Fountain of Death(76)

“What’s your name?” Gregor Demarkian asked.

“Greta Bellamy.”

“Thank you again, Miss Bellamy,” Gregor Demarkian said.

The gong sounded upstairs. The break was over. Greta hesitated for just another moment—she had done something right; she had done something right for the great Mr. Gregor Demarkian—and then raced back up the stairs, back to the balcony where Dessa and Cindi were waiting for her. Of course, that other detective had probably been right. It probably hadn’t been really important. Gregor Demarkian had probably just been polite. It felt good anyway.

In fact, Greta thought, sailing down the hallway to the studio, it felt great. She hadn’t spent a lot of time feeling great in her life.

She was going to have to find out how to turn this into a habit.





2


NICK BANNERMAN HAD HAD a headache all morning. By lunchtime—sitting at the picnic table in the kitchen with a glass of Perrier and a brown paper bag from Goldman’s Deli sitting in front of him; waiting for Frannie Jay—his skull felt like the diamond mine for Snow White’s seven dwarves. Maybe it was the workshop for Santa’s elves. Something was pounding and pounding in there. Even two double-strength Advils hadn’t helped. In half an hour, Nick had to go back upstairs and lead another aerobic dance. What was in the bag from Goldman’s Deli was a corned beef sandwich on rye with mustard, a bag of potato chips, and a garlic pickle. He’d been feeling a lot better when he came into work this morning.

They were inching up on the New Year, and there were starting to be signs. Someone had tied little blue banner ribbons to all the cabinet handles. The little blue banner ribbons were the preprinted kind from Hallmark with “HAPPY NEW YEAR” written across them in tiny letters made of glitter. Someone had put a big cardboard magnet-backed card on the door of the refrigerator, too. The card showed a bleary-eyed drunk collapsed on the floor under a pile of champagne bottles under the words IS IT NEW YEAR’S YET? The card was supposed to be funny. There was going to be a New Year’s Eve party for all the women who had attended this seminar week, although it was going to be held too early in the day for anybody to see the New Year in. Nick didn’t imagine the party would include alcohol. Too fattening.

The weather outside was getting worse. It had been blustery and gray and cold all week. Now the sky was thick with clouds and the air was heavy with snow. Sometime soon, they were going to have an ice storm.

The kitchen door swung open and Frannie Jay came in. Nick took a long pull on his Perrier and watched her move across the room to him in her leotard. He had been aware of that from the beginning: what Frannie looked like in her leotard. Then she had begun to seem strange to him, and he had been put off. Now he knew her better, and she didn’t seem strange anymore—just tense.

Very, very tense.

Right now, Frannie was as tense as he had ever seen her.

Maybe we should stop meeting in this kitchen, Nick thought. Maybe it’s just looking out on the lawn where she saw Tim Bradbury’s body that makes her get this way.

Frannie came over to the table and sat down. Usually she got something to eat first, alfalfa sprouts or raw spinach or yogurt mixed with raisins, but this time she didn’t even glance at the refrigerator. Nick felt himself getting tense, too, in reaction. It was impossible not to. Whatever Frannie had was catching.

Frannie put her palms flat on the table and spread her fingers out. She had very long fingers, but her nails were short and bitten off.

“Listen, I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you. In view of last night.”

What had happened last night was that Nick and Frannie had gone to bed. They had gone to bed here, in Frannie’s room at Fountain of Youth, because Nick was still staying with his friend Tom and there wasn’t any privacy in that apartment. There wasn’t a whole lot of privacy at Fountain of Youth, either, but there was enough. They had had what Nick considered to be a very good night.

Now what? Nick wondered. She’s married. She has herpes. She has AIDS. She can’t go on seeing me because her family would never accept anyone black. His family would never accept anyone white, but he figured he’d worry about that when he had to.

“All right,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Tell me something. In view of last night.”

“In view of the fact that I think you might want it to be more than just last night.”

“I do.”

“I thought so. I hoped so. It’s about something that happened in California.”

Nick’s brain immediately switched gears. This was going to be a victim story, then. He could see it coming. She would tell him the intimate details of the time she was raped or the time she was stalked or the time she was beaten up by two black guys who wanted her wallet, and if he was sensitive enough, he would have passed the test.