Flowering Judas

by Jane Haddam

  “Foster care,” Gregor said slowly.

  “I was always getting taken into foster care when I was little,” Haydee said. “Social services would show up at our door and I’d be taken away, and then in a few weeks I’d be brought back and the place would’ve been cleaned up. I used to sort of like it when that happened, to tell you the truth. I didn’t like the foster places, but when I got back home it would always smell of Pine-Sol and soap. It was kind of nice.”

  “And the mess in the trailer, that was the reason you were taken into foster care?” Gregor asked.

  “I don’t know,” Haydee said. “I suppose so. I was too little to really understand it, if you know what I mean. I just knew Chester was there all the time, and then I went away and he wasn’t anymore, and later people told me he had disappeared. Oh, and then there weren’t anymore fights from the other trailer.”

  “There were fights from the other trailer?” Gregor asked.

  Haydee flushed. “Really, Mr. Demarkian. I was too little. I didn’t understand anything that was going on, and I probably got a lot of it wrong. I don’t even know if my memories are right. But, yes, there were fights from the other trailer. It’s so close up against ours. There were people yelling a lot. And sometimes one of those people was my mother. But I couldn’t tell you who the other one was. I don’t even know if the other one was Chester Morton. It was just a lot of yelling through the walls, and it scared me to death.”

  TWO

  1

  Charlene Morton knew that they would be coming—Gregor Demarkian, certainly, but almost just as certainly, Howard Androcoelho. She’d heard about the bodies near the dam almost before the police had. Mattatuck was that kind of place. The guy who found the bodies called his brother-in-law before he called 911. His brother-in-law told his wife, his wife told her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law worked in Morton’s front office. Yes, Charlene knew they would be coming. It was the way these people think.

  There were two cars parked behind the family cars in the driveway, and two young men waiting behind the steering wheels. Why should it surprise her that Gregor Demarkian came with his own driver? Maybe the town was paying for that. That would be something to bring up at the next town council meeting.

  Actually, Charlene missed the old town government, where everybody got together at a town meeting and voted on every little thing. You could do a lot with town meetings if you knew how to negotiate them.

  The doorbell rang. Charlene pushed her hair back into place. She should have gone in to work today. She always did go in to work. It was just that, over the last few weeks, she had been feeling more and more tired.

  The doorbell rang again. Charlene went out into the foyer and opened it. It was Howard Androcoelho who was standing right there in front, as if having someone she’d known forever come and talk to her about these things would make them better.

  She stepped back and let Howard and Gregor Demarkian come inside.

  “We checked for you over at the office,” Howard said, “they said you weren’t feeling well and you’d stayed home. Mr. Demarkian here wants to talk to you.”

  “I know,” Charlene said.

  She turned her back to them and marched into the living room. She sat down in the big wingback chair that was always called hers in the family, and folded her hands in her lap. The two men came in. Howard looked around vaguely and then sat down on the couch. Gregor Demarkian remained standing.

  “Well?” Charlene said.

  “Well.” Howard cleared his throat. “We’ve had a murder,” he said finally. “We’ve had two murders, actually. Althea Michaelman and Mike Katowski. You remember Althy, Charlene. She went to school with us.”

  “Of course I remember Althy,” she said. “Not that she was ever a friend of mine. Or of yours, from what I remember. What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “Ah,” Howard said. “Well. For one thing, it was right over in the back there, near the dam, you could walk to the Morton offices from it. We’re looking at everybody and everyplace in the area, you know, to see if anybody saw anything.”

  “To see if ‘anybody saw anything’? Our offices close at five o’clock and they don’t open again until eight.”

  “Yes, I know, Charlene, but you know how it is. Just in case somebody saw something. Just in case somebody was working late.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Charlene said. “Nobody works that kind of late.”

  “Yes. Well.” Howard was looking more uncomfortable by the second. Charlene wanted to laugh out loud. “We have to check, you know,” he said. “It’s not good police work if we don’t check. And if anybody is going to know what’s going on in the neighborhood, it’s going to be you, Charlene. You know that.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on in that neighborhood at one o’clock in the morning. I’m home in bed at one o’clock in the morning.”

  “Yes, well. I know, Charlene, I know, but there’s more to it. Mr. Demarkian here had an idea. And I’ve got to admit, it’s kind of an interesting idea.”

  “What idea was that?” Charlene said.

  Gregor Demarkian seemed to have been looking out the window. Now he turned back to them. Charlene didn’t like Gregor Demarkian. She didn’t like him one bit. He had bad eyes.

  “Well?” she said.

  “There were two bodies,” Demarkian said. “They were both found, shot, in the front seat of a black pickup truck. A black Ford pickup truck.”

  “So?” Charlene said.

  “Your son, I believe, had a black Ford pickup truck.”

  “So?” Charlene said again. “That was twelve years ago. And he didn’t take it with him. There are a lot of black Ford pickup trucks.”

  “I agree, but the age of this one looks to be about right,” Gregor said. “You say Chester didn’t take the truck with him when he left. What happened to it?”

