Bleeding Hearts(62)

Gregor felt distinctly disoriented. He had known Hannah Krekorian all his life—or at least he’d thought he’d known her. They had been all through grade school and high school together. Gregor had served as an usher at her cousin Richard’s wedding. If he closed his eyes, he could still see Hannah sitting on the stoop in front of the old unrenovated apartment house where her family had lived when they were all growing up, eight years old and taunting the hell out of him for striking out four times in a row at stickball. How had they all grown to be so old? How had they all grown to be so different?

Gregor looked through the bathroom door again, at the paints and powders and makeup pencils lying in rows in a compartmented glass tray that had probably been bought for the purpose. Gregor knew even less about women’s cosmetics than he knew about crime-scene paraphernalia. He would never have guessed that Hannah had all those things. He would never have guessed that she would have wanted to. She had three times the makeup Bennis did, and Bennis was beautiful.

Did that matter?

He shook himself a little to bring himself to. “Well. Listen. You two are right. We ought to go downstairs. Only do me a favor.”

“What’s that?” Bob Cheswicki asked.

“Let me be the first one to talk to Hannah Krekorian.”





3


The apartment was not so full of people anymore. Names and addresses had been taken. Extraneous people had been sent on their way. The very old ladies had gone home and the Devorkian girls had in all likelihood been ordered to bed. Hannah’s living room looked randomly littered, as if a high wind had blown through it. Scraps of party napkins and half-filled glasses were strewn here and there. It made Gregor think of Pompeii. The volcano had erupted, and everything had been petrified in place.

Christopher Hannaford and Lida Arkmanian stood together near the fireplace, talking. Lida was standing very straight. Christopher was leaning against the mantel. When Gregor walked in with Bob Cheswicki and Russell Donahue, Christopher straightened.

“Krekor?” Lida said.

“Where’s Bennis?” Gregor asked them. “I expected to find her glued to a policeman’s side. Possibly the medical examiner’s.”

“Bennis took old George Tekemanian home,” Christopher said. “He was looking a little peaked. She took Tommy Moradanyan too.”

“Donna is still in the kitchen with Hannah,” Lida said. “Making tea, I think.”

Gregor nodded. “Are you going to take Hannah home with you? She’s going to have to go home with somebody. I don’t think she’d be able to sleep in that room even if the police didn’t have it sealed as a crime scene, which they probably will.”

Lida looked at Christopher and then down at her hands. “No, Krekor. Hannah is not coming home with me. She is going with Helen Tevorakian.”

“Really?” Gregor said. “What’s the matter? Did you two have a fight?”

“Of course not,” Lida said.

“Everything’s really very well organized,” Christopher Hannaford put in. “Donna Moradanyan and Helen are with Hannah now, and then, as soon as the statements are taken, at least—” He frowned. “It is all right, isn’t it? They’re not going to—arrest anyone?”

“Do you mean that awful DeWitt woman?” Lida asked. “I hope they do arrest her. That cat.”

“If they arrested somebody,” Christopher said, “it wouldn’t be Candida DeWitt.”

“Who else could it be?” Lida demanded. Lida looked from one to the other of them. They looked back again. Lida caught her breath, shocked. “But that’s crazy,” she said. “Hannah? They can’t possibly think Hannah killed that man. She’s known him only a week!”

“She was the one with blood all over her and the murder weapon in her hands,” Christopher said.

“Are you sure it’s been only a week?” Gregor asked her. “Couldn’t Hannah have known Paul Hazzard before that and never told you about it?”

“No,” Lida said positively. “Met him casually or just been introduced, that possibly, yes, but not really known him, no. I would have heard about it.”

“You two told each other everything,” Gregor said.

Lida blushed bright red. “No. No, Krekor, that isn’t what I mean. I mean that Hannah was not a woman who hid her feelings. When she was happy she was happy. When she was sad she was sad. And she was not—discreet.”

“Unlike some other people we know,” Christopher said, “who are sometimes too discreet.”

Lida ignored him. “Hannah is a woman who talks, Krekor. She met Paul Hazzard at a meeting of the Friends of the Matterson Settlement House. It’s one of her charities. They talked at this meeting and he brought her home and then took her out to dinner. That was one week ago today, assuming it is still Friday. Last Saturday morning, she called me about it.”