THERE WAS AN ALCOVE that jutted out over the front door from the second floor of St. Teresa’s House, and when Gregor Demarkian was finished looking through broom closets he stood in it. From the windows there he could see the cars pulling up to the curb outside and the people getting out. He noted the separate arrivals of Nancy and Henry Hare with some amusement. This whole situation made him feel a little uneasy, in spite of the fact that it was the way it was supposed to be. Maybe it was the fact that nothing before had ever been the way it was supposed to be that gave him pause. Reverend Mother General and the Archbishop had come out on the steps. Reverend Mother General paced back and forth the way school principals will when they have to think of something awful to do to someone and can’t. Gregor couldn’t remember how many lectures he had given about how murder cases had to be solved in the first forty-eight hours, about how physical evidence was much more important than the psychological kind, about how what must be true must be true no matter how strange it might seem. In his career, he could remember fewer than three men who had been convicted on physical evidence, and fewer than half a dozen whose guilt had been determined in the first forty-eight hours. As for the strangenesses, that was something else. Everything was strange. Just behind him, at the head of the narrow flight of steps leading down to the equally narrow corridor off the foyer, there was a gigantic poster, the one Gregor thought of as the granddaddy of all posters for Mother’s Day as Mary’s Day. Maybe he should have put that as the “grandmother” of all posters. It was at least as tall as he was, propped up against a wall with a rubber door stopper at its feet to keep it from falling over. It showed the Madonna standing on a cloud and holding the Child in the air. The Child had a crown and a scepter and a face that was at least fifty years old. Gregor wondered if women had once looked on their sons in this way, or if this was a male distortion of memory, what men thought their childhoods had been about. At the bottom of the poster were the words,
ON MOTHER’S DAY REMEMBER THE MOTHER OF GOD,
which Gregor was getting sick of. Gregor was getting sick of mothers and nuns and everything else he could think of connected to this case that was not a case. What it really was was a mess he had stumbled into that he was going to have a very difficult time cleaning up. He would have felt better if it had been Cardinal O’Bannion he had to deal with, and not this genteel Archbishop. Gregor knew what to expect from Cardinal O’Bannion. He looked back down at the walk and saw Nancy and Henry fighting, standing only a foot or two apart and screaming at each other. Gregor was safely enclosed behind his window. He couldn’t hear so much as an intonation from the people down below. He knew more or less what they were saying from the way they stood and the way they moved. Nancy was probably calling Henry a lot of very rude names. Henry was probably appealing to his honor. Gregor was sure Henry was the kind of man who appealed often to his honor. As for Reverend Mother General and the Archbishop…Gregor gave them one more look and shook his head. They thought they were going to make things better, but they were wrong.
Gregor searched around in his pockets until he found a crumpled piece of paper and a small pencil. Donna Moradanyan put the pencils in his pockets—just in case—and he crammed himself full of paper, because he hated to throw the stuff out. He flattened out a wadded up American Express receipt on the window-sill and wrote
a small knife
in badly formed script. His handwriting was atrocious. Then he realized that the receipt was small and that if he wanted to get it all in, he’d have to cramp. He made his letters very much smaller and wrote
plant food
fugu
chicken liver pate
flowers
thorns (too sharp)
timing
Then he rubbed his face. It was the timing that made him sure—given the timing what other solution could there be?—but that was neither here nor there. It wasn’t as simple in this case as telling the police what he knew and sitting back to let them handle it. The mere thought of Jack Androcetti made him wince. Gregor looked back at the front walk, saw that Norman Kevic had joined the war and a half dozen nuns in habits had signed on as spectators, and decided his suspects could wait. There was one more thing he wanted to find out for sure. To do that he had to make a phone call.
