“Like what?” Bennis asked. “Maybe somebody just didn’t want the publicity.”
“There’s that,” Gregor agreed. “But then there are other things. The most obvious one is murder. Maybe somebody drugged the man and then hanged him, then moved the body to be hanged again on the billboard. But even if Chester Morton really did commit suicide, the place he chose to commit it might have been … inconvenient for somebody. Who was doing something else unconnected with Chester Morton that he doesn’t want looked into?”
“I think you’re tying yourself in knots for no good reason,” Bennis said. “If Chester Morton committed suicide, wouldn’t he be connected to any place he did it in? People who commit suicide don’t just pick random places to do it in, do they? They pick some place with significance to them. I mean, I suppose there must be people with mental illnesses, you know, that kind of thing, who pick places you’d never be able to figure out why. But people who aren’t like that pick places they think have meaning.”
“True,” Gregor said.
“And most of them leave notes,” Bennis said.
“Half true,” Gregor said.
“You really can be enormously annoying sometimes,” Bennis said. “I’m just saying that wherever Chester Morton died, it had to be someplace that had something to do with him. Either he was murdered, so you have to ask where he’d go and who he’d go to and why, and all those things would matter to him. Or he committed suicide, and then—”
“Yes, I got that part. I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to go about doing this when the police are going to be more hindrance than help. Are you sorting through tiles or something today?”
“I’m going to look at sinks. It will all be over by the time you get back. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not a hundred percent convinced that I’m not going to be back today,” Gregor told her. “Don’t forget. One way situations like this work out is that the local police change their minds and send me home. It’s not the kind of thing I’d fight at the moment.”
“Go do something sensible and let me go do something sensible, too,” Bennis said. “Tommy Donahue says, ‘Hi’. Try not to eat yourself to death when I’m not there to watch you.”
Gregor thought about the fried clams, but didn’t report them. There was time to get into that particular argument—never.
A few minutes later, he was in his clothes and down the hall, knocking on Tony Bolero’s door. Tony came out looking as if he’d never gone to sleep late. His hair was still wet from a shower.
“Are you in any shape to go running around?” Gregor asked. “Could we maybe get some breakfast to take out and take a little ride? There’s something I want to see before I make up my mind what to do next.”
“Sure,” Tony said.
Gregor’s cell phone went off. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID. It was a local number, which meant it was either Howard Androcoelho on yet another line—how many lines could any one person have access to?—or somebody connected to the case somehow trying to get in touch with him. Gregor thought of Charlene Morton and shuddered. He rejected the call and put the phone back in his pocket.
“I’ll talk to people when I’ve seen what I want to see,” he said. “I want to go out to that place and get a look at that billboard. It’s supposed to be at the entrance to Mattatuck–Harvey Community College. Do you think you can find where that is?”
“Sure,” Tony said again. “Give me five minutes.”
“I’ll go down and order some food. Or coffee, or something.”
Tony made a noncommittal noise and retreated into his room to get ready.
Gregor went down the hall to the elevators, and then to the lobby. The lobby was deserted except for one young woman sitting on a couch in the middle of everything, holding a large tote-bag-sized purse on her lap and looking around as if she were lost. Gregor noted the off-the-rack business suit and the shoes that matched, asked for messages at the desk, got the answer that there weren’t any, and headed for the dining room.
He was almost at the hostess’s station when the young woman with the purse suddenly scooted up beside him, breathless, and said:
“Gregor Demarkian? I’m Darvelle Haymes. I have to talk to you.”
3
The first thing Gregor thought was that this was not what he had expected of somebody named Darvelle Haymes, and then he felt a little exasperated with himself. Forget the social sin of indulging in stereotypes. It was unprofessional of somebody who called himself a detective to jump to conclusions the way he had. The woman couldn’t help her name. The picture he’d had in his mind might have been more appropriate to her mother than it would ever be to her.