Hearts of Sand(6)
“Oh, I know,” Bennis said. “You think I’ve gone completely out of my mind. But it’s really not anything like that. And I promise you, the house will not take forever.”
The kitchen door rattled and Donna Moradanyan Donahue burst in, carrying three cat carriers and another pile of blankets, and being trailed by a small boy who looked as if his day had suddenly become not boring.
TWO
1
Gregor Demarkian always thought of Patrick Hallihan as living “in Philadelphia.” Technically, however, Patrick lived in a township just past the proper city limits, in a big apartment complex that stretched out across blocks like an upscale housing project. The name of the apartment complex was Drexelbrook, and Gregor tended to think of the entire town by that same name. He had no idea if this was right or not. The cabdrivers knew how to get him to Drexelbrook, and that was all that mattered.
Of course, a cab all the way out here was enormously expensive, but for some reason Gregor didn’t care this morning. This morning the sky was black and everything looked apocalyptically dismal. Gregor was sure that somewhere, somehow, Cassandra had returned in the flesh to warn the populace about the coming doom.
The cab left him at the curb. The building was a bit of a walk down a narrow concrete pathway. Gregor wished he’d brought his Windbreaker as well as his umbrella.
He went down the path and into the foyer. The fresh flowers were really there. The air-conditioning was on much too high. He went to the call board and buzzed Patrick’s apartment, only to get a lilting female voice saying, “If that’s you, prove it.”
Gregor said, “Good morning, Lillian. I don’t know how to prove it.”
“Honestly, Gregor,” Lillian said. “You wouldn’t know you’d been in the FBI for twenty years. You wouldn’t know it about Patrick, either. Don’t either of you ever watch television?”
Gregor made his way across the lobby to the elevators. When the elevator doors opened, he punched the button for the third floor. The lobby itself was absolutely empty, and it had been absolutely empty every single time Gregor was ever in it. In fact, now that he thought of it, every apartment building lobby he had ever been in was empty, except the ones with doormen, and those didn’t count. It made him wonder why there were apartment building lobbies.
When he came off the elevator, Patrick was standing in the hall waiting for him, holding open the door of his apartment. Gregor shook the water off his shoulders and hurried up a little.
“I think I’m losing my mind,” he said. “I’m thinking about apartment building lobbies.”
“What?” Patrick said.
“And Bennis has a cat,” Gregor said.
Patrick stepped back to let Gregor through the door. “I wouldn’t have thought Bennis was a cat person,” he said.
“She isn’t,” Gregor said. “She found it under our porch. It looked half dead, so she brought it inside. It was pitiful.”
Lillian was putting out a coffeepot and cups on the living room coffee table. She was all dressed up like a housewife in a ’50s sitcom.
“You two should watch television,” she said. “You’d find out how you’re supposed to behave. I’ve never known a law enforcement officer in my life who knew how to behave.”
“She watches CSI,” Patrick said. “I try to talk her out of it.”
“I left all that stuff on the wingback chair,” Lillian said. “I’m going to run out to the grocery store. You’d think once you people retired, you’d stay retired.”
Gregor and Patrick waited while Lillian went through the door to another room and then reemerged in a good London Fog raincoat. She waggled her fingers at them and headed out the front door.
Then Patrick looked at Gregor and shrugged.
“You might as well sit down and have some coffee,” he said. “I don’t know how much use I’m going to be able to be to you. It’s been a long time.”
Gregor sat down on the love seat. Patrick sat down on the couch. They both looked at the stack of papers and notebooks and journals on the wingback chair. Then Patrick picked up the coffeepot and started pouring.
“So,” he said, “I take it this is official. You’ve been hired to look into this.”
“I’ve been hired as a consultant by the Alwych Police Department, yes,” Gregor said, “to help them look into what really does seem to be the deliberate and planned murder of Chapin Waring. The deliberate and planned murder of a ghost, was what the police chief told me when he called. Then I got a call from the Bureau’s New York office, asking me to be their liaison, or something. I insisted that Alwych had to know up front. Nobody was happy, but everybody’s going forward at the moment.”