Fountain of Death(96)

“Something like that. Yes. And that, you see, was unacceptable.” Gregor turned to look at the officers standing near the door. “Would one of you two, please—?”

“Sure,” the one to the right of the doors said, coming forward to take the copy of the employment application out of Gregor’s hand. He went to the ersatz antique phone and started dialing.

“None of it had anything to do with Fountain of Youth, you see,” Gregor continued, “not really. This was just a convenient place to shunt suspicion, and every development made it even more convenient. That was luck, but luck counts. Luck always counts.”

“Okay,” the officer at the phone said. “She’s ringing.”

At just that moment, Tony Bandero’s beeper began to go off.

It took a while for the obvious to sink in. The beeper’s tone was high and strident. It bounced around the room like a rogue germ, leaving everyone blank. Then Nick Bannerman stood straight up and said, “Jesus Christ.”

Gregor Demarkian turned to Tony Bandero, who seemed to be frozen in place.

“Traci Cardinale is awake,” he said gently. “She seems to think she has a lot to say.”

“Does she?” Tony Bandero said.

The cop on the phone had put the receiver on the table, stunned. The phone was still making the beeper beep. The shrill high note seemed destined to go on forever.

“You should get that car of yours fixed,” Gregor told Tony Bandero. “It makes a very distinctive sound. I heard it when you picked me up at the train station. Frannie Jay heard it on the night Tim Bradbury died. At least four people now in this room heard it the day Stella Mortimer died. And, of course, I heard it last night, at the hospital. If I had been able to connect the sound to the descriptions I had been given of it, I would have been on to you before I was.”

“I’m not going to get the car fixed now,” Tony Bandero said. “I’m not going to have time.”