Festival of Deaths(27)

“It’s all over the place that you’ve been asked to be on The Lotte Goldman Show,” Don had said on the phone, “and it’s like Chickie said. Put two and two together, and it sure as hell is hot, the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot is going to be all over this case as soon as The Lotte Goldman Show hits Philadelphia.”

“If you call me the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot one more time,” Gregor said, “I’ll hang up this phone.”

“Chickie said I should call you up and ask you to lunch and talk it over with you,” Don said. “Just to see what you’re up to.”

“I’m not up to anything. This is the first I’ve heard of any murder.”

“It won’t be the last. Chickie will see to that. I’ll meet you at Café Blasé at noon on the first.”

Chickie was the name of the police lieutenant in New York.

Café Blasé was one of those vaguely French restaurants that decorated all its food with flower petals, so that a perfectly respectable piece of fried chicken breast arrived at the table looking as if it had been drowned with Ophelia. Gregor had been there once or twice and he didn’t like it. With another agent, he would have suggested another restaurant. With Don Elkham, he decided to let it slide.

He nearly slid himself, getting out of the cab in front of Café Blasé. December was never a good weather month in Philadelphia, but this December had been especially cold and wet. There were patches of slick brown mud at every curb. Gregor steadied himself against a mailbox and headed into the restaurant, going through the door just behind two young women in their twenties in thigh-high skirts and geometric hair. Sometimes these days, he felt as if he were in a time warp.

Don Elkham was sitting at a table in the bay window closest to the hostess’s stand. Gregor gestured to the hostess and she let him through with a nod. The two young women looked bored.

Gregor went over to the table where Don was sitting and sat down himself. Don did not rise. Don had never had his manners too firmly glued on.

“Sorry I’m late,” Gregor said. “I got here as soon as I could.”

“Held up by the lovely Miss Hannaford,” Don said. “Gregor Demarkian finds his debutante.”

“Miss Hannaford likes to be called Ms.”

“Well, that’s a surprise. I can’t imagine you falling for a women’s libber.”

Exactly what Don Elkham was supposed to know about who Gregor Demarkian was or was not likely to “fall for” was a mystery to Gregor Demarkian, since the only woman Don had ever seen him with was his Elizabeth, and she had hardly been a case in point against Gregor’s falling for “women’s libbers.” The waitress came up and Gregor ordered himself a glass of Burgundy. He didn’t much like wine, but he had to do something.

Don ordered himself a martini, which had to mean this was his day off. If it wasn’t, he was asking for trouble.

“So,” Don said. “What do you think? About the murder on The Lotte Goldman Show?”

“I don’t think anything about it,” Gregor said. “I told you on the phone. All I’ve heard about it, I’ve heard from you.”

“Your friend Father Kasparian hasn’t told you anything about it?”

“Father Tibor. And no, he hasn’t.”

“How about Father—uh—Tibor’s friend. Rabbi Goldman?”

“I’ve met Rabbi Goldman exactly once. It was at a food fair in central Philadelphia. I complimented him on his wife’s latkes. In spite of what you might think, I have not been spending every waking moment of every day of the last month consorting with people who are related to people who are involved in your friend’s murder case. I am a little surprised that I hadn’t heard about it at all. With television people involved, there’s usually a bit more publicity.”

Don Elkham was chewing on a breadstick. “The publicity was squashed,” he said through a mouthful of crumbs. “The official line is that it was an ordinary mugging.”

“I thought you said the circumstances were strange.”

“They were. The woman—her name was Maria Gonzalez—the woman’s apartment was ransacked, gone over real good, and by somebody in a hurry. Place was trashed. Body wasn’t there, though.”

“Where was it?”

“In a storeroom at the studio where they tape The Lotte Goldman Show in New York.”

“Dead, I take it.”

“Bashed on the side of the head hard enough to cave the skull in. But there’s more. She wasn’t there all the time.”

“She wasn’t in the storeroom,” Gregor said.