“The police department investigating this case is the Connecticut State Police,” Stacey Spratz said. “Mr. Demarkian is our consultant. He is. directly associated with us.”
“You mean you’ve hired Mr. Demarkian as a consultant in your investigation of this young woman in my garage?”
“We’ve hired Mr. Demarkian as a consultant in the investigation of the murder of your daughter, Mrs. Anson,” Stacey said.
Margaret Anson smiled thinly. “You are not here, at the moment, on the matter of the murder of my daughter. You are here on the unrelated matter of the murder of this young woman. Whoever she was.”
“Her name was Zara Anne Moss,” Mark Cashman said.
“Was it? Well, it has nothing to do with me. And as far as you know, it has nothing to do with Kayla. Once you’ve taken Mr. Demarkian on in the matter of the death of this young woman, I would of course be more than happy to talk to him.”
Stacey and Mark looked at each other, momentarily brought up short.
Gregor cleared his throat. “I can’t really believe,” he said, “that you think the two things are unconnected. Do you often find the dead bodies of young women in your garage?”
“I don’t often find much of anything in my garage, Mr. Demarkian. But it is a detached garage, well to the back of this house, and this house is very large. Anything at all could be going on out there without my knowing a thing about it.”
“I’m sure it could,” Gregor said. “But doesn’t the timing seem strange to you?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Well, the reporters have been out here, in front of the house, most of the day, haven’t they? I saw a picture of this house on the news last night, and there were vans and reporters parked all over the road, making it nearly impassable.”
“So?”
“So,” Gregor said, “you can see the garage bays from the road. I don’t think anyone could have brought that young woman’s body in here—or that young woman herself in here, alive and well—without the reporters on the road noticing. Unless there’s a way into the garage to the back?”
“There’s a door in the back, yes.” Margaret Anson said. “I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“Could you tell me if the garage bays were open earlier today, Mrs. Anson?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t been out. I haven’t even been interested in going out. I had to see Kayla’s lawyers, but they came here.”
“In full view of the television cameras parked outside.”
“Of course.”
“But then for a while the television cameras left the scene,” Gregor said. “They took off for the Washington Police Department, to cover the press conference. I saw many of the same people there that I’m now seeing here.”
“We did have a few moments of calm, yes,” Margaret said. “I don’t know if they all went, though. I didn’t check.”
“But you went outside.”
“Did I?”
“You must have,” Gregor said. “You found the body in the garage. To find the body in the garage, you had to have gone to the garage. Unless you’re claiming clairvoyance. It doesn’t seem your style.”
Margaret Anson looked down at her hands, folded calmly in her lap. If she was going to notice the fact that she was talking to him even though she had declared that she wouldn’t, she would notice it now. She didn’t. Instead she seemed to be studying the pattern of her good wool dress. Gregor realized that Margaret Anson looked dressed for church, at least, if not for a full day of professional obligations in the city. Either she had changed into formal clothes in anticipation of the arrival of the police, or she lived an unbelievably formal life.
“I grow herbs,” she said now. “On a window shelf—a whole series of window shelves—in the kitchen. I like to put up vegetables in the fall.”
Gregor waited. The nails on Margaret Anson’s hands were short and blunt but very well cared for, professionally manicured hands. She did not put those hands in dirt.
“I went out to the garage,” she said, “to get a couple of small clay pots. It’s what I grow the herbs in. And I walked through the bay and there she was.”
“The bay was open?”
“One of them was.”
“Was it the one where she was lying?”
“What? Oh, no. It was the one in front of Robert’s car. The Jaguar. Robert always had very flashy taste in cars. I once threatened to divorce him if he insisted on buying a Rolls-Royce.”
“And this young woman was lying there, in one of the empty bays, on the ground?”