Skeleton Key(106)

It hadn’t even occurred to her that violent death was different than other kinds of death, and now she was drowning in a sea of confusion.

She didn’t think she’d get straightened out again until she found herself in need of money. The practical, as she had told her husband once, would always trump the metaphysical.





3


Bennis Hannaford hadn’t brought a lot of clothes with her to the Northwest Hills. She never brought a lot of clothes with her when she traveled. A veteran of book tours, she knew that clothes were more a problem than an asset. They made it difficult for you to get away quickly. This time, she had only to pack two skirts, two silk blouses, and a dress. Her laundry was already in a plastic bag at the bottom of her suitcase. She could wear her jeans and her turtleneck and her sweater for the drive home.

Assuming, of course, that she was able to drive home. She didn’t see how she could avoid trying. The car was here, and there wasn’t anything in the way of public transportation. Her cough, though, had become a steady hacking convulsion. At least once or twice every half hour it bent her over double. She was finding it impossible to breathe.

She was also bringing up more blood. That was what had decided for her. She. had brought up two big wads of it, on two separate occasions, since this morning. Something had also happened to her smoking. She had been a two-pack-a-day chain smoker for decades, but she had always felt in control of her addiction. She had always been able to put the cigarettes aside for a few hours if she needed to, to ride in an airplane or sit through a movie. Now she couldn’t put the cigarettes aside at all. She wanted to smoke all the time. If she didn’t have a cigarette lit and to hand, she was positively frantic. It didn’t make any sense. It was also scaring her to death.

“Listen,” she’d told Tibor on the phone, when she’d called to tell him she was coming home. “Call Dr. Gerald Harrison and tell him it’s me and it’s an emergency. I’d do it myself but I’m in a hurry and I don’t have my book with me. Tell him it’s a big emergency. I’m not even going to come to Cavanaugh Street. I’m going to drive right to his office. I’m going to get there at about seven o’clock.”

“Seven o’clock at night? But, Bennis, the doctor will not be in his office at seven o’clock at night.”

“He will be if you call him and tell him I need him to be there. Tell him it’s an emergency, Tibor. Tell him it’s a big one. Do it now.”

“Bennis—”

“I’ve got to get on the road,” Bennis said.

Usually, Bennis was infinitely patient with Tibor. Tibor had been jailed in the old Soviet union  . Tibor was the best priest Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church had ever had. Tibor was her friend.

But right now, there was nothing and nobody more important than her moving, driving, going, getting where she had to be. Where a doctor could check this out. Where she could find that she was afraid for nothing, and that she wasn’t going to die. There it was, right there, at the back of her mind. She was afraid she was going to die.

At the last minute, because she had to tell him some-thing, she wrote Gregor a note and taped it to the mirror in the bathroom, where he would be sure to see it as soon as he washed his hands.

Had to go back to Philadelphia. Love you, Bennis.

She didn’t think she wanted to write down any more. She didn’t think she wanted to explain.

If she wrote it down—if she put it into words—it would turn out to be true.





Three



1


In the media atmosphere that now existed, it was going to be almost impossible to get anything done. Gregor had known that, vaguely and subconsciously, when Stacey’s police cruiser had been rocked on Margaret Anson’s drive. He knew it sharply and without question when it came time for them to leave, and he saw that they would still have to face the reporters massed into a knot in the road. Standing on Margaret Anson’s front steps, Gregor thought the route to 109 was completely impassable. A couple of the vans had been parked sideways across the road, blocking it to all through traffic. Reporters on foot were everywhere. The state police guards that had been stationed at the end of the drive were proving to be completely inadequate. The words feeding frenzy didn’t begin to describe what was going on.

“They’re mad at us,” Stacey Spratz said, sounding puzzled.

“We’re not telling them anything,” Gregor said. “Never mind that we don’t have anything much to tell them.”

“We don’t have anything.”

Gregor shook his head. “It’s the skeleton. That’s the key. The skeleton had to have been put there for a reason.”