Flowering Judas(123)

And there was the skeleton of a baby that nobody talked about.

And there were two people dead by the dam.

Penny got out her cell phone, found Gregor Demarkian’s number in her address book, and dialed.





FIVE

1

Gregor Demarkian took the call from Penny London while he was sitting in Howard Androcoelho’s office. After he had heard her out, he asked her to repeat everything so that he could write it down. Then he asked her if she could bring the copies of the essays, or make copies and bring those, or something. He was thinking that it might be possible to send Tony Bolero to wherever she was to get what he needed, but it turned out not to be necessary.

“I’m not far from you at all,” she said. “I’m at this awful shopping center with all these empty stores—”

“Out near the trailer park? I know where that is.”

“Yes, well, I’m there. And I’ve got my car. And because of you, I’ve got my own room at the Howard Johnson and two absolutely furious sons, who are apparently getting on a plane tonight. How did you do that?”

“I waited until you were asleep and then I went in and took your phone. I put it back when I was through with it.”

“I know that,” Penny London said. “I didn’t miss it. How did you know they were my sons?”

“They were California area codes,” Gregor said, “and the only ones on the phone. You told me you had grown sons. You told me they lived in California. It wasn’t that hard.”

“Yes, well. It appears they’re coming out here to take charge of my life.”

“From what I’ve seen, somebody has to.”

“Ahem. I do have a doctorate. I mean, I managed to get through graduate school. I’m not a complete idiot.”

“Any sixty-year-old woman who sleeps in her car when she’s got family she gets along with who want to take care of her is a complete idiot. How long before you get here?”

“Fifteen minutes. You’re a very unusual man, Mr. Demarkian.”

“My wife says the same thing, but she’s usually got a different inflection in her voice.”

Penny London hung up.

Gregor put his phone down on Howard Androcoelho’s desk. “Who do we talk to to get a rundown of the history of Althy Michaelman with—what’s it called here? Child Protective Services?”

Howard Androcoelho was sitting behind his desk, looking deflated and more than a little worried. Now he looked startled. “Here it is Children and Family Services, OCFS. But they won’t talk to us. They can’t. Everything they do is supposed to be confidential.”

“They’ll talk to us if what’s involved is the murder of a child,” Gregor said. “We’ve got the skeleton of an infant with its skull cracked. That’s the murder of a child.”

“But what does that have to do with Althy Michaelman? What does any of this have to do with Chester Morton? I don’t understand what’s going on in here.”

“Well, I’ll clear up the Chester Morton thing in about an hour,” Gregor said. “I just want to put a few things together first. But as for Althy Michaelman—Chester Morton said he was going to buy a baby. I think we’ve got everybody agreed on that, right?”

“Yes, right, absolutely.”

“Good,” Gregor said. “Well, Haydee Michaelman, Althy Michaelman’s daughter, takes a composition class from a woman named Penelope London.”

“I remember Dr. London,” Howard said. “She taught the class Chester Morton was taking back twelve years ago, too. She was teaching farther back than that—”

“Yes, I know,” Gregor said. “And she’s the one who witnessed the fight between Kyle Holborn and Chester Morton the last night anybody will admit to seeing Chester Morton alive and around here. I’m going to get back to that in a bit. But as to Althy Michaelman—Haydee wrote a series of essays and journal entries for Penny London’s class, and in them she wrote about how her mother had her first child at sixteen. She also wrote about being taken into foster care when she was six. It was a terrifying experience for her because her baby brother had been taken away only a little time before, and she had other brothers who had been taken away and never allowed to come home again.”

“Yeah,” Howard said. “Okay. That sounds about right. Althy dropped out of high school our junior year because she was pregnant.”

“It’s all those kids being taken into foster care I’m thinking about,” Gregor said.

“With a woman like Althy? Why? She was a raging alcoholic. She couldn’t stay in work. She did a fair amount of low-level drugs. She’s the kind of person OCFS spends a lot of time involving themselves with.”