“You said before it wouldn’t have an effect,” Magda said. “You said there would be a mention or two about a tragic mugging and that would be it.”
“That was before Stella died.”
Magda undid the knot on her work-out shoe. It was a Gordian mess. She had no idea how it had gotten that way. Her fingers felt like elastic. She started to tie up again.
“I think we should just go on tour and get it over with,” she said. “The police haven’t told us not to leave town, have they?”
“No, Magda. I don’t think they do that in real life.”
“Then we should go, and get on with it, and get it over with, and come back. Then I think I’m going to take a nice long vacation, a month or six weeks. It’ll all blow over, you’ll see. It’ll just disappear into thin air.”
“What if they don’t catch anyone? What if that Detective Bandero decides to make a public issue out of it?”
“He’s already making a public issue out of it. He’ll stop when he realizes it isn’t going anywhere. He won’t want to be embarrassed. And besides—”
“What?”
The left shoe was tied. Magda went to work on the right, more slowly this time. Was she imagining it? She thought she was getting shooting pains in her hands.
“Well,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it. And you know, it seems to me that people who get murdered—not people who get mugged, but people who get murdered on purpose—have usually done something to cause it.”
“Are you trying to say Stella was asking for it?”
The right shoe was laced. No mistakes. She did have a shooting pain in her hands. She sat up.
“I’m saying that we really didn’t know anything much about Tim Bradbury,” she said firmly, “not anything important. He could have been up to anything. That’s probably why Tony Bandero called this Gregor Demarkian in. I’ve been reading up on Mr. Gregor Demarkian over the last few days.”
Simon was giving her a very odd look. “That’s funny,” he said.
“What is?”
“This attitude of yours. Ever since Tim died, really. And I always thought you liked Tim.”
“I liked him as well as any of the other people we employ here. Cici Mahoney. Juliet Nash.”
“What about Traci Cardinale, Magda? Do you think she did something to cause it, too? What about Stella?”
“I don’t know about Stella. I don’t know about Traci, either, I haven’t been paying much attention. I’ve had work to do, Simon.”
“Yes, I know.”
Magda got up and flexed her knees. They hurt, but the pain was very far away. “Are you going to let Mr. Demarkian use the house?”
“Of course. He’s asked us to be in attendance. I think we both should be. If only so we don’t show up on the news later as a couple of uncooperative shits.”
“All right.”
“You don’t seem to be very interested in having this solved, Magda. Two of the people who worked for us are dead. A third very nearly died. I’d think you’d be very anxious to make sure that whoever is doing this is safely put out of the way. If only to make sure that whoever it is doesn’t decide to do you in next.”
Magda flexed her arms, and then her fingers, and then her toes.
“I’m not going to be next,” she said with perfect conviction, “and neither are you.”
“Famous last words,” Simon said.
“Oh, no,” Magda told him. “Inside knowledge.”
2
USUALLY, WHEN THE POLICE came, after her father had had one of his outbursts, Dessa Carter refused to let them do anything at all about calling an ambulance or putting him in the hospital. It seemed obvious to her that the old man didn’t need an ambulance and didn’t belong in a hospital. Or at least not in an ordinary kind of hospital. Aside from the Alzheimer’s, the old man was as healthy as a horse. He was healthier than she was. He was stronger than she was, too, which was the terrifying thing.
This time, when the police had insisted on calling Yale-New Haven Hospital, Dessa Carter had given in. She hadn’t even made much of a protest. The idea of spending the night in that house, with the old man crazy on the inside and the gangs and addicts rocketing through the streets on the outside, was suddenly horrifying to her. Why it would be that now, when it had never been before, she didn’t know. The gangs had been there for years. Her father had been crazy for years. What was different?
“It’s not like this is anything new,” she told Greta Bellamy as she got ready to leave Fountain of Youth that night. “It’s not like I haven’t been through it before. It’s just that I don’t seem to be able to see my way to living with it anymore.”