Baptism in Blood

by Jane Haddam

  When he came out of the shower, it was only 6:06 and the house was still quiet. He went to his suitcase, found a pair of good but reasonably relaxed gray flannel slacks and a shirt still in its packaging from the cleaners. He found new underwear and three ties, all shredded, that he decided not to wear. It was going to be too hot to wear a sweater, so he took out a sports jacket instead. Then he laid it all out on the bed and tried to decide if the pieces matched each other. Bennis and Lida and his late wife Elizabeth all seemed to be able to tell just by looking, but Gregor had no idea what they were looking at. Between the time Elizabeth had died and the time he had moved up from Washington to live on Cavanaugh Street, he had played it safe by wearing suits that had been matched by the store he bought them at. Now that he didn’t feel comfortable doing that anymore, he found himself spending too many mornings agonizing about whether he was going to look put together. That, he knew, was Bennis Hannaford’s fault. Before Bennis Hannaford, he had never cared whether he looked put together or not, although that might have been because Elizabeth had been there to make it unnecessary for him to care.

  Gregor was doing it again. He put on his clothes as quickly as possible. Then he put on his shoes and went back out into the living room. It was still quiet—why wouldn’t it be?—and he went out the big sliding glass doors on David’s deck to look at the ocean. It seemed im­possible that the ocean had gone crazy less than three weeks ago and laid waste to most of the coastline of this state. Right now it looked majestic but calm, like a grand old lioness well past the days when she was able to hunt.

  Gregor walked all the way around the deck to the side of the house, where the deck faced the beach instead of the ocean. From there, he could see not only the beach road but the start of town beyond it. Yesterday, that town had been nothing but a blur of crowded images, mostly of television equipment and junior reporters wielding microphones. Now it looked as quiet as David’s house was. And why wouldn’t it be? The media people were probably as night-oriented as David. The official organs of the town and state wouldn’t open until nine. The rest of Bellerton would be, though. If there was one thing Gregor knew about small towns, it was that they woke up early and got down to business with the dawn.

  Gregor went back into the house and into the kitchen. It wasn’t much of a kitchen, by Gregor’s standards. It was open on two sides to the dining area and the living room, and there were hardly enough cabinets to hold a decent set of baking pans. Still, there was a paper and a pencil and a refrigerator nearly coated with little magnets. Gregor wrote David a note—Gone for a walk; be back soon—and stuck it on the freezer door. The magnet he used to stick it with was a bunch of letters jumbled together that spelled out: THE TIME TO BE HAPPY IS NOW. If Gregor remem­bered correctly, that was a quote from a famous nineteenth-century freethinker named Robert Ingersoll. Freethinker was the nineteenth-century euphemism for atheist.

  Gregor went out the front door this time, and then up the slatted wood walk that led over the sand to the side­walk. Out here he could smell nothing but clean wild ocean. He could hear nothing but birds, cawing frantically above his head as they circled. The house next to David’s looked as if it had been badly damaged in the hurricane. Parts of its roof were missing and one of the pilings that held it up was cracked and out of true. Its windows were still boarded up, meaning that its owners, other vacation people like David, didn’t intend to occupy it anytime soon.

  At the sidewalk, Gregor did the proper city thing and looked both ways to check the traffic on the beach road, saw that there wasn’t a car in sight, and crossed. He found himself on a sidewalk corner between two small white houses, both battered-looking but full.

  Maybe just because he was finally doing something in particular, Gregor suddenly felt a lot better.

  2

  IN VERY SMALL TOWNS in the United States, all the real action happens in one of two places: on Main Street, or in the main room of the nearest McDonald’s. Gregor thought the nearest McDonald’s must be some ways away. Main Street was already humming. The grain-and-feed store was actually open, with big wooden bins placed outside its front door and filled with Gregor couldn’t determine what. The other stores he saw—a religious gift shop; a bookstore—weren’t open, but they were lit up inside, testimony to the fact that the people who owned them really meant business. Gregor walked down the street. Bellerton gave a very good impression. The sidewalks were well kept. The street was clean and swept. The brick Town Hall had been recently washed. Maybe all that was the result of the cleanup they had all had to do after the hurricane, but in Gregor’s expe­rience, keeping a town looking spruce and cheerful took active commitment. When that commitment was lacking, things fell apart in a hurry. Just look at New York.

