A Stillness in Bethlehem(59)

“Tisha Verek wasn’t from town,” Gregor said.

“No,” Franklin admitted, “and Gemma wasn’t, either, but she was an Episcopal priest. I mean, no matter how nuts the Episcopalians have gotten lately, a priest is still a priest. Although I got to say, I like your priest a lot better than I liked Gemma. Anyway. Dinah Ketchum was from town. Never in her life been out of it except to go shopping downstate or to have her gallbladder removed over to Mary Hitchcock in New Hampshire. Nobody would have wanted Dinah Ketchum dead if they weren’t from town.”

“Maybe nobody did,” Gregor said. “Maybe that much of the local speculation is right. Maybe Tisha Verek was deliberately killed—and now Gemma Bury, too—but Dinah Ketchum’s death was the result of an accident.”

“Tisha Verek was killed with Stuart Ketchum’s gun,” Franklin said.

“Stuart Ketchum’s guns are in the back of his farmhouse in a room open to anyone who wants to walk in,” Gregor told him.

Franklin gave Gregor a fishy look. “Do you really believe all this horse manure?”

Gregor sighed. “No, of course I don’t,” he said. “And I’m talking through my hat, anyway, because all I know is what you’ve told me and what I read in the paper, which isn’t much. I haven’t really seen anything for myself except for what Demp showed me this afternoon, and I’ve already told you how bad I am with forensic evidence. I’m just trying to work it out logically. You’re going to have to call the state police in eventually—”

“Maybe I’ll skip it.”

“—and I want you to have your arguments ready. Actually, what I really want to do is go over and talk to Kelley Grey. Tibor’s been trying to stuff her full of food for more than an hour now and she’s probably ready to scream. Besides, there are a few things I’d like to talk to her about.”

“I’ve already talked to her,” Franklin said.

“I know. Now I want to talk to her myself.”

Franklin gave Gregor a long and suspicious look—unjustifiably, Gregor thought, since it had been Franklin’s idea to bring Gregor into this mess to begin with—but when Gregor stood up Franklin didn’t try to stop him. Gregor had lost his gloves, he didn’t know where. He was always losing his gloves. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down the bleachers at Bennis and Tibor and Kelley Grey.

“I think,” he said, very slowly and very calmly, because he didn’t want to drop a bomb on Franklin Morrison’s head just moments before he walked away, “that what we’d better do right now is concentrate on motive. I mean, we had better hope there is a motive. Because if there isn’t a motive, by which I mean a motive in the ordinary sense—”

“Oh, hell,” Franklin Morrison said.

“I’m bringing it up,” Demp said. “Hey, Franklin. Guess what. It’s a .22-caliber bullet for a Browning.”

“A Browning,” Franklin marvelled. “Oh, double shit.”





2


From the moment they had first met, Gregor Demarkian had had trouble focusing on Kelley Grey. There was something about the young woman that slipped away from him, something inside her that seemed to will itself into invisibility. It wasn’t her plainness. One of the most arresting women Gregor had ever met had cheerfully called herself “plain as sin” and been accurate in her assessment, but she’d been one of those women you couldn’t take your eyes off nevertheless, and she had never walked into a room and sunk into the woodwork. Kelley Grey was a woodwork inhabitant, an occupant of the fringes, and with the attitude she seemed to be taking to everything, Gregor thought she’d be living on the outside for a long time. He reminded himself that he knew nothing about her attitude in general, on a day-to-day basis. This might have been a night when she was angry at Gemma Bury or upset about something personal he couldn’t begin to guess. He watched her with Bennis and Tibor as he came down the bleachers and couldn’t make up his mind. Kelley Grey wasn’t behaving like one thing or another. She wasn’t behaving at all. She was just sitting there, watching, while Bennis and Tibor talked to each other.

Out across the park at the gazebo, the movements had changed, the flow of traffic had switched directions. Franklin Morrison’s deputies were bringing their investigations to a close, at least temporarily. Someone—Gregor hoped it was Franklin—had given the stage hands permission to strike the set. The three donkeys that had served for verisimilitude were already gone. Gregor supposed permission for them to leave had been given early, on the assumption that there was no point in subjecting a lot of innocent animals to cold and wind to no good purpose.