Fighting Chance(69)

“All right,” Gregor said.

Bennis popped her head through the door. “I’m on my way. Steve is going to meet me there. He doesn’t want to get started until I get there, though, because he says if he’s going to get picked up by the cops, he wants Mrs. Gregor Demarkian along to get him out of jail.”

“I should go back to get the children,” Asha said.

“You don’t have any keys either,” Bennis said. “And your children know me. They even know Steve.”

“We’re going to call Russ Donahue and see if Mikel ever made his appointment,” Gregor said. “Maybe we’ll go over there and have a talk.”

“I’ve got my keys,” Bennis said. “And besides, I know how to get in without them.”

She disappeared from the kitchen door, and Gregor noticed he was not spending his time reassuring Asha Dekanian.

2

Gregor called Russ, at home, but on his cell phone, so that he didn’t wake up the entire house. He did wake up Donna. Gregor could hear her fussing in the background, asking about making coffee and putting out something for everybody to eat. Russ got her calmed down as best he could and agreed to go down the street to Gregor’s to talk. Almost as soon as Russ rang off, Bennis called to tell them she was in the house, with Steve, and nobody had been arrested.

“Can you imagine us getting away with this on Cavanaugh Street?” she asked. “I think Hannah and Sheila stay up all night with binoculars.”

Gregor didn’t believe that it was exactly that bad, but he took her point. This little episode was going to be all over the Ararat in the morning, and it was already nearly morning. There was nothing to be done about it.

He kept hovering back and forth in the hall so that he would hear the doorbell as soon as it rang. He didn’t want Russ pounding the way Asha had.

Russ’s ring was barely any ring at all. The only reason he didn’t walk right through the front door was that he probably thought Gregor had locked it. He had thrown on jeans and a cotton sweater and a raincoat so wrinkled, it must have been balled up in a drawer for months. He looked exhausted.

“I hope we didn’t wake everybody up,” Gregor said. “Asha came here because she didn’t want to pound on your door and get the children out of bed. I didn’t call on the landline for the same reason. I’ve got no idea if any of that did any good at all.”

“You didn’t wake up the children,” Russ said. “Most of the time, I’d have said you couldn’t have no matter what you did. They sleep like rocks. But the past few days, Tommy’s been a little … rocky.”

“Does he know what’s going on?”

“Probably,” Russ said. “Not that we’ve told him anything directly. Donna thinks it’s better if he doesn’t know. He’s been destabilized already. But for God’s sake, Gregor, what are the odds? He’s a very bright kid. He sees the newspaper. He sees the news. He must have a fairly good idea.”

“He hasn’t asked about it?”

“No,” Russ said. “Donna says he hasn’t even asked her. With me—well, I’m a little rocky myself these days. I think he’s gotten the impression that he should stay away from it where I’m concerned.”

“He is a bright kid,” Gregor said.

By then they’d reached the kitchen. Asha Dekanian was sitting at the kitchen table where Gregor had left her, crying into a handkerchief that was no longer much use.

“Oh,” she said when they walked in. “Mr. Donahue!”

Russ went to the coffeemaker and set it up again. Nobody trusted Gregor to make coffee. Nobody trusted Tibor to make coffee either, but nobody was going to mention that now.

“Mikel is missing,” Asha said. “He is not at home. He has not come home since he went out to see you.”

“He also didn’t see me,” Russ said.

Asha Dekanian blanched. “He did not come to your appointment?”

“Not that I know of,” Russ said. “I got back from a hearing and that was before he was due, so I got to working on the case and the next thing I knew, it was after six. And I’d assume that if he came in, somebody would have told me. He was in my appointment book.”

“I suppose your secretaries would have six kinds of fits if we checked with them about it,” Gregor said.

“Probably,” Russ said. “But we could. Everybody’s walking on eggshells anyway. The explosion is likely to be muted. But I don’t think we can wake them up at this hour of the morning to do it.”

“Mikel said you had told him you had good news,” Asha said. “He was very happy about it. And that big sign came down off the front of the house. I was very happy about it.”