Feast of Murder (The Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries)

by Jane Haddam

  Untangling himself from the low beam that had caught him and the narrow passageway that passed for a hall on the deck where his cabin was, Gregor climbed ponderously and carefully into the light on the upper deck and looked around. The fog was nearly gone now. Wisps of it trailed just above the water a little farther out into the bay, but they were like fairy dust. They lent enchantment without having the power to threaten. Gregor looked up and down Pier 36 and then up and down the piers on either side. The Pilgrimage Green was one of very few boats in dock, and the only one of any size. There was a jaunty little yellow single-masted sailboat at Pier 35 and a pair of fiberglass-hulled motorboats at Pier 37. The presence of even a moderate-size modern vessel, like a two master or a cabin cruiser, would have reminded Gregor how small the Pilgrimage Green was, but there was nothing like that and Gregor began to feel better. He looked into the rigging and saw men working there. Then he looked into the stern and saw men working there, too. Gregor had no idea what it took to sail a boat. He’d only traveled on boats once or twice in his life—to take Elizabeth on a cruise to Bermuda; as part of an FBI instructional tour on a submarine parked in Chesapeake Bay—and his basic opinion was that they were pleasant but not particularly necessary adjuncts to modern life. He was glad, though, that the men around him seemed so competent.

  He wandered forward, toward the bow, looking around him as he went. There were a great many ropes, which Bennis had already told him to call “lines.” There were a great many pieces of metal, too, including heavy iron rings that seemed to hold the lines together and sharp-edged hooklike things that reminded him of harpoons, but couldn’t have been. There were even a few self-conscious Thanksgiving decorations. Ever since he’d come aboard, Gregor had been half-assuming there wouldn’t be any decorations. Decorations for a holiday like Thanksgiving didn’t seem to be the sort of thing people like these would do. The passion for decorating must have been more widespread than he realized. Somebody had put up a tall thick pole with Indian corn attached to the top of it. Underneath the corn was a small wood plaque with words written across its shiny surface in old-fashioned script:

  God bring us safely to the shore

  or safely home to Thee.

  In spite of the script, the pole looked lethal enough to kill somebody. The whole deck looked like it would have been a wonderful place for a murderer intent on crushing his victim’s skull with something heavy, or smothering his victim with material guaranteed to cut off all air in thirty seconds flat. The deck was littered with large pieces of heavy, dark, closely woven cloth. Gregor had no idea what the cloth was for, but he was sure it had something to do with authenticity. On a modern boat, the cloth would probably have been replaced by plastic.

  He passed a small hutlike structure that he assumed to be the place from which the steering was done—he’d have to ask Bennis what to call it—and came out well to the front, in the space like a triangle that led to the bow. In that space, a table had been set up and half a dozen chairs set out. The table was a rough-wood replica. The chairs weren’t authentic at all. They had been made out of canvas and machine-planed wooden slats and could be bought for less than fifty dollars from the “Home and Camp Specialties” catalog from L.L. Bean. Gregor wondered where everyone was. The table was full of food: great plates of Danish pastry; long racks of toast; huge bowls of fresh fruit. There were even little orange and yellow and brown ribbons strung along the edges of the serving plates, looking limp but trying bravely to be festive. The food that needed to be kept hot had sterling silver warmers under it—battery operated, and no more “authentic” than the chairs. There were two big urns of what Gregor assumed were coffee and water for tea, and they were the battery-operated kind, too. Was that a Coast Guard regulation? Did the Coast Guard make regulations of that kind? He went toward the coffee. There was steam rising from the sides of both urns. Gregor could see his breath. He understood the idea that some people might want to watch while they were set firmly and finally out to sea, but it was November. Somebody should have considered the possibility that at least some of the guests on this boat would rather not catch pneumonia doing it.

  Gregor got a cup from the stack of cups on the table—they were secured by a plastic holder that wasn’t authentic either—and sniffed at the urns until he determined which was actually coffee. Then he turned on the spigot and filled up. Then, because he was still alone, he went to the side of the boat and looked out across the piers. At this point the side came just up to his knees and made him feel unbalanced.

  “Dangerous,” he murmured to himself.

  “Get away from there,” Tony Baird said from behind him. “We’ve already had a sailor go over the side this morning. We don’t need you going into the drink, too.”

  2

  It was the second time in less than an hour that Tony had surprised him, and Gregor wanted to say that the young man was something of a sneak. The truth of it was that Tony was probably nothing of the kind. Earlier this morning, the fog had hidden him. That had hardly been his doing. This time, nothing had hidden him at all. He wasn’t even alone. Gregor just hadn’t been paying enough attention. Gregor looked beyond the young man’s shoulder and saw a small, pretty woman with too much eye makeup. Then he moved away from the side and shook his head.

  “Why is it so low?” Gregor asked. “I’m not surprised somebody fell overboard. I want to know how you’re going to keep that from happening over and over again all through the trip.”

  Tony Baird shrugged. “I’m not going to keep anything from happening. It’s not my boat. And it’s low like that because the sides were low on the original Mayflower. Or at least I assume they were. Do you know my stepmother, Sheila Callahan?”

