Cheating at Solitaire(95)

A second later, Gregor realized that the young man who looked like a marine was a cop, and a second after that he was sure that the cop had once actually been a marine. He looked very young, barely out of high school, in fact, but Gregor guessed he was probably closer to thirty. He had the kind of posture that made you wonder if he had swallowed a flagpole.

The cop came forward and held out his hand. “Mr. Demarkian?” he said. “I’m Don Hecklewhite. I’m with the state police. I’m sorry to be out of uniform. It’s my day off.”

“Marines?” Gregor said.

“Yes, sir. Six years.”

Clara Walsh cleared her throat. “It’s no time to be talking about the military,” she said. “If you were both marines, you can go someplace and get some beers and talk about it later. I have a press conference due to start in ten minutes, and we can hold them up for a while, but they’re going to get restless. Could we get this done, whatever this is?”

“I was in the army,” Gregor said. Then he let himself look around the Ivory Room. There was some real ivory in it, which surprised him. It was illegal to trade in ivory, and Oscartown was the kind of place where the guests would care. The ivory was in the form of carved pieces, many of them very elaborate, all of them looking a little yellow with age. Maybe ivory was morally all right if it was old enough. Maybe the guests had pieces at home, brought back from tours of India by grandparents in the days when killing elephants was just as natural as having champagne at debutante parties.

Gregor pushed all these images out of his head and concentrated on Don Hecklewhite. “You’re on your own? You don’t have a partner?”

“No, sir,” Don Hecklewhite said. “We don’t usually ride together. It’s not efficient. And in this part of Massachusetts”—he shrugged—“there’s not much call for us. It’s like Oscar-town. They take on some extra people in the season, but for the winter, Jerry here is it.” Don Hecklewhite hesitated, then looked apologetically at Jerry. “I did talk to the town council about taking on at least one other man while the filming was going on. It’s not as crowded as it is when the summer people are here, but at least in Oscartown itself there’s been a significant uptick in the population. And an uptick in the population usually means trouble of one kind or another.”

“And has there been that?” Gregor asked. “Trouble?”

On the other side of Clara Walsh, Jerry Young snorted. “Sort of. Nothing serious. A real rash of drug-related crap, the drugs they use for date rapes, and now there’s Jack, and I haven’t talked to him yet. And a lot of drinking and driving, which we get here in the winter in any case. Mostly the big problem has been the photographers. They camp.”

“They camp?” Gregor asked.

“They don’t put up at hotels,” Clara Walsh put in. “Not that there’d be enough room for all of them anyway. But it’s the middle of the winter. You’d think they’d want somewhere warm to go. Instead, most of them sleep in their cars, right outside the houses where the girls live. Young women. whatever. They camp.”

“Ah,” Gregor said. “And these photographers, they’re around all the time?”

“They came in when the film people did,” Jerry Young said, “and they’ve been in ever since. Hordes of them. They camp out in front of the inn here, and at the houses where Marcey Mandret and Arrow Normand live, and outside where the filming is going on, and in the bars and places like that, anywhere they think they’ll be able to get a photograph. W e’re falling over them all the time. They’re falling all over each other. It’s insane. And I think it’s catching. Jack was getting like that for a while there.”

“Jack, the man who just got drugged and hacked at?” Gregor asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jerry Young said. “Jack’s a photographer too, he’s just local. He was chasing after them for a while there. He said he got good money for the pictures when Linda didn’t want them. I used to have such a crush on Arrow Normand when I was in high school. Now she’s in our jail, and nobody can figure out why. I thought these people had lawyers that got them out no matter what.”

“Jack Bullard got attacked?” Don Hecklewhite said. “Why didn’t anybody tell me that?”

“He got drugged and beat up,” Jerry Young said. “I’ll fill you in after all this. Somebody went at his hands and cut them up. No, not true. Just one hand. The right hand.”

“Linda must be close to losing it,” Don Hecklewhite said.