A Stillness in Bethlehem(92)

“All right. The second possibility is that you were out when it happened, but for some reason you don’t want us to know you were out. That would be particularly good if you were trying to establish an alibi for something that has recently happened back in town, while Mr. Morrison and Ms. Hannaford and I have been at Mr. Ketchum’s farm. That’s what I will go on to assume if there turns out to be another dead body there when we go back.”

“If there was a dead body back there, we would have heard about it,” Franklin Morrison said. “That’s my personal car we’re using, but it’s got a two-way radio in it. And I carry a beeper.”

“The body might not have been discovered yet,” Bennis said blandly.

“There isn’t any body.” Jan-Mark Verek was impatient. “At least, there isn’t one I put there. I will admit I might have taken a tranquilizer or two before I went to sleep.”

“Right,” Franklin Morrison said.

“Phenobarbital,” Stuart Ketchum said. “Without a prescription. And no brand-name packaging, either.”

“I keep telling him I won’t arrest him unless I catch him selling it to the local population, but he doesn’t believe me,” Franklin Morrison said.

Gregor paid no attention. He knew Jan-Mark Verek had been on some kind of drug and that that drug had probably been a depressant. He knew that that would account for Jan-Mark’s not having heard an intruder, if there had been an intruder to hear. With anybody else, he wouldn’t have bothered to go through this song and dance. He hadn’t been that kind of agent in the Bureau, either. His attitude had always been that people ought to be allowed to keep their shameful but not case-related secrets to themselves. He just didn’t like Jan-Mark Verek.

Still, there was a robbery to be investigated, or something to be investigated. That was why Jan-Mark Verek had set off his alarm. Gregor put his hand on the stair rail and gestured up the stairs with his head.

“That way?”

“That way.” Jan-Mark sprang into action. “All the way up. In the loft, like I said. And I’m going to tell you right now that I think my wife was right.”

“About what?” Gregor asked him.

“About a certain person who happens to work for Peter Callisher named Timmy Hall. Come on. Let’s go up. I’ve got a lot to show you.”





2


There was a reason for Franklin Morrison to investigate Tisha Verek’s office. He was the local lawman and Tisha Verek’s husband had just claimed that the office had been robbed. There was a reason for Gregor Demarkian to investigate Tisha Verek’s office, too. Jan-Mark Verek wanted him to. There was no reason at all for Stuart Ketchum or Bennis Hannaford to be investigating Tisha Verek’s office, or wandering around in it, or observing the actions of the three people who belonged in it, but they came all the same. It was part and parcel of the fact that nothing in this case had been very “official,” just as nothing in Bethlehem, Vermont, was very “official.” It all seemed to get done somehow here. Gregor didn’t mind. Since he was going to talk it all over with Bennis later, he thought it would save time if she saw it for herself.

Tisha Verek’s office was indeed in a loft, a very high loft, higher even than the one that served as the bedroom. The house was a series of lofts. They made Gregor, who had never been easy with heights, feel unsteady. He climbed the stairs doggedly, behind Jan-Mark but ahead of all the others. Bennis came up right behind him, muttering all the way. He didn’t like Jan-Mark Verek. Bennis didn’t like Jan-Mark or his house, either, on general principles, and now she seemed to be talking against his carpets. Gregor reached the loft, turned his back on the open rail and looked around.

What the loft reminded Gregor Demarkian of was not so much a dollhouse as a stage set, the kind of stage set where two rooms can be seen at once and two scenes go on almost simultaneously. On one side there was the bare, unadorned studio space that belonged to Jan-Mark himself. Because of the way the staircase was placed, they had to cross in front of it to get to Tisha’s office. Gregor saw canvases stacked against the walls and paints in tubes and jars and bottles on every available surface. There weren’t many available surfaces. To Gregor’s eyes, it was not a happy jumble, but an angry one. Things seemed to have been flung about in continually erupting fits of pique, and left to lie out of spite. Maybe that was a form of projection on his part, because of the way he read Jan-Mark Verek’s character. Gregor had never had a chance to read Tisha Verek’s character, and seeing her office he decided he was glad he hadn’t. This room was neat, but it was no more a cheerful neatness than Jan-Mark’s studio was a cheerful clutter. Gregor’s first thought on seeing the precise stacks of paper and the even-rowed photographs on the corkboard was: what a constipated, nasty woman she must have been.