by Jane Haddam
“Look,” he said. “Kayla Anson had to have been killed sometime between the time that Zara Anne Moss saw the BMW driving down the Litchfield Road, followed by the Jeep, and the time you saw the same BMW speeding through Morris.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t make any sense to think that Kayla Anson herself would have been speeding. If she’d been willing to speed, why wouldn’t she have been doing it when Zara Anne Moss saw her? What did Zara Anne say? The Jeep was following so closely behind that it was almost bumping into the BMW’s bumper. But Kayla Anson did not speed up, or at least didn’t speed up significantly. Which indicates to me, at any rate, that she didn’t like putting the pedal to the floor.”
“Ah,” Stacey said. “I see what you mean. But that’s still conjecture.”
“Yes, it is. But you’ve also got the body, which from everything I’ve heard about it had been dead at least some time before Bennis Hannaford found it. And you’ve got the garage, which showed no sign of anything in the way of evidence that a murder had been committed there. I read those reports you gave me. There was absolutely nothing.”
“Maybe there wouldn’t have been anything, if the murder had taken place in the car.”
“In that case, the murderer must have been Margaret Anson. She’s the only one who could have committed it in the car and in the garage and not have had to worry about leaving evidence of herself someplace on the property. And she’s my favorite suspect at the moment. The most likely person, so to speak. But even if it is Margaret Anson.…”
“Yes?”
Gregor’s drumming became a pounding. “There should be footprints.”
“What?”
“There should be footprints. Or something. The Jeep had to have been ditched first. Or ditched and then come back for. I wish I had a map.”
“I can get you maps—”
“Not that kind of map,” Gregor said. “I keep telling you, I want to draw a map that shows where everything is. How far it would be to walk. Because whoever killed Kayla Anson had to do a fair amount of walking on the night of the crime. He had to ditch the Jeep completely or ditch it and then come back for it. He had to get home. You ride around on these roads out here and you feel that everything is a million miles apart. The whole scenario seems impossible.”
“Things aren’t millions of miles apart,” Stacey said. “But you keep saying ‘he.’ Are you so sure it isn’t Margaret Anson?”
“No, I’m not. I was just speaking the way we were taught to speak before political correctness. And Margaret Anson would have the easiest time of it here—ditch the Jeep, bring the body back in the car, park it in the garage, and walk across the drive to her own living room. Much the simplest possible sequence of events.”
“But you don’t believe it,” Stacey said.
“I believe that I need to make that map,” Gregor said. “Let’s go somewhere and do it. There has to be somebody around here who would understand the kind of thing I mean and has some decent information about distances. And after that, we can talk to Peter Greer.”
“Why Peter Greer?”
“I’ll explain to you about Peter Greer later. Let’s go.”
Stacey Spratz looked down at the table and blinked.
“But Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “You haven’t finished your fries.”
Six
1
The last thing Annabel Crawford wanted to do, this afternoon or at any other time, was to drive out to Margaret Anson’s house. To Kayla’s house, she kept telling herself, as if, if she said it often enough, she could stop thinking of that place as having nothing to do with Kayla at all. It was just a place for Kayla to die in, that’s what Annabel thought. All that worried nattering on the television news was just so much nonsense. Of course Kayla had died there, in the garage, with the bats roosting in the rafters over her head. She had died there just the way that woman from Faye Dallmer’s place had died there. It was a miracle that the bats hadn’t had at both of them—or maybe they had. That was the problem with knowing so little firsth and, with not being able to see for yourself. It was impossible to get the whole thing straight in her mind. Maybe the bats had roosted in Zara Anne Moss’s hair. Maybe they had pecked against the window of the car where Kayla’s body was, desperate to get in.
Annabel had spent all afternoon at the club—again. Since Kayla had died, she seemed to hate the idea of being home. Jennifer was at home, treating this whole thing like one more soap opera, except that Jennifer didn’t watch soap operas. Soap operas were not considered a good thing by the run-of-the-mill Litchfield County lady. They were too low-rent for one thing. They were the kind of thing that housewives in small Cape Cod houses with jobs at the local Kmart watched and thought they were getting a glimpse into the life of upper-middle-class suburban ease. The clothes were all wrong. That’s what Jennifer and her friends always said, when they talked about the women in those Cape Cod houses, the women who contributed ten dollars in cash to the latest Cancer Society fund drive. Annabel sometimes wondered what it was like, living the way those people lived, going to public schools, doing your own lawn, having a bedroom that was barely as big as her walk-in closet back home. She couldn’t imagine it. She had always lived like this. She always wanted to. She didn’t believe Mallory Martindale when she said that that other way was real life, and that this was all a fantasy that they were indulging in only because they could. Mallory Martindale said that she was going to go to nursing school and then get a job in a hospital somewhere. She was going to have one of those Cape Cod houses of her own, if she could ever afford to buy a house.
“I’m not going to kill myself to try to keep this up,” she’d said, and then she had pocketed Annabel’s money, the money for the dress.
Annabel didn’t know if she was happy to have the dress or not. She only knew that Mallory was happy to have sold it to her. She thought that what Mallory was doing was insane.