  It took Gregor a couple of blocks before he found what he was looking for, and then it not only met his ex­pectations, it exceeded his hopes. It was called Betsey’s House of Hominy, and it was so full of people, they looked as if they were going to start spilling out the windows at any moment. It wasn’t a real diner—meaning a restaurant in a retired railroad dining car—but it had been made up to look like one, and there was a sign across two of the front windows in neon script that said: Get Your Grits. This be­ing North Carolina, Gregor supposed you really could get grits. The few times he had tried grits, though, he hadn’t much liked them. All the men Gregor could see were wear­ing short-sleeved camp shirts made of various colors in polyester. All the women had big hair. Gregor didn’t really believe, in a town that catered to this many tourists, that all the men in it had the kinds of jobs that required going to work in your shirtsleeves—but he did believe that this might be the kind of town where men had to pretend to have that kind of work. In cases like this one, the character of the town or the neighborhood where the crime had hap­pened was vitally important, and it was so hard to work it all out.

  Gregor worked up his courage and went in through Betsey’s front door. The place was crowded, but not as crowded as it had seemed from outside. Most of the cus­tomers seemed to like to sit in the booths that were pressed up against the windows. The booths in the back were all full, too. The counter around the cash register was mostly empty. Gregor sat down on one of the stools and waited for the girl behind the counter to notice him.

  Gregor had had Bennis Hannaford working on him for years. He knew better than to call women “girls,” but in this case he thought he was justified—and as soon as the girl behind the counter turned around, he knew he was. Gregor didn’t think she could be more than fifteen. In spite of the hair and the thick coat of makeup, she looked like she still needed a baby-sitter. She looked not so much inno­cent as bone ignorant, and not bright enough to do anything about that. Gregor sat patiently on his stool with his hands folded in front of him. The girl contemplated him as if he were a toad who had suddenly decided to order breakfast.

  An older woman came through a swinging door from the back, saw Gregor sitting with his hands folded, and bustled up behind the counter. It was only then that Gregor noticed that she was wearing a white uniform just like the girl’s. On the older woman it looked natural, instead of like a costume. The older woman brushed the girl away in the direction of the cash register and said, “Sheri Lynn, for Heaven’s sake. What can you be thinking of? Have you taken this gentleman’s order?”

  “Uh,” Sheri Lynn said. “Um. No.”

  The look on the older woman’s face spoke volumes. Gregor wondered just how long she had had to put up with Sheri Lynn. The older woman gave him a great big smile and said, “Good morning, sir. I’m Betsey. What can I get for you this morning?”

  Back on Cavanaugh Street, Bennis Hannaford was al­ways worrying about Gregor’s cholesterol. Bennis Hanna­ford was not here to worry about it now.

  “I’ll have two scrambled eggs,” Gregor said firmly, “and a side order of sausage and a side order of hash browns. And toast with butter. And some coffee. Oh, yes. And some orange juice.”

  Betsey wasn’t writing this down on
anything. “You just give me a minute,” she told him. “I’ll be right back with your coffee. Sheri Lynn, for Heaven’s sake. Donnie Mac wants to pay up.”

  Donnie Mac must be the young man waiting at the cash register, the one wearing the pin that said: MY BOSS IS A JEWISH CARPENTER. Gregor thought he ought to dispense with Christian charity in this instance and count his change when he got it. A second later, Gregor noticed that he did. Sheri Lynn seemed to be swimming through molasses, physically as well as mentally. She was far too thin, and Gregor thought that might be because she couldn’t keep her mind on anything long enough to remem­ber to eat.

