Somebody Else's Music(128)

“What was that all about?” Kyle asked as they came out onto the fourth-floor west wing itself. “I feel like I’m in a James Bond movie.”

“Security,” Gregor said.

It wasn’t much in the way of security. As soon as they were past the man in black, they could see Geoff DeAvecca running back and fourth between the rooms. Geoff saw them coming down the hall and veered in their direction. He came to a stop just in front of them and said, “Cool! Is that a real gun? Does it have bullets in it? Can I shoot it?”

Kyle put his hand protectively on his gun. “I always knew there was a reason why I felt stupid wearing a holster,” he said.

“It’s a real gun,” Gregor said, “but you can’t hold it and you can’t shoot it. It would be far too dangerous. I can’t believe your mother would approve of it.”

“My mother doesn’t approve of Donkey Kong,” Geoff said majestically. “But she’s a girl. Jimmy likes Donkey Kong.”

Up toward the other end of the hall, a head poked out of a door. A moment later, Mark DeAvecca’s entire body followed it, and Jimmy Card followed him. Jimmy was supposed to be the grown-up, but Mark was half a foot taller. Gregor always got the feeling that Mark was growing even taller as he watched.

“Mr. Demarkian! What’s up? Have you seen Mom? She went out with your friend Bennis. What’re you doing? Mom says you said she isn’t a suspect anymore. Is that a real policeman?”

“Mark, for Christ’s sake,” Jimmy said.

“I’m just a little jumpy,” Mark said. “I don’t like the idea of her being out there on her own. She doesn’t have a lot of sense.”

Gregor cleared his throat. It was that or laugh. “We got your note at reception. We just didn’t know what it meant. So we decided to come up here to see. Where did Liz and Bennis go, do you know?”

“No,” Jimmy said. “We don’t. Liz wouldn’t tell me what was on her mind. She went downstairs to borrow Bennis’s car, and then she called back up here to say that Bennis was going to go with her.”

“I figure if she wanted somebody with her, she wasn’t going to do anything stupid like commit suicide,” Mark said. “And don’t look at me like that. People do do that. They do it all the time. And she’s been depressed.”

“She hasn’t been that kind of depressed,” Jimmy said. Then he sighed. “I don’t know what it was about. She’s been acting peculiar practically since we got here. She keeps saying she thought she knew what she heard, but now she knows she’s wrong. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No,” Gregor said, although it did. He wondered why Jimmy hadn’t thought of it, or Mark. Elizabeth Toliver had heard a voice in the woods on the night she was nailed into the outhouse and Michael Houseman died, a voice screaming “slit his throat.” She’d always said she had no idea whose voice it was, but she might not have been telling the truth. Gregor had always suspected she wasn’t. She hadn’t been behaving like somebody who couldn’t figure out who it was she had heard.

“I just hope she didn’t get caught by reporters,” Jimmy said. “That’s just about all we’d need right now.”

“She talks,” Mark said. “You wouldn’t believe it. She’s on cable news all the time and she still doesn’t get it. She just blurts it all out. But that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about the murderer. That’s been the point of this exercise, hasn’t it? Somebody’s been trying to murder her? I’ve been trying to tell Jimmy that, but he won’t listen.”

“Nobody murders somebody just because they left town after high school and got famous,” Jimmy said.

“Those two women who drove me home would be happy to see her dead,” Mark said. “You didn’t talk to them for an hour. I did.”

“It took an hour to drive you home from the middle of Hollman?” Jimmy said.

“No,” Mark said. “We talked some before we went. But you ask Mr. Demarkian. I’m right, aren’t I? Somebody has been trying to kill her.”

“No,” Gregor said.

“This is new,” Kyle said. “Why would you think somebody wanted to kill your mother?”

“What else could be going on?” Mark said.

“Nobody has been trying to kill Ms. Toliver,” Gregor said firmly. “And nobody is going to be trying to kill Ms. Toliver in the foreseeable future, as far as I know. She may have enemies in New York or Connecticut that I’m unaware of, of course—”