The second floor of St. Teresa’s House didn’t consist of much. It certainly didn’t contain a phone that he could see. The lobby downstairs did contain a phone, but he didn’t want to use it. It was in a place anyone might walk in. On him at any time. There was a public pay phone in the lobby of St. Cecilia’s Hall, and he was going to have to use that. It was incredibly annoying. If there was one thing Gregor Demarkian had never been interested in doing, it was playing the kind of hide-and-seek, private-spy games so beloved of the fictional detectives Bennis Hannaford was so crazy about. Bennis was always giving him volumes in the adventures of Mike Hammer and the Continental Op. Gregor preferred Nero Wolfe, who sat in a chair and only got out of it to go to the dinner table.
Gregor went down the narrow flight of steps to the corridor off the foyer and stopped to listen. If anyone was in the foyer, they were keeping so still they weren’t even breathing. He opened the door and looked out. The foyer was empty. He rushed across it to the door on the other side and slipped into the corridor beyond. Now it was just a question of making it across the two thin strips of lawn and through the hedge that divided the two buildings, and he would be safe. He paused at the side door of St. Teresa’s House when he got to it and listened to the sounds out in the street. There was no mistaking what was going on now. Henry Hare was furious. Nancy Hare was furious. Norman Kevic was furious. The Archbishop seemed to be struck dumb. Gregor stopped at the hedge and peered around as best he could to see what he could see. Mother Mary Bellarmine was standing off to one side, watching Henry and Nancy with a tight, malicious look on her face. Norman Kevic had sidled up to the grey-haired hippie Gregor remembered as Sarabess Coltrane and was holding her by the arm. Gregor rushed the rest of the way to St. Cecilia’s Hall, grasped the knob of the side door and was relieved when it opened without a hitch. All he would have needed was to be locked out of his refuge.
Norman Kevic had put his arms around Sarabess Coltrane’s waist. Mother Mary Bellarmine had turned her attention to them, and now she was furious. It had to be something in the air. Gregor slipped through the door into St. Cecilia’s Hall and headed for the bank of pay phones on the other side of the building. He hated delaying action like this, but he didn’t think there was anything he could do. He didn’t want to be like Jack Androcetti, jumping to conclusions and ruining his own case with haste and mindlessness. Assuming he had a case. He stepped into the first of the phone booths and felt around in his pockets for a quarter.
He especially didn’t like delaying action to call Bennis Hannaford, but with Androcetti behaving the way he was and Gregor’s FBI contacts useless, he was stuck.
BENNIS HANNAFORD SCREENED HER phone calls, so instead of a voice, Gregor got a tinny tinkling in his ear and then an off-key rendition of “Mother,” starting with the M and moving on through the rest of the letters, but with different lyrics than originally written. Bennis was apparently in a mood. The lyrics were filthy, and she almost never did that anymore now that she was living on Cavanaugh Street Gregor waited until the singing stopped and then said, “Bennis? Bennis, pick up. This is me. It’s important.”
There were a couple of clicks in his ear and then the sound of Bennis’s voice saying “Oh, damn.” The next thing he heard was a match being lighted, and that was reassuring. Bennis was always ready to talk when she settled down with a cigarette. That was why she settled down with a cigarette. Gregor waited until he heard the frantic puffing that announced that Bennis had her cigarette actually lit. Then he said, “Are you ready to talk now? This really is important.”
“I’m ready to talk,” Bennis said. “Are you all right? There have been rumors about you up and down the street all morning. That some big black car came and took you away. That you’ve been kidnapped. That that fool police lieutenant arrested you—”
“Nobody has arrested me. A big black car came and took me away. It belonged to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia—”
“Uh, oh.”
“—and if I’ve been kidnapped, it’s because I want to be. I’ve returned to the scene of the crime. I’m at St. Elizabeth’s.”
“Are you.”
“I need some information.”
“What information could you possibly need? You’re the one who told me you couldn’t get involved in this case. Because of Jack Androcetti.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “Well.”
“Well, nothing,” Bennis told him. “I never want to hear from you a little lecture about how I should mind my own business. Never again. Not when the police have specifically told you to stay out of it and you’re still—”
“Bennis.”
“God, I can’t believe it. All the times you’ve told me what a nudge I am. All the times you’ve told me I can’t mind my own business. All the times—”
“Bennis.”
