“I don’t know if you realize,” he said to Gregor, “but I—meaning the church, of course, the Full Gospel Christian Church—have rather extensive holdings just outside of town.”
“He’s got a hundred and thirty-three acres and fifteen buildings,” David said. “And they aren’t small buildings.”
“She didn’t just want that,” Henry Holborn said. “She wanted the housing development. She wanted everything. I don’t know if anybody’s told you, Mr. Demarkian, but the church has a big tract of land out at the end of the Hartford Road, right on the county line, and we’ve built houses on it. For our members, mostly. The church handles the credit, you know, because most of them can’t go to the banks.”
“Two hundred twelve houses up there last time I checked,” David said.
“She offered me twenty-five million dollars for it,” Henry Holborn said. “In cash. Just like that. And I thought, you know, when I heard she was supposed to have committed suicide, that she couldn’t have. Because people don’t make offers like that and then go off and kill themselves, not unless they’re taking drugs or doing something else to make their minds not work right, and one thing I have to give Zhondra. Her mind always worked just fine.”
Gregor considered this. “It could have been an act of desperation,” he suggested. “Maybe she had had all she could take of hostility from the town, and she felt driven to make a really crazy offer.”
“I think she had had as much as she could take of hostility from me and my people,” Henry Holborn said, “but I don’t think she was acting in desperation. I’ve seen people in desperation. I see it every day. I saw Stephen Harrow the day before he confessed to the murders.”
“So did I,” David said. “He was crazy.”
“I believe in the Devil,” Henry Holborn said. “I believe that Satan is a real and existent presence in this world. But Stephen Harrow was wandering around town, seeing the Devil in the flesh right in front of his face. Zhondra was not like that when she came to talk to me. She was perfectly calm and perfectly lucid. She acted as if she was trying to buy a good winter coat and knew she was going to have to pay more than she wanted to to get it.”
“He said he could see the devil in the palm of his hand,” David said. “I asked him if he wanted me to help him home, but he didn’t. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. But I look back on it now, and I don’t think he was in his right mind.”
Henry Holborn moved away from the abstract art. Gregor didn’t think he had ever really seen it. “Oh, well,” Henry said. “It’s like I said. It doesn’t matter anymore, now that all that happened with Stephen. But it was on my mind, so I decided to come to you and get it off.”
“I don’t mind,” Gregor said. “It’s an interesting piece of information.”
“She actually had twenty-five million dollars in accessible cash,” Henry said. “After she made the offer, I had her checked out. It was impossible to get all the information, of course, with people who run on that track, so much of it’s hidden. But she could get twenty-five million dollars in cash if she wanted to, and she could probably get more.”
“I wonder what it’s like to live with something like that,” David said. “Not having to worry about money is one thing, but on that scale—” He shrugged.
Gregor patted the top of his suitcase and looked out the window. It really was a bright and sunny day, the kind of day silly rock-and-roll songs are always talking about. He wondered what Stephen’s wife Lisa was going to do, and what Bobby Marsh was going to do, too, since the news was all over town that Ginny no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. In the detective novels Bennis gave him, the story was always over when the murder was solved. Everything was put back in order. Everyone went back to living happily, undisturbed by the sudden eruptions of blood. In real life, there never seemed to be an end to it. The repercussions went on and on and on, like ripples on the ocean, destined to never reach another shore.
“You know,” Gregor said, “I think I’ve changed my mind. I think I will drop in on that party.”
“Oh,” David said, surprised. “Well, good. Good. Let’s go over.”
“You really will be very welcome, Mr. Demarkian,” Henry Holborn told him. “After everything you’ve done, I’m sure Ginny would be thrilled to have you there.”
Gregor didn’t know if Ginny would be thrilled to have him there or not, but he did know he needed some kind of closure.