Gregor Demarkian decided to find out where the Radisson was because he couldn't find Bennis Hannaford, who was supposed to be there, but who wasn't answering the phone. If she was off on the floor where Jimmy Card and Elizabeth Toliver were hiding out, he was going to kill her. She hadn't given him that numberâprobably because she hadn't been authorized toâand she hadn't given him any other way to reach her. Gregor was beginning to realize just how much he had come to rely on cell phones.
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the notebook he'd been using since before he'd first come out to Hollman. Kyle was driving as if everything would get out of his way when he needed it to, even trees. It was better not to watch the road while that kind of thing was going on.
“So,” Kyle said. “What's that you've got there? The answer to all my problems?”
“It's a list.” Gregor turned the notebook sideways so that Kyle could get a look at it. He didn't leave it up long, though, because he wanted Kyle concentrating on the roads. “In a way, it's a suspect list. It just wasn't supposed to be a suspect list for the death of Chris Inglerod Barr.”
“What is it a suspect list for, then?”
“Oh, it's a suspect list for the death of Chris Inglerod Barr,” Gregor said. “It's very efficient that way. It's just
that, when I wrote it, Mrs. Barr was still alive and well and I only knew her as Chris Inglerod. I should say knew of her. We hadn't met. This is the list of names Jimmy Card gave me the afternoon he hired me. I've added a couple of names to it.”
“Okay,” Kyle said.
“I should have insisted on talking to Liz Toliver before I came up here.” Gregor sighed. “As it is, I only met her after we both got to Hollman, and that was in the midst of the crisis about her mother's dog. And everything I knew about that night Michael Houseman died, I knew either from dry research or from Jimmy Card, and Jimmy Card doesn't give a flying damn about who killed Michael Houseman as long as it wasn't Elizabeth Toliver.”
“It wasn't,” Kyle said quickly.
“I know. But the thing is, since the beginning, my focus on this case has been what Jimmy Card set it up to be. But what struck him most forcefully, and what naturally strikes Elizabeth Toliver, isn't the murder but the outhouse. It makes much more sense for Elizabeth Toliver to be fixated on the outhouse and what happened to her in it than it does for her to worry about who killed Michael Houseman. She never even saw the body. And she never knew the boy very well.”
“She'd have recognized him in the corridors in school. But they never hung out or were friends or anything of that kind.”
“Exactly,” Gregor said. “So Elizabeth Toliver thinks about the outhouse, not about the murder, when she thinks about that night. The only thing she ever says about the murder is that she heard somebody screamingâ”
“âSlit his throat,'” Kyle said quickly. “She told the police that at the time. She said she couldn't recognize the voice.”
“She told Jimmy Card she couldn't recognize it as well,” Gregor said. “But what that leaves me with, what it has left me with all along, is an investigative structure that hinges on the outhouse incident. And since the two incidents are
connected in a very tenuous wayâsince they
overlap
, I should sayâthe suspect list is still useful. But it's not actually a suspect list for the murder of Michael Houseman, or for the murder of Chris Inglerod Barr, either.”
“So who's on it?” Kyle said.
Gregor held the notebook up. “Maris Coleman. Belinda Hart. Emma Kenyon. Chris Inglerod. Nancy Quayde. Peggy Smith.”
“Well, you can get rid of Chris Inglerod,” Kyle said. “At least, as a suspect in her own murder. Do you think she killed Michael Houseman?”
“No.”
“Well, you can't think she killed herself, can you?” Kyle said.
“I can't see Mrs. Barr doing it and managing to hide the weapon so well we couldn't find it,” Gregor said. “No. I don't think she killed herself. And Emma Kenyon Bligh is eliminated because she was attacked this afternoon. Of course, there is a possibility that Mrs. Bligh inflicted that wound on herself. This time, we do have the weapon. And there's also the possibility that Mrs. Bligh was working with somebody else, possibly Peggy Smith Kennedy, and they had a falling out. But all in all, I'm inclined to think not. It's not a crime of that character. It has too much passion in it.”