“Right I’ll shut up. What do you need?”
What Gregor Demarkian needed was an aspirin, or maybe even two Excedrin, like in the television commercials. Why was it that Bennis Hannaford always ended up making him feel this way? The booth he was in had one of those half-size seats that would have been inadequate for an undersize dwarf. Gregor sat down on it the best he could.
“Do you remember the invitations we got to the reception yesterday?” he asked her. They came in a big packet—”
“I remember. But those weren’t the invitations. I mean, the invitations were in with all the rest of the stuff, but the rest of the stuff was about the Order—”
“Fine,” Gregor said. He didn’t need a description. “Do you still have that stuff?”
“Of course I still have that stuff. Somewhere. Lida’s daughter’s husband has been laid up. She hasn’t had time to get in here and clean out my papers for at least two months.”
“You could always clean out your own papers,” Gregor said.
“I could, but that would only deprive Lida of an occupation. It would be like learning to cook. If I learned to cook, who would Hannah Krekorian bring casseroles to? Oh, speaking of Hannah Krekorian—”
“I know,” Gregor said. “We’re supposed to hold Mother’s Day all over again next Sunday so she doesn’t miss it. Go find that packet.”
“I really think you ought to get into the spirit of this thing,” Bennis said. “It’s going to be good. Donna’s going to make a cake for Hannah’s granddaughter Lisette to jump out of—she’s three—and then—”
“Bennis.”
“I’m going. Honestly, Gregor, sometimes you’re impossible. Donna was only trying to be—”
“Bennis.”
“You say my name a lot, Gregor, have you noticed that? You say my name a lot.”
Gregor was about to recite the words of an ancient curse, but as it turned out he didn’t have to. Having had her say, Bennis disappeared from the line and came back moments later, rustling.
“We got lucky,” she said. “The whole thing was right where I thought it was in the refrigerator—”
“In the refrigerator?”
“In the crisper drawer, where I keep important papers. Even though you really couldn’t call these important papers. What’s usually in the crisper drawer is my current contract. Never mind. Here they are. What do you want to know?”
The crisper drawer, Gregor thought, feeling slightly dizzy. “What I want to know,” he said, “is about that field house they’re building. Wasn’t there a brochure on the college or something—”
“Not a brochure on the college,” Bennis told him, “a little pamphlet about buildings. All the buildings. Just a second. Here it is. It starts with the Motherhouse in Colchester. Building overseen by the Blessed Margaret Finney. Isn’t that the woman who started the Order?”
“Yes. Go forward. Find the field house.”
“I will.” There was the sound of paper being paged through. Bennis started muttering. “Mother Mary Bellarmine, Mother Mary Bellarmine, Mother Mary Bellarmine. There are a lot of these projects built by Mother Mary Bellarmine. Isn’t she the awful woman from the line yesterday?”
“She most certainly is.”
“Well, she spends a lot of her time erecting architecture. Big projects, too. There’s a picture of her here in front of a boarding school in 1965, five brand new buildings at a cost of over twelve million dollars. I wonder where the Order got the money.”
“People gave it to them,” Gregor said impatiently. “Get to the field house.”
“I’ve gotten to the field house. What do you want to know?”
“Who’s building it, for one thing. Who’s in charge of the building.”
There was more paper rustling. “It says here the project director is someone named Sister Domenica Anne. Is that someone you know?”
“No.”
“I think I remember hearing yesterday that Mother Mary Bellarmine was consulting on the project or something. I’m trying to remember. Maybe Sister Anselm told me that. Didn’t you hear that, too?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Well?”
Gregor paused. “What about the pamphlet,” he said again. “It doesn’t mention Mother Mary Bellarmine?”
“Not in connection with the field house.”
“What about Henry Hare?”
