Festival of Deaths(102)
John Jackman noticed the difference as soon as he walked in, and approved. He walked from foyer to living room to kitchen and around again, nodding his head.
“Not bad. I take it you’re in a better mood than you were during—ah—during the Hannaford case.”
“Sit down, John. Don’t worry about the Hannaford case.”
“I try not to.”
John Jackman sat down on one end of the couch, and Gregor went into the kitchen to do his usual bit with the coffee. Since discovering instant, he no longer made a brew that could be used to clean sewer pipes and probably did when his guests dumped his stuff down the drain. He set the water on to boil and propped open the swing door from the kitchen to the living room, so he and John could talk while he fussed with spoons and cups. He looked into the refrigerator to see if anything had appeared in it while he was gone and saw he was in luck. A plate of mamoul cookies was sitting right next to the only other thing in there, a bottle of Perrier water. The Perrier water belonged to Bennis. The mamoul cookies had a note stuck in with them that said,
BUY SOMETHING TO EAT, KREKOR, THIS IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU.
Gregor took the plate out and put it next to the cups.
“So,” he said to John through the door. “Did you check out the things I asked you to check out?”
“Yesterday. I told you I checked them out yesterday.”
“I know. I just want to make sure. I’ve made a great many really stupid mistakes in my life, going with my instincts without making sure.”
“Yeah. So have I. What do you want to be sure about?”
“First, about Maria Gonzalez. This would all be a lot easier if you got along with the New York police. …”
“I get along with the New York police,” John Jackman said. “I just don’t get along with Chickie baby.”
“Right. About Maria Gonzalez. They searched her apartment.”
“They did. It was a wreck.”
“I understand that. Did they find anything missing?”
“Nothing but what they already knew was missing. Her purse was missing, the one she’d been carrying at work that day. That was it. Of course, that isn’t the most accurate sort of finding. She could have had a stash of Baccarat crystal nobody knew about. She could have had a stash of dope.”
“But there was never any suggestion that she was involved with dope,” Gregor pointed out.
“There was evidence to the contrary,” John conceded. “The New York police talked to her neighbors. She went to Mass every morning before work. She baby-sat for other women’s kids. All they seemed to have against her was they thought she was a little too flashy in the way she dressed. Welcome to the big city.”
“What about things that weren’t missing that should have been? Did they find money in the apartment? Jewelry?”
“I see what you’re getting at. A thief would have stolen what he’d found, and the apartment was enough of a mess so he’d have found what was there. No, there wasn’t anything like that. Not on the lists I read.”
“That’s too bad. That means there’s no way we can know for sure.”
“Do we ever really know for sure, Gregor?”
Gregor thought he knew for sure often enough, far more often than he could prove it. He got down the pewter tray Howard and Sheila Kashinian had given him for Christmas last year and piled it up with cups of coffee and milk and sugar and mamoul cookies. At the last minute, he noticed the spoons he had left on the table and put them on too. He usually kept the pewter tray on top of the cabinets next to the refrigerator, which made it something of a stretch to get. Now he flexed his back where the reach had strained it a little. Then he picked up the tray and went into the living room.
“I don’t suppose it’s information I really need,” he said, “but I like to have everything I can get.”
“Don’t we all. You going to tell me what this is all about, finally?”
“Of course,” Gregor said. “We’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”
“What?”
“A serial killer,” Gregor said. “A—”
“Yes, I know,” John Jackman said, “but what is this guy? Bisexual? There are two corpses and a near corpse and one of them is—”
“Why do you think this has to be sexual?”
“Isn’t it always? The two I worked before were sexual.”
“There’s usually a sexual element,” Gregor conceded, “but it isn’t always so obvious. And why do you think it’s a man? Women have been serial killers in a number of well-known cases. Genene Jones, for instance, who murdered all those infants because she liked the high that came from responding to a code blue.”