“I'll just leave you twenty dollars for this,” he said, taking out his wallet.
Emma had reached Peggy and grabbed her by the arm. They were, Gregor realized, the same age. Emma only looked younger at first glance because the heavy folds of fat left her without the kind of wrinkles Peggy had. He had,
he was sure, a Peggy in his notebook, but he didn't want to check it here.
Emma had started to drag Peggy through the aisles between the shelves. She had to drag, because Peggy didn't seem to be moving her legs or her feet. She was moving her head, but that was more disconcerting than if she had been holding herself absolutely still. Her head bobbed back and forth on the top of her neck, as if they weren't securely connected.
“Jesus
Christ
,” Emma said. “I can't believe you came in here at this time of day. Does he know where you are?”
“I'll just leave this twenty-dollar bill,” Gregor said again.
The plaque cost $14.95. He didn't really care. Emma continued to drag Peggy toward the back of the store, and in no time at all, they were out of sight. They were not, however, out of earshot. Peggy had the kind of clear-bell voice that carries for yards, even though it isn't loud, and Emma was hissing.
“He knows I had to work late,” she was saying. “You know what he's like. He understands when I have to stay at school to do the chess club.”
It was, Gregor thought, like listening to someone talking during an episode of sleepwalking. The voice had no affect.
He anchored the twenty-dollar bill firmly under a small vase of silk flowers. The vase was made of bubble glass. At the last minute, he left the plaque there, too. He couldn't imagine what he'd do with it. Then he headed out the door and across the porch and down the steps back to the sidewalk, having no idea at all why he should feel so much in a hurry.
When he got back to the car and slid into the backseat and gave the robot-driver directions to go straight to Betsey Toliver's house, he reached into his jacket again and looked up the entry on “Peggy.”
Fifteen minutes later, after some confusion about the difference between Meadow Farm Road and Meadow Farm Lane, the car pulled into the long driveway leading to a low ranch house that stretched out across its property like a ruler made of Silly Putty. It was a fifties ranch, not a modern one, but it had been kept up. The flagstone walk that led from the front door to the streetâthe one that nobody would ever walk on, because nobody would ever park on the street, out hereâwas well set and swept clean. The flagstone walk that led from the driveway to the side door was positively new. There were no cracks in the driveway's asphalt paving. The front door had been freshly painted a glossy metallic red. Gregor could easily see how this might have been the biggest and most expensive house in town thirty years ago, especially since Hollman was hardly a bastion of the rich and famous, or even of the rich and bored. He popped open his door, swung his feet out of the car, and vaulted out into the air. At the end of May, it was warm out here, although not as warm as Philadelphia would have been. There was a slight breeze brushing through his hair. The grass smelled as if it had just been mowed. The house looked so quiet, and so deserted, he thought he might have come at the wrong time. Maybe Elizabeth Toliver had taken her mother to a restaurant. Maybe nobody was home.
Gregor was just turning to watch the robot-driver take his suitcases out of the trunkâever since Bennis had bought him luggage, he looked like a software billionaire when he traveled, or maybe like Steven Spielbergâwhen there were sounds from the back of the house, and then the clear tap and crack of hard heels on a stone surface. A moment later, a small woman came into view from the backyard. She was small in every way, not only short but very slight, with a fine-boned, high-cheekboned face with edges so sharp they looked as if they'd been drawn with a
fountain pen. Gregor recognized her by her eyes, and her hair. Her eyes were enormous. Her hair had that overpuffed look it got when the people it belonged to were interviewed too often on television.
“Shit,” she said.
“Excuse me?” Gregor said.
“I'm sorry,” she said, running her right hand through her hair and making it puff all the higher. Then she walked up to him and stuck out her hand. “I
am
sorry. I didn't mean to sound as ifâoh, I don't know. It's Gregor Demarkian, isn't it?”
“That's right.”
“I'm Liz Toliver. And I really am sorry. I know I'm saying it over and over again. I'm not making any sense. But if that nurse quits, we're all up shit creek without a paddle, and the fool woman is totally losing it. I mean, for God's sakeâ”
“She's changed her mind,” a tall man called, coming around the house from the same direction Liz Toliver had. A moment later, Gregor saw that it wasn't a man at all, but a boy, and a fairly young boyâno more than fourteen, he was sure, in spite of the height and the stubble of a beard just beginning to grow at the edges of his jaw. Still, Gregor thought, it would take another man not to be fooled. He'd bet anything that that boy got away with telling girls he was at least seventeen.
The boy came up to them and stopped. “She's changed her mind,” he said again. “She's calmed down and she's going to stay, which is a good thing because Grandma is not going to be calmed down until that sedative kicks in. You're Mr. Demarkian, aren't you? Cool.”
“How do you do?” Gregor said.
The boy had grabbed his hand and started pumping it. “I'm Mark DeAvecca. Liz is my mother. Jay DeAvecca was my father. He wasâ”
“Mark.”
“Well, whatever. It's complicated to figure out. I've got this whole monologue I use on new people from school.
You know how conventional people are. Any sign of the cops?”
“You called the police?” Gregor said.
“We had to,” Liz Toliver said.
“Come on back and I'll show you,” Mark DeAvecca said. “It's in the garage. It's a detached garage. That's why we didn't hear. But it couldn't have been too long ago. I mean, it was still bleeding when Mrs. Vernon saw itâ”
“Who's Mrs. Vernon?” Gregor said.
“Grandma's nurse,” Mark said.
