Festival of Deaths(100)
“So,” Gregor said, “that still doesn’t answer my question. Why is Helena Oumoudian in your living room?”
“Well, for one thing, everybody agreed—in my absence, by the way, I was not a witness to this tango—that taking her up one flight of stairs to my apartment made more sense than taking her down the stoop flight and across a few blocks and then up I don’t know how many flights to her own apartment.”
“All right.”
“And I wouldn’t have minded that,” Bennis said, “because I was going to be leaving anyway and if they wanted to use the apartment for the old lady, who cared, except that isn’t all they wanted. They wanted somebody to take care of the old lady.”
“What about Sofie Oumoudian?”
“Sofie Oumoudian is leaving tomorrow on a three-day class trip. Sunday school class. You know. They’re going to Washington to sing Carols on the steps of the capitol. As if that would help.”
“I should think Sofie would just have to stay here instead.”
“It would break her heart. According to Tibor.”
“Then there must be someone else,” Gregor insisted. “Lida. Hannah. I don’t suppose Sheila Kashinian would be any use. Howard would have a fit. How about Donna Moradanyan?”
“Donna Moradanyan has a child to raise,” Bennis said in exasperation. “And she’s busy. I took her into New York last month to show her portfolio and now she’s working on a book cover for some mystery novel Bantam is publishing. And it’s her first job and she’s got a deadline.”
“How’s the cover?”
“It’s a cover painting,” Bennis said, “and it’s wonderful. I wish they’d assign her to me. Sheila Kashinian is never any use.”
“What about Lida?”
“Lida and Hannah are preparing to go on a trip,” Bennis said. “Together, I presume. Anyway, they’re much too busy.”
“I take it they’ve annoyed you.”
“Everybody’s annoyed me,” Bennis exploded. “Tibor won’t help because besides doing all the Christmas stuff he has to for the church—and there is a lot of it, really, this year, there’s too much—anyway, on top of all that he’s helping David Goldman do a library reading for the first day of Hanukkah for the Bryn Mawr library and he spends all his time walking around his apartment rehearsing his little speech. So he won’t help. And the only good news in all this is that I haven’t already paid for the Concorde tickets.”
“You absolutely have to stay?”
“Of course I have to stay. Somebody has to stay. The old woman has to be helped out of her chair and back into it again.”
“Maybe you could hire a service. A practical nurse. That sort of thing.”
“A service would take me at least two days to set up. I might as well wait for Sofie Oumoudian. But I don’t want to wait, Gregor. I want to get out of here.”
“Don’t look at me,” Gregor said. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation.”
Bennis gave him the kind of look that suggested he’d invented this murder investigation just to keep her from setting off for Paris and went stomping up the stairs to the second-floor landing. She was wearing her classic hanging-around-the-apartment clothes and draped in her classic hanging-around-the-apartment disarray. Her great cloud of black hair had been inadequately pinned up with bobby pins and was now half falling down. The knee-sock clad feet emerging from the legs of her jeans were wearing no shoes. She must have been freezing out there.
They got to the second-floor landing and stopped. Through the open door to Bennis’s apartment, Gregor could see past the foyer and into the living room. Helena Oumoudian was sitting in Bennis’s favorite black leather club chair, a tiny queen on an oversize throne, an Empress of the Universe whose diminutive size only underscored the force of her personality. She was dressed in the head-to-toe black lace Gregor remembered from their first meeting in the Oumoudians’ apartment. She was holding her black cane in front of her like Queen Victoria about to chastise Disraeli. Her spine was straight. Her head was held high. Gregor was sure that if he went closer, he would find her eyes as clear and sharp and bright as an evil imp’s.
“There she is,” Bennis said, looking around Gregor to see inside. “It’s intolerable, Gregor, it really is.”
“Miss Hannaford?” the sharp old lady’s voice called from inside. “Is that you now? There’s something wrong with the television set.”
“She can make the cable go out just by looking at it,” Bennis hissed into Gregor’s ear. “What am I supposed to do about this?”