What she was thinking of doing was insane, too, but that was a more complicated thing. Deciding that you’d rather be rich than poor should have been a no-brainer. Annabel paused in the hall outside Ruth Grandmere’s office and looked around. The administrative hall at the club was always mostly deserted. It was as if none of the members wanted to be seen in the vicinity of the actual work that had to be done to keep the club running. Annabel knocked on Ruth Grandmere’s door and looked inside. The office was empty, but there was what seemed to be a propped-up white card at the end of her desk. Annabel went in and read it.
Mortimer, it said. I’m in Sally Martindale’s office.
Annabel backed out into the hall. That was odd. She had seen Ruth walking around a little while ago, and she had simply assumed that something had happened to change the schedule. Ruth was never on duty at the same time as Thomas Mortimer.
Sally Martindale had the bursar’s office. Something had happened to her marriage, and now she had to work at the club. Annabel couldn’t imagine that any more than she could imagine Mallory in nursing school. She went down the hall and found that the bursar’s door was open. She stuck her head inside and saw that Ruth Grandmere was alone. She felt instantaneously better. She had to talk to someone. The situation was getting critical. She couldn’t have talked to Sally Martindale to save her life.
Ruth Grandmere was sitting at Sally Martindale’s desk, bent toward a computer screen, with a frown on her face. Annabel knocked tentatively on the open door. Then, when Ruth didn’t budge, she knocked again.
This time, Ruth heard. She turned away from whatever was engaging her attention, but for a moment it was as if she couldn’t recognize the person in the doorway. It made Annabel feel very strange, as if she had ceased to exist. Then Ruth seemed to snap to attention, and her gaze cleared, and she smiled.
“Annabel, hello. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m a little distracted.”
“That’s all right,” Annabel said.
“I wish I understood more about computers than I do,” Ruth Grandmere sa
id. “And more about money. It seems odd to me, to get to my age and understand so little about money. Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Do you often take money out of your account here? In cash, is what I’m talking about. Do you take money out frequently?”
“I don’t take it at all. I just charge stuff.”
“But what about when you’ve run short of cash?”
“I don’t think I ever have. Not out of here. And in town you, can use the ATM.”
“Yes,” Ruth said. “Yes, you can.” She looked back at the console, tapped a few keys, and waited. Then she shook her head again and sighed. “You didn’t take one hundred twenty-five dollars out of your account last August twenty-second?”
“On August twenty-second, I was in Martha’s Vineyard. We’re always on the Vineyard in August. We go to stay with my grandparents.”
“Do you? I didn’t realize it was all of August. Good God, but this is a mess, isn’t it? I don’t know what we’re going to do about it.”
“Do about what?”
Ruth Grandmere seemed to come to again. This time, she looked sheepish.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just rambling on. It isn’t very important, really. We’ve just got a lot of computer mess-up in the records, and they’ll all have to be straightened out. Was there something you wanted that I could help you with?”
Annabel shifted from one foot to another. The idea of Ruth Grandmere working on Sally Martindale’s computer was intriguing. Where was Sally Martindale? How messed up could the records get, that Ruth would come in when she was supposed to be off-duty just to get them straightened out?
Annabel looked at the floor, and then at the ceiling.
“The thing is,” she said. “It’s about Kayla.”
“Kayla?”
“I was going to ask for your advice,” Annabel said. “I mean, you know what my mother is like. She can’t keep her head about anything, really. And so I didn’t want to ask her. But I thought you might have an idea.”
“If there’s something important going on in your life,” Ruth Grandmere said, “you should talk to your parents, no matter how hard it is. I know what it’s like around here, Annabel. I know that it’s sometimes very hard for young people to go to their parents with a problem when their parents have spent years, spent years—”
“Pretending that their children don’t exist?” Annabel said. “Yes, I know about that, too. But that wasn’t the kind of thing I meant.”
“What kind of thing did you mean?”
“It’s just that—if you had some information, about Kayla, that might be of some use to somebody, would you tell them?”
“What kind of information could you have about Kayla?”
Annabel really wanted to sit down. Now that she had started this, it didn’t seem like such a good idea.
“It’s just—something I came across. Something Kayla told me. And I keep thinking that Margaret Anson ought to know.”
Ruth Grandmere was no longer paying any attention to the computer console at all. She was turned around on her swivel chair, giving Annabel her full attention.
“If there’s something you know about Kayla Anson that has to do with her murder, you shouldn’t tell Margaret. You should tell the police. Or that detective, that Mr. Demarkian.”
“It’s not that kind of thing. At least, I don’t think it is.”
“What kind of thing is it?”
“It’s hard to explain. But Margaret is the one who ought to know. Because Margaret is the—what do you call it? The heir. Isn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” Ruth Grandmere said.
“I don’t see that the information has anything to do with her murder. I mean, it was months and months ago that we talked about it. But it was supposed to be—private, I guess. Nobody was supposed to know. So I thought that maybe Kayla hadn’t made a record of it, and Margaret Anson wouldn’t know.”