“Oh, it mentions Henry Hare a lot Henry Hare has a big stake in this project. There’s a picture of him here at the groundbreaking, shoveling dirt out of the ground, with the caption ‘The field house project was made possible by the generosity of Henry Hare and the VTZ Corporation. Mr. Hare has been more than generous with both his time and his money, and VTZ is supplying the majority of the building materials and construction crews for this project.’ That’s a very iffy proposition, you know, Gregor. I mean, it looks like charity but it isn’t, really. He’s expecting to make money on it.”
“Mr. Hare?”
“That’s right. Hell sell the Order their lumber and their nails and their heating ducts and whatever and take a cut. It’s not necessarily dishonest. Interior decorators work that way all the time. It’s just not a way I’d want to do business.”
“Mmm,” Gregor said. “Is there anybody else you recognize in those pictures? Or anybody whose name we know in the copy?”
There’s Norman Kevic,” Bennis said. “VTZ owns the station he’s on, or a good part of it, anyway. I think I remember hearing that Norm owned part of it himself. Anyway, there’s a picture of him here with Nancy Hare, of all people, and she looks positively calm. I suppose it’s some kind of obligation. She has to play Lady Bountiful every once in a while to keep up the image of VTZ.”
“She didn’t seem to care much for the image of VTZ yesterday,” Gregor said. “Are you sure that’s it? There aren’t any cameo appearances by somebody strange, like Sister Scholastica or Sister Agnes Bernadette?”
“Not a thing.”
“How about any mention of a big donor, an anonymous source of significant cash?”
“Nope. Are you sure it would be here?”
“No, I’m not,” Gregor said. “And the fact that it’s not there doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There might be a very secret benefactor someplace who just doesn’t want his benefaction called attention to. That’s unusual, though. My feeling is that if there isn’t any mention of such benefaction, there isn’t any such benefaction.”
“Is that bad?” Bennis asked. “Do you need something like that for your theory to be correct?”
“I don’t deal in theories, I deal in facts. And no, I don’t need a benefaction. If there was something like that, it would throw a monkey wrench into everything. I still wouldn’t be wrong, mind you, but I’d have a lot harder time proving it.”
“Marvelous,” Bennis said. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Would you like to clue me in to who and what and where and why and when? I mean, I’m only the person with the most interest in this sort of thing that you know.”
“It’s easy,” Gregor said pleasantly. “All you have to know is not only who is dead but who was supposed to be dead.”
“You mean you think it was supposed to be Mother Mary Bellarmine who was killed after all?”
“I mean I hear police sirens.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s supposed to mean that one of my suspects seems to have called lieutenant Androcetti. I’ll talk to you later, Bennis.”
“But—”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“If I had a penny for every time you promised to tell me later and didn’t, I’d be richer than my father was.”
Bennis’s father was dead. Gregor hung up the phone and walked out of the phone booth to the front door of St. Cecelia’s Hall. From there the siren sounded too loud and too urgent, better suited for an air raid than a college campus. The nuns had heard it just as surely as he had and had come out to look. When he’d first come over, Gregor had imagined St. Cecilia’s Hall to be empty, but it most surely hadn’t been. Nuns were coming out of doors and out of corridors, down stairs and out of rooms. Their habits were all virtually identical, mostly black, and disturbingly mobile, so that each and every nun looked like a flag blowing in an unseen breeze.
Gregor wormed his way past the nuns standing in the doorway and onto the front steps. Now he could see nuns coming at him from every side of campus, moving across the lawns and sidewalks with eerie grace, looking like nothing so much as the reconstituted pod people in the first version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Since nuns were nothing like pod people, at least in Gregory’s experience, he ignored the image and concentrated on the patrol car.
It was a patrol car, too, not an unmarked one, with a flashing bubble light on its roof and a pair of uniforms in the front seat. It pulled to a stop in the midst of the arguing Hares, practically knocking Nancy Hare to the ground. She jumped back and bumped into Mother Mary Bellarmine. Mother Mary Bellarmine jumped back, too, then tottered forward and seemed to grab Nancy Hare around the throat. A second later, she had righted herself again and begun to brush off her habit in a furious attempt to retrieve her dignity. The patrol car’s two front doors popped open and a pair of glum looking uniforms got out. A second later, one of the back doors opened and Jack Androcetti catapulted himself onto the pavement. He was wearing a lightweight wool summer suit with very tiny red lines on a grey background. He reminded Gregor of the kind of kidnapper who went into office-supply stores to type his ransom notes on IBM Selectric demonstrator models.
