If you didn’t want to be interrupted, you’d have gone to work in the studio, Alyssa thought. She didn’t say it because she didn’t want to bring on the lecture on hidden motives and the imperatives of the undiscovered self she was sure it would bring on. Instead, she waited for the sound of Caroline moving away from the stairs. Then she went back into Paul’s room. I’d better be fast, she thought now.
She went over to Paul’s shoe tree and tilted it sideways. She hadn’t told the police about this, and as far as she knew, neither had James or Caroline. Why should they? The three of them had all been through this kind of thing before. The three of them all knew better than to “cooperate” with the police, because cooperation always turned into collaboration and got you in trouble. The three of them hadn’t needed to make a pact to say as little as possible. It came to them naturally.
She laid the shoe tree sideways on the floor and pried open the rounded leather bottom of it. She came away with a stack of papers and four heavy gold cuff links. She recognized the cuff links as gifts from Paul’s friend, Mrs. Charlow, the silly old cow he had known in Vermont. She put the cuff links aside and went through the papers. There was the deed to this house. There was the number of Paul’s Swiss account, with the word “closed” written across it. There was a packet of miscellaneous necessities tied with string: Paul’s birth certificate, Paul’s baptismal certificate, Paul’s old passports. Paul had had a perfectly good safety deposit box in a bank in downtown Philadelphia, but he never seemed to use it. Alyssa couldn’t fathom why he kept half the things he kept.
What she was looking for was just under the pile of miscellaneous nonsense. It was in a plain manila envelope folded over twice, but it was clearly marked: JACKIE’S WILL. Alyssa knew it wasn’t really Jackie’s will. Jackie’s will was with Jackie’s lawyers. This was just a photocopy. It would do.
She tucked the manila envelope under the waistband of her skirt and pulled her sweater down over it. Then she put the shoe tree back together and stood it up. The bathroom was right across the hall. She went in there and flushed the toilet and ran the water in the sink.
“Caroline?” she called, coming back out into the hall. “I’m on my way.”
Caroline didn’t answer. Alyssa thought it was a very good sign.
Alyssa thought it was a very good thing that Caroline never paid any attention to anybody but herself.
Seven
1
SONIA VELADIAN WAS A round-faced, slightly plump, cheerful young woman who looked vaguely familiar, and for a moment or two after Gregor Demarkian opened his apartment door to her he couldn’t remember who she was. It was quarter to six in the evening. Before his doorbell rang, he had been sitting at his kitchen table, going over the timetable Mary and Helen had made out for him and worrying over the things Hannah had told him. He had also been eating, but feeling very guilty about it. He had not been earing well. Just an hour before, Donna Moradanyan had emerged from her unprecedented holiday funk to bring him a heart-shaped chocolate layer cake with strawberries in syrup all over the top of it and real whipped cream in the middle. If Bennis had seen it, she would have delivered the lecture to end all lectures on The Virtues of Green Vegetables and The Necessities of Watching What You Ate Once You Got Older. It was Gregor’s contention that he did watch what he ate. He watched his bacon and eggs. He watched his pepperoni pizzas and his three-inch-thick prime ribs and his yaprak sarma. He was keeping an especially close eye on this cake. It was too bad that that wasn’t the sort of thing Bennis wanted him to do.
“I like that police officer they have,” Donna Moradanyan told him. “The one who’s supposed to be in charge of the case but isn’t really, because your friend is.”
This took a while to work out. Finally, Gregor said, “Oh. You mean Russell Donahue.”
Donna nodded. “He seemed very intelligent. And nice too. Not as if he were the kind of person who would—hound Hannah or anything.”
Gregor had wanted to tell her that it was hardly a case of anyone hounding Hannah, but he hadn’t had time. Donna had said something about not wanting to leave Tommy alone so long and ran back upstairs. Gregor had retreated to his kitchen and his timetable and a decent knife and fork. He had just written three very important lines at the top of his legal pad, when his doorbell rang.
7:00 TO 7:05—SHEILA KASHINIAN HEARS MOAN FROM SECOND FLOOR
7:48 (OR SO)—HANNAH KREKORIAN HEARS MOAN FROM OUTSIDE MASTER BATHROOM DOOR
CONNECT.