Feast of Murder(19)

Then he grabbed his jacket and headed for his front door.





2


The picture of the Pilgrimage Green—sealed into a brown envelope with the logo of Baird Financial in the upper left-hand corner—was sitting on the hall table with the rest of the mail when Gregor came downstairs, meaning that someone (probably old George) had picked it up off the floor and sorted it out. Gregor got the envelope open just as old George got the door to his first-floor apartment open and began to peer out. Old George was eighty-something and had to have a first-floor apartment because he hated elevators and couldn’t take stairs. At least, according to old George’s grandson Martin’s wife, old George couldn’t take stairs. Old George’s grandson Martin’s wife was a bit of a terror. Old George’s grandson Martin was a bit of a nut. He bought his grandfather all the gadgets his wife wouldn’t let him have himself, so that old George’s apartment was filled with things like sterling-silver liquor decanters in the shape of National Football League helmets and egg timers that sprouted crowing roosters instead of ringing bells when their cycles were done.

Eighty-something or not, there was nothing wrong with old George’s eyes. He spotted the photograph in Gregor’s hand and bobbed his head, excited. Old George was always excited about something. That was what made his grandson Martin’s wife so crazy.

“Is that the boat, Krekor?” old George asked. “It doesn’t look like much of a boat, to spend a week on with so many people.”

“It’s supposed to be a replica of the Mayflower,” Gregor said. He turned the photograph over and read, “Pier 36. Berth 102. Saturday, November seventeenth. Nine o’clock.”

“That sounds right,” old George said.

“It’s going to be ten days, not a week,” Gregor told him. Then Gregor pawed through the rest of the mail, searching until he found an identical envelope with Bennis’s name on it, feeling satisfied when he found it was there. Gregor didn’t pride himself on knowing much about people. He was a facts and logic man, not a psychologist. Still, everything he had ever heard about Jon Baird—and every impression he had gotten the one time they’d met—said that here was a man who did everything through his office. A wife would have known that Gregor and Bennis were coming together and sent only one reminder. A secretary would send reminders to everyone on her list. Unless, of course, she was a very confidential secretary—and Jon Baird hadn’t struck him as the kind of man to have one of those. Gregor pushed Bennis’s envelope back into the stack.

“I remember reading about it five or six years ago, when it was built,” Gregor said. “Baird went to an extraordinary amount of trouble. Finding people who could duplicate the methods of construction. Having fabrics made that no one had produced for a hundred and fifty years. It was quite a project.”

“All so that this man could sail the boat from Virginia to Massachusetts to have his Thanksgiving?”

“I don’t think he’s ever used it for Thanksgiving before,” Gregor said. “Mostly it’s used for schoolchildren. They come on field trips and visit it. I think Baird even offers an overnight sail for parents and children. Or Baird Financial does. Jon Baird is the kind of man who makes it difficult to work out where the person ends and the company begins.”

“How much of a replica is it?” old George asked. “Does it have plumbing? Does it have gas to cook with?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does Bennis know?”

“I don’t think so.”

Old George peered over Gregor’s shoulder at the picture and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s too much you don’t know, Krekor, and none of it sounds promising. I think you should stay home and have your dinner with Lida the way everybody expected you to.”

“I had last Thanksgiving dinner with Lida. I had Christmas dinner with Lida. I had Easter dinner with Lida.”

“You would be welcome to have every dinner with Lida.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

Gregor stuffed the photograph into the breast pocket of his sweater. “We’re late, that’s the point,” he said. “We promised Tibor we’d meet him at the church at ten o’clock and it’s already ten past. Get your jacket and get going.”

Old George gave him a long, steady, and slightly reproving look—but it didn’t have any effect, and Gregor knew old George hadn’t expected it to. He watched the older man return to his apartment for his latest jacket—something new Martin had bought him, made of leather and covered with zippers and chains—and was impressed again at how quickly the old man moved. Old George’s gait was vigorous and shaky at the same time, like the progress of a car whose engine is capable of anything but whose chassis is held together with spit and chewing gum.