Annabel had been half-staring at the ceiling again while she said all this. When she turned her attention again to Ruth Grandmere, she saw that the older woman had become almost comically agitated. She was half-rising out of her seat. Her eyes had become very wide. Annabel stepped back, startled.
“Listen to me,” Ruth Grandmere said. “Make sense, for once in your life. Two people are already dead. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, I know, but the thing is—”
“The thing is nothing,” Ruth insisted. ‘Two people are dead, and they were both found in Margaret Anson’s garage. Both of them. If you don’t know what people around here have been saying about that, you haven’t been listening.
“I do know,” Annabel said. “But—”
“No buts. I’m not going to say that I think that Margaret Anson murdered her own daughter in her own garage, because I suppose you should treat people as innocent until proven guilty. But you must know as well as I do that Margaret is capable of it. If you’ve got some information, no matter how trivial you think it is, you should take it to the police.”
“Yes,” Annabel said. “Yes, I know.”
Ruth reached out and touched her shoulder. “I want you to promise me that you won’t go hauling off to Margaret’s house and laying this thing all out for her. You’ll talk to the police instead.”
“The police really aren’t going to be interested.”
“That’s fine. After the police say they aren’t interested, then you can go to Margaret Anson. But not before. For your own safety. Okay?”
“Okay,” Annabel said.
Ruth Grandmere relaxed back into her chair. “That’s all right then. As long as you’re going to be sensible.”
Annabel made polite little noises, but Ruth didn’t hear them. She was back at the computer console again, concentrating as hard as if she were taking an exam. Annabel backed quietly out of the office and into the hall.
Of course she knew the sensible thing to do was to tell the police anything that might be relevant—or even anything vaguely odd, in case it might be relevant. And what she knew was definitely odd. The problem was, it really didn’t concern anybody but Margaret Anson, which meant that it was Margaret Anson who ought to be told. She ought to be told soon, too, because the longer it went before something was done about it, the harder it would be to actually do anything.
Assuming, of course, that there was anything to be done. Assuming that Kayla hadn’t taken care of it herself months ago. She had said that she was going to take care of it.
Annabel let herself out of the administrative hall and into the main body of the club. Then, on an impulse, she walked out of the club’s front doors and into the parking lot. Even if Margaret had killed Kayla, it had nothing to do with her. This wasn’t the kind of information you murdered somebody for. This was the kind that made you end up giving them a reward.
Annabel got into her car and started it up. Her jacket was still in the club. She’d have to come back for it later.
What she needed to do now was to drive out to Margaret’s house and lay it all out on the table. She didn’t have to worry about Margaret Anson getting violent, because she was sure that Margaret would never do anything conspicuous in front of all those reporters parked in front of her house. There was a trait that all the Litchfield County ladies shared. They all hated publicity.
Of course, Zara Anne Moss had been killed in Margaret’s garage and at a time when Annabel supposed that there must have been reporters in the road, but for some reason that fact didn’t seem to change the equation in any way that mattered.
2
Martin and Henry Chandling were waiting on their front porch when Stacey Spratz drove up with Gregor Demarkian, and Martin thought immediately that he’d never in his life seen a less foreign-looking man than this one with the big shoulders and the much-too-heavy coat. It made him a little peeved. He had been expecting something a little more definite, someone like Peter Lorre, maybe, or like Yakov Smirnoff. He had most certainly been expect
ing an accent, which only seemed natural for a man with a name like Gregor Demarkian. If Gregor Demarkian was a real Amerlean instead of an Armenian, why hadn’t he changed that name? Any normal person would have become Gregory Marks by now.
The state police cars were a little larger than the ones the towns in the hills used for their local police department Gregor Demarkian didn’t have to unfold himself too thoroughly from the front passenger seat. Still, he was a large man, much larger than the ones Martin was used to. Martin guessed that he was at least six three, and he didn’t have to guess about the gut. It was pitiful, the way some men went to seed.
“Doesn’t look like much, does he?” Henry asked, as they watched the two men walk toward them. Neither of them moved. Neither of them would have moved even if they’d been offered money. There was a standard to maintain.
“Martin? Henry?” Stacey Spratz said. “This is Gregor Demarkian.”
“We see that,” Henry said.
“We were just up at the Litchfield County Museum,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“He brought that thing down here himself, that’s what we think,” Henry said. “That Jake what’s-his-name. He brought it down here just to make a fuss so that his museum would get in the newspapers. Then somebody came along and murdered that rich girl, and that took care of that.”
“We want to go up the hill and see where the Jeep tipped over,” Stacey Spratz said.
Martin tipped his chair back a little farther. He had to be careful, because he’d tipped himself over backward once or twice already this year. Now he thought, uncomfortably, that the rumors they’d been hearing were true. The Jeep was involved in the death of Kayla Anson, somehow. Whoever had brought it here had been dumping it after he’d used it to—what? Martin wasn’t very clear on that He thought Kayla Anson had been killed in a different vehicle altogether, possibly in her own car. He only knew that the Jeep had to fit in one way or another.