  “Sheila Callahan Baird,” Sheila said, stepping out from behind Tony. She held out a single long-fingered hand and smiled that bright and overwattaged smile women develop when they spend too long paying court to famous men. Gregor had just taken the hand when they were joined by two more people, a young man and a young woman, both dressed impeccably in outfits for sailing from Abercrombie & Fitch. Tony saw them, nodded a little, and said, “Mr. Demarkian, this is my cousin Mark Anderwahl, and his wife Julie.”

  “Fritzie was just behind us,” Julie said, and then darted a nervous glance at Sheila. “She looked so pale I thought it would be a good idea, getting her out in the air.”

  “She won’t want to get around all this food,” Sheila said. “Did any of you see Calvin come on board? I was supposed to be notified as soon as he got here so I could check him off on my list, but I haven’t heard a word.”

  “I saw him come on,” Mark Anderwahl said. “He stopped to talk to Charlie Shay. I think they had business to discuss.”

  “Charlie never has business to discuss,” Sheila said dismissively, “but at least if Calvin’s here we’re all here and I can stop worrying about it. Jon has been fretting so much about getting off on time. Do you all like the breakfast spread? Jon is so picky about everything being authentic, but this time I just put my foot down. You can’t have a lot of people on deck like this in the middle of November and serve them cold food. And you can’t light fires under things, either, not docked the way we are. There are regulations. I suppose once we set off, Jon will insist, but as long as we’re docked I can carry the point. Don’t you think it would have been a much better idea if Jon had done what builders do, and made this a replica on the outside with modern plumbing in?”

  If Sheila had been talking to anyone in particular, that person might have answered her. Instead, she had been talking to the air, for general consumption and background noise. That was something else women did when they had spent too long paying court to famous men. Gregor had to assume it had some salutary effect on the famous men. For everybody else, it was an embarrassment. They looked at their shoes. They looked at the water. They looked at everybody and everything except Sheila, and then they began to edge together, drawing into a circle for protection.

  “Sheila’s always so
definite,” Julie Anderwahl murmured, sidling up next to Gregor and coming to a halt. “Tony said you were Mr. Demarkian. You must be our detective.”

  “This week I’m just a guest,” Gregor said politely.

  “Are you? They’re all convinced you’ve got something going with Jon. I’ve heard them talking about it all week.”

  “Have you?”

  “Sheila was insisting just last night that you’d been hired to run some kind of murder game. Charlie Shay believed her, I think. Nobody tells poor Charlie anything any more. Have you been hired to run a murder game?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. I take it you aren’t here to investigate the death of Donald McAdam, either.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Julie Anderwahl shook her head. Her hair was fine and blond and perfectly cut. Because of that, she looked much better and younger than Sheila did, even though she was probably older. She ran a hand through her bangs, took it down and frowned at it. The air was thick with moisture and her hand had come out wet.

  “I get seasick,” Julie Anderwahl said suddenly. “I get seasick all the time. Even just sitting in port like this.”

  “Why did you come?” Gregor asked her.

  “They’re my husband’s family,” Julie said, “and my bosses on top of it. I had to come. Did you know I worked at Baird Financial?”

  “I’d heard it, yes.”

  “My husband works there, too. It’s a very odd situation. Mark is the son of Jon and Calvin’s only sister. The sister wasn’t part of the partnership, of course, so Mark doesn’t have any direct stake in the business, at least not yet. Tony does, of course, and so do Calvin’s daughters. He has a pack of them and they’re each more mindless than the rest. They’ll probably inherit anyway. It makes me very nervous. Mark has never worked for anyone else and neither have I.”

  “If they’re as mindless as you say they are, I don’t see that they’d fire you or your husband once they did inherit—which wouldn’t be for some time yet, would it? I haven’t met Calvin Baird, but I have met Jon Baird and he seems to be in perfect health.”

  “He is in perfect health. He’s going to bring Tony into the business right after the first of the year.”

  “Ah.”

  “And he doesn’t have his mind on his work any more,” Julie said. “Sheila. Everything that goes along with Sheila. She takes him to parties. And if you want to know the truth, I don’t think he’d have gone to jail if it wasn’t for Sheila.”

  Gregor considered this. “Do you mean he did something for her he wouldn’t have done for anybody else? Or are you trying to suggest that she turned him in to the Feds?”

  “Neither.” Julie tapped her foot in agitation. “I just think he didn’t have his mind in gear, that’s all. She—unfocuses him. When she’s around him, he can’t think.”

  “Somehow, I can’t picture that,” Gregor said.

  “I know,” Julie admitted. “I can’t picture it either. But it’s the only explanation I can think of. That conviction made absolutely no sense, you know. His pleading guilty. His going to jail. People like Jon don’t go to jail for insider trading.”

  “What about Michael Milken?”

  Julie waved it away. “Milken was a maverick, taking on the establishment. From what I hear, his conviction will probably be overturned anyway. Jon Baird is the establishment and he always was, even though he was from a rundown branch of it. And besides—”

  “What?”

