Festival of Deaths(61)

Lotte waited until all the children were upstairs, even though she thought it would be useless, and then brought her coffee into the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table. This was one of those oversize houses that had been built in the 1980s, with too much closet space and a kitchen the size of Fort Ord. The kitchen opened onto a family room with a cathedral ceiling and a fieldstone fireplace. Even with the homey touches Rebekkah was so careful to add to every room in her house—the photographs of children and other family in silver frames; the souvenirs of the last trip she and David had taken to Jerusalem—Lotte felt she had nothing to anchor herself to. Lotte needed the walls to be closer to her, like plaster skin.

David and Rebekkah came down together, having said their good nights. When Rebekkah came into the kitchen, she picked up a plate full of cake crumbs that had been left on the counter next to the refrigerator and put it in the sink for the maid to find in the morning. Rebekkah had a maid to clean but not a woman to cook or a nanny for the children. She didn’t trust anybody to be as kosher as she was herself.

“Bram is absolutely livid,” she said, chucking a cake-encrusted fork into the sink after the plate. “I suppose we should stop treating him like such a child.”

“We’ll stop treating him like such a child after his bar mitzvah.” David dropped into a chair across from Lotte at the kitchen table and reached for the coffee pot still waiting at the table’s center. His cup was still waiting for him, too. Rebekkah was smart enough to know that it made no sense to clean David’s coffee cup before David was ready to go to bed. Lotte always wondered how David managed to sleep after drinking all that caffeine. “So,” David said. “I talked to Tibor. He says things are a royal mess.”

“Tibor would never say ‘royal mess,’” Rebekkah chided.

“I suppose ‘royal mess’ is as good a description of it as any,” Lotte said. “But it’s not as big a mess as the other one was, back in New York. At least this time we have help.”

“Do you mean Gregor Demarkian?”

“I mean the police,” Lotte said firmly. “I do not know how to describe to you what the police were like back in New York. This man here seems both honest and intelligent, and that’s a relief. Not that it will help either Max or Maria.”

“Maybe the police in New York were right.” Rebekkah slid into a kitchen chair herself. “Even if they weren’t honest or intelligent. Maybe it was an ordinary mugging—”

“I’ve told you why it could not have been—”

“Yes, Lotte, I know, but hear me out. You did tell me there wasn’t any rape, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Rebekkah. Yes, I did.”

“I know you did. And I’ve been thinking about it, Lotte. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we talked last month. And it just doesn’t make sense any other way.”

“But how does this make sense?” David demanded. “Maria in New York. This boy Max in Philadelphia—”

“But we don’t know that,” Rebekkah insisted. “A blow to the side of the head—”

“The same kind of blow to the same side of the head,” Lotte reminded her.

“All right,” Rebekkah conceded. “But it’s not exactly a fine Italian hand. And if you don’t accept a pair of muggings and a pair of coincidences—”

“More than a pair,” David said.

“—then you’re stuck looking for a motive.” Rebekkah was stubborn. “And that’s where the conspiracy theories you two are hatching lose me. The motive. Who would want to kill Maria Gonzalez? Or Maximillian Dey?”

David poured himself another cup of coffee, poured it carefully, poured it slowly. Lotte watched in fascination as he shoveled four teaspoonsful of sugar into it.

“The motive,” he said carefully, “may not be anything any of us would take as sane. That man who was there today—”

“Herbert Shasta,” Lotte said.

“Herbert Shasta.” David nodded. “He’s only one of a tribe, from what I understand. There are hundreds of people like him out and around.”

“What you’re trying to say is that somebody on Lotte’s show is a psychopath. Sociopath. Whatever you call them these days.” Now Rebekkah was mulish. “I say that’s impossible. The people on that show live in each other’s pockets. If someone was that far off, the rest of them would know.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” David said. “Look at Ted Bundy.”

“So look at Ted Bundy.” Rebekkah threw up her hands. “Ted Bundy is one man, and he’s very unusual. Look at the rest of them. Look at Charles Manson. Look at Jeffrey Dahmer. Look at David Berkowitz, for heaven’s sake. They were all at least a little off and everybody knew it.”