  There was a man on a stool four places away from Gregor toward the back of the room, sipping coffee and playing with the pens that lined the pocket of his lime green short-sleeved shirt. He swiveled in Gregor’s direction and said, “You a tourist down here? Isn’t very usual, hav­ing tourists down here in October.”

  “Shh,” somebody in the back of the room said. “He’s from the city; can’t you see that? He must be an­other one of those reporters.”

  “He’s too old to be a reporter,” somebody else said.

  Betsey came out of the back room again, picked up a Pyrex pot of coffee from a hot plate behind the counter, picked up a cup and saucer from behind the counter, too, and advanced toward Gregor.

  “All of you stop this now,” she said. “He isn’t a reporter. His name is Gregor Demarkian and he’s staying with David Sandler. I know. Minna Lorimer told me.”

  Gregor had no idea who Minna Lorimer was, but he was instantly grateful to her. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone might mistake him for a reporter. The woman who had called him too old had been absolutely right. Still, this whole town had to be sick to death of reporters.

  Gregor held out his hand to Betsey. “Gregor Demar­kian.”

  “Betsey Henner.” She shook.

  The man four stools down from Gregor said, “You’re staying with David Sandler? Does that mean you’re one of those atheist people, too?”

  “I don’t understand how anybody can be an atheist,” a young woman in one of the booths declared. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, where do you people think this big old world out there came from?”

  “Gregor took a long sip of his coffee. It was too hot, but he didn’t care. This was not going the way he had expected it to.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’ve never thought about it. Atheism, I mean.”

  “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” a young man in yet another of the booths asked.

  Betsey Henner blew a raspberry. “Ricky Drake, you just quit that. The man hasn’t had a chance to drink his morning coffee.”

  “We’re living in the last days,” Ricky Drake said. “You never know when the Lord is going to come. You never know what the Lord is going to do. You have to be prepared.”

  “Well, he can’t be prepared unless he’s had a cup of coffee,” Betsey said. “For Heaven’s sake.”

  “I believe in Jesus Christ,” Sheri Lynn said suddenly. The room hushed, as if it were a major occasion when Sheri Lynn decided to say anything. “I go to the Episcopal Church. My sister’s daughter’s getting baptized there on Sunday.”

  It was like somebody had given the place a collective cold bath. Everybody was silent. Everybody looked just faintly depressed, except Sheri Lynn, who looked blank. Betsey Henner sighed the sigh of the perpetually long-suf­fering and headed toward the back room again. Gregor hoped she was going to get his breakfast, cholesterol over­load and all.

  In the quiet caused by Sheri Lynn, most of the custom­ers went back to their breakfasts and their own conversa­tions. The man a few stools down was still looking at Gregor, but he didn’t seem hostile anymore, just curious. Gregor didn’t think there would be anything wrong with satisfying his curiosity. It might even help him get the in­formation he needed. Then a woman of indeterminate age got out of her seat at one of the window booths and sat down on the stool next to him.

  “Are you the Gregor Demarkian who is the detec­tive?” Her voice had just a trace of New York flat in it.

  “That’s right,” Gregor told her. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Maggie Kelleher. I own the bookstore.”

  Suddenly, Gregor knew who this woman reminded him of. She didn’t look anything like Bennis Hannaford, but she was like her nonetheless. There was something about the way she carried herself, and the calm but chal­lenging look in her eyes—as if she spent her time demand­ing something of the universe that the universe didn’t want to give back.

  Ricky Drake stirred in his booth. He was heavier than he looked at first glance, and sullen. “Maggie used to be one of us,” he said, “but then she went to New York.”

  Maggie Kelleher didn’t turn around to look at him. “I’ve read about you,” she said to Gregor. “I’ve read a lot about you. Have you come down here to help the police make it look like Ginny Marsh killed her own child?”

  “I take it you don’t think Ginny Marsh did kill her own child,” Gregor said.

  Maggie gave him a long, slow look. Then she hopped off her stool and went back to her booth. Gregor thought she had abandoned him entirely, but in a moment she was back, with a full cup of hot coffee in her hands. She put it down on the counter next to him.