“And you only know she said it was bleeding,” Liz Toliver said. “Considering the way she was behaving, God only knows what she actually sawâ”
“I saw it bleeding,” Mark said confidently. “Not much and not for very long, but the blood was definitely liquid. I was the first one out there after Mrs. Vernon had her fit, and it was oozingâ”
“Mark.”
“She's got that sound programmed on a chip inside her skull,” Mark said. “She doesn't have to make any effort to say it anymore. It just comes out automatically, every time Iâ”
“Mark,” Liz Toliver said, more calmly, but not much more. “If you don't start behaving like a human beingâ”
“I
am
behaving like a human being,” Mark said. “I am behaving like a very upset and frightened human being, and also like a very angry human being, because I
told
you so, I
told
you that this was a bad idea. And it's a good damned thingâdon't you dare tell me not to say âdamn'âit's a good damned thing that Geoff didn't see it, because if he had he'd be up with nightmares for weeks.”
“Wait,” Liz said. “Geoffâ”
“I've got the garage barricaded off. I didn't want to touch anything, so I piled up a bunch of stuff at the end of the drive so he can't get over it. And as soon as the police get here, I'm going to call Jimmy and tell him about this whole thing, and after that I hope you're going to listen to
reason, because this is fucking stupid. And don't you dare tell me not to say âfuck.'”
“What?” Liz said. “We're in some kind of crisis so it doesn't matter what you say? I don't get that. Since whenâ”
Mark turned his head to Gregor. “You want to come out back and see before the police get here? It's really lovely. There's blood all over everything. We're never going to get it out of the cement floor. If the real estate agents know about it, we're never going to sell the place. It's unbelievable.”
“All right,” Liz said. “It's unbelievable. I'll give you that.”
Somewhere in the distance, there was the sound of a police siren. Gregor wondered if Liz and Mark had been as incoherent with the police as they had been with him, or if they'd sounded this panicked. That would be enough to bring a siren. Of course, so would boredom, cops with nothing else to do in a small town on a Monday night. He cocked his head at Mark.
“What is it?” he asked. “I take it nobody is dead.”
“Not somebody,” Mark said. “Some thing.”
“It hardly seems right to call it a thing,” Liz said.
“A dog,” Mark said. “Grandma's dog. She's had it forever. That's one of the things we were supposed to do up here this vacation. Find someplace to put the dog. Except the dog looks as decrepit as Grandma. Although that could just be me. I can't really tell you how good my perceptions are in a situation like this, because I've never been in a situation like this, and I never intend to be in one again. If we can't talk my mother into packing up and going back to New York, I may just tie her up and throw her in the trunk and take her back myself.”
“You can't drive,” Liz said.
“Don't bet on it,” Mark said.
The sirens were much closer now. It was, Gregor was sure, only a single police car, but he had the noise on as high and fast as it would go.
“So,” Gregor said. “There's a dead dog on the floor of your garage. Somehow, that doesn't seem to be the whole story.”
“It's not just dead,” Mark said flatly. “It's been killed. It's been eviscerated, to be exact. Slit right down the stomach with something sharp and the guts are all the hell over the garage floor, intestines that look like intestines, everywhereâ”
“Mark.”
“That's the cops,” Mark said as a white and blue car pulled into the drive, “and what I just told Mr. Demarkian here is the truth and you goddamned know it. Somebody slit that dog open while it was still alive and dumped its guts all over our garage floor and that didn't happen by accident, Ma, that happened on purpose, and you know it as well as I do. And I am going to call Jimmy, I really am, because if you can't get your act together, somebody has to. I want to leave. I want to leave tomorrow morning. Let's take Grandma and the goddamned nurse with us if we have to, but let's go. Somebody who did that to a dog could do that to Geoff. Got it?” He swung around to Gregor again. “You know how I know it was alive? Because it was alive when I saw it. It was in pain but it was conscious and it made eye contact with me and you know I'm not making that up, either. Jesus Christ. I'm going to go talk to the cops.”
“Cop,” Liz said automatically, because only one man had gotten out of the blue and white car. “It's incredible, the kind of language they learn in very expensive private schools.”
Gregor looked up the drive. The garage was a small detached building at the very end of itâmaybe at the very end of the propertyâthat had been built to hold three cars, in a style meant to match that of the house. At the moment, there was a huge pile of debris in front of the doors, which were the kind that opened out, like barn doors, rather than the kind that folded up. Behind the garage, there were trees, tall pines that lined the property like a gate.
“What's back there?” Gregor asked. “Behind those trees, I mean?”
“More trees,” Liz said. “I don't know. I never was one for going outdoors when I was a child. Do you think the person came from there, from the trees?”
“I don't know. I was really wondering if there was another house back there, but that we couldn't see it except for the trees.”
“I don't think so,” Liz said. “But you're asking the wrong person. This is the first time I've been back in decades.”
“I know.”
The cop had finished talking to Mark, or Mark had finished talking to the cop. They were both walking down the driveway toward Gregor and Liz, and Gregor suddenly realized that the warm breeze had come back, or that his awareness of it had. For the first time, he was fully cognizant of just how isolated this house was. This was not a subdivision, or a suburban street. It was a country road, with not too much of anything else on it except this house. The nearest neighbor was a good trek away. The way things sounded around them, the entire landscape might be uninhabited. Gregor did a 360-degree turn, checking things out. It was still light. There were still birds.
Mark and the cop came up to them and stopped. The cop stuck his hand out and grabbed Gregor's. “I'm Kyle Borden,” he said, shaking vigorously. “You must be the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot.”