Skeleton Key(83)
“I’ve caused you a lot of trouble,” she said finally.
“No, no,” Grace told her. “It wasn’t any trouble. And to tell you the truth, sitting here with you in the afternoons has been a big help to me. I mean, I have all this reading to do, and when I’m home I get distracted by the television or the CD player or something else and I don’t get it done. Or the phone rings. There’s always something. But when I’ve been here I’ve been able to concentrate, you see. So it’s really worked out.”
“Oh,” Eve said.
Grace had left her book on the chair she had been sitting in. Eve looked at it again, but it was no more comprehensible than it had been. She tried to put together some kind of idea of Grace’s life, and couldn’t do it. None of the people Eve knew read many books, and the books they read had titles like Love’s Tempestuous Flower or Blood Vengeance. Grace had said something about being a student, but Eve didn’t think that could be right. Grace looked too old to be a student.
Eve took another long sip of broth. She was glad she had a second cup of it. The first one was going fast. And she was hungrier by the minute.
“So,” Grace said, “I talked to Darla Barden. You’ll have your job when you get out of here. She seems like a very nice woman. Oh, and I got the key from the super and went in and tidied up your apartment a little. Not that it was a mess or anything, but I was looking for your insurance card and there were a few dishes in the sink and I did them. Oh, and I kept you all the stories about the murder.”
“Murder?”
“Two murders,” Grace said. “First the murder of Kayla Anson, which is really the big noise, and then yesterday there was somebody else. The woman who lived with Faye Dallmer. You know Faye Dallmer, she writes those books about organic gardening and whatever. So this woman was murdered, the second one, and they found her in the same place they found Kayla Anson, in the Anson garage, you know, and now there’s a famous detective here from Philadelphia looking into it all. At any rate, I thought it would be a distraction, if you know what I mean. Everybody in town is talking about it and practically nothing else.”
Kayla Anson was dead? And also Faye Dallmer’s friend, what’s-her-name, Zara Anne Somebody. Eve rubbed the side of her face and tried to think.
In the world in which Eve Wachinsky had grown up, people like Kayla Anson and Zara Anne Somebody did not get murdered. Gang girls got murdered, and old ladies who lived in bad neighborhoods in Waterbury and had to walk to the bank and the grocery store. Women like Eve herself got murdered, too, if they were married and their husbands got liquored up. Eve had once gotten a black eye from a boyfriend who had snorted three lines of cocaine after drinking half a bottle of vodka and then decided that he didn’t like the smirk on her face. That was the boyfriend before the last one. Part of her was really happy that she hadn’t had more boyfriends than she had had.
She took another long gulp of chicken broth and finished the cup. She reached for the other cup and got the lid off this time without difficulty. Grace beamed at her as if she had done something very clever.
“So,” Grace said, “let me fill you in. Let me tell you all about the murder and all the rest of it. Really, it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened around here in the last century.”
Five
1
It was Stacey Spratz’s idea that they should do something about lunch that was “convenient.” It took Gregor Demarkian a whlle to realize that Stacey wanted to go out for fast food—wanted it, in fact, as ardently as Bennis Hannaford ever wanted Godiva chocolates, or Tibor wanted an evening at La Vie Boheme, where they made perfect flaming orange chicken. There was a Burger King on Main Street in Watertown, and a McDonald’s on Straits Turnpike near the Middlebury town line. If you wanted something more esoteric—Taco Bell, say, or Arby’s—you had to go into Waterbury, or out to the new mall. Stacey Spratz did not want anything esoteric. He wanted a Big Mac Extra Value Meal with a Barq’s root beer. He was willing to settle for a Whopper if Gregor had strong preferences in the direction of Burger King. Gregor didn’t think he had eaten in a fast-food restaurant of any kind since he’d been reassigned off kidnap detail, and that was—what? Thirty years ago? McDonald’s had only just been starting up then. They’d sold hamburgers for fifteen cents.
“Go to McDonald’s,” Gregor said, thinking that one place would be as awful as another as far as the food was concerned. “But stop at the inn first. I want to run up to my room and check on some things.”