Glass Houses(114)

“And she looked like what?” Gregor asked.

Tyrell looked astonished for a moment. “Oh,” he said finally. “She was a tall woman with mostly dark hair, just some grey streaks in it.”

“That would be Elizabeth Woodville,” Gregor said. “Woodville is her married name.”

Tyrell was momentarily confused, but he recovered. “Oh,” he said. “I see. That didn’t occur to me. The thing is, by the time she came, he was gone. I think he was gone because she was coming. I told him she was coming, and the next thing I knew, he’d taken off. I tried calling back, but he’d already left. And when she got here, I had to apologize. She was very good about it though.”

Gregor nodded. “Did Henry Tyder do anything else when he was here, except wander around and be a nuisance to the customers?”

“Not really. He knocked some stuff off the shelves, but I don’t think that was deliberate. He was just hammered. It couldn’t have been more than ten o’clock in the morning neither. It’s a shame to see that happen. I mean, the Book says riches won’t save you, and that’s true; but he had to have had all the advantages. He could have done something with himself.”

“What about the wandering,” Gregor said. “Did he stay out in the main section of the store? Did he go behind the counter? What?”

“Oh, he went everywhere,” Tyrell said. “We had to pry him out from behind the coffee urn. Nobody’s allowed to go there who isn’t working here because we can’t get insurance for it, and the water’s hot. Scalding hot. He went in the back there for a minute, before I could drag him out. He messed up some of the boxes.”

“This is back in the storeroom?” Gregor said. “Is that the same place that was broken into last night?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tyrell said. “It is. But he only got so far as the front of it when he was in here that time. I went right in and pulled him out. He was a sorrymess. I know there are people who swear by a drink in the evenings, but I’ve never seen alcohol be but a sorrow to anybody.”

“James Bond,” Charles Jellenmore said.

“Excuse me?” Gregor Demarkian said.

“James Bond,” Charles Jellenmore said. “He can drink. He drinks martinis. I tried one once. I like to puked.”

“Why don’t we go around the back,” Gregor Demarkian said. “We don’t want to hold you up too long. You’re probably anxious to open.”

Tyrell shrugged. “Everybody who’d come in this morning is around back with your officer, yakking his ear off. And speculating. By the time this gets around the neighborhood, I’ll have had my whole stock of beef jerky hauled out of here and sold to a pawn shop.”

“They don’t buy beef jerky at pawn shops,” Charles Jellenmore said.

“I’m working very hard here, Charles, not to wonder how you know how a martini tastes or what gets sold in pawn shops.”

Gregor Demarkian started off down the alley to the back of the building, and Tyrell Moss followed him, along with Rob Benedetti, the two detectives, and Charles. Tyrell didn’t like being in this alley anymore, or in the one in the back either, but he had no choice most of the time. And now, as always, he went. The back of the store was just as he’d imagined it was going to be while he was waiting out front. Claretta, Mardella, and Rabiah had been joined by all the rest of the churchwomen in the neighborhood, and they were surrounding the one uniformed officer like a herd of cats surrounding the one lone available mouse. The officer, though polite, looked halfway between nonplused and panicked.

Gregor Demarkian waded into the fray. “Officer,” he said. “You were the officer who came to the scene when the call came in? The one who called us?”

“Oh, yes,” the officer said, relieved to have a little air to breathe, finally. “I got the call about the break-in and came on out. I was talking to, uh, Mr. Moss, and it was revealed he had been a suspect in the Plate Glass Killings, so I thought—”

“He was cleared of suspicion in the Plate Glass Killings,” the district attorney said, “for God’s sake.”

Tyrell almost broke in to tell the man not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but he didn’t have to because Claretta Washington said it first, and then the other ladies added their opinions, and the whole scene looked about to ready to get out of control really fast. Tyrell cleared his throat. His speaking voice was one of his greatest assets. If he’d been a different kind of man, he could have been a preacher.

“Fley now,” he said, “there’s no time for this. This is Gregor Demarkian, and this man here is Robert Benedetti, the district attorney. They don’t have the time to waste here.”