Deadly Beloved(71)

2.


Bennis Hannaford was not alone. Her arm was in a cast that reached from her shoulder to her wrist. It had been broken in two places, both above and below the elbow, and she wasn’t expected to be able to use it normally again for almost six months. When Gregor came in, she had old George Tekemanian sitting in front of her computer, tapping things out on her keyboard. Donna Moradanyan was sitting on the low embroidered ottoman that Bennis had brought back with her from her trip to Morocco. Gregor didn’t suppose that Bennis would be taking any of her infamous trips for the next six months or so either. No waking up on Tuesday to find a note taped to his door saying that Bennis had taken a five A.M. flight to Kathmandu. No getting back from dinner at the Ararat to find a note propped up on the coffeepot in his kitchen saying that Bennis had decided she was going to lose her mind unless she immediately spent a good six days in Marrakech. The cast was stiff and unyielding. It jutted out from her body like a surgically implanted sword.

“So I listened to you and I didn’t call off the wedding,” Donna said, “but I’m going to have to decide what to do about things and it’s just not as easy as you think it is. I mean, he is Tommy’s father.”

Gregor drew up Bennis’s wing chair and peered over old George Tekemanian’s shoulder at the computer screen. There was a computer graphics picture on it of a nasty-looking little troll, jumping up and down, hopping mad.

“What’s all that about?” Gregor asked old George.

“That’s my mock-up for the treasure hunt for Zedalia Triumphant,” Bennis said. “Gregor, listen to this. Peter is back.”

“He’s not back,” Donna said. “He just called me.”

“He’s coming back,” Bennis said.

Donna Moradanyan sighed. Gregor Demarkian had once told someone that she was the least Armenian-looking woman he had ever known, and it was true. Donna was tall and athletic and blond, like some midwestern university’s field hockey princess. The Peter involved was Peter Desarian, the boy who had made Donna pregnant with Tommy all those years and years ago and then decided he was much too young to be a father.

“I’m just saying that you have to give it some consideration,” Donna said. “The fact that he’s Tommy’s father, I mean. He is Tommy’s father. And Russ isn’t anything to Tommy. If you know what I mean.”

“Russ has been more of a father to Tommy than Peter ever was,” Bennis said. “For God’s sake, Donna. What are you trying to do to yourself?”

“I’m trying to do the right thing. That’s all. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

“I think you still feel guilty about sleeping with Peter,” Bennis said, “so you’re trying to punish yourself for it by giving up Russ, and not because you think Peter’s going to marry you, because you know as well as I do that as soon as Russ is out of the picture, Peter will be out of the picture too, like a shot—”

“Wait,” Gregor said. “What’s this? Now Peter wants to marry her?”

“He says he does,” Donna said. “He says that if I have to be married, if it’s so important to me to have a wedding ring, then he’d rather marry me himself than have Tommy brought up by a stranger.”

“Russ isn’t a stranger to Tommy,” Bennis said firmly. “Peter is a stranger to Tommy.”

“This troll is going to have flat feet if this goes on much longer,” old George Tekemanian said. “Bennis, you really must come here and do something.”

Bennis got up off the couch and went to lean over old George’s shoulder. Her encased arm seemed to operate like a ship’s boom. Donna got up off the ottoman and started pacing.

“It’s what’s best for Tommy,” she told Gregor. “No matter what it is I’d rather do, I have to do what’s best for Tommy.”

“Do you really think giving up Russ for Peter would be what was best for Tommy?” Gregor asked. “Even assuming that Peter would keep his word and marry you in the end?”

“Especially if Peter kept his word to marry you in the end,” Bennis said, and then, to old George, “Key in G487-2T and let it run for a couple of minutes.”

“Run where?” old George Tekemanian said.

Bennis escorted her arm carefully back to the couch and sat down again. “There’s food in the refrigerator, Gregor. Lida came over and brought me a whole bowl of those bulgur-encrusted meatballs you like so much. Donna just needs a shrink.”

“I’ll get the meatballs,” Donna said. “I’ll even heat them up in the microwave.”