Glass Houses(108)

“I left you a note.”

“Yes, you did,” Gregor said, “but the note could have been an attempt to get me not to worry. Which would have failed, by the way. Or it could have been written under duress. Which, given your history and your really bad taste in picking up acquaintances, wasn’t out of the question either.”

“You thought I was in trouble with the Mafia?”

“Why not? You’ve gone out with rock stars with arrest records that make most of the Gotti family look like saints.”

“Used to,” Bennis said. “I haven’t ‘gone out’ with anybody at all since I started this thing with you.”

“What thing?”

“What do you mean, ‘what thing’?”

“Just that,” Gregor said. “What thing? What is this thing? What do we call it. And don’t call it a ‘relationship.’ The word makes me crazy. I’d like to know what we are to each other.”

“I did ask you to marry me,” Bennis said.

“Technically, you suggested we should get married. That’s not quite the same thing. But I’ve got you on that one because I asked you first. A couple of years ago.”

“I didn’t turn you down.”

“You didn’t accept me either,” Gregor said. “You’ve turned neurosis into an art form. I don’t understand why we can’t just come to some kind of resolution. You tell me what all this was about, and it was about something, Bennis, not hand me that nonsense about it being something you can’t put your finger on. Tell me what it was about, what sent you away for months, and why you’re sure it won’t happen again. Then we’ll get married and honeymoon somewhere where they don’t have murders.”

“You’ve got tickets to Saint Peter’s gate?”

“I was thinking something more like Maui. I can go in disguise. I’m really not kidding around, Bennis. There’s got to be some way that you can just tell me what’s wrong here. If it’s something to do with me, I’ll see if I can fix it.”

Bennis was standing in the middle of the kitchen, her hand still resting on the door of the microwave. The microwave had beeped. His food was ready. She didn’t seem to have heard it. She didn’t seem to be moving.

“Are you going to feed me?” Gregor asked.

Bennis looked at him. “I had a breast cancer scare,” she said.

“What?”

“I had a breast cancer scare,” she said. “I found a lump in my breast, and I didn’t say anything because those can be lots of things, and they’re not necessarily cancer. So I had a biopsy, and the biopsy was inconclusive. So the doctor thought the best idea was for me to have it out. And it wasn’t anything, Gregor. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even a cyst. But I know how you feel about women and cancer. And I didn’t want to—. I don’t know. I was afraid you’d hate it. Hate me for it. Something. I was afraid we’d never be the same with each other again.”





2


By the time Gregor got to Rob Benedetti’s office, he felt a little as if he had been blown to South America in a hurricane. Everything looked the same, but nothing was. Bennis had it wrong on at least two counts. He didn’t hate her, and he didn’t hate the idea of seeing her. There was just a part of him that didn’t believe that there were such things as cancer “scares.” There was cancer, but that was something else again.

He had none of the computer printout information that had been on his kitchen table when he woke up this morning. He did have the chart he had made in the evidence room the day before, with a couple of notes. He looked around and saw that it promised to be a better day than the one before, if only because it wasn’t raining.

It was, however, getting colder. This had been the worst winter for getting colder.

He went up in the elevator and down the hall without bothering to go through the rigamarole required by security. Security knew him by now. He got to Rob’s office and was waved through by a young woman he had never seen before. If he didn’t know it was impossible, he’d think Rob went through secretaries the way a man with a cold went through Kleenex.

Rob and three men he didn’t recognize were standing around Rob’s desk, looking at what seemed to be even more printouts.

“Oh, thank God,” Rob said. “These two are Kevin O’Shea and Ed Fabereaux. They’re taking over from Marty and Cord.”

“Hi,” the tall one said.

“Hi,” the other one said.

Gregor wondered which was which and let it go.

“We’ve been over and over these things,” Rob said. “We’ve looked for everything you told us to. We got Betty and Martha to run more computer searches. What’s all this supposed to be in aid of?”