“Are you talking about what happened to Chris now, or what happened to Emma?”
“Both. Sorry. I've been thinking of them as one crime. The two women and the dog. And that sequence has a lot of passion in it, which is interesting, because from everything you've told me and everything everyone else has told me and everything I've read in the material you've given me, the murder of Michael Houseman was cold as hell.”
“And you've got more suspects for that one,” Kyle said. “There's me. And Stu Kennedy. You don't suspect either of us of murdering Chris Inglerod?”
“No. In fact, I know that neither of you did. Mr. Kennedy is not capable of pulling off something of this complexity,
not unless he's also capable of getting himself sober and straight when he has to, which, from what you've told me, he isn't.”
“Not from anything I've ever seen, no.”
“I'd be willing to bet not, period,” Gregor said. “And as for you, you couldn't have killed Chris Inglerod Barr because you didn't have time. You were with me most of the afternoon. Then I left to go out to the Toliver place. You would have had to make it out there before me, kill Mrs. Barr, and get away again, all before Luis pulled into the driveway with me in the backseat. And that ignores the obvious, which is that you'd have had to know that Mrs. Barr was going to be there in the first place. So no. I don't think you're a serious suspect in the murder of Chris Inglerod Barr, and you're no suspect at all in the attack on Emma Kenyon Bligh, because we were together the whole morning and I know where you were and what you did. Feeling relieved?”
“More than you know.”
“It's not a bad suspect list for the murder of Chris Inglerod Barr,” Gregor said, “if I remember to use it for that, instead of letting the list focus my mind on the outhouse. Because the thing about the outhouse is that it was almost beside the point. Almost. Not entirely. That's another mistake I made. First I took it too seriously, and then later for a while I didn't take it seriously enough. There's a big sign over there saying âRadisson.' Shouldn't we do something about that?”
“I really hate that part of the detective novel where the detective tells his sidekick a third of everything he knows and then shuts up like a clam and acts like Buddha for fifty pages while the sidekick tears his hair trying to decipher all the Zen koans. You know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean. I'm waiting for one more piece of information, and then we'll do all the usual things that cops like to do and you can hold a press conference to announce the arrest. How's that?”
“Okay unless somebody else ends up dead in the meantime,” Kyle said.
“I absolutely promise you not to hold a party to accuse each of the suspects in turn. Some of them would probably refuse to come. And I absolutely promise you that there won't be another death, unless it's the death of Emma Kenyon Bligh, and the last time we heard from the hospital, that was very unlikely.”
“Right,” Kyle said. He had pulled into a parking space against the building. It was a handicapped parking space, but he didn't seem to care. “Dozens of people have linoleum cutters. You can buy them in any hardware store.”
“Of course, but why would she do that? Why not use something close to hand, like a kitchen knife?”
“Not sharp enough,” Kyle said.
“You're giving her too much credit. She didn't think that far ahead. And I meant it. The forensics are hard. They take meticulous collection, and meticulous lab work. Even big-city, fully professionalized police departments screw them up. Investigation is easy. It's just a matter of thinking clearly, and remembering that somebody can be very logical without being in the least bit rational.”
“We're back to Zen Buddhism again,” Kyle said.
Gregor laughed. He popped his door open and got out. He waited for Kyle to get out and then went up the curving concrete walk to the front door.
“With any luck,” he said, “there will be a fax waiting for me at the desk, and there will be Bennis waiting for me in the room. If we can get those two things, we can get this thing over with pretty quickly. And besides.”
“Besides what?” Kyle said.
“Besides. You keep forgetting that Emma Kenyon Bligh is going to wake up.”
