Cheating at Solitaire(27)

Stewart Gordon could bellow better than anybody Gregor had ever met.

He shrugged off his coat and left it over the back of one of the chairs at Donna’s kitchen table and then went down the hall to the living room. Tibor had been telling the exact truth. Donna was, indeed, fixing ribbons to Stewart Gordon’s head. She was then draping them down his back and measuring them.

“What is it you think you’re doing?” Gregor asked her.

“Ah,” Stewart said. “It’s you. Damned bloody time. Excuse me, Mrs. Donahue.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Donna said. Then she turned to Gregor. “You’d disappeared. And he’s the right size. The right height, even the right build.”

“Congratulations, by the way,” Stewart said. “For all the usual reasons, but also because I’m impressed with your intestinal fortitude.”

“Do you know Bennis?”

“Only by reputation,” Stewart said. “And, of course, because I’ve just met her, here. She’s a very beautiful woman, in person.”

“That’s a nice way of getting around saying you think she’s crazy.”

“Everybody knows Bennis is crazy,” Donna said. “Even Bennis knows it. If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Gordon, I just want to do a drape across your back and see how it falls on the shoulders. If I don’t get these measurements done, I’m never going to be on time for the wedding, and then what are you going to do? Postpone it until I’m ready?”

Gregor was ready to say that he and Bennis could always elope, but he didn’t, because he knew they couldn’t. Bennis didn’t want to elope. Donna had a long, thick length of ice blue satin ribbon in her hands and had started to pin it to Stewart Gordon’s back. Gregor sat down to watch the operation. It had occurred to him that now that he was here, she could make her measurements directly instead of using a substitute, but he wasn’t going to point it out to her.

“So,” he said, “I take it you didn’t just drop in. Didn’t I hear that you were in Scotland these days, teaching?”

“At St. Andrew’s, yes, on and off. It’s off, at the moment. I’m in a place called Margaret’s Harbor, making a movie.”

“Margaret’s Harbor,” Gregor said. “I’m impressed. Have you met any presidents lately?”

“This president of yours doesn’t go there,” Stewart said, “which is a damned good thing, considering. I’m making a silly movie, but they’re paying me a lot of money. Don’t you pay any attention to the news at all? It’s been on the news. It’s been all over the news.”

“That you’re in a movie on Margaret’s Harbor? I didn’t realize you’d gotten that important.”

“Be serious. The murder. The murder has been all over the news.”

Donna stopped with pins in her mouth. Even Bennis came in from the kitchen, as if she’d magically been able to hear the word. Gregor put the coffee mug Bennis had handed him on the small table next to his chair, then thought better of it, picked it up, got a coaster from the little stack next to the lamp, and put the mug down on that.

“Well,” Bennis said. “We’ve all been saying you need something to do.”

“Okay,” Gregor said. “I do think I’ve heard something about a murder, one of those girl singers killed her boyfriend, right, she’s—”

“She’s a first-class twit,” Stewart said, “but I’d be willing to bet nearly anything that she didn’t pull this off. Normand, by the way. Arrow Normand. That’s her name.”

“People in Khartoum know who she is,” Bennis said blandly.

“It’s to his credit that he doesn’t,” Stewart said. “She’s a twit. They’re all twits. The whole lot of them I’m working with. Well, you know, not the crew, those people. Those people are very competent. I like American film crews. They’re always very professional. Which is a lot more than you can say for American actresses, if that’s what you want to call this lot, which I don’t, as a matter of fact, but there’s nothing I can do about it. They’re all first-class twits, and if it hadn’t been for the money, I’d have walked out months ago. The money and Kendra Rhode. I found the body.”

It was liked being in a tornado. Gregor felt a little breathless. It didn’t help that Donna had gone back to draping her ribbon, openly listening, but diligently plying pins.

Gregor tried to piece it together. “I know who Kendra Rhode is. You can’t be romantically involved with her, can you? She isn’t the sort of person I’d expect you to be romantically involved with.”