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Fountain of Death(75)

By:Jane Haddam


I’d do better if the man didn’t seem so damned amused, Grace told herself—but it wasn’t Gregor Demarkian who seemed amused. It was his friend. Gregor Demarkian looked polite.

Greta rubbed the palms of her hands on the sides of her leotard again. “Well,” she said. “The thing is. It’s about that boy. The one who used to work here and he died?”

“Yes?” Gregor Demarkian said.

This was not the way Greta had imagined this working out. She bit her lip and twisted her right leg behind her left. She wished she could stop fidgeting. It was better than just as well that Bennis Hannaford wasn’t here. Bennis Hannaford would think she was some kind of silly little hick.

“Well,” Greta said again. “The thing is, I knew him. Sort of. I mean, it probably isn’t anything, of course, you know, but I thought I ought to tell you because he is dead and that woman is dead too and I thought—I thought—”

“You thought you’d better tell me, just in case,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“I didn’t really know him know him,” Greta blurted out. “He was too young. And the time I’m talking about, it was in February of 1988. He must have been in high school.”

“He must have been in high school when what?” This was Gregor Demarkian’s friend, whom Greta had already decided she didn’t like. Greta tried to pretend he wasn’t there.

“I got the picture from The New Haven Register,” she said. “I went to the library and had it copied off the microfilm. We were in a singing group together, you see. The New Haven County All-Country Choir. We were all in church groups.”

“What church group was Tim Bradbury in?” Gregor Demarkian asked.

“Baptist,” Greta said. “I wouldn’t have remembered on my own, but it was in the caption. To the picture I looked up. I made a copy of the caption, too. Anyway, I remembered because his mother used to come to all our performances, and it was really sad. She was this huge woman who wore tent dresses all the time and cut her own hair, you know the kind of woman I mean. And Tim was so embarrassed.”

“Nineteen eighty-eight, Gregor Demarkian said. “That’s interesting.”

“I don’t think he was just being snobbish,” Greta said. “I mean, it wasn’t just the way she looked. She was drunk nearly all the time. And then she’d come to these things and fall asleep in her chair, and everybody could hear her snore.”

“Nineteen eighty-eight, Gregor Demarkian said again. “You said you had a copy of this picture: Where is it?”

“In my purse. In my locker.”

“Where’s your locker?”

Greta pointed down the corridor at the side. “It’s not very far. I could go get it for you right now if you wanted me to.”

“Do you have time?”

“Oh, yes,” Greta said.

Greta didn’t know if she had time. The breaks were ten minutes long. She had no idea when the class had been dismissed for this one. She had no idea how long they had all been sitting around on the balcony. She ran down the corridor to the locker room. It was a very elegant locker room, not like the one off the gym in high school. The lockers had combination locks, but they were built in.

Greta went thirty-four right, twenty two left, nineteen right and opened the locker door. Her purse was right where she had left it. She felt in the outside pocket and came up with both the copy of the choir photograph and the newspaper picture of Tim Bradbury she had used to make sure it was the same person. She put the more recent picture of Tim back and locked up again. Then she ran back out to the foyer.

“Here you are,” she said, handing the photograph over. “I tried to tell that other detective about it, the one from the New Haven police department—”

“Tony Bandero?” Gregor Demarkian’s friend asked.

“That’s right,” Greta said. “Detective Bandero. I did try to tell him, but he wasn’t very interested. He said it was all so long ago it couldn’t have anything to do with what happened now. And that’s probably true. But I thought about it, you know, and it didn’t feel right. On television things like this matter all the time. So I thought I’d give it to you and let you decide what to do with it. You’re the one who’s supposed to be the expert.”

Gregor Demarkian looked long and hard at the choir photograph. Then he folded it carefully into quarters and put it into the pocket of his coat.

“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think this is necessarily unimportant.”

“You don’t?” Greta was thrilled. “Oh. Well. I’m glad I stopped you. I’d tell you more, you know, but that’s all I really remember. And I don’t suppose Tim’s mother has anything to do with it.”