“You said you thought he was talking about you,” Gregor said. “You decided later he wasn’t?”
“I decided later he mightn’t have been,” Bennis said, “because what happened next was even weirder than what had gone before. As soon as he started talking about politicians and their private lives, I decided to ditch him the first time he paused for breath. And I did. I called him terrible names. I gave him an analysis of his character that would be unprintable even in Screw magazine. I expected him to argue with me or call me names back or something. But he didn’t.”
“What did he do?”
“The first time I paused for air, he looked me straight in the face and said, ‘Kevin Debrett is the most courageous doctor who ever lived. He’s got a soul for the twenty-first century.’ That was it. I got the strongest feeling he was quoting.”
“Ah,” Gregor sat back, satisfied. He still wasn’t entirely sure what Bennis was feeling—he was going to have to work on that—but he knew that he himself was back on track. “That was wonderful,” he told her. “That was perfect.”
Bennis raised a single eyebrow halfway up her forehead, a Hannaford talent that never failed to impress him. “I’m glad you think it was wonderful. I think it was scuzzy.”
“It’s a scuzziness that’s going to catch us not one murderer, but two. Now do me a favor. Go downstairs, sit around with everybody else, and pretend we never had this conversation.”
“If you’re going to catch a couple of murderers, can I watch?”
“One of the murderers is already dead,” Gregor said. “The other will be unmasked before your eyes. Unless I decide you’re getting out of hand and send you home before then. Get downstairs, Bennis. It’s almost dark.”
“What does the dark have to do with it?”
“Not the dark, the fireworks. Go.”
“Do you really know who did it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Victoria Harte wears shoulder pads.”
Bennis stood up, brushed out her skirt, and fussed with her hair. “You’re doing it again,” she said. “Treating me like a half-wit. Treating me like a girl.”
“Bennis.”
“I’m gone.”
She was, too. Before he knew it, she was out on the balcony and slamming the door shut behind her. It was quite a slam. Gregor thought it could probably have been heard in New Jersey.
When he was sure she was gone, he got up himself and went to the window again. The solar-activated lamps were now on, full blast. Their light made the beach look like glass.
He reached out to grab the pulley and drew the curtains shut. He didn’t have the time to stand here musing about Bennis, or Carl Bettinger, or even the varied career of Dr. Kevin Debrett. He had told Bennis the truth. It wasn’t the dark, but the fireworks he had to worry about. He had less than half an hour before they would go off.
He had to find Henry Berman, and he had to find him right away.
FIVE
[1]
JANET HARTE FOX HAD always been good at making herself invisible. She had learned it as a defense against Victoria’s attempts to turn her into part of the Harte public persona, and it had been one of her most valuable assets as a politician’s wife. Now she had begun to wonder if it was possible to be too invisible—if it could be dangerous instead of safe, to be considered simply not there at all. It was eight o’clock at night—how it had gotten so late so fast, she didn’t know—and the sun was as far down as it was going to get until the early hours of the morning. Through the sliding glass doors of the beach room she could see the men who had been hired to run the fireworks strung out across the sand. They had already put out the line of kerosene torches that was supposed to mimic a Minuteman raiding party, or maybe the Boston Tea Party. Janet couldn’t remember. It was all part of what had been promised to the good ladies of Oyster Bay, and Janet preferred not to think of the good ladies of Oyster Bay.
She leaned a little closer to the doors, and squinted, and saw what she had expected to see. The fireworks men were all ready. The show was set to start at eight-fifteen, and start it would. If everyone had followed directions, it would be the most ostentatious show on the North Shore.
Janet tugged at her hair, pricked her finger on one of her pins, and sucked at the tiny drop of blood. Then she turned her back to the glass doors and walked slowly toward the foyer and the front of the house. It was mostly empty up there now. The policemen were still going back and forth from the second-floor guest wing, but the guests themselves had dispersed. God only knew where. Janet stopped in the living room space to stare for a moment at the chair Patchen Rawls had been sitting in just before she jumped up, got crazy and ran upstairs. If chairs had had facial expressions, Janet would have said this one looked depressed.