by Jane Haddam
“Amanda,” he said.
Amanda unhooked an empty felt Christmas stocking with her name on it from the wardrobe’s upper molding and tossed it on the bed.
“Don’t tell me how much I mean to you, because we’ll both know it won’t be true. I was never anything more to you than a convenience.”
“A convenience,” Peter repeated.
“That’s why I like Timmy,” Amanda told him. “He gets angry and sad and happy and horny, but he never tries to cover it up by saying it’s something else.”
Peter didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t know where to begin to look for an answer to that. He hadn’t even figured out what to think about tonight. He did tell himself that the right thing to do right this second would be to get her to stop, to prove through force and ardor that he hadn’t felt about her as she assumed he had felt about her, that nothing was the way she thought it to be, but for some reason he felt paralyzed, and the paralysis translated into visions of Gregor Demarkian, going off to talk to Kelley Grey while the crowd melted away into the night.
Maybe Amanda was right. Maybe she had been only a convenience.
Maybe putting up with Timmy had been the coin of the realm.
3
When it was over, the first thing Stuart Ketchum wanted to do was to drive out to Rose Hill Cemetery and visit his mother’s grave. He hadn’t been there since the funeral and didn’t intend to go again. He went once to any grave that concerned him and then left it alone. That was what he’d done with the boys he’d known in Nam who hadn’t come home. If he found out where they were buried he went to see their markers, once, and then he walked away. It made sense. It made the only sense Stuart could think of, when it came to death. It had never ceased to surprise him just how final dying was.
He never made it to the cemetery. He stood in the middle of Main Street, watching it empty out, thinking of these people he had known all his life. He thought of himself holding that pistol in the air, that pistol he’d only had with him because he was going to go down to Burlington tonight and talk to his dealer about selling it off. He had started collecting guns of every type and only settled on rifles after a time. What would have happened if he hadn’t had it with him? What would have happened if he’d had one of the rifles instead, so that he was out there in the middle of that circle looking like an ad for the United States Marines? What would his friends and neighbors have done then? Minute by minute, he had a harder and harder time thinking of these people as “his friends and neighbors.” They were like the pod people from the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the ones that opened their mouths and made a horrible noise.
He looked around in the empty street and saw Gregor Demarkian standing by himself, his hands in the pockets of his long city coat, his head bare. Stuart’s head was bare, too, and he could guess how Demarkian felt. Stuart thought his own ears were frozen solid and about to drop off. He went down the pavement and stopped just close enough to make conversation possible. Demarkian was staring into the gutter with a frown on his face. It was one of the things Stuart had noticed. Demarkian was the kind of man who looked intelligently at inanimate objects, as if they could tell him something.
The dwarf evergreen bushes that lined the walk to the front door of the Green Mountain Inn on the other side of the street had been decked out with gold Christmas balls. Stuart hadn’t seen them there the last time he’d been in. He moved a little closer to Demarkian and said, “Where did Franklin go? Did he disappear with the riot?”
“Chief Morrison was called away on an errand. By Kelley Grey.”
“What about you?” Stuart said.
“I am waiting here for no good reason, and in a moment I’ll go back to the Inn and get changed for the performance. I suppose it’s getting late.”
“Getting.”
Demarkian rocked back and forth on his heels. “Would you mind telling me something? If I asked you a question?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“Meaning you don’t have to answer.”
“Exactly.”
“This is a very little question,” Demarkian said. “I have heard, from a number of people, that your mother was having her portrait painted by Jan-Mark Verek.”
“That’s right.”
“And that she was very excited about this, and that she talked about it and about the times she spent at the Verek house. That she talked to quite a few people.”
“Definitely. She was tickled pink, to put it the way she would have herself.”
“That’s what I thought. Did she mention anything at all in particular about that house? Did she go only in Jan-Mark’s studio or did she go into the other rooms? Did she ever say she’d seen anything—”
“You mean in Tisha’s office?” Stuart laughed. “Of course she’d seen Tisha’s office. Jan-Mark shows people Tisha’s office. Haven’t you had a chance to talk to Cara Hutchinson?”
“Who’s Cara Hutchinson?”
“High-school girl, plays Elizabeth in the Nativity play this year. She’s the new portrait subject, the one Jan-Mark picked on after my mother died. I don’t know why he needs subjects, though, it’s all found objects and collages. Anyway, first day she was there, he gave her a tour.”
“He gave your mother a tour also, when she was alive?”
“No,” Stuart said, “it was Tisha who gave my mother the tour, at least as I understood it. Does this have something to do with why she died?”
“Why she was killed?” Gregor asked. “Yes. Yes, it does. It also confirms something for me.”
“Which is what?”
“Which is that that entire alarm nonsense we went through today was staged for the purpose of letting Mr. Jan-Mark Verek get a look at me, and incidentally to find out what we were doing, which wasn’t much.”
“You mean you don’t think he was robbed?”
“Of the photographs?” Demarkian smiled. “Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. He certainly wasn’t robbed of them today.”
“Why not?”