  “Well, it was dumb, wasn’t it, and Jon isn’t dumb. He didn’t admit to doing a single thing here that wouldn’t have been legal half a dozen other places, including Paris, where he keeps a huge apartment and spends three months a year. I suppose people have told you that before?”

  “Constantly,” Gregor said solemnly.

  She turned away from him, resentful at his tone. “Well, it’s true. It’s more than true. I know you’re supposed to be here to investigate all this. I know you’ve probably been told to be fair and impartial. I don’t really care. If you’ve got any sense, you won’t look any farther than Sheila Callahan Baird.”

  “Any farther for what?” Gregor asked, a little desperately. When this conversation had started, he had thought he was being treated to a simple recital of information—too freely given, perhaps, but then Julie Anderwahl was, if he remembered rightly, in public relations. Those people did give information too freely. Now Julie Anderwahl was anything but free. She was screwed up tighter than a vacuum-sealed jar and biting her lower lip so hard she was making it bleed.

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do,” she said. “I’m not going to interfere in your investigation. I have no interest in any of this except the kind of interest any sane person would have in seeing justice done. I’m just telling you, I know what Jon wants and I know he’s used to getting what he wants, but this time he’s just out of luck. That little bitch is as crooked as they come.”

  Gregor was about to protest once again—what had happened here? what was going on?—but two things happened at once to shut him up. First, new people began to stream into the area, including a frail man in a three-piece suit, Jon Baird, and an older man who looked more like Jon’s son Tony than Jon ever could. Gregor was just about to decide that this was the mysterious and as yet unmet Calvin, when the men parted to let a pair of women through. One of them was an older lady in regulation boating gear, right down to the canvas shoes, but so unsteady on her legs Gregor’s first thought was that she belonged in a hospital. The other was Bennis Hannaford.

  Gregor shot a quick look at Julie Anderwahl—still fuming, but no longer paying attention to him—and edged quickly behind the food table until he got to Bennis’s side. He looked back at Julie Anderwahl and saw that her rage had dissipated in a wave of seasickness. She was green and bleary-eyed and rocking back and forth on her heels. Gregor looked past Bennis at the unsteady older lady and blinked. She was staring at the food table in a peculiarly intense way, her eyes so wild they might have belonged to a starving cat.

  “This is even worse than I expected,” Gregor whispered, leaning over to get close to Bennis’s ear. He was so used to her now, he sometimes forgot how very short she was. “There’s a woman over there, being seasick, and I just spent five minutes listening to her accuse me of—I don’t know what.”

  “The woman on the other side of me is Jon Baird’s first wife,” Bennis whispered back. “She got me up near the stern about two minutes ago and accused me of being here just to sabotage her. I asked her what she was doing I was supposed to sabotage, and she said she knew all about you and she didn’t trust you an inch, and after that I couldn’t get anything out of her. Does this make any sense to you?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. The world has changed, Gregor. When I was growing up, you never discussed private matters with strangers, never mind going right up to someone you’d never met and—what’s that?”

  “That” was a tremor under their feet, growing stronger by the second. Gregor looked up and saw there was a man all the way forward in the bow now, pushing off against the pier with a long pole. It startled him, even though it made sense. They had no motor. They had to get out to sea somehow or other. He bent a little closer to Bennis’s ear and said, “He can’t pole like that all the way into the Atlantic Ocean. How do we get under way?”

  “We’ve got a wind,” Bennis said. “As soon as we get out to reasonably open water, we’ll hoist the sails. This is a sailboat, Gregor.”

  “I know.”

  “How did you think a sailboat worked?”

  Gregor was about to tell her that he hadn’t thought about how a sailboat worked—why should he have?—when the third thing happened. They had moved rapidly away from the pier and were now turned around, headed in the right direction. Men were yelling at each other and running back and forth, doing Gregor knew not what. High in the rigging, a sail opened and then another. Tony Baird, standing almo
st exactly midway between the bow and the food table, was raising his cup of coffee in the air.

  “I took care of this boat the whole time Dad was—unavailable,” he was saying, “and you know what the hard part is? Getting the sails. I’m not making this up. Getting the sails made just the right size and just the way they used to be. Getting the sails will make you absolutely nuts.”

  “Dealing with this boat in any way whatsoever makes me absolutely nuts,” Sheila Baird said. “I still don’t understand why we can’t just have an ordinary little yacht like everyone else.”

  “I think I’ll buy an ordinary little yacht,” Bennis whispered in Gregor’s ear. “You know, something like the Cristina.”

  “Don’t do it,” Gregor whispered back. “Tibor will have it filled with refugees before you ever get it out of dry dock.”

  “We’re pitching,” Tony Baird said. “I can’t believe this. We’re not even out of the harbor and we’re rolling around like a marble.”

  “Watch your step,” the man Gregor thought must be Calvin Baird said. “We’re always having accidents on this boat. It’s a damned menace.”

  “I never have accidents on boats,” Tony Baird said. He put his coffee cup back on the table, watched it slide along the cloth for a moment, and then picked it up again. Then he shook his head and laughed. “I’ll bet they didn’t let passengers up near the bow when the original Mayflower sailed to Massachusetts. If they had, they’d have lost half the company to the sharks.”