Gregor was not sure what he was expecting when he checked in at the deskâthe worst-case scenario was that
Bennis had forgotten to tell anybody he might be coming, and he wouldn't be able to get up to the room, or even in touch with herâbut as it turned out he was already on record as being one of the occupants of the suite, and there was already a sheaf of messages waiting for him in the mailbox. One of them was a fax from Russ Donahue. Gregor tried to remember if he'd told Bennis to have that faxed to the hotel or to the police department, and he was fairly sure he'd asked her to have it faxed to the police department. She might have asked for it to be faxed both places just to be safe. He folded that one in squares and put it in his right hip pocket. The other message was from Jimmy Card. It included a floor number and the words “password: goldfish.”
“Whatever,” Gregor said, frowning at the note. He put that away in his right hip pocket, too. “I think I'll go up to the suite and see if Bennis is around to talk to,” he told Kyle Borden.
“Ms. Hannaford has gone out,” the helpful young woman at the desk said cheerfully. “She left about two hours ago withâahâwith a friend.”
The young woman arched her eyebrows. Gregor frowned. “A friend? How could she have left with a friend? She doesn't know anybody in this part of Pennsylvania that I've heard about.”
“She left with a
woman
friend,” the young woman said. Now it was her tone that was arched. Gregor was completely bewildered. “She said you'd know who it would be. Of course, under the circumstances, I couldn't mention the name in a place where we might be overheard.”
Light dawned. It was an idiot light, but it dawned. “Ah,” Gregor said. “All right then. Maybe I'll go upstairs and answer my mail.”
“I hope you have a pleasant stay,” the young woman said, cheerfully again.
Gregor got Kyle Borden in hand and headed for the elevators, but once inside the car he didn't press the button
for the second floor, where his own suite was, but for the fourth. Kyle frowned.
“Didn't she say you were on the second floor?”
“Right.”
“Why are we going to the fourth?”
“Because that's where Jimmy Card and Elizabeth Toliver are. They have the entire west wing of the fourth floor.”
“And we can just walk on there anytime we want? They don't have any better security than that?”
The elevator car stopped on the fourth floor. Gregor and Kyle got out onto an open foyer-type arrangement. One set of signs pointed to the east wing. One set of signs pointed to the west. Gregor went toward the west wing doors and pulled them back. They were immediately blocked by a large man in a black suit. He looked like he should be doing a bit part on
The Sopranos
.
“I think you're lost, sir,” he said, very politely, with no Brooklyn accent at all.
“Goldfish,” Gregor said solemnly.
“Yes, sir,” the man in black said, politely again, stepping back to let them through.
“What was that all about?” Kyle asked as they came out onto the fourth-floor west wing itself. “I feel like I'm in a James Bond movie.”
“Security,” Gregor said.
It wasn't much in the way of security. As soon as they were past the man in black, they could see Geoff DeAvecca running back and fourth between the rooms. Geoff saw them coming down the hall and veered in their direction. He came to a stop just in front of them and said, “Cool! Is that a real gun? Does it have bullets in it? Can I shoot it?”
Kyle put his hand protectively on his gun. “I always knew there was a reason why I felt stupid wearing a holster,” he said.
“It's a real gun,” Gregor said, “but you can't hold it and you can't shoot it. It would be far too dangerous. I can't believe your mother would approve of it.”
“My mother doesn't approve of Donkey Kong,” Geoff said majestically. “But she's a girl. Jimmy likes Donkey Kong.”
Up toward the other end of the hall, a head poked out of a door. A moment later, Mark DeAvecca's entire body followed it, and Jimmy Card followed him. Jimmy was supposed to be the grown-up, but Mark was half a foot taller. Gregor always got the feeling that Mark was growing even taller as he watched.
“Mr. Demarkian! What's up? Have you seen Mom? She went out with your friend Bennis. What're you doing? Mom says you said she isn't a suspect anymore. Is that a real policeman?”
“Mark, for Christ's sake,” Jimmy said.
“I'm just a little jumpy,” Mark said. “I don't like the idea of her being out there on her own. She doesn't have a lot of sense.”
Gregor cleared his throat. It was that or laugh. “We got your note at reception. We just didn't know what it meant. So we decided to come up here to see. Where did Liz and Bennis go, do you know?”
