Glass Houses(109)

“Sometimes it helps to know where the similarities are,” Gregor said, “and the connections. For instance, Arlene Treshka, Sarajean Petrazik, and Elizabeth Bray were all clients of Dennis Ledeskis. And Elyse Martineau was his secretary.”

“Assistant,” the tall one said. Then he blushed. “We don’t call them secretaries any more; we call them assistants. They prefer it. Or they get upset.”

“Thing is, nobody intelligent wants to be a secretary since women’s lib,” the other one said. “So we changed the name.”

Gregor decided that the two of them weren’t fighting, which automatically made them better than Marty and Cord, but beyond that he wasn’t willing to go.

“There’s something else they were,” Gregor said patiently. “They were all residents of apartments in buildings owned by Green Point.”

“Oh, so were a couple of the others,” Rob said. “I mean, I didn’t check that, you didn’t say anything, but I know because I know the buildings. Rondelle Johnson was one. So was Debbie Morelli. So was Faith Anne Fugate. So was this one, now that I think of it.”

“This one?” Gregor said.

“The woman from the house on Curzon Street where we found all the bodies,” the tall one said.

“Skeletons,” the other one corrected.

“There was one body,” the tall one said.

Gregor cleared his throat. “One body and the skeletons of several more,” he said. “Where did the skeletons come from?”

“Oh, they were there,” Rob said. “You were right about that. Back in the Depression there was a church behind that house, and it had a graveyard. As far as we could find out, they just razed the church and built right over the graveyard. I think they were supposed to move things, but it was a different era. People cut corners.”

“Which leaves the body,” Gregor said. “I take it you’ve found out who and when.”

“Who and approximately when,” Rob said, “and that gives us a very interesting piece of information. The who is a woman named Beatrice Morgander. She rented an apartment in the house for three years, and then things seemed to have gone to hell. She had a nephewT who wras a drug addict. He’d show up every once in a while and beat her up until he could get her money. He’d make a lot of noise and break things. The other residents would complain.”

“It didn’t look like the kind of building,” Gregor said, “where that sort of thing is unknown. In fact, in that neighborhood, I’d expect there was quite a lot of trouble with drug addiction and casual violence.”

“Oh, there is,” Rob said. “But according to Kathleen Conge, the supervisor—”

“I met her,” Gregor said.

“Yes,” Rob said, “well.”

“We met with her,” the tall one said. “She thinks the perpetrator is one of the tenants, Bennie Durban. And he’s missing.”

“Alleged perpetrator,” the other one said.

Gregor rubbed his forehead. “She told me about Bennie Durban that night when I wasn’t wasting my time fighting with Marty Gayle. But about Beatrice Morgander.”

“Yes,” Rob said. “Well, here it is. There was the nephew, but Beatrice her-self was something of a pain in the ass. She picked fights with other tenants. She left her garbage in the halls. She paid rent when she felt like it. Kathleen Conge did what she could to get her to fly right; but when it didn’t work, she called the office and complained.”

“Why didn’t she just evict her?”

“The city has laws on who you can evict and why,” Rob said. “They’re not as bad as New York’s, and they don’t mean landlords have to keep impossible tenants, but the bigger landlords want to be careful because once they get hit they could find their entire operation under the microscope. And, quite frankly, most of them couldn’t survive it. Anyway, before she evicted anybody, Kathleen Conge had to inform the front office and explain her reasons and get an okay.”

“And did she?” Gregor asked.

“Yes,” Rob said. “She did. I called the office and asked. I—”

“Who did you ask?” Gregor asked.

“Oh,” Rob said. “I don’t remember. Somebody called the legal compliance officer? He’s got a title like that. Anyway, Kathleen Conge called, laid out her case, asked for the okay to evict, and got it. But she didn’t evict because Beat-rice Morgander was gone. By the time Kathleen Conge got to her door to tell her to go, there was no sign of her. She’d left her clothes and most of her other stuff in the apartment and just disappeared.”