“Because this Cara Hutchinson person of yours is not dead. I take it nothing you’ve heard of has happened so that she’s just narrowly escaped death? No one has shot at her? She wasn’t the person originally intended for Gemma Bury’s seat?”
“She’s in the play, like I told you. And you know what this town is like. If something really odd had happened, you’d have heard yourself by now. You’ve been in the paper so much, you’re practically a resident.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “Then the photos weren’t stolen today, if they were stolen at all. They would have had to have been removed before this Cara Hutchinson first saw Tisha Verek’s office. Is there a place in the Verek house where it might be possible to see into your yard?”
“Not into my yard,” Stuart said, “because the Verek place is in a hollow. But you know what he can see? The road and the notches in the woods where the stone walls come out.”
“Meaning he probably saw Franklin and me wandering in and out when we were using the stone walls. All right. That will do.”
“Why did the pictures have to be taken before Cara Hutchinson saw Tisha Verek’s office?”
Gregor Demarkian got a surprised look on his face that Stuart remembered from grade school. It was the look of a teacher whose prize pupil has just asked a monumentally stupid question.
“Because one of those photos was recognizable, of course,” Demarkian said. “That’s what all this has been about from the beginning. One of those photographs was recognizable.” Demarkian turned toward the Inn and frowned again. “It’s really too bad, in a way,” he said, “because I don’t think Tisha Verek would ever have picked it up on her own. Not from what I’ve heard of her, anyway. I think the first recognition came with your mother. I don’t know. I’m making this up. From what I’ve heard of Tisha Verek, she wasn’t a woman I would have liked. So I’m trying to give your mother all the insight. Maybe I’m wrong.”
“If it’s because the pic
ture was recognizable,” Stuart asked, “why hasn’t someone tried to kill Jan-Mark Verek?”
“Because the picture’s only recognizable to someone who’s seen the person herself. And Jan-Mark Verek does not see many people in this town. Not if he can help it.”
“That’s true,” Stuart admitted. “What about Gemma Bury? Did she see the picture?”
“No. She was looking through a window on the third floor of the Episcopalian rectory when Tisha Verek was killed. Those windows look directly down into the Verek driveway.”
“You mean she saw Tisha killed?”
“I mean she saw Tisha’s killer, although I don’t think she realized it at the time.”
“What happens now?” Stuart asked. “Do you get all the suspects into a large room and reveal the solution? Who are the suspects?”
“Right now I go over and get changed, just like I told you I was going to do. Then I make a phone call. After that, I don’t know what anybody could do. Have a good evening, Mr. Ketchum.”
“Oh, I will,” Stuart Ketchum said. “Soon as I can get my adrenaline down.”
“Work on it,” Demarkian told him. Then he turned away and walked rapidly across the street.
Stuart watched him go, a big, tall, middle-aged man totally out of place on this country Main Street, a man of long coats and hard leather shoes in a world made for parkas and cleated boots. He should have looked ridiculous, but he did not. Stuart thought he looked a lot like salvation. Before they had begun talking, Stuart had been ready to walk out—into what, or where, he had no idea, but out, away from here, away from the kind of people who could shoot rifles at women sitting in half-filled bleachers and threaten a man for no other reason than that he was mentally retarded. Now Stuart felt as if it all fit into something larger, a western movie with common sense in the white hat and hysteria in the black, and if he just put his mind to it, he could be part of it. It was silly, of course, but that was the way Demarkian made him feel. Stuart had had a sergeant like that in the army.
Sometimes, Stuart had a terrible feeling he was that sort of man himself.
4
Kelley Grey had gotten hold of Franklin Morrison, and now Candy George could see them both standing just inside the entrance to the dressing-room tent, talking to each other. That was all well and good, but it didn’t solve Candy’s problem, which was what to do about Reggie, who was not back home in the basement where she had left him. Candy hadn’t really expected him to be. She had told Kelley Grey all about it, and all about where the basement windows were and how strong Reggie was and also how the doors wouldn’t hold him, but Kelley was one of that alien breed, a woman who had never known a man like this. She had no idea what could happen. She had no idea what someone like Reggie could do.
Candy had a very detailed idea of what Reggie could do, and that was why she was watching him now, staying out of sight behind the flap to the dressing room she shared with Cara Hutchinson and Mrs. Johnson. He was going in and out of the dressing rooms on the other side of the corridor, the ones that belonged to the men. He was calling out to people he knew and laughing hard, as if he didn’t care who was around who might hear. He had been here before and nobody thought anything of the fact that he was here again. Kelley and Franklin didn’t know he was anywhere near them. There was a lot of noise in this tent, and they were so close to the flap they were probably hearing sounds from outside. The animals were kept back there. Every once in a while, Candy heard the donkey braying.
There were five dressing rooms on either side of the corridor, all of them tiny, all of them cold. It was a blessing nobody really had to do any dressing in any of them. Since there were no costume changes, actors came dressed for their parts every night and used the “dressing rooms” just to dress, or to repair make-up when it became necessary. Candy didn’t repair make-up because she didn’t use any. She had always used a great deal, ever since she was ten or eleven years old, because her friends had used it and because her stepfather had liked to see her in it—just like Lolita, he used to say, just like Lolita—but here in this place that was hers she didn’t like it. It helped that the distance between the gazebo where she spent most of her time and the stands was such that not having any on made no real difference. Cara Hutchinson was always slathering her face with foundation and rouge, but Candy couldn’t see that anyone in the bleachers would be able to tell. Or that it would do much good even if they could.
