Skeleton Key(86)

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Gregor said again.

“I do stupid things every day. I don’t seem to be able to help myself. I won’t charge Peter with child abuse.”

“Good.”

“I won’t even have a fit when he comes to spend his day with Tommy.”

“Also good.”

“But that doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. I’ve got to get out of here, Gregor. I’ve got to help Lida Arkmanian make pastry. If you come back fast enough, you may get a chance at some pretty good food. Father Tibor has decided that the street ought to hold an Armenian festival.”

“What?” Gregor said.

“I’ve got to go,” Donna said.

The phone went to dial tone in his ear. Gregor held it back and looked at it. An Armenian festival? What kind of an Armenian festival? And when? In some ways, he hated to be away from Cavanaugh Street. As soon as he got out of touch, people in the neighborhood started doing things.

He put the receiver back in its cradle and stood up. He would leave a note for Bennis and then he would go back down to Stacey Spratz. He just really wished that he could remember what Donna had said that had caught him up so short.

There was another advantage to being back on Cavanaugh Street. His mind worked better there. He didn’t forget things he should remember.

He went to the little desk in the corner of the room and started looking through it for notepaper.





2


The most difficult thing about any case of murder, Gregor had always thought, is getting used to the fact that everybody is going to lie to you. And he did mean everybody. Even people who could not possibly be suspects in the case, who had iron-clad alibis, who had been in labor at the time the murder happened or who were too close to blind to be able to fire a fatal shot—even those people lied, and lied often, when presented with the police in search of an explanation for why a dead body had ended up dead. The truth of it was, of course, that people simply lied all the time. Even he lied. Nobody wanted to present themselves to the world in the full reality of what they were in the privacy of their own minds. Nobody was the person he wanted himself to be, or even the person he thought he ought to be. Nobody was without some corner of his life that embarrassed or shamed him.

The problem with the way people lied in murder investigations, though, was that they lied about specifics. They said they were places they hadn’t actually been, or weren’t in places they had been. They fudged times. They invented emotional attachments to the deceased that had never existed, or put indifference in the place of what had been a hot and angry connection. Some of them were like Margaret Anson, clear enough about the reality that had been but not exhaustive. You got one part of the story and nothing else.

At the McDonald’s on Straits Turnpike, Stacey Spratz insisted on getting out to eat.

“I don’t like to eat in the car,” he told Gregor. “It’s too much like—I don’t know. Some movie about some loser who couldn’t get a wife, I guess.”

Gregor didn’t like eating in cars, either. It reminded him of kidnapping detail. Everything about driving always reminded him of kidnapping detail. He was sure that kidnapping detail had been the most miserable experience of his life, although not the most painful. The most painful had been watching his Elizabeth die.

He got out of the police cruiser and followed Stacey Spratz into the McDonald’s. It was a big, airy space with a sunroom built onto the end and furniture made of blond wood. There had been a fair number of cars in the parking lot, but the restaurant was almost empty. There were no lines at the registers at all.

“I always get a Big Mac,” Stacey said helpfully. “But some people prefer a double Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

Gregor didn’t want a double Quarter Pounder with cheese. He wanted a bowl of yaprak sarma, followed by a plate of something sweet, like those farina-and-honey cakes Lida was always making lately that he didn’t know the name of. He wished he hadn’t left Cavanaugh Street in such a hurry this time. When Lida and Hannah Krekorian knew he was leaving and going to be away for any length of time, they sometimes packed him big picnic baskets, full of Armenian food.

He ordered a crispy chicken sandwich and large everything. It startled him a little to find that instead of being given a Coke, he was given a cup and sent to fill it up on his own.

“It’s because you get free refills,” the young woman at the counter explained helpfully.

If Gregor had known he could refill his drink at will, he would have gotten a smaller one. He took his tray to the soda machine and pushed the button for ice. Something that sounded like a volcano opening up in front of his face started spewing little nuggets of cold into the air.