  “I kept it,” Charlene said.

  “Are you still keeping it?” Gregor asked.

  “No,” Charlene said. “No. After a while, I don’t remember how long, after a while I got rid of it. I hated looking at it.”

  “The truck was here?” Demarkian asked.

  “It was after a while,” Charlene said. “It was parked over there at the trailer park, and I couldn’t stand it. I really couldn’t. Those people over there. They’ve got no respect for property. They’ve got no respect for anything. I went over one afternoon and somebody had spray painted on it. So I got my son Mark to drive it back here, and I got it cleaned up. After that, it just stayed in the garage.”

  “For how long?”

  “Like I said. For a while.”

  “A month, two months, a year?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlene said. “A couple of months, I guess. Something like that. I had other things on my mind.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I sold it,” Charlene said. “What else do you do with a car you don’t want?”

  “There are a number of things,” Gregor Demarkian said. “You can give it to charity. You can junk it. Did you sell it to a car dealership?”

  “No,” Charlene said. “We put up notices, you know, on those bulletin boards in the grocery store, and we put a notice in the paper. It didn’t take that long. I wasn’t selling it for all that much.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Gregor Demarkian said. “You put out ads to sell the truck only a couple of months after your son disappeared—”

  “Well, I didn’t think he’d disappeared,” Charlene said. “I thought he was dead. I had every reason to think he was dead. He loved that truck. He worshipped it. I didn’t think he’d go anywhere without it. And then I just wanted it out of the garage, out of my life, where I didn’t have to look at it anymore. I wanted it away.”

  “Do you remember the person you sold it to?”

  Charlene shrugged. “Just some kid. Some college kid, Chester’s own age or younger, I’d guess.”

  “You don’t remember his name
?”

  “No.”

  “Did he pay you by cash or check?”

  “Cash.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars.”

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars for a pickup truck that was, at that point, nearly brand new?” Gregor Demarkian looked surprised. “Was it banged up in some way I haven’t been told? That has to be significantly below book value.”

  “It wasn’t banged up in any way,” Charlene said, “and of course that was significantly below book value. I told you. I wanted to get rid of it.”

  “Do you have paperwork from that transaction?” Gregor asked. “A bill of sale, or a receipt, anything?”

  “No, of course not. The buyer gets all that kind of thing. And it was years ago. It’s not the kind of thing you keep.”

  “And you don’t remember this kid’s name?”

  “No, really, I don’t.”

  “It’s all right,” Howard Androcoelho put in quickly. “The kid would have had to register the truck. If we know the approximate date, and we’ve got anything at all—we could look up Chester’s own registration. Then we could use the computer, and we’d find it eventually. Who the kid was, I mean.”

  “Good,” Charlene said. “You do that.”

  Demarkian rubbed his hand against the side of his face. “Did you see or speak to your son between the time he came back to Mattatuck and the time the body was discovered?”

  “You mean did he show up on my doorstep and try to offer me an explanation?” Charlene said. “No. I had no idea he was in town. I had no idea he was even thinking of coming back to town.”

  “All right,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Thank you.”

  “That’s it?” Howard Androcoelho said. “That’s all? I’m sorry, Charlene, I didn’t realize it was going to be so—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Howard,” Charlene said. “Go to hell. Get out of my house and go to hell. I’ve got nothing to do with two strange people being shot dead just because they had a pickup truck the same color as the one Chester used to have, and you know it.”

  2

  Penny London woke up for the second time because her phone was ringing. When she sat up in bed and looked around, she wasn’t sure where she was.

  It got clearer when her eyes were finally able to focus. She was in a hotel room, at the Howard Johnson, that belonged to Mr. Demarkian’s driver, who was named Tony. She remembered all that from the night before. She was sleeping in a little, since Tony would not be coming back to the room until the end of the day. Mr. Demarkian had had to go out. He had woken her up and told her that …

  She checked the clock at the side of the bed. Hours ago. It must have been hours ago since he left. It was nearly noon.

  The phone stopped ringing. She picked it up and it started ringing again. She saw Graham’s picture in the little ID window. She made a face at it. Then she picked it up.

  “Graham,” she said. “How are you? Aren’t you supposed to be at work? Isn’t this the middle of the workday?”

  “I am at work,” Graham said. “I’m a goddamned lawyer. I can talk on the phone in the middle of the day if I want to.”

  “You’re an associate in a big firm,” Penny said. “You know how hard it is to make partner. You can’t afford to let your bosses think that you’re taking care of personal business in the middle of the day.”

  “And you’re damned near sixty years old. You can’t afford to sleep in your car.”

  Penny’s mouth felt bad. She needed to get up and brush her teeth. Her vision was fuzzy, on and off. She needed her eyes to focus on a more consistent basis.

  “I’m not sleeping in my car,” she said. “I’m sleeping in a perfectly wonderful bed, complete with quilts, and I’m sleeping in.”