Reggie had reached the third dressing room on the other side. Candy’s was the last on this one. She retreated behind the flap and counted to ten in her head. Then she bent over and very carefully put on the shoes she had brought with her for just this occasion. The shoes had been a risk. She had had to go back to the house and get them, moving very quietly so that Reggie didn’t hear. He had still been in the basement then and still bellowing. She’d had to sneak into the bedroom and get them out of her closet and get back into the car again. She’s done it just before she’d gone to see Kelley Grey. When it was over, her chest felt so tight, she didn’t think she would ever be able to breathe again.
The shoes were one of the three pairs Reggie had bought for her special. Candy didn’t wear shoes like these for herself, because the heels were too high and too pointy and she didn’t walk well in them, and because the toes came to so sharp a point they made her own toes ache. These were made of pink patent leather and had little straps instead of heels at the backs.
Cara Hutchinson saw her putting them on and said, “You can’t wear those on stage. They wouldn’t look right.”
“I’m not going to wear them on stage,” Candy said, whispering instead of talking.
“You should speak up,” Cara told her. “I swear, I don’t understand how anyone hears a thing you say out there. You’re always such a little mouse. You have to learn to project.”
Candy’s private opinion was that the thing she’d most like to project at the moment was Cara Hutchinson’s rear end, right out into the snow, but she didn’t have time for that now. There was serious business to take care of. She leaned toward the flap and looked out again. Kelley and Chief Morrison were still talking, still blocking the front entrance to the dressing-room tent. They should have realized that Reggie would come in from the back, the way most of the actors did.
Reggie got to the fourth of the dressing rooms on that side. Candy let the flap fall in front of her face and held her breath again and counted to ten again and tried to remember how to pray. It had been such a long time, all she could remember was “Now I lay me…” and then everything went blank. Reggie said hello to Evan Underwood in a false hearty voice that recognized how little he and Evan got along. He moved on to the fifth of the dressing rooms, and in that dressing room somebody did what Candy had been expecting all along. Somebody told Reggie where she was.
“Right across the aisle,” she heard Reggie say.
Candy stepped back into the tiny room and positioned herself so that she was facing the slit at the center of the flaps. She looked around and saw that Cara Hutchinson was absorbed in her make-up but Mrs. Johnson was quiet and watchful, alert, ready for something to happen. Just don’t get in my way, Candy told the old lady, silently, in the back of her mind, while she was still not breathing. And then the canvas flaps opened and he was there.
“Candy,” he said, the smile starting to spread across his face, the smile she knew so well. They all had smiles like that. That was the odd thing. They all had smiles that were exactly alike. Reggie filled the flap opening now, the canvas pulled back above his shoulders, his legs spread wide so that she wouldn’t have room to pass. It was beyond his comprehension that she might not want to pass.
Years ago, when she was still in junior high school and still naive, Candy had worked very hard to make the cheerleading squad. She had practiced for months doing splits and kicks. She had worked up dance routines and learned to jump three feet in the air. That was before she realized that girls like her never did become cheerleaders, no matter how good
they were; they had reputations instead, and it didn’t matter how they’d gotten those reputations in the first place. She had thought that the only thing that mattered was being the best, and for the only time in her life she had worked herself to death, singlemindedly, to be the best. And it had worked. She hadn’t made the cheerleading squad, but on the day of the tryouts she had done the cleanest split, jumped the highest jump and turned cartwheels with her body so straight she looked like a spinning snowflake. She had also done the highest and fastest and most elegant kick in the history of cheerleading in Bethlehem, Vermont.
“Candy,” Reggie said again.
That was when Candy did it again, high and hard, as high and as hard as she had that day back in junior high school, but this time in a pair of spike-heeled shoes with the stiff sharp tips of the toes aimed straight at the one thing Reggie George had ever given a damn about in his life. He saw what she was doing and stepped back, more surprised than angry, but not fast enough. She caught him squarely in the center underneath and he screamed.
My God, Candy thought, as the scream went on and on, higher and higher. I think I’ve killed him.
She hadn’t killed him. He was lying on the floor, hunched into a fetal ball, screaming and crying, but he was alive enough. Franklin Morrison came rushing up and grabbed him by the shoulder. Candy kicked the shoes off her feet and turned away.
“I want to have him arrested,” she said. “He tried to kill me. I want to have him arrested for attempted murder.”
“It’s true,” Mrs. Johnson piped up, her round little matron’s face thrusting itself toward Franklin Morrison’s stunned one, her look of innocence so perfect that only Candy knew she had to be lying. “It’s true,” Mrs. Johnson said again. “He went for her throat. And I’ll testify to that in court.”
Candy George closed her eyes and told herself:
Your name is Candace Elizabeth Spear.
And you are going to be all right.