from stoop to roof, with a bow and a cross on top. He looked up and down the street, then shook his head. In his absence, Donna had gone off her nut. The front of Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church was wrapped up in white satin, too, and Tibor hated it when Donna decorated the church. He thought it looked less than dignified. Gregor wished there were more people around, outside, where he could see them. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was hanging very low in the sky. The street lamps had already begun to glow. The windows in Lida Arkmanian’s living room were open and the big chandelier was lit. Lida must be back from California. Gregor told the driver where to stop and got out his wallet to pay him. It seemed odd that he had lived here so long now that it had begun to seem natural to think of this as home. When he had first come back to Philadelphia, he had still been living, mentally, in Washington, D.C. He woke up in the morning and reached out for the small square alarm clock that had been on his bedside table in the apartment in Foggy Bottom. He and Elizabeth had had a town house once, but they had sold it when they realized just how sick Elizabeth was. Elizabeth always said they sold it so that they could be more sure about the money. Gregor had always agreed with her, but he didn’t agree with her now. If there was one thing working for the federal government could get you, it was excellent health insurance that covered everything. Gregor had started to hate the house, that was all. He had begun to see it as a monument to Elizabeth that he would be expected to live in, rattling through the rooms alone when she was gone, using their silverware and their china like some badly incarnated ghost. They had bought that house years before, when they had still expected to have children. Gregor could never get over the feeling that if Elizabeth had had children, she would not have had the cancer that ultimately killed her.
In the town house on Cavanaugh Street, Gregor checked the hall table for his mail and noted in passing that there was no light under George Tekemanian’s door. There was no mail for him on the hall table, either. Gregor went up the stairs and stopped on the landing in front of Bennis’s apartment. There was a light on in there and the sound of a CD player pumping out “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon, but Gregor didn’t knock. He went up to the third floor and let himself into his own apartment. He left his suitcase in the foyer and waked through the living room and down the hall to his bedroom. Then he took off his clothes and threw himself in the shower. His mail was lying on his bed—put there by Bennis or Tibor or Donna Moradanyan. If he went into his kitchen, he would find food in his refrigerator—put there by Lida or Hannah or even Sheila Kashinian. Cavanaugh Street was a predictable, well-ordered place, the kind of place everyone said was so good for children. Gregor got out of the shower and wrapped himself in the big terry cloth robe Bennis had given him one Christmas. His apartment was full of things Bennis had given him, the way her apartment was full of things he had given her. They must both have been out of their minds, or willfully stupid. They had probably been a little of both.
Gregor went back down the hall and through the living room to the kitchen. There was food in his refrigerator, along with notes. The note on the meatballs with the bulgur crusts said: “Krekor, call me when you get in. There is a crisis about the birthday party for Sheila.—L.” Gregor took the bowl out and put it on the kitchen table. Then he got a smaller bowl out of the cabinet next to the sink and put five big bulgur-covered meatballs inside it. Then he covered the smaller bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the microwave. Sheila Kashinian’s birthday party could wait. In fact, Gregor thought, it could wait forever. The thought of Sheila’s husband Howard dancing on tables and talking to lamp shades, which he often did when he was drunk, which he often got when he was at parties, did not make Gregor’s heart leap for joy. Gregor put water on to boil for instant coffee and picked up the phone. “You Can Call Me Al” had become “Kodachrome.” He could hear it through his kitchen window, meaning that Bennis’s kitchen window downstairs must be open, too. Gregor had been around Bennis long enough to know that these two songs were not on the same album, and that it didn’t matter, because Bennis’s CD player could handle more than one disc at a time, and play songs off both of them in any order you wanted it to. It was not as good as the CD player old George Tekemanian’s grandson Martin had given him, which held nine discs at once and could be programmed to do everything but give the State of the Union address while wearing a tuxedo. Gregor punched Bennis’s number into the phone and sat down on a kitchen chair to wait for her to pick up. The music coming through his kitchen window got instantly softer.
“Hello?” Bennis said when she picked up.
“I’m home,” Gregor told her.
“I thought I heard you wandering around up there,” she said. “I’ve been watching you on television. You ought to come downstairs and tell me how the good Methodist minister ended up killing a little baby.”
