Act of Darkness(85)

“What?” Chester said.

“—and about our dear departed Dr. Kevin Debrett—”

“What?” Gregor said.

“—and you told me,” Victoria was going on, unheeding, at full steam, “that it was all because you were interested in protecting my daughter from any kind of scandal. But think about it, Mr. Bettinger, that was three months ago, not one or two—”

“Oh, Christ,” Bettinger said.

“And I can count,” Victoria finished up dramatically. “Stephen didn’t start getting those attacks until the first of June. You’ve been sniffing around here for two months longer than that. And then, when my son-in-law is murdered off by that deplorable woman, it takes you forever and a day just to show up at the door!”

Gregor Demarkian had seen people turn green before, even veteran agents, even FBI investigators with a dozen bloody mob killings lodged forever in their memory banks. He had never seen anyone turn as green as Carl Bettinger did now. Bettinger was destined to get greener. Dan Chester had been angry. Now he was on the warpath.

“Mr. Bettinger,” he said, “I’m going to have your balls.”

Gregor thought it was time to put a stop to this. If he didn’t, it would only get worse.

He crossed the foyer quickly, grabbed Carl Bettinger by the arm, and began tugging him toward the stairs. Then he bowed courteously first at Dan Chester and then at Victoria Harte and said, “Excuse me.”

“If it turns out you knew about whatever this is too,” Chester said, “I’ll have your balls along with his.”

Gregor did the only thing he could do, which was ignore him, and got Bettinger onto the first of the steps to the “balcony. Then he got Bettinger up two more. Then he leaned over and whispered in Bettinger’s ear, “Come on now, Carl. Let’s go upstairs and talk about how when Kevin Debrett died you showed up at the door almost before the police did, and when Stephen Whistler Fox died you didn’t show up for two hours.”





FOUR


[1]


GREGOR DEMARKIAN REACHED THE balcony of the second-floor guest wing with the intention of taking Carl Bettinger to Bennis Hannaford’s room, because he had taken everyone else there. That room, after all, was the semiofficial temporary headquarters of the investigation. Because Gregor knew that Bennis Hannaford had killed neither Kevin Debrett nor Stephen Whistler Fox, he wasn’t worried about disturbing any vital piece of evidence there. He was also used to Bennis and the way she arranged her rooms. In the bedroom of a stranger, he might be distracted by the trivial details of a private life. In Bennis’s bedroom, he simply wondered how someone whose rooms were so orderly could have a mind that ran like a Rube Goldberg machine.

Of course, he had to admit, those Rube Goldberg machines had always worked.

He got halfway down the balcony and then stopped. On consideration, he did not want to take Carl Bettinger to Bennis Hannaford’s room. Henry Berman had made himself scarce while Gregor was talking to Patchen Rawls, but that was animosity. Henry Berman had developed an instantaneous and unqualified dislike of Patchen Rawls and, with Gregor there to take up the slack, he hadn’t been about to suppress it just to question her. With Carl Bettinger, it would be entirely different. Berman would dearly love to question Bettinger.

Gregor was stopped almost directly in front of Bennis’s door.

Policemen were going in and out of it, passing him and nodding, and then scurrying across the balcony to the senator’s room, to prod the medical examiner’s people. Berman was out of sight, but Gregor had not doubt he was going quietly crazy.

Gregor turned back to Bettinger and said, “One door down. That room is my own. No one will bother us there.”

“Bother us?” Bettinger looked thoroughly bewildered. He had been looking bewildered since Victoria Harte had started attacking him.

“I am trying,” Gregor told him, “to be polite about this. I am trying not to involve the local police until they have to be involved. Isn’t that what you want?”

Bettinger flushed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want.”

“I thought so.” Gregor opened the door to his own room and waved Bettinger inside. Still untouched by the hands of any maid and further disordered by the kind of quick-and-dirty police search that can only be conducted with the consent of the victim, it was a mess. The bed looked as if it had been writhed in, not slept in. The vanity was covered with the metal debris of the half dozen complimentary travel kits Gregor had picked up over the course of his career and stuffed into his favorite suitcase and forgotten there. The clothes he had slept in the night before were lying on the floor of his closet.