“Her father’s absolutely livid,” Krissa pointed out. “He was going on and on this morning about how he should have let Mary go to Wellesley instead of keeping her here at home, at least she wouldn’t be mixed up in a murder. And he’s livid at Hannah too. For inviting that man.”
“Do people on the street think Hannah killed him?” Gregor asked, curious.
Krissa said no. “They all think it was that other woman, that Mrs. DeWitt. I’d never seen a fancy piece up close before. It was very interesting.”
“Candida DeWitt looks like a suburban matron on the verge of being elected president of the garden club.”
“It’s not what she looks like, Gregor. It’s what she is like.”
If Krissa Ohanian had met Candida DeWitt on the street without knowing who she was, Krissa would have thought Candida was a very pleasant woman with good WASP social connections. Gregor was sure of it.
“I’m supposed to go in back here?” he asked, pointing behind the counter at a curtain.
“I’ll let you through.” Krissa pulled up the hinged countertop and stepped close to the cash register to let Gregor pass. “They’re all the way in the back there. Just follow the light.”
Gregor followed the light. The back of Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store was like a cave with stalagmites of cardboard boxes rising from the ground. Some of the boxes had words printed on them in English, but most of them didn’t. A great many of the boxes had import stamps plastered all over their sides. Greek, Hebrew, Arabic—when the Ohanians said “Middle Eastern,” they weren’t fooling around.
The light led to an open space at the very back, where three boxes had been laid side to side and covered with a pair of worn terry-cloth dishtowels to make a table. Krissa had been absolutely right. Mary wasn’t doing a thing about taking an inventory. Mary had a bottle of Coke. Helen Tevorakian had a bottle of 7-Up. They were both bent over a sheet of paper placed carefully on Mary’s clipboard. It was not a sheet of paper that would tell anybody how many bags of pignolia nuts were on the shelves.
Neither Mary nor Helen looked up when Gregor came through. Helen was murmuring something about how Lida couldn’t have been getting it right, it had to have been much earlier than seven twenty-two. Then Mary said no, seven twenty-two was just right, Helen forgot how early everybody was getting to the party.
Gregor Demarkian coughed. Mary Ohanian jumped guiltily and nearly fell off the packing box she was using as a stool.
“Don’t sneak up on people like that,” Helen Tevorakian chided him. “You could kill somebody.”
“I wasn’t sneaking at all,” Gregor told her. “I walked right up to you two and you didn’t even notice. What are you doing?”
“Making a timetable,” Mary Ohanian said. “We thought, you know, that since you wanted to talk to us about what happened last night, we’d get it all written down. All the times and that kind of thing. We called people.”
Gregor held out his hand for the sheet of paper. “I don’t suppose it occurred to either one of you that you could leave the detecting to me? Or to the police?”
“Well, we don’t want to leave the detecting to the police in this case, do we?” Helen demanded. “The police think Hannah killed that stuck-up little jerk.”
“He wasn’t little,” Mary Ohanian said. “He was very tall. He was the thinnest person I ever saw in my life who didn’t have an eating disorder.”
“Maybe he did have an eating disorder,” Helen said indignantly.
“Let me see that thing,” Gregor insisted. “Right now.”
Helen Tevorakian took the paper off the clipboard and handed it up. “It’s just a rough outline. We know we’re not professionals, Krekor. We’re just trying to help.”
“And you know what people in this neighborhood are like,” Mary put in. “Always hearing omens and sensing prophecies. You should hear Mrs. Kashinian on the subject of ghostly presences from the other side.”
“Sheila says she heard a ‘desperate moan’ at just about seven o’clock.” Helen Tevorakian was being as diplomatic as she could. “Sheila says it was coming from upstairs.”
Gregor looked at the sheet of paper they had handed him. Amateur or not, it was a pretty fair job. That expensive private school the Ohanians had sent Mary to must have done some good. Gregor thought Mary’s father ought to be ashamed of himself. He ought to have let Mary go on to Wellesley. Maybe they could get a few people together on the street and convince him to let Mary go next year.