“I think there’s money in it.”
“Peter being Peter, he’ll lose his shirt. Whatever. I just changed my mind, that’s all. Tommy and I are better off without him. I’m young. It’s not impossible that somewhere along the way I’ll find someone Tommy and I wouldn’t be better off without. If you know what I mean.”
“Sure,” Bennis said without hesitation. “Is this someone in particular? Someone you know now?”
“I don’t know,” Donna answered.
And that was true. She really didn’t know. She didn’t know much about anything except that if she didn’t get this heart up to the roof soon, Valentine’s Day was going to be over and she was never going to have the chance. The heart was absolutely wonderful. It was composed of hundreds of small mirrors tinted different shades of red and pink, and whenever the sun shone on it it glittered. Gregor had taken off for the Ararat with Bennis. Old George had promised to pick Tommy up at play group. Donna had nothing on her hands but time.
She tucked the heart and the things she needed to secure it with into a backpack. Then she let herself out on the fourth floor fire escape and started climbing the metal ladder to the roof.
It was a very good thing she had never been afraid of heights.
2
DOWN THE STREET, AT the Ararat, Gregor Demarkian and Bennis Hannaford were sprawled across the benches in the window booth, bent over coffee and English muffins while Linda Melajian hurried back and forth from the kitchen, followed by a steady stream of Armenian in a high-pitched voice. The high-pitched voice belonged to Linda Melajian’s grandmother, who was spending the day at the restaurant while Linda’s father looked around for a new live-in nurse. Linda Melajian’s grandmother went through live-in nurses the way a man with diarrhea goes through toilet paper. The word on the street was that she treated those nurses like toilet paper too. She certainly did screech. Gregor wondered why it was no one ever seemed to go about strangling women like this.
Linda had left a pot of coffee on the table. Gregor topped off his cup and sat back.
“In the beginning, I made the same mistake everyone else did,” Gregor said. “I kept trying to work out how the murderer—Caroline Hazzard, we know now—how she planned to kill Paul Hazzard in the middle of that party. And it was impossible, of course. She had no way of knowing she would be able to get him alone while that party was in progress. That wasn’t what she intended to do at all.”
“She intended to kill him later,” Bennis said.
“Exactly. She intended to find a handy hiding place and wait until the party was over. Then, with Hannah and Paul in the apartment, she’d have a very dangerous but very useful setup, perfect for her purposes as long as she was careful. She went to a great deal of trouble to make sure there were enough suspects. She stole Paul Hazzard’s invitation and slipped it in Candida DeWitt’s mailbox. She had no idea that Candida would show up at the party to make a scene, but it didn’t matter what Candida did. Caroline was simply trying to establish a certain impression.”
“Go back to the beginning,” Bennis commanded. “First, Caroline got in through Hannah’s bedroom window just around seven o’clock somewhere—”
“Which was the moan Sheila Kashinian heard,” Gregor said. “Then she hid in the guest room, dropping one of her sister Alyssa’s earrings to throw even more suspicion around. She checked out the neighborhood on Wednesday evening, by the way. Russell Donahue had his people around and they finally came up with something. I knew she had to have been seen.”
“She hid in the bedroom,” Bennis prompted.
“When Hannah and Paul had their fight, Caroline could see all the running around to the bedroom through the guest room door. She decided to take a chance and it worked. As soon as things quieted down a little, she rushed into the master bedroom and locked the door behind her. Remember, Hannah was still hysterical and Paul Hazzard himself was agitated. Caroline just took advantage of all the confusion to catch him off guard. My guess is that she reached out to hug the man—these people are incredible; they emote constantly—and as soon as she was close enough, she stabbed him with the anchor point of that compass. The six times, I think, were sheer pique. Then she put the compass away—in the inside pocket of this big cape she had, by the way; Russell Donahue found that, too, in her closet with the pocket all crusted bloody—and then she put the dagger down. More diversion. Then she unlocked the door and headed for the window.”
“Which is when Candida DeWitt saw her.”