Bleeding Hearts(48)
“I thought you said you didn’t know Hannah Krekorian.
“I don’t. It’s who else this Hannah Krekorian knows that makes me think there’s a chance, an outside chance, that this invitation might have come from her. Do you know who Gregor Demarkian is?”
“Of course.”
“Hannah Krekorian is a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Gregor Demarkian’s.”
“So?” Alyssa was blank. What could the woman be getting at? “I don’t see why this woman’s friends are an issue. And you just said, just a second ago, that she’d never invite you to this party.”
“Well, that’s true enough, as long as you assume that the purpose of this party is to put something on for Paul. But what if the purpose of this party is altogether different? What if it’s to put something on for Gregor Demarkian?”
“But why?” Alyssa insisted. “Why would Demarkian want to cause embarrassment to you and Paul? Do you know Demarkian?”
“Of course I don’t know Demarkian,” Candida said in exasperation. “But Gregor Demarkian is a detective, Alyssa. And the Philadelphia Police Department is not happy leaving the murder of your stepmother as an officially unsolved crime. If you would just put two and two together—”
“But why?” Alyssa demanded again. “Why now?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” Candida agreed. “It doesn’t make sense. So that brings us back to square one. Somebody at the house sent me this invitation, hoping I’d use it and wind up with egg on my face. It wasn’t a very good idea.”
“It obviously didn’t work.”
“No, it didn’t work. It did get me angry. That’s not a very good idea either, Alyssa. I’m not a very pleasant person when I’m angry.”
“Well, go be unpleasant to somebody else,” Alyssa said, tugging her collar up against the wind. “I didn’t send you that thing. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want the trouble it would get me into. Go pick on Caroline or Paul.”
“I’m not going to pick on anybody,” Candida said.
They had reached an intersection, how many blocks west of The Silver Unicorn, Alyssa didn’t know. Candida stepped to the edge of the curb and shot her hand into the air. A taxi appeared out of nowhere and pulled up beside her.
“I’ll let you take this one,” she told Alyssa. “I want to walk awhile longer. You should think of the things we were talking about.”
“What things?”
“What we were talking about,” Candida insisted. She had the cab’s door open. She was waiting politely.
Alyssa got in the cab and recited her address mechanically. Now, what was this all about?
But the driver pulled out into traffic, and Alyssa didn’t have a chance to ask. She looked back at the sidewalk. Candida had disappeared. She thought of the invitation. She decided it made no sense at all.
Even Caroline, who hated Candida with even more venom than she hated most women, wouldn’t do anything like this.
If Caroline wanted to make Paul look like a world-class horse’s ass, she’d find a way to do it in worldwide syndication.
Six
1
THE ENGRAVED INVITATIONS THAT Hannah Krekorian had sent out to everyone she knew on Cavanaugh Street had not been made up especially for this party. They were stock invitations with blanks on them for date and time. They could be ordered from Tiffany’s by the hundred. All the older women in the neighborhood had them. There had been a craze for them about a year before Gregor Demarkian moved back to Philadelphia. They went out of local fashion almost as quickly as they had come in. Almost nobody used them anymore. That Hannah did struck most of her friends as very odd. It also struck Gregor Demarkian as useful. The nice thing about stock invitations that hadn’t been especially made up was that there were always more of them hanging around somewhere. All Gregor had to do to get one for Bob Cheswicki was to call Hannah and ask her if she minded if he brought a friend. Of course, Hannah thought he was talking about a woman. Gregor could hear the alarm in her voice. Everybody on Cavanaugh Street expected him to come to his senses and marry Bennis Hannaford one of these days—in spite of the fact that both Gregor and Bennis thought any such move would mean they were equally certifiable. Hannah couldn’t help herself. No matter how much she might want to discourage Gregor from veering from the path that local gossip had already laid down for him, she couldn’t bear the idea of not seeing who he would bring. Gregor asked for the extra invitation when he ran into Hannah in Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store on Wednesday morning. Hannah brought it over to Gregor’s apartment herself on Wednesday afternoon. Gregor didn’t tell her what he was up to. He knew perfectly well she wouldn’t want a police officer who was still vitally interested in the case against Paul Hazzard at the party she was giving for Paul Hazzard. Even if she said the party wasn’t for Paul Hazzard.