Act of Darkness(39)

The man and the woman near the ice-sculpture eagle caught his eye and held it. By process of elimination, Gregor knew they had to be Dr. Kevin Debrett and the lobbyist Clare Markey. By Clare Markey’s posture, Gregor knew something in their conversation was going terribly wrong. He headed for them, moving slowly, feeling as if the mere act of breathing was overexertion in this hot sun.

“What I’m trying to tell you,” Kevin Debrett was saying to a Clare Markey with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes on fire, “is that this whole thing is just another example of Victoria Harte’s self-centered—”

“It’s Victoria Harte’s house,” Clare said coldly. “It’s hardly self-centered if she didn’t have it designed specifically for you.”

“She didn’t have it designed specifically for anyone, except herself. She had no consideration for her future guests. She must have expected to have guests. She built a guest wing.”

“So?”

“Don’t you see? Every time you leave your room, you’ve got to leave it open, unlocked. Anyone could steal—”

“This is Mr. Demarkian,” Clare Markey said. “Why don’t you stop obsessing about your personal belongings and turn around and say hello?”

Kevin Debrett didn’t just turn, he whirled. The movement tipped him off balance, making him stumble. He fell forward nearly into Gregor’s shoulders, righted himself at the last possible minute, and flushed.

“Excuse me,” he said, and then shot Clare a look of pure murder. It was as if he thought Clare had made him fall, even though she wasn’t standing close enough to touch him. “Excuse me,” he said again. “Mr. Demarkian. I’m Dr. Kevin Debrett.”

“Dr. Debrett is having paranoid fantasies about someone stealing his medical bag.”

The flush that rose on Kevin Debrett’s neck this time was dark and thick and far worse than murderous. Gregor got the impression that Clare Markey had been pushing the man toward the edge of something for a long time now, and had finally pushed him over.

“There’s nothing paranoid about it,” Debrett bit out. “There’s nothing fantastical either. No more than two months ago—”

“Dr. Debrett is one of those old-fashioned, caring physicians who carries his medical bag everywhere.”

“Clare—”

Gregor coughed, to break the tension. “Is that so very unusual?” he asked them, and Clare Markey laughed.

“It’s damn near unheard of,” she said, “but about two years ago, our good doctor got caught in an emergency in the National Opera House without his bag, and the publicity was absolutely—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“—awful,” Clare Markey finished up. “So you see, now it’s sitting up in his bedroom and the door is unlocked, and he’s convinced someone around here is a coke head—”

“—I never said anything—”

“—and he’s all worked up. Hello, Mr. Demarkian. Are you going to find out what’s wrong with Stephen Whistler Fox?”

The shift in the conversation had the intended effect. It changed the emotional atmosphere entirely, although Dr. Kevin Debrett didn’t seem to get with the program. He at least retreated, pressing his lips together, hunching his shoulders, and fading back to the edge of the conversational circle. In the meantime, Gregor considered the uselessness of covers. In all his long experience, he had used exactly one that actually worked. In fact, Robert Ludlum novels notwithstanding—and not counting drug stings, where you were dealing with people who spent at least half their time non compos mentis—he had only even heard about two that worked. The one he hadn’t been involved in had been Abscam.

He began to turn his attention to Clare Markey, and then saw that they were being joined—deliberately by Stephen Whistler Fox, reluctantly by Patchen Rawls. Ms. Rawls had attached herself to the senator’s arm and had no intention of letting go.

“Uh-oh,” Clare Markey said. “Here comes our matricide. Do you know about that?”

“Vaguely.”

“It was one of those permission-to-end-life-support things. Mrs. Rawls had broken her hip. The life support that was removed was the intravenous feeding tube.”

“Fight that battle later, if you don’t mind,” Gregor told her.

Clare looked a little startled, as if she wasn’t used to being read so clearly. But she didn’t look balky, and Gregor thought she would do what he had asked her, even if she didn’t know the reason. He turned his attention completely to the senator and Patchen Rawls. Then he remembered something and turned again to look for Janet Harte Fox. She was gone.