And One to Die On(53)

If there was one thing Geraldine wanted to do, it was to go into the pantry and get a good look at the CD machine. She had already been in the pantry once since Tasheba Kent died—ostensibly to check for Carlton Ji or Carlton Ji’s corpse—but with the way things had been then, she had barely had a chance to notice that the machine was, in fact, still there, never mind whether its volume control was up or if it had been set to replay. It was just about that time that the Demarkian man had discovered that the phone was out. Then everybody had gone running into the kitchen, hysterical and angry, and she had had to follow them. She hadn’t wanted to appear conspicuous. She hadn’t been hysterical then, because she hadn’t expected the lines to be cut. She had only thought that the phone lines were down between the island and the mainland. That happened without the need of outside interference at least once a month.

The Demarkian man seemed to have forgotten all about the ghostly laughter of the beginning of this evening. For that, Geraldine was more than grateful. She knew she would have to explain it to somebody sometime. If she didn’t talk to Gregor Demarkian, she would have to talk to Dick Morrow, who served as sheriff for Hunter’s Pier, or to the state police. She didn’t want to talk tonight, while she was tired and upset and hadn’t had a chance to think.

Outside, the storm was really turning into something special. That hadn’t been in the forecast. Geraldine had been checking the forecasts all week. The worst she had heard was that they were supposed to get “a little rain” on Thursday night. This was more like the start of a wet-weather nor’easter, complete with howling winds and rain that turned unexpectedly to hail, pelting the windows and the side of the house with round hard balls. This house was so solidly built, it was possible not to notice that the weather out there was awful. You had to really listen to hear the hail. Geraldine was the only one who was really listening. The rest of them, she could see, thought things were going to get better when the sun came up.

Which it would, of course. It was just that the sun might not come up until Saturday afternoon.

Geraldine had gotten them all to the second floor. Now she shooed them in the direction of the guest wing.

“I’m not going to set up breakfast until nine o’clock,” she told them. “Nobody is going to want to eat before then. You should all go to bed and get some rest.”

“Rest,” Mathilda Frazier said. “Oh, God.”

“I’m not just going to lock my door, I’m going to bolt it, and I’m going to put a chair in front of it, too,” Hannah Graham declared. “I’m sure I’m not going to be able to get any sleep. How can I know that this house isn’t full of secret passageways?”

“Of course it isn’t full of secret passageways,” Geraldine said wearily. “It’s just a house.”

“It’s going to be a house with a lien on it to pay the fees from a lawsuit when I’m through,” Hannah Graham said.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to be through,” Bennis Hannaford told her. “I’m going to go to bed.”

“I’m going to bed, too,” Mathilda Frazier said.

“We aren’t going to make any sense until we get a little sleep,” Kelly Pratt said.

Hannah glared at the rest of them in contempt. Then she stalked away, down the hall to the door at the end, which belonged to her bedroom. Maybe we should have put her in the family wing, Geraldine thought. She rejected the idea. Hannah Graham might be related by blood to Cavender Marsh and Tasheba Kent both, but in every spiritual sense the woman belonged to another species.

“I’m going to go to bed myself,” Geraldine said. “I’ll set my alarm and get up at quarter to nine. I’ll have breakfast on the sideboard for anybody who wants it. Don’t feel you have to get up.”

Mathilda Frazier looked down the stairs. “I wish we could move her. I know all about… not tampering with the evidence and all that, but… I wish we could move her.”

“I do, too,” Geraldine said gently. “But Mr. Demarkian says not, and Mr. Demarkian is the only one of us who knows what he’s doing around here. Go to bed now?”

Mathilda Frazier nodded, and the rest of them took their cue from her. Even Gregor Demarkian began drifting obediently off. Geraldine watched until all of them were safely in their rooms. Then she turned away and went into the family wing.

The first thing she did was to stop in and look at Cavender. He was lying exactly as they had left him, perfectly still and on his back. His chest was rising and falling in even, rhythmic sweeps. He seemed to have a smile on his face. Gregor Demarkian had said there was nothing to worry about. Cavender wasn’t exhibiting the symptoms of true coma or showing signs of going into respiratory failure. If anything, according to Demarkian, he was exhibiting admirable fitness of lung and heart, especially considering the fact that he’d been smoking cigars since he was nineteen years old. Geraldine trusted Demarkian, but she wanted to check anyway. Demarkian was a detective, not a doctor. There were probably a lot of things about the human body he didn’t know.