“No,” Jimmy said. “We don't. Liz wouldn't tell me what was on her mind. She went downstairs to borrow Bennis's car, and then she called back up here to say that Bennis was going to go with her.”
“I figure if she wanted somebody with her, she wasn't going to do anything stupid like commit suicide,” Mark said. “And don't look at me like that. People do do that. They do it all the time. And she's been depressed.”
“She hasn't been that kind of depressed,” Jimmy said. Then he sighed. “I don't know what it was about. She's been acting peculiar practically since we got here. She keeps saying she thought she knew what she heard, but now she knows she's wrong. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” Gregor said, although it did. He wondered why Jimmy hadn't thought of it, or Mark. Elizabeth Toliver had heard a voice in the woods on the night she was nailed into the outhouse and Michael Houseman died, a voice screaming
“slit his throat.” She'd always said she had no idea whose voice it was, but she might not have been telling the truth. Gregor had always suspected she wasn't. She hadn't been behaving like somebody who couldn't figure out who it was she had heard.
“I just hope she didn't get caught by reporters,” Jimmy said. “That's just about all we'd need right now.”
“She talks,” Mark said. “You wouldn't believe it. She's on cable news all the time and she still doesn't get it. She just blurts it all out. But that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the murderer. That's been the point of this exercise, hasn't it? Somebody's been trying to murder her? I've been trying to tell Jimmy that, but he won't listen.”
“Nobody murders somebody just because they left town after high school and got famous,” Jimmy said.
“Those two women who drove me home would be happy to see her dead,” Mark said. “You didn't talk to them for an hour. I did.”
“It took an hour to drive you home from the middle of Hollman?” Jimmy said.
“No,” Mark said. “We talked some before we went. But you ask Mr. Demarkian. I'm right, aren't I? Somebody has been trying to kill her.”
“No,” Gregor said.
“This is new,” Kyle said. “Why would you think somebody wanted to kill your mother?”
“What else could be going on?” Mark said.
“Nobody has been trying to kill Ms. Toliver,” Gregor said firmly. “And nobody is going to be trying to kill Ms. Toliver in the foreseeable future, as far as I know. She may have enemies in New York or Connecticut that I'm unaware of, of courseâ”
“Senior citizens,” Mark said solemnly. “These guys who are like sixty-five and seventy. They hate it that they've been sending their stories in for years and couldn't get published and there she is. They hate losing to a girl.”
“I don't think that means they'd kill her,” Jimmy said.
“Even if the killer didn't mean to murder her in the first place,” Mark said, “couldn't he be meaning to do that now? There has to be some reason he killed Grandma's dog and left the body on her lawn. It's not like Grandma's house is convenient to anything.”
“Maybe it is,” Jimmy said. “There could be any number of things in the area.”
“You have to drive to all of them,” Mark said. “Ask Mr. Demarkian.”
“Nobody is going to kill anybody for the rest of the day,” Gregor said firmly, “at least, nobody involved in this case is. You don't have any idea at all where Ms. Toliver has gone? And Bennis?”
“I thought she might have gone to the hospital to visit Grandma,” Mark said. “I mean, she's been agitating over Grandma all day. I don't know why. The woman's a complete bitchâ”
“
Jesus
,” Jimmy Card said. “She's going to blame me for your language. She always does.”
“I'm being accurate,” Mark said. “Grandma is a bitch. Especially to Mom. It's like she hates her or something. Except you wouldn't think a mother would hate her own daughter, but she does. I don't understand women. I mean, guys just do what they do, you know? Women get psychotic.”
“Women are born psychotic,” Jimmy Card said.
“Listen,” Gregor said. “We just came up to make sure that everything was all right. We need to get back to the hospital and see if Emma Bligh is ready to be interviewed. If you give me the number, we'll call in when we get to the hospital. I really would like to know when you know that Bennis and Liz are all right.”