A Stillness in Bethlehem(114)
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?”