  “You’re sleeping in a room at the Howard Johnson that actually belongs to this Gregor Demarkian person,” Graham said. “You’re there because he found you sleeping in your car and he didn’t want to leave you there. Don’t try to put this on with me. He called me. And he called George.”

  Penny sat forward and bent over her knees. “He doesn’t even know you exist. Where would he have gotten your number?”

  “Off your phone. He said you left it in his room when you went to bed.”

  “I never leave my phone anywhere.”

  “Then maybe he lifted it.”

  “It was right here next to the bed this morning. You woke me up with it.”

  “Then maybe he lifted it and put it back. Would you stop this? What’s wrong with you? You were sleeping in your goddamned car. You could have frozen to death—”

  “Well, I wasn’t sleeping there in the winter,” Penny said. “What do you take me for?”

  “Winter will be coming around again,” Graham said, “and if you didn’t freeze to death, you could have been mugged. You could have been murdered. And don’t tell me nobody gets murdered in Mattatuck. There were two murders there just last night. It’s been all over CNN.”

  “I wouldn’t have been sleeping in the car when winter came around again,” Penny said. “I’d have had enough for an apartment by then. It was just a temporary—”

  “It’s going to be a lot more temporary than you know. We’re coming out there. We’re going to be there by tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Penny was now wide awake. “But you can’t do that. You’ve got work. And all those college loans. You can’t just—”

  “The plane tickets are already bought. George will call you in a minute about what you’re going to do tonight. We’re getting all three of us rooms at that Holiday Inn of yours—”

  “Howard Johnson.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. We’re getting them for tonight and you can go to bed in your room like a sane person. And you better be there and be ready for us when we get there, because when we say tomorrow morning, we mean it.”

  “It depends on whether or not I have to teach,” Penny said. “I can’t just cancel a class—”

  “You don’t teach at four o’clock in the morning. That’s when our plane gets in. And you don’t teach at six, which will probably be when we show up. And if we’re late in any way, you’d damned better be sure you’ve left a note telling us where you’ve gone, because if you don’t, we’re going to hunt you down and wring your neck.”

  “But,” Penny said.

  The phone was dead.

  Penny swung her legs off the bed and sat there, holding her hair in her hands. The remote was right there on the night table. She picked it up and turned the television on. The first channel she got was some kind of cooking network. She flipped around a little and settled on one of the local stations. It was broadcasting a talk show where everybody was much too cheery, but it had a news feed running underneath.

  The two dead bodies discovered at Stephenson Dam this morning have been identified as belonging to Althea Marie Michaelman, 52, and Michael Robert Katowski, 48.

  The names meant absolutely nothing to her. She had no idea what was going on.

  The phone rang again, and she picked it up again. The face in the window this time belonged to George. Penny sighed.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you proud of yourself?” George said. “I mean, really? Are you just peachy keen proud of yourself? Because you’ve pulled a lot of stunts in your day, and I’ve even helped with some of them, but this really tears it. This really tears. it. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  “I was just trying to get through a couple of months,” Penny said. “This really isn’t as big a thing as you’re making it. It was just for a few months and then in the fall I was going to rent a regular place. I just needed to save up—”

  “Are you out of your mind?” George said. “Are you crazy? Seriously, Mom, listen to yourself. You had to get through a couple of months? Why? You’ve got two grown children and we’re both working—”

  “You’ve got your own lives to lead,” Penny said. “You’ve got those
college loans to repay. And you can’t let those default. It ruins your credit rating. And you need a credit rating these days if you want a new job or anything like that. So you can’t—”

  “I can afford to keep you in an apartment in Mattatuck. What does that cost these days, maybe five hundred a month?”

  “Five hundred a month is a lot of money.”

  “Oh, please. Between Graham and me, we could afford twice that, plus your utilities. Why didn’t you tell us? That’s what bugs me. Why didn’t you tell us? You made such a point of it, after Dad died, when we were all growing up, about how we’d be all right as long as we remained a family and we all stuck together. Well, where’s the ‘sticking together,’ Mom? Where is it? Was that only supposed to apply to you, and Graham and I were allowed to be self-absorbed little asses.”

  “You’re not self-absorbed little asses.”

  “You can bet your butt we’re not,” George said. “You’d better get a pen and a piece of paper. I’ve got stuff you need to write down.”

  “I really don’t want the two of you to tear up your lives just because I can’t get my act together,” Penny said. “I’m a grown woman. I can take care of myself. I’m supposed to take care of myself.”

  “We’re supposed to take care of you,” George said. “Take this down. We got two rooms. They’ve always got those big double beds. Graham and I shared a room for years when we were at home. Go to the front desk. Say you’re Penelope London and you want to check in. We put it all on credit cards. It’s all paid for. Check in, move in, order a bunch of room service—”

  “I don’t know if there is room service,” Penny said. “And you can’t do that. Room service is ridiculously expensive—”

  “I’ll call the restaurant and order you lunch. It’ll cost more than an arm and a leg because it will be dinner for six and you’d damned better eat it.”

  “No, don’t do that.”