Androcetti shoved his hands in his pockets and began to bellow.
“Demarkian,” he shouted. “Demarkian, where are you?”
Gregor Demarkian sighed. Every nun in the area knew where he was. They were looking straight at him. Jack Androcetti was staring up into the branches of the tree that spread out above his head. It could have been a metaphor for the man’s entire career.
Gregor decided to give him a break of sorts.
“I’m right here,” he said, as he walked down the front steps of St. Cecelia’s Hall and started down the sidewalk to the patrol car. “I’m coming.”
It was one of those mistakes you can make only once or twice in a lifetime. It was one of those mistakes that can kill you.
Jack Androcetti was not interested in conversation, or in solving the case, or in finding out what was really going on here. Jack Androcetti wasn’t interested in anything but solving problems the way he’d always been able to solve them before.
As soon as Gregor Demarkian got into range, Jack Androcetti pulled back his fist and let loose with a right-upper cut.
ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO, three potato, four.
Gregor felt the impact on his jaw and that was what he thought.
One potato, two potato, three potato, four.
It was crazy.
Jack Androcetti had a big fist. His aim was terrible and his technique was nonexistent, but that didn’t matter. He was huge and he was fierce and he connected. Gregor’s ears rang and rang, like a car alarm going off in the night. On the other side of the little crowd of people now gathered around them, Gregor saw Norman Kevic begin to fade carefully out of the group, headed for safety, headed for open space.
“Wait,” he said, through what seemed to be blood filling his mouth. What if he’d lost a tooth? “Wait,” he said again. “Stop—”
“For Christ’s sake,” somebody said. Gregor took a minute to recognize the man as Rob Collins. “What are you doing? You’ve made him bleed.”
“That son of a bitch has no business in this case,” Jack Androcetti said.
“He’s not in the case,” Rob Collins said. “He’s at the college. And he’s got a perfect right to be here.”
Norman Kevic was still sliding away, sliding away. It seemed to be taking place in slow motion.
“Wait,” Gregor said again, this time wondering if he was making any sense at all. A Sister he didn’t know planted herself in front of him and handed him a glass of ice water. He took it and rinsed out his mouth. “Wait,” he said for the fourth time, when the blood was mostly gone. The problem was, the blood came back again. Gregor shook his head.
“That son of a bitch,” Jack Androcetti said again. “I told him to stay out of it I meant for him to stay out of it. He’s going to stay out of it.”
“Stay out of what?” Sister Scholastica demanded, barreling out of nowhere. Nowhere was really a gaggle of nuns. What did you call groups of nuns? Gaggles were for geese. Pods were for whales. Schools were for fish. It was maddening. “I think you’re a jerk and a bully,” Scholastica said, “and if I were you I’d get off this campus now, before you get thrown off. I don’t care if you are the police. This is private property and Church property and all the rest of it. I have half a mind to kick you in the shin.”
“Sister,” the Archbishop said, sounding alarmed.
“Sister is exaggerating,” Reverend Mother General said. “But I know how she feels.”
“You can get suspended for hitting a civilian,” Rob Collins said. “You can get canned.”
The pain was so bad, Gregor couldn’t stand up. He kept gulping down ice water, but it didn’t seem to help. He got down on his haunches and put his head between his knees. He was down there with his eyes closed when whatever happened happened.
That’s how he thought of it later. When whatever happened happened.
He caught only the result of it.
He felt some of his pain ebbing away.
He stood up.
He looked blindly through the crowd at nothing in particular and focused when he detected movement.
The movement was the collapse of Nancy Hare, fatting forward onto Norman Kevic and grabbing his tie in the process, so that Norman looked choked.
Nancy had a shiny thin X-Acto knife sticking out of her side.