Bleeding Hearts(102)
“If you don’t, it might prejudice your reasoning.”
“Right. The murderer, he or she, works out how to get into the apartment—what about window locks?”
“What about them?” Gregor said. “You can always break a window. Considering what was being set up here, it might even have been an advantage.”
“All right. So, on the night of the party, last night, the murderer climbs up the fire escape, meaning to sneak into the apartment, but when he—or she—gets to the landing, there’s Paul Hazzard, designated victim, pacing around in the bedroom—”
“No,” Gregor said.
“No?”
“That wasn’t when the murderer entered the apartment. It couldn’t have been. I went all over that with Bob last night. Paul Hazzard would have seen. He would have struggled. He would have cried out. By the time Hannah locked herself in the master bathroom and Paul Hazzard came to pace outside it, the murderer had been in Hannah’s apartment for quite some time.”
“Really. Since when?”
“Since sometime between seven and seven-oh-five,” Gregor said promptly. “That’s when, according to Helen Tevorakian and Mary Ohanian, Sheila Kashinian heard a moan.”
“Sheila Kashinian,” Russell Donahue ruminated. “Is that the one in the earrings and the four-inch heels and the green-and-gold dyed mink coat?”
“That’s the one.”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Demarkian, you can’t take that woman’s word for anything. She’s crazy.” Russell Donahue stamped his feet to get feeling back into them.
“She may be crazy,” Gregor said, “but she’s no liar. Let’s go back to my apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m cold. And because I want to talk to Bennis Hannaford for a while. Can you get in touch with anybody this late on a Saturday night?”
“Like who?”
“Like your lab and technical people. The ones who are running the tests on the evidence picked up last night.”
“I don’t know if I can get in touch with the exact people. But Cheswicki put rush orders all over all that stuff last night. There ought to be somebody over there who knows what’s going on with our stuff.”
“Good. I hate working blind like this. I want some confirmation of what can be confirmed. Like the fact that that idiotic dagger was not the murder weapon.”
“Right.”
“I’ve got it almost all worked out,” Gregor said. “It’s just a question of—well, never mind for the moment. Let’s go.”
“Right,” Russell Donahue said again, bleakly.
Gregor took the alley with the utility shed in it instead of the garbage, and went back out to Cavanaugh Street.
2
Bennis Hannaford was on the phone and the front door of her apartment was propped open with The White Trash Cook Book when Russell and Gregor came upstairs. They stopped and waved at her and she nodded distractedly.
“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” she was saying, “I really don’t. You have to understand—well, no—well, yes—I’ve thought of that already, but you can’t—oh, for God’s sake—no—no—never mind—I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Jesus.”
Bennis hung up the phone and walked across the foyer to them. “Sorry,” she said. “Is there something the two of you want?”
“This is Russell Donahue,” Gregor said.
“We met last night.”
Gregor felt awkward. Bennis was not usually this—this stiff? Had he done something wrong?
“Well,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind and you don’t have anything to do for the moment, I was hoping you’d come upstairs. There was something I wanted to show you. And something I wanted to ask you.”
“He’s outlining how the murder happened,” Russell Donahue said. “It’s very interesting. He has me totally confused.”
“I heard from Father Tibor,” Bennis said. “He said some friend of his was in your apartment when you got a phone call that Candida DeWitt was dead.”
“That’s true,” Gregor said.
There was a clattering from above them and Donna Moradanyan came running down the stairs, her hands full of red crepe paper and silver balloons, her blond hair sticking out in every direction. She saw them and stopped, blushing.
“Hi,” she said.
Russell Donahue seemed to stand a little straighter. “Hello,” he said. “Where’s your little boy?”
“He’s sleeping over downstairs at old George Tekemanian’s.”