She had never wanted Zara Anne to die. That was the truth. She had only wanted to be on her own again for a while, to have some quiet, to be able to think. Now she had all those things, and she hated them.
3
Back at the Mayflower Inn, Bennis Hannaford was stretched out on the bed, feeling awful. The television was on. She had heard much of the press conference, and she had gone on watching after everybody had taken off for Margaret Anson’s house. Breaking news, they called it—an excuse for hyperactivity. She knew nothing at all about this young woman, Zara Anne Moss. She wondered just what it was Gregor was doing. She wished she could stop coughing. That was the thing. She couldn’t stop coughing.
Actually, she did stop coughing, on and off. She stopped and felt the muscles in her arms and chest relax—and then, as soon as they did, the coughing would start again. It had gotten to the point where she was afraid to sit up. Any movement at all seemed to trigger another set of spasms. She didn’t even move to answer the phone when it rang. She was afraid to turn over, or that, if she did answer it, she would start coughing and not be able to stop. She willed herself to lay still until the ringing stopped. Then she closed her eyes and tried very hard not to yawn, even though she needed to. Yawning was the most treacherous thing of all.
She was just beginning to drift off to sleep when the phone started ringing again. She sat up to answer it without even thinking about it. She got the receiver off the hook and said, “Bennis Hannaford speaking” before the cough started in again.
“Bennis?” Donna Moradanyan asked.
“Donna,” Bennis tried to say, but it didn’t work. The coughing hit her like a wave, and in no time at all it was much worse than just coughing. It was something like convulsions.
She stood up and bent over at the waist.
“Bennis?” Donna said again.
Bennis felt something come up her throat, something thin and raw. She convulsed one more time and spat it out, and then the coughing stopped.
Then she looked at the floor, and saw what she had left there.
It was a thick clot of blood.
Three
1
Bennis Hannaford was asleep in bed when Gregor got back to the inn that night, carrying an armful of notes that made him feel as if he were back in college and had lost his briefcase. She was awake when he got up the next morning, running the water in the shower and muttering behind the bathroom door. Gregor got up, discovered that the bathrobe he’d brought was gone—this was nice, it meant that Bennis was behaving according to type—and took up his notes of the day before. It felt to him as if he had seen a million people in just a few hours. It might even have been true. Kayla Anson. Zara Anne Moss. The two deaths were almost undoubtedly connected. Gregor just didn’t understand why investigating them required riding around in cars for the better part of the day.
Bennis was done in the bathroom. Gregor waited politely for her to come out and then went in himself. She did not look well. Her eyes were pouchy. Her skin was much too white. Gregor took a shower and brushed his teeth and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. His eyes were pouchy. His skin was much too white. Maybe there was nothing wrong with Bennis except that she was a forty-year-old woman and he was seeing her the first thing in the morning. Maybe the other mornings when he had seen her first thing, and she had not been like this, had been the real exceptions.
He went back out into the main room and found Bennis sitting at a small round table, eating breakfast. The table was set for two, and the wheeled cart beside it had urns for both coffee and tea. She must have called room service.
“Good morning,” Gregor said.
Bennis waved at him with her cigarette. “Donna Moradanyan called. Last night. She said it was important, but you can’t call her back today. She’s out until just around dinnertime.”
“Did she say what it was about?”
“Something about Peter. She didn’t go into a lot of detail.”
“She didn’t go into detail with you?”
“I was throwing up at the time. I think I’ve got a touch of . . . food poisoning. Or something.”
“I thought you looked ill,” Gregor said. “Do you want to see a doctor?”
“I don’t see what for. I’m not throwing up anymore. I don’t feel as if I’m about to die. I’ll be all right.”
“Maybe you should just stay in and take it easy.”
“Mmmm,” Bennis said.
Gregor sat down at the chair that was waiting for him and got himself coffee. It was decent coffee, properly perked, as he would have expected it to be. There were Danish pastries and doughnuts on the tray, too, and he took one of those. Bennis, he saw, was having her usual fruit and cheese, but she had barely touched it.