“He didn’t,” Gregor said. “The mother did.”
“That’s not what Dan Rather said. And I believe Dan Rather.”
“You can go on believing Dan Rather. It’s a complicated situation. I’ll explain it to you, if you want me to.”
“I want you to.”
“Not now,” Gregor said. “I’m sitting in my kitchen in a robe. Is everything all right here, Bennis? Has Tibor been well? I was worried when I left.”
“Everything’s been fine. Tibor is spending the day with some people from the UN or something. He’s supposed to be giving a seminar in New York on the religious implications of war next month. He was never as obsessed as you thought he was, Gregor. That was mostly in your head.”
“I know.”
“He was just upset,” Bennis said. “And I think that’s entirely natural. Did Lida leave you a bowl of those big meatball things?”
“Yes, she did.”
“She left me some, too. I was out shopping and when I came home there they were, sitting in my refrigerator. She’s planning a big surprise party for Sheila Kashinian’s birthday.”
“I figured that out,” Gregor said. “Are you ready to go to dinner with me?”
“Right this minute?”
“Don’t be ludicrous. How about this evening, around seven?”
“Fine,” Bennis said.
The microwave beeped. Gregor opened the door and took the bowl of meatballs out, very carefully, using only the tips of his fingers. “I’ll make reservations for that place with the candles that you took me to. The one where the tables had those big pots of flowers.”
“Fleur de Lis.”
“Right.”
“Gregor?”
The water was boiling for the coffee. Gregor took the kettle off the burner and reached for a white mug and the bottle of Folger’s. “What?” he asked.
“I think you ought to come down earlier than that,” Bennis said. “To tell me all about the mother and the Methodist minister. Or whatever.”
“I’m nervous, too, Bennis,” he said.
“Good.”
“I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
“That’s good, too.”
“Play something a little less hiccuppy. If you’ve got anything less hiccuppy.”
“I don’t think I’m ready for Joni Mitchell yet, Gregor. Come on down.”
“I will.”
Bennis hung up. Gregor poured hot water over his Folger’s and then picked up both the mug and the bowl to take them back to the bedroom. The music from downstairs seemed to have been shut off altogether. Once he was beyond the kitchen, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it anyway. This building was too well built for sounds to travel between floors. He put his mug and his bowl down on the bedside table and picked up the phone book to find the number for Fleur de Lis.
He was pacing back and forth in front of his mirror, wondering how long he would have to wait for the coffee to cool enough for him to drink it and how many rings he would have to listen to before somebody at Fleur de Lis picked up, when he saw the three pictures of Elizabeth lined up like soldiers across the center shelf of the built-in bookcase next to his bed. He wondered suddenly when he had put them there, almost out of sight, instead of next to his phone where he would see them all the time. She was beautiful, Elizabeth was. When he had first met her, he had thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. There was still something magical about her, captured in these old photographs. Maybe there would never be a day in his life when he would not turn over in a bed he was sleeping in alone and half expect to find her there. Maybe there would never be a night in his life when he didn’t think he half heard her calling him, just out of sight in the next room. That was what it meant to be married and in love with somebody for thirty years. It did not mean that that was all you’d ever have or all you’d ever want or all you’d ever think about.
The phone was picked up on the other end of the line and a very harried woman said, “Fleur de Lis.”
“Yes,” Gregor said, walking over to the bookshelf as he talked. “My name is Gregor Demarkian. I would like to make a reservation for quarter to eight.”
“Oh, Mr. Demarkian,” the woman said. “Oh, of course. A reservation. For quarter to eight.”
“For two. For one of those booths in the back, if you’ve got one available.”
“Of course we’ve got one available. Of course we do.”
“Good,” Gregor said.
The woman was still fussing, Gregor couldn’t figure out about what. He looked at the pictures one more time and smiled slightly at the one of Elizabeth dressed as a clown, holding her nieces on her lap. Then he took all three down, one by one, until he was holding them in a stack in his free hand.
“There!” the woman at Fleur de Lis said. “All done. We’ll be expecting you at quarter to eight.”
