Deadly Beloved(46)

“Anyway,” Linda went on, “we’re going to block off the whole street and have tables set up on the sidewalks and Lida and Hannah and Sheila and Helen are all cooking and so is Sophie Oumoudian’s great-aunt, you know the one, and somebody is bringing liquor from Armenia. My mother says we shouldn’t drink any of it because it’s probably going to be moonshine.”

“It’s probably going to be fatal,” Tibor said.

“I think it’s going to be the best,” Linda said. “Anyway, I’ll get you your yaprak sarma, Gregor, and your salad and whatever. I mean, we’re not all out of it at the moment. Bennis was in here earlier. She had pictures of her dress.”

“Dress?” Gregor asked.

“Her maiden of honor dress,” Tibor said helpfully. “Under the circumstances, I think for Bennis to be a maiden of honor is possibly incorrect.”

“I don’t think they take it that literally anymore,” Gregor said. “At least, not in the United States.”

“Of course they don’t,” Linda Melajian said. “Really, Gregor, it’s going to be wonderful. Donna’s picked out the most wonderful bridesmaids’ dresses and there’s going to be a daisy chain flown in from California—two, I think, actually, one for each side of the aisle—and I don’t know. I can hardly wait, can you?”

Gregor was about to say that he most certainly could wait, he could wait forever. He wanted to see Donna married, but the wedding was doing something worse than getting to him. Then there was the sound of thunder all around them, the rumble of something ominous and immediate, and Gregor looked up. It would have been all right, except that the thunder didn’t sound as if it was coming from the outside. It sounded as if it had exploded in the middle of the Ararat’s dining room, and now it was sending aftershocks around to all of the glass-and-candlelit tables. Ass, Gregor told himself. Thunder doesn’t have aftershocks.

The Ararat was always so dark at night, it was difficult to get a grip on anything, even when it was happening right next to you. It took Gregor a good half-minute to adjust his eyesight to the dimness in the middle of the room, and to begin to pick out familiar figures at the tables there. Lida Arkmanian was there, having dinner with Hannah Krekorian and the older Mary Ohanian. Sheila and Howard Kashinian were there, having dinner together and alone and looking sour-faced and grim in the conduct of it. Even Bennis Hannaford was there, having dinner with old George Tekemanian’s grandson Martin and his prissy daughter-in-law Angela, who were probably telling her off for letting old George have food that wasn’t on his diet. Martin and Angela Tekemanian regularly took Bennis Hannaford out to lecture her, and Bennis regularly let them. In her opinion, the reason they really wanted to take her out was that she had made her debut at a good ball on the Main Line and at the Philadelphia Assemblies, and that was the kind of thing Angela was impressed by.

At the round table in the very center of the restaurant, however, was the star of their show: Donna Moradanyan. For once she had neither her small son Tommy nor her formidable mother with her. She was alone with her beloved, Russ Donahue, once one of John Jackman’s best and youngest homicide detectives. Russ was tall and spare and redheaded, a curiosity on Cavanaugh Street, filled with the dark-haired children and grandchildren of Armenian immigrants—but he was sitting down. Donna was standing up, and she was something of an anomaly too. Tall and blond and athletic, Donna was the least Armenian-looking woman Gregor had ever seen, although she was definitely Armenian. All four of her grandparents had come from Yerevan.

Donna was standing next to the table, holding the little glass candleholder in her hand. The candle was still lit, which seemed strange to Gregor. Shouldn’t waving it around in the breeze like that have blown the flame out? Donna was waving herself around in the breeze. She was wearing one of those spaghetti-strapped A-line shift things with a T-shirt under it. Gregor had seen them everywhere in Philadelphia that spring. The shift was bright red and the T-shirt was stark white. There was something about the way Donna was standing that made her seem just on the edge of violence.

“Oh, dear,” Tibor said in a whisper. “I think there is something very wrong here, Krekor.”

Tibor’s whisper carried, although Donna didn’t seem to hear it. The whole of the Ararat had gone deathly still. Even the tourists were quiet, and tourists, in Gregor’s experience, never shut up.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Donna said in a clipped, angry voice. “I’m not even sure I care anymore. But if you think I’m going to let you get away with this—”