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Conspiracy Theory(123)

By:Jane Haddam


“Is Grace coming down?” Tibor asked.

They both looked toward the stairwell, as if it was normal to find apparitions on it. A second later, far above them, a door slammed open and then slammed shut again, and they could hear Grace humming something that sounded like a polka.

“Does she play polkas, do you think?” Tibor asked.

“I don’t think so,” George said.

Grace clattered down the stairs. She came so fast, Tibor found himself anxious that she would fall. She didn’t. The closer she came, the less the song she was humming sounded like a polka, but Tibor wasn’t sure what else it sounded like. It was quick. It was lively. It was not rock and roll.

“Father,” Grace said, as she reached the ground floor. “This is wonderful. Are you coming for breakfast? I bet you haven’t been eating right at all since you got back. They bring all kinds of food, but it isn’t breakfast food, if you know what I mean.”

“I just wanted to get out of the apartment and move around,” Tibor said.

“Well, come to the Ararat with us,” Grace said. “Gregor and Bennis probably won’t make it for another half hour. Gregor was gone half the night. I know. I heard him come in. I saw the news at eleven too. There’s been an FBI agent murdered, actually murdered a long time ago or something, and they just found his body. Decomposed.”

“Ugh,” old George said.

“In a vacant lot,” Grace said. “But I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right to me. Does it seem right to you? You’d think people would have found it in a vacant lot a long time before this. The news said he was probably out there for more than a week. Kids play in vacant lots. They’d just love to discover a body.”

“I wouldn’t have loved to discover a body when I was a child,” old George said. “But maybe I’m being old-fashioned again. These days, children go to the movies and watch aliens blow up the White House.”

“And dinosaurs eating San Diego,” Tibor said.

They went out the front door onto the street. It was just starting to get light. Tibor truly hated the late fall and early winter, when it was dark until late in the morning and dark again early in the evening, so that the light seemed to be an intruder in something sinister. Now there was a small smear of pink just above the tops of the houses and the air seemed illuminated—but not illuminated enough—from within.

Lida Arkmanian was just coming out of her own house, with Hannah Krekorian in tow. When Tibor saw them, he waved tentatively, not sure how they would respond to seeing him out. He didn’t want to be hustled back into Bennis’s apartment and told to rest.

Lida and Hannah came over, the tall and thin and the short and squat, and fussed at him.

“You’re getting out,” Lida said. “That’s a good thing. You can’t spend the rest of your life in Bennis Hannaford’s apartment.”

“Especially not the way she keeps it clean,” Hannah said.

“She has a cleaning lady come in,” Lida said.

“It’s not a very good cleaning lady, then,” Hannah said. “Besides, you can’t trust cleaning ladies. They do the least work they can get away with for the money. And you really can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to clean somebody else’s house.”

“I have a very good cleaning lady,” Lida said.

Tibor cleared his throat. This could go on forever, and it was cold. “I was thinking,” he said. “We should find some place to have a liturgy on Sunday.”

“We went to St. Paul’s last Sunday,” Lida said. “You don’t have to worry about that. We won’t be missing church.”

“We won’t,” Hannah said. “But some people will. Not that I mean to speak ill of Sheila. She’s got her troubles just like I’ve got mine. But—”

Tibor began to move purposefully down the street. They really could be here forever. “No,” he said, once he was sure he had them moving. “I mean we ought to find a place to have a liturgy here. Not go to another church. Be here.”

“But where?” Lida said, bewildered. “We’re not supposed to go into the church, even though there’s a lot of it left. The police came and gave us all a warning about how dangerous it could be because the structure isn’t stable—”

“I know the structure isn’t stable,” Tibor said, and suddenly he did know, immediately and unmistakably. They had reached that part of the sidewalk directly across from the church. They could all see it for themselves, the gaping hole where the facade used to be, the roof beginning to cave in toward the center far in near the altar. “It is clear we are not able to use the church. But we do not have to use the church. The Christian community has often not had churches. We have celebrated the liturgy in fields, in caves, in living rooms. Where Christians are persecuted, where Christianity is outlawed—”