Festival of Deaths(53)
“Of course it will,” Bennis said. “I’m not going on television.”
“I mean Mr. Demarkian without Dr. Goldman or the other guest,” Carmencita corrected. “We will light again with all of you together in half an hour.”
“Wait,” Gregor said. “What other guest?”
Carmencita was backing toward the door. “Fifteen minutes,” she repeated. “Only fifteen minutes. There’s nothing to worry about at all.”
“I’m not—” Gregor said.
Carmencita was already out the door. As her heels hit the hard floor of the corridor she began to move faster, so that she looked a little like those backup reels the silent movies had used to buy cheap laughs in the days before all that audiences wanted to see was one more bucket of blood in Rambo LXVII.
“Fifteen minutes,” she said again.
Then she turned on her heel and ran down the rest of the corridor to the studio door.
3
THE FOOD CAME JUST as Carmencita Boaz said it would, in less than five minutes, on a big silver cart, with Tibor’s tea in an elegant pewter pot nestled in a tiny electric blanket. The problem was that it was brought in by the sourest young woman Gregor had ever met, who introduced herself as Sarah Meyer and made it clear that bringing tea and oranges was far more menial work than anything she should have been doing. Her body language was so explicit it practically screamed. When it wasn’t shouting about how shamefully she was underemployed, it was shrieking her dislike of Bennis Hannaford. Even Tibor noticed that, which meant it must have been blatant indeed. Gregor noticed that Bennis didn’t seem to mind. It occurred to him that Bennis must have elicited a fair number of such responses in her time.
Bennis poured Tibor a cup of tea and handed it to him. It was black and evil looking and made Tibor smile. Then she poured Gregor a cup of coffee and handed it to him. What she got for herself was another cigarette, long and slim and taken from the sterling-silver Tiffany cigarette case her brother Chris had given her for her birthday a few years back. Bennis never took cigarettes from that case. She had a crumpled paper pack of Benson & Hedges Menthols in the pocket of her skirt. Gregor could only conclude that she had taken a dislike to Sarah Meyer equal to the one Sarah had taken to her. Bennis was pulling out all the stops.
If Sarah Meyer had noticed the bit with the cigarette case, she gave no indication. She was looking over the fruit on the cart and fiddling with a grapefruit knife. She fiddled long enough for Tibor to finish his cup of tea and hand the empty china back to Bennis for a refill. She fiddled long enough for Tibor to get his refilled cup and for Bennis to finish smoking. Then she put the grapefruit knife down on a butter dish and said to Gregor, “Look. I know I’m not supposed to bother you. I’m only a secretary. I’m not supposed to bother anybody. But I want to.”
“Bother me?” Gregor asked, confused.
“Ask you some questions. Necessary questions. Like about what you’re doing here.”
“I’m appearing on a television show about serial killers.”
Sarah Meyer looked disgusted. Don’t hand me this sort of crap, her look said. People have been handing me this sort of crap for all my life. Gregor saw Bennis get out another cigarette—from her regular pack this time—and begin to look thoughtful.
Sarah Meyer had gone back to fiddling. She had a white paper doily this time. “Everybody around here is saying you’ve been hired to look into the murder of Maria Gonzalez. Is that true?”
Gregor shook his head. “You can’t hire me to look into anything. Nobody can. I don’t hire.”
“He doesn’t investigate crimes for money,” Bennis explained.
“You investigate crimes,” Sarah Meyer insisted. “I’ve seen the magazine articles. You investigate crimes a lot.”
Gregor nodded. “I do some consulting, that’s true. But I don’t charge for it. I’m not a professional.”
“Are you doing some consulting here, about Maria?”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gregor’s coffee was gone. He got up and poured himself another cup. “Nobody,” he said carefully, “in any way connected to the death of Maria Gonzalez or to the investigation into the death of Maria Gonzalez, has asked me to consult with the investigation.”
“But you know about it,” Sarah insisted.
“I know about it.”
“Did you read about it in the papers?”
“No,” Gregor said. “I was informed about it first by an acquaintance, and I have heard a fair amount about it from Father Tibor here and from Rabbi David Goldman, who is—”