  “I was up there on the day of the storm, you know,” she said. “Up at the camp.”

  “And?”

  Maggie Kelleher shrugged. She had very elegant, very expressive shoulders. She also had very intelligent eyes. “Half the town was up there, if you want to know the truth. Stephen and Lisa Harrow from the United Church of Christ. He’s the minister there.”

  “He’s a bigger atheist than David Sandler these days,” the man a few stools down said. “Nobody knows what Stephen’s up to being a member of the clergy these days,”

  “There were a lot of people,” Maggie went on. “Rose MacNeill who owns the religious gift shop. In the big Victorian house. You might have seen it on your way here.”

  “I did.”

  “I keep trying to remember everybody who was up there, but I can’t. It was the middle of the storm and every­thing was crazy. And of course, that’s the highest ground in town.”

  “David Sandler said something about the high school.”

  Maggie Kelleher nodded. “That was the official ref­uge, of course, but it was safer up at the camp and we all knew it. And Zhondra had made it clear enough that she didn’t mind company for the duration as long as the com­pany behaved itself.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning no acting like Ricky back there would act if he got around someone who was gay. It was all right. The people who felt like that didn’t come up anyway. They went to the high school or out to Henry Holborn’s place.”

  Gregor frowned. “Henry Holborn. He’s a—what? Minister?”

  “Something like that,” Maggie replied. “I don’t know what you know about places like this, Mr. Demarkian, but there are a lot of guys out here, they didn’t go to the seminary or get ordained in a regular religion the way Catholics and Presbyterians do. They went to Bible college—there are hundreds of Bible college all across the South—anyway, they went to Bible college and then they came home and started preaching. And if they got enough people to come listen to them, that got them the money to found and build a church. Henry Holborn is one of those. His place is called the Bellerton Full Gospel Christian Church, and it’s enormous.”

  “Henry Holborn is a good man,” Ricky Drake de­clared. “He’s a messenger from God.”

  “I don’t know if Henry Holborn is a messenger from God,” Maggie said, “but he is a very successful preacher, the most successful one we’ve had around here for years, and the complex he built is far enough from the water to be safe from most hurricane problems. So there were a lot of people out there. All the members of his church who could get there, for one. Except Ginny Marsh, who was out at the camp. Bobby was there, though.
”

  “Who’s Bobby?”

  “Ginny’s husband. Tiffany’s father. That’s the usual thing, isn’t it? When a mother is supposed to have killed her children. People usually say it was the husband’s idea.”

  “Actually,” Gregor said carefully, “people usually say it was the boyfriend’s idea. In the two most famous cases of this kind that I know of, there was a boyfriend in the background, a man they wanted to marry who didn’t want to support another man’s children. Does Ginny Marsh have a boyfriend?”

  “Not that I know of. And this is Bellerton, North Car­olina, Mr. Demarkian. If she had a boyfriend, I’d know.”

  Gregor took another long sip of his coffee. This was not strictly true. In spite of the legendary nosiness of small towns, they were often utterly unaware of the most outra­geous things. It might be impossible to find privacy in a place like Bellerton, but it would be easier than Bellerton realized for one of its citizens to keep a secret.

  “You say you were up at the camp,” Gregor said slowly. “Let me ask you this, then. Did you see anything that might indicate that Ginny Marsh was not lying? Was there some kind of Satanic ritual going on? Was Ginny in your sight all along?”

  “Ginny wasn’t in my sight all along. But it doesn’t matter, Mr. Demarkian. I don’t think you’ve understood me. I said that I didn’t think Ginny killed her baby. And I don’t.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t think Ginny was lying,” Maggie Kelleher went on. “I do think she’s lying, Mr. Demarkian. I think she’s lying through her teeth. About the Satanic rituals. About the way the baby died. About everything.”

  “But why?” Gregor asked. “If you’re trying to tell me she’s covering up for her husband—”