Festival of Deaths(62)

“But Rebekkah,” Lotte put in, “it really is impossible. Two deaths like this, with everything so close.”

“All right then. Tell me. What was the motive? Is it somebody who just doesn’t like Spanish people? Then you’ve got another nut. What else could it be?”

“I don’t know,” Lotte said.

“I don’t know either,” David admitted.

Rebekkah got up from the table. “I’d be willing to go along with this if either one of you could think of just one thing—just one thing—that doesn’t make these two deaths look like coincidental muggings. Just one thing. A fingerprint. A tire track. Something.”

David winced. “Rebekkah wants the strange case of the dog that didn’t bark in the nighttime.”

Lotte looked down at her hands. A fingerprint. A tire track. Sherlock Holmes marching around in circles with a magnifying glass. There was something.

“Wait,” Lotte said.

The coffeepot was empty. Rebekkah was rinsing it out, so that it didn’t stain. Sterling silver was something else she took care of herself.

“Wait,” Lotte said again. “I remember.”

“Remember what?” David asked her.

They were both looking at her the way her television audience looked at her, expectant. Lotte felt the way she felt when she had to announce that the subject of today’s program is “Is Broccoli an Aphrodisiac?” thereby disappointing everyone. But there was nothing to do now but get it over with.

“I remember,” Lotte told them, “the dreidel.”





2


SHELLY FELDSTEIN WAS NOT a superstitious woman, any more than she was a religious one. She believed in science and mathematics, physics and chemistry, PBS and the New York Times. Her unconscious but unshakable take on serial murderers was that she would know one if she ever saw one and have sense enough to run like hell. Her very conscious take on the present situation was that a couple of admittedly bizarre coincidences were being used in the relentless effort at self-aggrandizement being perpetrated on the citizens of the United States by one Gregor Demarkian. Shelley had only met Gregor Demarkian for about a minute earlier that day, when DeAnna Kroll had introduced them and Shelley had shaken the great man’s hand. He hadn’t looked like such a great man to her and she hadn’t liked him on any level. She hadn’t expected to. Shelley Feldstein hadn’t met Gregor Demarkian before this morning, but she’d heard about him. What she’d heard she didn’t like. Shelley was a woman who believed in institutions. Significant scientific discoveries were made in the well-funded laboratories of government research facilities or university departments. Great literature was written with grants from the NEA. Crimes were solved by the police. Why the police chose to put up with G. Demarkian, Shelley would never understand. Shelley made a point of never having anything to do with anybody who was even so much as fifteen pounds overweight, if she could help it. Fat was an infallible indicator. Anybody who let himself get fat had to have something wrong with his character.

Shelley put up with Sarah Meyer because she was stuck with Sarah Meyer, just the way everybody else was. Shelley had discussed Sarah’s weight with Lotte and been told her to mind her own business. Lotte was very European that way. Europeans didn’t understand how important it was to bring the natural appetites under control.

Sarah didn’t seem to care. Shelley had asked her down to the bar to take some notes. As soon as she’d gotten there, Sarah had ordered a turkey sandwich with mayonnaise and a glass of diet Coke. Shelley supposed the diet Coke was a step in the right direction, but the sandwich was something else. She hated to see fat people eat.

“You should have had a salad,” she said to Sarah, unable to help herself any longer.

“I don’t like salads,” Sarah told her. “And besides, I can’t eat them with one hand and take notes with the other.”

“I’m sure we could break for fifteen minutes to let you eat a healthy dinner.”

“I don’t want to eat a healthy dinner. I don’t like healthy dinners. And there’s nothing unhealthy about a turkey sandwich.”

“Mayonnaise is nothing but fat.”

“You’re not my mother, Shelley. You’re not even my boss. If we’re going to finish this memo, we ought to get on with it.”

Shelley knew that if she had been the boss, instead of Lotte, Sarah would never have been hired. DeAnna Kroll might never have been hired, either. Shelley would have run a much tighter ship.

Shelley picked up the notes she had brought down from her room and turned a little to the side, so that she wouldn’t see Sarah when she accidentally looked up.